A Girls Guide to Vampires (2 page)

"True," Roxy nodded.

"Whatever happened to good old fashioned falling in love at first sight? That's all I ask for, a little romance and candlelight and staring meaningfully into each other's eyes, knowing you've met your perfect mate the second you see him."

"Too many creeps out there these days," Roxy replied. "Love at first sight has been replaced by a comprehensive credit check."

Miranda's soft hum took on a decidedly strident tone. I listened for a moment to the murmured words, but could make nothing of them.

"Shhh."
I pinched Roxy. "You're going to blow your chances with the Goddess if you keep flapping your lips when you're supposed to be concentrating."

"You're the one who's supposed to be concentrating." Roxy pinched me back. "I already know what qualities I want in my perfect man. I bet you haven't thought about what you want in a man at all."

"Both of you are supposed to be concentrating," Miranda intoned between hums.

Roxy and I looked guiltily at one another.

"It really is sweet of you to spend your evening on this, since you had to close your shop for the ritual cleansing and all," Roxy smiled.

I nodded.

"You're a true friend, Miranda," Roxy went on. "I hope you know I wouldn't have asked you to go to all this work if it hadn't been an emergency, but what with that date last night with Mr. Octopus Hands, well, a girl just has to do something when she hits the 250th date mark with nary a boyfriend in sight to show for her trouble. And, of course, Joy needs all the help she can get."

"Hey!" I glared at Roxy. She just grinned back at me.

"In fact, I've been worried about her for some time. She's got a dead-end job, an ex-boyfriend who could bore an ice
cube,
and no interests outside the library. If we don't take matters into our own hands, she'll end up single and chaste the rest of her life, living in a small pink house with thirty-seven cats all named Kevin, with no one to talk to but her successful, happy, catless friends."

"You're delusional," I said with great dignity. "And for the record, you have the same dead-end job I have."

"So if you don't see her soul mate in the immediate future," Roxy continued, ignoring my interruption, "I for one would appreciate it if you would lie and say you did. She's desperate, if you know what I mean."

And lonely.
I was willing to admit that.
Very lonely.
I swirled the ice in my glass around and reflected on my loneliness. "I'm not desperate, Rox, I'm just… available."

"Well, there's always Germany if we can't find nice American men."

Miranda opened her eyes to shoot a questioning look at Roxy.

"Germany," I reminded her. "Roxy and I are part of the team going to the Frankfurt Book Festival. I have to admit, I wouldn't mind one of those dishy blond German men. You think some of them might be wearing lederhosen?
Hubba hubba!"

Miranda opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, and shook her head. She continued the soft chanting, a prayer, according to the cheat sheet Roxy had given me earlier, to the Goddess for strength and enlightenment.

I flicked ice chips at Davide for a few minutes until Miranda opened her eyes and pinned me back with a look that could strip the stripes off a tiger. "Now is the time for both of you to focus your attention on envisioning your ideal man. You must open yourself to the image engraved on your heart and your soul. Focus on that image, allowing it to fill your awareness, narrowing your thoughts until they are made up only of him."

"Oooh, goody, fantasy time!"
I rubbed my hands together and thought of the ideal man made up of the better parts of Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, and Oded Fehr, all rolled into one luscious, droolworthy package.

"Dibs I go first!" Roxy said quickly. I made mean eyes at her. When Miranda sighed and nodded, Roxy sat up as tall as a person who barely tops five feet could, closed her eyes, and started ticking items off her fingers. "OK, here's my order: someone not too
tall, that
is important point number one. Lord knows I've been on enough dates with tall men. Do you know how disconcerting it is to find yourself staring a man straight in the nipples? I'd like someone of medium height, please. And just to make things easier on you, I won't be picky about hair color or eye color, or even how handsome the man is, as long as he has really nice hands, knows how to cook, and wants lots and lots of children."

Miranda smiled as she got to her feet and began sprinkling rose petals around the Circle, still chanting, pausing to make gestures of protection to the four compass points.

"And he's got to have a good sense of humor. I'm afraid that is a must-have; I'll have to return any prospects
who
turn out to be humorless. Life is simply too short to be stuck with a guy who can't be silly once in a while."

"I understand. Joy?"

I glared at my friend. "Geez, Rox, leave something for the rest of us to work with, will you?"

She smirked at me. Miranda cocked an eyebrow in such a manner that I immediately cleared my mind and tried to picture the perfect man.

"Um, well, tall, dark, and handsome goes without saying. Roxy was right about one thing, a sense of humor is good,
I'd
prefer a man who likes to laugh."

Roxy rolled her eyes.

"And… um… well… I'd… um… like someone who's nice to animals."

"Bo-ring!"

"And one who likes to read."

"So in other words, you want Beaver Cleaver's dad?"

I ignored Roxy's comments, deciding if I was going to do this, I might as well do it right. I thought for a long moment about what I wanted in a man, what I really wanted, what secret desires were hidden deep within me. Slowly, out of the everyday confusion of my mind, an image wavered before me, growing solid as the gentle herb-scented night breeze washed over me. With the brightening image came the words, hesitant and charged with a strange emotion, as if it weren't really me speaking. "He will send shivers of delight down my spine with the dark cloak of intrigue wrapped around him. He will captivate me, fascinate me,
fold
me into the air of mystery and adventure that surrounds him, making my blood sing with desire. He will need me, depend on
me,
trust me where he has trusted no other. He will light my dark hours, and his love will shine as a beacon that will guide me through the most twisted of paths. He is my strength, my faith, and I will not really begin to live until I know his heart is mine."

"Ooooh," Roxy breathed. "That is so romantic. You should write that down."

I blinked as the image in my mind turned to mist and evaporated. I felt a bit dizzy, like I'd been turning somersaults down a long hill. I was more than a little bit weirded out by the whole thing until I remembered the gin and tonics I'd been sipping on. Although alcohol had never triggered that sort of a vision before, there was a first time for everything.

"I want all that on my list, too!"

"Too late, it's mine," I told Roxy with a dazed grin. She punched me in the arm.

"Is that all?" Miranda asked us both, completing the circle and returning to her spot.

"It is for me, since old greedy-guts there won't share the good stuff on her list," Roxy said huffily.

I ran down my mental checklist. Yup, it was all there, all but for one last item…

"I have one more request," I said.

Miranda paused in the act of lighting the large candle sitting before her.

"Big private parts," I told them. "That's important, don't you think? I mean, size does matter, no matter what they say, right? And since we are talking
the
man for me, my soul mate, he'll be the only one I sleep with for the rest of my life, so I think he should have really nice personal equipment.
Something memorable.
The phrase 'hung like a horse' comes to mind."

"Joy Martine Randall!" Roxy choked.

I made an innocent little moue at her. "What's wrong? Mad you didn't think of it first?"

Her hazel eyes flashed a warning at me. I cackled. She
was
mad I had beaten her to big genitals.

Miranda gave me a look of martyrdom that had me biting back my cackle to a more seemly giggle. "OK, you don't have to include that last item on the official request list. I can live with a man with a regular set of dangly bits as long as the rest of the items are there. If he meets the other requirements, I'll be happy."

Miranda sighed and shook her head. "You're so flippant, both of you, I don't know how you expect me to help you find the man you are searching for if all you're thinking of is the size of his crotch and whether or not he's likely to laugh at your jokes. This is serious; the power of the Goddess is nothing to be taken lightly. You should be reaching out with your heart and soul to find this man, not parroting the silly ideas you've soaked up from those romances you both read."

Roxy and I instantly united in a solid front against her condemnation of our beloved romances.

"They aren't silly or horrible; romances are upbeat and fun to read," my bosom buddy protested.

"Yeah," I added, flipping another ice chip at Davide. He gave me an open-mouthed silent hiss that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Skeptic I might be, but there was
no reason to be stupid and tempt powers I wasn't sure didn't exist
.

Miranda stilled. "What about those vampire books you are both addicted to?"

Something in the air between us thickened. I wondered if an electrical storm was on its way. "What about them?" I asked.

"They're dangerous."

"Dangerous? How can books be dangerous? They're just a series of stories about heroes who happen to be vampires, Miranda. It's not like they advocate the drinking of blood or anything."

"Some people," she said to me, without taking her gaze off Roxy, "believe them to be a guide to their fate."

I looked between her and Roxy. The latter was sitting quietly, picking at the leather thong on her sandal, not meeting our eyes.

"Some people believe every word written in them to be the truth."

I shook my head. "No one really believes in the
Book of Secrets'
Dark Ones," I told Miranda. They're just really dark, broody heroes that turn a lot of women on,
myself
included, I'm not too horribly embarrassed to say. Just because we like the stories doesn't mean we believe that vampires really exist."

"I do,"
came
a soft voice.

I stared at my friend of nineteen years.

"I do," she said louder, with more confidence, an obstinate set to her jaw that I knew well. "I believe they really exist. C. J. Dante, the author of the
Book of Secrets
series has done extensive research in the Moravian Highlands, the area where the Dark Ones live. He even moved there so he could be closer to them, so he could study them and learn their ways. I believe they exist."

She must have felt the weight of two sets of disbelieving eyes, because she hiked her chin up even higher. "Well, I do!"

"Roxy…" I shook my head. "Honey, I know it's a tempting thought to believe that such things really exist, but come on!
Vampires?
Men who drink blood and burn up in the sun and wander around all tormented and angsting because they haven't found the right woman to save their soul? I'll admit some of the guys you've dated might meet a few of those qualifications, but we're going to have to have a long, long talk if you're going to start believing in ghosties and goulies and things that go bump in the night."

I had forgotten in whose house I was sitting.

" 'There
are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'," Miranda said quietly.

"Yeah, but I don't think Shakespeare had Moravian Dark Ones in mind when he wrote that," I argued.

She just looked at me with light gray eyes that reminded me of a full moon at its brightest. Her belief in things that I doubted made me uncomfortably aware of just what I was doing sitting in a circle of candles. "Look, why don't we get on with this? Dr. Miller wants me to re-catalog the entire biology collection before we leave for Germany, and I'd like to get some sleep before I face a bunch of books on fungi and spores and mildew in the morning."

"No," Roxy said stubbornly. "I want to hear why Miranda believes in the good powers she uses, but won't admit the possibility of a darker side of the same power."

Miranda shook her
head,
her red curls a riot of crimson and gold in the candlelight. "I never said I don't believe in a dark power, Roxanne. I do, most profoundly. There are things I have seen that I hope I never see again, but that type of danger is not what I'm speaking about. I'm talking about the power of persuasion, the intent of the author who includes in his fiction ideas dangerous to your soul."

"Dante writes them as fiction, true," Roxy argued, "but all of his followers know the stories are based on truths he has uncovered during his research. You should see the websites devoted to the genealogies of the people Dante has written about—"