I Only Have Fangs for You(8)

He simply held the plain white towel out to her.

“Here you go. And help yourself to anything you want.”

He grabbed a towel for himself and headed toward the door.

“Wait,” she said more sharply than she intended, her voice echoing off the tile. He paused and turned back to her, arching an eyebrow.

“Aren’t—aren’t you going to fire me?” she asked, her voice now much softer, and irritatingly to herself, a little shaky.

Sebastian shook his head. “No. Accidents happen.” He offered her another smile and left the room.

Wilhelmina remained motionless, the towel held loosely in her hand. She couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t going to fire her. Her plans for him and Carfax Abbey weren’t thwarted.

She wondered why she didn’t feel more pleased.





Chapter 3





“Oh my God! What happened?”

Wilhelmina stepped into her apartment and dropped her purse on the floor. She brushed her still damp hair from her face, and toed off her wet shoes before answering her roommate, Lizzie.

Lizzie sat on the sofa, a huge platter of nachos balanced on her lap. Her long legs curled under her, her glossy amber hair loose around her shoulders. As usual, she looked lovely, making Wilhelmina all the more aware of her drowned-rat impersonation.

“Well,” she stated, “I set off a sprinkler.”

Lizzie set the nachos on the coffee table and leaned forward, excitement lighting her pale blue eyes. “You did?” Then she paused. “Wait, a sprinkler?”

Wilhelmina nodded and held up a single finger.

“Why? What happened?”

Wilhelmina flopped into a chair that took up a majority of one corner of the small room. She ignored the fact that her dress was dampening the chenille cushions.

“Apparently when you light a fire under a sprinkler only that sprinkler goes off, not all of them.”

“Well, they all go off in the movies.”

“I know,” Wilhelmina agreed, still disgruntled about the whole fiasco and her trust in cinematic truth. “And, unfortunately, it gets worse.”

Lizzie paused, a nacho dripping with cheese and meat halfway to her mouth.

“Not only did I set off only the one sprinkler, but I slipped and fell into the water. In front of him.”

“Oh no.” But Wilhelmina couldn’t help noticing that Lizzie didn’t seem surprised.

Then Lizzie’s pale eyes lit up. “Super-Fang’s back?”

Wilhelmina frowned at the nickname Lizzie had given Sebastian. Granted she didn’t know his real name or the name of the club. Only registered members knew that information. Which, given how dangerous Sebastian was, seemed a little self-defeating. Not to mention Lizzie could probably hold her own with the vampire. Still, she had the feeling her roommate wasn’t taking Wilhelmina’s mission seriously.

“Yes, he returned to deal with the police investigation on the accusation that Carfax Abbey was serving minors.”

“That was a good one,” Lizzie said. “I thought that one would work.”

Wilhelmina nodded. So had she. She sighed. “So all my sabotage attempts have managed to do so far is lure the nefarious vampire back to his club to witness me falling in the small flood I created.” She sighed. “That ought to stop his evil ways.”

Lizzie shook her head, giving her a sympathetic smile. She popped the nacho into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

Wilhelmina watched her, wishing she could drown her sorrows with a little binge-eating.

“Well, it sounds like you made a good attempt,” Lizzie said as she munched another nacho, and then she uncurled from the sofa, her impossibly long legs elegant even in jeans. “And he didn’t fire you.”

She picked up the platter and headed toward the kitchen before she spun back to her. “He didn’t fire you, did he?”

“No,” Wilhelmina said, still unsure how she felt about that surprising fact.

“That’s good, right?” Lizzie gave her an encouraging smile and disappeared into the kitchen. Wilhelmina closed her eyes and let her head fall against the back of the chair.

She appreciated Lizzie’s support especially since she knew her new roommate thought that Wilhelmina’s involvement with the Society was a bit out there. But her sympathetic smiles only managed to make Wilhelmina feel more like a failure.

She knew Lizzie was only being supportive because she was a friend. She never asked for many details, although she had tried to help with sabotage ideas. Lizzie seemed to like the idea of that, even though Lizzie thought most of the work the Society of Preternaturals did was silly. She wasn’t for the integration of preternatural creatures. She wanted a cure for them. That was where her energy was focused. Her research.