Free The Demon Lover by Juliet Dark Page A

I don’t see what despising commercial vampire dreck has to do with anything—”
    “Dreck? What a snob! Have you ever read Anne Rice?”
    “No.”
    “Stephenie Meyer?”
    “God, no!”
    “Charlaine Harris?”
    “Who?”
    We continued arguing as he helped me bring up all my books and files. It took three trips, at the end of which we were both breathing hard and drenched with sweat.
    “Sheesh, it’s hot,” he said, wiping the sweat off his brow with a red bandana. “Would you like a beer?”
    “At ten in the morning?” I asked.
    “Now who’s the snob?” he asked, throwing his hands up and walking out of my office.
    I unpacked my books and files in a snit of annoyance that turned gradually into an insatiable urge for a beer and then into regret for not having thanked Frank Delmarco for helping me carry up all those boxes. I went out into the hall to find his office. I followed the sound of laughter around the corner and saw, through an open doorway, the profile of a young, pretty girl sitting in an office chair next to a large desk. All I could see of the man behind the desk was a pair of Timberland hiking boots propped up on a stack of books, but I recognized Frank Delmarco from his booming laugh. The girl joined in his laughter, tossing her waist-length shiny hair over her shoulder and crossing her very long, very bare legs. I suddenly felt like I’d had enough socializing with my new colleagues for the day and decided to go home.
    When I stopped back in my office to lock up, though, I found I had a visitor. A student—or maybe a student’s kid sister, she looked that young—was perched on the edge of the straight-backed chair next to my desk, her shoulders hunched over, her medium-length hair—which was the color of weak, milky tea—obscuring her face. When I walked into the room she flinched and looked up. Her eyes were huge and the same milky tea color as her hair.
    “Oh, excuse me, Professor McFay, I hope you don’t mind me coming in … The door was open and it was drafty in the hallway.”
    It was eighty degrees in the hallway but this girl looked as if she could be blown away by a summer breeze. The reason her eyes looked so big, I saw now, was that her face was so thin.
    “No problem,” I said, not sounding as if I meant it. I was tired and wanted to go home. “Office hours haven’t really begun yet …”
    “Oh, I am so sorry!” She jumped up from her chair. She was wearing a soft blue peasant blouse that flapped around her rail-thin chest. This girl wasn’t just thin, she was undernourished. Anorexia? I wondered. “It’s just I come late to school and have not made the registration.”
    I noticed her accent now. Eastern European, I thought. “It’s okay, please, sit down. I just wasn’t expecting any students today, but I’m new here and I don’t know the routine yet.”
    “Me too. I am new, too!” She smiled. Her teeth had clearly not had the benefit of American dentistry, and the smile failed to brighten the pastiness of her skin. “I am … how do you say? Change student?”
    “Exchange student,” I corrected her as gently as I could. She looked as if she might crumble under the slightest rough handling.
    “Exchange student,” she repeated dutifully. Then she wrinkled her brow in confusion. “But that cannot be correct. Exchange means to trade one thing for another, no?”
    I nodded in agreement.
    “But I do not think Fairwick College will be sending an American student back where I am coming from.” She said this with such stolid gravity that I felt a little chill.
    “Where exactly do you come from?” I asked.
    She shook her head, making her lank hair whisk against her thin shoulders. I noticed the ends of her hair were split and damp—as if she’d been chewing them. “The borders change so often I hardly know anymore.”
    When I’d walked into the room I had thought she looked younger than the average college student, but now, talking about her