Romancing The Dead by Tate Hallaway Read Free Book Online

wandered into the kitchen to hunt up lunch. I heated up a bowl of tofu stir-fry from a Vietnamese take-out container. The veggies were wilted and the rice gummy, but it passed for sustenance. By the time I was finished, it was time to get dressed to meet Sebastian at the Horticultural Society. Since I was the girlfriend—oops, strike that, fiancée—of the lecturer, I thought I should try to look respectable. From somewhere in the very back of my closet I found a brown tea -length skirt. In my chest of drawers I discovered a white button-down shirt, which I think I’d actually borrowed from Sebastian some time ago. Still, they went together reasonably well, and the shirt, miraculously, didn’t need ironing. Much.
    Shoes were a bigger problem. Even my most conservative pair had bat-wing buckles. Similarly, most of my hosiery involved glitter and/or spiderwebs.
    Given the temperature and the state of my tan (which was dark for me, that is, not so pasty as to stand out), I decided I could go without nylons—besides, if my knees started bleeding again . . . well, pulling mesh from a scab was ugly, ugly business. Luckily, the skirt covered the scrapes.
    I gelled my hair into its usual spikes, because flat hair just made me look like Eddie Munster. I noticed that there was a faint line of blond beginning to show at the roots. I was going to have to dye my hair again soon or I’d end up looking like a skunk. Pulling at a bit of my hair, I looked at the blond. I didn’t really need the Goth-girl disguise anymore. Not only had the Vatican witch hunters decided I was dead, but the FBI had closed their case on me as well. I wasn’t running anymore. Hell, I was contemplating the big settle—marriage. Maybe I should go down the aisle as a blonde.
    I swallowed hard. I watched my throat bob in the mirror in the classic image of fear. My eyes showed it too. No wonder Sebastian was cranky with me.
    Well, when I saw him tonight I’d let him know how much I wanted to be with him. I’d missed him terribly all day; I couldn’t wait to see him again.
    I called Jensen’s to see if Sebastian was planning on picking me up or if I should phone for a taxi.
    “Haven’t seen him all day,” Hal said in his usual, disinterested way. Where other guys might have offered to take a message at this point, Hal simply let silence sit on the line almost like a challenge.
    “What about the Mustang?” I asked.
    “What about it?”
    “There is a ’66 convertible there, right?”
    A moment of silence, and I held my breath. “It isn’t yours, is it?”
    “No,” I said.
    “Good. ’Cause I’m still waiting on parts.”
    After an exchange of awkward good-byes, I hung up.
    I wanted to be more surprised that Hal hadn’t seen Sebastian all day, but I wasn’t. I called for a taxi and reminded myself that a vampire’s wife was going to have to make peace with the idea of his ghouls.
    My stiff upper lip lasted all the way to the University Club, but then I found myself surrounded by Volvo -driving baby boomers so into their gardens that they tended to sneer at me when I mispronounced the Latin name or, worse, called my plants by their common designation.
    I managed to make small talk about roses and mullein and wild mustard with a few of the friendlier ladies while we all waited for Sebastian to arrive. About ten minutes before the lecture was to start, I thought I spotted him slipping in the side door. I rushed over, grateful to finally have someone decent to talk to.
    About a foot away, I realized my mistake.
    My warm, welcoming smile withered. It wasn’t Sebastian who’d just walked in—it was his son, Mátyás. 3.
    Mercury
    KEYWORDS: The Intellect, Volatile Action, and Children
    Noticing my quickly crumpling smile, Mátyás’s own expression brightened. That was the thing about Mátyás: you could always count on him taking a tiny bit of pleasure from other people’s misfortunes, especially mine. The last time I saw Mátyás, one of his