1 Dead Girl's Guide to Style (8 page)

The next day, I was busy in the shop when the door opened and caught my attention. Dean and Jared were now standing in my shop. The air around them had changed. They glared at me. What did they want with me?
They didn’t wear suits this time, but they were still dressed alike. Black pants and shirts. Did they coordinate on purpose?

They continued to stare at me, not saying a word. Finally, I managed, “May I help you?”

Something told me they weren’t there for fashion advice, though by the looks of their ill-fitting clothing they could use a few pointers. They still didn’t speak and I knew that it was time for me to get out of there.

After flashing their fangs, the men lunged forward and grabbed me from behind as I made my way toward the back door. Unfortunately, I hadn
’t been fast enough and they now had a strong hold on me as they dragged me toward the door. Where were they taking me?

I kicked and screamed as they pulled me out the door and to a silver car. My fighting didn
’t seem to have any effect though. It looked as if I was going with them whether I wanted to or not.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded.

Of course they didn’t answer.

“I don’t think Max will like this at all,” I said.

Again, I got no response. Jared shoved me into the back seat of the car and locked the door. There was no way to open the doors from back there, so I was stuck. I swallowed hard and tried to remain calm. Jared climbed into the passenger seat and Dean slipped behind the wheel.

We drove in silence and I still attempted to get them to speak with me. Their lips were sealed though. I thought about smacking them on the back of the head, but that would probably cause an accident.

After making our way across a few streets, Dean turned onto the street where the disputed house was. The next thing I knew, we had pulled up in front of what was now Mona’s house. My eyes widened when they stopped the car and turned off the ignition.

“Why are you taking me here?” I asked.

Finally, Dean said, “You talk too much. Now shut up.”

Yeah, fat chance of that. I
’d talk as long as I still could move my mouth.

Jared pulled me out of the car and forced me across the sidewalk and through the gates toward the house. Had Mona made them bring me here? Was the historical society using the place today? Maybe they were bringing me here? That was one heck of a way to tell me to mind my own business. Maybe they were the ones who had sent me the stake. I didn
’t think they liked that I had gotten involved in the status of this house.

Just as we made it across the path toward the front door, I yanked my arms back in a swift motion. Jared lost his grip on my arm and I sprinted away from them and back out the gate.

Max lived only a couple blocks away. I knew I had to make it to his place without these two catching me again. What I would do when I got to Max’s, I had no idea. What if they had already gotten him? Once he found out about this, I hoped he fired them from the company.

Going to Max’s was my only option. I took off down the sidewalk, not looking back to see if the men were there. I just assumed that they were and I honestly didn
’t want to know just how close they were to catching me again. I ran as fast as I could and made a left and looped back around in the hopes that I would lose them.

After not spotting them, I finished the trip and finally made it to Max
’s place. I ran up to the door and pounded on it. I had to look over my shoulder, but thank goodness the men weren’t back there. That was odd though. Had I really lost them? I was just thankful they weren't back there, but I probably didn’t have long before they found me again. I knocked on Max’s door again, but he still didn’t answer.

That was when I remembered that he was probably at work. I knew where the company was and even though it was a little further, I knew I had to go there.

I made my way to the company, which consisted of several gray warehouse building. The Dupree Company encompassed a large area and I had no idea where to find Max. If I couldn’t find him I would have to ask someone, but I hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. After stepping inside the gate, I somehow managed to slip past the security guard without him looking up. Apparently he was taking a little nap. Some security he provided. I hurried across the parking lot toward the first building that I saw. It looked like it was possibly the main building with the offices. There were a couple smaller buildings on the lot, and I figured I’d look in one of those. Max probably wouldn’t be in the warehouse-looking buildings. I opened the door and stepped into the lobby of the place. Air condition hit me in the face and I welcomed the respite. A few chairs sat on my right with a large hallway up ahead to my left.

No one had noticed me and I saw no one in the place. I stepped across the room and peeked down a hallway. I still didn
’t see anyone, but there were several doors. One of them was open, so I decided to take my chances and see if anyone was in the room. I would ask them where to find Max. I eased down the hallway. I didn’t know why I was being quiet—I guessed because there were no other sounds coming from the building. It was like the place was abandoned.

When I stepped closer to the open door, voices came from inside the room. I eased over so that I could hear what they were saying. I didn’t want to just barge in on people if they were in a business meeting. That was when I heard Max
’s name. I listened for the other voice, but it wasn’t Max.

“We will get to the bottom o
f whether he has it. He can’t keep it from us forever. He will pay for what he has done,” the man said.

That didn’t sound good. I would have to warn Max immediately. Was that why they had been so nice to him
? So that they could do something to him? I turned around to leave, but tripped and groaned on my way down to the floor. The voices stopped and I knew that they had heard me. I jumped to my feet and rushed down the hallway.

“Hey, stop,” the man called out from behind me.

I glanced over my shoulder, but I didn’t stop like I had been instructed. They didn’t need to know why I was there. I couldn’t tell them that I was looking for Max. They would probably do to me what they wanted to do to Max. I hurried toward the door, but I knew the men were running after me.

I’d almost made it to freedom when the man grabbed my arm.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

I turned around to see the man with gray hair staring at me. He had a scowl on his face.

“Call security,” he told the other man.

The man hurried over to the phone at the desk.

“I was lost. I’m sorry. I was just leaving. Sorry if I disturbed you,” I said.

He glared at me and I knew that he wasn
’t buying my story. I thought that it had sounded pretty convincing.

The other man returned. “They’re on the way,” he said.

It didn’t look as if they wanted to let me go without giving them answers as to why I was there. That wasn’t happening though and I sure as heck wasn’t sticking around for security to drag me out either.

“Look, I am leaving. There is no need to call security.” I held my hands up.

“We’ll be the judge of that,” the man said.

Yeah, we’
d see about that. I took off out the door before they had a chance to even blink. They’d have to move a lot quicker than that to keep up with me. I spotted the security guard in the distance, but I slipped out the gate to safety. My hands shook—heck, even my legs were a little wobbly after that confrontation.

Since it looked as if I wasn
’t going to find Max, I decided to call Mona and find out why the men had taken me to her house. She had some explaining to do. Not that I expected her to give me a truthful answer, but I would be able to tell if she was lying.

I dialed Mona’s number and waited for her to pick up. I played over what I was going to say in my mind while the phone rang. I was beyond angry. She had some nerve doing that to me. Who did she think she was?

Just when I thought she wasn’t going to answer, she picked up. She didn’t sound pleased that I had called. Well, I wasn’t pleased that I had been stuffed into a car against my will.

“Do you want to tell me why you had those guys bring me to your house today?” I asked curt
ly. She was lucky that I hadn’t called her a few bad names.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said.

“Oh, save that act,” I said.

I heard her snort through the phone. I knew she was probably glaring at me and possibly baring her fangs.

“You have taken on a very strange attitude lately. Honestly, Hadley, I hope it has nothing to do with Max, because I told you he is bad news.”

“You can act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, but I know what you did and I intend on finding out why,” I said and hung up before she protested again.

I’d added more layers to avoid the sun, but I could only do that for so long before the heat would overcome me. I’d noticed other vampires were doing the same thing. I decided to call my best friend for advice. I didn’t know what I would do next, but if anyone could help me
, she could.

Caitlin
picked up on the first ring. “Do you have any news?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t call it news per se, but I have some interesting tidbits that you might like to know,” I said.

“Oh, quit playing that game, you know I want to hear everything,” she said.

I filled her in on everything that had happened
—being shoved into the car and pulled across the front lawn of Mona’s house.

“You’re lucky they didn’t stuff you into the trunk,” she said.

I snorted. “Yeah, thank goodness for small favors.”

“We have to find out more about Mona,” Caitlin said.

“What do you mean? I think I know about all I need to know. She’s not very nice,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” she said. “If we find out more about her maybe we can find out why she
’s doing all this.”

“Yeah, it probably wouldn
’t be that easy. She must have a lot of things that she kept from me while I was helping her. She always seemed so nice.”

“You never told me much about her. What does she do? Where does she work?” Caitlin asked.

“To be honest, I guess I don’t know much about her. I know that she owns a small gym and that’s about it. She works there a lot and she wanted my help with style,” I said.

“I’m just glad you got her out of those terrible sweatpants. She should never wear those things. Ever.”

“Well, it wasn’t easy. She was really attached to them. But anyway, back to what I know about her. I know that she works a lot and has a very full social life. Plus now she claims to own Max’s house.”

“I bet those men could be found at her gym too,” Caitlin said.

“You’re probably right.”

“We should go to where she works and see what happens.”

“You do remember that she works at a gym? I think I would embarrass myself there. I run for exercise, I don’t think I know how to use the equipment,” I said.

“How hard can it be? We can figure it out,” Caitlin said.

“Won’t she kick us out when she sees us there?”

“Well, that
’s something that we’ll have to figure out when we get there,” she said.

I sighed and then said, “I guess we can give it a try. It wouldn
’t be so bad.”

“Exactly
, and we can ask other people about her too,” she said.

“Suppose we find people who are willing to talk with us, then what?” I asked. “What would we do if we find out something is up with Mona? We can
’t do anything about it.”

“What makes you say that? Of course we can do something about it. We will show her that we aren
’t going to let her bully you. We don’t have to put up with that out of her. She can’t just do whatever she wants,” Caitlin said.

Caitlin
’s words swirled in my mind, and I thought about what would happen if Mona tried to take my business. After all, she’d taken Max’s home. What would I do? She couldn’t do that, could she? No, that wouldn’t be possible.

“We
’ll confront her and demand that she tell us everything. Even about the house and what is going on with Max. We will tell her we want to know if she sent the men too. Then we can get them to leave Max alone too,” she said.

“You make it sound so easy,” I said.

“I intend on making it that easy,” she said.

“I don’t know that they’ve done anything to Max since I haven’t talked to him about this yet,” I said.

“I think this all started the night they took you to the party. They weren’t doing that to be friendly,” she said.

“I guess we have a plan then, don’t we?” I said.

“I guess we do.”

I just prayed that this worked out. Caitlin sounded more confident th
an I’d ever heard her.

“I
’ll pick you up at three and we’ll go right over there. We should probably dress as if we are going to work out. I bought these cute yoga pants that I’ve been wanting to wear anyway,” she said.

“Why did you buy them if you didn
’t have anywhere to wear them?” I asked.

“Because they were cute,” she said.

That made perfect sense to her, so who was I to argue? I grabbed a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and hurried into them before Caitlin got there. I slipped into my pink sneakers. In spite of being dressed for the gym, I couldn’t help but think that I would still seem out of place. I was shy in front of crowds.

After Caitlin arrived, I locked the shop door and we headed down the sidewalk toward her car.

“I’ve noticed something odd with the sunlight lately,” I said.

“What do you mean odd? What’s going on?” she asked.

“I can’t go out into the sun like I used to,” I said.

“Yeah, that is odd. I noticed you’re wearing a lot of clothing for this time of year. I wonder what
happened?”

“I don’t know. There was one thing… when I looked up Max at the library there was an article about vampires going into the sun. It started on the date Max was turned. How odd is that?”

“Very strange,” she said. “You should look into that more.”

“But how would I even find out?”

Caitlin released a deep breath, but didn’t have an answer for me. I didn’t expect her to, but I was glad just to have someone to listen.

“I can’t imagine if I could never go out during the day again. I’d miss all the good shopping. Do you know how many stores stay open twenty four hours?”

Caitlin scrunched her face and said, “Hardly any?”

I leaned my head back against the leather seat. “Exactly. I’d be stuck shopping at Wal-mart.”

Caitlin and I contemplated that scenario in silence. We drove across town to the gym. It was a medium-sized building with lots of windows. I wasn’t sure if that was so that people could look out, or if people could look in and watch everyone running like crazy on those treadmills.

Caitlin and I walked into the gym and I immediately wanted to turn around and leave. Caitlin grabbed my arm and pulled me to the reception desk. No one was there when we approached and I took that as another sign that we should leave.

“No one is here,” I whispered, as if someone would hear us over the roar of the treadmills and loud music.

Caitlin leaned over the desk and a guy popped around the corner.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

She whipped her hand back. “We want to work out, but no one was at the desk,” she said with a frown.

He looked us up and down as if to say we had no business there. Finally he said, “Are you members?”

“No, but we
’d like to try the place out,” she said.

He moved closer to us. “Yeah, I guess that would be okay.”

He waved his arm and gestured for us to go back.

“Don
’t you need us to sign something?” Caitlin asked.

He shook his head. “Not really, I don
’t care whether you join the gym or ever come back.”

“What a nice guy,” I quipped.

Caitlin and I made our way across the gym floor.

“I don
’t know what to do,” I said.

“We should just go use those machines over there. That will give us a good view of the entire gym,” she said as she
pointed across the room.

I nodded. “Yeah, okay
, I guess.”

We made our way through the machines and muscular bodies to the edge of the room. I sat on the machine’s seat and tried to move the arm lifts. Nothing budged.

“I think you have to adjust the weight.” Caitlin gestured.

“Oh yeah, thanks,” I said.

I moved the plate and still couldn’t budge the machine.

“Maybe you
’ll have to use no weight,” she said.

I frowned. “Yeah, I guess so.”

As I did a few reps, I looked around the room for Mona.

“I don
’t see her,” I said.

Caitlin stopped using the machine and wiped her face. “Yeah, I don
’t see her either.”

“Do we really want to continue to work out when we may not see her here at all?” I asked.

Caitlin looked at me for a second and then said, “No, I don’t.”

“Let
’s go look around for her,” I said.

She nodded and we moved away from the machines. I was hoping to blend in with the crowd. If I wanted to look like I belonged there we would have to act like we knew what we were doing. Caitlin and I made it down the hallway that led to the bathrooms and showers
, Beyond that were a few rooms that looked like offices. Maybe one of them was Mona’s. I peeked in the little windows of each room, but didn’t see her—or anyone else, for that matter.

“What
’s that door straight ahead?” Caitlin asked.

“I think it
’s the pool,” I said. “At least I think that was what the sign back there said.” I gestured over my shoulder.

“Let
’s go take a peek,” she said as she motioned over her shoulder.

I followed her down the rest of the hallway. I could already smell the chlorine.

Caitlin opened the door and we peeked in. At first, I thought the pool was empty, which was odd considering the amount of people who were at the gym. I would think someone would want to swim. Maybe something was wrong with the water.

Then I spotted the reason why no one was there. Mona was in the water. Probably no one wanted to swim when she was in there. She apparently had that effect on people.

A small white table with four chairs sat to the left of the door when we entered. Mona’s swimming skills left a lot to be desired. Her arms flailed about in the water and she looked more like a lion that had been dropped into the water and was trying to get out rather than a mermaid. Of course Mona’s personality was more like a shark. Because of her thrashing arm movements, she hadn’t heard us enter the room.

As we neared
, I noticed a purse on top of the table. It was as if a power pulled me toward the handbag.

“It’s a Louis Vuitton Lumineuse PM in the color Infini,” I said, trying not to drool.
“I’ve always wanted one.”

“Why don’t you get one?” Caitlin asked.

“Because I can’t afford it.”

“How much does it cost?”

“Two thousand eight hundred and twenty dollars,” I said without hesitation.

Her eyes widened. “Well, maybe if you stop drinking that
AB negative blood you can save up for one.”

Okay, so I liked to treat myself to the rare blood once in a while, er, more often than I should, but I liked the taste. Yeah, it probably didn’t taste different
than the common stuff. People could say that the rarity made it taste better, but in reality it was probably no different. In my eyes though it was the caviar of blood.

A
piece of paper peeked out from the top of the bag. I inched a little closer for a better view. Mona still hadn’t noticed us.

“What are you doing,” Caitlin whispered.

“I want to see what is on that paper.”

“If she sees you she’ll probably go crazy.”

I waved my hand. “She’s already crazy.”

Once I was close enough I got a good look at the portion of the paper that was sticking up. It was a drawing of a coin. What the symbols meant was beyond me. Mona was an odd one. I pulled my attention away from the drawing and the drool-worthy handbag.

“We should go confront her now,” Caitlin said. “Get her while she’s in the water.”

“She can just climb out,” I reminded her.

Caitlin waved off my comment and walked into the room. I reluctantly followed. When we made our way across the room, Mona was getting out of the pool. She was wearing the green bikini that I’d helped her pick out. The color looked great with her hair and eyes. She must have sensed our presence because she immediately turned around and looked at us.

“What are you doing here?” she spat out.

“We came to ask you questions,” Caitlin said defiantly.

Mona glared again and grabbed a towel. As she dried off, she walked over to us. She stood right in front of me.

“You are a brave woman.” Mona’s fangs peeked out over her bottom lip.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Caitlin asked.

Mona stepped even closer and before either one of us had a chance to say another word she reached over and shoved me into the water.

I fell with a large splash and gasped for air. I wasn
’t a great swimmer. I’d only gone to the pool to goof off in the water, not actually learn to swim. Plus the lifeguard had been a hottie. I thrashed my way over to the edge of the pool and Caitlin reached down and helped me climb out of the water. Needless to say, my clothes and shoes were soaking wet. I was so glad I’d left my phone in the car.