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Given Mr. Sutherland’s parking-lot experience, I guessed I couldn’t blame him for being a little paranoid. In 1999, this whole public vampirism thing left a lot of humans unsure of our place in the food chain, which could lead to ugly confrontations.
It was as if vampires had walked into the proverbial room, and the entire world stopped talking at once. The first year “postvampire” was a pretty dark chapter in terms of our collective history. The World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead formed to “formally interact with human governments and facilitate open, cordial communication.” In other words, they busted their way into the homes of presidents, prime ministers, and dictators around the world and told them, “Quit killing us off for giggles, or prepare for an ass whipping of biblical proportions.”
The American government issued mandatory after-dark curfews out of fear that vampires would retaliate en masse. So humans found ways to track vampires to their sleeping places during the day, making daytime vampire security a sought-after, ridiculously overpriced service.
Enter Iris Scanlon and her business, Beeline, a daytime concierge service for vampires. Beeline was part special-event coordinator, part concierge service, part personal organizer. Iris took care of all of the little details that vampires couldn’t see to without bursting into cinders or just didn’t want to deal with themselves. Picking up dry-cleaning, filing government paperwork, delivering blood, receiving deliveries of household items. The transport service was an experimental venture, and so far, it didn’t seem likely that Iris was going to be adding it to the menu of regular Beeline services.
I drove hypercarefully through the northeast corner of Oregon to Idaho, driving two miles under the limit and steering as if I was performing neurosurgery. But the drive was a productive one. I learned the words to three Nickelback songs, which meant that I could eventually make fun of three more Nickelback songs. I caught up on The Help, an audio book I’d been saving for a special occasion. My cell phone rang frequently, and I ignored it.
I drove without thinking, without planning. I just enjoyed the scenery and the music and the blissful solitude. I ate gummy worms and trail mix. I went through several of the playlists on the iPod I’d plugged into the stereo system. I loved creating a mood-setting list for every occasion, everything from the “You’ve Been Up for Far Too Long List,” which included a lot of peppy ’80s music, to the “Work the Pole List,” which I’d rather not go into.
I may or may not have made several stops along the way to take pictures of the mountains and a broken-down drive-in movie theater in the middle of nowhere. Yes, it was a calculated risk, but I had to enjoy something about this trip. I could feel my joints loosening when I held the camera. The pictures weren’t particularly good, certainly not good enough to include in my photo journal. I preferred to take shots with some people in them, but for now, it was a good workout, so to speak.
Other than spilling coffee down the front of my blouse, a minor injury sustained while locking a bathroom stall, and a brief run-in with an RV driver who didn’t seem to recognize “no passing” zones, the day went off without a hitch.
Just after sunset, as we left Idaho, I heard bumping around in the cubby. I pulled over on the lonely stretch of I-90 with my emergency flashers blinking and pulled out the warmed packet of blood that Mr. Sutherland had requested.
The evening was pleasant and mild. The blacktop radiated heat against my legs as I made my way around the car. There was no road noise, just the chirp of crickets and the wind over drying grass. I opened the back hatch of the car, just as the cubby door swung up.
Mr. Sutherland sat up as if he was on a hinge, in one smooth upward motion. His three-piece suit—dark charcoal gray with a faint pinstripe—was perfectly pressed. The only thing mussed about him was his hair, arranged in that flawlessly tousled, “recently laid” arrangement. The suit made me think of that Gary Oldman Dracula movie, which made me think of Keanu Reeves’s English accent, which made me giggle.
Hungry vampires were irritable vampires, so I choked it back, making an indelicate snorting noise, as I thrust the blood packet toward him. He took it, eyebrow raised at my display, and drained it immediately.
“Another?” I asked.
He shook his head, watching me carefully. “You don’t have to spoon-feed me. I’m not a newborn.”
“Good morning to you, too, sir,” I retorted with a little curtsey.
He gracefully slid out of the vehicle, straightening his cuffs, and stood over me. He scanned me from head to toe, that same frustrated expression clouding his eyes. His mouth bowed south. “You do realize that you’re supposed to drink the coffee, not bathe in it, yes?”
I glanced down. How did he know I’d dumped half a cup of coffee into my cleavage? I’d changed my stained blouse hours before on one of my scheduled bathroom stops. I sniffed my shirt and only detected the slightest scent of coffee, which was coming from … my bra. He was smelling my bra. Well, that was gross.
“Caffeine tightens the pores,” I retorted, rounding the car. “Are you planning to ride shotgun, or—” I watched as Mr. Sutherland slid into the backseat. “OK, then.”
He opened his atlas and checked our progress against the map. He frowned. Without looking up, he asked, “Did you submit the police report this morning?”
“Yes. That was a creepily accurate forgery of my handwriting, by the way.”
He ignored the compliment-slash-jibe. “Did you contact Miss Scanlon and let her know about our difficulties? Did she make arrangements for our travel expenses?”
I cleared my throat and nodded. “Mm-hmm.”
I glanced down at my phone, noting that while we were standing outside, I’d received another call from my mother. I grumbled, shoving it into my purse, and then turned the keys in the ignition.
“Miss Puckett.”
I looked up into the rearview mirror to see blue eyes glaring at me. I moved to put the car into gear, and the frown deepened.
His velvety voice was more insistent—and slightly pissed at being ignored. “Miss Puckett.”
I shoved the gearshift back into park. When I turned to face him, I was smiling so sweetly I feared my cheeks would crack. “Yes?”
He had his arm stretched across the backseat in a casual, “Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Bond” supervillain pose. The top of his light blue shirt was unbuttoned, revealing the perfectly symmetrical hollow of his throat. A sudden, compulsive urge to lick that narrow expanse of skin, framed by slender cords of muscle, overwhelmed my brain, and I had to grip the steering wheel to keep myself in the front seat.
Did they make Adam’s apple porn? Was that a thing? Would I be scarred for life if I Googled it? And if I couldn’t find any pictures, could I take my own? My camera was in the bottom of my bag—
And then I realized that I was staring at Mr. Sutherland’s throat cleavage … and he was clearly aware of this. I could tell by the curious lift of his eyebrow. My cheeks flamed, a rush of blood beneath my skin that shocked as much as it shamed. How could a stare—well, let’s be honest, it was a glare—be enough to make my panties spontaneously combust?
