“No!” Hell, he’d all but snapped. “I’ll be fine, Dixie. You need to rest. You’ve been up all night.” Sewing for Sam…and him.
“So have you!”
“I have the advantage of centuries.”
She grinned. “No one would ever guess!”
“No one ever does, Dixie.”
She looked up at him, her green eyes alert as if catching his mood. “I can easily deliver it. The sun’s not bright and it will only take ten minutes.”
“I want to, Dixie.” As if he’d have her run his errands. He tucked the map in his pocket and the black-edged box under his arm.
“Take the car.” She held out the keys.
“I thought it was close. I’ll walk.”
“No.” She pushed the keys into his hand. “You want to appear mortal, right? Drive.” He made to hand them back, but she shook her head. “A few blocks south of Thurman, the neighborhood changes. It’s not the sort of area where people go strolling for pleasure. Drive in and drive out is what anyone else would do.”
In that case, what in Hades were a single woman and schoolboy doing living there? “Okay.” He closed his fist over her car keys and hoisted the black-and-white box closer. “Thanks, Dixie.”
“Just be sure to tell her she can pay me whatever she’d have spent on another costume.”
“Will do.” He curled his hand over the knob and opened the back door. “Bye, and thanks again.”
“And remember to stay on the right side of the road!” she shot at him as he stepped out the door.
Justin unlocked Dixie’s car, and then realized he’d opened the wrong door. Would he ever get used to this? He placed the box on the passenger seat and walked around the bonnet and unlocked the driver’s side. By the time he finished readjusting the seat and fiddling with the rearview mirror, he could have walked there! But Dixie’s caution worried him. She was most definitely not a woman to get overly nervous, and if she thought an area risky…
He’d soon find out.
Her directions were easy to follow and precise, and her warnings about the area were spot on. As he turned left onto Lubeck, he couldn’t miss the boarded up, dilapidated house on one corner. Now that really did look like a place for Hollywood vampires or ghouls to lurk! The house across the way wasn’t much better, but it was inhabited. Two shaven-headed young men lurked on the sagging porch.
Justin checked house numbers. At least Stella’s was a distance down the road. Two blocks down. Heck, he was thinking in the lingo. He pulled the car into the curb and looked around. Her house was shabby but tidy-looking. She had no sagging sofas in the front garden, nor did she have a rusty, disused water heater decorating her front porch like one of her neighbors. Stella’s front steps were flanked with a pair of pumpkins, and a cardboard cutout of a green-faced witch hung on the front door. Obviously a witch didn’t mean the same to her that it did to Kit and Dixie. Stella was fortunate.
He took the steps two at a time and rang the bell. And waited. And waited. He sensed a heartbeat behind the locked door. “Who’s there?” Stella asked.
“Justin Corvus, Ms. Schwartz.” As if she’d remember!
“From the Vampire Emporium.” Only Dixie could come up with that name for a shop the size of a shoebox. “Dixie sent something she thought Sam might use.”
He heard a bolt slide back and a lock turn. The door opened a few inches and Stella peered out before releasing the chain lock. “Come in,” she said, opening the door wide.
At her invitation, he stepped over the threshold into a tidy but shabby sitting room. He held out the box. “Dixie hopes this fits Sam.”
Stella looked doubtful but took the box. “Thanks.”
“Have a look. See what you think.”
She slipped the lid off and reached into tissue, putting the box on a chair, before shaking out the cape. Her lips parted as she stared at the velvet hanging in rich folds. She should be wearing velvet like this. Velvet and the finest satin and lace not blue jeans and a worn sweatshirt. “It’s beautiful,” she said, “but…”
Her skin would surely taste like new cream on honey cake. He smiled. “You don’t think Sam will like it?”
She laughed. “He’d love it but I really think…”
He could feel the tug between her longing and her anxiety. “Look, Stella…” She hadn’t balked at his use of her given name, so he went on. “See if it fits him. If so, why not keep it?”
“Because it’s more than I can afford!” Her face flushed red with mortification at her admission. He could hear the rush of blood to her face. Abel, help him! He had to will his fangs to stay retracted. He hadn’t realized how much he needed to feed.
“We haven’t even mentioned a price.”
She fixed him with an exasperated look. “I know what things cost and this was custom-made.”
Yes, custom made for Sam!
She started re-folding the cape. She really was going to refuse! It would be so easy to will her to agree—she was halfway there, all it would take was a little nudge of her mind and she’d agree to what her heart wanted to accept. He resisted the temptation. Somehow it seemed important that she accept freely. “It was a special order.” By him. “But there’s limited market for children’s outfits.” That much was true. “Yesterday evening it was sitting up there in Dixie’s workroom, no use to anybody.” Because it was still on the bolt. “If it fits Sam, at least someone is getting use out of it and it won’t go to waste.”
That last line was a touch of genius. He bet “thrifty” was her middle name. She nodded. “Thanks.” She paused. “I didn’t mean to sound ungracious.”
“You didn’t. Just careful. No one wants to run up obligations they can’t meet. Dixie said to pay her whatever you’d have spent on another costume.”
He should have stopped when he was winning. Stella looked at him. “That would hardly meet the cost of the fabric.”
“No,” Justin replied, and watched as she frowned. “But it’s more than she’ll get with it sitting in a box in her storeroom, and this way someone gets to use it other than the moths.” Now he was tempted to push her will just a little.
“And if you promise to bring Sam by the shop, it will be a great advertisement for us.”
He sensed her acceptance a second before she spoke. “Thanks.” She had a smile that could fell a strong man. How any mortal man had ever resisted her, he’d never know. It made this vampire want to…
“Would you like a cup of coffee?”
He wanted her blood, rich and warm and flowing over his tongue. He needed her skin against his lips. “Coffee would be brilliant.”
She brought the box with her as she led the way into the kitchen, a bright room with a tall bay window. Justin sat in the chair she offered, glanced out of the window at a sand-box and swing and a dilapidated garage at the end of the garden, and then gave his full attention to the object of his lust. A lust he’d better damn well keep reined in.
Stella filled a kettle and put it to boil. She reached for two mugs from a row on hooks under the cabinets. “Instant okay?” she asked as she measured out spoonfuls from a large jar.
“By all means.” Fluids would slow his metabolism down, and about time too. Of course walking out of here would work even better.
“Cream and sugar?” Stella half-turned his way.
“No, thank you, just black.”
She busied herself,