The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire by Molly Harper Page A

Styrofoam carrier, which was resting safely on the little concrete pad outside the employee entrance.
    I hoped my coworkers liked cold coffee.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    I was hiding under my covers, because that’s what grown-ups did when they were faced with problems, right?
    I’d managed to finish my workday with some dignity, delivering coffee to my grateful coworkers and doing some actual work. And I’d avoided having any of my teeth forcibly pulled, so I considered that a win. Coming home and avoiding contact with either Iris or Cal, who were both working in their office because three a.m. was the middle of the workday for vampires, was another mark in my victory column.
    I put on my softest, comfiest pajamas and climbed under the covers, pretending the previous twelve hours were a surreal and upsetting dream. All except for the second kiss with Nik, which, again, made the old paradigm its bitch.
    And I could not explain that in a rational manner, endorsed by a sense of self-preservation. Nik was the opposite of every person I’d been attracted to in the past. From what I could remember, John had played up the wounded, soulful, brooding creature of the night thing. Ben was the poster child for boys you’d gladly allow your daughter to date. And Nik was kind of, well, untrustworthy, but at least he was up front about it.
    I liked it. I liked his weird, dry sense of humor. I liked that he called me on sassing him. I liked that he seemed to take my threats of violence seriously, instead of considering them cute, like the other members of Team Vampire did. He was the one vampire in Half-Moon Hollow who hadn’t seen me go through my awkward adolescent Gigi phase.
    The irony that I’d mocked Iris’s fascination with paperback romances for years—and I was basically infatuated with the template for every “naughty duke” cover hero she’d ever swooned over—was not lost on me.
    The last thought I had before drifting off was that once she got over being wicked pissed at me, Iris was going to mock me mercilessly. And I was indeed drifting, floating in that unstable twilight space between sleep and waking, where everything is formless and quiet and dizzy. Images floated freely through my head. My desk at the office was perched on the edge of an abyss, and unless I continued working, I would fall off. Then the desk became a table at Jane’s shop, Specialty Books, where stacks of file folders loomed over my head. Nik’s wry grin became Marty’s strangely confident face as we shuffled out of the staff meeting. My delicious midnight coffee was thick and metallic in my mouth, like sucking on pennies. I threw the cup away from my lips and watched it splatter the walls of my bedroom in thick rivers of red. The very sight of the mess was enough to send me running. But now I was sprinting down the hallway at the Council offices with an athame, a double-edged ceremonial blade, clutched in my hand, the gray walls melting all around me into fog. And even though I couldn’t see anyone in the offices, I could hear the click-clack of computer keys. Someone was typing, and from the sound of it, the code was angry. Click-clack-clackity-clack-click. I turned corners at random, searching for a door, an elevator, anything that would get me away from some invisible menace that seemed to be hovering closer and closer at my heels. Click-click-clack-click-clackity-clack . I was afraid to look back, afraid to see what might be chasing me. I turned again, and there was Nik, standing at the end of the hallway, in front of the staff exit, and he was roaring with rage, baring his bloodstained fangs.
    Clack-click-clack-clack-clackity-cli ck .
    I bolted up from bed, clutching the comforter to my chest, sucking in deep, gulping breaths, as if I’d been shoved underwater. I threw the covers aside and rubbed my hands over my face.
    Click-clack-clackity-clack.
    What the