Dating for Demons by Serena Robar Page B

smiled benignly.
    “Your friend from the other day, Colby, is it?”
    “Yeah, that’s her. She’s very competitive.” It annoyed me he remembered her name, though I couldn’t say why. Everyone remembered Colby. Blonde hair, perfect figure. She was larger than life. And by assuming it was Colby, he was basically saying I had no other friends, wasn’t he?
    “She okay?” he asked, apparently buying my scavenger hunt story. That annoyed me too. Did I look like the kind of gal who would waste her time on a Greek Week activity? Hello? Not so much.
    I stamped down my annoyance. “Colby? Oh yeah. She’s fine.”
    “She’s so little,” he commented.
    “She’s small, but she’s wiry,” I assured him sharply. Did we have to go on about Colby’s tiny, frail figure?
    “Good to know.” Sometimes, it was tough having a friend like Colby. Little Miss Sunshine girl. Even now that she was a half-blood vampire she still lit up a room. She could at least have become a stereotypical vampire and gone all dark and morbid but no, Colby had to do things her own way. Like always.
    “What’s with the sigh?” Hunter asked.
    I shook my head. “This scavenger hunt is becoming a huge pain in my rear. Do you really think you might be able to decipher this message?”
    He picked up the paper, reviewed it closely and looked back at me. He seemed to be contemplating his answer, measuring his words carefully before saying them aloud.
    “I might be able to but I don’t have enough to go by. Do you have more of this writing?”
    My heart sank. No, I didn’t have more ancient texts. In fact, any texts were going to be at the vampire library and who knew if I could make copies of the stuff there? If it wasn’t on display, I wouldn’t even know what to look for. One script looked very much like another to me and Hunter had taken all of three seconds to figure out it was actually two ancient alphabets used together.
    I had a crazy, wild, irrational thought. No, I couldn’t. Colby would kill me. Of course, she didn’t know Carl gave me access to the library and she’d forbidden me from going anyway because of the danger factor. What if Hunter were to accompany me? He could act as my bodyguard, and he certainly didn’t need to know we were breaking into a vampire library, did he?
    “Why are you here, anyway?” I asked bluntly.
    “Tea is the new coffee, haven’t you heard?”
    “But you’re not drinking any tea.”
    He refused to break eye contact. “No, it doesn’t appear that I am, does it?”
    “How did you find me?”
    “What makes you think I was looking for you?” Haughty was so sexy. I needed professional help, didn’t I?
    “And yet, here you are.”
    “Coincidence?” he ventured.
    “Unlikely.”
    “Maybe someone told me I would find you here.”
    “Who?” I asked sharply.
    “Someone at Psi Phi House.”
    My heart raced. How did he know about Psi Phi House? Who was he anyway?
    “Your car had a Psi Phi House sticker in the window so I did a little checking. Only one sorority called Psi Phi and it happens to be at PSU. Very convenient, since I live on Capital Hill.”
    “So you were looking for me.”
    “Maybe I was looking for your little blonde friend?” he countered.
    “She’s not here. I am,” I said. Why was I surprised? Of course he was interested in Colby.
    “Lucky me.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that. He was way better at the cool, sophisticated banter than I was. I decided to switch the conversation back to where I was in control.
    “How do you know so much about these scripts, anyway?”
    He stared at me a moment more before saying, “My grandfather,” without elaborating.
    “And?” I drawled after a moment.
    “And when I was little, I would stay with him in his huge house full of all sorts of books and journals. He loved ancient languages but preferred pagan symbols above all others. He devoted most of his time to their study after he retired.”
    “Oh, what did he used to do?”