Under Wraps Read Online Free PDF Page A

milky-white legs dangling.
    Nina is a vampire—a 167-year-old vampire—and my very best friend. She was turned in 1842 and before that was a twenty-nine-year-old foul-tempered Parisian heiress who climbed out her bedroom window one night to meet a dark-eyed stranger. Two months after that, Nina, the newly made vampire, caused the Massacre of Elphinstone’s Army. You could never tell it by looking at her, though. She’s just barely my height but supermodel-skinny with waist-length black hair, a little ski-jump nose, a heart-shaped red mouth … and fangs.
    “Tell me everything and don’t leave out a single, juicy detail. He smelled good, didn’t he? Different”—Nina’s dark eyes scanned the ceiling—“not like your standard breather. It was like …”
    “Smoke and toasted almonds and cocoa. Not that I really noticed,” I said quickly.
    “So spill! You were gone for an age with Mr. Yummy Cop,” Nina said, lacing her fingers together and leaning into me.
    “Actually”—I wiggled a file on demons in unincorporated San Mateo County out from under Nina’s butt—“he’s not a cop, he’s a detective.”
    Nina licked her lips. “Even better.”
    I reached into my desk drawer and shoved a Fiber One bar in her hand. “Eat this. You’re obviously starving.”
    Nina glared at the Fiber One bar, fangs bared, and dropped it as though it were holy water. “Gross,” she said, wiping her hands on her dress.
    I shrugged. “Sorry. It’s the best I could do. I don’t have any Plasma Pops here.”
    Nina’s eyebrow twitched and she pursed her lips. “Stop stalling, start spilling.”
    As much as I wanted to brag about my Sampson-Sophie-Hayes manwich, the details of the murder—and the bloodless, eyeless bodies—trumped my lust-o-meter, and I shivered.
    “There’s a murderer in town,” I said.
    Nina rolled her coal black eyes. “Big deal. There’s a million murderers in this town. Get to the cop.” She grinned. “Did he take off his shirt?”
    “Nina! We were with Sampson.”
    Her jaw dropped, her pointed incisors glistening. “Did Sampson take off his shirt?”
    “No one took off their shirt!” I lowered my voice. “Like I said, there’s a murderer in the city and the PD is concerned it’s supernatural.”
    Nina looked only slightly interested—although whether it was in my story or her cuticles I couldn’t tell. “You should check with the zombies. They can get so rowdy.”
    I began stacking files and shoving them into my shoulder bag. “Nah, zombies are totally adherent.”
    “When they’re on their first brain.” Nina jabbed at my files with one perfectly manicured cotton-candy pink fingernail. “What are you doing with those? Aren’t they confidential?”
    “The PD wants Sampson to work with them, but he can’t. Too risky to be out after dark, especially if he’s examining crime scenes with that much blood.”
    Nina licked her lips, and I pretended not to notice.
    “So, I’m working with Detective Hayes on the case. Bringing in some of the files that we have. Thinking maybe we can locate the perp—I mean perpetrator—from some of our adherents. I figured we’d go through the relevant UDA files and see if there are any clues.”
    I loved how detectivey I sounded.
    Nina pressed her pale hands to her open mouth, her thin black eyebrows shooting up. “You’re kidding me!”
    A little twitter of pride slipped through me, and I hid my smile behind a stack of file folders. “Really, Nina, it’s no big deal. The PD needed some help, and frankly, I’m the only one who can do it.”
    How totally CSI am I?
    “No big deal?” Nina hopped off my desk—her landing didn’t make a sound—and turned to me, her palms pressed against my file folders, pinning them to my desk. “You are going to be nose to nose with that hot cop for, for days, weeks, maybe months on end and it’s no big deal?”
    I hadn’t thought of that.
    Me and Parker Hayes, alone together for days, weeks, months on