Read Online Even Vampires Get the Blues by Katie MacAlister - Free Book Online Page B

scanned the room. A chill rippled through me as his gaze approached me. I was suddenly very, very afraid, and wanted nothing more than to be away from that room. There was an aura of something powerful around him, as if he suddenly presented a threat. I tried to tell myself that I was being ridiculous, that there was nothing anyone could do to me in astral form, but my brain didn’t want to listen.
    I froze when the man’s eyes met mine, holding my breath as if that would make my invisible self even more invisible. He held out his arm for the monkey, going still when Beppo scrambled up to his shoulder.Then he smiled at me. Slowly. With so much menace that a scream built up inside me. Just as it was about to burst from my formless lips, a voice in the distance called my name.
    â€œSamantha!”
    The man snarled something and lunged toward me, but my ethereal body was yanked out of the room, whisked back toward the voice that so imperiously demanded my attention. “Samantha, you will answer me!”
    The trip back to my body was conducted much more quickly than the journey out—the world seemed to shimmer and blur, shaking itself for a moment, then suddenly I was sitting in Paen’s car, my neck tingling, my body tight and tense as if it had been on the verge of an orgasm.
    â€œWelcome back,” Paen said dryly.
    â€œHi,” I said, touching my neck. There didn’t seem to be any open wound, so I gathered he had some power to heal up any signs he had been dining at Café Sam. “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.”
    â€œFor what, boring you?” he asked, reversing the car, turning so we were headed back into the hills.
    â€œBoring me? No, Paen . . .” I put my hand on his arm, slightly surprised to find that I was shaking from my encounter with the dark man. “I was thanking you for pulling me back. I . . . there was someone I would not care to meet again, and you anchored me when I needed it, so thank you. But I wasn’t bored with you—it’s not that at all. It’s just . . . I have . . . oh, it’s a little difficult to explain.”
    â€œIs it?”
    I sighed, rubbing the chill from my arms. Justbeing near Paen seemed to drive away the nightmarish quality of my out-of-body experience. “The truth is that it’s all my mother’s fault.”
    His jaw tightened as he drove. “Indeed.”
    â€œI didn’t mean that it’s her fault I’m here, and thus with you—I meant it’s my mother’s fault because she passed on a couple of elf traits to me. I was born with her pointy ears, elf-tipped eyes, talent for finding lost things, and a really warped version of her ability to do out-of-body trips. Unlike Mom’s skill with astral projection, however, mine only hits whenever I’m sexually aroused.”
    He looked at me in patent disbelief. “You what?”
    I nodded, then pointed to the road. He turned back to it, but glanced curiously from the corner of his eye a couple of times. “Whenever I get aroused, my body and consciousness part ways, and I go drifting off while it has all the fun. I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it is.”
    â€œI can imagine,” he said dryly.
    â€œOh, you think you can, but I doubt it,” I said mournfully. “It’s awful, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve tried everything, too. Once I’m gone—pfft! I just have to wait it out. No one has ever called me back like you did. That was pretty amazing.”
    â€œHmm.” He didn’t look like he disbelieved me, but he didn’t look like he was buying everything I was saying, either.
    â€œThe worst is when I come back and find out that evidently I’ve been having wonderful sexual experiences, but wasn’t there to enjoy them.”
    He shot me a curious glance. “Are you saying this happens every time you engage