Tess Owens has been a forensic chemist for the Pittsburgh Police Department for four years.
She has been a junior Keeper of the Hollow Creek region for one. Her grandmother is dead. The reagents on her lab bench are her grandmother’s. The case file on her desk on the Tuesday morning of the last week of October is, by way of the inter-town treaty office, a parcel from a man who has been in a holding cell in Burlington for the previous twelve months.
The man’s name is August Reeve.
The parcel is a notebook. The notebook contains a list of eleven vampires he has turned, against their will, in the last sixty years. The list is the start. The list, by the end of Tess’s first day in Vermont, has expanded to forty-seven. The second name on the list is the woman who brought a casserole to her grandmother’s funeral.
Felix Ardenne has been a vampire for one hundred and thirty-four years.
He has been alone for the last forty-five. He has been a corresponding member of the Burlington council’s scientific advisory for forty. He has been working August Reeve’s case for the previous twelve months and has identified, in those twelve months, two of the eleven names on the notebook he has not yet seen. On the Wednesday afternoon a Pittsburgh PD forensic chemist sends him an addendum in pencil on the back of a letter from her supervisor, Felix tears up the methodology dossier he had spent the morning preparing and starts over.
Tess and Felix have eleven days to identify the eleven. They have eleven weeks to identify what the eleven do not, on the strict standing arrangement of the chain of custody, fit. They have twelve months to close the case, on a secondment Joel Vasquez had been preparing Tess for since the day she started at the PD.
They have, between them, exactly as much time as they need.
DRINK ME is Book Three of The Hollow Creek Vampires, a small-town paranormal romance series by C.J. Blackwood. Forensic-chemist heroine, scholarly vampire hero, age gap (26/134), slow burn, enemies-to-lovers-by-paperwork, cohabitation in the spare room that was once his ex-wife'''s, the bite she has never had and the bite he has been waiting for. Standard C.J. Blackwood heat. Guaranteed HEA. Cassius, Wren, Theo, Estelle, Marguerite, and Eleanor from Books One and Two all carry forward in supporting roles. Each book a new couple. Read in order, as a standalone, or alongside the box set.
Tropes: forensic heroine · scholarly vampire hero · age gap (26/134) · enemies-to-lovers-by-paperwork · slow burn · the only spare room is his ex-wife’s · dead-grandmother-as-mystery · cold-case-turned-hot-case · found family · morally complex everyone · quiet HEA · the bite she has been waiting for and the bite he has been waiting longer.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
She has been a junior Keeper of the Hollow Creek region for one. Her grandmother is dead. The reagents on her lab bench are her grandmother’s. The case file on her desk on the Tuesday morning of the last week of October is, by way of the inter-town treaty office, a parcel from a man who has been in a holding cell in Burlington for the previous twelve months.
The man’s name is August Reeve.
The parcel is a notebook. The notebook contains a list of eleven vampires he has turned, against their will, in the last sixty years. The list is the start. The list, by the end of Tess’s first day in Vermont, has expanded to forty-seven. The second name on the list is the woman who brought a casserole to her grandmother’s funeral.
Felix Ardenne has been a vampire for one hundred and thirty-four years.
He has been alone for the last forty-five. He has been a corresponding member of the Burlington council’s scientific advisory for forty. He has been working August Reeve’s case for the previous twelve months and has identified, in those twelve months, two of the eleven names on the notebook he has not yet seen. On the Wednesday afternoon a Pittsburgh PD forensic chemist sends him an addendum in pencil on the back of a letter from her supervisor, Felix tears up the methodology dossier he had spent the morning preparing and starts over.
Tess and Felix have eleven days to identify the eleven. They have eleven weeks to identify what the eleven do not, on the strict standing arrangement of the chain of custody, fit. They have twelve months to close the case, on a secondment Joel Vasquez had been preparing Tess for since the day she started at the PD.
They have, between them, exactly as much time as they need.
DRINK ME is Book Three of The Hollow Creek Vampires, a small-town paranormal romance series by C.J. Blackwood. Forensic-chemist heroine, scholarly vampire hero, age gap (26/134), slow burn, enemies-to-lovers-by-paperwork, cohabitation in the spare room that was once his ex-wife'''s, the bite she has never had and the bite he has been waiting for. Standard C.J. Blackwood heat. Guaranteed HEA. Cassius, Wren, Theo, Estelle, Marguerite, and Eleanor from Books One and Two all carry forward in supporting roles. Each book a new couple. Read in order, as a standalone, or alongside the box set.
Tropes: forensic heroine · scholarly vampire hero · age gap (26/134) · enemies-to-lovers-by-paperwork · slow burn · the only spare room is his ex-wife’s · dead-grandmother-as-mystery · cold-case-turned-hot-case · found family · morally complex everyone · quiet HEA · the bite she has been waiting for and the bite he has been waiting longer.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Used availability for C J Blackwood's Drink Me