AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My self-taught handygirl skills kept my family fed and our cabin warm. No matter how bad things got, I never worried that we’d starve. I knew I could provide for my sisters with hard work and my own two hands.
Well, I could back when we were kids and our cabin and forty acres were our entire world…
Now, the others have scattered to the four winds and the only thing we have in common is the fact that our lives are headed nowhere fast.
Casey is dating an asshole who refuses to help with their daughter, Delilah is partying way too hard, Everly just lost funding for her research project in Washington State and may soon be out of a job, and Felicity has probably been kidnapped by fairies.
Or she spaced out and ended up in a foreign country without a cell phone or money to call home. My baby sister is as flighty as our mother and at only twenty, still needs a keeper. A room of her own in a mansion big enough to fit all six of us and a little stability would do wonders for Felicity.
And the rest of us, too. Annie’s library in our hometown permanently closed last January and thanks to the shrinking local population in our part of Maine, my home renovation business was bringing in less and less money every year.
We needed a change and had no choice but to evolve, but I never imagined we’d end up in a place like this, with Annie’s future on the line. Or that just a month after moving to this seaside town populated by vampires, shapeshifters, selkies, and other assorted supernatural creatures, I’d know enough about vampire digestion to be sneaking into an eighteenth-century kitchen to spike a bunch of blood goblets with lemon juice.
Vampires are violently allergic to citrus.
According to the book I slipped into my purse at our new library yesterday, it won’t kill them, but the oozing sores on their skin will last for weeks. And surely Colin won’t want to get hitched with leaking pustules all over his pretty face. He’ll push back the wedding for at least a month, giving me time to save my sister from his clutches.
It’s not the most brilliant plan, and I’ll be in deep shit if I’m caught, but right now it’s all I’ve got.
Turning away from the door, I tiptoe back to the massive wooden food prep station in the center of the room, where three dozen goblets full of blood and wine are sitting on silver trays, ready to be toted out by the servants currently passing hors d’oeuvres for the mortals and champagne for all.
The first event of the ten day “Hallow-wedding” festivities is the “fealty toast.” The Blackmore vampires will pledge to protect our family, and Annie and I, the only Wonderfully sisters currently in Nightfall, will pledge to dedicate our magic to their service in return.
Which would sound okay, I guess, if I needed protection from anyone other than the snotty, stuck-up vampires living in their giant estate on the bluffs above town.
After only a month here, I hate every vamp I’ve had the displeasure to meet with the passion of a thousand, white-hot suns. Colin is a cranky jerk, Baron is a brooding psycho who lives in a swamp at the edge of town for reasons no one has bothered to explain, and Darcy…
Well, Darcy is a grade A dick of the first order.
And probably a bedwetter.
Or he will be, once I spike his blood with citrus. In addition to the sores, lemon plays havoc with vampire digestion. The thought of Darcy, the tall, dark, and condescending trapped on a toilet with his perfectly pressed suit pants around his ankles gives me more joy than it probably should.
But I never pretended to be a nice girl. I’m the defender of my family, the warrior, and I’m not handing my sister over to a bunch of creepy vampires without one hell of a fight.
I lean in, giving the closest tray of glasses an experimental sniff and drawing back with a soft gag as the metallic, faintly sweet scent of human blood fills my nose.
This tray is definitely for the vamps.
Glancing over my shoulder to ensure I’m still alone, I pull my little squeeze bottle of lemon juice from my purse and lean in. But just as I’m about to pop the top, something whooshes past my face, close enough to ruffle my hair.
I wince and duck, swallowing the startled sound rising in my throat in hopes that I might still avoid getting caught.
But it’s too late. A part of me knows that, even before the bat flapping around by my head poofs into a man in a steel gray suit who wraps his massive hand around my neck.
Chapter Two
Darcy
Darcy Blackmore, a vampire who
doesn’t have time for this shit.
(Though he will admit that witches, even half-blood witches, smell delicious.)
Ever stepped out of the bed into a puddle of warm piss that immediately soaked through your socks to squish between your toes?
Well, I have—my cat is a jealous beast who leaves pee puddles on the floor as punishment when I have a lady friend over for an evening—and I can assure you the experience is identical to most interactions with Blair Wonderfully.
