Kiss of the Vampire(19)

She headed into her bedroom, Rufus at her heels. As she went through the living room she noticed the book she’d been reading was on the floor. It didn’t look too worse for wear, but she could see it was a little mangled around the edges. “Have you been nibbling on my book?” she asked the dog. A stray that had started hanging around the apartment complex, he’d adopted her a couple of years ago. Every time he’d seen her he’d immediately rolled onto his back for his belly to be scratched. Nix had managed to ignore him the first few times, but the dog had been persistent.

Now he was her constant companion. She sat on the edge of her queen-size bed and shoved her feet into her old-fashioned sneakers, pulling the laces tight. “Don’t you know dogs don’t like demons?” she asked him for the umpteenth time. He gave her a doggy grin and wagged his tail.

She supposed it was the human in her that the dog was drawn to. Or, as she had long suspected, he was just a little on the nutty side.

As she was tying the shoestrings, Rufus yipped at her. She finished and stood. “All right, already.” She walked back to the entryway and grabbed his leash. He started prancing around, making it difficult to get the leash clipped to his collar. She finally did, though, got the door opened, and pulled it closed behind her as Rufus yanked her out onto the sidewalk. As soon as they were outside, he took off for the grassy area between the building and the parking lot, Nix jogging to keep up with him.

“You poor baby.”

Rufus sent her a look she could only interpret as gleeful canine relief and shortly began walking her the length of the parking lot, dodging around stately saguaros and clusters of purple-tinged prickly pear cacti. As the dog stopped and sniffed everything in sight, he ignored the sound of traffic from the street and the loud music coming from the apartment on the corner. Usually Nix had patience with him and let him do his doggy thing, but tonight…

Between seeing Tobias again and the nonsense the council had put her through, her inner demon was pretty ramped up. She needed to get back inside and calm it down with tai chi.

She got Rufus inside and gave him half a cup of dog food as a treat for not ruining the apartment in her absence—she wouldn’t count the gnawed-on book against him—then changed into a loose pair of cotton shorts and a tank top. Going back into the living room, she dimmed the lights and began her tai chi routine by raising her hands above her head on an inhale, and then bringing them down and in front of her while exhaling. One form flowed slowly into another, from Embrace the Tiger to Return to Mountain. Arms and legs worked in controlled harmony. Her breathing evened out, her soul centered and became calm.

Waving Hands in Clouds was followed by Golden Pheasant Stands on One Leg. She remembered when she first began doing tai chi and tried this move, she’d wobbled back and forth like a bobblehead. Now she was steadfast, her balance true. A few more moves, a cross of her hands in front of her, a final exhale, and her routine was complete. She felt relaxed and in a much calmer frame of mind. She went through her nightly bedtime preparations, and, with her favorite penguin pajamas on, she turned off the light and climbed into bed. She heard the clatter of Rufus’s claws on the hardwood floor. They stopped and in the dark she could feel him staring at her. She gave him a firm no. He huffed a sigh and padded over to his thick dog bed. It was a routine he followed every night. Standing by her bed making doggy eyes at her, hoping to get to sleep up in the big bed with her. And every night she told him no. She had a hard enough time sleeping as it was. She wasn’t about to let him spread out and take up most of the room.

Nix bent one leg and stretched her arms out. The tai chi had done what it was supposed to, relax her body and calm her mind, but she could already feel her thoughts beginning to race, drawing her back to when she’d first seen Tobias again. It had been so long since they’d seen each other, but in those first few seconds it had been like no time at all had passed. It would have been the most natural thing in the world to walk right back into his arms.

She couldn’t stop her mind from taking her to a time when she and Tobias had been happy together. They’d gone out to celebrate her twenty-third birthday. A night out at one of Maldonado’s clubs, then home to bed. But not to sleep.

Nix shivered and rolled onto her side. The year that she and Tobias were together would be ingrained in her memory until the day she died, but that night…the details of that night were as fresh as if it were just yesterday. There’d been the slow walk across the bedroom floor, him guiding her backward as his mouth never left hers. When the mattress had hit the back of her thighs Tobias had steadied her.