Dates from Hell(14)

It was comfortingly silent in the restaurant proper, and the low ceilings and dim atmosphere seemed to follow her into the closed-party rooms in the back. A wide stairway behind a door led to the private second floor. Her hand traced the wall for balance as she rose up the wide, black-wood stairs, eager to find Kisten and an understanding ear that wasn’t attached to a manipulating mind.

She and Kisten lived in the converted apartment that took up the entire top floor of the old shipping warehouse. Ivy liked the openness, arbitrarily dividing it into spaces with folding screens and strategically placed furniture. The windows were spacious and smeared on the outside with the dirt and grime of forty years. Piscary didn’t like being that exposed, and this granted the two of them a measure of security.

Wine bottles clinking, Ivy set them on the table at the top of the stairs, thinking she and Kisten were like two abused children, craving the attention of the very person who had warped them, loving him out of desperation. It was an old thought, one that had lost its sting long ago.

Shuffling off her coat, she set it and her purse by the wine. “Kist?” she called, her voice filling the silence. “I’m home.” She picked the bottles back up and frowned. Maybe she should have gotten three.

There was no answer, and as she headed back toward the kitchen to chill the wine, the scent of blood shivered through her like an electrical current. It wasn’t Kisten’s.

Her feet stopped, and she breathed deeply. Her head swiveled to the corner where the deliverymen had put her baby grand last week. It had dented her finances more than the bike, but the sound of it in this emptiness made her forget everything until the echoes faded.

“Kist?”

She heard him take a breath, but didn’t see him. Her face blanked and every muscle tightened as she paced to the couches arranged about her piano. The dirty sunshine pooling in glinted on the black sheen of the wood, and she found him there, kneeling on the white Persian rug between the couch and the piano, a girl in tight jeans, a black lacy shirt, and a worn leather coat sprawled before him.

Kisten lifted his head, an unusual panic in his blue eyes. “I didn’t do it,” he said, his bloodied hands hovering over the corpse.

Shit. Dropping the bottles on the couch, Ivy swung into motion, moving to kneel before them. Habit made her check for a pulse, but it was obvious by her pallor and the gentle mauling on her neck that the petite blond was dead despite her warmth.

“I didn’t do it,” Kisten said again, shifting his trim, pretty-boy body back a few inches. His hands, strong and muscular, were shaking, the tops of his fingernails red with a light sheen. Ivy looked from them to his face, seeing the fear in his almost delicate features that he hid behind a reddish blond beard. A smear of blood was on his forehead behind his brown bangs, and she stifled an urge to kiss it away that both disgusted and intrigued her. This is not who I wanted to be.

“I didn’t do it, Ivy!” he exclaimed at her continued silence, and she reached over the girl and brushed his too-long bangs back. The gentle swelling of black in his gaze made her breath catch. God, he was beautiful when he was agitated.

“I know you didn’t,” she said, and Kisten’s wide shoulders relaxed, making her wonder if that was why he was upset. It wasn’t that he had to take care of Piscary’s mistake, but that Ivy might think he had killed her. And somewhere in there, she found that he loved her.

The pretty woman was Piscary’s favorite body type with long fair hair and an angular face. She probably had blue eyes. Shit, shit, and more shit. Mind calculating how to minimize the damage, she asked, “How long has she been dead?”

“Minutes. No more than that.” Kisten’s resonant voice dropped to a more familiar pitch. “I was trying to find out where she was staying and get her cleaned up, but she died right here on the couch. Piscary…” He met her eyes, reaching up to tug on a twin pair of diamond-stud earrings. “Piscary told me to take care of it.”

Ivy shifted her weight to her feet, easing back to sit on the edge of the nearby couch. It wasn’t like Kisten to panic like this. He was Piscary’s scion, the person the undead vampire had tapped to manage the bar, do his daylight work, and clean up his mistakes. Mistakes that were usually four foot eleven, blond, and a hundred pounds. Damn it all to hell. Piscary hadn’t slipped like this since she had left to finish high school on the West Coast.

“Did she sign the release papers?” she asked.

“Do you think I’d be this upset if she had?” Kisten arranged the small woman’s hair as if it would help. God, she looked fourteen, though Ivy knew she’d be closer to twenty.