“WHAT’S the matter?” Betsy asked him. She was so tall, she didn’t have to adjust the seat, just the rearview mirror. “Did you guys have a big wicked fight, or what?”

“Something like that.”

“I know what that’s like.”

“Mmm,” he replied, secretly doubting she had the tiniest clue. Nice enough gal, and super-pretty, but a regular guy like him didn’t have much in common with the queen of the vampires. “Okay.”

“Dude, seriously. I’m supposed to be the consort of a guy who’s totally arrogant and sneaky and has, like, eighty hidden agendas.”

“You’re supposed to be?”

“Don’t even get me started. It’s a whole long story, and I come off really bad in it. But so does Sinclair! Anyway—”

“You’ve got something…” He pointed to her neck, where three mosquitoes were currently having a party. He guessed…did mosquitoes bother vampires?

“What?” She brushed in the wrong spot, as people always did when told they had something on them. “What? Did I get it?”

“Here, I—” He brushed at her neck, and was startled when something snagged his finger. Well, he was pretty bad at this stuff. “Aw, shit, now I’m caught on something…” He pulled back, surprised to find a gold chain entwined on the end of his finger, and even more surprised to find a cross dangling from the end of the chain.

“Oh, crap! The chain broke!”

“I can fix it,” he told her, since she seemed pretty upset about it.

“It’s just, Sinclair gave it to me. I wouldn’t want anything…it’s nice, right?”

“Right.” He stared at it in wonder…she was a vampire, correct? “Let me hold on to it for you, and I’ll fix it when we’re done tonight.”

“Thanks. It used to belong to his sister, I guess it’s a family heirloom thing. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it, is all. Anyway, where was I?”

“I’m sorry,” Liam said. “But I’ve just gotta know. You’re a vampire, right? The queen of them? What are you doing carrying around a cross? And if Sinclair gave it to you…I guess it’s just an old wives’ tale, huh?”

“Oh no, no,” she assured him, stomping on the clutch and shifting into third. “Sorry, didn’t mean to go all Bela Lugosi mysterious-ee on you. I haven’t been a vampire very long…just a few months.”

“That’s why crosses don’t work on you?”

“No, no. Nothing works on me. Crosses normally burn the crap out of a regular vampire, but I guess I’m special.” She said it glumly, as if it wasn’t a good thing at all. “Crosses don’t burn me, and holy water makes me sneeze, and stakes through the chest don’t work, but they sure wreck my clothes.”

“That’s too bad,” he said, because he had to say something. “About your clothes, I mean.”

“Tell me. My dry cleaner totally freaks out when I come near him these days. Anyway, crosses would burn Sinclair, except he got that one way back when his sister died, before he was a vampire.”

“Oh.”

“Okay? Everything cleared up?”

“Uh, sure,” he said, pretending he heard this sort of thing all the time. Of course, very little had been cleared up. Why was this woman so special? Why had Eric Sinclair, whom she professed to dislike, given her a family heirloom, a religious symbol, no less? Could she be killed? Should she be killed?

He guessed he’d never know, and wasn’t sure if that was good news, or bad.

“Now where was I? Oh, right, the jerkiness of Eric Sinclair.”

“And the whole consort thing,” he prompted her, pocketing the necklace.

“So, I’m supposed to just throw all my doubts aside and be his wife for, like, a thousand years or whatever. And nobody can understand why I’m not getting with the program.” She laughed, sounding a little bitter. “Just forget everything I’ve ever learned and trust some guy who’s as scary as he is good-looking.”

Hmm. Wasn’t that what he expected Sophie to do? Toss aside all she had learned, all she was, because he was mortal and he demanded it? Maybe her thing was more his problem than hers.

“Hellooooooo?” Betsy was saying, waving a hand in front of her face and steadying the steering wheel with the other. “My lips are moving; it’s polite to pretend to listen.”

“I heard every word,” he assured her.

“IT seems your evening has been almost as stressful as mine.”

“Sir, you have no idea.” She glanced over at him and was surprised to see a compassionate expression on his face. “I’ve had a lot thrown at me in the last few hours, that’s all. I’m certainly not going to bore you with it.”

“I’m interested,” was all he said, so she found herself telling him the entire story…her loneliness since her friend had died; how wonderful Liam was; how she didn’t know he had loved her in secret all those years; how wonderful Liam was (when he wasn’t being a tiresome pig-head); how he seemingly accepted her vampire nature; how wonderful Liam was…all of it.

“It sounds like a wonderful problem to have.”

“Sir, it’s not that simple.”

“No?”

“Sometimes it’s…easier to stay by yourself.”

“Keep the status quo, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“It’s certainly safer.”

“Yes.” She saw where he was going and gave voice to her biggest fear. “He’s a child with a crush.”

“He looked full-grown to me. He also looks like a man who knows what he wants.”

“Hmph.”

They had finished searching the bed-and-breakfast, which was free of guests except for a couple on their honeymoon, currently enjoying themselves behind a closed bedroom door. No serial killers in that room.

Sophie was embarrassed; for a while she’d completely forgotten that there was quite a bit more at stake than her love life. But she and the king were almost half-hearted about the search; their enhanced senses had already told them the B and B was virtually deserted, but it was always best to make sure.

“Thank you for listening,” she said, following him back out the front door. “I appreciate your advice and will think hard about what you’ve said.”

“I didn’t say much,” he replied mildly. “Compared to my queen, I’m not much of a talker.”

“Is that some kind of slam, pal? Because if you wanna go, we’ll go.” Betsy was walking through the front yard, Liam on her heels. “No luck at the other place. They’ve got a full house, and none of them are our guy. It’s all couples.”

“Couples like the killer with his new girlfriend?” Sophie asked.

“Naw,” Liam said. “Couples like retired people on vacation. You guys didn’t have any luck?”

“How could you search an entire house, then drive across town and be here just as we finished?” Sinclair asked.

“Dude: have you seen this town? It’s, like, a mile long. Is it our fault we’re way more efficient at looking for killers than you two are? I’m telling you, our guy’s not there.”

“Well, he isn’t here either,” Sophie said. “Damn it all. We’ll have to go back and talk to Shawna’s mother some more, poor thing. I was hoping we could leave her out of it.”

Liam was looking at the wooden sign over the front door. “This is the Rose Manor. But The Garden Bed-and-Breakfast is the one we’re looking for. We just assumed this was The Garden, because it’s the other B and B you can see from the road. But…”

“There’s another one,” Sinclair said immediately. “Probably called The Iris or something tiresome like that. But since the same people own and run them both, they’re considered one business. We checked the one across town, and we checked this one, because those are the two businesses.”

A quick trip inside to speak with the owner confirmed their suspicions; there was indeed one other B and B called The Garden.

“Stupid,” Liam said disgustedly. “We should have checked. Never assume, that’s what my mom always said.”

“I don’t understand,” Sophie said. “We checked the two in town. What are you talking about?”

“There’s three in town, and they’re all under the business name The Garden, because they’re all owned by the same family. We checked two of them…you and Sinclair checked The Rose, Betsy and I checked The Tulip.” At her mystified expression, he continued. “Those are the names of the individual houses, though they’re all under the same business name. But there’s one more, like the guy said inside. And it’ll have another flower name, like Sinclair said.”

“I guess it makes sense for the bad guy to make it hard for us to track him down,” Betsy said. “I know I’m totally confused. But if there’s another one, there’s another one. Let’s go check it out.”

Five minutes later, they were standing at the end of a long driveway outside a third Victorian with yet another flower motif.

“The Sweetheart Rose,” Sinclair said. “I was close.”

“We’re assuming he’s even still there,” Betsy said. “If it was me, I’d be long gone.”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Sophie said as Sinclair nodded agreement. “With the funeral, and the reporters, and all the mourners…there’s too much here for him still.”

“Prick,” Betsy commented, and this time, everyone nodded.