That was insane. Absolutely insane.
I looked at the kids desperately. “Did Winnie tell you to keep this secret from me?”
Bianca shook her head immediately. “She told us we shouldn’t lie to you.”
“She wanted to tell you herself,” CJ added. “We just didn’t know when.”
My pulse hammered painfully. “This isn’t funny.”
“We know,” Bianca whispered.
And then Billie—little chaotic Billie who exaggerated literally everything—started crying. “We swear,” she said brokenly. “We swear on Mommy’s grave.”
Silence crashed into the room. Nobody had ever sworn on Jade before.
CJ swallowed hard. “We’re telling the truth, Dad. And Winnie’s in trouble.”
My entire body suddenly went ice cold because I believed them. God help me, I believed them. Every horrifying little puzzle piece clicked into place all at once.
“What do we do?”
Bianca inhaled slowly. And in the calmest tone imaginable for a nine-year-old discussing vampire emergencies, she said, “First, we need a solid plan.”
The doorbell rang at exactly eight-thirteen. We’d been waiting for over an hour. It wasn’t like Winnie to be late.
I stood from the couch so fast I nearly spilled my drink onto Bianca, who was sitting ramrod straight beside me with a notebook in her lap. CJ looked equally tense, though he was trying to hide it by pretending to casually doodle dragons breathing fire over tiny stick figures labeled EVIL VAMPIRE MAN. Billie had climbed entirely underneath the coffee table ten minutes ago “for tactical reasons.”
None of us were handling this normally. Which, in fairness, was difficult to do when you’ve discovered your nanny was a vampireand her terrifying undead-looking boyfriend might also be a serial killer.
I wiped my palms against my jeans and crossed toward the front door. My pulse was pounding hard enough to make me slightly nauseous.
Perhaps the kids were wrong. Maybe this was all explainable.
Maybe—
I opened the door and immediately knew absolutely none of this was explainable.
Winnie stood on the porch. For one awful, stupid second, my brain forgot how to function because she looked—different. She was still beautiful enough to make me do a double take, but she was muted somehow.
She wore black, of course, but not her usual soft vintage dresses and layered cardigans. Tonight, it was a fitted dark blouse buttoned high at the throat and a long black skirt that fell almost to her ankles. No parasol. No oversized sunglasses. Her red hair had been pinned back too tightly, exposing more of her face than usual.
She looked pale. And her eyes?—
Good God.
Her eyes looked empty, like someone had dimmed something inside her.
Then the creepy man stepped into view behind her. Tall didn’t begin to cover it. He unfolded into my doorway. Dark hair hung nearly to his waist, partially tied back. Expensive blackcoat. Gray eyes that landed on me with amusement, like I was something mildly entertaining he’d found beneath a shoe.
His smile appeared a second later. Completely dead behind the eyes.
Every protective instinct I possessed detonated. The kids had been right. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know why. But every cell in my body recognized danger.
“Conrad,” Winnie said quietly.
I dragged my attention back to her. “You came.”
The sentence nearly killed me.
