Legally Undead by Margo Bond Collins

buildings. The fact that Nick had hustled me off into a new place indicated that vampires did indeed have to have an invitation to come into individual apartments, but the building itself might be another matter. I mean, my building had locks on both the inner and outer doors and only tenants and their guests were supposed to be able to get in, but I didn’t understand vampire entry rules—so for all I knew, a vampire could be hiding in the elevator waiting for me.
    That thought sent me bounding up the four flights to my place. I was breathing heavily by the time I slammed the door behind me and shot the bolt into its slot to lock it.
    Millie wound herself around my ankles and mewed at me inquisitively. I picked her up and stroked her. “I know, Mill. I haven’t paid enough attention to you lately. Let’s go snuggle up in bed.”
    It was almost 3:00 in the morning by then. I checked out all the darker corners of my apartment (yes, I know, vampires can’t get in without an invitation. But I was scared. I did it more to reassure myself than because I thought there would really be anyone there). And then I crawled into bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
    At 8:00 the next morning, a thought came to me as I drifted through my morning sleep haze. I sat bolt upright in bed.
    What had Malcolm meant, exactly, when he’d said he didn’t want to stay on my couch ?

Chapter 9
    I spent all morning rolling that thought around in my head. I thought about it all the way through class, all the way back to my apartment.
    Clearly I was crazy—any sane person would have spent the day worrying about the vampire infestation paperwork we’d discovered last night. But not me. Nope. I was more concerned about why Malcolm had stressed that he didn’t want to sleep on my couch.
    I wondered if he would have stayed if I had invited him to sleep in my bed. That thought worried me.
    Not that I wasn’t interested, at least hypothetically. Any woman in her right mind would be interested. He was attractive, kind, smart, funny, willing to sneak into law offices under false pretenses and steal files. What more could a woman ask for? But the problems with Malcolm wanting to sleep with me were legion—and I mean that in the Biblical “demonic” sense. There were monsters out to get me. For that matter, there was one monster out to get me back, as in “back into his undead life as his girlfriend.”
    I hadn’t realized quite how dangerous this whole thing might be for Malcolm. I’d really only thought about my own need for help. But now I knew that keeping Malcolm involved in this could be just as dangerous for him as it was for me—especially if he had developed a romantic interest in me. I suspected that last bit would piss Greg off. And I didn’t want Greg to focus his attention on Malcolm.
    I had let Malcolm take one of the file printouts home last night.
    Curses. Blast. Damn. Hell. And those were the mild ones.
    I had to get that list of numbers back and I had to get Malcolm off the case. He didn’t know enough about what was really going on. I could get him killed.
    And I didn’t want that. I liked him. Which meant that I had to get rid of him.
    Have I mentioned how much it sucks (no pun intended) to be hunted by a vampire? Ruins your whole day.
    And your whole life, if you’re not careful.
    I’d already lost one boyfriend to the vampires. I wasn’t going to lose another, even if he wasn’t actually my boyfriend.
    So only one question remained: how do you break up with an un-boyfriend?
    I decided to put off answering that question in favor of sorting through the garbage bag. It seemed like the more entertaining option of the two.
    Most of the trash was pretty standard working-late-at-the-office stuff: old Starbucks cups, stale doughnut pieces, take-out boxes. I moved those into another bag for disposal. There were a lot of yellow post-it notes, and I saved all of those. In fact, I saved all the paper I found. Some of it had