COLONIAL CORPSES

  Haven Hollow #19

  (Hallowed Homes)

  by

  H.P. MALLORY

  &

  J.R. RAIN

  Colonial Corpses

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2022 by H.P. Mallory & J.R. Rain

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Colonial Corpses

  Chapter One

  “I’m just so happy, you know,” Lorcan Rowe said to the air beside my elbow, his eyes glazed and distant.

  He slumped a little further forward onto the table and I had to move quickly to keep him from knocking his blood cocktail onto the floor.

  “And that’s the problem,” he continued.

  I set the glass back on its coaster, and then, thinking about it, slid the whole thing down to the other end of the table and out of easy reach. It might take a lot to get a vampire drunk, but Lorcan had made a real effort of it by the look of things.

  Lorcan had invited me out to the Half-Moon Bar and Grill for drinks and chit chat, but he’d been well on his way to soused by the time I even finished work for the day, so I was mostly playing baby sitter and chauffeur, making sure our resident vampire didn’t pass out in a bush and get caught by the sun.

  It was a struggle not to smile at his woebegone expression. Lorcan usually tried to come off as aloof, or effortlessly charming, like a cat. Maybe it was a vampire thing. Maybe it was just a Lorcan thing, I didn’t know. He was only really real with Wanda, who I thought was now to be termed his ‘girlfriend’. But on that subject, I still wasn’t sure. If there was ever a relationship that deserved an ‘it’s complicated’ status on social media, it was theirs. And since I was kind of the Queen of relationships going up in a ball of flames, I knew what I was talking about.

  Still, it was part of ‘the drinking buddy’s code’ not to laugh at said buddy’s woes, no matter how absurd they might appear. The Black Cat Cocktail Club was always kind enough to console me when yet another boyfriend jumped into the ‘ex’ bin, and not one of its members had made fun of me, even when it was obvious that one or two of them were chewing on their tongues to keep from commenting on the tragedy that was my love life, so I was duty bound to pass that kindness and understanding along. Even if Lorcan wasn’t making a lot of sense.

  I reached over and patted his arm. “Why is being happy a problem?”

  He stared at me, and I was convinced that if he’d actually been physically capable of it, there would have been tears in his eyes. “Oh, Fifi, you do not understand because you are quite simple,” he sighed dramatically and I chose not to take offense. Lorcan never meant any of the somewhat caustic things he might say—it was just his way. I bit the inside of my cheek not to smile.

  “Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  He nodded with that same sense of drama he’d been wearing all night. “When you’re happy, my dear, you can lose that happiness. Something can just come along and muck it all up and then you’re back to where you started from—only worse because you’ve tasted Heaven and had it taken away again.”

  Maybe it was just the cocktails talking, but Lorcan’s lilting brogue made his words sound all the more poignant. Or maybe I was finally starting to understand his point—hmm, maybe I was simple. Anyway, I knew what it was like to want something to go right so, so badly, to put all your hopes on something, only to have that something blow up in your face.

  I glanced over at the bar that dominated the back wall of the restaurant, all gleaming wood and sparkling glasses that hung from metal racks. Roy was tending tonight, but to be fair he tended most nights. He’d had trouble finding someone who could sling drinks reliably, so even though Roy was the part owner of the Half-Moon, he also worked the bar.

  As soon as I took in Roy’s rolled up shirt sleeves that revealed the swells of his muscular arms and saw the sweat beading across his upper lip, my inner demon perked up, uncurling from where she’d been dozing. She’d been quieter these days, since I’d actually been feeding her regularly, but the sight of Roy’s broad shoulders and corded forearms had her purring in anticipation. And it wasn’t just the succubus that reacted to him this way. I was right there with her. Roy didn’t even have to do anything in particular to get me feeling all loopy on the inside—simply flex some of his muscles and I’d be wiping my chin, worried I was drooling on myself.

  I forced myself to look away from my maybe-but-probably-not boyfriend, suddenly wishing I had a drink myself. It wasn’t a good idea to get drunk, not with my succubus awake and ready to hunt out her next meal, but at least holding a glass would give me something to do with my hands.

  It was just… I’d thought Roy and I were in a good place but now I was second-guessing that good place. We’d been friends for so long, best friends even. And then he’d started helping me out with feedings when I’d been in a really bad way—as in, basically starving.

  As powerful and hungry as my succubus was, there was no way she’d ever be able to drain a Sasquatch’s life energy—so that meant Roy would never be in danger from me… or her. The combination of being able to take my fill of his life force and not have to constantly be terrified I was going to hurt him made me so grateful I almost wanted to cry. And I’d tried to content myself with that—with a literal friends-with-benefits situation with Roy. It wasn’t what I truly wanted, which was a real, committed relationship, but it was working for now. Roy was my friend, and it certainly didn’t hurt that he was super tall, dark, and absolutely gorgeous.

  It had been enough.

  I’d made it enough because I hadn’t wanted to risk losing him as my friend and I knew a relationship with him would do just that. Why? Because I was hopeless with men and even more hopeless with relationships. Sometimes I wondered if maybe I was cursed—yes, my luck with men was that bad.

  But then Roy had come to me and said our sexual friendship wasn’t enough for him. I’d thought he was breaking the whole thing off, and I’d been bracing for as much almost as long as we’d been sleeping together. Some things were just too good to last. But then he’d told me he wanted more, wanted a real relationship, wanted to call me his girlfriend. And then? Well, then everything was what I’d ever wanted: date nights, cuddling, spending lots of time together, and yes, okay, mind-numbing, toe curling, scorching hot sex too.

  Lately, though, I’d been getting the feeling that something was wrong. Roy had been working a lot of extra hours, which I understood. He didn’t have enough help to keep up with all the business the Half-Moon brought in, so he needed to fill the gaps. I’d even experienced it myself; I’d worked at the bar for a while before I’d started my own business, Hallowed Homes Realty.

  Now, for the first time in my life, I was the boss, and I’d been putting in a lot of my own hours to get things into the black after the last owner, Ophelia Ponsobby, had made such a huge mess of things. That is, before she went on a murderous rampage and got herself turned into a dead statue.

  But this with Roy… it felt different. It felt like more than his just being busy and not having enough hours in the day. It felt like he was avoiding me, like he was keeping something from me. Of course, I’d asked him if anything was bothering him, but he’d just deflected and never really answered the question. So, the warning sirens started blaring in my head, with shades of breakups past crowding the corners. It was all I could do to try to keep the sirens silent.

  Roy was one of the most straight-forward people I’d ever met. He didn’t shy away from things; he was the type to dig in and get things all sorted. And yet he seemed to be avoiding whatever was bothering him now. If he didn’t want to tell me something, then it had to follow that that thing, whatever it was, had to be bad, or hurtful, right? I’d been wracking my brain, trying to think of what I might have done, or not done, that had caused him to pull back but I kept coming up blank. And just when I’d thought we’d finally come to an understanding…

  My inner succubus had different ideas.

  She wasn’t one for dithering or questioning herself. As far as she was concerned, the answer was to get Roy alone, and then tease and torment him, right up to the point of pain, and then leave him hanging, leave him wanting me desperately, but refuse him any carnal anything until he told me the truth.

  I did my best to jam those thoughts back into the closet of my brain, and slam a dozen locks over the door. I didn’t want to manipulate Roy; I just wanted him to talk to me. I hated not knowing where we stood. But the longer things went on in this no-man’s-land, the more reasonable some of her suggestions felt.

  “Yeah,” I sighed, turning back to the depressed vampire. “I know what you mean.”

  Lorcan nodded blearily, as if I’d just said something profound, and reached for the dregs of his cocktail again. He had to half sprawl across the booth to reach it, but managed to drag it over, hooking it precariously by the stem of the glass.

  There had been a time a long time ago when I’d had a crush on Lorcan. That had been when I’d first moved to Haven Hollow and first set eyes on the most handsome dentist I’d ever seen. He had this sort of pirate look to him, I thought—with that longish blonde hair that was always wisping off this way or that. And his devil-may-care attitude only added to the mystery that surrounded him.

  But soon we’d struck up a friendship and soon after that my crush on him had dissolved and I was happy for it. There was nothing I loved more than being Lorcan’s friend. And Lorcan didn’t have many of them so I was also pretty proud to know I was up there, at the top of his list, when it came to people he could talk to about Wanda. I figured Poppy was probably up there on his list too, but because she and Wanda were best friends, there was only so much he could confide in Poppy.

  My phone pinged from the pocket of my blazer while Lorcan slurped the last of his drink from between ice cubes, the sound obnoxiously loud.

  I fished my cell out, hoping it wasn’t a client emergency that would drag me back to the office. My lips curled up in a smile when I saw it was a text from Tobias Mathison.

  Tobias had been an almost client once upon a time. His house had been haunted for years, since before he was born, really, by the ghost of a guilt-stricken incubus. The incubus had been possessing Tobias periodically, without his knowledge, since he was a teenager. The good news was that I’d managed to convince the demon’s ghost to move on and let Tobias actually live his own life. The bad news was that Hallowed Homes had missed out on selling a beautiful house, one of those first built in Haven Hollow. But I was also happy to know Tobias was sticking around.

  Technically, Tobias was human. But after so many years of hosting an incubus, he’d developed some pretty rare abilities. He was a ‘demon caller’, a kind of extremely rare medium. I’d never even heard of a ‘demon caller’ before but Bailey, our resident medium and fellow member of the Black Cat Cocktail club, told me all about it. Being a demon caller meant Tobias could not only channel evil spirits a lot more easily and safely than other mediums, but he could also control demonic energy… well, to a degree.

  This ability of his was the reason he’d been hired on at Spook Society, and because his abilities were so rare, he was also commanding a pretty healthy salary, so at least he’d gotten something out of the whole ordeal, besides the relief of no longer being possessed.

  After all the dust had settled, Tobias had asked me out.

  In the past, it would have been tempting to say yes, I couldn’t lie. Tobias was kind, handsome, and unlike most humans, he could actually keep me from taking too much energy from him during sex. Yes, this was a constant concern—the existence of the succubus was a real struggle in a relationship. Repeated feedings tended to have fatal results for the partner of a succubus or incubus. That was why my brother, Angelo, was such a player, spending every weekend with a new woman, having marathon sex and then ghosting her when she was drained to exhaustion. Honestly, that was the game plan for most sexual demons. I was the exception, not the rule, and the black sheep at family reunions. But a ‘new partner every couple of nights’ just wasn’t the kind of life I wanted for myself.

  Tobias’s interest had been really flattering. But, well… he wasn’t Roy.

  I glanced up, just in time to see the Sasquatch in question, glaring at Lorcan whose head was resting on the table and I wasn’t sure, but he might have been asleep. Roy’s and my eyes met, and his whole face softened, the corner of his lips tilting up into a crooked little smile that always made me go weak in the knees.

  I had to look away before I did something embarrassing, like I tended to do where Roy was concerned.

  Getting back to Tobias, yes, I’d turned him down, but we still chatted from time to time, mostly through text. And as I glanced down at my phone now, I read:

  Channeled the spirit of a miserable old miser today. Family was trying to get his will sorted out. He was awful. Had the personality of a mouse trap. Feel like I want to wash my insides out.

  It was a little funny that Tobias never complained about demons like he did about the truly awful human spirits he came across.

  I’m sorry to tell you this, I typed back. But the soul is pretty strictly dry clean only.

  I slipped my phone back into my pocket, smiling to myself as my gaze settled on Roy once again, as it tended to do. At least if Roy decided he didn’t want to be with me, I still had some options.

  Immediately on the heels of that thought came a wave of guilt. Even if Roy had changed his mind about me, I still wanted him. And the thought of him rejecting me, telling me we should just be friends from here on out, well, that was worse than anything else I could imagine.

  I turned away at the thought and a few seconds later, an enormous shadow fell over Lorcan and the table. I glanced up to find Roy standing beside our booth, glaring at the vampire like he was a grease stain someone had left on the bar.

  Sometimes I wondered if Lorcan invited me out just to get under Roy’s skin. I mean, he probably did want someone to talk to about his relationship issues, but we could have gone anywhere else in Haven Hollow and not been right under Roy’s nose. And yet, here we were. Every single time.

  Furthermore, I’d thought Lorcan and Roy would have started getting along a bit better, ever since they’d spent a day in each other’s company when Lorcan had gotten himself cursed into the shape of a goose, but their animosity seemed to still be going as strong as ever. Now it just involved more goose puns.

  “Lorcan,” Roy started.

  I looked up at Roy, trying not to let my gaze wander over his shoulders and the swells of his pecs which were clearly visible beneath his white shirt. “Just let me scrape him off the floor, and he’ll be out of your hair.”

  Roy snorted, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that made his biceps pull at the sleeves of his shirt. “You’ll need a dustpan to scrape him up with.”

  Lorcan mumbled something rude half under his breath that might even have been Gaelic, and I gave a weak laugh.

  “Keep that up, and I’ll kick you outta this place for good,” Roy all but growled in response.

  I wet my lips. Lorcan was just about down for the count, and I quickly counted the empty glasses on the glossy table top—he’d just finished his seventh blood cocktail. As close to comatose as Lorcan probably was, I figured it was now or never where talking to Roy was concerned. This was as close to a private conversation with Roy as I’d come in a few days now, between both our work schedules and the fact that I was fairly sure he was avoiding me.

  “Roy,” I started slowly. “Is everything—” He looked at me with furrowed brows. “Okay?” I finished.

  “Everything’s fine,” he answered, frowning at me. “What do you mean?”

  I shrugged and felt heat starting to crawl up my neck. “Just that… I don’t know… we haven’t seen each other that much lately or even really talked.”

  “Right,” he answered and rubbed the back of his neck. “I know. It’s just been…”

  “Busy,” I finished for him.

  He nodded. “Busy.”

  “I just figured maybe… you know, maybe something was wrong?”

  He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something but then thought better of it.

  “Hey, can I get another beer,” someone called from the bar. The relief on Roy’s face was palpable.

  “Just a second,” he rumbled to the guy in question in his deep, deep voice. Then he turned back to me. “I’ve gotta go, Fifi. I’ll call you later.”

  And then he was off and making his way back to the bar.

  “Okay,” I finished lamely.

  Heaving a sigh, I just barely resisted the urge to let my forehead thunk down on the table next to Lorcan’s.

  This probably wasn’t the best place for this conversation, anyway. I didn’t want Roy to placate me between waves of customers while he was at work and Lorcan was passed out on one of his tables. No, I wanted honesty. And to get it, it looked like I’d just need to find time between Roy’s packed schedule, my own schedule at Hallowed Homes, and our mutual schedule involving the supernatural council, upon which we both had seats. After juggling all three schedules, we’d be able to have a potentially relationship-altering chat.

  Easy. No problem. Piece of cake.

  I hauled myself up and out of the booth. “Come on, Lorcan. Let’s get you home.”

  Lorcan stared at me for a long moment, his green eyes bleary. Even being soppy with drink, Lorcan couldn’t be anything but handsome. Wanda really was a lucky woman.

  As the silence dragged on, I hoped Lorcan wasn’t going to get stubborn and make things difficult for me. Hauling him out of here wasn’t going to be an easy feat. Of course, with all the regular feedings lately, especially from such a powerful Sasquatch source, my succubus was stronger than she’d been in years. That didn’t mean I wanted to have to wrestle with a drunk vampire though.