Argeneau Family 12. The Renegade Hunter(45)

Dear God, she'd taken Charlie for a walk in the park looking like this, Jo thought with dismay as she grabbed a towel and quickly began to wipe the mirror. It probably hadn't been as bad as this right after her shower, though, she reassured herself. Unfortunately, Jo had inherited her mother's naturally curly, flyaway hair. It tended to imitate Ronald McDonald's wild mass if it wasn't styled. That was why she normally scraped it back into a ponytail.

Jo finished wiping the mirror and sighed as she got a better look at herself. Wow, she was some femme fatale. It was no wonder Nicholas hadn't kissed her before leaving; she'd be lucky if he ever tried to kiss her again after seeing her like this.

Muttering under her breath, Jo moved out of the bathroom and to his duffel bag to find the mentioned brush. She then searched the bed until she found the scrunchie he'd tugged from her hair earlier and returned to the bathroom to fix her hair. It was a bit of a struggle. Her hair knotted like no other. In truth, it was one of the few things Jo hated about herself. She considered herself smart enough, she had an okay figure, and her face was pretty enough though her mouth was a little wide and her nose a little too tipped up. But her hair was a misery to her.

Jo had just finished getting the knots out and was giving her hair one final brush to be sure she hadn't missed any when she heard the main door open.

"One bucket of ice," Nicholas announced as he entered the room.

Jo glanced to the reflection of the doorway behind her as Nicholas strode past with a heaping bucket of ice in hand.

"Thank you," she called, starting to scrape her hair back, gathering it for her customary ponytail. "There's pop on the desk if you want one."

"Shall I pour you one?" Nicholas offered, and then—a frown entering his voice—asked, "Where did the soda come from?"

Jo hardly heard either question, her arms were raised, hands holding the hair back from her face, and eyes locked on her now-revealed neck. Frowning, she peered at the marks there for a moment, and then finished putting the scrunchie in even as she leaned forward, arching her neck to get a closer look at the two small punctures. That's what they were—puncture marks. Weird, Jo thought. She had no idea where those had come from. She should have felt something like that. Sam had had two blackfly bites up north that had looked somewhat similar, but there were no blackflies in downtown Toronto.

"Jo? Where did you get the pop?" Nicholas suddenly appeared behind her, a can of pop in hand. "You didn't leave the room, did—?"

The question died as he saw what she was doing. His gaze slid over the puncture wounds, and then he turned and walked out of sight. Jo stared at the spot where he'd been for a moment, and then looked one more time at the puncture marks, glanced back to the empty doorway, and then turned and followed him out of the room.

Nicholas was standing by the table pouring pop over ice in two glasses. "Come sit down," he said without turning around. "I suppose it's time we got to those explanations you wanted."

Jo hesitated. Something about the way he said it made her suspect she was about to learn something she wouldn't like, but when he slid one glass in front of the seat across from where he stood and then settled into the opposite chair, Jo gave up her position and moved across the room to settle in the chair. She glanced at him warily, then picked up her drink and said, "I'm listening. What the hell is going on?"

"Right… well… I'm sorry. I bit you. I'm a vampire," Nicholas started, and then jumped up to rush to her side and thump her back as her drink went down the wrong way and she began to choke.

"All right?" he asked worriedly, his thumping coming to an end when her coughing and gasping slowed.

Jo nodded, wiping her face and breathing deeply as she waited for the stinging in her nose and lungs to stop. Drowning in pop, she decided, would be a terribly painful experience. Shaking her head at the completely inane thought, Jo picked up her drink again, took a sip to clear her throat, and then set the glass carefully back down and turned to glare at him where he still hovered beside her. "What kind of stupid idiot do you take me for? I'm a vampire ? If that's your idea of a pickup line, it's about the most asinine, trivial bit of bullshit I've heard in a long time. I've had better lines from the computer geeks at the university. I—Crap," Jo cut herself off when Nicholas suddenly opened his mouth and his canine teeth extended into two very sharp, wicked-looking fangs. Jo was close enough she could see it was no trick. Those were his real teeth growing and shifting, she realized, and suddenly had a flash of her dream—Bad-Breath Boy Ernie, eyes glowing and fangs bared, growling at her like a rabid dog. Only it hadn't had the same feel as the rest of the dream and didn't now either. At that moment it felt like a memory that had somehow managed to stay veiled earlier when the rest had come back to her.