Heart of the Dead: Vampire Superheroes (Perpetual Creatures Book 1) by Gabriel Beyers

down and weave her fingers into his, to lean over and rest her head on his shoulder. But what if he didn’t accept her affection? Jerusa had had enough pain for one day, so she let the moment pass in awkward silence.
    “So, this friend of yours just gave you his house?” Thad asked.
    “Yeah, I guess so.”
    “With no strings attached? I’m mean, you two weren’t … you know?”
    It took longer than it should have for Jerusa to catch Thad’s meaning. “No. No! Oh god no.” She waved her hands and shook her head to elaborate her point. “Foster is just my friend. My best friend, really. He’s eccentric and smart and I love him dearly, but there was never anything like that between us.”
    “Yeah, but a house?” Thad asked. “I guess I hang out with the wrong friends. I can’t even get them to chip in for gas money.”
    “Foster has been looking out for me ever since I met him. He knows how overbearing my mother is and that with my illness it would be hard to break away from her. The house is Foster’s way of jumpstarting my life.”
    The driveway was hard to see on a sunny day, but with the eerie darkness of the storm, he missed it twice. On the third try, he crept along at a snail’s pace until Jerusa pointed out the opening in the trees. Thad pulled the Jeep up the gravel driveway and parked to the side of Foster’s — now Jerusa’s — house.
    Jerusa stared at the house, barely visible through the rain. She should have felt sadness. Foster was gone and she’d probably never see him again. The house didn’t seem empty, though. The windows were darkened, but she thought she caught a little flicker of light seeping through the curtains. The eyes see what the heart wants.
    “I’ll probably only stay a night or two,” Jerusa said, rolling the keys to the house in her hands. “I’ll let her cool down and then maybe we can discuss things without screaming at each other.”
    “I hope so,” Thad said.
    Another awkward moment passed between them. Jerusa wanted to lean over and kiss him, but she had forgotten to pack any courage in her little travel bag. Was it too much to ask for him to make the first move? Jerusa watched Thad, trying her best to will his lips to hers, but he just sat there looking out the windshield as the raindrops danced across the glass.
    Thad looked over at the house. “Are you sure it’s all right to go in there? What if your friend hasn’t left?”
    “It’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Foster was going to meet his girlfriend at sundown.”
    A tiny alarm sounded in the back of her mind. Both Foster and the strange man she had named Silvanus had warned her to stay indoors tonight. She looked about, catching brief views of the trees as the lightning momentarily chased away the night. She didn’t know why, but she felt suddenly vulnerable, exposed, as though she were adrift in dark waters alive with sea monsters.
    Jerusa feigned a casual glance into the backseat, hoping that Alicia would be there, but the ghost girl was nowhere to be found. Where was she? Alicia had been sitting back there, grinning like the Cheshire Cat when Jerusa had climbed into Thad’s Jeep. Maybe the storm was zapping the energy she needed to appear. Jerusa doubted it, though.
    “Would you like to come inside and have a look around?” Jerusa asked, hoping that she had masked enough of the fear that laced her voice.
    “Uh, yeah. Sure.”
    They darted from the Jeep and ran for the front porch. The heavy rain soaked them to the skin in seconds. As Jerusa put the key to the door, a thought occurred to her. She was about to be in a house on a stormy night, alone with Thad Campbell. How many Harlequin romances had she read with just this scenario? Enough to make her stomach squirm into a knot.
    Her hand trembled as she lifted it to the door. A thunderclap erupted above the house as she fitted the key into the lock. Jerusa opened the door, took a step inside, then screamed.
    Alicia rushed out of the