How Nina Got Her Fang Back: Accidental Quickie (Accidentally Paranormal Series Book 13) (3 page)

January motioned to her private bathroom behind her. “Please. Be my guest.”

As Nina strode toward the bathroom, her long legs eating up the short distance, January paid close attention to her tense frame and flashing coal-black eyes.

This was a clear sign Nina’s circumstance left her feeling out of control these days. Unbeknownst to Nina, she’d played right into the jackhole’s hands. This was exactly what he wanted the clan to hear, and because he was monitoring every session she’d have with the ex-vampire via hidden camera, they’d all see Nina’s abrasive behavior.

And January hated that, because Nina wasn’t just angry and reckless. She was so much more. She was a tangled web of brutal honesty, uncensored, crude assessments, and ride-or-die loyalty.

January didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to poke around in this woman’s life and find every fault then magnify them by ten thousand so it looked like she was unfit to be a part of the clan.

But if she didn’t, she’d pay. And she’d pay dearly.

S
he’d pay because Artem Casteel, a.k.a the Jackhole, would make her pay. Artem, sire to a small vampire clan of three thousand, and current leader of the “bring me Nina Blackman-Statleon’s head on a pike” coalition, was a twenty-first century vampire supremacist and a big, very vocal head honcho consultant on the paranormal council of elders.

He’d wormed his way in by greasing palms and doing “special” favors…but it was his personal agenda that worried January and kept her up at night.

The centuries-old vampire knew exactly what he was doing—the sociopath. What bothered him was, he also knew
January
knew exactly what he was doing.

He wanted a pure race of vampires, and in an effort to get what he wanted, he’d invested a great deal of time convincing the other vampire clans and paranormal council members it was what they wanted, too.

Artem and his closest right-hand officials in Clan Casteel didn’t like any kind of crossbreeding, either. Worse, he didn’t like Nina and Greg’s choice to raise their baby daughter, Charlie, with the knowledge she was both vampire and genie.

He’d used Nina and her last debacle with a mob of Russian bears to rile the elders of the council to a frothy frenzy like one would whip a good meringue to a stiff peak. He’d wooed them with his charm and his charisma.

He’d swayed them, misguided them, manipulated them until he’d turned Nina into the shining example of everything the clans shouldn’t want mucking up their carefully constructed world.

And he’d done it until he’d turned an unwitting Nina into the equivalent of a human’s modern-day Antichrist.

He’d also put January right in the middle of it all, with the clans and the paranormal council of elders setting their sights on
her
to rid them of this alleged blight on their vampirism.

They wouldn’t dirty their hands by doing the deed personally, nor would they risk the wrath of Nina’s husband, Greg, should he hear about the rail they planned to run Nina out of town on.

No, they’d let January play the role of bad guy, and they’d let her do it because, unbeknownst to the council, Artem had
blackmailed
her into doing it—literally made her volunteer. And January’s council, her very own coven, had gone along with this idea that Nina was some sort of danger to the world of paranormals.

Not just because they’d bought Artem’s hype, but because it looked good to have one of their prestigious own represent them in securing safety for the paranormal world. The coven was all about appearances and keeping in good stead with their fellow paranormal peers.

And now it was all in January’s lap.

But she had a plan. A plan she’d prayed to the goddess would work every night since she’d been given this heinous task. If she could just get Nina to use that soft, gooey center of hers instead of her fists and verbally abusive words, half her battle would be fought.

But she had to be careful not to use her magic to get her to do that. Which meant she had to be sharper and more cunning than ever.

Swallowing, January sought to soothe Nina. Bring her back into focus, disengage her, redirect her to kinder thoughts. She needed an ally, not a foe. Leaning back in her chair, she mused about how to deal with the ex-vampire who’d all but clenched a fist in preparation to clock her square in the head.

So January tiptoed forward anyway. This was a good plan. It was solid. Mostly. And it wasn’t like Nina wasn’t struggling. She was desperately trying to keep her head above water while she ate her way through her fears.

January wanted her to see that even though she was no longer a vampire, she was worthy. She was still just as good on the inside without her vampirism, without her strength—she could still contribute. She’d just have to show it in other ways.

As Nina took her seat again, she rolled her tongue along the inside of her cheek and waited.

January broke the silence. “So, okay, cheesy metaphors aside, wanna tell me why you decided to listen to your friends and come see me? I suppose you didn’t have to. Their opinions must mean something to you, yes?”

Nina licked her lips and smacked them, but her defiant coal-black eyes were no longer raging, they were softer. “Sure. They mean something. They’re my family. They all mean something to me. We’ve been together a long damn time.”

January nodded and scrolled Nina’s chart. “I see that. Eight years, almost nine now. Plenty of memories made, I’d guess.”

“Feels like fucking eight hundred years most days,” she responded then cackled.

“Yeah. Family can do that to you. Do you feel like they interfere too often? Stick their noses into your life too much? Dole out advice when you don’t want it.”

Nina rolled her gorgeous eyes. “You’re kidding, right? Fuck yeah, I think that. Didn’t you just see Wanda dunk me in this chair like I was a fucking NBA basketball and force me to have my head shrunk? Doesn’t that say ‘stick your cute, perky nose in where it doesn’t belong’ to you?”

“Ever ask them to butt out? Set boundaries?”

“Nope.”

January cocked her head, leaning forward on the desk separating them. “Because?”

“Because that’s who the fuck they are. That’s how they love me and everyone around them. Some people show their love with food, like Arch, Wanda’s manservant. He cooks and dotes to show his love. Ass-Sniffer and Mother Hen coddle you, smother the flip out of you, make you shop with them, Skype with them. Who am I to tell them they can’t love me in the only way they seem to know how? They coddle. I slap their hands. They coddle some more. It’s a cycle. But it’s one I’m unwilling to break because that’s how they show their love. I show mine by calling them snarky names and giving them shit because that’s who I am. I accept them for who they are.”

“And that’s why you’re here. They loved/smothered/coddled you into seeing me because you’re struggling with some pretty serious anger issues since your accident, correct? Issues that have almost cost you your life?”

Now she sank deeper into the chair, pulling her hoodie back up over her head and crossing her booted feet at the ankles. This was what made Nina vulnerable—afraid. Expressing her fears out loud in words.

Nina didn’t look at her when she spoke; her eyes fell to the floor and her jaw remained stiff. “I’m here because they think I’m going to get myself killed with the kind of work we do for OOPS—because I can’t keep up the way I did when I was a vampire. Because I’ve been a fucking vampire for eight years and I don’t know what the fuck to do with myself if I can’t go into some crazy battle for a client with the twins on either side of me. I don’t know what to do when they leave me out of the fray. It’s like I’m the receptionist, left to do all the damn paperwork, and they’re the heavies. I thought I was getting tired of never being able to have chicken wings again, but…”

January watched Nina’s slender throat work, the visible effort she made when she swallowed to bite back the emotion she didn’t want to burden everyone with. The emotion attached to her immortality—or lack thereof.

“Do you miss being a vampire, Nina?” January asked softly.

Now she lifted her chin, clearly refusing to give in to an emotion she considered weak. “Define ‘miss’.”

“I’d prefer
you
did,” she replied, her tone firm but her smile sympathetic.

As January gave Nina time to consider her request, she put herself in Nina’s work boots.

To lose something that was an integral piece of you—be it a limb, an organ, a friend or parent—was the equivalent of losing a power. Being a vampire had defined Nina, had given her purpose, a reason to get up each day. She was a savior, and she liked the role of hero.

She didn’t like it because she was egotistical—not in the least. She didn’t want praise. In fact, adulation made her squirm in extreme discomfort. What this ex-vampire
did
like was knowing she’d likely come out the victor. It made her feel helpful when for so long, she’d felt helpless.

She’d grown up in a tough neighborhood, raised by her grandmother, with a mother who was a drug addict. She couldn’t control her mother or her eventual death, but Nina could certainly try to control the loss of someone else’s life. Each time she saved someone, she was saving her mother. That much was clear from all the information January had been given.

Those almost omnipotent powers were now long gone, and she was floundering to find her place amongst a group of saviors who worried themselves sick over her, and had gone to great lengths to keep her out of the messy stuff.

But Nina didn’t look at Wanda and Marty as two people who only wanted to keep her safe when they were on a case. To her, this was insulting, a slap in the face, a notion her two best friends thought she was weak—and if Nina hated anything, she hated weakness.

But this last time, the event that had given Artem the green light to request the council probe deeper, was the time Nina had almost been killed by a stray bullet.

When Nina didn’t answer, January pressed her with a gentle nudge. “Nina? Can you define why you miss being a vampire?”

But the ex-vampire shut right back down. “Like I said, I miss being able to keep up.”

“Do you feel differently now that your friends have powers and you don’t? Does that make you feel less like you’re part of this intimate group you’ve created with them?”

Nina bristled. The signs were in her body language and her tone. “You mean like inferior or some shit?”

“No. I mean less included. Marty can still take on a hundred linebackers without blinking an eye, Wanda can do the same. Do you feel like you’re no longer doing your part with OOPS, or you no longer belong because they’re technically different than you now?”

Her lips thinned as she looked down at her feet. “I’ll tell you what I feel. I feel like one of those two dingbats is gonna get hurt because they have all these whiny feelings you chicks are so big on, and they take those into consideration instead of taking fucking action when we’re in the middle of a crisis. I’m not afraid to make the hard choices and act on them. I’m the muscle…
was
the muscle,” she murmured, looking back down at her hands, now folded in her lap.

“You definitely made a hard choice when you threw yourself in front of that Queen Sangria—”

“Angria. Her name was Angria. Can’t you read? Marty wrote all that shit out for you when she filled out the forms. Of which there were nine hundred frillion. I can’t believe you didn’t ask for a lung and my damn kidney.”

“Okay then, Angria. You put yourself in harm’s way to save someone—”

“
Toni
. Her name is Toni. And she’s a good kid. A really good kid who’d had some shitty times.”

January nodded, tucking a stray hair from her face behind her ear as she noted how important it appeared to Nina that she hear Toni’s name. Sometimes that meant the patient was keeping a tally in her head. A checklist of sorts. In this case, the kind of checklist made when a life was saved.

“Right, Toni,” January repeated. “You saved Toni. You didn’t think about the consequences, you didn’t consider you’d end up hurt. You acted. You made the hard choice.”

“And? You givin’ out shiny medals today? I don’t want a standing O. I did what I did. End of.”

January sat with that for a moment, allowing Nina’s facial expressions and body language to do the talking before she asked, “Do you regret making that choice, Nina?”

“Nope,” she said almost before the entire question was out of January’s mouth. “I’d do it again. The kid needed help. I helped. I’ll say it again. She’s a good kid who had an effed-up row to hoe. She didn’t deserve to get snuffed out before her life had even really begun.”

How could anyone not see that this woman was nothing but an asset to her clan? She was bloody fearless, and above all, selfless. But it didn’t matter because she wasn’t supposed to be shining a light on Nina’s assets. She was supposed to be shining a spotlight on her faults, as per that fuckhead Artem.

Stirring in her chair, January decided to delve into the heart of the problem Nina was having. Accepting her mortality now that her life was solely built around being a vampire.

“But that also means it’s taken your longevity away. You’re no longer immortal, Nina. Your husband, Charlie, Carl, all your friends—
they are
.”

There was a tense pause, where January was sure she was going to have to break out her magic wand to keep Nina from jamming her up against a wall and crushing her skull, but then she appeared to find her own wall. The one she’d constructed in her mind to keep her anguish in check. One she wasn’t going to let January climb over and most certainly wasn’t going to allow to be disturbed.

“I know what the fuck it means, Head Shrinker. I kinda don’t feel like you’re telling me anything new here. How is you telling me what I already know helpful?”

January smiled. “I’m not supposed to tell you anything new. You’re supposed to find something new on your own. You’re supposed to hear it out loud instead of keeping it locked up in your head. Sometimes, actions aren’t always louder than words. I’m just here to guide you to making peace with what your life will become now that you’re human again.”