Read Online After Dark (The Vampire Next Door Book 2) by Rose Titus - Free Book Online

town, but they kept in touch. She was pleased to see him.
    “Jim! Well, what brings you here?”
     
    The lights were out. She reclined on the worn out couch wrapped in the woolen blanket, drifting into the dreamlike state between alertness and sleep and listened to the sound of his soft voice. “Have you gone to sleep yet?” he asked.
    No, she wanted to say, keep talking, keep telling me these things. But she did not have the energy to speak up.
    Why did she trust him so much? She never allowed herself to trust anyone before. Was it because he was different? Because he was also kept apart from the rest of society? Or was it simply because she needed to trust someone, anyone?
    She heard him go to the closet for his jacket, getting ready to leave and go out. And then he was gone.
     
    Jim was sitting at the small kitchen table, finishing his Chinese takeout. “Alex insisted on getting me something; this is rather good. Too bad you never have any.”
    “It has certainly been a while since we’ve seen you,” Lina bent to pick up her poodle. “And you! Stop begging under the table, Alex is right, you are spoiled rotten.” She put the dog back down. “It’s really good to see you again, Jim. Actually, to be honest, I am glad it’s really you, I almost thought it was a neighbor, a tenant actually, when I heard people talking on my way in. I thought it was her, causing trouble again.”
    “Yes.” He opened a fortune cookie and silently read it. “Alex was telling me all about that one. Ought to do a feature on her, maybe. How about... let’s see... Woman Possessed By Space Aliens?”
    “No,” Alex growled from the living room where he sat in near darkness. “Space Aliens Invade Earth, Refuse to Pay Rent.”
    “Oh Alex, now let’s stop making fun at her expense!” And she looked down to notice the dog begging again.
    “And Lina, I see that you still are as lovely as ever. Alex is a very lucky man.”
    “Oh stop it, Jim.” She felt herself nearly blush. Even at her age, he made her feel like a school girl.
    “Yes,” he went on. “You remain young and pretty while I get old. Luckily the climate here makes my arthritis more... tolerable.” And he finally gave in to the dog’s begging. He handed Sasha an egg roll.
    “Lina definitely has that mutt spoiled, Jim,” Alex spoke again. He was now watching out the window, looking over the property towards Sky’s unit, as if spying.
    “Oh, why not? Here,” and then Jim gave the dog half a fortune cookie. “Cute little puppy.”
    “Lina, Jim came up to show us a copy of this article he found.” Alex drifted out of the darkness and handed the printout to his wife. He had been reading it in the dark by himself. “Here. Read this.”
    She took it from him and begin to read it quietly. “This is incredible. A college kid wrote this?”
     
    Sometime before the sun came up he wandered quietly back in. He drew the curtains to close out the light; she stirred when she heard movement in the room.
    “Why do you put up with me?” She opened her eyes and realized she was still on his couch, wrapped in the old woolen Navajo blanket, instead of in her own apartment, where she should have been.
    “If you found a lost kitten on your doorstep, wouldn’t you take her in?”
    “I wish I was a cat.” She yawned, and pulled the blanket more tightly around herself.
    “Why?”
    “So I couldn’t be me.”
    “Yeah? Cats don’t do laundry any better than you or me.”
    She couldn’t comprehend his sense of humor very well; she strained her eyes in the darkness and watched as he put his leather jacket away in the closet and headed towards his small room.
    “Did you go down there?”
    He stopped. “What?”
    “Did you go down there, again?”
    “Yes. See some old friends, have a few drinks, get the local gossip, you know, the boring stuff that vampires do at night.”
    “I wish I had a few old friends, like you do.”
    “You will, some day, give it some