Exes and Exorcisms by Keira Blackwood (uplifting book club books .txt) 📗

Upstairs, Peter was singing. He’d been getting increasingly louder the longer Kelly was gone. And within the past hour, he seemed to have found a recording of “Another One Bites the Dust,” which he played over and over again, pounding his foot on the floor with the beat.

It was better than him coming down here and the two of us having to spend time together.

And then it turned out I jinxed myself. The music became exponentially louder as Peter stepped into the hall, leaving Marla’s door open.

“Kelly?” he called.

I debated ignoring him.

“Kelly Jelly Belly,” he sing-songed. “I’m hungry.”

I stepped into his line of sight at the bottom of the stairs. He froze midstep, and his wild black hair fell down over his eyes.

“Oh, it’s just you,” he said. “Where’s Jelly Belly?”

“She won’t like you calling her that,” I said.

He shot me a coy grin. “You think?”

I guessed this was as good a time as any to get to know what kind of vampire Peter was. The job was to kill the vampires in Forbidden. It was Stakehouse Code—never leave them squirming. Slaughter all vampires before they slaughter someone else. No way in hell I was going to harm Kelly, even if she harmed me. Part of me expected she would, only not in the way vampires did. She’d hurt me because she held my heart.

And before I had to leave Forbidden for my next job, or even before I had to report back tonight about the state of my mission, it would help to know what kind of man Peter was. He’d been a tough nut to crack, holed up in Marla’s room.

“Kelly’s out,” I said. “But I know where she keeps the blood.”

“You don’t want to be my snack?”

“I’ll bring you a packet if you keep your fangs and your diseases to yourself,” I said.

“Well that’s no fun.”

“Promise,” I told him.

“Fine, fine,” he said. “But for the record, two people can bond over a case of genital warts.”

I did not know what to say to that.

He pointed at me and laughed. “Your expression.” He shook his head. “No warts, I swear on Kelly’s second life.”

I growled at that.

“Fine, fine. No more joking. I’ll be a good boy. Cross my heart.” He disappeared into Marla’s room but left the door open.

I grabbed a packet of blood from the fridge and jogged up the steps. The music stopped, leaving the hall feeling a little too quiet.

Marla’s room was dark, likely because Peter preferred it that way, or possibly because this was his way of setting me on edge. But I had the sharp eyes of a shifter, and it didn’t bother me.

The flowers that had covered every surface were mostly wilted by now, though a few hung on. They wouldn’t last long without water, sunlight, or soil.

Instead of lurking in a corner ready to pounce, Peter was lying out across the couch, a leg and arm dangling from the side as he watched me enter.

“Bring it here,” he said. “I’m famished.”

I crossed the room and tossed the pouch toward his chest. He caught it and shoved the whole thing into his abnormally large mouth like a chipmunk. Cheeks puffed out and lips barely closed, he chewed. A stream of red leaked down his chin.

He swallowed the plastic bag and darted his tongue out to catch the last drop, and instead smeared it around. I cringed.

“You swallowed that plastic,” I said.

He shrugged. “Yep. And for the record, I wouldn’t have bitten you unless I had to.”

“Right,” I said.

“Aren’t you barky types supposed to sense the truth?”

True enough.

“Uh huh, well, flesh disgusts me. You’ve seen what it does when I’m around. The sores, the scabs.” He shivered. “Human bodies are disgusting.”

I laughed. “You are unlike any vampire I have encountered before.”

“Thank you,” he said, beaming as if I’d just praised him.

It was a compliment, I guessed, given my history. I was beginning to discover that Kelly wasn’t an exception to the rule, but that there were two types of vampires—those who acted like monsters, and those who didn’t. Just like shifters, or humans.

A strange hissing sound came from the alley outside the foil-covered window.

I went to the glass to look, peeling back the foil a bit. I was careful not to let any of the last shreds of daylight land on Peter. “Meowcus Anthony is back,” I said.

“Not you, too,” Peter said. “Why is everyone obsessed with a bunch of alley cats?”

“They’re not regular cats,” I said, peering down to the quickly darkening alley below. “They have a story. It’s obvious if you just—”

My jaw fell open when I spotted a huge black cat perched on top of a metal trash can. At that size, it had to be His Lordship King Snugglebumpkins. But there was no way.

This cat was certainly regal, but he was clean. He looked like a fancy pampered feline from magazines that belonged to some rich lady who took him to kitty salons for the perfect blowout.

He lifted his chin toward the sky, and I swear it was like his fur shimmered in an ethereal glow.

Snowball rubbed herself all around the bottom of the trash can. That wasn’t so weird. But Meowcus Anthony did, too, along with a handful of other cats I had never seen before.

One orange cat pushed his way closer to the can and Mewocus Anthony, clearly not wanting anyone to be closer to His Lordship than he himself was, tackled the orange tabby to the ground.

“You think I should make up little stories for them?” Peter asked. “Who has time for that nonsense?”

He pulled a pillow over his head and sighed.

“You,” I said. “You have endless time where you do nothing.”

I grabbed the pillow from his head.

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine, maybe that’s true. But I prefer other kinds of nonsense to fill my endless time.”

“Like giving people diseases?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” he said. “But that’s not all that I am.”

“Is that so?”

“I fancy myself a poet. I figured you’d have gotten that by