6 Under The Final Moon Read Online Free Page B

as cush a job a chick with a BA in English could get. The dental care was superb (gotta love those vampire staff members), and I got paid vacation, weekends off, and the world’s largest stash of fake sugar and non-dairy creamer since the majority of my coworkers took their blood red.
    I supposed I owed a debt of gratitude for my abilities to my deceased mother, who had been a seer, and my absent father, who was probably Satan. Not Satan in the couldn’t-you-at-least-pay-child-support kind of way, but Satan in the Prince of Darkness, Lucifer, Legion kind of way.
    It was probably a good thing that he hadn’t been around for the father-daughter dance in junior high.
    After my mother’s death, when I was a toddler, my grandmother hadn’t talked much about my father, leading me to fantasize that he was some CIA super spy with a James Bond suit and George Clooney hair who would come and swoop in to find me one day. He would pepper me with apologies for never making contact, but it was all for my own good as he was such a wanted man from all the evil plots he’d foiled while I was being stuffed in my locker by the mean girls at Mercy High. We would run off together and live in a chalet in some part of the world where chalets were prevalent, and we would drink cocoa and he would tell me how he’d cried when he’d missed my eighth birthday, but he’d had to protect the prime minister of Dubai and there really was no safe way to send an American Girl doll at the time.
    I fantasized much less about my father as I grew older, but I’d still found it a stomach-lurching shock when I’d realized that Dad’s digs were probably more charcoal than chalet and that my direct bloodline contained a tendency toward belly fat, high cholesterol, and soul-stealing eternal torture.
    I was pacing the apartment, pretending to be completely cool and unaffected when Nina pushed open the front door. She broke into an instant grin when she saw me, her tiny fangs pressing over the Corvette red of her lipstick.
    “There’s the little scamp who took off two hours early and didn’t even bother to come get me.”
    “Sampson gave me the rest of the day off.”
    Nina kicked off a complicated-looking pair of Jimmy Choos and pulled a blood bag from her Plymouth-sized Marc Jacobs purse. She massaged the pouch for a beat before piercing it with one angled fang. “So, what did you do with two hours’ worth of freedom? I’d shop. Or get a massage—you know, if I could.”
    Truthfully, there wasn’t any real reason that she couldn’t—except possibly that her cool, bloodless, breathless, marble-hard torso might make it a little rough for any living masseuse to get the knots out.
    Nina glanced at the television and her face fell. “Please don’t tell me you squandered your time watching marriage-to-murder stories on Lifetime?”
    “Thanks for the vote of confidence, best friend.”
    She grinned, her teeth tinged a heady pink. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
    “You are. I had to stop into Alex’s office.” I took my time, letting the words come out slowly. Nina’s eyes grew with every syllable.
    “You saw Alex? How was he? How were you? Did you tell him you were dating someone?”
    “I’m not dating anyone.”
    She sucked the last of the bag and massaged the bit of plasma at the bottom, tipping her head to slide it down her throat. “He doesn’t need to know that. He just needs to know that you’ve moved on.”
    “Oh.” I waved at the air. “I’ve totally moved on. Totally.”
    Nina gawked at me.
    “Well, I’m no longer wearing sweatpants, okay? But we didn’t talk about any of that. There was an incident.”
    The lock on the front door tumbled, and Vlad walked in, a backpack slung over one shoulder.
    “What?” he asked as we stared up at him.
    “Nothing, Count Chocula. Sophie was just telling me about an incident.”
    Vlad’s face remained unchanged. “There’s been an incident?”
    “Nothing major,” I said, eyeing Nina.