Wolf at the Door Read online

He had no idea. At all. No idea that to her, to the Pack, he really did seem as something of a living god. And that was annoying, too. She could hear herself thinking such nonsense and wanted to roll her eyes. Unfortunately, knowing it was a cliché (and a silly one, too) did not make it untrue.

  He snarled at her, showing a lot of teeth, but it was more show than substance, he was still trying to articulate what he needed from her. Her! One of his least fiery, passionate, ferocious Pack members. One who never married, one who kept to herself, had never left the state of Massachusetts except for one ill-fated trip to New York City. One who didn’t seek people out.

  Come to think of it, she would go because Michael knew all her flaws, knew she disliked fights and intrigues, knew she was more sapiens than any other Pack member, knew she was happy at spreadsheets. She would go because Michael knew all those things about her . . . and loved and valued her not despite her odd habits, but because of them.

  Her father and Michael’s father had been brothers born a generation apart. Her father loved to read, loved to figure things out, loved to learn, loved to teach.

  Michael’s father loved to fight.

  So here they were, two branches of the same tree, but for all they had in common, there were many differences, too.

  “Listen: I don’t think they mean trouble for us. Specifically, I don’t think Queen Betsy does. I don’t know what her consort wants . . . that fucker’s harder to read than my own dad was.”

  Yow. Not a lightly made comparison. Her uncle had been famous for sitting quietly one moment with a cub in his lap, then exploding into a fight to the death after tossing said cub to a bystander.

  Her irritation at the rude uprooting of her business and personal life—

  What personal life, you silly bitch?

  That’s enough out of you, inner voice who sounds like Mother.

  —began to fade, and interest began to take its place. The interest wasn’t necessary, but it was a bonus she was grateful for. Because the two people in this room knew she would leave at once for Minnesota, despite the dreadful seven-month winters.

  Of course she would go; there had never been a doubt. If it meant her death, fine. If it meant permanent banishment from her homeland followed by death, as it had for Antonia, fine. If it meant tedious meetings and bad food and shrill vampires and dreadful weather and frostbite and a thousand tornadoes (they had all sorts of them in Minnesota, right?) and having to eat lutefisk and lefse so as to blend in, and to march through the monument to consumerism that was (drum roll, please, or maybe a cow bell?) THE MALL OF AMERICA . . . so be it.

  But she was a family member first, a werewolf second, and an accountant third. Aw, nuts. If her mom was still alive, she would have given Rachael a smack. Mother had always thought her only daughter’s priorities should be different.

  But! Mother was (probably) dead. So Rachael’s priorities were her own.

  And it suited her fine.

  She would go. He was family; more, she loved him like a brother and was bound, not only by their blood, but by her heart, to do as he asked.

  But it would never do for Michael to know too much of that, so she fumed and scowled and insulted him and let herself be placated and pretended this thing was a terrible inconvenience.

  Oh, wait. It was.

  Dammit!

  Three

  “Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.”

  Eddie Batley groaned and tossed The Sandman across the surgically neat living room. Then he gasped in horror at his foolish, foolish act and hurried across the spotless blue carpet and retrieved the graphic novel. Ennui was no excuse, ever, to abuse anything by Neil Gaiman. Ever.

  He blew on the cover but it was relievedly flawless.

  Ever!

  His (un)dead roommate, who would have heard a carpeted version of The Sandman hit carpet in the deep (carpeted) vacuum of space, yelled from the back bedroom, “Rule six, Eddie!”

  “Edward,” he muttered back.

  “Rule six, Edward!”

  Vampire hearing. Argh.

  (Rule six: no hurling graphic novels before five thirty P.M.)

  “I need to get out of here.”

  “Where would you go?”

  “I’m talking to myself out here, if you don’t mind.”

  “Rule eleven!”

  (Rule eleven: before five thirty P.M., talk to yourself in your head.)

  “Rule twenty!”

  (Rule twenty: back off Edward if you’ve brought up two or more rules before supper.)

  Edward waited, but Greg (“Gregory, dammit!”) Schorr was finished.

  It wasn’t Greg(ory), anyway. It was him. It was Edward Batley IV, heir to a long and distinguished line of accountants. He had to get out of there. Being a third wheel for a few months was almost fun. Fodder for late-night routines (which Greg loved, being the only vampire comedian on the planet, probably), right? Something to blog about, yes? He should have pitched the idea to Hollywood; all things paranormal were being turned into terrible movies and terrific sitcoms. He could move out to California, pitch screenplays. There were worse ways to make a living. Guard at Buckingham Palace. Brazilian mosquito researcher. Portable toilet cleaner. Roadkill remover.

  That would all have been fine, except for the tiny detail that it hadn’t been months. He had been a third wheel going on four years. No, that wasn’t . . .

  He whipped out his cell, stabbed the calendar button, and gaped with horror at the date. It hadn’t been going on four years. It had been four years and seventeen days. Boo would never allow a party, never mind a simple, “Hey, thanks again for saving me from being devoured and turned into a shambling Night Thing,” but he always made a mental note of the day they’d met.

  Four years and seventeen days? That was nothing to blog about. It wasn’t almost fun anymore; it wasn’t something to pitch to public access, never mind FX. It wasn’t an undead Three’s Company. It wasn’t even Wings, or Coach. It was more like an I Love Lucy, if Lucy was a vampire slayer and Ricky was a vampire, and Fred had divorced Ethel because of her vain, snoopy competitiveness but lived with Lucy and Ricky anyway. In Boston. And was an accountant for Grate and Tate.

  I have to stop seeing my life as a series of old sitcoms. And I have to get out of here.

  And go where?

  That was it. His enemy wasn’t just ennui; it was the sweet, sweet comfort of knowing where the strawberry Smucker’s was, and when Boo and Gregory were out at a comedy club so he could enjoy, um, alone time, and when they were getting drunk enough so he could hear their slayer/vampire sexual shenanigans from half a block away. (The first time he’d realized what he was hearing, he simultaneously popped a boner and threw up. Boo was hot; Gregory was hot if you were into sculpted urbane intelligent vampires; and they were both terrifying.)

  He liked most everything else about his roommates; they were always a good time on a Friday night, and sometimes they let him come hunting with them. He liked knowing he was paying next to nothing for his share of a gorgeous Quincy apartment (Jack had moved in with Chrissy and Janet for a reason, right?), and where the best black-and-white cookies were, and when the Tuesday staff meetings were safe to skip (which was every third Tuesday). And yeah, like he’d said, he liked his roommates, too. It would be weird, being in the Boston area and not living with them.

  Also, they’d miss him dreadfully.

  “Pathetic,” he announced.

  “Seriously, will you stop? Rule eleven!”

  He ignored Greg(ory) and pointlessly began tidying the spotless apartment. Boo had always been one to let a bra fall where it may, but he and Greg were sticklers. Edward suspected it was his mind, which tended to stray toward all things tidy (you could perform an appendectomy in his cubicle). And Greg wa
s old-fashioned. Really old-fashioned. “Cleanliness is next to you-know-what,” he’d informed them the first week he had moved in. When Boo had realized he was serious, she laughed like a hyena for ten minutes. Then they’d disappeared into her bedroom for . . . uh . . . never mind.

  He swiped nonexistent dust off the coffee table in front of the squat black-and-white TV, circa 1950 (Gregory liked his antiques, and Boo didn’t give a shit), and thought about his living situation. Despite the lack of a plasma TV and windows not curtained in dark brown, it was pretty sweet. He couldn’t believe he was considering leaving. Well. Considering considering leaving.

  Who are you kidding?

  Good question. He stayed for the reason he stuck with anything in his life: he needed a kick in the ass to get going. So far, kicks in the ass were in short supply. Worse: if not for the third-wheel thing, it would likely never occur to him to move out. His roommates were the most feared vampire slayer (not that Boo would ever, ever refer to herself as such) in the history of time, and a dead comedian who lived (so to speak) for the slayer.

  What could compare? Honestly? A corner office at Grate and Tate? The newest toy from Steve Jobs, the iAll? Regular sex with Uma Thurman (provided he could overlook the manhands and man-feet)? To quote a sage of the age, “Shyeah!”

  Also, they had a view of Wollaston Beach. A tiny sliver of a view they could only enjoy during high noon with clear skies on Thursdays, but still. Water view! In Boston!

  So he stayed.

  “I’ll live here until I die,” he announced.

  “Which, if you don’t stop breaking rule eleven, will be later this evening.”

  Edward did not have a heart attack, or jump back, or even flinch. Although he never heard Gregory coming, years of cohabiting with a dead guy had given him a flinch-free poker face.

  “Nothing’s going to make me move out,” he announced.

  Gregory yawned and headed for the kitchen.

  “Not one thing.”

  “So, who asked you to leave? We found this place together, you, me, and Boo,” Gregory said mildly. “No reason not to make use of it as long as you like. Half of it is yours, after all.” He opened the fridge, withdrew several oranges, plugged in the juicer, and began shredding orange after orange. Edward had never seen anyone fonder of fruit juice. Maybe it was a vampire thing.

  “My place is here.”

  “All right.”

  Edward yawned, showing too many teeth that were too big. He was a tall, lean man with a tendency to slouch, Columbo style. His dark blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, though he occasionally clipped it savagely short. Or cop short, which made sense, as he’d been a member of the BPD in the years leading to his death.

  “You realize you get this way every several months.”

  “Do not.”

  “You need a woman, my friend.”

  “Tell me about it.” Problem number thirteen: the only women he met were off-limit coworkers and psychotic vampires. On the occasion he met a perfectly nice, good-looking, intelligent woman, his lifestyle freaked them out. Frankly, if it didn’t freak them out, it would have freaked him out. And to be fair, he hadn’t been trying terribly hard to hook up. Chalk it up to more of his ennui. Or sheer laziness.

  “Where’s Boo Bear?”

  “Dare you.” Gregory stopped chugging his orange juice long enough to point at him. “I dare you to call her that to her face.”

  “It would sure solve a lot of problems,” he said glumly. He slipped into one of the bar stools at the kitchen counter and propped his chin up on his elbows. “What, is she out on recon?”

  “Stop that. I loathe pop culture gibberish. And yes, she is researching Amanda Darryn for me.”

  “The Black Widow.” Like the villain played by Joan Cusack in Addams Family Values. Except this one had been getting married, vacuuming bank accounts, and killing her husbands for a hundred fifty years.

  “Soon to be The Staked Widow.” Gregory had disliked being murdered and returning from the dead. He coped by honing his routines and tracking down really, really bad vampires. As a former cop, his contacts and data access were inspiring. He had hired Boo to slay a local vampire who specialized in murdering third graders. Boo had been pissed, then intrigued, then horny. Cue the happily ever after theme. “Would you like to come? Perhaps you merely need to get out of the house.”

  “So there’s another vampire to kill next week. A flood of the undead.”

  Gregory snorted. “That’s the spirit. And I stand by what I said: you need a woman.”

  “You say that about everything wrong in my life.”

  “Because it would fix everything wrong in my life.” He busily squeezed more oranges—Edward wondered why he bothered with a juicer at all. The man could flatten grapefruits with either hand. Except Gregory was beyond fastidious. Case in point... “Aaaah!” He grabbed a sponge from the sink and scrubbed off the wayward seed, hurriedly dumping it in the sink. “Have you ever seen anything more repellant?”

  “You’re asking someone who’s never missed a Comic-Con.”

  “I do not know what that is. Ah! Here comes the sun of my life.”

  Edward, of course, couldn’t hear anything. But he wasn’t surprised when, a minute later, he heard Boo’s key in the lock and the thud of the door popping open as she kicked the bottom. Edward had never seen her turn a knob in his life.

  “Darling!”

  “Moron.” She was shrugging out of her leather jacket in midbitch, tossing it over the back of a kitchen chair and walking right up to Gregory for a kiss. It was a long one. Edward looked away, thinking, You’d think they hadn’t seen each other for a month.

  “Hmmm, let me guess.” She leaned out of his embrace and licked her lips. “Orange juice!”

  “You must be a detective or something.”

  “Or something,” she agreed. She plopped into the bar stool beside Edward, squinted at him, then said, “Are you still doing the can’t-go-but-don’t-want-to-stay-but-shouldn’t-go thing?”

  “It’s not a thing,” he said, offended. “It’s midlife crisis.”

  “You’re twenty-three.”

  “Boys mature faster than girls,” Gregory said, pouring a glass for Boo. “That’s a medical fact.”

  Boo laughed and shook her hair out of her eyes. A striking woman, she had the coloring of a true albino, so pale she seemed almost to glow. Her skin was so light it appeared fragile, as if it would tear like paper. Her hair was also white, and curled under at the ends, the curls bouncing around her shoulders. Her eyes were such a pale blue she appeared blind, or jaded, as if she had seen much to blast all the color from her face and body and soul.

  He called her Boo, but her street name was Ghost. She’d gotten into the slaying because not one but two vampires had tried to kill her before her twenty-first birthday. Her striking coloring was like catnip to them. Long ago, she had decided to make herself bait, the better to stake you with, my dear.

  He still remembered how she’d explained because of her skin, she had to stay out of the light, too. She was treated as a freak. She preferred evenings, and her senses were heightened from long years of avoiding sunlight. There was nothing supernatural about it, or her, but try telling anyone else that. It had taken Edward almost a year to believe that about her.

  “I’ve never seen an ugly vampire,” he said out of nowhere. Boo and Gregory both looked at him. “Isn’t that weird?”

  “No,” they said in unison. Gregory waited, but they didn’t illuminate until he coaxed them with a “What?”

  “All vampires are essentially murder victims.”

  “Most,” Gregory corrected, mashing more oranges.

  “Fine,” she replied. “And given a choice of murder victims, they go for the cute ones.”

  “That’s like saying a rapist picks victims based on their sex appeal,” Edward protested. “It’s not about sex. And with vampires it’s not about looks, it’s about blood.”

  “And beggars can�
��t be choosers,” Boo agreed. “But when they can, they go for the pretty ones. No offense, Greg.”

  “I am fairly fabulous,” he admitted with a modest smirk.

  “So: murder victims.” Boo slurped more juice, then grimaced and pushed the glass away. It made a small damp ring on the counter; Gregory gasped and wiped it up in the manner of someone getting rid of nuclear waste: get it out, get it out, get it out, out, OUT! “Agh, too much acid on an empty stomach.”

  He prompted her: “They go for the pretty ones . . . still sounds dumb.”

  “They die, they come back. Some return more vengeful than others, which is why I have a job. Some of them spend decades making innocent people pay for what a killer took. Then I have to kill them. So, essentially: it’s all about me, in the end.”

  Edward was astounded. He had never heard her speak like this; usually Boo’s attitude was the only good vampire was a dead one, except for the one she was shacked up with.

  “None of which explains your whole should-I-stay-orshould-I-go thing. You want to go? Great, sounds like a plan, drive safely and don’t forget to update your Facebook page.”

  “I’m touched,” he said dryly. “But I’d never do that to either one of you. You’re not up to the emotional devastation that’ll be caused by my moving out.” She snorted, but he affected not to hear it. “Besides, what would you do without me? Your lives would be as drab and lifeless as a Jersey Shore rerun.”

  “That’s not quite—” Gregory began.

  “The Team Supreme with its own laugh track shall go on!” he declared. “I would never leave either of you.”

  “And here we go with the threats,” Boo observed.

  “Nothing would induce me to leave this teeming coastal area infested with the undead and leave you defenseless. Nothing!”

  Then he looked at the mail.

  Four

  “Well.” Rachael squinted as she took in the situation. “No matter how many times I look, it’s always the same. Minnesota is . . . just . . . awful. I don’t know why anybody comes here unless they’ve lost a bet.”