The vampire in the potti.., p.1
The Vampire in the Potting Shed (Groom & Doom Book 1), page 1
the vampire in the potting shed
HAILEY EDWARDS
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No generative artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the writing of this work. Only the author’s own blood, sweat, and tears (and possibly tumble weeds made from corgi fur) were used in its creation.
Edited by Sasha Knight
Copy Edited by Kimberly Cannon
Proofread by Lillie's Literary Services
Cover by Damonza
contents
The Vampire in the Potting Shed
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
Join the Team
About the Author
Also by Hailey Edwards
the vampire in the potting shed
Groom & Doom, Book 1
There are two things Ana Sartori knows for certain. She can’t shapeshift into a wolf like her father or his pack. And, despite her being a latent, little more than human, he loves her despite her faults. She’s never going to be an alpha like him, but she can still hold her own in a fight. Not that her life is violent. He makes sure of that. Aside from occasionally wrestling pets into a headlock when it’s time to trim their nails at Gwinnett Street Groomers, Ana leads a simple life.
At least that was the case until someone broke into her pet resort and spa, leaving a mystery dog behind in one of the bougie boarding suites. Not to mention there’s a vampire hiding in the potting shed. A very tall, very handsome vampire. He even smells nice, minus the blood drenching his clothes.
Ana could handle those things, probably, but now there’s a new alpha determined to claim the town—and Ana—as his territory. Either she stands and fights for her home, or she runs to her father with her (metaphorical) tail tucked between her legs. Life is a lot of things, but for Ana, simple isn’t one of them anymore.
one
“Red alert. Red alert. Red alert.”
Vibrant wings spread wide, Harvey the scarlet macaw threw his weight behind pumping the swing in the massive cage I kept parked in front of the wide plate glass windows at Gwinnett Street Groomers as free advertisement we catered to more than the furry pet crowd and offered services beyond what the name implied with a variety of upscale extras. Such as boarding exotic pets. Very loud exotic pets.
“Good morning, Harvey.” I fed and watered him then turned on his TV. “You’re going home today, bud.”
“Alien invasion.”
Add-ons like screentime were available for boarded pets who enjoyed watching their shows, like Harvey, whose tastes ran toward science fiction. Not surprising when his owner spent his annual leave snooping around Area 51 with like-minded friends, every year, without fail.
“We’re all gonna die.”
Lights flooded the back room as my kennel tech, Sloane, came whistling through the employee entrance behind the old Victorian turned pet resort and spa. She wasn’t qualified to do more than feed and water the animals or clean out their runs, but that was the cost of being Carmichael Sartori’s daughter.
Dad hired qualified people. Just not people qualified for this job.
“Um.” Sloane stuck her head into the lobby as I was turning the sign from closed to open. “Ana?”
A whiff of anxiety hit my nose as I pivoted toward her, hoping she hadn’t gotten bitten again. “Hmm?”
“There’s, uh, an extra dog?” She chewed her bottom lip. “We had five last night, and now there are six.”
“That’s not possible.” I ran down a mental checklist of the pets we had in residence. “Do a recount.”
“I did?” Her voice wobbled as her scent grew more pungent. “I still get six?”
“Show me.” I walked through the door she held open for me then veered left, toward the bougie private rooms always booked out months in advance. “The extra is in here?”
The four exclusive suites were thirty-six square feet, and each one featured a different hand-painted mural in a variety of themes to fit any personality. Unlike the kennels, where plush beds weren’t allowed, here they were supplied by a local seamstress for these pampered pets to take home with them to remember their stay.
“Suite Two.” Sloane indicated the pristine observation window. “What even is that?”
The trespasser was mostly hairless, its smooth skin a mottled pink-and-black pattern, except for feathery tufts of long white hair on its head, ankles, and tail. No collar as far as I could tell, but I would check for a microchip. On a dog from a breed that spendy, there must be some identifier.
“A Chinese Crested.” I dragged a hand down my face. “Where’s Bailey?”
The golden retriever belonging to my first client without ties to the Sartori family—thank you very much—had been tucked in her favorite suite when I left for the night. She loved chasing the flashing stoplight that lent the city mural its 3D effect. Now that I thought about it, she had also been watching Sex and the City.
Whoever left the Crested had changed the channel so it could binge home improvement shows.
“She’s in Kennel D.” Sloane palmed her phone from her back pocket. “I’m sorry, Ana, but I have to call this in.” Her fingers hovered over her screen. “The threat risk is too high.”
This didn’t feel like a threat, but it was downright strange. I wasn’t sure what to make of it or what to do about the frou-frou freeloader. I had no room for it. I was booked solid for the next two months. I wasn’t bumping a paying customer to give this dog the treatment its owner felt it deserved on the house either.
“Yeah.” I blew out a sigh that ruffled the curtain bangs I already regretted cutting for myself. “I know.”
If Dad heard secondhand that someone had broken into GSG, he would blow a fuse. Then he would send one of his sentinels to drag me home where he could keep me under lock and key until the owner was found. And if the owner skipped town? I would never see the sun through anything but bulletproof glass for the rest of my natural life.
“Who does that?” Sloane dialed his number from memory then waited for him to answer. “Breaks in, steals a suite from a paying customer, then bounces without leaving so much as a note?”
The moment Dad thundered across the line, I made myself scarce, returning to the lobby.
Halfway to the register, I spotted a blank card I had missed earlier wedged under its slim base.
I read the note once. Twice. Three times.
Each reading cranked my temper higher and higher.
A few minutes later, Sloane returned wearing a tight expression. “Do we call the cops?”
For insurance purposes, probably not the worst idea, but nothing had been damaged.
And that note. That damned note.
“No.” I shoved the card in my pocket. “We wait and see who comes to pick up the dog.”
Give her your best, or I’ll show you my worst.
As far as threats went, I had received better, but the penmanship was nice.
“How do you know someone will come back for it?”
“Oh.” I smoothed a hand over the thin square tucked in my jeans. “I just have a feeling.”
And if the owner tried jailbreaking their dog without first squaring up with me, they would learn fast I wasn’t Carmichael Sartori’s daughter for nothing.
two
While we waited on a full-scale Sartori invasion, Sloane and I resumed our daily routine. Pets still needed their food topped off, their water refilled, and walksies. Then there was cleanup in the runs for her while I got grooming.
After the hard work was done, we had to get started on cuddle time, one of our most popular add-ons and the bright spot in my day. Who didn’t love snuggling animals? Crazy how I got paid to do it.
As I was trimming Robespierre’s nails, debating on a new polish color for him to wear during his vacation to Orlando next week, the front door banged open on a bellow that startled a yelp out of the chihuahua.
“Peanut?” a painfully familiar voice boomed through the lobby. “Peanut?”
“Wait in the lobby,” I called back, not wanting him to spook the animals. “I’ll be right there.”
I set down my tools, scooped up Robespierre, and crated him until after I had dealt with the drama.
The drama being six feet of muscle crammed into a bespoke pinstripe suit, the expensive fabric groaning at the seams as he struggled to contain his inner wolf. As soon as he set eyes on me, the wildness in him ebbed a fraction, and he opened his arms to me. Heat burning my cheeks, I walked into his embrace.
“Do you have any idea who could have done this?”
“I’m not even
“That big heart of yours will get you in trouble one day. That’s why I worry so much.”
“They didn’t cause any property damage.” I wasn’t sure why I was defending the note writer. “It’s okay.” I pulled back to smile my best daddy’s little girl smile at him. “I’m okay.”
The dark-chocolate eyes that studied my face were darker than my hazel ones. He always wore his wavy, coal-black hair slicked back, but I got Mom’s stick-straight golden-blonde hair. The uncanny resemblance to a mother I couldn’t remember had always been a sore spot for me. I wouldn’t have minded it so much if I had inherited the single most important thing from Dad.
A wolf spirit of my own.
Heightened senses were nice, and the extra strength was a lifesaver in my line of work, but without a wolf, I was more superhuman than shifter, and the pack never let me forget it.
“You’re in danger out here.” He slid his grip onto my shoulders. “You should come home.”
“Home is forty-five minutes away,” I reminded him. “Thirty if I push the speed limit.”
A low growl revved up the back of his throat, his eyes flashing gold, and I took a healthy step back.
“Not that I would ever break the law or endanger my frail human self, but that’s what I’ve heard.”
A masculine snort blew warm air across my nape and tempted me to break character and snarl at Bowie, who must have sneaked in through the back, but I behaved myself.
“You’re not a human.” Dad leaned in to kiss my forehead. “You’re a shifter, the same as anyone else.”
That was the line he used to feed me when I limped home from school after the other kids, who had wolves, beat the taste out of my mouth. I wasn’t sure if I preferred those early days, when he had been so sure it would happen. That a she-wolf would burst from my skin under the right conditions to protect me. Say, when kids tripped me in the lunch line in the cafeteria. Or shoved me down while we waited on the bus. Or knocked me off the swings at recess.
Violence was a classic shifting trigger, but I only fired blanks.
Now that Dad had lost hope of a wolf emerging from me, he coddled me the same as he had Mom, who had chosen divorce over his suffocating love when I was a toddler.
“Then why do I have bodyguards, unlike everyone else?”
Damn it.
I hadn’t meant to let my temper slip its leash, but Bowie had that effect on me. He had since I was in the fifth grade, and his younger sister knocked out my front tooth. Then, instead of being helpful, he had the balls to lecture me on picking fights I couldn’t win.
“You’re the pack princess, Peanut.” Bowie trailed a finger down my spine. “You get special treatment.”
“Daddy.” Embracing the stereotype, I stuck out my bottom lip. “This creep is bothering me.”
The death stare Dad leveled at him over my shoulder broke a genuine smile across my face.
I wasn’t the only one who remembered the reason I came home with my tooth in a glass of milk.
“I’ll check in with Zoe,” Bowie grumbled at my back. “She’s expecting a call about the Walsh situation.”
And if he pinched my hip on his way out, I didn’t give him the satisfaction of flinching. “What’s the Walsh situation?”
“There are no signs of forced entry or magic use.” Mercer swooped in, saving the day and giving Dad the perfect excuse not to answer. He offered Dad his mini tablet then winked at me before presenting me with a lollipop, like that made excluding me any better. “Whoever broke in picked the lock with a good set of tools and a steady hand. This wasn’t their first rodeo.” He unwrapped a sucker for himself. “I would think they didn’t want Anie knowing they had been here, but a dog that ugly is hard to miss.”
“Hey.” I anchored my hands on my hips. “We don’t dog shame at GSG.”
“Apologies.” Mercer wiped the smile off his face, but it lingered in his eyes. “I meant no disrespect.”
“No magic means the intruder left behind a scent.” Dad watched the screen for long moments before he tilted it toward me. “Have you ever seen this man?”
The short clip let me watch a powerfully built man in sweatpants and a hoodie let himself in through the back with a mesh dog carrier slung over one shoulder. “I don’t think so, but it’s hard to tell.”
For the whole minute he spent coaxing the lock to open, the man had kept his head down, denying me a glimpse of his shadowed face. He kept his wide shoulders bowed too, making it difficult to peg his height except to say that he was tall. Maybe around Bowie’s height, give or take an inch or two.
“The thing is,” Mercer said, circling back to Dad’s earlier comment, “GSG is a public building, and Anie has all kinds of clients. Human, witch, shifter, vampire.” I was damned proud of the diversity I had cultivated too, even more so when I reminded myself how few of the pet owners had Sartori ties these days. Bailey might have been my first, but she was far from the last client I earned through the reputation I built for myself, not the one attached to me at birth. “We have no means of parsing customers’ scents from the intruder’s scent without a baseline.”
The men shared a look that transferred onto me, but I wasn’t having any of it.
“We can circle back to how you mounted surveillance cameras across the street without telling me.” The energy it would take to act surprised, when I was more shocked they hadn’t wired the inside too, wasn’t worth the effort of scrounging up enough outrage to carry me through an argument that I wouldn’t win. “That poor dog has had enough excitement for one day without randos smelling like wolf backing it into a corner in a strange place and sniffing it for clues.” I blasted out an exhale. “I’ll do it.”
A wolf spirit might have snubbed me in the womb, but I was born possessing the exact same heightened senses and increased strength and stamina as the rest of the pack. Not that anyone gave me credit for it.
One whole step later, Dad cleared his throat. “Are you sure you—?”
“I’ve got this.” I ditched them in the lobby and entered the kennels. “Sloane?”
“Here, boss.” She trotted over from where she had been talking to one of the sentinels. “What’s up?”
“Clear the room, please.” I palmed a ring of keys in my pocket. “I’m going to visit our guest.”
“On it.” She allowed her wolf to climb into her voice. “Everybody out.”
The four male wargs in the room hustled to obey the command in her tone, reminding me she might not be the world’s greatest kennel tech, not yet anyway, but she was fierce when it came to doing her actual job. All her anxiety melted as her dominance streak emerged from where she kept it hidden for my sake.
Because I had the heart of a dominant and no wolf to back it up if I triggered her instinct to fight me.
As soon as the room was empty, I let myself into the suite and shut the door. I sat on the concrete floor, crossed my legs, and let the dog decide when to come to me. I smelled like a predator, which helped me when it came to wrangling difficult clients into the tub for their bath or holding them steady underneath the force dryer, but it hindered me when pets had human owners.
“I’m sure you have some kind of fancy name,” I said, voice low and soft, “but I don’t know it.”
The dog cocked its head at me, listening, but it continued lounging on the custom golden-size dog bed.
“Still, I can’t keep calling you it or the dog.” I couldn’t get a visual read on gender with it belly down, face aimed at me. That didn’t mean I couldn’t smell it on her. She had been in this confined space for a while, and her scent overlapped Bailey’s. “How about I call you Myrtle?”
The dog—Myrtle—appeared to consider it but found the TV bathroom demo more interesting than me.
Good thing I always carried homemade peanut butter treats in my pocket.
“Are you hungry?” I counted out three smaller ones and held them on my open palm. “Want one?”
With a sigh that hinted she wasn’t used to fetching her own treats, she trotted over and nibbled on one. I held my breath, waiting for the verdict, but the recipe must have met with her standards. She inhaled a second and third one before I promised I would get her real food as soon as the pack left us in peace.
