Dead and Dateless Read Free

dangling beads that had been ripped off prior to the cuffs being snapped on— sniffle. There would be plenty of time for that when the cops weren’t this close to dragging me off to the pokey.
    I drew a deep breath—not that I needed it, but I’d been living in the human world and blending for so long that it was sort of a habit now—and focused my thoughts on getting the hell out of there, like, now .
    Every nerve in my body seemed to come alive in that next instant. My arms tingled and my legs vibrated. A rush of heat started at my toes and worked its way up until I felt my cheeks flush.
    I know, I know, it sorta, kinda, maybe sounded a little like an orgasm. But trust me, it didn’t feel like one. Except for the vibrating legs, that is. And the flushed cheeks. And, perhaps, the hot…not going there.
    Then again, it had been so long since I’d actually had a mucho, fantastic O (over a hundred years ago with an actual partner), my memory might be a little rusty.
    I sniffled again. Once. Twice. A third time (hey, we’re talking a hundred years).
    I felt an overwhelming sense of crappiness wash over me. Nonexistent love life. Microscopic apartment. Newborn business barely breaking even. Sure, I had hot, happening hair (brown with enough high lights to make it look sunny-licious blond), but what was hair in the big scheme of things?
    A police car rushed down a nearby street and jerked me out of my sudden funk. Panic bolted through me and I clamped my eyes shut and willed myself to change.
    A loud flutter soon joined the frantic pounding of my heart. Suddenly, I felt weightless (yep, the change had its perks). I left the alley behind as fast as my tiny pink wings could carry me. (I know most bats are black, but black is so…black. As in dark and gloomy and so not my color.)
    Even more testimony to the fact that I was totally freaked. No way would I risk discovery and annihilation of the entire born vamp race by morphing into a cute but totally conspicuous pink bat.
    But I was free, and putting as much distance as possible between myself and the whole hamburger meat thing (yuck). And that’s all that mattered at the moment.
             
    Pigeons weren’t the only ones who kicked ass when it came to homing instincts.
    I reached my apartment, located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in just under a minute, and landed in the small, and smelly, alley that ran behind my building.
    A few tingling moments later, I hurried up the front steps of my building in my bare feet. While I could morph as well as the next vamp, when I was nervous (or wanted for murder) I tended to leave behind a thing or two. In this case, my shoes and a really fab toe ring I’d bought in SoHo.
    I punched in the code and rushed inside the renovated duplex that housed mostly single, corporate types and a few seniors. There were only two married couples (the Griffiths on one and the Shanks up on three) and zero children, which meant that the noise level was moderate, consisting mostly of CNN, game shows, and the occasional “Your mother is driving me crazy!”
    Tonight, Mac Griffith’s mother wasn’t just driving his wife loony, however. She was shoveling the dirt over and burying her alive, judging from the raised voices coming from the first apartment I passed as I hauled butt toward the elevator. Several frantic moments later, I reached my front door. The O’Reilly Factor drifted from the apartment directly across the hall from me and a rerun of Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire carried up from old Mrs. Janske’s just below. She was a widow who’d moved in last week, along with a zillion cats and at least three birds.
    My nostrils flared as I unlocked the door to my apartment and I caught a whiff of…Make that a zillion cats, three birds, and an entire case of mothballs.
    I made a mental note to stop by and introduce my self when I wasn’t being hunted for murder. While I don’t particularly like animals, I do have a weakness for a