Almost Everything Read online

  Praise for the

  Vampire Princess Novels

  Almost Final Curtain

  “These books are tightly plotted and contain enough intrigue and action to satisfy any reader of paranormals.” —CA Reviews

  “Almost Final Curtain is a fast-paced tale of young love, emotional strength, and figuring out who you are—even if it’s not exactly human.” —Book Fetish

  “An enjoyable, fast-paced adventure that will leave readers looking for more.” —Monsters and Critics

  “An exciting fantasy that kept me reading until the very last page. Tate Hallaway brilliantly brought together the ideas of forbidden love, attraction, and pure mystery.” —A Novel Menagerie

  Almost to Die For

  “Hallaway’s witty, fast-paced series starter cheerfully details the horrors of magical war and high school life.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Hallaway throws her expertise into the popular teen vampire genre with an original twist that adds witches and vampire servitude to the mix…. Fast moving, filled with fun, self-depreciating humor, this sparkling teen read features plenty of attitude.” —Monsters and Critics

  “Put me under its spell and didn’t let go! A great story and characters I can’t wait to meet again.” —New York Times bestselling author Rachel Caine

  “Ms. Hallaway deftly handles the life of a teenager and weaves in paranormal elements to make for an exciting story that’ll captivate you…. Almost to Die For will hook you with its deft handling of teenage angst and supernatural problems, and leave you anticipating a sequel.” —Fresh Fiction

  “Take The Princess Diaries, sprinkle on some Charmed and a dash of Twilight, and you’re ready to enjoy Almost to Die For.” —Justine

  “[It will] keep you turning the pages not because you want to get through it, but because you can’t help yourself…. Hallaway gives readers young and old what they want from a YA romantic heroine.”—The Green Man Review

  “Ana is a fighter and her story follows many twists and turns that I wasn’t expecting. The dialogue is quick and the settings are vividly described. The anticipation of which guy she will choose and who is best for her is fun, and I am looking forward to the next book.” —Page Turners

  “Filled with plenty of teen angst and high school mishaps, this novel is on par with the many other vampire series out there … well written and fun to read.” —Library Journal

  Praise for Other Novels

  by Tate Hallaway

  “A fast-paced, hilarious paranormal romance … the story captured this reader from the very first page, and is a must read for paranormal romance fans.” —The Romance Readers Connection

  “Well paced and lightly written, mixing magic, romance, and humor to good effect … perfect for lazy summer-afternoon reading.” —Love Vampires

  “This paranormal romance overflows with danger, excitement, and mayhem; however, whenever things become too stressful, a healthy dose of irony or comedy shows up to ease the way. Tate Hallaway has an amazing talent for storytelling.” —Huntress Book Reviews

  “A truly enjoyable read if you like a jaunt into the paranormal … and enjoy humor as well as the more serious side of life!” —WritersAreReaders.com

  “What’s not to adore? … Tate Hallaway has a wonderful gift.” —MaryJanice Davidson, New York Times bestselling author of Undead and Unfinished

  “Tate Hallaway kept me on the edge of my seat … a thoroughly enjoyable read!” —Julie Kenner, USA Today bestselling author of Demon Ex Machina

  “Will appeal to readers of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series.” —Booklist

  “[Hallaway’s] concise writing style, vivid descriptions, and innovative plot all blend together to provide the reader with a great new look into the love life of witches, vampires, and the undead.” —Armchair Interviews

  The Vampire Princess Novels by Tate Hallaway

  Almost to Die For

  Almost Final Curtain

  Almost Everything

  Almost

  Everything

  A VAMPIRE PRINCESS NOVEL

  TATE HALLAWAY

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

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  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, February 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Lyda Morehouse, 2012

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Hallaway, Tate.

  Almost everything: a vampire princess novel/Tate Hallaway.

  p. cm.—(Vampire princess; 3)

  EISBN 9781101574904

  1. Teenage girls—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. 3. Witches—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.A54825A77 2012

  813’.6—dc23 2011033388

  Set in Minion

  Designed by Alissa Amell

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For Shawn and Mason, FTW

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks go to my fabulous and stalwart editor, Anne Sowards, and my awesome and tireless agent, Martha Millard. My poor writers’ group, the Wyrdsmiths, sees less and less of my novels as my deadlines grow shorter and shorter, but I couldn’t survive without their constant moral support. Particularly critical are the Wednesdays with the Women of Wyrdsmiths—Eleanor Arnason and Naomi Kritzer—at the Coffee Gro
unds in St. Paul that help keep body and soul together. Speaking of Naomi, thanks to her and to Sean M. Murphy for their usual, though no less amazing, oh-my-god-I’m-running-up-to-deadline critiques. The book would be much less than it is without them.

  My family, too, deserves praise, especially my son, Mason, who cheers me deeply every time he reads out loud a sentence from one of my Ana books with shouts of joy, like he does with all his other favorite books. My partner, Shawn Rounds, I should tell you, is, in all honesty, mostly responsible for all the cool plot twists and revealing character moments. I just write the words down. She makes them sing.

  Almost

  Everything

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter One

  You’d think one of the perks of being half vampire would be a resistance to weather. No such luck.

  Or, considering that I, Anastasija Ramses Parker, am the vampire princess of St. Paul, you’d think a title like that would come with some supercute servant boys waving fans over my body and feeding me ice-cold bonbons.

  Again, this doesn’t seem to be happening.

  Instead, I’m melting because my college professor mother doesn’t believe in air-conditioning.

  Minnesota summers are surprisingly hot and humid. I kind of forget how awful it can be until the first ninety-degree day with eighty-percent humidity hits St. Paul.

  The oppressive stickiness in our house sent me out to the porch swing. At least there, with the brutal July sun finally sinking into brilliant orange and lavender streaks, there was a slight breeze.

  It was too warm to even read. I pressed the sweating glass of lemonade into the hollow between my breasts and pushed a strand of hair from my eyes. Other girls complained about how the weather made their hair frizzy and unmanageable, but for me the problem was sticky flatness. This morning I’d tried to pull my past-the-shoulders deep black hair into one of those fancy French braids, but by this point in the day, bits kept slipping out and clinging to my neck and face.

  A few gawker pedestrians strolled down the broad streets of my Cathedral Hill neighborhood, trying to act casual as they surreptitiously peered through the lighted windows into the Victorian-era mansions that lined our block. I guess our house, at least, suited my supernatural rank. With its ivy-covered brick and castlelike tower, it looked like the sort of place you might expect a vampire to live.

  I just hoped no one I knew came by, since I was sprawled limply in my shortest shorts and last year’s Hello Kitty tank top that had half the sequins missing.

  A bicyclist whizzed by, the tires clicking, and I wondered what kind of health-crazed nut could work up the enthusiasm to exercise on a day like this. I would have given him the finger out of spite, but I couldn’t muster the ambition to lift my hand. Even the flowers in the garden drooped. Tall stalks of lupine bent low, depressed by the humidity. Cicadas buzzed angrily in the trees as I pushed the swing with the tip of my toe to use as little energy as possible.

  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the cicadas that were pissed off. I frowned darkly at the sunset.

  Mom was inside, setting a table for “tea” in the sitting room. I could hear the good china clattering through the open window, and the noise set my teeth on edge. In about an hour, maybe less now that the sun was setting, Elias would rouse himself from a dead sleep, and the farce—I mean the festivities—would begin.

  When I offered to let my ex-betrothed vampire boyfriend crash in the basement, I kind of expected it would be short-term. I really thought my mom would object, first of all. Mom is the Queen of Witches, and, even though I’m half vampire, witches and vampires don’t get along. In fact, they usually hate each other.

  A lot.

  I shifted the glass to let the cool droplets of condensation run onto my skin. It was pale, like that of my vampire father’s people. Even in the middle of summer, my legs stayed milky white. I didn’t even get freckles. I was envious of the girls I saw at Lake Josephine with their golden bronze skin and Norwegian natural blond hair. The only benefit I derived from inheriting my dad’s complexion seemed to be that I also rarely had to deal with acne.

  Even before I realized my dad was a vampire, I knew I didn’t look much like my mom. She was all hips and mousy blond curls, and she wore glasses. Despite my bookish bent, I’d never needed vision correction.

  Dishes clanked through the open window, and I heard the sound of a mixer grinding. I shook my head. I would never have imagined it would be like this. Not only was Mom putting up with Elias; she was cooking for him.

  For the past two months, I’d had to endure this increasingly bizarre evening ritual. Mom never used to cook for me. I mean, sure, she might open a can of this and mix in a can of that. On special occasions, like my birthday, she might pull out all the stops and make the one from-scratch meal she did well and burn me a cake, but lately it’d been like Rachael Ray around here, with food processors and clarifying butter. For instance, tonight she made some kind of freezer cheesecake that took her an hour and a half to prepare. And the result might actually be edible.

  And did I mention that Elias is a vampire? He doesn’t even need to eat. All this effort for a guy who doesn’t even eat! How weird is that?

  Wait—it gets stranger.

  After Elias gets up every night, we all sit around and … chat—in the nice room, with the good dishes and the straight-back chairs.

  It’s awful.

  I guess I hadn’t anticipated how much my mother needed the company of someone who could remember Kennedy’s assassination and other ridiculously old, antiquated stuff.

  I mean, at first, I was really happy that Mom seemed willing to sit down with a vampire at all. As I said, there’s been a war going on between vampires and witches since the beginning of time. But then Mom and Elias started getting all nostalgic and friendly. Pretty soon, I found myself pushing cranberry sauce around my plate while listening to enthusiastic debates about the women’s movement and economic busts and bubbles and other completely incomprehensible things that happened before I was born.

  Worse, when I tried to change the subject to something vaguely twenty-first century, I got shushed. Shushed!

  My mother and my kind-of boyfriend shushed me as if I were some kind of annoying toddler.

  WTF!?

  Running my palm over my forehead, I wiped again at the sweat and that damn uncooperative hair. A car drove by, snippets of Prairie Home Companion blaring through its open windows. I heard something about powder-milk biscuits as it turned the corner. Goddess, could this day get more irritating?

  Especially given that two minutes ago, while letting me taste test the cheesecake, Mom admitted something I already suspected: she had a crush on Elias.

  Okay, what she actually said was, “I’m working on a way to keep Elias around permanently. It’s good having him here.” But for my mom, the I-never-got-over-the-seventies, bra-burning feminist, that was pretty much a declaration of true love.

  I so did not want to go back inside the sweltering house and pretend to enjoy cheesecake, knowing that my mom was trying to conceal googly eyes for my sort-of boyfriend. Not that Elias has been particularly boyfriendy lately.

  Now that we aren’t officially betrothed and he lives in the basement, we don’t court. We used to have this wonderful weekly ritual where he’d come over and sit in the pine tree outside my window and we’d talk. Sometimes he’d bring flowers. Other times we might go up onto the roof and stare at the stars in companionable silence. He wrote me poetr
y.

  Then my dad called off the betrothal and exiled both of us for daring to stand up to him. You know those TV shows with all the crazy kings of England? That’s kind of my dad. Of course, it goes both ways. I did nearly put his eye out with a white-hot magical talisman later, but he was trying to kill me—again.

  My family totally puts the dis in dysfunctional.

  I miss Elias’s attention. Now I’m lucky if he gives me a wave before he settles in to American History 101 with Mom. I think maybe he’s all broody because of the exile. But he should be over it by now. It’s been months.

  Jealous much?

  Yeah, totally. I guess you always want the one you can’t have, right? Because it’s not that I’m hurting for boy attention. I have two other guys texting me on a regular basis, trying to get me to commit to a date.

  First is my other ex, Nikolai Kirov. He’s got those classically smoldering looks you get when you’re half Russian, half Romany, and all rock star. Seriously, Nik’s band, Ingress, has been getting tons of local radio play. Yet I went down that road before, and let me tell you, it’s not easy being the dorky, high-school-age girlfriend of the lead singer in a popular college band. Talk about feeling shushed; only it’s more like being shut out completely when the gaggle of groupies descends.

  The ice in my glass clunked as it melted. The little air that stirred brought the sharp scent of lighter fuel burning on someone’s barbecue grill. I sighed. If I was being honest, a lot of the problems I’d had with Nikolai’s fame were my fault; I never felt cool enough to hang around with him. I felt most comfortable with people who made obscure references to Star Wars movies or Lord of the Rings novels, and people who got excited at the idea of new Doctor Who episodes and extra work in precalculus—in other words, nerds.

  Nik was also the junior vampire slayer of the region, which gets messy given my title—you know, vampire princess.

  Yeah, me, a princess—lying here in my ragged, sweat-soaked clothes. You can see it, right? Glamour, thy name is Anastasija Parker.