LITMIR.BIZ

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her strolling around, as Tash put it, the previous night and staking whatever vamps she’d come across. Not for the first time since the battle at the Hot Box I had wondered what kind of toll being a hereditary Daughter of Lilith would take on my sister. For those who don’t know, Daughter of Lilith is the correct term for what Megan is—a true descendant of Adam’s first wife, the one who’s gotten such bad PR over the centuries from Venus-envying men. Technically, Tash and I are daughters of Lilith, too, but the vamp-slaying destiny only gets passed down to one female descendant per family per generation.

      Which makes us Megan’s sidekicks, in the staking business at least. As Tash had continued, I’d suspected she wasn’t totally thrilled with being a sidekick.

      “A name for our agency, of course,” she’d said. “Say a woman looks out her window one night and sees her boyfriend standing there, except there’s no way he can be because she’s in a third-story apartment with no balcony. Or some poor schmuck walking his dog after dark barely escapes being attacked by a bunch of thugs who have fangs and can fly, or a wife notices a bite mark on hubbie’s neck and the next day finds him sleeping in the basement under a blanket of dirt. Who do they call?” she’d demanded. “Not the cops, unless they want to be labeled nutcases. Which is where Darkheart & Crosse comes in. We set up an office, put out some flyers—”

      “And just what do you propose these flyers say, sweetie?” I drawled. “Darkheart & Crosse, Vamp Exterminators?’

      Tash had given me an annoyed look. “I was thinking more along the lines of Darkheart & Crosse: Extraordinary Investigations.”

      “You know, Kat, I think the brat’s got something,” Megan had said slowly. “Grandfather Darkheart says that in the old country, everyone knows who the local Daughter of Lilith is, even if they don’t talk about what she does. But this is Maplesburg. Maybe we should hang out a shingle.”

      It had snowballed from there. Mikhail, Megan’s gorgeous shape-shifting main squeeze—don’t ask, it’s a long story—had thought the idea of an agency made sense, and although Grandfather Darkheart had been dubious at first, Megan’s point about Maplesburg not being Carpathia had finally won him over.

      If anyone had asked my opinion about the whole thing, I would have given it. But they hadn’t, so two weeks later I had signed the papers making me the new owner of the late, unlamented Hot Box.

      The acquisition had taken a big chunk out of my part of the trust funds Popsie had set up for his three granddaughters, which we’d been able to access when we’d turned twenty-one. I’d written the check without a qualm, informed Megan and Tash about my purchase, and made regretful sounding apologies for not joining them in their Darkheart & Crosse venture.

      Only then had the sick feeling that had lodged in the pit of my stomach since Tash had proposed her vampire-hunting agency idea gone away.

      Which wasn’t to say that I didn’t still have problems, I thought now as I turned from the bar and narrowed my eyes at the crew of carpenters. I did, but they were the kind that could be solved. Cocktail in hand, I left Ramon in gay heaven interviewing the conga line of beefcake and made my way to the half-built stage on the far side of the room. The crew foreman, bulging biceps revealed by the rolled-up sleeves of his sawdusty shirt—don’t you just love what swinging a hammer all day does for a man’s muscles?—gave a grin as I approached.

      “Hey, boss lady, I wondered when you’d get tired of those pretty boys prancing around in their undershorts and check out us real men.” He lowered his voice and a frown replaced his grin. “Why didn’t you call last night, babe? I waited around to hear from you and when you didn’t phone I tried your number but I just kept getting your machine. I know you were home because when I drove by, your car was parked outside and a couple of lights were on in your apartment.”

      Gorgeous biceps or not, Terry was the problem I needed to solve. I took a sip of my drink and did so. “Getting my very own personal stalker wasn’t what I had in mind when you and I had our fling last week, darling,” I said lightly. “As spine-tingly and delicious as you made me feel during our naughty little romp, it was a one-time-only thing. So much more romantic that way, don’t you think? You know, ships that pass in the night and all—”

      “Cut the bullshit, Kat!” His tone was beginning to attract attention. I saw the dark-haired carpenter nearest to us flick a glance our way before returning to the task of reloading his nail gun as Terry went on. “I fell like a ton of bricks for you and you know it! Who the hell were you screwing senseless last night when you could have been with me?”

      I sighed. I’d tried letting him down easily, but some men just can’t accept it when a woman doesn’t rush out to choose a china pattern after she sleeps with them. “If you must know, sweetie, one of those pretty boys over there prancing around in his underwear. His name’s Jean-Paul, and to be perfectly honest, it was a toss-up as to who screwed who more senseless.” I tipped back the final potent drops of my cocktail and gave Terry a wide-eyed look over the rim of the glass. “You know, it really is true what they say about the French knowing so much more about amour. Jean-Paul had me doing things I’d never imagined in my wickedest—”

      “Spare me the fucking details,” Terry said tightly. “Before I went out with you I heard stories about what a ball breaker you were, but I didn’t believe them. Now I do.” He grabbed a nearby toolbox. “I quit. Some other sap might have taken my place in your bed, but it won’t be so easy for you to find another master carpenter to take my place on this job, lady.”

      Ball breaker? Me? I stared after his retreating back, unaccustomed anger getting the better of me. “You never had a place in my bed, sweetie!” I called after him. “We did it on the floor and the kitchen table and in the shower, but we never actually made it to the bed, remember?”

      “I think we’ll all remember now, sis.” I turned to see Megan standing behind me, her eyebrows raised and her arms folded across her chest. She was wearing a tight-fitting sleeveless top with slim black pants, and her shoes were Chanel ballet flats. Very retro–Audrey Hepburn, right up to and including the cropped Sabrina haircut she’d recently gotten. “Didn’t you used to handle breakups more…discreetly?” she asked.

      I waved my hand airily. “Oh, pooh, Terry’s not a breakup, he was a lapse in judgment. Although he might have a point about finding someone to replace him on the job,” I admitted, my airiness fading.

      “You should have thought about that before you did the floor and table and shower thing with him.” Tashya joined us. In contrast to Megan’s basic black, she was wearing a ribbon-belted Zac Posen bias-cut skirt topped with a cashmere shell in pale lemon that played up the strawberry-blond glints in her curls. In my bitchier moments I compare her to Shirley Temple, but most of the time I have to admit she looks like a Botticelli angel. She’d obviously entered the club with Megan but, being made of less stern stuff than a Daughter of Lilith, she’d been distracted by Ramon’s conga line of hotties. She cast a last, longing look at them. “Not that I’m complaining, but why do they have to drop their laundry to get a job here?”

      “Because the staff uniform’s almost as revealing,” I told her. “Think Chippendale dancers. I want to be sure every male working at the new Hot Box is absolutely to-die-for from head to toe. Did I tell you about my idea to—”

      “Kat, we didn’t come here to talk about your club,” Megan cut in. She frowned. “Although just as an aside, you’re surely not going to keep the name Hot Box, are you?”

      Even a Daughter of Lilith could be distracted, it seemed, but distractability wasn’t a positive when it came in the repressive tone of voice Megan was using. I studied her, trying and failing to see the sister I’d grown up with—the one who’d rolled her eyes with me over Tash’s irritating whininess, giggled with me over how dumb but fascinating boys were and later snickered with me over how dumb but fascinating men were—who’d known all my secrets and told me all hers.

      Sometime in the past two months, that sister had left me. She’d been replaced by the seriousfaced

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