Read Online Paranormal Bromance by Carrie Vaughn - Free Book Online

and she was the prettiest woman I’d ever seen in my life.
    “Sam, what are we going to do?” Jack was stalking around the living room looking like he wanted to break something.
    “Well, they can’t get in here unless you invite them, right?” Ginny said.
    “I’m not sure that works on a vampire house,” I said. “I think that’s a human thing.”
    “Well, I’m here,” she said.
    “But you don’t actually live—” I stopped. I had this sudden vision of being normal, having a human girlfriend, and moving into an apartment together, sharing normal stuff. Everything I didn’t get to do before this all happened. How the hell had I gotten into this? And I realized, if I hadn’t been turned into a vampire, if I’d lived my life normally, I’d be forty years old and Ginny would be too young for me. We’d never have met. This was so confusing.
    But I smiled, because who cared?
    “Wait,” Aaron said, blinking as if he’d just seen Ginny for the first time. “There’s a stranger in our apartment. We talked about this—”
    “Aaron, calm down,” I said. “Ginny, this is Aaron, our other roommate.”
    “Hi—”
    “Aaron, Ginny. There, now you’re not strangers.”
    She seemed as nonplussed as the rest of us, which was understandable.
    Jack pointed to the door. “Guys? Bad vampires, coming after us.”
    Ginny had been carrying a mason jar tucked under her arm. She set it on the counter, and Aaron poked at it. “What’s this?”
    “It’s holy water,” she said. “I stopped at a church—”
    All three of us scrambled away from her, stumbling over furniture and bumping into walls, as ungracefully as we possibly could.
    “What’d you bring something like that for?” I yelled. I had never actually seen in person what holy water did to a vampire, I’d just been told stories. Horrible stories. It wouldn’t kill us. It would just hurt. You’d think as a vampire I would be a little better about handling pain.
    “I thought it’d be useful.” She was exactly right, of course.
    “Wait a minute,” Aaron said. He went back to his pile of Nerf weapons and held up one of the little darts that went with one of the guns. The spongy little darts. Oh, that could work…
    He found a pair of ancient rubber dishwashing gloves under the kitchen sink. Must have been left there by the last tenants. Ginny was helping him, searching cupboards for a stray bowl they could use for soaking the darts.
    I watched her. She had the look of profound concentration I imagined she wore while gaming.
    “Why are you doing this?” I asked out of the blue. “This isn’t your fight.”
    She shrugged. “Because I put myself in the middle of it? Because they’re bad guys and it’s the right thing to do? Because I like you?”
    “This isn’t going to be pretty,” I said.
    “I’m already in this. They know who I am, they were already coming after me.”
    I had to smile. I felt gooey. This was so weird. “Um. That thing you said, about being here. You said you wanted to move closer to downtown, right? You want to move in?”
    She chuckled. “I’ve known you for like a week. This is only the second time I’ve seen you face-to-face.”
    “Yeah, okay. I’ll sleep on the sofa,” I said.
    “Sam, no!” Aaron said, horrified.
    Jack added, “Aaron’s got a point, what exactly are you thinking here—”
    I found a paper towel in the kitchen and the Sharpie Aaron had been using to label boxes. Sharpie on paper towel—lots of bleed. But I wrote out three lines of a sublet agreement: Ginny can live here if she promises not to mess things up too bad and maybe pays a to-be-agreed-upon rent.
    I signed, then shoved the towel at Jack.
    “Sign this.”
    “No! I don’t want her moving in here—”
    “Just for a couple of days, until we’re not being attacked by vampires anymore.” He stormed off. Shit. We all of us had to agree to it.
    Jack said, “Someone around here has to be practical. Does someone maybe want to help