Read Online The Girls With Games of Blood by Alex Bledsoe - Free Book Online

Hell, just let Patience here give you a shopping list.”
    “Sure,” Fauvette said with a scowl. “Waitress, janitor, and now decorator.”
    He yawned again, completely missing her sarcasm. “Thanks, hon, I knew I could count on you. Look, I’ve got to go lay down on the couch in my office. Patience, Fauvette will show you around. Make sure you leave a phone number and address. We’ll get the contracts signed next week, okay?”
    By then he had gone into the kitchen and they heard hisoffice door slam shut. Patience chuckled and took out a cloth to wipe down her guitar strings. “And that, my dear, is how I feed. What did you think?”
    “I could kind of feel it,” Fauvette said. “It was like the air was vibrating between you two. Like when you make a telephone out of two cans and a long piece of string.”
    Patience put her guitar back in its case. “That’s a very good analogy. I got enough energy from him to counteract what I lost in the sun coming down here. Now I should be fine until tomorrow.”
    Fauvette shook her head. “And how many people have to die because I can’t do that?”
    Patience stopped, stepped close, and sadly touched Fauvette’s cheek. “Don’t do that to yourself. We are what we are, Fauvette, and it’s not our fault. I didn’t ask to be this, and neither did you.”
    Fauvette luxuriated in the touch. She could not recall ever feeling so safe with physical contact. She sighed and said, “Thank you. Do you think . . . can you teach me to do that, too?”
    Before she could answer, the front door opened, admitting Zginski in a blast of afternoon heat. The door closed with a thud, and Zginski looked around the empty room. When he saw Fauvette his face noticeably brightened. But it grew closed and cautious again when he spotted Patience beside her.
    “And who,” he said as he threaded through the tables and upturned chairs, “is this?”
    Patience looked him over and said, with a grin that clearly displayed her fangs, “I was about to ask Fauvette the very same thing.”

 
     

CHAPTER 6
     
    Z GINSKI FELT P ATIENCE brush him with her supernatural influence, then withdraw it completely, like a reflex that had to twitch before it could be restrained. It had no effect, but nonetheless he found himself staring for longer than he intended.
    He’d met more vampires in his brief time in Memphis than in all his decades traveling across Europe, he thought ironically. He wondered if they’d somehow spread themselves exponentially through ignorance and deliberate malice while he was in limbo. But his instant, powerful attraction to this one took him off guard. It was not that she was beautiful in any normal way. Certainly Fauvette, standing almost demurely beside her, was far more conventionally striking. Yet this newcomer compelled his attention in a way Fauvette never had.
    Before Fauvette could respond, the other woman said, “ ‘This’ is Patience Bolade.” She smiled and extended her hand. The gesture was graceful, and the grip dainty and old-fashioned when he took it. He bent over it, a slight version of continental chivalry, and she likewise bent her knees just enough to count as a curtsy. She asked, “And you are?”
    “I am Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski,” he said formally.
    “Delighted to meet you,” Patience said. “It appears we’re thick on the ground here, doesn’t it?”
    “I have had the very same thought.”
    “Probably not phrased the same way.”
    “No.”
    Fauvette scowled, but neither of them noticed. She was unsure who inspired this surge of jealousy: Zginski for butting in on her new friendship, or Patience for so blatantly showing interest in him. Fauvette and Zginski had not been lovers since that night in the warehouse, but that didn’t mean it had faded from her mind. If anything, she was growing more certain that she wanted to do it again. She said sharply, “So did you buy your car?”
    Zginski, annoyed at the interruption, snapped, “Yes, I