Page 88 of Road Trip with a Vampire

I laughed. Those were clearly Reggie’s. “I don’t mind superheroes,” I said.

“For a third,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, “that room is all the way down the hall from mine.” He stepped closer to me, taking my hands in his. My breath caught. “While those tax books look like they’d be a decent sleep aid, I can think of a better one.”

His eyes smoldered. Heat bloomed on my cheeks as I thought of how it had felt to fall asleep in his arms the past few nights. Of how it had been waking up next to him in the morning. I licked my lips, which had suddenly gone bone dry.

“You don’t care what my friends will think?” I asked quietly.

A corner of his mouth kicked up. “They’re a human and a vampire living together,” he pointed out. “If they judge us, they’re the world’s filthiest hypocrites.”

I snorted. “True.”

His face shuttered. “Unless you’d prefer to sleep with those tax manuals.”

Would sleeping separately while we were here be the smarter move? Yes. The same way never having slept with Peter in the first place would have been the smarter move. But was it what Iwanted?

No. It wasn’t.

Gathering my courage, I extended my hand to him. “I’m tired after our drive. Take a nap with me?”

He smiled. “There is nothing I would rather do.”

Twenty

Three weeks earlier

Peter stood in front ofthe safe that had stymied him for weeks, frowning at the slip of paper in his hands.

He didn’t think someone as clever as Zelda would ward her safe with something that could be cracked with the absurd solution his employers had given him. Not that heknewZelda, of course. All he knew about her he’d learned from visits to her studio’s website, the minutes from last February’s Redwoodsville, California, chamber of commerce meeting where she’d spoken passionately about a proposed bus route, and his failed attempts at cracking her safe.

He thought he was likely right in his assessment of her intelligence, though. He’d built a career out of his educated guesses usually being correct. Her sharp, shrewd eyes seemed like they saw everything. (Her eyes were lovely as well, bright hazel and flecked with green, though he told himself that had nothing to do with it.) Besides—anyone who could successfully keep him out of something he wanted to bust into had to be uncommonly bright.

When he’d asked his employers where they’d gotten this spell,they’d said something about a Redditor called smokedup_69420 who’d insisted this counterspell could counterspell anything. And when Peter had voiced his doubts over whether smokedup_69420 had the faintest fucking idea how to counterspell magic that was this strong, John and his egregious red plaid suit had both glared at him and demanded he try it anyway.

Given that Peter was no closer to cracking the safe than he’d been weeks ago, he’d had no ready reply to that.

If this worked—though Peter seriously doubted it would—then he could finally go home. One thing to look forward to, anyway.

Peter read the scrap of paper again before clearing his throat. Here went nothing.

“Lalalala kalalalalala,” he said in the most serious voice he could muster, cringing at himself.

For long moments, nothing happened.

Just as he was about to call his employer to let him know they were back at square one again, an explosion from the still-sealed safe sent him flying across the room.

A bright burst of pain exploded behind his eyelids when his head cracked against the cold tile floor.

And then…

Darkness.

I had a moment ofdisorientation when I opened my eyes and didn’t recognize my surroundings.

I lay in a comfortable but unfamiliar bed. It was dark as pitch outside the too-high windows.

Then I heard the unmistakable sound of Reggie’s laughter coming from the other side of the closed bedroom door and remembered where I was.

This was Reggie’s guestroom.