An excerpt from
COME HELL OR HIGH WATER
By Michele Bardsley

Advanced Reading Copy
Please Forgive All Errors

“Off to the ol’ coffin, Phoebe?” asked Connor Ballard. He’d finished his shift at the Old Sass Café a few minutes early and had helped me finish mine. We’d wiped down tables together, and flirted all the while. He was Scottish, so every one of his words sounded like melted sugar.

“Ha. Ha.” I’d been a vampire for nearly four years now. A few weeks after my son, Danny, was born, I was killed. I woke up undead, sporting a shiny new set of fangs and no heartbeat.

Oh, it gets better. Not only had I become a vampire, I had the ability to control demonkind. Y’see, every bloodsucker gets the basic package: glamour, strength, speed, the inability to tan. Then each of the seven vampire Families have a different super power.

I’m from the Family Durga. I can summon demons, send them back to the Pit, make them clean my house. They really hate scrubbing toilets. (Who doesn’t, right?) I’m joking. I wouldn’t let a demon in my house on purpose. Woe to the Pit dweller who even tried.

Thanks to the Consortium, we lived in a safe paranormal community protected by an invisible force field. Technology and magic at their finest. Ever since the Invisi-Shield went operational, we’ve enjoyed some peace and quiet. The town’s prospered. Vampires, dragons, witches, sidhe, lycanthropes, and even a few ailuranthropes, or were-cats, had settled down here.

Connor and I leaned against my car, which was parked in front of the Café, and flicked glances at each other. It was a few minutes past 4 a.m., which was closing time for most of Broken Heart. Nearly all the lights on Main Street were off, including the neon sign for the Café.

According to Connor, he was Ghillie Dhu, a Scottish fairy. Once, they lived in birch trees and used their powers to protect the forests. But the Ghillie Dhu numbered too few these days. So, he’d moved here and I’d hired him as the short-order cook. It seemed to me he should’ve been a gardener, or maybe even joined the security team. God knows he was built like a warrior.

Even though I managed the place now, I’d been waitressing at the Café since I was sixteen. I didn’t figure death should stand between me and a paycheck. Besides, the Café was like a second home to me.

I went by my maiden name, Phoebe Allen, though I’d been Phoebe Tate for all of two minutes. A quickie marriage to the guy who’d knocked me up turned out to be a big-assed mistake. Don’t get me wrong. Jackson Tate was nice enough, and definitely a good daddy. But we sucked as a couple and called it quits before our kid was born. We shared custody of Danny, and since it was the summer, my son was with his father. Jackson had taken him to Florida yesterday, the start of a two-week vacation at Disneyworld. I was in that mommy limbo of feeling relief (four-year-old’s absence = sleep and quiet and tidiness) and the ache of missing my kid, shaded by irrational panic that something might happen to him if I wasn’t there to protect him.

“Am I borin’ you, lass?”

“No,” I said, laughing. “I’m just thinking ‘bout stuff.”

“You miss your boy.”

I was surprised he’d guessed at my thoughts. Connor had never struck me as the familial type. I looked at him beneath my lashes. His face was slashes and angles. Hard-edged. Even the look in his eyes was all knives. The only softness I detected was the lushness of his mouth, the bottom lip slightly fuller than the top, lips that showcased perfect, white teeth. And there was the dimple, of course. He had chocolate brown hair that he wore long; the ends brushed his shoulders. His eyes were the color of Crown Royal, rich amber, filled with secrets.

Wicked handsome.

He exuded a caged strength I’d wanted so badly to see unleashed in bed.

Whew.

It was unusual for me to waste time flirting. Or hoping for, you know, a little nookie. Well, not all-the-way nookie. Since sucking blood was such a sensual act, the original seven vampires magicked up the Binding. If you had intercourse, you were bound to your lover for a hundred-years. Needless to say, most of us were careful about mealtime.

Mm-mmm. Connor sure knew how to get a girl riled. A secretive look, a quiet compliment, an unexpected touch … yeah, he’d employed them all over the last month.

I liked him. More than I should, really.

“Sunrise is only a couple hours away,” I said patting the hood of my beat up 1965 Mustang. She needed a paint job and some interior work, but her innards were top-notch. I’d taken my baby to our local mechanic Simone Sweet, and she’d made the car purr like a baby tiger. “Think I’ll take Sally for last one run before bedtime.”

Connor’s lips quirked. “Mustang Sally?”

“Well, she was brand new in nineteen-sixty-five,” I said, grinning.

He laughed. Oh, lord. He was sexy. I turned toward him, inched closer.

“Well then,” he said, his gaze on my mouth, “I suppose I should kiss the pretty girl goodnight.”

I rolled my eyes and punched his shoulder. “Lame.”

He put his hand over his heart as if I’d wounded him there.

“You have that fancy brogue,” I teased. “And you can’t give me a better line than that one?”

He cupped my face and kissed me.

His lips were firm and warm. He tasted like cinnamon and coffee. His fingers threaded through my hair and my hands flattened against his muscled chest. His tongue slipped past the seam of my lips, beckoning me, daring me.

I met his passion with my own.

Heat poured through me, every nerve ending pinging with need, every molecule within me wanted. We parted, briefly, he gulped in a breath, and then he re-captured my mouth, deepening the kiss, his tongue dueling with mine, his heart thundering under my palms.

Anything I’d ever had before was nothing compared to this maelstrom. I wanted to breathe in Connor, absorb him, take him into me and become whole.

“Lass.” He pulled free leaning his forehead against mine. He inhaled greedily, shuddering. Inhaling wasn’t really an option for me, but quivering? That I could do.

My mouth felt swollen and tingly.

I looked down. My white Nikes and his black boots touched, our knees rubbing against each other, and I thought: We could be naked.

“Come home with me, Connor.”

He drew me in close and tipped my chin so that I was staring into his eyes. An old word floated to the surface of my mind: aurum. Latin for gold. His eyes were tarnished with the kind of sorrow I’d only seen in my mother’s troubled gaze, usually when she was thinking of my father, who’d died when I was fourteen. I wondered about the tragedy that had dulled the shine of Connor’s gaze.

“When you look at me like that,” he said, running his fingers down my throat, “it’s like you can see into my soul.”

“No.” I stilled his roving hand and took it to kiss his fingertips. “I just see you.”

He sucked in a breath, and I was surprised my words had affected him so. Was this the game people played when they felt like their hearts had met before the world began?

No, Pheebs. Animal attraction was not love.

“You wish to spend the night with me?” he asked. “And you make this choice of your own free will?”

His formal language threw me, but I went with it. Impulsive, thy name is Phoebe Allen. “Yes,” I murmured. “I choose you, Connor.”

He kissed me until my knees felt wobbly, and I knew, right then, I was in for one helluva night.

Connor slid into the passenger seat, as if he belonged there, his Clyde to my Bonnie. I imagined him riding shotgun, wondered if he’d leave with me if I asked.

I glanced at him and saw him staring out the window, his eyes lifted to the full moon. For a moment, he seemed as though he might be praying.

Then he looked at me, and his eyes were not those of a penitent man.

Pre-order @ Amazon.com