The Sexorcist by Vivi Andrews

lady?” he asked. His voice sounded oily rather than aged and carried just the slightest trace of an accent.
    Brittany ran her hands down her arms, feeling like she had been greased by the sound. “Er, well, yes,” she said slowly, battling down the urge to say no and walk quickly in the other direction.
    He was just a little old man. A perfectly normal little old man. In a cardigan, for heaven’s sake! So why did she feel like she’d just brushed against a snake? A very poisonous snake. With too many fangs.
    He tapped his chest with one finger. “Any flower you want. Trust in Mikos. I’ll take good care of you.”
    “Mikos. What an odd name.”
    His smile twisted strangely and Brittany kicked herself. Great. She’d just insulted the name of the nice little old man offering her flowers. The only flower seller who hadn’t run in the opposite direction as word spread that she was the new wedding planner for that wedding . She couldn’t afford to alienate Mikos.
    “And how lovely,” she added quickly. “Is it Greek?”
    The too-many-teeth smile returned slowly. “Er, yes. Greek. You want flowers?”
    Brittany forced her own smile to brighten, ignoring the twitching at the base of her spine that urged her to run back to her car and not look back. “I’m planning an… event in three weeks and I will need a variety of arrangements. Centerpieces, decorations for wall sconces, and, er, some, ahem, bouquets. And perhaps a boutonniere or two.”
    There really was no getting around it. It was impossible to even describe the flowers she needed without making it painfully obvious that her event was a wedding.
    But Mikos didn’t even blink. In fact, she didn’t think he’d blinked once since appearing in front of her. Like a snake. Brittany shivered. Did he even have eyelids?
    “Whatever you need,” he said, smiling toothily and nodding with steady bobs of his head.
    “The, er, guest of honor is particularly fond of lilies.”
    “Lilies.” Bob, bob, bob went his head.
    Brittany found herself nodding along with Mikos and forced herself to stop, feeling a bit disoriented. His head kept bobbing, the motion oddly hypnotic. She cleared her throat, again feeling the urge to escape scratching its way up her spine. She had to leave. Now.
    “Do you have a card?” she asked abruptly. “Can I visit you in your shop?”
    “A card?” he repeated, seeming irritated by the question.
    “Or you could just tell me the name of your store. I’m sure my car’s GPS can find it. So handy, GPS. What did we do before we had it, eh? Calling information all the time.” She was babbling. She knew it, but the words seemed to fill the air between them like a buffer, a safe-zone, and she just kept throwing more words into that space, trying to make it wider. “I really must be going now,” she said, backing away. “I can’t be late for work. It’s my first day. New job. I need to make a good impression. Begin as you mean to go on, and all that. Thank you for your time. Goodbye!”
    She turned and began rushing away. She got about three feet before the dual realizations hit that she hadn’t gotten the name of his shop and that she was, in fact, running away from a man who had to be sixty if he was a day and had been nothing but friendly to her. She tried to slow her feet, but they kept on hurrying toward her car—as if they knew better than she did where she ought to be going right now.
    Brittany glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see Mikos gazing after her with a rather puzzled expression on his face. She was behaving exceptionally oddly. Even for her.
    What she saw instead sent a wash of ice water rocketing through her bloodstream and had her breaking into a run.
    He wasn’t watching her walk away.
    He was following her.
    And he had far too many teeth.
    Rows of them. Like a shark. Small and pointed and vicious. Some of them looking more like fangs than teeth and... Was that gore? Were there little bloody bits snagged on