Free Adventures of a Vegan Vamp: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery by Cate Lawley Page B

If I wasn’t careful, I’d reopen the small, almost-healed wounds on my bottom lip. So I kept my mouth very still while Alex laughed at me and my baby fangs.
    It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if I hadn’t seen Wembley’s adult version. His serpent-like fangs had been wicked. Fear inducing.
    Mine were more likely to be called adorable. Little fluffy bunny, indeed.
    I closed the vanity mirror with a sharp snap.
    “I’m sorry—but they’re so…cute.” And he laughed again. “I’ve seen new vamp fangs before, and I never thought I’d say that. But they’re so…darling.” He snickered.
    I sighed. A loud, very dramatic, speech-replacing sigh.
    “Right. Sorry. There’s a juice place just a few minutes up ahead. I was thinking you should give the mango spinach a try—decent calories and iron-rich. And”—he snickered again—“maybe you should start carrying a few spare cans of that supplement stuff that was littering your apartment when I picked you up this morning.”
    I didn’t reply. What would I say, other than you’re right ? And that would probably come out hissy and weird with the fangs.
    Finally, he drove through and snagged a mango spinach smoothie for me. I sucked on that frozen juice, tiny baby fangs hanging out for all the world to see—if they had really powerful binoculars.
    About halfway through the shake, my fangs disappeared. I didn’t feel them retract; they just weren’t there anymore.
    “You are a nasty man to kick a girl when she’s down.”
    He gave me a sheepish look. “They’re just so tiny. Like training wheel fangs.”
    I glared, but my heart wasn’t in it. He was right. I couldn’t hang on to my mad, not after having seen Wembley’s grown-up version. “Uh-oh. Am I stuck with these? I mean, I don’t use them to eat. Will they keep growing even though I don’t drink blood?”
    “Well, you’re about week out from the bite?”
    “Give or take, sure.” Crap. Today was Tuesday. I could not forget to email work.
    “I hate to tell you this, but your fangs are closer to day-old than week-old in size.”
    “Wizards are up to date on the transformation process of vamps?”
    His body stiffened, subtly, but the change was there. “You forget; I do emergency response.”
    “Wembley says you’re also a kind of an enforcer for the Society. Is that true?”
    “It’s not my job title anymore, but there’s an aspect of that in what we do.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye then back to the road. “Why?”
    “Why? Because I want to know why you guys aren’t hunting down the perv who bit and turned me. That’s against Society regs, from what Wembley said.”
    “You’re correct. It’s highly illegal.” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “You’re not the only one.”
    “I’m sorry—what?”
    “There have been some deaths. In order to transmit the virus, a vamp has to bite deep and drink long. The deeper the bite and longer the drink, the greater the load of the vampire virus that’s delivered. And if the subject is immune and receives a large load of the virus, the body has an anaphylactic response.”
    “Untreated, death results,” I whispered. “If I had the immunity to the virus that most people have…” I shuddered. “You guys have found the dead bodies of these other victims?”
    “Not exactly. There are a few deaths that we suspect are related, all discovered through targeted research. Victims that appear to have died from untreated anaphylactic shock—all women, alone, late at night, with no known allergies. I suspect there are others we’re missing. There’s one case we’re certain of. She sought treatment from Dr. Dobrescu, just like you did—but she didn’t make it.”
    I clasped my arms tight around my middle and sank deeper into my seat. “What are the police doing?”
    “They haven’t connected the deaths, not that we know.” He seemed to give his next words some serious thought. “Anton should have brought