Pretty Plastic: Cold Fingers, #3

By Amy Spector

Pretty Plastic (Cold Fingers Book 3)

 

Three months after his run-in with the vampire Marcus Gråsson, Christopher's ankle has healed but his life is anything but perfect. There are people watching the house. Flora's worried about the scarecrow. And after an unexpected tragedy strikes, Christopher will need to figure out how to deal with the loss without tearing a rift between his brother and himself.

When Victor accepts a job with Pretty, a prestigious private hospital, to work alongside the handsome Austen Poole, Christopher ends up with one more thing to worry about. While it might seem like a dream job, there's something not quite right in paradise, and when Vic starts acting strangely, Christopher will stop at nothing to get his man back.

When striving for perfection, you sometimes need to get your hands a little dirty.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy Spector
• Release date: May 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201429607

Amy Spector

Amy Spector grew up in the United States surviving on a steady diet of old horror movies, television reruns, and mystery novels.After years of blogging about comic books, vintage Gothic romance book cover illustrations, and a shameful amount about herself, she decided to try her hand at writing stories. She found it more than a little like talking about herself in third person, and that suited her just fine.She blames Universal for her love of horror, Edward Gorey for her love of British drama, and writing for awakening the romantic that was probably there all along.Amy lives in the Midwest with her husband and children, and her cats Poe, Goji and Nekō.

Book preview

Christopher Minnick is still not a zombie.

Three months after his run-in with the vampire Marcus Gråsson, Christopher’s ankle has healed but his life is anything but perfect. There are people watching the house. Flora’s worried about the scarecrow. And after an unexpected tragedy strikes, Christopher will need to figure out how to deal with the loss without tearing a rift between his brother and himself.

When Victor accepts a job with Pretty, a prestigious private hospital, to work alongside the handsome Austen Poole, Christopher ends up with one more thing to worry about. While it might seem like a dream job, there’s something not quite right in paradise, and when Vic starts acting strangely, Christopher will stop at nothing to get his man back.

When striving for perfection, you sometimes need to get your hands a little dirty.

Acknowledgements

Much thanks to Neptune Flowers, Ofelia Gränd and Al Stewart. I owe you all a drink.

Dedicated to Professor Henry Jarrod.

People...chained by monotony, afraid to think, clinging always to certainties and terrified by the unknown. They live like ants.

— Bela Lugosi

Chapter 1

I’d always been terrible at deciphering a map. It wasn’t something that had ever concerned me—there was always GPS—but now, with a numb ass and even number toes, I stood at a grave marked Stevenson.

I didn’t even know a Stevenson.

I crouched, using the stone to lean against, and slipped the map from the pocket of my coat to study it again. It didn’t help.

I think this thing is misprinted. I may not have been able to read a map, but I had my pride.

Jonathan snorted—as if my brother had any room to judge—and I turned to find him sprawled on the cold ground, memorial stones and statuary casting odd shadows around him in the waning afternoon light.

Despite the not particularly late hour, nerves churned my stomach. Cemeteries did that to me now. A remnant of my short, bloody acquaintance with Marcus Gråsson.

Are you sure we’re even in the right cemetery?

The paper said Mount Olive.

Jonathan sat up, batting dead grass and snow from his hair as he considered. Who’s to say there’s only one Mount Olive?

I was. We were talking about a cemetery, not a McDonald’s.

Pushing myself up, I walked back out to the paved road that wound through the collection of stones and markers, seemingly without much forethought, in search of the signpost that had brought us to this particular spot, and cursed myself for not waiting for a day when Vic could have come with me. But I had seen the death notice and had been compelled to search my brother down in the house.

Mom and Dad are both dead.

He’d looked up from a book, blinked a few times and shrugged. May they burn in hell.

It wasn’t the reaction I’d been expecting. It seemed harsh, even for Jonathan.

Don’t say that.

And why not? He closed his book, dropping his bare feet to the floor, and gave me a questioning look.

Because they were our parents.

They were no longer my parents the day they kicked you out. He hopped up from the couch, moving to slip whatever he’d been reading back onto one of the library shelves. No, I take that back. They were no longer my parents the day they stopped talking to you.

I had been sixteen.

Come to the cemetery with me, I said. He scowled. Please. If I can forgive them, so can you.

Not that I’d forgiven them. I’d only been a child when I’d come out to my family, an impulse I would have been better off ignoring. But once it was out, the damage was done and there was no going back.

No, I hadn’t forgiven them.

I found the sign just as Jonathan found me.

I think it’s gotten turned. He reached up, tapping the embossed metal plate, and we watched as the 1886 twirled around the pole. Helpful.

I looked down at the map again and, with more confidence than I felt, made a decision. There. If that section isn’t it, it must be this one on the other side.

We crossed the pavement and slid our way down a steep incline and a narrow strip of lawn wedged between a mostly frozen ornamental pond and a large stand of naked trees, reading stones and calling the names out to each other.

Olsen.

Osbourne.

Glasscock.

Glasscock?

Wilted Christmas decorations gave the place a more somber feel than I think it would have had otherwise. There was something inherently depressing about dead poinsettia and damp crepe-paper Santas.

Around the bend of trees, the section widened out, stretched long, and the two of us cursed in unison. Maybe coming back would be better. The weird compulsion that brought me here had drained away in the thirty minutes since we’d driven through the Mount Olive gates, and I didn’t see it getting a second wind.

I think someone’s watching us.

I looked around, finding a small congregation of mourners in the distance, a tent erected above a casket. I could hear the rhythmic murmuring of a voice, but I couldn’t understand what it was saying.

While our clumsy approach had certainly drawn attention, I thought my brother was being a bit dramatic.

Not there. There. Old guy in the Stetson. Jonathan nodded behind me, and I turned. Sure enough, a man bundled in a long, tweed coat and wearing a black cowboy hat stared at the two of us. Instead of looking away once he’d been discovered, he waved us over.

I wanted to ignore him—and not only because of the hat—but Jonathan had already started walking his way.

Minnick, he called out, whether because of my hesitation or some other reason, I didn’t know, but when I looked over to him again, he indicated the ground at his feet. Your parents.

The last words were delivered in one of those loud whispers that did no one any good, as if he’d suddenly become concerned about the mourners a few hundred yards away, but not that concerned.

With little choice, I reluctantly followed Jonathan over, the ground crunching loudly under my feet.

You’re the Minnick boys. I can’t believe it. He grabbed at my bare hand, shaking it with his gloved one. Who is who? No, no...let me guess. He stared back and forth between the two of us with intense blue eyes, eyes that looked younger than the lines on his face suggested. My god, I remembered you boys but it’s been so long. I didn’t recall you looking so much alike. It was twins, right? Not triplets?

Twins. Jonathan supplied the answer before I could, but shoved his balled-up fists in his pockets when the stranger let go of me and offered him a hand. I’m Jonathan, he’s Christopher. And you’re Mr. Utterson.

He had always been better with names and faces than I was.

Yes. He beamed at my brother. "I’m your...well, I was a friend of your parents. And their attorney."

Mr. Utterson patted at his pockets, eventually fishing out a business card and held it out until my brother took it.

Longman, Green and Utterson, Jonathan read out loud, then passed the card over to me.

I’m very sorry about your parents. He blinked a few times, and where he’d seemed excited to see us before, he now appeared downright broken. It was so sudden. You have my deepest sympathy for the loss.

Neither of us said anything. What was there to say? We hadn’t spoken to either of them in more than fifteen years. It felt wrong, somehow, to take this man’s sympathy. It didn’t feel like we had any claim to it.

Well, thank you for the assistance, Mr. Utterson. I was ready to end the conversation, and if he wouldn’t leave, I would.

Of course. He straightened, morphing from mourning friend to attorney in a single sigh of breath, pulling out a second business card and handing it to my brother again. I slipped the one Jonathan had given to me