An Undead Grift for Christmas Read online

  An Undead Grift for Christmas:

  The holiday con is on!

  Cassandra Duffy

  Sapphic Pixie Tales

  2011

  Other Sapphic Pixie Tales From Cassandra Duffy:

  The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head

  Astral Liaisons: Lesbians in Space!

  Demons of Paradise

  Fabled Fang Girls

  The Last Best Tip

  Other Grift-Girl Series Novelettes:

  The Last Best Tip

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any matter whatsoever without the written permission, except in the cases of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, and events are meant to be fictitious. Any similarity between any persons living, dead, or undead is completely coincidental. The events are fictional, although you should feel free to try to re-create anything you think you’re limber enough for, especially if you have a willing partner in crime (or two as needed).

  ©2011 Cassandra Duffy

  Cover Design by Katiie Kissglosse

  Edited by Nichole Mauer

  The Twelve Days of Griftmas:

  1 - Auntie on an Old Futon

  2 - Two Scamming Elves

  3 - French Kisses

  4 - Festive Fantasies

  5 - Five-fingered Discounts!

  6 - Plots-a-hatchin’

  7 - Cons-a-conning

  8 - Vampires-a-nibbling

  9 - Santas Dancing

  10 - Ladies-a-leaping

  11 - Naughty Games of Telephone

  12 - Minutes in Heaven

  Author’s Note

  Crushes, dream jobs, relationships, and apparently holidays are funny things. I love funny things. I also like vampire things and instant gratification, which is why I started this novelette series following the erotic and madcap adventures of Lucy and her vampire girlfriend Sasha as they explore the world of alternative employment known as grifting.

  This is a novelette, and shouldn’t be mistaken for a novel. It’s also the second book in the series, and while it may stand up on its own, it will read a lot easier if you’ve also read The Last Best Tip. Because this is a novelette, and priced so reasonably, I can create finished products within the series much faster than full books, which means vampire fans can get their hands on tasty literature that much faster—instant gratification.

  Think of this series as pure, frivolous, sexy fun in bite-sized pieces.

  1.

  Until Lucy met Sasha, the word heat simply meant the opposite of cold. Sitting in Lara’s aunt’s apartment, still dressed in her festive elf-wear from her job as one of Santa’s Assistants at Bloomingdale’s, Lucy was wishing it also didn’t mean police pressure. Not that she minded being out of St. Louis for winter. Midwestern winters on the Mississippi were frigid, dry affairs with mountainous snow drifts and incessant holiday cheer. Still, sharing a two bedroom apartment in New York with three other people until the heat was off seemed a tad cramped.

  To add to the lousy holiday season, it didn’t seem fair to Lucy that Sasha was allowed to play Lady Winter from the vampire December holiday pantheon in a beautiful flowing dress of silvers, whites, and blues designed to be reminiscent of snow and ice, while Lucy had to wear the green tights, curly-toe shoes, and dozen or so jingle bells of an elf. She’d been bitten, kicked, scratched, bonked, stepped on, cried upon, and nearly thrown up on dozens of times by the army of barely supervised children waiting to see Santa. The parents had the thousand yard stare of holiday shopping shellshock as though they were all veterans of the Black Friday beach landing and had escaped with their lives but not all of their faculties. Meanwhile, Sasha simply posed with vampires and vampire pretenders in the hall of frozen death in her beautiful costume—no children allowed.

  Lucy’s bartending friend from the swingers club she used to work at, Lara had found them all jobs through a high school friend and convinced her aging aunt that it might be fun to house the three of them for Christmas and maybe a little beyond. Lara, the unflappable and confident stem of remarkable grace and charm, was just about at the same cracking point as Lucy under the pressure of being a Bloomingdale’s elf. Lucy felt bad about it, but she secretly enjoyed knowing something could get to Lara.

  Lucy rolled onto her side in the midst of the throw pillows that lined the tiny living room of the economy apartment to give Lara a closer look. With her hair uniformly dyed to all black, removing the purple she used to sport when bartending, and her myriad of facial piercings removed for the new job, Lara didn’t look nearly as tough as she had when she worked at the Swing Set. However, where the fitted costume displayed Lucy’s Asian lack of curves, it seemed almost erotic on the leggy Lara; more than a few of the fathers waiting in line had noticed this as well, which put to the test every deflecting technique Lara had honed over several years of bartending at a swinger’s club. She looked exhausted and Lucy began to feel a little guilty about dragging her into the con artist mess that was becoming her relationship with Sasha.

  Lucy and Sasha’s sports bar was gone. Their money was nearly gone. And a few cons that didn’t go as well as they could have left them with detectives poking around in their business. Sasha took it all in stride as part of the game she’d been playing since who knows when, but Lucy was thoroughly rattled by it all. This was all compounded by the fact that Lucy and Sasha had only been dating about six months and they were already trying to duck the law together, which really felt like something that shouldn’t happen until after a full year together.

  The Lady Winter herself was sprawled across the afghan encased futon, still in costume. As the lone vampire in their trio, she was the only one who could survive the hellacious torture device that was the lumpy couch/bed combo. Both Lucy and Lara had tried several times to get comfortable on the futon, but always fled back to the pillows on the floor—Lucy suspected there was something very wrong with article of furniture.

  Lucy turned away when Sasha began breaking pieces off candy canes to flick them across the room into the trashcan she couldn’t even see from her recumbent pose. Earlier that evening, a little girl in a beautiful green dress had projectile vomited what Lucy guessed was the entire contents of a box of candy canes onto one of the animatronic reindeer. It was all Lucy could do to not sympathy vomit as well when the scent of partially digested peppermint hit her nose.

  “I used to like Christmas,” Lucy muttered.

  “Me too,” Sasha agreed. “Once upon a time, Christmas was such a wild party that the church actually banned it as too sinful and fun.”

  “Is that something you remember from when you were alive?” Lara asked.

  “Nope, I saw it on the History Channel yesterday,” Sasha replied. “Hey, we should go barhopping in our costumes!”

  “No, we really shouldn’t,” Lucy said. “I’m not even sure why I’m still wearing mine.”

  “Because you’re too tired to take it off,” Lara explained.

  “Oh, right, now I remember.” Lucy flopped back onto the pillows with a jingle of the little bells on her collar and hat.

  I think you’re cute in your costume, Lucy heard Sasha’s voice in her head.

  I think you’re twisted, Lucy replied.

  I could show you exactly how twisted, Sasha’s voice took on a decidedly direct tone and Lucy knew it wasn’t really an offer so much as it was a sign post of something inevitably coming.

  They’d tried the mental trick they’d used during bartending in St. Louis of sharing a fantasy in Lucy’s mind while they left their bodies on auto-pilot. It had been such an effective way to pass the time at their old despised jobs that it only seemed natural to use it on their new despised jobs. Apparently shepherding a couple hundred children toward a single fat man in a red suit was a lot more difficult than filling drink orders. Lucy’s body wasn’t really up to taking over the entire task without significant help from her brain, and it nearly resulted in her being fired to learn the lesson. This flaw was compounded by the fact that the shared fantasies tended to turn sexual, even though Lucy tried not to let them start that way, and she came within a hair’s breadth of having another one of her public orgasms. The one attempt at the waking dream vampire trick proved it wasn’t a valid option, which left Lucy to muddle through her shifts as a Santa Assistant fully aware of the world around her.

  Sexual frustration was becoming a problem as well. Aside from not being able to release it mentally while at work, which Lucy admitted to herself was a fairly opulent thing for her to have gotten used to, the three of them were sharing the spare bedroom and their work shifts overlapped in prohibitory ways. Sasha was at work during the evening shifts when Lucy and Lara were just getting done for the day which meant not only did Lucy and Sasha never have a moment alone, Lucy didn’t even have a moment by herself for more provincial satisfactions. Less than a week of celibacy had passed and Lucy was about to climb up the walls, making her wonder how she’d ever gone a whole year without getting laid before she met Sasha.

  I had a thought earlier today, Sasha said telepathically.

  Lucy plucked out one of the thoughts floating near the surface of Sasha’s mind. Their psychic connection had strengthened, mostly from Sasha allowing Lucy so much access backward across the vampiric mental tether, which Lucy knew was special treatment since she had access to the parts of Sasha’s memories that knew how guarded most vampires were with their mi
nds. The memory from earlier that day was a flashed snippet connected to a brief glimpse of Lucy that Sasha had when she and Lara were passing out the front doors for the evening. After the fleeting glance, Sasha had imagined Lucy in her elf costume writhing in the fake snow of the display, rubbing one of the oversized plastic candy cane decorations between her green spandex covered legs in a festively lewd display. If Lucy was being fair, her own recent fantasies and dreams about Sasha were far kinkier, but she rather liked the Christmasy elements Sasha’s mind had included.

  That sort of thought? Lucy asked of the dredged up fantasy from Sasha’s mind.

  Well, yes, I had that thought, but that’s not the one I meant, Sasha didn’t sound irritated by the mental intrusion. In fact, Lucy thought the voice resounding in her head sounded a little flirty. I think there might be an opportunity for a grift, but it’s a three person job. Do you think Lara would be up for it?

  Lucy couldn’t say for sure. She knew Lara knew they were suspects in a few things, but it was a far leap from theoretical knowledge of a friend’s possible wrong doings to actually participating in defrauding someone of money. She might be, Lucy sent back. She does seem up for trying new things and the mountain of parking tickets she abandoned in St. Louis along with her old clunker speaks to the requisite disregard for law and order.

  We can talk her through it tomorrow when I get the props, Sasha sent to Lucy.

  Props—Lucy liked the sound of props. Their grifts to that point had mostly involved clever wordplay and reliance on greed or desire, so props spoke of a whole other level of con artistry. It was strange, but Lucy realized she thought of Sasha as a con artist, but didn’t think of herself as one. She really couldn’t put her finger on what she thought of herself as. She didn’t want to consider herself a holiday elf or a bartender, which were the last two legitimate jobs she’d had, but she also didn’t particularly feel like a con artist. She was…Sasha’s girlfriend was the only thing that came to mind and even that felt like an incomplete description.

  You’re a naughty little elf, Sasha offered, picking up on the surface thoughts flashing across Lucy’s mind at a thousand miles an hour. She offered up the same mental image from earlier of Lucy grinding against a decorative plastic candy cane. The mental image, which had initially been comical to Lucy, held a far steamier edge on the second viewing.

  Her willpower drained from her and before she knew it, Lucy was fully engrossed in the shared fantasy. She was no longer viewing herself as Sasha had imagined her; she was in the mental image of herself created by the fantasy including feeling the fluffy fake snow around her and the hard, plastic shaft of the candy cane, around the size and shape of a real cane as it stroked along the inside of her thigh. Sasha stood over her in the shared fantasy, still dressed as Lady Winter, watching with growing amusement painted on her lovely pale features.

  Lucy adored the mischievous look Sasha got right before kinky sex. Her eyes would sparkle, her messy blond hair would fall in her face, and she would often bite her thumb with the corner of her mouth as if she needed the restriction to prevent her from letting out a gleeful giggle.

  The act of mentally sharing a fantasy was freeing. Lucy couldn’t imagine a setting in reality where she would actually writhe around in fake snow, grinding against a plastic candy cane decoration like it was a giant sex toy, all while wearing an elf costume, but in the fictional world created between their two minds, Lucy felt liberated to do whatever she and Sasha could imagine. And so she indulged, stroking the candy cane up and down along her thigh, giving Sasha her best bedroom eyes, licking her lips to wet them to an inviting glisten, and then mouthing the word ‘please’ to make a genuine offer.

  But Sasha demurred, shaking her head coquettishly. “Keep going,” she said.

  Lucy’s body, even the mental image of it, carried the ache of their once highly active sex life suddenly hitting a roadblock. She needed Sasha well beyond simple wanting. Lucy ran the plastic candy cane up until the rounded edge pressed against her pussy through the green spandex of her leggings and then genuinely began grinding her hips against it to feel the hard plastic rubbing through the material. Sasha seemed antsy while she watched as though she was on the edge of diving on top of Lucy at any moment, but she held off for far longer than was comfortable for Lucy. By the time Sasha finally did lower herself into the snow at Lucy’s side to help with the clothed masturbation, Lucy was already feeling overheated from the lengthy show she’d given her girlfriend and suddenly wanted a lot more than clothed rubbing.

  She relinquished the candy cane entirely to Sasha’s expert hands. Their lips met in a fiery kiss that Lucy believed might melt even the fake snow around them. Sasha knew exactly what she was doing in turning the decoration into a toy, angling it with her rubbing until it pressed the hard plastic against the hard edge of Lucy’s clit straining against the material of her leggings. She stroked it back and forth, letting the rounded edge caress either side until Lucy had to break the kiss to scream Sasha’s name. Only after the much needed sexual release did Lucy remember her physical body always reacted with equal verve to the mental stimulation. She chased away the fantasy to return to the waking world just in time to see Lara begin a slow, but genuine round of applause.

  “I don’t know what you two were thinking about, but it was quite a show even from my view in the cheap seats of reality,” Lara said.

  Sasha laughed. She always laughed at the same social stimulus that embarrassed the hell out of Lucy. “How do you feel about candy canes?” Sasha asked of Lara, adding a little wink, “because Lucy loves them.”

  Lucy really regretted having told Lara about the vampire trick of shared fantasies.

  2.

  The following day at work was distracting at best. Decorative candy canes and fake snow had a Pavlovian effect on Lucy and she kept thinking of Sasha in really naughty ways. To top it all off, Lara was fairly overt in her sexual jokes, occasionally eliciting a raised eyebrow from the afternoon shift Santa who was the only other person to hear them. But Lucy was the type to fixate on someone when she was in a relationship and so she willed herself to miss the flirty spin placed on many of the jokes by Lara, although she couldn’t deny they had shared something somewhat intimate the night before if only by proximity.

  Lucy wanted to do her part in the whole grift process since it was always Sasha’s plans and Sasha’s preparation with Lucy’s only contribution being in the performance and math, should any math need doing, which wasn’t always the case. Sasha had said they needed three and thought Lara would work—Lucy wanted to help make it work. As she and Lara were gathering their coats, scarves, and things from the break room after their shift, Lucy decided to broach the topic.

  “How do you think you are with acting?” Lucy asked. Grifting was all about the performance. The best way to make people believe something was to find something they already wanted to believe and act like it was true, but it didn’t work if you couldn’t act convincingly.