Necromancing Nim Read Free

intimidate me with his height advantage. I was far too used to people being taller than me for it to work. Obviously disappointed by my lack of terror, he said, “I’m going to have to ask you to come by the station for questioning.”
    “Right now?” There went the rest of my night’s stops. Colin was going to be pissed.
    “Yes, ma’am. Shouldn’t take long.”
    “Right.” Now I was the skeptical one. It was a given that a stop by the police station would definitely be long, no matter what Wilson said. I sighed and started to get back into the car.
    “Ma’am?” Officer Petty called. She was standing by her cruiser, Sebastian next to her, cuffed now but quiet.
    “Yes?”
    “Could you come here for a moment?”
    I glanced at Wilson, who shrugged acquiescence. I’d been hoping he’d tell me to get my ass in the car and on to the police station, but of course he would do just the opposite. Typical. I made my way to the other car. “Yes?”
    Petty gestured toward Sebastian. “He wants to tell you something before we take him in.”
    I frowned. Since when did arrested vampires get to request a visitor? Then I fell into Sebastian’s far-too-blue eyes and understood. He had the kind of face that could go from heart-stoppingly intense in a really hot way to classy and debonair in a really hot way to hangdog, “please scratch behind my ears because somebody was mean to me”. In a really hot way. With that kind of ammunition, he didn’t even need a vampire whammy to make women do his bidding. He was using the latter mode right now, and I had an urge to cuddle him close and lick him. I mean comfort him. “What is it?” I asked.
    “You’ll tell them I saved you, right?” There was an edge of pleading in his voice. “If it comes to that?”
    “Of course I will.”
    He leaned forward a bit, his cuffed hands brushing the edge of my open jacket, and whispered in my ear.
    The moment he drew his head back, his breath still wafting against my ear, I hauled off and slapped him across the face as hard as I could. His head whipped back, and his expression changed from an easy smile to a feral grin, his eyes suddenly shrewd and narrow.
    “Hey, hey!” Officer Petty grabbed Sebastian and yanked him away from me, pulling him almost off-balance. “Take it easy.”
    Officer Wilson peered at me in concern. “You okay? What did he say to you?”
    I just stared at Sebastian, unable to form words. He met my gaze steadily and gave a small nod. My hands were shaking. “Nothing,” I said to Wilson. “Nothing at all.”
    Wilson laid a gentle hand on my elbow and steered me back toward my car. “Let’s get you back to the station so we can get this over with.”
    I nodded. But, sliding behind the steering wheel, I frowned. The flood of adrenaline had eased, and I knew now what had happened. Sebastian had whammied me. Why, I didn’t know, but there had to have been a reason he wanted me to club him in the head. Because all he’d said to me, whispered soft and hot into my ear, was, “Thank you. And tell Colin I said hi.”

  “There are approximately six quarts of blood in the average human body. The average vampire can subsist quite comfortably on approximately one pint a day. It’s absolutely ludicrous to think that any human being—much less multiple human beings—should have to die in order to properly feed any single vampire.”— Colorado State Representative Marcus Woodruff (human, D), address to the Colorado House of Representatives, in defense of the Vampire Beverages Act, September, 1972.
    Chapter Two
    Just as I’d figured, once they got me to the police station, they kept me for three hours. Two and a half of them were spent on paperwork and waiting. They also confiscated my collection of defensive weapons—“Just a formality, miss, we’ll get them back to you, provided everything’s in order.” Understandable, since it’s not good practice to let just anybody carry weapons into a police station.