1 - This Cozy Mystery Sucks

My name is Jessica O’Halloran and I’m a vampire.

My husband and I left our safe little paranormal town of Broken Heart, Oklahoma to enjoy a weekend getaway. We’re at a paranormal bed-and-breakfast situated on an isle off the coast of Maine.

Sounds cozy, right?

WRONG.

A vicious storm traps us on the island with werewolves, witches, other vampires, and a human true-crime writer.

Oh, and also an ax killer.

Will we survive? Good question. I guess we'll find out. But I'm giving this experience 0 stars. Do not recommend. This cozy mystery sucks.

---

This Cozy Mystery Sucks was previously published as Dirty Rotten Vampires. It’s been substantially revised and updated for its 2024 release.

PLEASE NOTE: Chapter One is FREE, but the rest of the novel is for paid subscribers. Or you can buy the book.

---

Chapter One

The bed-and-breakfast looked less like a welcoming place of respite and more like the setting of a Murder, She Wrote episode. Admittedly, my current infatuation with Cabot Cove and Jessica Fletcher had led to our vacation in the back-of-beyond. 

Surrounded by tall, thick-branched pine trees, the Cape-Cod style two-story house had a steep-pitched, gabled roof. On it perched two rectangular dormer windows spaced an equal distance apart. The bright white accents of the porch and the shutters offered a stark contrast to the dark gray clapboard exterior.

With the incoming thunderstorm roiling across the black evening sky, it was darker than sin outside. I could see fine, however, thanks to my preternatural vision. 

I’m a vampire. 

My name is Jessica O’Halloran. I know, right? Jessica Fletcher and Jessica O’Halloran. The fact that the crime-solving heroine shared my name was another reason I was enamored of the classic TV show. 

I got vampified—what our kind calls Turned—when I was thirty-six. I still looked that age. Well, better, because getting Turned smoothed out my wrinkles, perked up my boobs, deleted my stretch marks, added adorable sparkles to my eyes, and made my brown hair shine like polished carnelian. 

Those last two details about myself come from my husband, Patrick, who is also a vampire. He was the reason for my undead status. I mean, he didn’t kill me, or anything. I was attacked by a slobbering Bigfoot-type creature and the only way for Patrick to save my life was to Turn me.  

Patrick was more than 4,000 years old. 

Given his real age, you might think Patrick was a decrepit Nosferatu-type bloodsucker. Nah. My husband looked nothing like the hook-nosed, bald, needs-a-dentist-STAT Count Orlock. 

Patrick was superfreakinggorgeous with shoulder-length black hair, muscles on his muscles, and very unusual eyes—a silvery gray color. 

When I met Patrick, I was a widowed housewife with a nine-year-old daughter and fourteen-year-old son. (Patrick and I adopted two-year-old Rich after his mother died.) 

My son Bryan worked as a journalist in Tulsa. My daughter Jennifer was a … zombie-ologist. Yes, it's a thing. To her. She's been fascinated with zombies since she rescued her first one when she was a kid.

With my youngest son starting his freshman year of college at Oklahoma University, I’d been officially relieved of my motherhood duties. 

It was strange, this sudden freedom.

I don’t think I liked it. I felt like a balloon that had been accidentally released into the sky. I was floating away from all that I knew into this terrifying vastness—without direction or purpose.

I couldn’t believe my kids were all grown up. Sniffle. Rich was 18, Jenny was 25, and Bryan was 30. In my mind they were still mah babies, not adults with lives of their own. 

I was having a tough time figuring out what it was like to be me without kids. Sure, I was still a mother. I guess. Well-meaning people kept telling me to turn my attention to other things. Except … I didn’t have other things. 

I tried stuff, like being in charge of a vampire senior citizen program. That sooooo did not work out. The elderly undead are pains-in-the-patootie.

Some people I knew had hobbies like gardening and scrapbooking and collecting skulls, but I found all that crap boring. 

Who wants to dig up coffins and poke around dusty old bones? 

Although grave robbing wasn’t as awful as say, commemorating life events on decorated pages with photographs and stickers and calligraphy. 

Also, I couldn’t keep plants alive when I was alive. I’d rather steal skulls than plant peonies anyhow. I mean, if I had to pick someone else’s idea of a hobby. 

Patrick had pitched the idea of a short vacation because he wanted to get me out of the house, out of our hometown of Broken Heart, Oklahoma, and out of my funk.

I had suggested Cabot Cove, Maine.

We had a good laugh because Patrick had binge-watched Murder, She Wrote with me. 

I let the whole idea go. 

My amazing hubby did not. He found a vampire owned-and-operated bed-and-breakfast in Maine.

Well, Maine-adjacent.

The bed-and-breakfast was nestled on Willescane Island. The isle was only accessible by ferry from Mount Desert Island. Yeah. Another island. 

It was something else to get here, I tell you. We had to take a private plane to Bangor International Airport. Then we checked in for our rental car.

Ha! I'm kidding. 

Parakind couldn't utilize the same transportation options as humans. 

Besides, why rent a car when you could just buy one? At least, that was Patrick’s thinking, and a new car waited for us in the hangar when the jet pulled in. (Four millennia is a long time to build up wealth, and I was fairly sure Patrick could buy small countries, if he wanted.)

We drove from the Bangor International Airport to the tiny town of Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island. Then we got onto a ferry so small it could only deliver one car at a time. We chugged three miles across the Atlantic Ocean. 

After we reached Willescane Island, we’d driven up a steep, narrow road that twisted through the forested hills and ended at the charming home turned B&B. 

Cue the cheerful theme music of Murder, She Wrote.

Patrick parked our vehicle in the small gravel lot next to the house. The area was big enough to accommodate about ten cars, and besides ours, I counted another five. I wondered who the other guests were. Given the amount of cars and the number of rooms available, I was pretty sure it would be a packed house. 

Thunder boomed and the threatening storm unleashed its fury. The next thing I knew, a ton of rain fell from the sky and tried to pummel our car into the ground.   

Here we were in late September on a teeny tiny island on the ocean. It was storming. And it was creeping toward the midnight hour.

Could this get anymore cozy mystery?

I turned toward my husband. “We should do the beam-me-up-Scottie thing.” 

Older bloodsuckers had the ability to dissemble their atoms from one place and reassemble ‘em in another. Say, from a nice, dry car to a nice, dry lobby. I had acquired this ability for reasons unknown. See, I was still technically a Turnblood. I'd been a vampire for almost two decades. That's still really young in vampire culture. But I was mated to one of the most powerful of our kind, so I had some perks a lot of Turnbloods didn't. 

“We’ve never actually been inside, so it’s unwise to pop in until we get the lay of the land.” My husband’s voice was tinged with Irish. That musical lilt to his words still gave me the tingles. 

"Fair point," I said. We didn’t want to translocate ourselves into a wall or a piece of furniture. Once we saw the place with our own eyes, we’d be able to think about the location and use our transport powers. Until then, we’d have to enter the bed-and-breakfast the old-fashioned way. Like humans. 

“You said this place is only for paranormal people, right?” 

“It is. They host parakind guests only, although they might have a human or two on staff.”

“You mean, as food?” I was only half-joking. 

He laughed. “We won’t starve, love. But we should probably keep our fangs to ourselves for now.”

Here’s the crappy thing about being undead. Vampires can’t eat real food. Which meant I couldn't try a lobster roll or eat a steaming bowl of clam chowder while in Maine. I guess I could bring a to-go box to Broken Heart. A fairy wish made it possible for bloodsuckers within our hometown's borders to eat and drink anything with no consequences. Because of this, a lot of vampires had moved to Broken Heart.

I stared at the sluicing rain. “This sucks.” 

Patrick leaned over and brushed his lips over mine. The sweet kiss unlocked my shoulders, which made me realize they’d been hunched up from stress I hadn’t realized I was carrying. He always knew how to make me feel loved. 

The simplest gesture often had the greatest impact. 

“As soon as we get to our room, I’ll warm you up right and proper.” 

“I assume by ‘right and proper’ you mean we get naked and you do naughty things to me.”

“The naughtiest,” he promised. 

Well, then. I no longer minded the fact I had to run the storm gauntlet. “Let’s go, Mr. O’Halloran.” 

"As you wish, Mrs. O'Halloran." 

Aw, I loved it when he quoted The Princess Bride. That was our thing. I never tired of the references gleaned from multiple viewings of our favorite movie. 

“Wait here, Jess. I’ll get the suitcases and then we’ll make a run for it.” 

“You’re the best.”

He flashed me a grin. He got out of the car and dragged our suitcases from the trunk by himself. As soon he slammed the trunk shut, I darted out of the car. 

The rain slashed at us like tiny, freezing knives as we ran to the narrow stone path that led to the bed-and-breakfast’s front porch. 

Mud coated the stones, making them slick, and I uttered curse words approximately 300 times as I tried to keep my feet from going rogue and tossing me into the nearest rose bush. 

Vampire or not, I wasn’t graceful. Still, I avoided falling on my face, and I considered that a win. 

Underneath my windbreaker, I wore jeans and a pink T-shirt, none of which protected me from the craptastic weather. By the time we reached the porch, I felt like I’d taken a swim in the ocean. My tennis shoes and socks were soaked. My hair was plastered against my face and neck. Despite the vampire’s usual resistance to temperatures—I was dead, after all—I shivered like I was being electrocuted.

Up close, the bed-and-breakfast seemed more welcoming. On either side of the red-painted door were barrel planters filled with a variety of multi-colored flowers. The wide porch held white wicker chairs and tables just big enough to hold a book and a drink. You know, I could imagine sitting out here on a nice fall day sipping tea and enjoying the cool weather.

If I were human. 

Vampires exploded in sunlight. 

My husband, because he was one of the oldest vampires in the world, could tolerate more light than most of our kind, but not even he would intentionally sit outside on a sunny day. Not that we could. The minute the sun hit the morning sky, most vampires went to sleep—whether they wanted to or not.

Patrick reached for the front door's old-fashioned brass knob, but before his fingers touched it, the door opened. 

A woman wearing a knee-length black dress with lace fringe and black flats appeared. Her brunette hair was cut into a bob with finger waves and framed a friendly, heart-shaped face. Her blue eyes held genuine warmth as she waved us inside. 

“You must be Jessica and Patrick O’Halloran,” she said as we stepped through the doorway. “Welcome to the Thompson Twins Bed and Breakfast.”

Want to read This Cozy Mystery Sucks and other novels? Get a paid subscription to Pretty Evil Fiction.

---

---