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My relieved sigh curdled into a screaht, squawking and flapping like a lass

I was reeling backward, vaulting toward the couch when an insistent knock at my door terrified me five times more and I felt every s are always exposed, in ti or a bartender spills sos extend an extra half-inch causing that frightening scowl you see plastered all over TV My hackles were up and adrenaline pulsed through me; even ht was savagery and a hiss of air sliced through my teeth as I snatched open the door

I was met with pursed lips

And a cocked eyebrow

And an expression completely devoid of terror or shock

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"What? A guy can’t fly across country to see his favorite aunt?" My nepheas standing in the hallway, fra like I had just won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes His fangs were ses of his upturned lips

"I’m not your favorite aunt, I’m your only aunt" I addressed him suspiciously and the smile fell from his face

"So can I come in or not?"

In the Hollywood sea of varaveyard dirt, and the ability to turn into bats--there was one thing they had gotten right: a va invited Even if those premises were home to another vampire I stood aside and opened my arms "Vlad, you are welcome to come into my apartment"

Vlad stepped over the threshold, ar at just over six feet, he looked down at e expressions A hint of mischief flickered in his dark eyes and I was instantly seized with joy and sadness Vlad looked so much like hisalmost immediately fled because I knew Sonia was dead, would never know that her son was thriving--though undead--or that his Aunt Nina was taking good care of him She also would never know that Vlad headed up the West Coast division of VERM--the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement--or dressed like a fashionably suicidal cross between Bela Lugosi and Count Chocula

Maybe it was better that she stayed in the grave

I ju "I’m sorry I a here?"

He stepped back in true teenage fashion as though someone would catch wind of the fact that he had shown a modicum of emotion Vlad ht in the , obnoxious sentience of a sixteen year old

And he never picked up his socks

He threw an Arain I could tell he just fed by the deep, ruddy pink of his lips

"I came to visit you!"

Now I crossed my arms in front of my chest and cocked a brow "What’d you do?"

A sweet innocence flooded over Vlad’s face "What do you mean?"

I pulled er over the trackpad "You know I have Sophie on speed dial" In addition to being uardian by proxy, andhand "Okay, okay So, there’s some talk that I may have had a tiny indiscretion with a fairy"

"Fairies are awful!" Though Walt Disney painted the, kind eyes and pursed pink lips, anyone who’s met one will tell you that fairies--and pixies, too--are awful little buggers Mean, sassy, stuck-up

And some of them bite

"So you came out here to escape your fairy lover?"

"Actually, I came out here to escape Kale You think fairies are bad? Try a jilted teenage witch" Vlad whipped off his coat, showing off a dark strip on his pale white arm "This just happened She made the sun rise in our da an arm over Vlad’s shoulder "Oh, she’d never kill you Just torture you a little I like her And I’ "Me, too It’ll be nice to hang here for a bit No ro or crime scene tape" He flopped down on the couch next to his duffel and I bitnext to hiht because of your little ‘fashion ith that guy and--what’s her nainald and Eavesmile "You won?"

I wrinkled my nose "Not exactly"

He quirked a brow "Someone drop out?"