Greg, R̶a̶v̶e̶n̶o̶u̶s̶ ̶P̶e̶r̶v̶e̶r̶t̶

Isla and I broke apart. My fang cut her. She gasped out a string violent swears in a mix of English and Spanish, patting her bleeding lip as I yanked the robe up to cover her breasts. She hopped off the counter, holding the garment closed and hiding behind me. A protective instinct straightened my spine.

Dmitri. The damned coot. He hovered, upside down, just outside my window. He was changed. Rejuvenated. Younger. Handsomer. Almost unrecognizably so. Almost. But I'd known him long before he started fasting for love.

"Gregorio!" he moaned; voice muffled beyond the glass. "Please. I must know! Where is my beloved?"

He scratched a dirty talon against the windowpane. Bloody tears streamed down his forehead and into his long, thick waves of mahogany hair. The fool's lip even trembled while that damned cape fluttered in the breeze.

No. That was it. I'd had it with him. My body was sore and throbbing from unspent lust – Isla's body hot and wanton and pulse racing – and for that Dmitri deserved to suffer. Or at the very least, be inconvenienced.

"Get. Down. I have human neighbors, you maniac. No—not through the window, I'll meet you downstairs. Just wait."

Whimpering, the vamp fell against the metal awning jutting out from the front of my house with a thunk. From the sound of it, he dug his claws into the metal as he slid down onto the sidewalk below (a dog barked in the distance). His frantic wails and pounding against my office door came only a moment later.

Isla exhaled. "Is his timing always—"

"Yes. Excuse me."

I dashed upstairs. To the closet. Grabbed a shirt. Then the T-shirt from the bed. At the dresser, another pair of sweats. A hoodie. Socks for her.

"Jesus!"

Isla jumped when I seemed to merely reappear at her side, arms laden with clothing, only a moment later. She spilled coffee all over my robe, slamming the mug down on the countertop in surprise.

I hissed – involuntarily – at her blaspheme, the very sound of it singeing the hair in my ears. Didn't mean to snap at her. Didn't mean to startle her either. Thirst quenched, my strength and energy had returned in full. She was, I had no doubt, already formulating a quip about this in that delectable mind of hers. Biting back my growing fangs, I pushed all the clothing but one shirt into her hands.

"Put some clothes on and stay up here."

Of course, the phone rang while I haphazardly buttoned up my shirt. My cell – no idea where during our frenzy I'd left it – had made its way to the living room coffee table at some point while the sun was up. It buzzed and skittered across the metal.

"If that's Phoebe tell her I know he's here, I've seen him."

Isla unfolded the bundle of socks. "Alright, first off, she can hear you just fine. But, uh, she wanted to say something about a Mrs. Cabroni—" she turned and faced the vacant staircase – "that Kyle's wife?"

"Fangs." She was probably calling to snarl at me for her husband coming home with rabies. Dang it. I was never getting paid. "Tell her I'll call her back, Phoebe."

"Yikes. She has some choice words about that."

Yeah, I'll bet, but at least the ringing stopped.

"Hey," I said. "Hey."

I tucked a finger under Isla's chin and tilted her glassy gaze to meet mine. Her heartbeat skipped. Those plush lips parted. Forced myself to swallow my growing urge to reclaim her mouth again.

"Please," I said. "Please, darling, stay up here."

She nodded.

"Good girl."

The shiver that simmered through her broke my resolve. Just a bit. I leaned down and awarded her with a quick kiss, sucking in her bottom lip till she softly moaned.

"Gregorio! Allow me entrance!"

Dang it.

Dmitri looked pathetic with his face squished against the glass pane of my front door. Fangs jutted out in an unfortunate overbite. Eyes large and sad and pleading. Long hair wild and tangled as it cascaded over his shoulders. Blood from tears dribbled into his otherwise perfectly groomed beard and curling mustache. Those nails fervently tap, tap, tapped away on the door. He was like a sad, bloodthirsty puppy.

Seeing as how I operated a business out the ground floor, Dmitri did not necessarily need permission to enter the building. He just couldn't figure out the lock.

"Get in," I unlocked and yanked open the door. "Hurry up before somebody sees you."

Old bat flung himself on me. Hissing and sobbing. Latched his arms around my neck and buried his cries against my shirt collar. "Tell me! Where is she!"

"Fangs, Dmitri, I don't know. Been trying to call you, by the way."

His claws dung into my shoulder blades. "Good."

"Good? Good!"

I pushed him off. One handed, I pressed a palm flat against his shoulder and shoved. Dmitri stumbled back, knocking into the door hard enough to close it. He blinked. Bloody tears smeared dark circles under his eyes.

"What the fuck, old pal?"

"I see you've indulged."

The snide judgement rolling off him was just peaches wasn't it? Bat had some nerve.

I nodded at him and snatched my notebook off my desk. "Yeah, you look like you've hit the blood bank buffet yourself. What happened to fasting? To being unable to eat because not having your truest love by your side—" did a quick flip through the pages "—'is to have your heart soul ripped from you?'"

A ghastly wail escaped him. Cross between a howl and sob and a thousand bees buzzing in harmony with a high-rise fire alarm while you're stuck in the elevator.

"What happened is that I am a scoundrel, Gregorio! I hath betrayed my beloved and broke my fast! I was too weak to resist. Are ye satisfactioned by my dishonor, unromantic joy-slayer?" Dmitri yelled, dropping to his knees. The cape squelched as it pooled around him. It was laden with wet blood. "I cannot bear for her to look upon me in this fashion. The horror of it. The utter agony the obvious sight of my unfaithfulness would inflict upon my truest love! She would reject me like this, I am certain, and I cannot stomach it."

"You saying you don't want me to find her now?"

"Pish-posh, of course not! I must have her! I have failed to reunite us so many times. It breaks me in twine to fail again. Oh, what a monster is I!"

"Aren't we all, pal?" I pinched my nose. "Take that off, you're dripping all over my rug."

Dmitri stood with a flourish. He twirled out of his cape. Instead of hanging it on the rack, or even draping it over my outstretched arm pointing to the rack, he flung it on the sofa (why did everyone keep doing that?). The sofa, I suddenly remembered, where Isla's stockings and panties were poking out from between the cushions. Where my ruined pants and shirt were piled beside. Where dried puddles of stale, coppery blood, a mix of Isla's and mine and the werewolves', stained the fabric and the rug beneath. I made to at least grab the evidence of a woman undressing in my office, but tripped over one of Isla's hot pink shoes and face planted into the sofa.

It smelled like her.

The lovesick loon didn't seem to notice at first. He threw his arms up and gracefully paced the room, crunching muddy footprints onto my scattered paperwork. Hell. The room was a disaster. The place looked more like a crime scene than a love nest. Barely a clear spot of floor was visible. As he lamented, I crept behind Dmitri and collected Isla's undergarments from around the room, stuffing them into the pockets of my sweatpants (devil help me her panties were still damp) and, lastly, hung up his stupid cape.

I gulped as Dmitri kicked Isla's discarded dress across the floor. But the fabric didn't slow his pacing. Not even the walls could do that. As he reached one, he simply stepped against it and continued to stride up its length and onto the ceiling. With his damned dirty feet.

"I let her go!" He choked on a sob, stuffing a bloodied fist into his mouth, scratching his knuckles open on teeth and licking the scrape. "You must understand. When I denied her desire to convert, twas not out of malice or rejection, but because I loved her so! My truest love did not deserve the hunger of this unending curse. Too pure. Like, spring water trickling down the mountainside. No, she hates mountains. What she loves is the seaside, Gregorio. The seaside. That is a place meant to be touched by the sun!"

I gathered up Isla's dress – it smelled of mint and iron and margarita mix – and rolled it into a ball, tossing it behind my desk while Dmitri flipped his luxurious hair.

"And then my beloved was gone. In a whisper of a moment, she took her own life to goad me into reversing my decision and I—I was too late."

My chest tightened.

"Hang on there, pal," I straightened midway through collecting blood splattered files from the floor. "She killed herself? We talking Lily or Rosemond?"

Dmitri dropped from the ceiling, landing on my desk. He kicked over a cup of pens and cracked the USB mouse for my laptop under his heel. Damn it. Bad enough Phoebe always broke those things flinging them onto the floor all the time.

"My Rosemond!" Dmitri kicked a falcon shaped paperweight, pointing his toes like a dancer, launching the object across the room. It collided with a filing cabinet. Dented the metal with a loud crash. I cringed, glancing over my shoulder at the staircase to catch if Isla decided to come running at the noise. "Tis how her soul parted her first mortal form. I cannot be too late again. I cannot discard the gift it has been to be reunited at last. I must prove my love and commit to her by thoroughly feasting on her flesh and blood till the precious life flees from her every pore and muscle and her bountiful tits—"

"That's enough, pal, I get the picture."

My palm tingled. I made fist, grazing my fingertips over the spot where Isla's nipple had just been pressing against my hand.

"You do not know, Gregorio." Sighing, Dmitri sat himself cross legged across the desktop. At the last moment before tucking his feet, he seemed to notice his footsteps decorating the wall, and kicked his shoes off onto the floor. "You have never loved as I love!"

"Yeah, well, you seem to have enough love going around to compensate for every vamp in the city."

"What tis that tone intended to imply?"

I placed his filthy boots on the shoe rack, which was not so shockingly situated alongside the coat rack. Tucked Isla's pink heels onto it too.

"How's Sloane? Your current wife. Keep forgetting about her, don't you, pal?"

"I— she is not at home."

"She's in the hospital. Got staked in her own home. Missed her heart but silver sealed inside the wound when it healed. A chain..." A silver chain, like a necklace. I rubbed my throat. The jagged tear across my neck had mended itself. Luckily the chain that nearly took my head off had snapped before it got embedded into my hide.

"Is she..."

"Last I heard she needed surgery."

I slapped Dmitri's knee off my desk and grabbed a pen he'd sat on. Snatched my jacket off the ground and shook it out. Several long, deep claw tears stretched across the back, shredding it open. Dried blood cracked across the leather. I poked the pen into the pockets. My lock picking tools, and more pens tumbled out the first. But from the second, I managed to wrap the shattered remnants of a silver chain around the pen. It had thin, nondescript links and rusty blood stains. Not unlike the one stuffed into Sloane's chest. Or, really, not unlike any necklace chain one could simply buy off the internet.

Still. Interesting.

I dropped the chain between the pages of my notebook and snapped it shut.

Dmitri sniffled.

When I looked up, fresh, red tears welled in the old bat's glowing eyes.

"Have you really not checked in on her?"

"I shelter regrets. An eternity's worth."

"Certainly ain't too late to make some things right," I said, hoping it was true.

"Nay. I fear my regrets drive me mad with longing to be reunited with my Rosemond that I—I perceive her when she is not truly with me."

If I didn't know any better, I'd say I heard the ghosts of Pearl, Rusti, and Agatha cackling in their graves. "Wild thought here, but say, like the ghost of her?"

"Double nay! Not as some silly specter," Dmitri twirled his mustache while he seemed to contemplate what to say next. "Her essence. Her will. Always such strength she possessed. Twas what drew me to Sloane. Her brashness, oh, how it reminded me of my dear Rosemond. Yet I was so wrong. She is not my truest love. Now she is cursed by my mistake."

Stupid, lovesick, idiot. Centuries of grief and longing for this woman was what had driven him mad. But that's the fate that befalls you when you fall for dame with mortality. Pity swelled in my throat. Notebook stuffed into my waistband, I approached and patted his knee.

"Perhaps, old pal. It's time to give up that ghost. Let Rosemond rest."

"That'll be difficult for her, what with her bones jacked from their final resting place," said Isla.

I whirled around. She stood on the stair. Hip cocked and scratching the bandage on her neck. Though the ankles were rolled up, revealing her jewelry, my sweatpants snuggly embraced her hips and thighs. The t-shirt fit her more loosely. She appeared to have tied a knot at the bottom, exposing her navel, and one sleeve hung lazily off her shoulder. I was lousy at picking shirts. There were holes in the armpits and collar. The fabric was thin. She was cold. As evidenced by the way her nipples pushed against the cotton.

"What?" screeched Dmitri.

"Oh," Isla looked at me. "You haven't told him?"

I bit my lip. Tension gripped my back and chest and neck. My muscles coiled so tight they ached. Dammit woman. I told her to stay upstairs.

Isla pressed a palm against her chest and rolled her shoulders.

Dmitri grabbed me by the shirt collar, whipping me around to face him. Eyes blood red and fangs long and sharp and tinted the color of rust. Still sat on my desk, the old bat lifted me off the ground.

"How? Who? Why, Gregorio, hath ye not yet recovered my dearest?"

"Technically, you hired me only to find the barista."

"I employed thee to return to me my truest love. The bones of her first vessel count."

I flung my hands up between us, breaking Dmitri's hold on my shirt. I landed feet first back on the floor. Stepped back, out of his immediate reach, only to bump into Isla's soft, warm body. We teetered. She wrapped her arms around my waist to steady her balance. I clutched her hand at my hip, which had slipped inside my wrongly buttoned shirt, and pressed her hot palm against me until her feet steadied. Once the threat of weebling, wobbling, and falling down subsided I gently pulled her around to my front. She squeezed me. I returned the gesture. Stupidly, instinctively. Without thinking. My arm around her waist, I held her heaving chest tight against mine. Just for a moment. A mere breath of time.

It was too long.

I pushed her away just as Isla's heart began to beat frantically.

Dmitri's eyes narrowed. His cold, deadly gaze drifted from the bandage on Isla's throat, to the warzone of papers on the floor, to the bloody mess that was my sofa. Rats. I missed her bra flung over the armrest.

"Oh em gee. I see what hath distracted thee so."

"Not what it looks like," I said.

In the unfortunate and exact same moment Isla uttered: "Might as well consider yourself matchmaker."

We stared at Isla. I, hoping to convey a pleading sense of sweet hell woman please for the love of your cat shut the fang up. Dmitri's stare was hellfire and rage. I stepped between them.

"She didn't mean—"

"No, yeah, I did—will you stop with this meat shield thing," she poked around my shoulder. "Listen, guy, you hired Greg to find your girl. He really just found me. Things... escalated. The boy needs to relax once in a while, give him a break."

"You've lied to me Gregorio. Vastly uncool."

Dmitri stood. In a single, slow, elegant stride he disembarked from my desk and was looming over me. His withered form was hunchbacked and frail. But this Dmitri, young and healthy and freshly fed, was taller than me. He tossed a lock of hair from his eye, glowering down. Crazy vamp dragged a long talon deliberately down the length my arm, coming to rest at the crook of my elbow, where Isla's hands clutched me like a manacle.

Damn us all. His was angry. I wasted too much time chasing after Isla I ignored his case and now I'd pay the price. Just like I had for ignoring Mrs. Cabroni's calls. You're on a real winning streak, aren't you, old boy? I ignored Isla's protests not to shield her and braced myself for his attack. Perhaps, if he was clumsy and I quick, I could snap his neck before he reached for Isla.

"Ye made me believe that you were a grass untouching eff boy who'd never known the endless joy – and fathomless sorrow – of finding one's heart soul," he droned. "Of being joined by truest love."

I slapped his claw away. "It ain't like that."

"Greg is, okay f-boy is a big stretch, but he's not a liar. You're getting this all wrong. It was just a hookup," said Isla. "Don't go planning our wedding, alright. ... Uh, please."

Dmitri's lips curled back into knowing smile. I hated it. He extended his arms again, wide enough for a bear hug, and before I could retreat he'd clasped those claws over both mine and Isla's shoulders and smooshed us together.

"The wedding shall be magnificent," he giggled. "Do not waste this chance at love, Gregorio. Sink your teeth into her ti—"

"Don't you say it."

"Timber." Dmitri cleared his throat. Way to pivot. "I delight in your happiness. In fact, I shall pay your dowry Gregorio. Nay! The whole affair! I know I am not your sire but tis the least I could offer. I was thinking lilies. Yes, lilies would be lovely. Perfect for both weddings and funerals, no?"

Beside me, Isla shrugged and nodded.

My cheeks burned. "There's no wedding, Dmitri, you loon!"

"No, not yet there isn't," he dug those claws into my shoulder, a string of drool dangling from one fang (Isla swore, squirming against me). "Not until you find my beloved or else, I fear, you may also feel the wrenching pain of having your truest love vanish—"

"No," I said.

"No?"

"Nah, Dmitri. I think I'm done with your loony demands."

I shrugged out of his grasp. That hot, feral sensation clawed at the insides of my ribs. Dmitri snarled. Especially after I snapped the wrist of his hand holding Isla. The bone shattered and bent at an impossible angle, pointing his fingers right back at his own nose. Good. Kick me around all you want, I could take it. But he didn't deserve to touch her. I wouldn't allow him to again. Ever.

"Ye swine! Ahh!"

He'd get over it. The bones were already beginning to pop back into place.

I grabbed Dmitri by the hair. Pulling roughly, I dragged the buffoon to my coat rack, draping his wet cloak over his head and kicking his muddy shoes into his shins. He whined.