Haunted Honeymoon by Marta Acosta Read Free Book Online

interviewing the yapping factions and wasn’t able to see Ian before he left on one of his mysterious trips.
    “I’m quite disappointed,” he said when I called him.
    “Gabriel said he’s going to a meeting with the Council aboutWilcox Spiggott’s vampire rights movement. Is that where you’re going?”
    “Milagro, if you want to know where I’m going, come with me.”
    “You’re trying to manipulate me by baiting my curiosity. Promise me that you won’t let those vipers lock up Spiggott. I still have nightmares about their underground lair.”
    “No doubt you’re terrified of being forced to attend another tedious meeting there,” he said. “Why are you interested in Spiggott? Attractive young fellow, but insubstantial.”
    “How can someone organizing a liberation movement not be substantial? It is by its very nature a serious activity.”
    “My meeting shouldn’t take long. If you come, I’ll spend most of my time with you. We can get married all over again.”
    “Ha, ha, and ha,” I said. “How’s everything working out with your serfs and your new neighbors?”
    “Splendidly. Mrs. K’s cooking is as delectable as promised, and Cricket is especially attentive to me.”
    Jealousy embraced me with the excessive enthusiasm of a drunken frat boy. “I bet she is. She’s probably talking to her divorce attorney and ordering new monogrammed linens so she can trade up. Too bad Ford seems to be in love with her.”
    “Ah, but we all choose the partner who gives us what we need, not what we think we need, or want to need.”
    “While that sounds insightful, it may just be glib, so I’m not going to read anything into it.”
    But after we said good-bye, I did think about it.
    I’d believed that Oswald was the right person for me, and I wanted to be the right person for him. Our breakup had been engineered by others: Ian’s crafty sister, who’d been assigned as our vampire wedding consultant; the vampires’ Council, who would have preferred me dead; and Oswald’s parents, who detestedme. There was also a friend’s bat-shit-crazy jealous ex-girlfriend, who’d mistaken me for a romantic rival.
    And there was me, too. When I remembered how I’d betrayed Oswald, I felt sick with shame and remorse. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t make the same mistakes.

three

Once Bitten, Twice Snide
    I finished the story for Paws to Reflect in time to go to Mercedes’s nightclub, arriving before the small red neon my dive sign was turned on. Ian had invested in my friend’s business, allowing her to do a remodel and add the My Dive Annex, a tiny shop that sold cafecitos and Cuban sandwiches.
    Lenny, the house manager, was hurrying through the lobby as I came in. He gave me a pat on my bottom and said, “Sugar, do me a favor and help the bartenders. One of the girls is running late tonight.”
    “Sure, Lenny. I could waitress if you need me.”
    That sent him into convulsions of laughter, bending his skinny torso over and holding his arm across his waist. After he’d finished, he gasped, “I remember when Mercedes hired you.”
    Chagrined, I said, “Who knew that balancing a tray of glasses was so hard?”
    After helping the bartenders stack barware and tote supplies from the storeroom, I went to Mercedes’s office and stretchedout on the grubby brown sofa that had survived the remodeling.
    We could hear the new house band, Juanita and the Rat Dogs, rehearsing. Oswald hadn’t liked their klezmer-Cuban music, but Mercedes and I agreed that they were brilliant. “I love Juanita’s percussive right hand,” I said as the musician ripped through a piano solo.
    “Me, too,” Mercedes said, turning her head from her computer screen to listen.
    My friend was a sturdy woman who’d inherited her Cuban mother’s cocoa complexion, her Scottish father’s freckles, and both parents’ immigrant work ethic. She’d shared her passion for music with me, introducing me to dazzling bands and genres,