Playing With Vampires - An Izzy Cooper Novel Read Online Free Page A

had it, Captain Beaufort was buried beneath the Marsh estate, but he wasn’t actually dead due to the fact that he was a vampire. Over two hundred yeas ago, Beaufort had been imprisoned in another dimension by the Knights of the Eclipse, which happened to be an order of werewolves who believed it their mission to rid the world of vampires, especially evil ones.
    And Beaufort was evil. He’d recruited a group of special people, such as witches and whatnots, to sail with him to a new settlement. Most of the old witches on Mystique Island believed Beaufort intended to kill the witches in order to absorb their power.
    Now Zane Dupree wanted to renovate the Marsh estate, which could be risky. There was no way to know what would happen if Beaufort’s body were disturbed and he awakened.
    “Why do you think it’s so important? What happens in this town shouldn’t be any concern to you,” I said before taking another sip of my coffee.
    “It’s not.” He laughed. “My concern is you. Unfortunately what happens in this town … happens to you.”
    “You’re not fooling me one bit Julius. The sooner I’m dead again and damned, the sooner you’ll be free.”
    “So true sweet Izzy, but then again, I might miss you when that happens.”
    I wasn’t buying it, but getting Julius to tell you what was really going on was something like pulling teeth, painful and slow.
    “Okay, so maybe I’ll drop by there tomorrow night … if I’m not busy,” I added.
    “Good. I think you’ll find it very interesting.”
    Judging by the brooding look on Julius’s face, I guessed there was something else bothering him. “So you’ve gone through a lot of trouble over a town meeting. You could have told me all this with the free pass you have to my bathroom.”
    His dark eyes sparkled with laughter. “I thought maybe if I put some restraints on our relationship … then maybe you’d look at me as just another guy.”
    I lifted one brow. “You mean instead of looking at you as the sadistic demon that you are?”
    “That cutting tongue of yours, though attractive, isn’t too angelic like,” he said, shaking his head.
    He was right. I was going to have to start watching what came out of my mouth. I needed to start acting a little more angelic if I wanted to earn redemption and maybe a halo while I was at it.
    The problem was, being angelic didn’t come natural to me, especially when it involved dealing with a demon.
    For the first time I wondered what would happen if I did earn back my white wings?
    Once I’d managed to rid myself of the bad karma that had sent me to hell in the first place, would my time on earth be up?
    It made sense. Technically, my time was up the night I stepped in front of that truck. I was only allowed to return to my life so that I would have the opportunity to change my final destination. If I did everything right, I just might go to heaven instead of hell.
    I made a mental note to stop being so snarky to people, and demons.
    “Sorry,” I said, giving him a genuine smile.
    “See there.” He pointed in my direction. “You drop the tough girl façade and suddenly you have a heavenly glow thing going on.”
    I rolled my eyes in response. It wasn’t as if I actually believed that he cared one wit about my salvation.
    “Spit it out Julius. There’s something else on your mind.”
    “You’re right,” he confessed. “Sometimes I pick up on chatter coming from the old hot box. The word is, I’m not doing my job here … so they may replace me.”
    The news was like being hit with a jolt of electricity. True enough, Julius was a pain in the ass, and he was a demon, but he was my demon. The average person might think me completely nuts to care about a devil, but I’d grown quite close to him over the last several months.
    “There’s more.” He cut into my thoughts. “Apparently the people upstairs think you’re still slacking. They might terminate the deal.”
    “Oh come on!” I groaned. “A