Charlie Estes moved back home to heal a broken heart, but one chance encounter is enough to catapult him into a whirlwind of intrigue, desire, and age-old feuds.
When high school math teacher Charles Estes meets a tall, dark stranger at an exclusive event, he can barely believe his luck. He’s almost reluctant to go home with him for fear of disturbing the mirage. But rather than worry about could-have-beens, Charlie opts to bite the bullet. He has no idea that he’s about to be bitten in return.
Micah is not like other men. He hails from the nearby town of Freeburn—a forbidden enclave populated by vampires and their serfs. Charlie really ought to know better than to get involved with someone like that. If only Micah didn’t keep cropping up all over Charlie’s town like a bad penny. He’s everywhere, in the nearby woods, at the high school where Charlie teaches, even in his dreams.
One night of passion changes everything.
Faced with a murderer on the loose and the resurgent turmoil between their worlds, Charles must soon choose between the life he knows and the promise of a future with Micah.
General Release Date: 28th March 2014
Sixth period math was an all-round terrible idea. Charlie had been doubtful of the scheduling from the beginning of the term and, two weeks in, he was sad to say that every suspicion had been warranted. His students lunged for the door on the first chime of the bell. By the third, they were already in the hallway, leaving nothing but papers fluttering in their wake. Recess was salvation when you were sixteen and forced to suffer through fifty long minutes of dreaded calculus.
A voice echoed through the din, familiar and sweet, reaching its tendrils into Charlie’s classroom. “Slow down, there, Mr LeBeau. Hallways aren’t for running.”
“Sorry, Ms King!” rang out from the other side of the hall in a croaky, adolescent voice. Students generally applied a policy of ‘ask forgiveness rather than permission,’ so it was no surprise to see Merriell LeBeau speed past the open classroom door like a very pale, very blond Flash Gordon.
Val King, the woman whose voice Charlie would’ve recognized with his ears blocked, had already turned her back to him. She parked herself in the doorway like a particularly insurmountable obstacle, her five foot nothing height easily filling out the space. She didn’t look in a mood to go toe-to-toe with the sprinting high schoolers outside, but if she was stopping by Charlie’s classroom at this hour on a Friday afternoon, she must’ve had some ulterior motive.
“I know that everyone’s excited for the weekend,” Charlie said, grumbling, “but your grin is freaking me out.” He tossed his blackboard marker onto the desk and started the tedious task of gathering up textbooks and test papers. “I was going to give them homework. Fun homework.”
“There’s no such thing,” Val scoffed.
Val’s own classroom was on the second floor, in the other wing of the school—and no one expected her to teach AP mathematics at the end of the school day on a Friday.
Jealousy sparked and died just as quickly in Charlie’s breast. She was a friend, and Charlie didn’t have many of those. He had seen her etchings once, way back in college when she had still been confused enough to date men and he hadn’t had the guts to admit he preferred them to women.
Val had more than made up her mind by the time she’d strutted into Charlie’ cramped little office, red-stamped envelope in hand. She was holding it so tightly that Charlie almost thought it might contain a piece of the Holy Grail.
“I mean, it’s hard enough teaching a subject that gets such a bad rep, but when they run off like that, it hurts my feelings,” Charlie went on, affecting a pout. “It’s a miracle they didn’t trample you in their haste.”
“I’m sure you would’ve written me a pretty obit and mourned in all the appropriate ways. Now shut up for a minute, okay?” A loyal devotee of all things high tech, Val rarely wandered the halls with her arms laden with papers. Seeing her work around the stack now as she opened the envelope had Charlie wondering what she was up to. He came up with two possible reasons—one, she had, at long last, booked herself that cruise she’d been talking about since they were in college.
Or two, she had finally produced irrefutable evidence that Principal Geller was seeing Ingrid from the history department.
He was hoping for the latter when Val triumphantly produced a hand-scrawled letter from the envelope.
“Do you know what this is?”
Charlie noted Val’s flushed cheeks and bright, liquid eyes. She was happy about something. If the above weren’t true, then surely she had finally gone and tendered her resignation like she’d been threatening to do for the past year and a half.
Not knowing the right answer was no viable reason to keep his peace. “Your Hogwarts letter?” he suggested.
“Alas, no.” Val snickered, blowing a strand of ginger hair from her cheek. “It’s an invitation and two tickets to a one-night exclusive performance of La Bohème at the Wellport Concert Hall. And guess what? The Grace is singing!”
What might have been excitement took on an edge of apprehension. Charlie balked. “The Grace, as in…the Grace? The, um, vampire?” There were other words for what she was, but none that Charlie would ever use in polite company.
Val rolled her eyes. “How many others do you know? Yes, the vampire. Don’t worry, she’ll be on stage, you’ll be—oh, let me see”—she plucked the tickets out of the envelope with a hurried hand—“three tiers up. Somewhat obstructed view. Well, who goes to the opera for the visual experience, right? That’s what the movie theatre is for.” Val was practically bubbling with excitement as she turned to him. “Well? If you need to sit down, I understand.”
He didn’t sit. “How…um, how did you get the tickets?”
As far as Charlie knew, The Grace didn’t perform for cheap. It was rumored that she had a suite of some fifty humans and vampire roadies, and security to boot, all of whom needed to be paid. She got away with exorbitant prices by being a damn good soprano, though her popularity had as much to do with her singing as the fact that she was one of those rare and dangerous creatures whom Wellport had long confined to living outside town limits.
It didn’t hurt that The Grace had become something of a pop culture darling in Hollywood—her good looks and old-world charm attracted admirers like honey. Here in the north, purportedly where The Grace drew her origins, the public was a little more circumspect. Suspicion still ran high when someone spoke too loudly about integration or vampire rights—and she never shut up. The wound was still too fresh after fifty short years. Charlie’s parents still recalled the reconstruction.
But that was neither here nor there. Val had the tickets and Val was like a dog with a bone when she refused to see reason. “You should blame Ingrid Aldenberg for our luck. Go figure, right? I guess she knows someone in The Grace’s retinue…” There was the potential of yield for the rumor mill in that, but Val seemed too animated to dwell on it for long.
Charlie wiped down the board and locked his desk drawers, the equivalent of closing up shop for the weekend when one’s daily bread was won in a school. “You’re actually thinking of going?”
“Duh,” Val said, scoffing. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Literally. How many times do you think she’ll sing in front of a human crowd once the censors get their way?” It was no secret that the anti-vampire lobby was making great strides in Washington—or that The Grace had pissed them off one too many times—but it was going to be some time before the ripple effect was felt in Wellport. Charlie was mostly sure of that.
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