Dates From Hell by Kelley Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page A

her breath catch. God, he was beautiful when he was agitated.
    “I know you didn’t,” she said, and Kisten’s wide shoulders relaxed, making her wonder if that was why he was upset. It wasn’t that he had to take care of Piscary’s mistake, but that Ivy might think he had killed her. And somewhere in there, she found that he loved her.
    The pretty woman was Piscary’s favorite body type with long fair hair and an angular face. She probably had blue eyes. Shit, shit, and more shit. Mind calculating how to minimize the damage, she asked, “How long has she been dead?”
    “Minutes. No more than that.” Kisten’s resonant voice dropped to a more familiar pitch. “I was trying to find out where she was staying and get her cleaned up, but she died right here on the couch. Piscary…” He met her eyes, reaching up to tug on a twin pair of diamond-stud earrings. “Piscary told me to take care of it.”
    Ivy shifted her weight to her feet, easing back to sit on the edge of the nearby couch. It wasn’t like Kisten to panic like this. He was Piscary’s scion, the person the undead vampire had tapped to manage the bar, do his daylight work, and clean up his mistakes. Mistakes that were usually four foot eleven, blond, and a hundred pounds. Damn it all to hell. Piscary hadn’t slipped like this since she had left to finish high school on the West Coast.
    “Did she sign the release papers?” she asked.
    “Do you think I’d be this upset if she had?” Kisten arranged the small woman’s hair as if it would help. God, she looked fourteen, though Ivy knew she’d be closer to twenty.
    Ivy’s lips pressed together and she sighed. So much for getting any sleep this morning. “Get the plastic wrap from the piano out of the recycling bin,” she said in decision, and Kisten rose, tugging the tails of his silk shirt down over the tops of his jeans. “We open in eight hours for the early Inderland crowd, and I don’t want the place smelling like dead girl.”
    Kisten rocked into motion, headed for the stairs. “Move faster, unless you want to have the carpet steam cleaned!” Ivy called, and she heard him jump to the floor from midway down.
    Tired, Ivy looked at the woman’s abandoned purse on the couch, too emotionally exhausted to figure out how she should feel. Kisten was Piscary’s scion, but it was Ivy who did most of the thinking in a pinch. It wasn’t that Kisten was stupid—far from it—but he was used to having her take over. Expected it. Liked it.
    Wondering if Piscary had killed the girl on purpose to force Kisten to take responsibility, Ivy stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes going to the filthy windows and the river hazy in the morning sun. It sounded just like the manipulative bastard. If Ivy had succumbed to Art, she would have spent the morning at his place—not only obediently taking the next step to the management position Piscary wanted for her, but forcing Kisten to handle this alone. That things hadn’t gone the way he planned probably delighted Piscary; he took pride in her defiance, anticipating a more delicious fall when she could fight no longer.
    Warped, ruined, ugly, she thought, watching the tourist paddleboats steam as they stoked their boilers. Was there any time she hadn’t been?
    The sliding sound of plastic brought her around, and with no wasted motion or eye contact, she and Kisten rolled the woman onto it before her bowels released. Crossing her arms over her like an Egyptian mummy, they wrapped her tightly. Ivy watched her hands, not the plastic-blurred face of the woman, trying to divorce herself from what they were doing as they passed the duct tape Kisten had brought around her like lights on a Christmas tree.
    Only when she had been transformed from a person to an object did Kisten exhale, slow and long. Ivy would cry for her later. Then cry for herself. But only when no one could hear.
    “Refrigerator,” Ivy said, and Kisten balked. Ivy looked at him as she stood