by D. D. Syrdal
She must have dozed off in the heat because suddenly she realized her plate was gone, and Neko was standing in front of her. She started, looking around trying to remember where she was. The sun was lower in the sky; it must have been hours since Daisy had been there. Or had she just dreamed her? She tried to compose herself, but she was still disoriented. Then she noticed the lily lying across her lap.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Neko said. As usual, he had his dark glasses on. The sun wasn’t quite low enough for his liking. He sat down on the bench next to her in the shade and slid the glasses up on his head. “Mind if I join you?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah, no, of course not,” she said, still flustered. She wasn’t sure why she felt so embarrassed at being found asleep out there.
“So you talked to Andrej?” he asked.
“Yes.” She pushed her hair back, trying to recall her conversation with him. She was having trouble focusing, still half asleep and groggy. She looked at him, starting to wonder if he had done something to her.
“What is it?” he asked, looking at her sharply.
She blinked her eyes rapidly a few times. Things were blurring, and she felt lightheaded. “I’m not sure, I don’t feel very well.” She reached down to put her hand on the bench to steady to herself.
“Can you see me?” Neko asked, putting his hands on her arms to turn her to look at him. He was staring into her eyes to see if she could focus on him.
“Not very well.”
“Ok, come on, I’m going to take you inside. Can you walk? Nevermind, I’ll just carry you.” With that he lifted her easily and took her quickly back into the house, and set her down on the sofa in the living room. She was barely conscious, and while she lay there he made a couple of calls on his communer, but before she could find out who he was talking to she faded into unconsciousness.
When she woke up again it was dark outside. She was alone in the room which was dimly lit. Her head was pounding but she struggled to get up. She wanted to find her way back to her room and locate her communer and try to contact Andrej, without letting Neko know. She wobbled as she tried to stand up.
“Hold on there, missy,” a voice said. Not alone after all. She felt a hand grab hers, and an arm go around her waist.
“Daisy? What happened?”
“Our buddy had a serious lapse in judgment,” she said. “Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.” The cheerful, happy-go-lucky girl she’d met in the garden that afternoon was all business now. “Here, drink this. It’ll take care of the headache,” she said, pressing a glass into Anne-Marie’s hand.
It did help, quickly. “What was that?” Anne-Marie said as she set the glass down.
“Just an old home remedy for stupid people tricks.”
She looked at Daisy with some admiration and sank back down on the sofa. “Thank you. Where did Neko go?”
“I sent him off for awhile. I was pretty angry with him.”
Anne-Marie unconsciously raised her eyebrows at that. If this petite woman was enough of a force to stand up to Neko she’d have to watch her step around her. “Is he coming back?”
“Later. So it’s just you and me for now.” She gave Anne-Marie a somewhat winsome look.
Anne-Marie did a very subtle double-take when she saw the way Daisy was looking at her. “Is something wrong?”
Daisy shook her head. “No, sorry, you just kind of remind me of someone.”
“So is it polite in vampire circles to ask about someone’s history?”
“I suppose so, although it doesn’t come up too often. Frankly I’d rather hear about you, how you met Andrej and why you’re still with him.”
Anne-Marie took a breath and pursed her lips. “Well, how I met him is easy enough. Why I’m still with him… that’s a little more complicated.”
Daisy smiled a little. “Or maybe not.”
Anne-Marie blushed. “I guess it’s written all over my face.”
“Ha, sort of. He obviously doesn’t mind or he would’ve sent you packing by now.”
“I half-wondered if that’s what this trip was for.”
“If that was his intention he wouldn’t have bothered with all this. No, I’d say you’re fully vested in his life.”
Anne-Marie smiled at that. The only thing that would have made it better would have been hearing it from Andrej. She gave Daisy a short version of how she’d met Andrej in New York, stumbling on him feeding on her best friend Denise outside their favorite club, how she’d followed him without thinking, just wanting to know more about him, and him leading her back to his apartment where he offered her the job as his assistant.
“Why’d you do it? Why’d you agree to it?” Daisy asked.
“I figured if he’d planned to kill me or Denise, he could have; would have. He came along at a real low point in my life. Denise and I had been out spending the last of our money, we were about to get kicked out of our apartment. We had no place to go.”
“Spending the last money you had doesn’t seem like a good plan for the future,” Daisy said.
“It wasn’t,” Anne-Marie said drily, “but then we didn’t give much thought to the future. Neither of us expected to live long. We had no one, nothing left. The future was a gray concept, something other people had waiting for them.”
“You had no family?”
Anne-Marie looked away, twisting her lips and swallowing hard. “My parents were dead, there wasn’t anyone left on either side. No aunts, grandparents. I do have a brother, he lives in Toronto, but we don’t get along.”
“What about Denise’s family? Wasn’t there anyone who could have helped you?”
“Denise ran away from home when she was thirteen. Her stepfather liked her better than he did her mother.”
“Oh.” Daisy nodded. “So what happened to Denise when you left to work for Andrej?”
Anne-Marie fidgeted a little, scratching her arm absently. “I send her money. She’s doing ok now, she’s going to school so she’ll be able to take care of herself soon. She calls me her fairy godmother.”
“And you are. You’re a good friend.”
“She’s like my sister, I could never just forget about her.”
“You should have her come for a visit sometime.”
Anne-Marie gave her a funny look. “That would be a little awkward, don’t you think? How do I explain… everything? Especially now with all the trouble with these vampire hunters.”
“I suppose this isn’t the best time,” Daisy agreed. “Maybe when things settle down you could go visit her.”
“I don’t know, I’m almost afraid to. If those jerks are watching us, I don’t want them to know about her, and use her to get to me and Andrej.”
“Mm, good point. Well, someday we’ll have to figure something out.”
“So what about you?”
Daisy gave a little laugh. “That’s a long story. I’m not sure where to begin.”
“Well, how long have you been a vampire? And how did you meet Andrej? Was he the one who turned you?”
She cleared her throat, and began slowly. “I was reborn in 1933, so no, Andrej was not the one who turned me. I’m older than he is. I met him during the Rapture Wars, what he calls the ‘Purification.’ We were in London where I was trying to find a friend who had disappeared.” She got a faraway look in her eyes as the memories came back. For a second Anne-Marie thought she was going to cry.
“Did you find your friend?” she asked in quiet voice.
“No, I didn’t.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.” She could see the memory of whatever had happened was still strong, and Daisy still felt the loss.
“It’s all right,” she said, smiling again. “It was a long time ago. But let’s get you some food and you’ll feel better, and then we’ll give Andrej a call and see how things are going at his end.” She got up and started for the kitchen.
“You know,” Anne-Marie said, “All of you–Andrej, Neko, you–are all so happ
y. I’ve never known people who were so happy all the time.”
Daisy stopped and turned. “Most people are just afraid. A lot of people don’t even know what they’re afraid of. So they walk around angry. No one likes to admit being afraid, so they bottle it up, and it comes out in all kinds of ways. Andrej, me, Neko–we’ve had a long time to sort it all out, make peace with the world. Or at least stop fighting it all the time.” She turned back and went down the hall into the kitchen.
