Page 39 of Kick the Candle (Knight Games 2)
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Fifteen minutes later, I returned to my porch dressed for an Antarctic expedition, complete with snowpants, poofy jacket, hat, gloves and boots. I turned on the porch light, so I could see Gary better, and plopped down on a dining room chair I'd dragged out because I didn't have any patio furniture. Poe came out with me, circling Gary's head before taking off to do some hunting.
"Damned, winged rat!" he said, swiping at the air Poe had just vacated.
"Hey! Don't badmouth my familiar. You're on borrowed time, so say what you came to say and get out of here."
"Got one for me?" he said, gesturing toward the chair.
I glanced at the door and the five other dining room chairs behind it. "No." I made myself comfortable.
He leaned against the railing, dressed only in a dress shirt and slacks. If he'd been human, he'd have frostbite by now. "I need to tell you something about the night I became this." He circled a hand through the air in front of his body.
All of the feelings around his abandonment of me came back like a reoccurring sore. I was over Gary but I wasn't over 'it'. Why had he left? What was wrong with me? I needed answers. "Okay. I'll listen. But first, answer me this question. Did you leave me because you became a vampire or did you become a vampire after you left me?"
Turning toward the road, he scanned my snow-covered yard with the interest of a nocturnal predator. I could picture him leaping over the banister in one lithe movement to capture a rabbit between his teeth.
"I wanted to open our bookstore. I really did. But then I met this woman," Gary began.
"Uh huh." There was venom in my voice. So, he left me before becoming a vamp. For another woman. My ego curled up at the pit of my stomach.
"No, it wasn't like that. She'd heard my poetry and said she was a big fan. When I told her I was thinking about opening a bookstore, she insisted it was suicide. 'People don't buy paper books anymore,' she said. 'Everything's going electronic.' Instead, she convinced me to partner with her to open a coffeehouse designed around readers. We were going to call it Drink, Eat, Read. Free wifi. I was excited to tell you about it."
"Wait. Are you saying this happened while we were still together? You never told me about any of this!"
"No."
"Why not?"
"She was a vampire."
I narrowed my eyes, willing him to tell me more.
"She compelled me to empty your accounts and give her the money."
"Why? To open some lame cafe?"
"No. She never intended to follow through on that idea. She turned me the night I handed the money over." The last sentence came out so quietly I could barely hear it.
My thoughts raced, sifting through the details of his story. "Did you consent to be turned?" I demanded. My stare burrowed into the side of his head.
He pivoted to meet my eyes. "I'm not sure how to answer that question."
"How could you not be sure? You either did or you didn't."
"I left you for her, Grateful. How much of that was compulsion and how much was choice is impossible for me to say. What I do know is I was happy with you before I left, and after she turned me, she used me as slave labor."
"Forced you to make cappuccinos against your will, eh?"
"Like I said, she never opened a coffee shop. She owns a bar, had owned one for years, a nightclub called Mill Wheel. Deals in vamps for hire."
My memory flashed to the vamp I'd sentenced to a decade in the graveyard in Mill Wheel's alley. "Mill Wheel? I'm familiar with the establishment. What exactly do you mean by vamps for hire?"
"Compulsion. Men pay her to have the vamps in the place compel young women to be interested in them. It's like a supernatural roofie. Only, sucks to be the vamp. No pun intended."
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. "Wait. Human men? How do they even know about the vamps?"
"They don't really. They think Mill Wheel is like an escort service. They pay for the girl. The girl gets compelled. The queen vamp gets her money, and the slave vamp gets drained."
