How Knot to Marry a Vampire Read online

  How Knot To Marry A Vampire

  A Nocturne Falls Universe Story

  Laurie London

  Contents

  Dear Reader

  Copyright

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Excerpt from Assassin’s Touch

  About the Author

  Dear Reader,

  Nocturne Falls has become a magical place for so many people, myself included. Over and over I’ve heard from you that it’s a town you’d love to visit and even live in! I can tell you that writing the books is just as much fun for me.

  With your enthusiasm for the series in mind – and your many requests for more books – the Nocturne Falls Universe was born. It’s a project near and dear to my heart, and one I am very excited about.

  I hope these new, guest-authored books will entertain and delight you. And best of all, I hope they allow you to discover some great new authors! (And if you like this book, be sure to check out the rest of the Nocturne Falls Universe offerings.)

  For more information about the Nocturne Falls Universe, visit http://kristenpainter.com/sugar-skull-books/

  In the meantime, happy reading!

  Kristen Painter

  HOW KNOT TO MARRY A VAMPIRE

  A Nocturne Falls Universe Story

  * * *

  Copyright © 2017 by Laurie London

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction and was made possible by a special agreement with Sugar Skull Books, but hasn’t been reviewed or edited by Kristen Painter. All characters, events, scenes, plots and associated elements appearing in the original Nocturne Falls series remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Kristen Painter, Sugar Skull Books and their affiliates or licensors.

  Any similarity to real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author or Sugar Skull Books.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Penelope Bechtel comes from a long line of mediums, so she shouldn’t have been surprised to see a ghost for the first time at the Waffle Emporium. But the gift he gives her puts her in terrible danger and sends her on the run…right back to where she started: Nocturne Falls and—

  * * *

  Is that a nearly naked, gorgeous vampire?

  * * *

  Luka Cavanaugh lost a bet, and now he's stuck modeling at a wine and painting party, where he meets a beautiful woman who threatens to untie the knots around his cold, undead heart. The problem is, he doesn’t date supernaturals. Too many secrets. Too much baggage. And Penelope is no exception.

  * * *

  With danger looming and things heating up between them, maybe some rules are meant to be broken…

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  1

  Penelope

  * * *

  It was 11:10 on a Wednesday night when I saw my first dead body. And 11:11 when I saw my first ghost.

  I’d entered my section at the Waffle Emporium to find Reverend Wainwright facedown on his plate of Strawberry Supreme Waffles with extra whipped cream.

  It's not like I wasn't expecting something like this to happen at some point in my life. Coming from a long line of mediums, I knew the day would eventually come when the dead would try to communicate with me. I just wasn't expecting it to happen during my shift at the WE. And not with someone I knew.

  “Reverend, are you…. Are you okay?” Dumb question, since an apparition was hovering next to his body. Clearly, he wasn’t.

  “I'm afraid I’m dead, my dear,” Ghost Reverend said gently.

  Hazard Junction Community Church was located across the street, and the reverend often came in with a few parishioners after the Wednesday night service. Tonight, however, he’d come alone.

  He had a short, gray Afro, thin at the top, and was wearing his standard bolo tie and colorful suit. (Today’s color: turquoise.) Kind, yet portly, he’d always been a generous tipper. There was a fork clutched in his hand, a piece of waffle still speared on the end. I hoped it wasn’t his first bite. To die without having at least one taste would be a real tragedy.

  I frantically patted my pockets, fumbling for my phone to call 911. A futile act, not only because the man had been dead long enough for his ghost to appear, but because my phone was in my purse in the back room. We weren’t allowed to have them during our shifts ever since Mary Sue Betz was caught sexting her boyfriend while waiting on a table of Mormons.

  At this hour, the WE was dead, both literally and figuratively. A four top had left a few minutes ago, and it wasn’t shift change at the Hazard Junction Prison yet, when the guards would come in for a late-nighter. It was just me, the night cook, and the dishwasher, a spaced-out work-release guy who, more than likely, was using again. Lorraine, the other waitress who was supposed to be here, was always running late. She’d recently remarried her ex-husband, which apparently messes up one’s ability to tell time.

  “Johnny,” I hollered to the cook. “Call 911.” He didn’t answer. Even though I couldn’t hear the music from here, the classic rock that was always on in the kitchen was probably too loud. Who could hear above a good Steven Tyler scream anyway? I cupped a hand to my mouth and tried again. “Johnny!”

  Still no reply. I cursed under my breath (bad form, I know, in front of the reverend) and started toward the kitchen.

  “Penelope, wait,” said a deep voice behind me. “I need your help.”

  I stopped and turned back around. Ghost Reverend was giving me an apprehensive smile.

  “I…um…you do?” I immediately felt like a dim bulb with these stupid questions. Of course he needed my help. That was why ghosts tried to communicate with the living. They wanted us to do something they couldn’t. But like I said earlier, this was all new to me.

  My mother was a medium. My aunt was a medium. Their mother, my grandmother, was a medium. You get the picture. In other words, I’d been around this sort of thing a lot growing up, just without any hands-on personal experience until now.

  “What can I help you with, Reverend?”

  “Glory be!” he exclaimed, relieved that I could hear him. “Please retrieve the keys from the left pocket of my suit jacket.”

  “Of course.”

  But before I could move, Johnny’s voice boomed from the kitchen. “Penny, did you need something?”

  I bristled. I hated when people called me Penny. “Um…uh….”

  “Go on,” Ghost Reverend urged. “Take the keys. Quickly.”

  I wasn’t about to argue with a ghost. They could be vindictive. I gingerly reached into the reverend’s pocket and grabbed the keys. “Who do you want me to give them to?”

  “That gold key there will get you into the church,” he said in that molasses-like drawl of his, making every word take forever.

  He wanted me to go into the church? Okay, whatever. There was no time to argue. “Yes,” I prodded, trying to hurry h
im up. It would be really awkward if Johnny came around that corner right now and saw me talking to a dead guy.

  “Go to my office,” Ghost Reverend continued. “The bottom drawer of my desk is locked. That key—it’s the tiny one there—will unlock it.”

  “Bottom drawer, tiny key. Got it.”

  “Inside, you’ll find a Cuban cigar box secured with a rubber band.”

  Wait. What? Was he really that concerned about someone getting ahold of his good cigar stash? I mean, he was dead. Why the heck did he care? “And who do you want me to give it to?”

  Ghost Reverend’s kindly eyes narrowed. “It’s for you, child. You must take it.”

  “I’m…I’m afraid I’m not really much of a smoker.” As in, I’d never had a puff in my life. My deadbeat father was a chain smoker. I hated the smell.

  “Penny?”

  I spotted the top of Johnny’s bald head over the partition. Crap! He was coming.

  “Hold that thought,” I said to Ghost Reverend, then rushed to meet the night cook, a short, mustachioed guy with a limp and tattooed forearms. “I think Reverend Wainwright is dead,” I told him.

  Johnny strode to the red vinyl booth, his white apron flapping. He took one look at Reverend Wainwright and all that whipped cream, then staggered backwards and crossed himself. “Are you sure?” His face had gone ashen white. So much for Mr. Tough Guy.

  “You need to call 911,” I said.

  Johnny didn’t argue. He left my section as quickly as a man with a fairly severe limp could.

  Ghost Reverend continued to hover a few inches off the ground next to his body. “You must take the box for safe-keeping. What’s inside is precious and powerful. And very dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands. I cannot emphasize that enough.”

  Dangerous? My heartbeat kicked into high gear like a muscle car at a road rally. Guess the cigar box wasn’t filled with cigars after all. I didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to ask what was in it.

  “What do I tell Mrs. Richardson?” I’d need to give the church secretary some sort of reasonable explanation as to why I had to go into the reverend’s office after his death.

  “Nothing. You won’t be seeing her.”

  “But—”

  “You’re going to go now.”

  “Now?” It came out as a high-pitched squeak.

  He couldn’t be serious, could he? A million reasons why this wasn’t a good idea swirled in my head, and to be honest, it was making me a little queasy. For one, it was almost midnight. I don’t know about you, but rooting around in an old church in the middle of the night—alone!—wasn’t my idea of fun. And second, I was right in the middle of my shift. I couldn’t just leave.

  “Yes,” Ghost Reverend said. “Do it now. Someone will come for it later.”

  “Someone? How will…they even know…I have it? Did you know you were going to die beforehand and told them to come to me?” Which honestly made zero sense the minute I said it.

  “Nope,” he said, knocking down that flimsy theory like a baseball bat to a rural mailbox. I could almost hear the thwack. “This comes as much of a surprise to me as it does to you.” Before he could tell me more, the bell above the door rang.

  Dang it. Customers.

  Thank goodness for the partition. This section was where we liked to seat groups and parties. Set slightly apart from the other side of the diner, it was especially popular with the high school crowd after Friday night football games because our garlic home fries were bottomless. Even after wiping down the tables, the smell would linger for days. Today being Wednesday and not during football season, this wasn’t an issue.

  I shifted a little to my right in an attempt to block the customers’ view of the body and pointed to the other side of the diner. “Go ahead and find a seat over there, and someone will…uh…be right with you.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized I should’ve told them we were closed and sent them on their way. I felt deceptive about my cheery tone. I didn’t like to lie.

  “Good gravy! Is that Reverend Wainwright?”

  So much for the partition. Sirens wailed in the distance as two couples rushed into my section.

  “I…I think he had a heart attack,” I said guiltily. “We’ve called 911.”

  One of the customers, a large-boned woman in a suede jacket and mom jeans, seemed to have some medical knowledge. They hauled the reverend to the floor and started doing chest compressions. I stood to the side, watching. I couldn’t exactly tell them it was no use, that the horse had left the barn and wasn’t coming back. Not even if you shook a can of oats.

  Ghost Reverend hovered next to me, his see-through hand tapping his see-through chest. “Look at them. How touching. They really loved me, didn’t they?”

  I nodded discretely as someone wiped the whipped cream from the face of his body and started giving him mouth-to-mouth. I liked the reverend, too, and not just because he was a good tipper…or a pastor. I wasn’t a regular church-goer, just on holidays, but he was a sweet man with an infectious laugh for everyone.

  Putting a hand over my mouth, I kept my voice low, not wanting anyone to think I was talking to myself. “So, about the danger, Reverend.”

  When he didn’t answer right away, I turned my head in his direction.

  Ghost Reverend was gone.

  As I hurried to the church, I threw a glance over my shoulder. The last thing I needed was for Lorraine to see me. She’d pitch a fit like there was no tomorrow.

  Lorraine had arrived for her shift at the WE soon after the ambulance left with the reverend’s body. She’d been less than supportive when I’d told her I wasn’t feeling well and that I had to leave early. Another lie, of course, but I couldn’t exactly tell her the truth.

  “After everything that happened tonight,” she’d said, hands fluttering around her like a couple of nervous butterflies, “I don’t think I’m emotionally ready to handle the shift by myself.” As if she’d been around when it all went down.

  Despite her tear-filled plea about her mental health, I didn’t feel too guilty about leaving. I know that sounds harsh, but in the three months I’d been working at the WE after quitting my bookkeeping job, she’d left me in the lurch plenty of times because of her inability to deal with whatever crisis was ailing her at the time. This was in addition to her chronic lateness. For instance, just last week, she called in, saying she couldn’t come in to work because her cat had had its yearly vaccinations the day before and was still traumatized from the experience. Although I liked cats, this seemed excessive to me.

  The town didn’t have any streetlights, so it was fairly dark as I made my way to the church. The crescent moon cast long shadows on Hazard Avenue’s uneven pavement, but I didn’t dare use my phone’s flashlight to avoid the cracks and potholes even though I had weak, easily sprainable ankles that I inherited from my mother. With Ghost Reverend’s cryptic warning still ringing in my ears, Lorraine catching sight of me wasn’t my only concern.

  Several dogs yapped in the distance as I reached the front steps, but when the playful sounds turned into a cacophony of mournful howling, I shivered. They were coyotes, not dogs. It reminded me that there were other creatures out here in the dark with me. Wild ones. I’d better hurry.

  I climbed the steps, shoved the key in the lock, and slipped inside.

  Hazard Junction Community Church was fairly small, with a dozen rows of pews on each side of the center aisle. The moon shone through a stained-glass window at such an angle that the wall behind the altar was lit with a gorgeous kaleidoscope of color. However, just because I noticed how pretty it was didn’t mean I wasn’t still tense. My shoulders were practically touching my ears.

  I forced myself to take a deep, calming breath. The kind you do in yoga. My mantra, however, was different. Go to the office. Get the cigar box. Go home.

  Spotting a door in the back, I hurried down the aisle. Even though I wore sneakers, each step echoed loudly through the empty space as if I were we
aring platform boots.

  The small but tidy office smelled of pipe tobacco and peppermint. I didn’t waste any time examining knickknacks. Kneeling down in front of the desk, I fumbled with the keys, found the right one, and opened the bottom drawer. A Cuban cigar box, held shut with a rubber band, was inside, just where Ghost Reverend had said it would be. I carefully lifted it out and was a little surprised that it wasn’t heavier. Whatever was inside had to be fairly small. Without opening it, I held the box to my chest like a textbook and quickly locked the drawer. I wasn’t about to dilly-dally.

  I glanced around the dark room, expecting Ghost Reverend to materialize again. Hoping, actually. I still had so many questions for him. Who would come for the box? What was inside? Where would they take it? When would they come? And why were the contents so valuable?

  But, no, he never did appear. I locked up and left the church without seeing another soul.

  That is, not until thirty minutes later.

  I was in my pajamas, making a cup of tea before climbing into bed, when the large turquoise apparition took shape in my kitchen.

  “Reverend!” I exclaimed, nearly jumping out of my skin. “What are you doing here?” The man definitely had a flair for the dramatic. A good trait for a pastor, I thought. Kept people on their toes.

  Notwithstanding the fact that he was already dead, he wasn’t looking good. Gone were his laugh lines and jovial manner.

  “You're in terrible danger, Penelope.”

  “Danger?” I repeated, as if saying the word myself would give me more clarity. It didn’t. I gripped the teacup tighter to keep my butterfingers from dropping it. “Danger from what?”

  He looked furtively around my postage-stamp kitchen as though he expected the boogeyman to jump out at any minute. “I...I didn't think they'd come. Not this soon. And certainly not before the Others.”