Dead is the New Black Read Online Free PDF

blood light!’”
    This punch line was followed by a chuckle
that sounded more like a cat choking up a wet hairball. Leech
continued making that sound and snorting through her nose until we
reached the front door.
    Her hand on the knob, she turned to me.
“Velcome to Moonrise Manor. De Herr Dock-tor seems pleased mit you.
I am heppy to leaf him in zuch gapable henz.” She opened the door
and followed me onto the veranda.
    “Thank you,” I said. “I should be back in a
couple of hours. I’m aware you have several guests. Will I have any
duties I need to be prepared to perform this evening?”
    Leech stepped back into the threshold and
crossed her arms. “Not tonight. Ve all vill probably be watching
our favorite TV show.”
    The undead watched television shows? Who
knew? “May I ask what that is?”
    A gleam sparked in her obsidian eyes. “Boardwalk Vampire.” Again with the
hairball gag. She continued to giggle and chortle as she closed the
door, leaving me to return to my car in a bit of a daze.
    Sliding behind the wheel, I buckled my seat
belt and turned the key in the ignition, then gazed at my
reflection in the rearview mirror.
    What in the hell had just happened? Now that
I was away from the house, my thoughts seemed to clear, my brain
unfuzzed, leaving me with the distinct impression I’d just
experienced some kind of waking dream.
    Was I really going to be working for a
Vampire? And living in his house? With my mother? Dr. Van Graf had sworn we would be safe and he
had such an expression of sincerity, I believed him. I probably
wanted to believe him more than I actually did, but I needed a
place to live and I needed a job and I needed to care for Mom, so
the incredibly attractive Dr. Van Graf just had to be on the level.
    Part of me was elated and relieved. A job.
Money. Security. A roof over my head. At last. But part of me—that
back-of-the-brain nagging part—was worried I’d just made a horrible
mistake.
    Releasing the parking brake, I had the
distinct impression I was being watched. As I started to pull into
the driveway, a movement out of the corner of my eye caught my
attention. I turned my head in time to see the curtain in the
topmost turret flutter, as though someone had pulled it aside and
then quickly stepped back. The telltale curtain confirmed my
suspicion. But who was watching me, and why? Simple curiosity, or
something more…sinister?
    In movies, the heroine shakes her head and
dismisses these kinds of warnings as just her imagination running
wild, or a trick of the light, or an errant breeze, but this wasn’t
a movie and I’d just accepted a job as housekeeper to a vampire.
Oh, excuse me. V ampire.
    Of course somebody was
watching me.
    As I headed for home, however, I couldn’t
shake the feeling that whoever or whatever had been in that tower
window had not been watching me out of curiosity, but out of
malice.
    I should have known right then and there to
drive away—and never look back.
    ***
    We live in Sequoia City on the western slope
of the Sierra Nevada in northern California. California, land of fruits and nuts, as my mother used
to say. She still does on those rare days when she’s lucid. In her
former life, she’d taught poetry at Stanford and had many of her
own poems published. But those days were gone now. These days, Mom
lives in a confusing world where poems and poetry do not exist,
have never existed.
    Since Mom’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis six years
ago, she’s been with me in the house I bought back when I was a
popular romance novelist and the money was rolling in. Like most
people, when my career was flying high, I thought it would last
forever. As to that topic, my mom had warned, Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched , and, Don’t put all your eggs in one basket .
    Sadly, the only thing I got from her words of
wisdom was stay away from poultry farming.
    Boy, was I ever naïve.
    Or stupid.
    Or both.
    Even before she developed Alzheimer’s, my