Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo (Southern Vampire Detective Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo (Southern Vampire Detective, #2)

  Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Honeysuckle Memories: A Scarlett Smith Memoir

  Selene Charles’ Books in reading order:

  About Selene Charles

  Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo

  My name is Scarlett Smith. And I’m a vampire who was raised by a pack of wolves. Little crazy, I know. But let’s not get hung up on semantics here. Because I’ve got a story to tell.

  There’s something inside of me. A darkness. And she’s really starting to make herself known, think Harley Quinn on ’roids and you might get the picture. She’s powerful and definitely unhinged, but I don’t have time to focus on that right now because I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

  From the Alpha shifter on trial for breaking the unbreakable oath to a local vampire clan wanting me to party like it’s 1699, I’m in neck deep—pun intended. Have no fear though. I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeves and some unexpected allies in my corner. Sure, there are bound to be a few surprises along the way, and I’m guessing they aren’t all good. But, no one ever said being dead would be easy...

  Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo

  Copyright 2017 Selene Charles

  Cover Art by Damonza

  Formatted by D2D

  My super seekrit hangout!

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, events, or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, Selene Charles, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in the context of reviews.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Selene Charles.

  Unauthorized or restricted use in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patent Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2017 by Selene Charles, United States of America

  Author’s Note

  Between Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves and this book I wrote a novella—Fae Bridge Over Troubled Waters. The story was published as part of an anthology which has recently been taken down. But because there are many references to that story in this book, I’ve gone ahead and placed it for sell separately wherever e-books are sold.

  Also, many of you asked me where you could find the short story, Honeysuckle Memories. The backstory as to how Scarlett wound up where she did and how she became what she is. I’ve included that short story for free at the end of Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo. Just make sure to keep turning after the final page!

  If you want to keep up to date with all my releases, make sure to sign up for my newsletter!

  Chapter 1

  Mercer

  A few months after Scarlett’s change...

  The thick, coppery stench of blood was everywhere.

  Frowning, Mercer gently and silently laid the empty boxes in the dumpster behind the honky-tonk, not wishing to alert Scarlett that he was close.

  He knew it was her by the way she smelled. Even as a creature of darkness, she’d never lost her scent of sunshine and early-morning dew, and whatever she’d killed, she’d made a massacre of it.

  Moving silently, as only a stalking wolf could, he barely disturbed the blades of grass as he crept ever closer to the shadow hunkering on the ground, savaging the amputated leg of a deer’s carcass.

  Taking in the scene, Mercer was shocked to discover not one but four dead bucks, each easily weighing close to three hundred pounds. Scarlett had transformed herself into the monstrous version of her kind.

  With fangs extended, her normally beautiful face was the twisted, macabre mask of a killer, cheeks hollowed out and dancing with shadows as she sucked and pulled on the veins, gorging on the animal’s blood.

  She didn’t care about the meat. Once she got what she needed, she tossed the leg over her shoulder, tore off a chunk of shoulder, and sank her fangs in deep, lost in her killing haze.

  Dressed in her favorite pair of cherry-red boots, jeans that looked painted on, and a pearl-snapped shirt that clung tight to her slim waist, she was a dichotomous vision of both the killer and the feminine.

  Walnut-brown hair fell in natural waves over her shoulders, the ends dipped and stained in drying blood. Streaks of matted red covered her clothes and neck.

  He moved, making sure to snap a twig. The worst thing he could do would be to startle her. No predator liked to be surprised.

  Instantly, she stiffened and hissed. Twisting at the waist, she glared over her shoulder at him. Her normally brown eyes glowed a heated red. Her lips curled back, exposing the thick curves of her fangs as she hugged the desiccated haunch of meat to her breast, a subtle warning that she’d fight to the death to keep what was hers. Madness burned through her gaze.

  Mercer kept his nerves steady, his pulse stable. Having grown up around predators, he knew a confident but calm approach was the only way to safely near her.

  Holding up a hand, he walked slowly toward her.

  “Scar,” he said, “it’s me. Just me.”

  She held her pose a moment longer, and all he could do was marvel at the power and beauty of her. Never in his long life could he have imagined he would ever find a fanger hypnotizing, but he couldn’t tear his eyes off her.

  A shifter’s life was one of constant strife and warfare. Tensions had cooled some in the modern era, but blood and guts and gore would never go out of fashion for his kind. It was why he found her current state of dress alluring rather than repulsive. A woman not comfortable wearing blood was a woman not worth knowing, in his humble opinion.

  A second later, she frowned as confusion settled into her gaze, and he knew the beast in her sensed the beast in him. Vampire or no, he knew Scarlett would never harm him.

  Then the breeze shifted, and he smelled something he’d not expected. His entire body stiffened, causing Scarlett’s eye to twitch. Her animal still beat wildly just below the surface.

  He sniffed, recognizing the telltale sweetness of a human. Reminding himself not to make any sudden movements, Mercer flicked his gaze over to the right and spotted a thin woman seated a few yards back, tucked partway behind the thick trunk of a massive dogwood. She was trembling, shivering almost violently, but not saying a word. No sounds worked from her throat.

  Only the whites of her eyes and the stench of adrenaline revealed the terror she actually felt.

  Mercer took all o
f two seconds to realize what’d happened, to understand why Scar had brought down four deer and had laid into them as savagely as she had.

  Mercer had never encountered a fanger with more willpower and fight than his Scar, but even so, he knew the temptation of that human would be a battle too great for her to bear much longer.

  Scarlett’s upper lip curled, the beast in her growing more anxious the longer he stared at her and said nothing. Time was up for him. Wetting his lips, Mercer made a snap decision. Ignoring the human and whatever fate might befall her, he turned his attention fully to Scar.

  “Scar,” he murmured thickly, his Southern accent growing hoarse with his desperation to reach her. She flinched, but the fingers gripping her kill were lax. Somewhere inside the animal was his Scarlett. He just needed to reach her.

  Leaning into the shifting wind, he moved just enough to allow it to more fully pick up his scent, then he knelt within inches of Scarlett and held out his hand to her loosely.

  “Scar, it’s just me,” he continued to murmur.

  Scarlett stayed unnaturally still, but her nostrils were flared, and he knew she was breathing him deep into her lungs. The key to breaking any predator’s thrall was to reach inside the mindless killer and pluck out the cognizant being resting somewhere within.

  Her eyes were still a vivid, bloody red, and there were animalistic sounds rumbling through her chest, but lucidity was creeping back into her gaze. Interrupting a feeding vampire was never advisable, but Scar was on Silver Creek land. She wasn’t supposed to hunt there.

  The humans on Clarence’s land were to be left alone. If she was found out, the consequences would be dire, and there was no way in hell he’d let that happen.

  “Hey, sunshine girl,” he murmured gently as he gently threaded their fingers together, plucking that savaged haunch of meat out of her hands.

  She whined but didn’t fight him.

  “Made a mess tonight, haven’t you?” he said, continuing to speak soothingly, letting her animal know that he was no threat.

  His words were soft, gentle. He wasn’t there to provoke her or condemn her for what she’d done, but he needed her to snap back to the present before someone else found them out there and reported her to the Alpha.

  She blinked harder, and tiny frown lines formed between her shapely brows. “Merc... er?”

  Her voice was a blend of woman and devil. He trembled to hear that deep-throated and shivery voice of hers, having only ever known it before in the intimacy of dreams.

  Mercer despised any and all fangers and would gladly see them all burn and rot in hell—but not Scarlett. Never her.

  With his free hand, he tenderly stroked her gore-covered cheek and grinned. “Hi, sweetheart. You know you’re supposed to be home tonight.”

  “Hungry,” she moaned.

  From the corner of his eye he caught the silent human shaking. If that bitch kept it up, she’d force the beast back into Scarlett. She wasn’t fully back from her thrall yet. Shifting on the balls of his feet until his large frame blotted the human out of Scar’s sight, he continued to idly stroke her petal-soft skin.

  Her heat infused his body with warmth. Vampires were naturally cold to the touch unless they’d just fed, but human blood didn’t linger long in their desiccated veins. The spark of her shot through him like charged bolts of lightning, burning and singeing his fingertips, making him crave more and more.

  Fuck, he loved touching her. It was a damn sickness in him, and one of the rare times he ever allowed himself that luxury was when he could do it under the guise of saving her from herself.

  His lips tipped at the corners. “So you thought to eat her?” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Yes,” she admitted weakly, and finally the glow of the monster slowly bled from her eyes as she stared down at the toes of her boots with something akin to shame.

  Mercer chuckled because Scar was so damn cute sometimes he couldn’t help it. He usually tried like hell to pretend he didn’t feel a tenth of what he felt for her, especially to Scarlett herself, but there were times like right then when he just couldn’t pretend. Only Scar would go and slaughter a family of deer while she kept a human thralled behind her.

  Humans were of little to no concern to Mercer, other than the fact that he honored the truce Clarence had drafted between his kind and theirs. Still, the woman was probably terrified out of her fucking mind after having been forced to sit and watch a bloodied vampire feeding savagely.

  “But Clarence wouldn’t—”

  “Like it. You’re right,” he said as he gently flicked at the tip of her button nose. “He wouldn’t. Did you compulse her, Scar? Is that why she’s so silent?”

  Her fangs nibbled on her delectable lower lip. Even covered in filth, she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. For a year, he’d come to know the real woman. After years of hiding in the dark, of watching her from a distance, he’d been allowed into her sphere, her circle.

  What he was learning about Scarlett... it was everything. She was everything. His regard for her had only continued to grow, to evolve.

  Darkness hadn’t come to visit him since the night of Scar’s death, and the words she’d whispered to him in the night—to never get close to her, to never allow Scarlett to know just how much he needed her—had begun to fade with time.

  Yes, that Veiler was powerful and something the likes of which he’d never encountered before, but Mercer was tired of pretending, tired of standing by the sidelines.

  A man unwilling to fight for what he wanted got what he deserved. Locking eyes with Scarlett, Mercer felt his pulse raging and beating out of control. His wolf rose swiftly to the surface as it too began to realize that the woman, whom it had claimed long before she’d entered the world of the Veiler, might soon know the truth—one way or another.

  Her hand on his cheek was gentle, tender, and his lashes flickered as his stomach twisted almost painfully inside of him. Her touch was so feather light it shouldn’t have made him feel that weak, yet he felt one strong gust would be enough to knock him flat on his ass.

  “Your eyes glow,” she said sweetly, and he clamped a hand around her wrist.

  “Release the human, Scar... before someone catches us,” his voice was a guttural growl.

  She nodded, eyes turning serious. “I didn’t feed off her, Merc. I wanted to. Badly. But I remembered your words. I would never... never want you to be ashamed of me.”

  His lips tipped at the corners. “Leave her with no memory of this night, nothing but a drunken haze of half-formed thoughts. Be quick about it.”

  Walking over to the woman, she rested her hands on her shoulders. The human stiffened up, shaking her head furiously as she scooted back on her heels.

  Scar must have done a number on her to keep the human as compliant as she’d been. For such a young vampire, Scarlett was already in possession of talents far outweighing her years.

  With a tight grip on the human’s chin, she forced the female to stare deep into her eyes. Mercer knew the moment the compulsion had taken hold because the female’s stiff shoulders sagged, and she began to sway drunkenly.

  The power of suggestion was a beautiful thing.

  “Get up. Go. Get the hell away from me.” Scarlett spat out the words, pointing toward the honky-tonk.

  The woman rocked unsteadily on her feet but did as bidden. Scarlett stood still as a sentinel, watching her go until she was nothing but a dark speck of shadow blending into the night.

  “I’ll tell Emerson to make sure she gets home safely,” he said to Scar’s back.

  She nodded, crossing her arms tightly to herself. He’d known Scarlett almost all her life, though she’d never know it, and in all that time, he’d learned her mannerisms and quirks.

  She was anxious. Her scent had shifted too, from sunshine to dark clouds. Walking around in front of her, Mercer dipped his head until her gaze met his.

  “Don’t do that,” he said softly.

  She
snorted. “Do what, Mercer?”

  “Don’t berate yourself. At the end of the night, you stopped. There aren’t many newborns could do what you did.”

  Rolling her eyes, she thrust out her chin. “Doesn’t matter. I’m still a monster. Look at what I did to those poor deer.” She grimaced.

  He shook his head. “I’ll wrap up what meat is left and give it to Em as an early birthday present.”

  She laughed despite herself.

  Emerson wasn’t exactly kind to Scar. Actually, apart from himself, there weren’t many shifters nearby who enjoyed having a fanger as one of their own. She bit down on her back teeth, causing her cheek muscles to twitch.

  He knew she was thinking the same thing when she said, “I don’t fit in this world, Mercer. In your world. I’m a disease. A monster. I saw that poor girl walk past my house tonight, and I didn’t think. It was like my brain just clicked off, and all reasoning fled. I became the hunger.”

  It was a good ten miles from her house to the honky-tonk. “And you brought her here, why?”

  He was pretty sure he already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from her lips.

  The red was now entirely gone from her eyes as she said, “Because of you. Because I knew that you’d find me. You always find me. You’re my conscience, Merc. I knew you’d help me to stop.”

  Unable to resist touching her for another second, he slid his hands up her toned arms, slowly rubbing circles on them with his thumbs. “You’re not a monster, Scarlett. You’re learning. You’re doing great.”

  She closed her eyes. “I just want to be human again. I don’t want this sickness in me anymore. I don’t want to be who I am.”

  He frowned. “Stop. Don’t do that. There’s no going back, dwelling on the past. It’s useless. You have to move forward, Scar, or the pain’ll kill you.”

  Lower lip trembling, she tentatively wrapped her arms around his waist, and Mercer had to bite down on his tongue to keep from groaning, tipping her chin up, and stealing a kiss.

  God, he wanted her.

  Couldn’t she see that? Couldn’t she sense it? The hunger in him? The constant need for her? The way his eyes always sought her out, how he was so damned attuned to her that no matter where she went, he would always find her?