Sex and the Single Vampire Read Free

most haunted spots in London. I couldn’t cancel.
    I got to my feet and collected the lighter version of the dark glasses I wear during the day. A quick look in themirror confirmed what I had known—my eyes hadn’t changed during the miracle of the Summoning. I glanced one more time at the cat, but it was apparently sleeping. According to the rules of Summoning, it shouldn’t be able to leave without my Releasing it, but maybe there was an expiration date or something that meant I had only a little time with it.
    “Just stay put, kitty, and I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can,” I told it as I shoved my glasses on and grabbed my purse. The Do Not Disturb sign swung from the door handle as I closed the door and headed downstairs.
    The guy slouched over a magazine at the reception desk was the evening clerk; I recognized him from the last couple of nights when I had slunk out of the hotel on my ghost-hunting missions.
    “Hi. I’m in room one-fourteen. I’m going out for a bit; will you take any messages for me? Oh, and I left some equipment out, very fragile and expensive equipment, so I don’t want anyone going into my room.”
    “Not a problem,” the clerk said without even lifting his eyes from his magazine.
    I hesitated a moment, then decided to throw caution to the wind. “Um … I’ve heard that the room I’m in is supposed to be haunted.”
    He looked up at that, frowning at my dark glasses.
    “Eye condition,” I told him with a wave at my face. “My eyes are … uh … sensitive.”
    “Oh.”
    “Do you happen to know anything about room one-fourteen? Who it’s supposed to be haunted by, that is?”
    His frown deepened. “If you’d like another room—”
    “No, no, it’s not that; the room is fine. I was just curious about the ghost that’s supposed to haunt the room. I love history, you see, and thought there might be an interesting story connected to the room.”
    “Oh,” he said again, his gaze slipping down to his magazine. “Supposed to be an old lady and her cat. Died in the room in a fire.”
    “The old lady or the cat?”
    He shrugged and moistened a pudgy finger to turn the magazine page. “Both.”
    “Ah. When was that, do you know?”
    He shot me an annoyed look. “What’s it to you, then?”
    It was my turn to shrug. “Just casual interest.”
    He eyed me suspiciously for a moment, then returned to the magazine. “I heard the old lady died sometime during World War Two. This hotel was blitzed. Everyone made it out but her and the cat.”
    Interesting. I wonder why my Summons drew only the cat and not the human ghost? Maybe I didn’t use enough dead man’s ash. Or perhaps I just didn’t have enough strength to Summon a more complex spirit as a human. Former human.
    I nodded my thanks to the desk clerk and limped off to find a cab. When you have one leg shorter than the other, riddled with scar tissue that has defied even the most dedicated of orthopedic surgeons, you hesitate to spend long hours on your feet, let alone walking anywhere that can easily be reached by a comfy cab. I used the short cab ride out to the building located near the Southwark Bridge to muse over whether or not the successful Summoning of a ghostly cat meant I’d have luck at the haunted inn.
    “Maybe just a smidge more dead man’s ash,” I mused aloud before realizing the cabdriver was giving me a worried look in the mirror. I smiled in what I hoped was a suitably reassuring manner and kept the rest of my musings to myself.
    Ten minutes later I limped around to the back of a tiny old building dwarfed by a nearby sports complex. About three hundred years ago the small building had been aninn, but had most recently been used as headquarters for a trendy decorating shop. Now it was empty, reportedly due to the unusual and unexplained “phenomena” that was connected with the inn’s distant past. A thin man of medium height stood shivering by the door, waving his flashlight at me as I