Page 80 of Hallow Hill at Halloween: Part One

“JEFF!” I yelled. “THIS IS NOT FUNNY. ONCE WAS ENOUGH!”

Aofinne cocked her head to the side and looked at me in a way that conveyed I was not encountering a human-friendly creature.Uh oh.This was not Jeff. Nor was it a civilized vampire like John David. This was a full-bore predator. As my brain began to thaw from the shock, I realized the monster’s hideous blood-stained smile was growing, as was a chilling shine of pleasure in her eyes.

She dropped Jarvis. He fell to the floor like a discarded rag doll. I knew John David would hate this development. After all, it’s not easy to get that kind of help these days. As that thought romped across my mind, I scolded myself for being so callous. The butler may’ve had no sense of humor at all, but he didn’t deserve to die.

Poor dead Jarvis.

I remembered what the werewolf had said about not running and knew I shouldn’t, but every fiber of my being was saying, “RUN! RUN! RUN!”

The last time I’d seen Keir he was too far away to hear me call, even with his extra-sonic abilities. Keir couldn’t save me, but John David could. Maybe. Hopefully.

I was still holding the butler’s pantry door open. That was one less barrier between his ears and me. Sound just had to travel two rooms over and three flights of stairs upward.

“If you kill me,” I said to the thing in front of me, “John David will surely do the same with you.” She released the ugliest laugh I’d ever heard. Wow. Hollywood had been getting it wrong for decades. To get the depth of depravity of a vampire laugh, you had to have a real vampire. “Okay then.” I sounded both bold and brave. It was the biggest deception of my life because everything was trembling, my hands, my voice, even my internal organs. Trust me, that was an odd sensation.

I took in a deep breath and yelled like when I’d pretended to care about the Super Bowl for the sake of my marriage that failed anyway. “JOHN DAVID!!!!!!!!! HELP. HELP. HELP. HELP.”

As Aofinne advanced, my hand came up involuntarily to shield myself and, in the process, grazed the silver brooch Braden had made for me. It was a gavel fashioned to look like a Viking dagger wrapped in trailing vines. Of course, that would likely be unnoticed with the fake Tiffany Diamond as the focal piece. It was as big as my palm and had a steel pin that was thick, long, and sturdy, but I knew the kind of meticulous care Braden takes with each work of art and knew that he would coat the steel with silver. I surreptitiously pulled the brooch from my velvet-covered breast and held it open in my right hand, the base of the pin clutched tight in my fingers.

When she reached out to grab me, I threw my left forearm into her face and gave her a righteous scratch across her neck at the same time she bit down on my arm.

I screamed in pain, but there was no way it could’ve been heard over Aofinne’s howl. She was holding her neck, which was actually smoking where I’d scratched her. She waffled between looking pained and looking like she was making a vow to kill me painfully if it was the last thing she ever did.

That wasn’t as disturbing as it sounds. It seemed unlikely she would survive a wound that was smoking and consuming more of her body by the second. Half her face was burned along with the upper half of her maid costume. The red-black scorch looked like actual fiery embers before transitioning to dull charcoal gray ash. The decomposition was lightning-fast. By the time I’d finished that thought, the lower half of her body, the only thing left, had crumpled to the floor.

OMG

Suddenly I didn’t find being the only human privy to the magical world delightful. There were definite downsides. However, I had survived so I supposed I shouldn’t be a shit about it.

First, how did I know silver would do that? Second, thank you, Braden! I vowed to do an impressive series of recommendations on Rita Rules.

John David joined us in the butler’s pantry and took in the scene in a heartbeat. “How in Hades’s name did you…” Stopping mid-sentence when he noticed the bite on my arm, he seemed to decide that was a story for another day. “Get Esmerelda,” he said over his shoulder to anyone who was listening. “The magistrate needs immediate attention.”

With another glance at my arm, he removed himself from the vicinity. Quickly. My arm looked bad but didn’t hurt. It occurred to me that the sight might have been tempting to the reformed vampire.

Even though the wound didn’t hurt, I was feeling a little weakened from loss of blood. I felt Lochlan take hold to steady me. Jeff came up on the other side. I looked over at him, “I thought it was you.”

He looked confused for a couple of seconds then his brow smoothed with understanding. “You thought that vampire was me?”

“I did. You can understand why.” He nodded. I heard myself speaking in mom-voice. “See? Pranks are all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.”

“Everything is relative,” Lochlan said. “Two people who were alive a short while ago are departed while you are cracking jokes.”

I tried to turn my neck to look at him as I was being hustled toward the drawing room. “You want serious? Okay. Am I going to live?” I’m sure I never sounded quite so pitiful before.

“Of course, not.” Lochlan sounded out of patience.

“You don’t have to be mean about it.”

“I’m not being mean, Rita. I’m being frustrated with your self-sabotaging behavior.”

I still had enough energy to be incensed. “Self-sabotaging! What are you talking about? I’m the victim here.”

Jeff cleared his throat. “She’s right, Lochlan.”

“Thank you, Jeff. You’ve always been a dear, dear friend,” I said.

He chuckled. “A couple of minutes ago, you were scolding me about pranks.”

---