Beauty is the Beast: Beasts Among Us - Book 1 Read online

  “She looks 10 years younger.” Her husband stood, depositing his newspaper back onto the coffee table.

  “You’ll have to take her out and show her off,” I said with a laugh as I cashed them out.

  “Oh, I will. We’re going out for a late supper,” Mr. Franz promised, taking his wife’s hand.

  “Thank you, dear. You did a wonderful job.” Mem tipped up onto her toes and gave me a dry kiss on the cheek.

  “See you next month. First Tuesday, same time?” I asked, before giving her a hug.

  “Sounds perfect. Make sure you call and remind me, though.”

  “I will. See you later.”

  “Good night, dear.”

  I watched them leave, then penciled the appointment into my planner. I closed it with a thump and shoved it into a drawer.

  “Are you doing close out tonight, Lacey?” I asked, rubbing my shoulders.

  “Yeah.” She wandered up to the counter after sweeping up the last of the hair.

  I started the millionth load of laundry for the day and folded what came out of the dryer with Percy’s help.

  “Percy, I’m going for a quick run. I’ll be back in 20 minutes for supper.” I called, before dashing up the left staircase. I need to clear my head and my sinuses from my day.

  “No hurry.” Percy acknowledged without looking up from her bookkeeping.

  I hurried anyway. I didn’t want to waste time walking.

  Percy’s house isn’t just huge, it’s a mansion she had built in the 1700s. She’s lived there almost full-time ever since, selling off her other properties over the years.

  My particular suite of rooms took up the west end of the house. I threw off my hair-infested work clothes as soon as I got the door shut and yanked on a sports bra and a pair of shorts, then shot back out the door. I ran on the property, so I didn’t really care who saw my state of undress, and the chill didn’t bother me. Part of me wanted to change completely, to become a furry four-footed monster, but there were humans about.

  The moon was waning, and I’d spent the last three days as a wolf. I needed to remember how to be a human again.

  The woods smelled vaguely of wolf, which I wrote off as my own scent. I ran a lot, and it hadn't rained recently.

  Percy threw a sweatshirt at me as soon as I arrived back in the kitchen for dinner, and I put it on without a word. I didn’t particularly care if anyone stared at me. Looking was okay, touching was not. I’d gotten used to both at a young age. I was a lady of the evening when I changed, a slave, as was my mother and my grandmother.

  I got lucky and made it out alive and not-so-free nearly 200 years ago when no one else did, but I still didn’t want to associate with the job.

  My phone pinged, and I pulled it out to see a photo message from Mem. She and her husband, George, were dressed up and sitting so close together that their foreheads touched, each wearing a brilliant smile.

  I sent her a quick reply: Gorgeous as always :)

  She sent back: Thanks to you, dear!

  Percy’s body relaxed as she set a nearly mooing steak in front of me. Gone was the persona of the pleasantly plump Greek woman in her mid-30s. In her place was a blonde buxom goddess with a spicy warm skin tone only slightly lighter than my own, otherwise known as Persephone, as in wife of Hades and daughter of Demeter. She'd moved to Isenburge, Maine to get as far away from the Mediterranean Winterland home of her husband as she could nine months out of the year.

  Her violet eyes were the most unsettling I’d ever seen. Even more so than my yellow ones, covered by brown contacts, or even Lacey’s red eyes, also covered in mud brown contacts.

  A big steaming mug of blood was set in front of Lacey-Marie. As a vampire, she lived off the stuff. She had a severe sun allergy and an aversion to religion.

  We’re an interesting bunch to be running a salon. But a job is a job no matter who or what you are. We’re good at what we do. And good at hiding what we are. As far as we could tell, our clients, Penny, and my band mates suspected nothing.

  The dark did nothing to dampen my senses the next morning, and something was off.

  I stretched my hand towards my nightstand, fumbling for my phone. 4:10 a.m. glowed at me from the screen.

  I groaned and snuggled down into my covers as I tried to figure out what had woken me up. Nothing was amiss in my suite, so I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

  The sweet coppery smell of blood assaulted me, provoking my animal side to my surface. I shoved the wolf down as best I could and sat up. My hearing sharpened, but all I could pick up was the deep, even breaths of Percy and the silence of Lacey-Marie.

  Not wanting to wake anyone else, I tiptoed to my door and down the stairs, avoiding the creaky ones. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and focused on the dark figure sitting at Penny's station. The reek of blood was wafting from our work area.

  I approached slowly, my feet making no sound on the tiled floor and my blood heating in anticipation. My heart sped up, and my breath came in short bursts as the smell of prey enticed me. It was a woman, her long brown hair draped over the back of the chair, her head lolled to one side.

  My muscles shook as I fought the urge to change. Slowly, carefully, I stalked around, my eyes sharpening in the dark as I took in the woman's face, and I moved closer. Now that I was right on top of her, the woman's scent under the blood became familiar.

  Her dead eyes were wide open, and her jaw was slack. There were two deep slices, like gills, over each jugular and despite the overwhelming scent, there was very little blood on her. I reached out a hand and touched Penny's still warm arm.

  Rage filling me, nostrils flaring, I threw my head back and howled long and loud.

  In a moment, Percy was at my side, her clothes and hair rumpled by sleep, eyes alert.

  "Get a hold of yourself, Gretchen," she demanded, her hands clenched on her hips.

  I snapped my jaw shut and fought the animal clawing its way out of my skin once more. Deep breaths. Don't think about the smells, just breathe.

  Percy picked up the phone and dialed as a few tears slid down her cheeks and dripped off her chin. I heard a muffled voice pick up. “I need to report a murder,” she said, her voice steady. “My name is Persephone Pluto, and I’m at Olympian’s Salon and Day Spa. I also live here.” She gave the address of the salon and the phone number.

  She was quiet for a moment, listening to the voice on the other side. “No, nobody heard anything. Everyone has been asleep.” After answering a few more questions, she hung up and beckoned me over with a wave of her hand.

  "Go wake Lacey up, then start a pot of coffee. After that, I want you to go outside for a minute and cool off. Now get out of this room until the police get here. We can't have you endangering anyone."

  I nodded then raced up the stairs and pounded on my best friend's door. "Wake up, you deaf corpse!" I roared, my humanity hanging on by a thread.

  "Good god, what's your problem? Do you have any idea what time it is?" Lacey answered the door in a pink, lacy, barely there baby doll.

  "Get dressed," I growled.

  "What's going on?" she asked, suddenly looking alert.

  "Penny's dead."

  "What!?" she grabbed my arms. "When? How?"

  "Not too long ago by the feel of her. Someone cut her throat. Oh, and she's downstairs. Cops will be here any minute. I can’t believe the smell didn’t wake you up." I turned away from her, and headed down a back staircase to the kitchen.

  Or at least that was my goal. Doors and stairs don't always lead where they're supposed to. I ended up in the library.

  "Don't mess with me. This is not a good time," I muttered at the house as I made my way down the hall to the kitchen. Not that the house cared what I thought. It was probably its fault that Lacey didn’t smell anything. It was really good at protecting everyone from a vampire feeding frenzy by absorbing the smells.

  I hurried with the coffee and put a kettle on for myself. I was going to need a good dos
ing of tea before I could deal with humans.

  Lacey followed me outside so she could smoke.

  "So, who found her?" she asked, lighting up.

  "I did." I waved her growing cloud away from me.

  "Seriously? What were you doing up? Did you hear something?"

  I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know what woke me. But I could smell her as soon as I did."

  "So, no clue who could have done it?" She took a deep drag off her cigarette and aimed the resulting stream of smoke away from me.

  "Not so far. All I could smell was blood and her."

  My ears picked up the sound of approaching sirens. I took a few steps away from my friend, closing my eyes and focusing on taking deep, slow breaths. The air was cool, fresh smelling, and clean. I counted backward from 10, breathing as I went. My pulse slowed, and my senses dulled as my wolf became dormant once more.

  "Ready to go back inside? I think the paramedics have landed," said Lacey, taking my hand.

  I let her lead me back into the kitchen. The pleasant aroma of freshly brewed coffee permeated the air, and I sniffed in appreciation. I might not be able to drink the stuff, but I could still get some enjoyment out of being around it.

  Lacey pulled the large insulated coffee carafe, which was usually used for clients during business hours, from a cabinet. I selected mugs and stacked them on a tray.

  The tea kettle whistled, and I poured it over sachets of tea for myself, the scent of lavender and lemon billowing upwards as the hot water hit the mixture.

  "You got the coffee?" I asked Lacey.

  She nodded, grabbing the bottle of fresh cream from the fridge for the coffee tray.

  "Good. Let's get this over with." I followed her through a maze of rooms to the salon with my pot of tea, where Percy stood talking quietly to the police as paramedics loaded Penny into a body bag resting on a gurney.

  Percy's eyes were red rimmed, and there were salty tear tracks down her glamoured cheeks. Gone was the goddess, her public face firmly in place.

  An officer broke off from the group.

  "I'm Officer Reynard. Ms. Pluto says you're the one that discovered the body?" He held out his hand to me in greeting.

  I nodded as I shook it and took in the strong scent of German Shepherd. His K-9 partner must have been waiting in his cruiser.

  "Walk me through it."

  I detailed as honestly as I could, without implicating my true nature, my discovery of Penny's body. I felt like I should have been crying. I was sad, yes, but I’d seen so much death over the years that I’d become a bit callous to a single death after the initial shock.

  "You heard nothing?" he asked.

  "Nope. I don't know what woke me up. I just felt like something was off so I went to investigate. I screamed when I found her, and Percy called 911."

  He asked for a few more details before questioning Lacey-Marie.

  I poured myself a mug of tea and took a seat on one of the chairs next to Percy.

  "So now what?" I asked her.

  "Well, this is a crime scene, so these gentlemen and ladies will be around for a while. We'll have to cancel today’s appointments and proceed from there." She waved her index finger in a circle and cast her eyes around the salon.

  "Proceed?" I asked.

  "Yes. Decide whether or not to remain closed for a time."

  We removed ourselves from the salon as soon as they finished with Lacey and headed upstairs with our mugs. There was no way any of us were going back to sleep, so we sat in Lacey-Marie's room and pretended to watch a movie in silence.

  I dozed off eventually, curled up in a deep blue armchair, as did the others.

  Waking up alone I stood, stretched, and made my way down to the kitchen.

  A scowl darkened Lacey-Marie’s pale features as she sat in the chair farthest from the sunlight pouring in through the kitchen’s big windows. She wouldn’t actually burst into flame like in the movies. She told me once that in the first few seconds of exposure she’d get a blistering sunburn, then char black and crispy in a few minutes. But no actual flame, puffy dust, or spurts of blood. Never having seen a vampire burn or die before, we had a little discussion about the most practical methods of killing each other, way back during cosmetology school in the mid -80’s. 1980’s. Lacey wasn't alive yet, in the 1880’s.

  She was changed when she was in college in the 70’s. Getting turned kind of put a damper on her biology major and her passion for sun tanning, poor girl. That’s why she was so excited about the spray tan booth, I think.

  She sampled her blood and performed a nose wrinkle worthy of me.

  “What’s in this?” She smacked her lips as she tried to decide whether or not she liked the taste.

  “Maple syrup. I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to enjoy it. It’s local.” Percy held up a jug of syrup with her own label. On top of being the original owner of the salon and a stylist, she also ran an organic farm. She didn’t eat anything that wasn’t organic, a remnant of how things used to be.

  I had to agree. Organic range fed beef was so much better than cow pumped full of growth hormones, which wreaked havoc on my wolf.

  In front of me, she set a plate of blueberry maple turkey sausage she'd traded for during farmer’s market.

  The muffled sound of a phone ringing in the salon interrupted our quiet breakfast, and Percy immediately jumped up to get it.

  “Don’t even think about it, Percy. It's probably a reporter," I garbled around my mouthful of meat.

  Percy understood me just fine but didn’t cooperate. She was in the salon, in human form, in the blink of an eye.

  It was disconcerting when she changed. I don’t know how she managed to keep up the glamour all day, but she’s really good at it. Glamours take a lot of energy as they ’re flawless magic illusions that cover a person, or sometimes objects, with a different appearance. Lacey wore a necklace spelled with a glamour that she had to replace once a week as it wore out, and it was expensive. It wasn’t much of a disguise as it just hides her fangs. The contacts that covered her blood red irises were cheaper than a glamour.

  “That was a cancellation, Lacey, your 1:00. She saw it on the news. I crossed it out of your book so you’ll know not to call her.” Percy pushed her way back through the doors and bolted down the rest of her breakfast.

  Lacey and I followed her example. If the phone was already ringing, it was just going to keep going, guaranteeing a very long day.

  I ran upstairs to my room to dress for the day, wishing I’d gotten up early for a run.

  I stripped off my fuzzy pajama pants and deposited them on the floor with yesterday’s clothes. My top joined that, and I flung the door open to my walk-in closet, dodging my punching bag, coming to stand, hands on hips, in front of my clothes rack. I wasn't officially working, so professional clothes weren't required. I dressed quickly in tight jeans and an oversized black hoodie, opting to remain barefoot.

  I threw my wild, curly dark hair up into a ponytail and decided against makeup before locking my door—a habit to keep out wandering clients—and shoving the key in my pocket.

  “Seven times. The phone has rung seven times since you two went up to change. Five new possible clients and two regulars wanting appointments for this week.” Percy sat on the swivel stool, staring at the salon phone. She poked it with her index finger as if expecting it to bite or ring, which is what it did.

  Lacey answered, putting on her professional voice. “Good morning! Olympian’s Salon, Lacey-Marie speaking, how may I help you? Uh huh, no . . . Uh, I’d have to see it . . . No, don’t buy a box of bleach, come in. I’ll see what I can do . . . No, I won’t be able to do anything about it today, but we can discuss options . . . Yes, yes. All right, see you in a bit.”

  Lacey hung up the phone and joined Percy in glaring at the ringing annoyance. “That was Yvonne Sandus, one of my sometimes regulars. She let one of her friends dye it black and cut it. Apparently it’s a mess.”

  "Lacey,
we're closed. We're not working," I reminded her, leaning over the desk on my elbows.

  "I'm not going to do anything today, just look at it. It's not like we're going anywhere."

  The phone rang again.

  My turn.

  “Good morning! Olympian’s Salon, Gretchen speaking. How may I help you?” I asked in my professional voice.

  “Hi. I got a cut there yesterday, and it’s just not right. I want my money back,” a woman’s voice snapped at me.

  “I see…” I paused. I’m not good at these situations. “Can you tell me who cut your hair so they can—” straighten you out “—correct the situation?”

  “I don’t know her name,” said the exasperated-sounding voice.

  “Describe her to me.”

  “Tall, dark.”

  Well, that describes me as Percy is middling height with dark hair, and Lacey is petite and blonde.

  “Gretchen?” I supplied with a snap of my own.

  “Yes that’s it, Gretchen.”

  She must have forgotten my introduction already.

  “Your name, please?” I asked, pulling my appointment book towards me.

  “Lucinda Evermont.”

  I couldn’t remember the name, so I flipped through my schedule in search of her. I didn’t have a single Lucinda listed on the previous day’s page, and I write down all my walk-ins.

  “I’m sorry I—we—don’t have your name here in our register for yesterday.”

  “Well, I—She must have realized what a terrible job she’d done. I want my money back.”

  “Listen, lady, I’m Gretchen. And I’m absolutely positive that I didn’t cut your hair yesterday. You’re gonna have to find another stylist to swindle—”

  Percy grabbed the phone from my hand before I could finish my tirade.

  “Hello, ma’am…. Yes I’m sorry about that. Gretchen’s had a tough week… Yes. I’m sorry, we don’t do refunds, but if you’d like to come in, I’d be happy to fix it for you. Yes… yes… of course. .. No, you’re right. Have a nice day, ma’am. You too.” Percy placed the phone back in the cradle and turned to glare at me.

  Just call her damage control.

  “What? She’s trying to steal my money. She’s never even been here before!”