Never Been Bitten

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Book: Never Been Bitten Read Online Free PDF
Author: Erica Ridley
investigation. What do you say?”
    Ellie stared at the wrinkled banknote in her client’s elegant outstretched palm. The money would mean everything to her and nothing at all to Miss Breckenridge. Her client hadn’t been about to sack her out of disappointment over her behavior, but rather due to a belief that she wasn’t taking the situation seriously. Given that Ellie had felt herself under her mother’s ultraconservative thumb her entire life, and had begun scientific investigations as much out of rebellion as industriousness, she could certainly empathize with a desire to be taken seriously. To know her own mind. Regardless of whether her beliefs matched everyone else’s.
    “Very well.” Ellie plucked the crumpled paper from her client’s palm and slowly, methodically, flattened it across one knee before folding it carefully and consigning it to the darkness of her own, otherwise vacant purse. Then she returned her gaze to her client and tried to apply her most scientific perspective to the topic at hand. “Are there any characteristics shared by supposed vampires that are not also plausibly explained by eccentric, but wholly human, actions of men?”
    Miss Breckenridge bit her lip in consideration. “Well, I’ve never seen him eat a morsel of food, or drink a single drop of punch. . . .”
    “No one with any brains drinks the ratafia,” Ellie countered logically. “It’s horrid.”
    “Fine.” Miss Breckenridge’s eyes narrowed at a spot just above Ellie’s shoulder for a long moment. Her sudden victory squeal nearly knocked Ellie out of her skin. “A mirror!” she exclaimed, rapping Ellie’s knee for emphasis. “Vampires have no reflections, and no one has ever seen Macane anywhere near a looking glass. I will double—nay, treble —your fee if you but maneuver him before a glass!”
    Ellie hesitated. There was little she wouldn’t (honorably) do to earn such a sum, but what was the likelihood of success? She leveled her gaze at her client and infused her voice with as much calm rationality as possible. “If Mr. Macane has a visible reflection, you will agree that I’ve disproved your theory?”
    Miss Breckenridge’s blinding grin bespoke utter confidence. “I will, indeed—because he will not have one. And I know just how to find out. My birthday is but a fortnight from now, and I’ve already planned a three-day party. I shall invite Macane—and you shall attend as well, of course—and we will have done with this investigation once and for all.”
    The five-pound note in Ellie’s purse weighed as much as a five-ton anchor. Her family desperately needed the income, but there was no hope of Ellie attending a three-day party. She’d had to misrepresent quite a few details of tonight’s festivities to garner her mother’s permission for the outing.
    “I apologize,” she said quietly, “but there is no chance at all of my attendance. My mother is quite protective and will never allow me out of her sight for so long. She doesn’t even know where we were tonight.”
    Miss Breckenridge’s eyes widened. “Where on earth does she think you are?”
    “At a local estate . . . helping you find a lost kitten,” Ellie admitted with another furious blush. “If Mama for one moment suspected I attended a soirée, I should never be allowed out of her sight again.”
    The young lady across from her merely laughed in response. “I am a Breckenridge,” she said matter-of-factly, “and no one tells a Breckenridge no. I will call upon you on the morrow to extend the invitation in person. There will be no chance of refusal.”
    Ellie gulped. Miss Breckenridge might consider herself a royal flush, but Ellie’s mother was a wild card more likely to be repulsed than impressed by Quality lineage.

Chapter Four
    The next morning, Ellie jerked the steel tip of her dip pen out of her mouth for what was surely the hundredth time. She might not damage the dip pen’s metal exterior, but she was certainly
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