It was a Saturday; no better than the day before, no worse, Sam thought as she looked out of the large-framed kitchen window, waiting for the ham to fry in her skillet. Across from her family home on Mulberry Street, kids were playing in the park. Two houses down, Mrs. Horton, the block's official busybody, was probably working on her list of who was naughty and who was nice. She was always trying to hear who was. She and her best friend Mrs. Fishe would be discussing it, giving everybody a good grilling while they used binoculars to survey the parking lot of Sam's uncle's bar. Mrs. Horton and Mrs. Fishe knew what everybody drove, and they loved to see if one car, or two cars, red cars or blue cars would still be in the parking lot on Saturday or Sunday mornings.
Sighing, Sam realized it was just another Saturday morning like a thousand other in her life. One hour following another, each without a phone call from a one-night-standing dirty rat of a vampire.
Almost one whole week it had been! "Six days, over one hundred and forty-nine hours and no telling how many minutes, all with Prince Petroff Varinski being a no-show," she complained to the empty kitchen.
Sam had not only fallen off cloud nine after their glorious bout of lovemaking; she had crashed to earth in a large splat. After being splattered, she had quickly congealed into a slumping grump, and then slouched into what she regrettably called "the waiting place." Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for Petroff to realize what a fool he had been. Waiting for her heart to start mending a little, and waiting to hear that remarkable raspy voice with the Russian accent.
"What a sap I am! An easy sap!" For boy oh boy, had he given her the royal brush-off. She grumbled, wondering how she could have thought that a vampire who had more shoes under his coffin over the years than Wal-Mart kept in stock could ever fall in love with her. How could she have hoped that the places she would go with Petroff included a happy flight off into the sunrise and a coffin for two. No, that was something only a knucklehead would believe in, a vampire fairy tale.
And there'd been no check, either. Well, she told herself, she hadn't really expected a check. After all, she was the one who'd told him that her services of ridding him of his hurtful phantoms were free, meant to showcase her talents. Still, she couldn't help picturing the proverbial check in the mail. It seemed to represent his acknowledgment of her business service, since he was obviously ignoring her bedroom service.
"I did a great job of removing his ghosts, and quick too. What a cheapskate. For somebody who's really rich… A real gentleman, vampire or not, would have sent a check, flowers, made a phone call—something," she griped, scowling ferociously at the coffeemaker, which only gurgled back.
Not one word had Sam heard from the womanizing vampire. For years she had ignored the various talk shows that spoke and complained about men, as did her friends, but it appeared that every female who had ever been dumped was right on target: The male species were all alike, and they all had two faces. Men wanted to acquire, but once they had acquired, they often wished they had not. The innocent victim—usually a female—always got a shock treatment. And now Sam saw that vampire males clearly had the same unattractive characteristics as human males. When it came to lovemaking, love-taking and getting the hell out of Dodge—or out of Mandelay castle as the case may be—they were all. the same: no good.
Rubbing her forehead, she grimaced. She'd had another one-night stand once. The galling incident had happened around six months after her parents' death, when she'd been a naive nineteen—a stupid nineteen. She had met the man in Scotland while clearing out a nest of nasty gargoyles in a small hamlet. The gargoyles were worse than ever, and in full rutting season. There wasn't anything more dangerous than a cranky gargoyle in rut.
While Sam had been scouting out the gargoyles' numbers, this man had been documenting the rutting for the BaCall Scientific Journal of Preternatural Mating Rituals. The two of them had developed a friendship, talking and walking together for over a week. Romance had been in the air, despite or perhaps because of the coupling gargoyles. Sam had gotten all misty eyed. And to the accompaniment of some gargoyles' rustling wings and mating cries, Sam had been seduced.
Unfortunately for the budding romance, the next morning Sam discovered that the lying jerk had a wife he'd forgotten to mention. The betrayal hurt, although her heart wasn't really broken. Still, she had been pained and felt guilty for years. To this day, she cringed when she heard the cry of a gargoyle in rut, though that might be because that wasn't a particularly nice noise, anyway.
Regrettably, Sam was experiencing one-night stand syndrome all over again. She felt used, abused, angry, humiliated, guilty and worthless—as a female and as a human. She was alone and lonelier than ever, and all because of a too-big-for-his-coffin prince who obviously felt she was beneath him, the lousy leech.
Yanking her frying ham out of the pan, Sam sat down at the table and poured herself a glass of juice. Deep down, she felt like grabbing the nearest stake and marching back to the Prince's palatial home in Dodge and shoving it somewhere the sun didn't shine. She'd stick him in the heart, but she was no longer sure he had one.
She had done a bang-up job at ridding him of his lousy ghosts. She had done an even banging-uppier job of making love with him. Their souls had met on some distant plane, but that plane had apparently gone down in flames.
"We should be hot and heavy right now," she muttered to herself. It wasn't often a man and a woman—or even a vampire and a woman—could touch each other's souls. "Instead all I got was a Wham, Bam and No Thank-you, Ma'am!"
Ham in hand, Sam heard the scuffling of tiny feet. She wrinkled her nose. Sure enough, the ham smell had awakened her pet goblin. Damn! Now she would have to make the breakfast her pet, Zeuss, loved.
Reaching into the refrigerator, she pulled out some eggs and plopped them in a skillet, making a moue of distaste at their forest green color. Although it wasn't as unappetizing as the lime green of ghost slime, it still wasn't pretty.
"A breakfast food should be brown, tan or even red, but never green," Sam criticized her pet.
Zeuss hopped onto the counter with his little yellow feet, his white tongue flicking in and out as he made little purring noises. Goblins were much like cats, except they walked on two legs and their fur was varying shades of green and gold. Today Zeuss had on his top hat, making him look like a character out of some weird children's book.
Turning the eggs, she spoke to him like a person, although his understanding was much more along feline lines. Still, she wanted to keep his attention. Zuess loved and adored her when she was feeding him; when she was not, she was pretty much on her own.
"I feel like the greatest dope alive, and I've never taken an illegal drug in my life! I laid my emotions on the line for that vampire. I want to wash him right out of my hair, but I can't seem to. How could I get involved with an overblown, oversexed, callous client?"
Zeuss yawned; his little rainbow-colored tongue flickered in and out.
Petting her pet, Sam continued her list of grievances. "It's just my lousy luck that I had to pick a loser for love in the game of life. I bet that stupid unprincipled Prince will give the rest of his paranormal pest problems to the Strakhov brothers, too. I battled with that smashed grapes of wraith chef and the appalling artist apparition, and all my hard work and risk will be for nada—zip. A big, fat zero. And what do I get for all this? A cracked heart."
Shaking her head at her maudlin thoughts, Sam picked up the newspaper, eyeing again the notice she had seen earlier that had sent her blood pressure skyrocketing. Prince Varinski was giving a party tonight, for various friends in high places—jet-setters, vampire bats and other nocturnal creatures—and she obviously and quite pointedly hadn't been invited. This, coupled with the ignominy of being unpaid and a one-night stand, was the proverbial straw that broke a woman's back.
A slow grin spread across her face, and a crafty little plan began to form. Nodding her head at Zeuss, she vowed, "I'm going to crash Mr. High-and-Mighty's party. And there, I'll tell the Prince of Bat-asses just what I think of him."
Sam picked up her glass of orange juice, raising it in a toast. Her goblin in a hat squawked. "Here's to plain-speaking, and to the place I'm fixing to go. I'm going to knock that arrogant vampire for a loop!"
Her pet goblin had finished his meal, and he merely looked bored and rolled over onto his back. Well fed and satisfied, he went immediately to sleep.
"Got what you want and you go to sleep? Just like a man," Sam snapped.
Then she stalked out of the kitchen with grim determination—the determination of a woman with revenge on her mind and in her sights. She had a hundred dresses to try on, and at least two hours of hair-styling; she was hauling out the big guns for this finale, and she didn't mean ogre pistols!