In comparison, this Colonial looked a bit like the condemned heap Lorcan accused it of being. It was probably a few steps away from completely falling down around us—the walls groaned as the wood settled or the wind blew. It was absolutely crawling with spider webs and the spiders that spun them, which at least had the bonus of keeping every other bug population down. I’d had to bring an electric lantern, because my night vision wasn’t as good as a vampires’, and the windows were all so filthy with caked-on dust, the moonlight could barely stream through them.

  Most of the antique furniture that had been abandoned with the house was pretty solid. They’d built things to last, back then, all heavy wood and careful dove tailing. It just really, really needed a cleaning, even those pieces that had had the benefit of sheets thrown over them.

  “And this over here,” I called, trying to draw them away from cooing over the cobwebs. “Is the kitchen of the house.”

  The kitchen probably wouldn’t be a big draw for vampires, owing to the fact that they didn’t eat anything, but it was the next room in the house, and at least it didn’t have a bunch of dust encrusted furniture in it.

  Not that the kitchen was in any better shape than the rest of the place. The casket of a refrigerator looked like it would survive a direct nuclear attack. Overall, the place had last been updated some time in the early sixties—the tiles were chipped and cracked, the paint peeling off in curling strips, and the less said about the state of the sink, the better.

  Viviana skipped over to the area beside the pantry. “Oh, look!”

  I followed her, wondering what kind of creepy crawly she’d discovered this time. But instead, she was crouched down beside the bug-chewed remains of a sleeping bag. There was an old hurricane lantern, and a pile of cans so rusted and bloated, I was pretty sure they were ready to split open and leak primordial ooze all over the floor.

  Great. Just great.

  Not only was I showing clients a house with grime so thick, it might actually be load bearing, but there were signs that a squatter or two might have settled here for a while. Hopefully they weren’t still squatting here because I just wasn’t prepared for that conversation. I watched a few mouldering bits of down feathers blow past my shoe, and only years of practice kept my smile in place.

  “Ah, wonderful.” Marius gave Mihaela’s shoulders a little squeeze as they walked over to see what Viviana had found. “This is all going to be so perfect. My darling, brilliant as ever.” He laid a loud, smacking kiss on her temple that made me yearn for Roy.

  Will you stop it, Fifi, I chided myself.

  Stefan, their ‘son’, made a little sound of disgust and walked away as if embarrassed by the display. It seemed one member of their little family wasn’t as excited about this whole endeavor. The slouching line of his shoulders as he turned away from the spectacle the others were making was just so ‘teenage boy’, it was almost impossible to remember he was centuries old.

  I cleared my throat and polished up my ‘professional’ smile. “The basement is unfinished as of now, but it’s as large as the first floor and it would be very easy to make it comfortable.” I’d had my contractor out to make sure of that. He’d assured me the basement was solid, and it would only take a couple weeks to turn it into a cozy living space, leaving the other three floors of the house available for their planned attraction. Yes, they were planning on living in the basement which, owing to their vampire natures, made sense.

  “Wonderful.” Marius beamed at me, smiling wide enough to flash his fangs. “Absolutely wonderful. This is just what we’ve been looking for.”

  “Well, let’s check out some of the bedrooms upstairs while we’re here. The floors are sound, just a little bit loud.” I turned my head, gesturing towards the door nearest the front hall and its enormous staircase.

  “Oh,” Mihaela said, sounding pleased. “You have a bite mark.”

  It took everything in me not to slap a defensive hand over the mark on my neck like a human teenager being called out for having a hicky. The bite was old, from way back before Lorcan suddenly decided he didn’t want to feed from me any longer. It shouldn’t have even been visible anymore, but I’d kind of starved myself for a long time which put my healing capacity into the dumpster. Sure, I’d been feeding pretty regularly lately, but my energy and healing reserves still hadn’t quite caught up. And recently, with Roy being so busy, I hadn’t had the chance to top up. I was trying really hard not to think about that. It was time for professional Fifi to do her job, not anxiety Fifi to twist herself into a spiral.

  Mihaela’s dark eyes took on a distinct sparkle as she walked closer and made a point to inspect the spots on my neck. She smiled at me then, red lips curling up knowingly. “Ah, you muzt have a vampire lover zen?”

  Her accent drew the word ‘lover’ out, rolling the ‘r’ until the whole thing sounded as salacious as the erotica I enjoyed reading on occasion. A flush burned up into my cheeks, and I couldn’t believe that I, a literal succubus, was blushing just because a mom vampire point-blank asked me if I was sleeping with another vampire.

  I cleared my throat, looking for a polite response. I didn’t want to be rude, Mihaela was clearly just trying to be friendly, if a little too personal. People in love wanted everyone to be in love, I guessed, and she was clearly in love. Regardless, I definitely didn’t have a vampire lover. Heck, Lorcan was the only vampire I’d fed regularly, and he’d never even been in the running for a boyfriend title. And I really, really didn’t want to get into my complicated and confusing dating life and man troubles, especially not with a woman who’d been married for as long as the United States had been a country.

  Hmm, now that I thought of it, she could probably write a pretty good book on the ins and outs of maintaining a happy marriage. But that was another conversation…

  “I’m not… seriously dating… anyone right now actually,” I answered and my response seemed to work because Mihaela simply nodded as her eyebrows reached for the ceiling and then apparently finding the house much more interesting than my crappy love life, she turned her attention back to it. And I took the opportunity to usher everyone up the grand staircase that creaked like a rusty hinge all the way up, while Marius exclaimed over the way the cobwebs hung over the banister like curtains.

  I had a feeling they would keep them.

  After a quick trip through the bedrooms, the bathroom with its old, claw-footed bathtub, and the mostly open third floor, we all walked out to see the backyard. After an hour of being inside with all the windows shrouded with accumulated filth, the moon was nearly blinding and the cold, night air was welcoming.

  Mihaela and Marius linked arms like newlyweds, gazing up at the house happily. “I think it might just be perfect, my dear,” he said, pressing another kiss to her temple.

  I tossed out a few more bits of information about the house and its history, anything I thought they might find interesting, and then laid out the asking price while forcing myself not to wince.

  It was a lot, I knew.

  The price wasn’t steep owing entirely to the house, which, let’s face it, probably would have been better to tear down than build back up at this point. But the asking price was mainly owing to the location, the amount of land (over an acre), all of that added up. I just hoped the vampires saw what a benefit it was to be perched on the top of a hill, where the town could look up and always see them. That seemed like pretty good advertising to me.

  None of them even blinked at the asking price.

  “We’ve lived for nearly four centuries,” Marius said with an easy smile. “There is plenty of money in assorted accounts, don’t worry.”

  “Ve brought enough to pay for zee houze in full,” Mihaela added. “Ven can ve fill out zee papervork and make zee zale?”

  I didn’t cheer, because I was a professional after all, but I did grin.

  “We can fill out the paperwork tonight, if you’d like.”

  “Yah, yah, very good,” Mihaela answered with a clipped nod.

  “As soon as the sale is final, the house will be all yours, and you’ll be able to start construction to get the attraction up and running.”

  Viviana clapped. “Oh, excellent!” She looked at her husband. “Ve must start right away.”

  Marius nodded as he turned back to me. “We intend to open the attraction in a few weeks.”

  “Wow,” I said, eyes going wide because they definitely had their work cut out for them.

  “Yes, so the soonest we can take ownership, the better,” he finished.

  Marius and Mihaela hugged. Only Stefan looked less than enthusiastic about the purchase. I wondered if maybe he’d left a vampire girlfriend behind or maybe he was just ticked off to have to transfer to a new high school. Whatever the reason for the cloud over his head, he cast a doubtful look up at the house in all its grimy windowed glory.

  I didn’t let it get to me.

  The other’s enthusiasm was infectious, and I was grinning along with them as they happily babbled about what they had planned for the house in a blend of English and Romanian.

  I reached for the paperwork in my leather attaché and slipped a pen out of my blazer pocket. “After we get all the paperwork sorted, I’ll take you down to the Half-Moon Bar and Grill. The owner, Roy, makes a mean blood cocktail.”

  “Oh, ve vould like zat very much,” Mihaela said.

  “I believe we are going to settle right in to Haven Hollow,” Marius added, giving his wife’s rear a little pat.

  I forced myself not to notice and, instead, to be grateful for what I had. Sure, my personal life might have been a puzzle made up of nothing but blue sky with no edge pieces, but at least I had that. This successful sale, the eagerness of happy customers, both caused pride and contentment to fizz through my veins like champagne bubbles.

  My job, at least, I was good at that.

  I’d try not to let the rest of my life drag me down.

  Chapter Four

  Three Weeks Later

  I held the two jars of honey up, squinting at the labels.

  They were both organic, but I couldn’t figure out why one was almost twice the price of the other. After reading the ingredient list, and the teeny tiny writing on the labels, I realized one was clover honey, and one was something called Tupelo honey, which I guessed was fancier than clover. I hesitated, but put them both back on the shelf as I eyed a jar of buckwheat honey so dark, it appeared almost like molasses. This bottle actually had little slivers of sage suspended in it.

  I hadn’t known there were so many kinds of honey, and was feeling a little over my head.

  Finally, I just shrugged, grabbing a nice bottle of artisanal clover honey. It seemed to be the most common type, so I probably couldn’t go wrong with that. Better than getting something really unusual and finding out no one liked it.

  It was strange, but I always felt so decisive when it came to work. I knew what to say, what to do to make my clients happy. Hallowed Homes was doing great. I’d made so many sales over the last few weeks that I was starting to think my company could actually thrive—maybe even more so than when Ophelia owned it.

  My personal life, on the other hand, continued to be a cross between a soap opera and a dumpster fire. On the one hand, I had a handsome Sasquatch who could take literally anything I threw at him in bed, and did so with great enthusiasm, but he closed up like a clam when it came to anything emotional.

  It had been three weeks and I hadn’t seen Roy once. We’d talked a bit here and there but that had been it. We’d been friends for years, but now that sex was involved, he’d suddenly taken a giant step back. It was baffling, and I was ready to yank my hair out by the handful.

  On the other hand, there was Tobias. A sexy and handsome human who had that little brush of demonic appeal, but who could actually give me the life I wanted. Tobias might have been human, but his gifts meant he could keep me at bay and stop me from hurting him accidentally. I wouldn’t be able to have sex with him as often as I’d like (or as often as I could with Roy), but was that really such a high price to pay for a little normalcy?

  And why was I so darn hung up on Roy, anyway? The truth of the matter was that Tobias was the obvious choice—he wanted a relationship, at least I was fairly sure he did. Roy? Who knew? Half the time I figured there was a reason he’d thwarted the customs of his kind—he hadn’t married, didn’t have any kids and was basically as unsasquatch like in that regard as it was possible to be.

  Tobias, on the other hand, well…. Hmm, it seemed that maybe he wanted the same things I did. He’d mentioned that he wanted to settle down some day, to raise a family, to be a dad. And not only that but Tobias… well, he actually, you know, talked to me.

  I shook my head, turning away.

  Forget it, I had work to do. Relationship stuff could wait.

  I’d recently arranged the sale of a greenhouse on a pretty big plot of land to a colony of dryads, naiads, and nymphs, and I had a viewing set up for them to come and check out the building to see if it was suitable for their needs. If everything went well, they might be able to open up the old greenhouse again and have the place run by some of the more human-looking supernaturals. A woman of leaves and bark might be a little too much for the mundane population of Haven Hollow to ignore. Probably one of the Faeries could help out there though—they were good with disguising spells. Or I bet Poppy could whip up some sort of camouflage potion. Some of the Fae, like my best friend Bea, could look human when they wanted to, as long as they were careful to hide their wings and pointed ears.

  The nymphs especially had seemed excited at the prospect of opening up a flower shop and that was something we didn’t have in Haven Hollow. I got all my arrangements at the grocery store. I was all for a florist and decided Hallowed homes would definitely end up being one of their customers. Some living flower arrangements would perk up the office, and I knew Bea would love it.

  The trouble I was having at the moment was trying to decide what types of snacks to put out for the open house. I wanted them to feel welcome and comfortable, but I didn’t know what kind of food would be acceptable to offer a plant-based species. I’d figured artisanal water and maybe a honey-based dish, but that just didn’t seem like much in the way of hospitality.

  I was so intent on examining the water selection, and debating between the sparkling versus non-sparkling options, that I didn’t notice someone coming up right beside me until they’d actually brushed my arm.

  My breath came out in an imploded little squeak as I nearly jumped out of my skin. At least I wasn’t holding any of the fancy glass bottles, because I would have dropped them.

  I glanced up, an apology on my tongue, even though technically they’d bumped into me, and met Roy’s amused dark eyes.

  “Oh.” The tension rushed out of me and I smiled, even as I cursed myself for the way my whole body seemed to perk up at the feeling of his warmth even through the sleeve of my shirt. “Roy.”

  Smooth, Fifi. Sex demoness extraordinaire, there.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to spook you,” he rumbled in his deep voice. “What’s got you thinking so hard?”

  Our arms were still touching, and I could feel the thrum of his voice all the way into my chest. I fought not to shiver, to just keep everything light and casual, the way Roy seemed to prefer it, even if doing so sent a little sliver of pain through my heart.

  “Oh.” I sighed, waving my hand towards my basket and the wall before me of every type of water under the sun. “I’m trying to get some snacks for an open house, but I really have no idea what to feed the prospective buyers.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Well, they’re a colony of nymphs and dryads, so a veggie platter seems a bit too close to cannibalism, but I doubt they eat meat either. I just… I guess I’m not sure what to serve.”

  Roy smiled, one big hand coming up to squeeze my shoulder. “Nymphs and Dryads?”

  “And Naiads,” I added.

  “Alright,” Roy said, easily. “Then you’ll want to get some fertilizer and spring water, and if you want something they’ll really like, grab some calcium tablets.”

  “Um, what?”

  He chuckled, and the sound made my heart start pounding in earnest. “The calcium tablets are good for helping to prevent leaf and blossom rot.”

  I stared up at him in awe. “How do you know all that?”

  He shrugged, looking pleased. “You remember Devona?”

  How could I forget? She was the half-witch, half-sasquatch who had helped me out when my brother had decided it was a good idea to pour a bottle of Poppy’s Love’s Goddess potion on me in an attempt to get me to feed like a proper succubus instead of holding out for a real relationship and an actual emotional connection. Angelo had been furious that I’d been looking for ways to separate myself from my demonic nature, and I guess drugging me and kicking off a supernatural orgy in the middle of Main Street was his idea of an answer.

  The potion, mixed with my own succubus pheromones had resulted in the entire male population of town other than Marty, who was a null and immune to magic, and weirdly, Roy, going into a kind of feeding frenzy. I’d had to flee town for the deep woods of Roy’s family home while we figured out what the heck to do. Devona had helped me a lot, and came out of her semi-isolation in the mountains to do it.

  When I nodded, Roy continued. “Devona works closely with the local nature spirits back home, and she’s had me bring stuff for them in the past.”

  The sheer relief of knowing what to do made me grin. “Thank you!” Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around him and gave him a big hug.

  Then I pulled back and froze awkwardly as reality kicked in and reminded me that our relationship had changed somewhat recently, and maybe we weren’t ‘hugging’ types anymore. Maybe friends didn’t hug? Hmm, but I hugged Lorcan sometimes. And I hugged Marty sometimes. But maybe things with Roy were too weird now to warrant hugging? It was just so confusing, because we’d been going so hot and heavy, and then, nothing.