Her eyes narrowed and I knew she was no longer thinking about her fear. “Sneak up on you? I’ve sent you twenty texts. I left ten voice mails. I told you in the last one that I was working on a locator spell and that I would be here, in this very place, in twenty minutes. I don’t know how else you want me to announce my damn presence.”
I shrugged and clicked the safety back on the gun. “I guess I missed that.”
Liv scrambled up, her heels clacking against the cement. “Yeah, right. I believe that. You’ve ignored me all day.”
“I’m working,” I said because I knew that tone. I was about to get a massive lecture on the evils of alcohol. I smiled bitterly as I twisted open beer number three.
“I can tell.” She shook her head at the empty beer bottles and food wrappers. “Nathan called me last night. Between that and your drunk texting, I figured out you fell off the wagon last night.”
“I wasn’t aware I’d been on the wagon.” I got back on my knees because Liv might want to throw an intervention, but my night was far from over. Another limo was pulling up.
I was clicking pictures of three vampires and two women. These were kind of strange looking vamps, I thought as Liv’s tirade continued. She was saying something about me throwing my life away. I was thinking that vamps didn’t normally wear jeans and hockey jerseys. The tall, lanky vampire was wearing just that and he had his arm wrapped securely around the shoulder of a dark-haired Hispanic girl who, if I had to guess, was a werewolf.
Curious. I wondered if the wolf was a hooker. Liv continued on, telling me how dangerous it was to get drunk when I had no backup, but I was thinking no on the hooker bit. The vamp’s smile was a happy one. There wasn’t anything salacious about it, just a sweet joy. I doubted the woman in his arms was anything but a girlfriend. He was careful with her. The other vampire with a female seemed a little European to me. They had a certain style that American men didn’t have and confidence in their own sexuality that few American men possessed. This vampire was wearing a dusky rose silk shirt over dark brown slacks and he looked wholly masculine in them. He held hands with a blonde in a short skirt and a wide smile. The last vamp seemed young and I meant that in a vampire fashion. If I was a betting girl, I would lay money that he’d recently started walking the night and the two older vamps were showing him the ropes.
“Have you listened to a word I said?” Liv asked, her hands on her hips.
I turned and tried a conciliatory smile. “Alcohol bad. Sobriety good.”
She rolled her eyes. “Give me a damn beer.”
I tossed her the coldest one I had left. She sank down and regarded me with serious brown eyes.
“What are we doing here, Kels?”
The limo drove off and I wondered if that was it. “I’m working a case you sent me on. You’re bitching at me. That’s what we’re doing here.”
“You know what I mean.”
I looked down at my best friend and gave up the fight. “It’s a vampire club. It’s one of the addresses in Joanne’s book. I think she worked here.”
“Sheee-it!” Liv took a long swig. “A real vamp club?” She knelt beside me, looking over the concrete barrier.
“Four vamps have already gone in and it’s early,” I commented.
“I’ve heard they like to get the whole dinner thing out of the way.”
“Four vampires.” From what I understood, they were rare and tended to spread out. “Do you think that’s the whole population of North Texas?”
Liv snorted. “Not lately.”
I pursed my lips as I thought about the implications of diving in. I knew that Liv, Nate, and Jamie had been careful to keep any news of the supernatural world out of my hearing for the last ten years or so. I was about to open the door. “What do you mean?”
Liv’s shoulder-length golden brown hair was in her right hand as she twisted it around. It was an unconscious mannerism she used when she was contemplating a problem. “You know Nathan doesn’t think it’s a good idea for us to keep you in the loop. He really thinks it is best for you to stay out of this world entirely.”
“He worked you over good, didn’t he?”
Liv sighed. “He showed up after school and yelled at me for a while. He told me I was driving you to drink.”
“It wasn’t you, Livie,” I said with a sarcastic grin. “I totally drove myself. That’s what got my ass in trouble in the first place. Next time I’ll walk.”
She punched me in the arm. “Don’t joke. I think Nate’s wrong. I think you need this. I don’t think you’ll be able to live in the normal world. You’ll have to keep too many secrets and deny too much of yourself. So, do you want the lowdown on the vamps?”