Read Almost Final Curtain for Free Online

come by on Wednesdays in the first place.
    Mom also despised Elias. It was more than just the protective-lioness thing—my mom was the Queen of Witches. Thanks to that whole former slave/owner thing, vampires and witches didn’t get along. At all.
    Next to Nikolai and his dad, Mom was vampire hater number one. She refused Elias entry over the threshold, so when he came courting, he sat in the top branches of the giant spruce outside my window. Vampires liked hanging out in trees for some reason—hell elves, I’m telling you.
    Anyway, I couldn’t figure out why mom threw such a snit fit. I’d taken the bus home a bunch of times before. I suspected the real reason for her ballistic mood was the Igors. Mom probably caught sight of them before they disappeared into the underbrush of our neighbor’s garden. The lots were wide here in Crocus Hill, and many people took advantage and planted small forests for privacy. Our neighbor claimed to be green, but I think he was just lazy and didn’t want to mow, and thus, it was a perfect place for the Igors to go to ground. Mom liked to pretend that I didn’t have an “honor guard.”
    Let’s get real—Mom liked to imagine I wasn’t a vampire princess at all.
    Anytime anything happened that reminded her, snap!—she became Ms. Cranky Pants. Dinner had been frosty. I was just as glad to escape to my room upstairs, doing homework and waiting for Elias.
    I glanced out the window. It was warm enough to have the storm windows up. It was too early in the season for crickets, but the birds heralded the sunset with muffled chatter. A woodpecker added a staccato beat to their symphony by pounding noisily on the telephone pole. The breeze held the promise of rain and the delicate scent of the neighbor’s apple blossoms.
    I tried to concentrate on my history chapter, but my gaze bounced over the words and flicked instead between the cell and the window. I picked up the phone and tried to will Nikolai to text. Setting it back with a sigh, I peered into the gathering darkness for a sign of Elias.
    “Trouble?” he asked, the nearness of his voice startling me. Leaning forward, Elias’s pale form seemed to materialize out of the tangle of branches just beyond my window. His inky black hair was cut short, above the ears. The style always seemed a bit militaristic to me and not very vampy, and when I asked him about it, he said it was a close approximation of what was popular when he was brought across the Veil.
    As always when he was using his vampiric powers, Elias’s pupils were bright yellow, and cat-slit. Once he’d settled in, they’d return to their normal color, a captivating stormy gray. I’d never had the courage to ask which was his real eye color.
    He pointed to my phone. “Are you expecting news?”
    “Probably not,” I said, setting the cell aside. “Nikolai and I might be fighting.”
    At the mention of Nik’s name, Elias pulled back into the shadows slightly. I was sure he was trying to hide his expression, but the darkness served only to make him look more sinister. “It would be my deepest pleasure to defend your honor if my rival has besmirched it in any way.”
    Elias always talked like that. Sometimes it took me a few minutes to parse out what he was really trying to say. “No, you can’t go beat him up.” I smiled once I had. “And he might not be your rival anymore either.”
    “Oh, most unfortunate,” he said. Though he’d pulled back so that his face was now completely hidden, I totally heard his unconscious smile at the thought.
    “You’re the worst liar, Elias Constantine.” I flicked off my desk lamp and used my feet to wheel my desk chair over to the window. I leaned my elbows on the sill. From this position and with the lights off, I could see Elias more clearly.
    He leaned his back casually against the trunk of the tree, his long, trim legs stretched across the branches like a lounging panther. Though vampires weren’t fond of clothing for