Still, Campbell women being Campbell women, Lucy wanted to deck her—or at least pull her hair out or something equally humanly fiendish. This was the home-wrecker! And she was still around Val, while Lucy was long gone?
Her gaze hot and furious, it raked over the vampiress and then back to Val. "Damn you to hell, Valmont DuPonte," Lucy said. "I almost bought your act. I thought maybe, just maybe, I had been wrong about what I saw that night!"
Lucy clenched her fists, her breathing tight, trying desperately to control the tears that were in her eyes and in the back of her throat. Once again, Val had branded her heart without even showing up for the roundup. More of her mother's sage advice suddenly rang in her ears: "If a rattlesnake bites you once, you're damned unlucky. If you get bit twice, your mama raised a fool."
"What a laugh!" she continued. "You made a fool of me then, and I'm a great big fool now. Foolish, the Queen of Fools. I hope you're satisfied, Mr. Two-timing Tick! I was ready to throw myself at your feet and listen to your explanations. If I had been wrong, I would have begged your forgiveness for being too suspicious. For not trusting you more. But you're still with this woman! How dare you? So I'm human, and evidently my poor mortal blood isn't good enough for you. So you cheat on me with this fang-faced viper? Well, Val, here's a big surprise: I'm proud of my human blood and my talk show. I wouldn't invite you on if you were the last bloodsucker on earth. So take that, you big leech!" And with those words, Lucy turned and ran off into the crowd, her eyes full of tears of hurt and humiliation.
Val and Christine watched her go, bumping into every person on the dance floor as she passed.
"She still loves you, mon ami," Christine remarked thoughtfully. With a girlfriend like Lucy, Val would be up to his neck in trouble trying to keep up with her. Which was perhaps just what her morose partner needed—a lover who would shake him up like a blenderful of margarita, and keep him laughing as the nights turned to years turned to decades.
Val snorted. "And that makes everything all right? She didn't trust me enough to listen to what I had to say. No, it's all blood under the bridge now."
"She would have listened tonight. She still will if you go after her," Chris advised, recalling the look of terrible pain in Lucy's eyes.
Val shook his head. "You can't have love without trust," he said tersely.
"Val, your love life since Lucy has been dead as a doornail. For eighteen months you tore everybody's head off like a rogue werewolf. Talk to the lady. Work it out."
Val growled. "Go stick your nose someplace it's wanted, and leave my love life alone," he said, and then he stalked off.
"What love life?" Christine called after him, shaking her head. The male species really was quite stupid at times, and quite stubborn. It was a good thing that females knew just how to handle them. Laughing, Chris dubbed herself the matchmaker from hell.
And she was about to do a little business.
Chapter Thirteen
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
Lucy hurried outside the club and began walking back to her car four blocks away. Tears were running down her cheeks, along with a thin trail of mascara.
"Damn, I must look like a raccoon," she muttered to herself. She wasn't going to be doing any more hunting tonight for DeLeon. Val's latest deception had devastated her, made her fit only for the dogs.
Her high heels made a clip-clop noise on the sidewalk through the mist swirling at her feet. Behind her, she could hear someone's fast approach. She felt a twinge of unease at the hurried purpose of those steps, but, taking a quick peek behind her, she stopped suddenly, anger overriding her sense of caution.
"What the hell are you doing following me?" she snapped. At the moment, she didn't care if the female vampire wanted to have her for lunch; Lucy felt sure that at the very least she could tear out all the vampiress's lovely black hair at the roots. "Come to gloat?"
The woman stopped in front of her, shaking her head. "That was pretty stupid back there," she suggested.
"Thanks. I really appreciate you coming after me for an extra insult or two. What is this, some new vampire fad?" Lucy stuck a finger in the air, then pointed it. "Well, I can come up with a few insults of my own. You're a coffin-jumping, neck-licking, freaky-fanged vamp!"
Christine laughed softly. Then, seeing Lucy's hands clench into fists, she wiped the smile off her face. If she went and punched out Val's one true love, her partner might get a bit testy. "You've got it all wrong, Lucy," she said.
The mortal rolled her eyes. "Sure," she said sarcastically. "It's in a frog's nature to hop."
Christine blinked. "What's a frog got to do with Val?"
"It's the nature of the reptile—or the beast or vampire or whatever," Lucy ranted. "A cheater cheats."
Christine hissed at Lucy, angry. "Val would never betray anyone—especially not you. You've got it all wrong. Val and I aren't lovers. We haven't been for over eighty years. I'm just his partner in the PTF. I have been for the last four years."
"Oh, right. I'm too dumb to notice his fangs in your neck that night, and you both practically buck-naked! He was going at your jugular like a wino with a bottle of Thunderbird."
Christine shook her head. "It wasn't what it seemed. And we both had bathrobes on."
Lucy raised her eyes to the heavens. "Bathrobes! Well, I saw what I saw—and you're obviously with him tonight."
Christine shook her head. Humans could be so very… human at times. "I'm his partner. That's why we arrived together at the House of Usher. Duty and all that."
"Go on." Lucy felt a strange feeling come over her. Like she was being… stubborn. Stupid. Again.
"The night you dropped in to surprise Val, well, we had been involved in a werewolf pack rumble. Val took a silver bullet meant for the chief of the Lafitte clan. He had lost a lot of blood, and was replenishing it off me when you arrived. We were dressed in robes because we'd both had blood all over us, and had showered just a few minutes before." Seeing the doubt and disbelief in Lucy's eyes, Christine added, "I took a shower in the guest bathroom."
"You expect me to believe this?" Lucy asked, her thoughts whirling like a rider on El Diablo, the meanest bull in Texas. What if these things the vampiress said were true? What if Val was truly innocent? What if Lucy had been a world-class idiot, what with her lack of trust and refusal to listen?
"Why didn't he tell me?" she asked.
"He tried more than once. You didn't listen," Christine snapped. "You ripped out his heart better than any slayer ever could."
Lucy gulped, her stomach queasy. "I didn't mean to. I thought he was cheating on me," she said. She might have made a big mistake five years ago. She might have made the biggest mistake of her life, and then, like the world-class idiot she was, gone and done it all over again. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't think anyone who could treat him like that deserved him. He loved and cherished you, and you crushed him."
Lucy hung her head in shame. She couldn't bear to see the accusation in the other female's eyes. And… "Why tell me now?"
"I thought about calling you when you first moved here to the Big Easy, but after watching your show a couple of times, I decided you weren't the brightest bulb on the tree. But maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe it doesn't matter. Either way, Val never got over you, and he deserves to be happy."
Lucy's eyes glistened with tears. Her heart held a glimmer of hope. "You don't think he's over me?"
"No, I don't."
"Then why isn't he here?"