Vampire for Hire Read Online Free Page A

he said. “I heard a few snatches here and there.”
     
               “So how is it that you can read my thoughts?”
     
               “I don’t have all the answers, Moon Dance.”
     
               “Well, give it your best shot, big guy.”
     
               He stared at me long and hard. As he did so, his tongue slid along his lower lip and seemed to be searching for something that was not there. I sensed his great sadness for what was lost. I suspected I knew the source of his sadness.
     
               Finally, he said, “We are connected, Moon Dance. Or, more accurately, you have allowed me access into your mind.”
     
               “So I can turn it off?” I asked.
     
               “I don’t see why not,” he said. “And you’re right, Sam, I do miss them every day. More than you know.”
     
               His teeth, of course.
     
              
     
              
     
              
     
               Chapter Five
     

     
              
     
              
     
               Instead of going home, I went to a place I was familiar with: The Embassy Suites in Brea. My home over the past month.
     
               I parked the minivan in my old spot, and shortly said hello to Justin who was working the front desk. He smiled and nodded and seemed to have forgotten that I had checked out a week earlier. Of course, just last week, when I had busted my husband for running an illegal strip club in Colton, I had dressed the part of a stripper. I might be little, but I’m a curvy thing, and Justin the night clerk hasn’t looked at me the same since.
     
               I felt his eyes on me all the way to the bank of elevators. At the ninth floor, I found a locked service door I had seen many times in the past. A service door I had taken note of. Why? Because the plaque on it read: Roof Access. Maintenance Personnel Only.
     
               I glanced up and down the hall, took hold of the locked doorknob, and turned steadily until the inner mechanisms shattered in my hand. The knob broke off.
     
               God, I’m a freak.
     
               I pushed the door open, and, after wiping the knob with the hem of my shirt, tossed it in the corner of the stairwell. Next I stepped over a low gate and quickly headed up a metal flight of stairs, taking them two at a time and noticing how strong my legs felt. The door at the top of the landing was locked as well. But not for long.
     
               As pieces of the broken door knob fell away at my feet, I stepped out onto the roof.
     
               Immediately, wind buffeted me. The waning moon was higher now and shone through a thin layer of pathetic-looking stratus clouds. Mostly, though, the sky was clear, and I could even see a star or two.
     
               At the service door, I quickly removed my clothing and naked as the day I was born, moved across the dusty roof, avoiding, of all things, a broken beer bottle.
     
               Hell of a party up here.
     
               Now standing at the roof’s edge, I stared down at the city of Brea, which shone before me like a brilliant constellation, providing me a view that the heavens could not. At least, not the heavens here in Southern California. Thousand of lights winked and sparkled. Some were brighter than others—street lamps, perhaps. Others were barely discernible—bathroom nightlights and perhaps the glows of Kindles and Nooks.
     
               Whatever those were.
     
               The wind was at the edge of the building. It rocked my naked body. But I had no fear of falling. My hair whipped around my head like so many serpents. Medusa would have been proud. Or envious. I breathed slowly, deeply, each intake spiced with exhaust and tar and the sage from the nearby foothills.
     
               The world lay at my feet. The normal world.