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"Someone like me?" she asked.
I'd absent-mindedly been thinking "for someone as attractive as you." Clearly, she thought I'd been talking about something else, because she turned back to the counter where she'd applied the sanitizer and moisturizer, then seemed to notice a small pharmacy's worth of prescription pill bottles lining the counter. She saw me looking, too.
I didn't know what to think of it all, but it wasn't my problem. Before I could leave, a woman came through the door, stopping when she saw me. I was surprised I hadn't heard her coming and decided I could blame the alien cat and the pretty girl who probably wasn't wearing pants.
The newcomer looked like she was some kind of yoga instructor. She had a mat rolled up under her arm, perfect posture, the same dark hair and brown eyes as the girl without pants, and I could smell that she'd been sweating. But just beneath that scent, there was something alarming.
Something that made my entire body go rigid.
Vampire.
It was faint, and I knew it wasn't her scent. But this new girl had been around a vamp. Recently, too.
I took one more look at no-pants, who had a strange, far more vulnerable look on her face now. Maybe she'd been offended by my warning, maybe it was something else. All I knew was I needed to get the fuck out of this apartment.
For some reason, these two were involved with vamps.
There were some rules in my life I didn't mind bending. Then there were some that were absolutely iron clad.
For me, the only good vamp was a dead vamp. And if these two were tangled up in them, they'd be far better off if I was gone before the blood sucker showed up and got him or herself killed.
So I picked up the cat by the scruff of its loose-skinned neck, set it aside, and left.
5
Sylvie
Maisey and I didn't speak for a few moments after the huge guy I'd hit with a bat left. I could still remember how the scruff of his stubble had felt against my fingertips and how furnace hot his skin had been. I thought I'd killed him, and then he was up and standing there like nothing was wrong after just a minute or two.
But God, he'd looked like bad news. If the guy on the street corner with the phone had been the perfect hero from my romance books, this guy had been the one who is clearly being set up to be the bad guy in a TV show. He was all darkness. Black hair, bold eyebrows, and scorching gray eyes that made me feel like a rabbit staring into the eyes of a wolf. He'd practically radiated danger.
And then the moment he saw my pills, he'd bolted without a word.
Of course he had.
I didn't just have baggage, I was baggage. And I couldn't blame any guy for not wanting to be anywhere near it. It wasn't self-pity, it was just common sense. There were too many perfectly normal, perfectly healthy people out there for someone to willingly get involved with someone like me.
Maisey finally pulled the door closed after the brief shock seemed to pass. She tossed her yoga mat in the corner by the door, then put her hands on her hips and gave me that dreaded big sister look.
My sister was thirty and had a hectic schedule because of her multiple gigs doing yoga classes at three studios across the city. I knew she worked her ass off to help pay for our place and my pills, and I was always grateful for that. I was also her little sister, though, so I was still contractually obliged to be a little brat from time to time.
"What?" I asked, not making eye contact.
"You're not going to explain why whoever that was just rushed out of here? Or why he was here in the first place? Or what the hell you were thinking?"
I gave her the abridged version of what had happened. Of course, I might've taken an artist's license and omitted the part where I actually included the apartment number, and I might've softened the content of my note to be less cringe-inducing. In my version of the story, I also only hit him once with the baseball bat.
Maisey was still looking at me like I'd lost my mind when I finished.
She sighed, sanitized her hands, and then went toward the shower. She stopped at the door, holding a finger out at me. "You need to be more careful, Syl. I know it's hard, but I can't lose you. And hey, I could cancel tonight and maybe we could just watch a movie together like you've been wanting. Sound good?"
"Yeah," I said, grateful she hadn't lingered on the guilt trip part for very long. "That actually sounds great."
