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searched his pockets like crazy. “My phone.”
    I spotted the cordless lying on the floor and rushed to get it for him.
    He snatched it from my outstretched hand, punched in the buttons, and brought it to his ear. His whole body relaxed after a couple of seconds. Not wanting to intrude on a family moment, I pretended to be very preoccupied with my nails but watched him for signs of discomfort.
    “Hey, Mom. The house is fine.” He blushed and lowered his voice. “Yeah, I’m eating right. Mom, I’m thirty-two. I live by myself, I know how to… Yeah, okay.” He nodded a couple of times, rubbed his throat. “I promise. See you soon.” A grin split his face. “Say hi from me too, and he better be taking care of you.”
    I didn’t look at him until his thumb began caressing my knuckles.
    “She’s fine,” I said with a smile. His mother was unharmed, and he was being all chummy with the back of my hand. Things were looking up.
    He cleared his throat and nodded. “Which proves my suspicion. They’ve been here before.”
    Another coughing bout took him over. I went to the kitchen, filled one of the glasses on the drying block with tap water, and rushed back to him, having managed not to spill more than a few drops. He took it with a shaky hand and a mumbled “thank you” and began downing the water greedily. Choking on the second gulp forced him to take it a bit slower, but he still finished the whole glass.
    Reverting to cop mode happened instantly, in front of my very eyes. The line of his mouth hardened, his whole face becoming a stone mask. He was scary in a way that turned me on beyond words. “We’ve never met before last night, have we? You haven’t…” He waved a hand by his head.
    “No, of course not.”
    “Then I was right. They were after me.”
    The idea seemed preposterous. “Why?” I hadn’t meant for it to sound as if I didn’t find him significant enough, but he scowled.
    “I’m a cop , Cherry.” The scowling lost its oomph by the way he rubbed his chest, as if in pain. He waved my worry off when I began to ask if he was all right. “I go after bad guys, and most of the time, I piss them off.”
    I rolled my eyes and sat on the armrest, one foot tucked under my butt. “Supernatural bad guys? You couldn’t piss off the normal mafia kind?”
    His laughter caught me unawares. “It seems the supernatural is attracted to me these days.” He was still chuckling when he cupped the back of my head and pulled me to him for a kiss. Brief and casual, it felt like something I could get used to—if I weren’t a vampire or he weren’t a human. It seemed he no longer resented my nature and was still attracted to me, but I couldn’t allow myself to get comfortable with that idea.
    “Any clue why they’d be after you?” I tried to pull away, but he didn’t let me.
    “Been looking into some disappearances lately. Girls in their twenties. Beautiful, sociable, no direct family. They go to a club or a party. Then nobody hears from them again.”
    I pushed against his chest so I could straighten up. “Willoughby—” I needed several deep breaths to finish that sentence. “My maker, he turned me after a party. If he’s part of it…”
    “You think he’s turning them?” His voice was flat, no emotion coloring it.
    “I think you should look for them in Dumpsters.”
    “He’s killing them?”
    “That was what he was planning to do with me.” Making my voice gruffer, I said, “‘I should have killed you, bitch!’ His words, not mine.”
    Alex’s eyes narrowed, and his brow furrowed. “We haven’t found any bodies.”
    “Oh my God, I knew the other guy too. The guy I offed?”
    Alex arched an eyebrow, urging me to continue.
    “He lied the first time we met. He hasn’t seen me.”
    Alex looked perplexed. Of course Alex looked perplexed. Alex didn’t know, and I wasn’t making any sense.
    “I was in a couple of films,” I said hesitantly, “of the adult variety.” Biting my