“This may not be a five-star hotel, but I doubt they’ve resorted to eating dogs,” Hunter drawled.
She lifted the animal into her arms and stood, turning to face him but still looking at the animal in her arms.
“Marigold is a raccoon, as you can see. And this is the South. They eat raccoons in the South, or haven’t you read Nathaniel Porter’s Field Guide to Local Fauna?”
“I…can’t say that I have,” he said slowly, because his brain cells seemed to be melting.
It was a raccoon.
In a hotel.
And the raccoon rescuer was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
She was nearly as tall as he was, so maybe five-ten. She had cheekbones that could cut glass, and her smile, directed at the raccoon, was wide and lit up her face. Her eyes were the brilliant green of a spring apple, and her mass of red curls reached nearly to her waist. The purple dress she wore was a complicated thing made of scarves or loose flutters of fabric, and the entire picture gave him the impression of a forest nymph or fortune-teller.
“A raccoon,” he finally said, simply because the situation seemed to call for him to speak, but he had no idea what the hell to say.
“Yes. As I said. If you’d move out of the way?” She finally glanced up at him. Her eyes narrowed, and her glossy red lips tightened. “Oh. I should have known it would be that kind of night.”
He knew she was talking, but he couldn’t quite make out the words or the meaning, because every single molecule of his body was suddenly, painfully focused on one thing and one thing only.
The pulse beating in her throat.
“What?” he finally managed.
“Are you listening?” She narrowed her eyes, but then a look of dawning comprehension spread across her face, and she sighed. “Oh. Oh, right. Well, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to learn the rules. I’m only available for consults from ten until two on Wednesdays, and this is decidedly not that.”
Suddenly, Hunter’s confusion had nothing to do with the thirst, as the meaning of her words penetrated his dazed mind.
“What? The rules?”
“Shush, Marigold,” she told the raccoon, which seemed to be trying to climb onto the woman’s shoulders and into her tangle of hair. “Yes, the rules.”
She glanced left and right and then leaned forward and whispered. “You see, I know what you are.”
Hunter rocked back a step. She knew? But how? He hadn’t flashed his fangs or done anything to expose his new nature…
“You know?”
She nodded, her beautiful eyes warm with something that looked a lot like compassion. “Yes, I know. I can sense when someone is…has passed on. I’m Alice Darlington. You may have heard of me.”
“I don’t think so,” he said slowly. Alice Darlington. It wasn’t a name he’d forget. And her face—damn. He was sure he wouldn’t forget that face.
A flash of what looked like resignation crossed her face so quickly he wasn’t sure he’d really seen it, but then she raised her chin. “Right. You just happened to show up in my elevator.”
But then she took a deep breath and shook her head. “I’m sorry. That was petty, especially in light of what must have happened to you when you were alive. You can come tell me what you need, just like everyone else. Just pop by between ten and two on Wednesday, okay? The rest of my time is my own and—”
“When I was alive?” How did she know he’d died? And he was damn sure still alive.
He jerked his head to the right at the sound of footsteps and laughter. People coming. But he needed this conversation to continue. He put an arm around Alice Darlington and gently guided her down the hall to a windowed alcove, trying all the while to ignore the scent of her hair and the pulse in her throat. He closed his eyes and reached desperately for control when he realized he didn’t want to let her go, because—somehow, some way—holding her was sending a warm sensation of peace through him.
And he hadn’t known a moment of peace since he’d gotten caught in the fire that had killed him.
When he opened his eyes and slowly exhaled, she was staring up at him, her green eyes suddenly enormous in her pale face.
“How are you so solid?” Her voice was barely a whisper; she trembled in his arms. “You’re manifesting this strongly, and you can’t be more than six months dead… Please stop touching me. I can’t help you if I’m afraid.”
Hunter immediately, reluctantly, dropped his arm from her waist and took two steps back. Manifesting? What the hell?
Maybe all of this was a strange dream he was having.
A dream about raccoons?
Nope, didn’t seem likely.
“Three weeks, not six months. How do you know about me?”
“I—It’s my gift.” She laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “My curse. I know you’re a ghost, but I can’t help you right now. Please—I have to go.” With that, she edged past him and raced off down the hallway, still clutching Marigold the raccoon, leaving Hunter standing there staring after her.
A ghost?
She thought he was a ghost.
And she had regular consulting hours with ghosts?
Her scent still floated around him, teasing his heightened vampiric senses, and then a real smile—the kind he hadn’t felt since before he’d become a vampire—spread across his face. To hell with Dracula, climbing around on buildings, and vampire lessons.
He was going to follow Alice Darlington.
His new life had just gotten a hell of a lot more interesting.
Chapter Two
Alice secured Marigold in her crate in the back of the old and battered minivan, then made her way through the midnight-painted streets of her adopted hometown. Savannah was beautiful in the moonlight, taking on the magical shadows of a city that embraced its haunted past, took pride in its golden present, and looked forward to a brilliant future.
Best of all, it held no painful memories for her.
She caught a flash of deeper shadow in the darkness along the edge of the street in her peripheral vision. Something—a furtive movement?—out of the ordinary that tickled the edge of her mind. Or maybe that was only the remnant of her encounter in the hotel.
She’d never seen a ghost that real before.
Usually they were more…hazy. Edges not clearly defined. Sort of wavery. Shimmery.
Some of them—the ones that had been dead the longest—were almost hard to see in certain light. There was a feeling of transparent impermanence to them, as if a strong breeze would blow them to wherever they should be going.