Serafina and the Silent Vampire

Serafina and the Silent Vampire

(
Serafina’s
, Book 1)

Marie Treanor

SERAFINA AND THE SILENT VAMPIRE

DEDICATION

To my husband,

with love and gratitude for his unfailing support and encouragement.

And to Edinburgh’s real psychics,

with apologies.

Serafina was having a blast.

Not only had she strung smelly garlic bulbs all over Ferdinand Bell’s large, beautiful house on the outskirts of Edinburgh and defaced every single room with rough wooden crosses, she now got to swagger through his evening party guests like Buffy the Vampire Slayer on patrol
and
drink old Ferdy Bell’s vintage champagne while she was at it.

And she got paid.

Work didn’t get much better than this.

On the whole, Bell’s guests were taking the bizarre ornamentation in their stride. They were here to celebrate the promotion of his son Jason to a partnership in a major financial investment company and so were drawn from a wide age group. However, they were all, clearly, stinking rich, and whether they wore traditional evening dress, kilts, trews, formal gowns, or stylish designer outfits, they shrieked money from every pore. Well, money and manners, Serafina supposed, since no one had actually laughed in old Ferdy Bell’s face yet. Or in hers, unless you counted Jilly, whose eyes gleamed in answering delight whenever they encountered hers across the room.

The guests gave odd surreptitious glances at the garlic strung across the doorways and windows, and at the somewhat ugly wooden cross nailed to the wall above the fireplace and upstaging a hideous, abstract oil painting. Serafina guessed that most present were already aware of old Ferdy’s unique theory that a vampire was stalking his family. They might have considered him senile, though what they imagined
her
excuse was, she’d no idea. It wasn’t as if she’d tried to blend in: she wore jeans and a short, leather jacket with its pockets blatantly full of sharp sticks.

Realizing that one of the catering staff was passing her with a bottle in either hand, she stuck out her glass with alacrity and received a grudging refill. She toasted the back of the waiter’s head before knocking half the contents down her throat.

Jack, one of her three regular, underpaid employees, materialized in front of her. Although an actual guest at the party through his own and his family’s connections, he looked much as he always did: all wild curly brown hair and a harassed expression.

“That’s no way to treat champers of that quality,” he murmured in his English public school accent, twitching the glass from her hand.

“Oy!” she protested, snatching it back.

“Are you pissed?” Jack asked under his breath.

“I hope to be very soon.”

“Can we do the job first, Sera?”

“Spoilsport,” she grumbled, although she did start to walk toward the french doors, where Jilly, displaying a sexy expanse of thigh, was halfway up a ladder, rehanging a fallen string of garlic while guests squeezed past her to make the most of the surprisingly warm late summer evening in Ferdy Bell’s beautiful garden.

“Is this stuff meant to be on the outside or the inside?” Jilly demanded.

“Both,” Sera said vaguely. It was definitely dusk, and in another few minutes, there would probably be enough darkness to carry out her plan.

Jilly lifted one eyebrow. “Then you’d better give me a hand, hadn’t you?”

“Fair play,” Sera allowed. She turned to Jack, murmuring, “Make sure Tam’s all set. I’ll be along soon to give you the nod. And Jack,” she added, picking another string of garlic bulbs from the basket under Jilly’s ladder. “Try to look as if you’re having fun?”

Whatever retort he’d been about to make vanished into a smile as someone he knew paused to speak to him amid much back slapping.

“He’s in his element,” Jilly muttered, clambering back down the ladder. Sera shifted it through the doorway with her foot, politely excusing herself to Jack and his friend, who stood in the way.

“Good thing too,” Sera replied, arranging the ladder outside with one hand while the other held valiantly on to her glass of champagne. “Plan wouldn’t work, otherwise, would it?”

Jilly grunted, a sound spectacularly at odds with her angelically beautiful appearance. She was Sera’s best friend as well as her first employee, and fierce intelligence lurked behind her baby-blue eyes, stylish, golden-blonde bob, and perfect makeup. Brought up in one of Edinburgh’s roughest housing schemes, which she’d worked damned hard to escape, Jilly refused to forgive Jack his privileged background, even when having him here as a guest made their own job easier.

“What
is
all this?” Jack’s friend asked, riveting his gaze to Jilly’s long, slender leg halfway up the ladder as she stretched above the french door. “Seems an odd theme for a party.”

Jilly and Sera made brief, sparkling eye contact.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jack said, turning his friend toward the garden before he could catch sight of the women’s inappropriate mirth. “It wouldn’t be the first time the term ‘bloodsucker’ has been applied to bankers.”

“Still the socialist, Jack?” his friend mocked.

“Nothing to do with politics,” Jack argued, moving farther away as Jilly came back down the ladder. Reluctantly, Sera placed her glass on the table just inside the french door.

“What’s this?” Jilly demanded. “Guilt?”

“No. Jack’s right.”

“Nah,” Jilly said with conviction.

“Unfortunately, yes. I’ve got to be capable of taking on the real stalker if he shows up.”

“You really expect him to, with all these people around?”

“Well, Ferdy clearly does.”

“He expects a vampire,” Jilly said dryly, “which is why we’re here.”

Sera sighed. “Ferdy, bless his old banker’s heart, is not telling us the whole truth.”

“That why we’re trashing his party?”

“Yup,” said Sera, hefting the ladder over one shoulder. “That and the fact it’s bloody funny.” She carried the ladder round the side of the house to the shed where they’d found it some hours before. Then, having stashed it, she dusted herself off and walked across the lawn at the back of the house, where little clumps of people stood and chatted, or walked, glasses in hand, around the well-kept grounds. Their features were growing fuzzy in the darkening evening, despite the atmospheric lighting shining down from the walls of the house.

Underneath the garlic hanging from the french doors, Jilly appeared to have been cornered by their attention-seeking host. All to the good. Sera raised her hand in what might have been misinterpreted as a wave. Jilly’s nod told her the true meaning was clear. Five minutes until she’d bring Ferdy.

Sera went in search of Jack and Tam, who should be ready now to play their parts. The Bells had a good, large garden surrounded by a high wall. There was a small, ornamental maze in the middle and a grove of apple and pear trees some yards to the side of it, running along the high boundary wall. Tam’s instructions were to skulk among the trees until it was time to come to the edge of the wood and “attack” Jack, after which, when Jilly brought Ferdy Bell, Sera would leap out of the trees and, with the aid of a neat bit of smoke kit acquired by Tam himself, turn Tam to apparent dust. Tam would then run off unseen back into the trees until they could either smuggle him out or inform him it was safe to leave, while Sera and Jilly would fuss over Jack, who would, unless he wimped out, have genuine if self-inflicted puncture wounds in his neck. He’d made a tiny set of clippers specially—they’d inflict shallow but bleeding wounds of the right shape. With luck, Sera would get another fee out of it.

Jack was propping up the hedge on the outside edge of the maze nearest to the trees, but as he saw Sera approach, he straightened and strolled toward her, his gaze darting to check for guests within earshot. A jerk of his head warned her there were unseen people inside the maze. There was no need; she could hear their voices from yards away.

“Where’s Tam?” Sera asked low as they met.

“Not here yet, or at least I can’t find him.”

“Oh, for the love of—” She broke off, adding impatiently, “He
is
here. Jilly spoke to him on the phone. Where did you look?”

“In there, of course.” Jack nodded at the arranged meeting place in the nearby grove, which was now satisfyingly dark.

“If you want something done properly… Wait here. Jilly’s bringing Ferdy in just a couple of minutes,” Sera muttered and strode off in the direction of the trees.

It was hardly a deep, dark forest, but the lights outside the house didn’t stretch this far, and Sera quickly felt enveloped in blackness. She delved in her jacket pocket for the pencil-thin flashlight and shone it in front of her feet as she walked, occasionally darting it around to search for Tam. It was ridiculous, losing him in a bunch of trees, but she didn’t want to phone him in case the ringing was heard elsewhere in the garden and ruined her carefully prepared spooky atmosphere. On the other hand, she couldn’t afford to take too long or Ferdy would be herding his guests inside from the late evening cool, and her moment would have passed.

She felt her way around two intertwining apple trees and found Tam.

She stopped dead with shock. His large frame was unmistakable in the flashlight beam, but she’d never before seen it slumped in the brutal hold of an attacker who seemed to be strangling him or
squeezing
him to death. Which would be quite an achievement considering the size of Tam’s muscular body. And the fact that his opponent, although about equal in height, was far lighter and leaner in weight. And wearing a kilt, as if he was, or was pretending to be, one of the Bells’ guests. Tam’s arms flailed as if trying feebly to fly free. That was terrifying in itself: Tam the Tank physically helpless.

Sera’s hand wavered, and the beam from her flashlight shifted over a shock of dark chestnut hair. There was a tiny instant when she imagined she’d steeped herself too deeply in this vampire nonsense, because it almost looked as if the stranger had his face buried in Tam’s throat. It sent a weird, almost sensual shiver down her spine before she yanked her brain back into line.

Who the hell was this? Ferdy’s stalker? Sera didn’t wait to find out. As he began to turn his head, granting her a glimpse of his shadowed face and gleaming eyes, she hurled herself at him feetfirst. Both her boots connected jarringly with hard flesh; her whole being jolted as if she’d been shot.

It took an instant to realize that she lay on the ground on her back, winded, while Tam’s attacker, and Tam himself, remained upright. Jesus, she couldn’t have lost her touch to that degree! She’d
slammed
into him. She should at least have knocked him off balance! But then, she should have landed on her feet, not her back, and been ready to jump him before he recovered.

As she struggled to rise, her blurred vision cleared enough to show her, by the crazily waving beam of the torch, that the kilted thug had released Tam, who leaned one massive shoulder against the tree, shaking his head as if to clear it. Thank God, at least the bastard hadn’t killed him. And now they were two against one, however strong this maniac was.

“Tam! Now!” she commanded in an urgent stage whisper and ran at the curiously still figure of the enemy.

Tam muttered something that might have been, “Don’t, Sera.”

Her quarry sidestepped her with a blur that surely spoke more for the intensity of her previous winding than for his genuine speed. Whatever the cause, it was enough to unbalance Sera. Fortunately, Tam leapt and caught her in his muscled arm—all that prevented her from falling over again.

She whirled around, poised to face a counterattack, snatching the only weaponry she carried in her pocket—one of the ridiculous pointy sticks—and for the first time looked into the shadowed face of her enemy. Remembering belatedly about her flashlight still clutched in her bruised left land, she shone it directly into his face. The eerie crisscrossing of shadows on his skin disappeared in the golden glow, but he made no effort to hide from the light. Two large, dark brown eyes stared at her from a lean, still face. There was no doubt he was good-looking enough to turn heads, with a high forehead, long, thin nose, and full, expressive lips, all framed by a shock of thick, dark hair streaked with auburn. The combination of high, broad cheekbones and leanness gave him a slightly cadaverous look that somehow didn’t detract in the slightest from his male beauty.

All these jumbled impressions Sera absorbed in an instant. But chiefly what caught and held her attention was the trickle of red blood running from the corner of his mouth and down the side of his chin.

“Oh for f…!” Sera hurled the pointy stick to the ground. “What the
hell
do you think you’re doing?” she raged. “This is
our
show.”

The trespassing bastard—no dangerous stalker after all, but another charlatan muscling in on Ferdy’s apparently much-publicized delusions—took a step nearer her, reminding her of a hunting cat. “Show? What are you showing?”

Sera frowned, caught off guard because his lips didn’t move as he spoke the words. Well, it made him one up on Tam, who couldn’t do ventriloquism, so far as Sera was aware. She glanced at Tam, frowning direly. She couldn’t believe she’d actually worried about the big, stupid lump. “Were you in on this? Because we’ve wasted enough time. Come on.”

She swung on the interloper. “And you, bugger off.”

The man’s brows rose as if in surprise, while his eyes continued to devour her face, dipping downward over her neck and breasts in a way that, in spite of everything, made her flush.

He said, “Oh no. You are much more beautiful.”

“Than Tam?” she retorted. “Excuse me, but that’s not exactly a compliment to die for.”

His gaze returned to her face. Deep, dark eyes alight with amusement and an excitement that was almost…hunger. For no reason that mattered, Sera’s stomach seemed to dive. His full, sensual lips quirked up at the corners. “I won’t let you die.”

Sera glared, mostly because of his seductive voice—low and soft and with only a hint of Scottish. It added butterflies to the plunging of her stomach and pleasant little tingles to her spine. “
Will
you stop doing that?”

His lips stretched farther. “Doing what?”

“Talking without moving your lips! It might be clever, but it’s bloody disconcerting.”

“Sera?” Tam interrupted, drawing her attention. “Are you all right?”