Hollywood Dead: Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective Read online

  “LaRue’s on the warpath, no doubt.”

  “Oh yeah. Dude’s going to be in a world of hurt any minute now.” I knew how much LaRue cared for Jo and didn’t doubt my crank caller would be screaming for Jesus a few minutes after LaRue’s boys found him. “It got me worried about everyone I know.”

  “I’m fine,” Ted said, holding me tighter.

  “Really?”

  “Really. This thing with the OPS is no big deal.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “A torturer’s greatest weapon is the fear of the unknown. I know what’s coming for me. Maybe it is a monster, but then so am I. Let it come.”

  I shivered a little at the coldness of his tone, the matter-of-fact way he spoke. “I don’t want you hurt.”

  “I’ll do my best not to be,” he promised, then kissed me lightly on the cheek. “What about you? Should I be worried about threatening phone calls?”

  I told him about it, naked, our bodies wrapped together. We also talked about Jo, the blues, the bar, and the guy who had attracted so much interest from my sister. We talked about everything but what mattered most which was that I held him safe in my arms.

  4

  When I got home from Ted’s, I used the back door—the one that went directly to my apartment. It was hidden from view, and miles more secure than the front door. The office felt too public, too exposed and sleeping on the floor of the apartment appealed more than trying to sleep in a house with a vampire like William. Ted seemed fine knowing a monster could be coming for him and Jo might not be able to be poisoned but after the day I had, I was willing to swap comfort for a very secure empty room.

  I trudged up the stairs to the interior door, surprised I had left it completely unlocked. I was even more surprised when the door wouldn’t budge. I put my shoulder into it, pressing hard to shove something heavy out of the way. When I’d left this morning, the place had been bare. Now, I stumbled over something reaching for the lights, with barely enough room to move.

  “What the hell?” I asked the universe in general and was surprised when a voice answered.

  “I’m trying to decide where to put the couch.”

  “In the dark?”

  “I can see in the dark,” Jo said. I flipped on the overhead light to see her standing in the empty space that might someday be a living room. Beside me, just inside the door, piled at no particular angle, was an entire apartment’s worth of furniture. I stood lost for a minute until I noticed the dining room table from Jo’s old apartment, chairs with peach silk seats neatly in place.

  “Your stuff?”

  “Yup, every bit of it. The dining room was easy. How do you want the couch?”

  We took a good hour fitting her peach and cream couch into the space, moving all the bulky brown wood around. Jo did most of the heavy lifting; if your friend can bench press a half a ton without breaking a sweat, it makes sense to let them move furniture. Unfortunately, the bed was an awkward shape and she needed me to balance one end. We got everything else moved, then struggled to get it in place.

  “You must love peach.” I shook my head a little at the orange-pink and cream bouquet that was the canopy bed.

  “I hate it actually. Can’t stand it.” Her voice sounded unnaturally bitter.

  “Then why?” The whole set-up—the dining room chairs, the couch, the bed set—was peach.

  “Maman feels peach is the only acceptable color for young women. Pink is too sexual, blue is too masculine.”

  “Wow. I guess I shouldn’t ask about red.”

  She laughed, and sounded more like herself. “Nope.”

  “How many years did you live with a color you can’t stand?” I’d been allowed to pick out the color of my own bedspread when I was ten.

  “A hundred? Hundred and fifty? Let’s just say decorating was a lot more fun when I was living with Jean-Laurent.” She looked around at the bed set. “You want to go get a beer?”

  Two beers later, we ran into an old friend of mine, an army buddy, John David Douglas—just plain Douglas to his friends. He’d had a little problem readjusting to real life after the war. The Army had given him a purpose. Work just gave him a paycheck so he’d started taking jobs. I couldn’t argue with that, I’d started taking jobs the minute I got back. Anything for a paycheck that didn’t require I shave off my edges and fit in the nine-to-five world. But Douglas wasn’t as good as I was, or maybe he liked danger.

  Whichever it was, when I told him not to take a job from the mysterious Mr. LaRue, he’d taken it anyway and ended up a vampire. It wasn’t all bad, figuring out his death had given me my first real detective work. Finding Jo, back when I thought of her as Josephine, had been a blessing, and LaRue turned out to be incredibly sexy and trustworthy. Well, trustworthy the way you could trust a snake to bite you.

  Douglas was part of LaRue’s crew now, a third wheel to the pair of thugs that LaRue kept like lapdogs, the only Black man in a bunch of out-of-date White vampires. Douglas got his own apartment and he kept a job, so he was better than the other two, but as vampires went, he was low on the totem pole. It made sense that he hadn’t gotten time off to drink until the middle of the night.

  I drank beers and complained about clients. Jo drank from a dark bottle with the label torn off. She talked about her son and what it had been like when she’d had a family. Douglas drank from the same kind of dark bottle and griped about being weakest in the bunch. All in all, we made for a complaining group of losers, but it was a good time.

  The beer made me slow, so it took an hour for me to catch on to why Douglas was really there. When the band took a break, Jo went up to feed the juke box and I pounced on him.

  “You’re here looking out for her, aren’t you?”

  “Yup.” He took a long pull on the bottle. He finished it and scrubbed his hand across his face. “Damn, but I miss beer.”

  “Yeah, it’s great. Mind telling me why I’m suddenly not enough protection for my friend?”

  “Come on Hicks, don’t be stupid. LaRue’s worried about that phone call you got. So the big boys go into LA to find out who made the call and I stay here to babysit.”

  “She’s got me. She doesn’t need a babysitter.” I did my best not to sound bitter while I slumped in my chair surrounded by empty beer bottles.

  “She does. You do, too, and I’m it. Get over it.”

  “I do?” Anger made me sit up straight. I hadn’t needed a babysitter since boot camp. Douglas should know—he’d been there.

  “LaRue says you do so you do. Different world, Hicks. This isn’t about who you can machine gun into quiet. This is about what my boss wants, and he wants you safe. It seems you mean a bunch to his lady.”

  “That she does,” Jo returned brightly. “What did I miss?”

  “Nothing,” I grumbled, still not okay with the idea of Douglas, who I’d shepherded through all sorts of gunfire, being my quasi-bodyguard.

  “Yeah, sure,” Jo sighed. “If that’s how you’re going to be, I’m going for another round.”

  And she was off again, curls bouncing behind her in a high fuzzy ponytail.

  “What she’d do tonight, then?” I asked, determined to prove he wasn’t all that good as a detective or a bodyguard.

  “Went to your place with a ton of furniture, turned into a mist at the door, went under the frame, opened it up, put the furniture inside. Stayed inside until you showed up, then came here. I figured after a beer or two, you’d be ready to deal with reality but it looks like I should have hung back. Or maybe you’re just smarting that I tailed you all the way here and you didn’t know it.”

  I opened my mouth, hot angry words ready but Jo showed up, saving his ass.

  My client’s voicemail told me her husband always spent Saturday with the family. This weekend they went to the beach house. I smirked at the thought of a beach house when you live in LA, which was already only an hour from the beach. The baby would never know the fun of packing up the car for a drive
that took less time than a movie but had more preparation than Hillary’s expedition to Everest. Still, I couldn’t be too cynical—a day at the beach house meant I didn’t have to tail anyone.

  I had gotten to bed late. After insulting my abilities to pick up a tail, Douglas turned the conversation to Army life. Soon, we were making Jo laugh over stories I’d never tell my mother. Jo being Jo, she pulled me out to dance, the two of us probably looking like fools in the divvy Irish bar. But an evening filled with dancing and bullshitting with good friends wasn’t that bad, even if it did leave me just a touch hung over.

  Jo’s bed was a bit too frilly for me but it beat the hell out of the couch downstairs. I spent some time looking at it—the girly canopy, the mounds of pillows. Ted hadn’t seen it yet, making me wonder if I should do something special for when he did. I was halfway to trying to find something peach and risqué when I realized, Saturday or not, there was still work to be done.

  I ran around town, collecting checks for a few hours, pestering people to write them out and then driving the bundle to the bank. In those first few months, I’d needed work enough that I let people pay me in installments. I was kicking myself for it now. People forgot to pay, or maybe they really didn’t have the money. Either way, it meant I had to chase payments down, not one of my favorite hobbies. When I was almost done, my cell phone buzzed at me. I grabbed it with one hand, managing the steering wheel with the other.

  “Hicks.”

  “Oh, uh, hi. This is, uh, I mean, it’s…”

  “I recognize your voice, what can I do for you?” It was the producer’s wife—the one who had told me to take Saturday off. I suspect she was about to take that back.

  “Dan’s leaving the beach house.”

  “Uh-huh.” I tried to make the single sound a question and a statement.

  “He’s going to the opening of a night club. Uh, the Follies. Have you heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I didn’t think you would, but anyway, he’s going tonight but it seemed really… I don’t know. Rushed or secret. Can you be there?”

  At seventy-five dollars an hour plus expenses, I would go where ever she wanted. I pulled over to the side of the road, took down the information, and promised her I’d find out what I could. Fifteen minutes later, I was back on the road, headed to my last collection with sudden, lucrative plans for the evening. I half-hoped Dan would be fool enough to get caught with some woman in the bathroom. As much as I needed the money, I didn’t love this case. I like Hollywood just fine when it stayed about two hours down the road or in the movie theater. Hollywood when it’s hitting on my sister or making me wear high heels for the second night in a week had worn out its welcome.

  The last collection was for a missing cat case. It turned out the cat was dinner for a bobcat. I had been willing to let the fee go but the owner, a thirteen-year-old boy, insisted on paying me twenty dollars a month saved from his allowance. I liked the kid and I felt sorry for his cat. Besides, his house wasn’t that far from where Jo lived so, all in all, I didn’t mind that bit of bill collecting. After he showed me his new kitten, I headed toward Jo’s place.

  Jo’s antique French manor glowed in the setting sun, all of the windows reflecting the bright colors of the sky when I pulled up. The Cinderella staircase sat at the top of the circular driveway, but a new addition had arrived since my last visit—a water fountain with a statue of a woman reclining in a giant shell. I didn’t have to look close to see the woman was Jo, decked out in a toga with her wild curls barely tamed by some Greek-looking hair bands. It almost looked like she was supposed to be Venus, going back to her birth place for a nap.

  I knocked on the door before I walked in. Once they were awake, Jo and LaRue didn’t bother to keep it locked. Other vampires had double locking doors, an outside door to the sunlight, and an inner one that would only open when the first one was shut. But then, other vampires had daylight shutters—heavy pieces of steel that blocked out the sun, letting them live normal lives inside the house until sunset came. I’d seen that at Douglas’ apartment. For Jo and LaRue, those safety measures ruined the lines of the house.

  “You guys decent, yet?” I called before I got though the drawing room.

  “I am, she is not,” an overly male voice replied from the kitchen. I steeled myself for what I would find and went after it.

  LaRue, the constant test of my will, had been a roué for centuries. Devoting himself to a life of lustful pursuits, he sampled every pleasure he could find, regardless of the consequences. Everything had changed when he met his Josephine. She’d made night into day for him, melted his cynicism, and given him a reason to smile again. She had not stopped his lecherous ways.

  While he loved only her, LaRue still delighted in sensual pleasures of the flesh. LaRue was beautiful, intelligent, and exceptionally experienced. Everything a woman could want, and I did. Unfortunately, he knew. But he was a vampire, and as a vampire attack survivor I could never bring myself to sleep with one. Also, he was married to my best friend, so even though they’d offered to open their marriage to me, the answer would always be no.

  Jo and I had shared him in dreams, visions that were part of a psychic connection, thanks to her necklace. He’d been good, better than good, but as much as I wanted LaRue and the pleasures he held, he was a vampire. Cuddling him would be about as safe as cuddling a cobra.

  I found him in the kitchen, blond hair hanging in ropy waves down his neck, just barely past his shoulders. Thankfully, he wore clothes, or at least pants—short ones, breeches maybe from a hundred years ago, in a creamy white color. Normally, the two of them slept naked, completely without modesty. As the fading sunlight hit his back, I saw ripples in the skin.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied without looking up. He was fixing a drink, warming something I didn’t want to see in a microwave.

  “It has to. It’s leaving marks.” I reached over and pulled his hair back, my skin brushing his. Too late I realized the gesture was overly familiar, something you do to a lover. While I had been his lover in those dream things, I wasn’t—not really. I didn’t have this right.

  “These are whip marks.” Fear turned my voice into a whisper. Before I’d found Jo for him, LaRue had been mercurial. He’d smacked me once for saying something I shouldn’t have and thrown me to the floor before he realized it. I suspected this trespass would be worse.

  He surprised me by only nodding, not drawing away from me. “You sound so shocked, Elisabeth. Has the military stopped flogging its transgressors?”

  He turned, using that unnatural vampire speed. When he started speaking, I was looking at his bare back and when he finished, my hands hovered over his chest. His green eyes pierced mine, calling to me the way they always did.

  “You were…”

  “Flogged,” he supplied. “For some sin so minuscule I cannot recall it. Thankfully, all was not lost. The scars have become a playground for my lovers’ tongues.”

  He caught my hand and pressed it to his fleecy chest, connecting us through my magic. I saw them—the women, a few men, his lovers. All of them cooing over the scars and kissing them, soothing the ancient hurts before their tongues moved lower or in front of him, dipping between his legs to—

  “Honestly, can I never leave you two alone together?” Jo asked with mock exasperation, her eyes sparkling with mirth.

  “I always prefer you join us.” He dropped my hand and walked away from me like I didn’t exist. But then, when she was in the room, no one else existed for him. He crossed the sunlit room to reach her in the darkness of the doorway. For Jo, sunlight burned in an instant—she wasn’t nearly as strong as he was. When they kissed, that didn’t matter, and I did my best to appear distracted.

  The microwave beeped and I reached for the mug inside, keeping my back to them.

  “That’s mine.” Jo reached out for the mug. I looked down and saw red fluid. My stomach did a lazy flip f
lop. “Maintain your calm. It’s cow, not person,” she teased. “What’s going on?”

  “I was around, thought I’d stop by. What do you have going on tonight? I sorta need to be in LA, but I don’t want to be.”

  “You could always spend the night with us instead,” LaRue offered, his green eyes smoldering. Seducing was more natural breathing for him, nothing would stop his flirtations.

  Jo gave him a playful smack. “Don’t listen to him, he knows better. What are we doing in LA?”

  “Checking out a new club and watching a possible philanderer. The club’s called the Follies.”

  “Oooooh.” Jo grinned. Obviously, she’d heard of it.

  “Right, so I’m guessing this isn’t appropriate?” I gestured to my usual ensemble: faded blue jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt.

  “No,” Jo said, with a laugh. “I can dress you out of my closet or pick you up in a couple of hours—your call.”

  “May I suggest the former?” LaRue offered. From the look in his eyes, I suspected watching the two of us getting dolled up wasn’t all he had in mind.

  “Suggest all you want, I’m heading home.”

  Except I didn’t. I planned to, expected to, but my car somehow headed toward Ted’s house. I blamed LaRue’s influence. The way he’d put my hands on his chest, the images in his mind… I shook my head trying to get clear of them. It didn’t work. He was just too damn sexy. Thankfully, I knew someone who could chase all that away. If I was lucky, he’d be available for a bit of fun.

  “Lover, you home?” I called out as I walked into the living room. Unfortunately, Ted was home but so was his house guest. I mentally kicked myself for forgetting about the vampire.

  “You want some dinner?” Ted asked from the kitchen while I stared at William seated on the couch.

  “No, I’m on my way to Mom’s.” I responded to Ted before turning to the man looking at me. “How was your day?”

  It seemed like a passable opening gambit, the kind of thing you would say to a human who had just gotten home from work.