Page 18 of Cuddling Sucks in Coffins
Jacek’s mouth wavered into a smile that didn’t fit him. “We’ll get right on that, Slayer.”
Nodding, I shut the door behind me, a ball of unease unraveling inside me. A cold chill licked up my back. I loosed a slow breath as I started off the porch steps. The darkness held perfectly still as if the night were bound with a tight rubber band. Something was wrong. Lots of somethings were wrong. But some of them I couldn’t address right then because my body was telling me togo.
I slipped through the dark toward the cemetery, each step bringing me some relief from the cramping and itchy feet. But my stomach was tying itself into knots the farther away from the vamps’ house I moved. It had been more than the paint fumes bothering Jacek and Sawyer. I just didn’t know what it really was. Maybe they didn’t know either.
But I couldn’t dwell on that now. I forced myself to focus on nothing else but my slayer sense because duty called. As soon as my mind shifted to do just that, every hair on my body spiked. Someone was watching my every move. Paul? Ronick? A vampire I’d have to interview before I slayed?
Shit.
What I wouldn’t give for a simple night of patrolling on my own damn terms.
I scanned the empty, quiet street, then plucked the stake from my bun. Just as I was about to smash it down on the cemetery gate’s new lock, my slayer sense ripped up my back. Footsteps sounded behind me.
“Belle Harrison?”
No. Not again. No first and last name. No more marriage proposals from the devil, thank you very much. This was exactly how that never-ending conversation had started.
“Look, dick, you can crawl back to your...” I started, turning around.
Detective Appelt waved his badge at me. A uniformed cop who looked like he’d never cracked a joke in his life stood next to him. He carried a plastic bag in front of him. A plastic bag that had my cell phone in it, the same one I’d dropped at the graveyard the night Tim was murdered.
I gulped loudly.
“Belle Harrison,” Detective Appelt said once again. “You are under arrest.”
Chapter Five
Well, this was notwhat I’d planned at all.
I sat behind a graffitied table in a small interview room that reeked of sweat and desperation, some of which was mine. My body was rebelling against me because I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. Weird spasms twitched my nerves, my feet burned as if I’d slipped hot coals into my boots, and my stomach felt like I’d plunged forty knives into it and then drank a gallon of lemonade. Speaking of, I had to pee something awful. That bucket of coffee I’d had was now making me swim up to my eyeballs in yellow.
A one-way mirror hung on the wall to my right, and I avoided my reflection at all cost. The last time I’d looked, my complexion had gone white as death, and a sickly sheen of sweat made me look as if I’d greased myself in butter. Yellow, melted butter. I crossed my legs even tighter and willed myself not to piss the chair.
Finally, the door opened, and Detective Appelt walked in. He’d gotten rid of his oversized suit jacket and wore a button-up shirt that might’ve once been white. It was more of a grayish yellow, and a fresh pool of sweat stained the pits, visible when he moved his arm to pull out the chair across from me. The detective badge attached to his navy pants glinted in the harsh fluorescents.
“I have to go the bathroom,” I announced.
