Wicked Game

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “You are scared.” His brows lower into a scowl. “You’re looking at me like I’m a monster.”

  “It’s not you, I swear. It’s me.”

  “Damn right it is.” He snatches the backpack from my hand, which luckily lets go before he can tear my arm off. “I’m not a monster. I’ve never hurt anyone. That’s more than I can say for you.”

  My throat tightens. “What?”

  “Your con artist days aren’t exactly in the distant past, are they? David told me you were arrested for swindling just a few months ago.”

  A flush of heat runs up the back of my neck. “He did?”

  “He said the guy—what do you call it—”

  “The mark.”

  “Yeah, the mark was too embarrassed to press charges.” He steps forward again, well inside my personal space.

  “They usually are.” I put my hands up. “Stop looming so I can explain.”

  “So you can lie?”

  “No!” If he’s so quick to suspect me, maybe he doesn’t deserve an explanation. “First of all, I wasn’t arrested, I was brought in for questioning. Second of all, it’s not true you’ve never hurt anyone. You hurt me.”

  “I said I was sorry. Is that ever going to be enough?”

  “Not when you judge me like you’re some kind of saint. You drink blood. The way I see it, better an empty wallet than an empty vein.”

  His voice lowers to a rumble. “My donors give me what I need of their own free will.”

  “You tell yourself that, that your donors are happy to do it, that they’re not hypnotized by the magic in your eyes, the way my victims were fooled by pretty promises.”

  “I do what I do to survive.”

  “So did I. But a part of me loved it, the way you love having the power of life and death.”

  He shakes his head. “Don’t compare us.”

  “The one person I don’t lie to is myself. I know what I was, and I know how far I have to go to be something better. That’s why I took this job.”

  “So we’re your little redemption project?”

  “Maybe.” His sarcasm inspires my own. “Or maybe I just need to pay the rent. Who can know with me? Like you said, I have so many layers.” I smear the makeup on my cheeks. “What would you find if you peeled them all away? Maybe nothing at all.”

  “Don’t say that.” He drops the backpack and pulls my hands from my face. “There’s something more than nothing there.”

  My stomach flops like a hooked fish. I break his knife-sharp gaze to keep from puking.

  He releases my hands. “Let me know when you figure out what it is.”

  Before I can summon a reply, he’s gone, out the restaurant’s back door.

  A half-jar of cold cream later, my skin is makeup free. I stare at my reflection in Lori’s compact, but the mirror’s too small to see more than half of my face. I hold it at arm’s length for perspective, but the reflection shakes and blurs.

  I slap the lid shut on the disquieting metaphor and stuff it back in the bag.

  13

  I Forgot to Remember to Forget

  By the time I drag myself out to the bar, Spencer has left the stage and Jim is playing the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.” The crowd has switched from bopping to writhing. I’d join in if my body didn’t feel so heavy and dull.

  Lori approaches with a tray of empty glasses. “What’s wrong? What happened to your makeup?”

  I rub my eyes, which feel puffy, and give her the condensed version of what just occurred, leaving out the part where I’m a criminal.

  She gives my elbow a squeeze. “I don’t get it. You told me to stay away from them. You said they were dangerous.”

  “Shane’s different.” I take the tray from her and move over to the bar, where we start unloading it. “But if I could unmeet him somehow, make all this unhappen, I would.” Lori raises her eyebrows. “Or maybe not,” I admit.

  “He does feel different. And even the rest of them, they seem decent—except Regina.” Lori sends a darting glance over her shoulder. “She keeps looking at me.”

  “She’s just messing with your head. Best not to show fear.”

  “Right.” Lori wipes the tray with a damp cloth. “No fear.”

  Regina pokes her head between us. “Hi.”

  Lori squeaks and knocks her tray into the row of dirty glasses. With one hand, Regina grabs them before they fall.

  “Careful now,” she purrs to Lori.

  “Um, thanks.” Lori keeps her face turned from the vampire. “Gotta go.” She scurries off.

  “What happened to your makeup?” Regina asks me, then sniffs my shoulder. “Ah, yes, Shane likes his humans to have a more natural look.” She tweaks my hair. “Someday he’ll tell you to stop highlighting. He’ll say it’s the smell of the dye he hates.”

  “Get away from me.”

  She clicks her tongue. “Testy for someone who just got laid, aren’t we?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but we didn’t.”

  Her eyes go wide in mock surprise. “Well, that explains why you smell so horny.”

  “Fuck off.” I tell her, unfortunately just as the music fades. Half the crowd casts curious glances at us.

  “Ladies.” David appears on my other side. “What happened to your makeup?” he asks me.

  I rub my eye again. “It itched.”

  “You have an itch all right,” Regina mutters.

  David stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets and looks around with pride. “Great party. Frank is schmoozing clients, so Ciara, we need you to peddle the paraphernalia.”

  Relieved at the distraction, I stride over to the WVMP table, grab a size small T-shirt, and yank it over my head. The soft black cotton covers the top half of my Let’s-Play-Vampire getup. My too-bare skin sighs with relief.

  Work: the all-American cure for heartache.

  I shill and hawk for two hours, until all the merchandise is sold except two broken buttons and one extra extra extra large T-shirt. I consider bestowing this latter item on Jolene, but she and her sidekick seem to have vanished.

  I find David and Franklin near the bar and hold out the cash pouch. Franklin snatches it.

  “You robbed me, you little witch,” he says with a touch of admiration.

  “Huh?”

  “That trick you showed me earlier, the one you screwed up. You used ten of our dollars to demonstrate and never gave it back.”

  I put a hand to my mouth. “My God, you’re right.” I slip him a ten-dollar bill. “Thanks for keeping me honest.”

  David pulls out a bar stool. “Sit. Take the rest of the night off.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly.” I climb onto the stool, and my tired feet shriek with joy. “On second thought, buy me a drink.”

  David sits to my right, signaling to Stuart, who plops a red beer in front of each of us. I reach for it, but my belly says no.

  Franklin spies another client by the hors d’oeuvres table and shifts into his sales waltz without sparing us a glance.

  David takes a long sip of beer, then sighs with satisfaction. “So how are you?”

  “You mean, how am I after finding out you told Shane I was arrested?”

  He blinks. “I never said you were arrested. I said they questioned you.”

  “Why did you say anything at all?”

  “Because you both need eyes wide open going into this relationship.”

  “What we need is for you and Regina to mind your own businesses.”

  “It is my business when two of my employees are involved with each other. And believe me, you do not want to fall in love with a vampire.”

  “Who said anything about love?” I realize what he just implied. “Wait—are you speaking from experience?”

  He glances away and doesn’t answer.

  “Not Regina, I hope.”

  David scoffs. “I value my life, if not my sanity.”

  He suddenly looks past me, then touches my arm. I tur
n toward the front door.

  The crowd hushes in the middle of the Grateful Dead tune flowing from the speakers. All eyes stare in the same direction. Their stupor is caused by the fact that Monroe Jefferson is, by my best estimate, the most stunning man ever to walk the earth.

  I imagined him old, simply because he is old. But he has the face and body of a young man, even as his eyes hold nearly a century of heartache.

  The sly way Monroe regards the crowd from under the brim of his white fedora sends a shiver up our collective spine. He wears an immaculate white suit and tie, which contrast with the battered black guitar case swinging at his side. He steps up onto the stage like he was born and raised there.

  David speaks in a hushed voice over my shoulder. “Ci-ara, this is unprecedented. You’ve done something here.”

  “I never even talked to him.”

  Monroe sits, then flips open his guitar case while Jim lowers the microphone.

  “But your idea,” David says, “bringing them out into the light. It gave him the chance to perform again.”

  With no warm-up, Monroe starts playing, with such speed and confidence I could swear it was more than one person. He sings the first line of “I’m So Glad,” and the ancient voice bears as little resemblance to his baby face as a butterfly to a caterpillar. One hand flies over the fret board while his picking fingers form a blur. On the second verse, his voice soars up another octave as naturally as a bird taking flight.

  I grip the bar’s brass railing. Though I’m totally sober, the music puts me under a spell as strong as any drug.

  The song is short, and when the last note shimmers away, the audience members finish the breaths they were working on before exploding in applause.

  Monroe tips his hat. “How y’all doing tonight?” More applause. “That’s just fine, fine.” He tunes his guitar as he speaks. “Name’s Monroe Jefferson, some call me Mississippi Monroe, since that’s where I hail from, Natchez to be exact, but you can call me Monroe if it suits you. I was born in 1913.” He smiles and strokes his smooth ebony chin. “I look good for my age.” Applause and laughter. His smile fades. “That’s because in 1940 I met a man changed my life.”

  I gasp and turn to David. “He’s going to tell it?”

  David puts a finger to his lips. On the other side of the bar, Regina and Noah confer with worried faces.

  “Lotta people know about Robert Johnson, how he’s supposed to met the devil at the crossroads at midnight, sold his soul to master the blues. Anyone who knew him, like I did, knows that ain’t true. It was Tommy Johnson— no relation—who said he himself had done it. He’s the one gave me directions.”

  Pluck. Strum. “I’d been playing the juke joints, oh about ten year. Little bit of money in it, kept me in whiskey and cigarettes, but not enough to buy me a ticket to Chicago or New York, places where bluesmen made it big. I was good—you can tell that right now,” he says without a trace of false humility, “but not good enough.

  “So one night I go to the crossroads—not the one at Highways 61 and 49, that’s a lie. The real crossroads is a secret, and no, I ain’t telling.” He strokes the strings like they were the hair of a woman on the next pillow over. “I went on a Tuesday, so I wouldn’t have to stand in line.”

  I look at David, who reflects my smile.

  “ ‘Round about midnight, a man walks up, a tall man, a white man. Just like Tommy said the devil would be. Long hair so black, look like a river of blood in the moonlight. He come up to me and says, ‘Son, you’re not here to catch a bus, are you?’ I shake my head no. ‘Well, I reckon we got business, then,’ he says. By this time I’m scared as a whipped puppy, but I ain’t about to leave, so I pull out a cigarette and try to light up.” He pauses while he does just that. The brief flame casts shadows over his face, giving his deep-set eyes an even more haunted look. “Problem is, my hands shaking so hard I can’t hold the match. Then the man flicks his fingertips and there he is, holding fire in his hand. Cigarette falls out of my mouth, but he catches it and lights it himself. He takes a puff—” As Monroe does. “—and hands it back to me. I put it in my mouth and—” He holds the cigarette between his lips while he plays a few more notes. When he’s done, the silence is deafening. “—it tastes like blood.”

  I steal a glance across the bar at Regina. She stares at Monroe, frozen, her own cigarette holding a two-inch ash.

  “Didn’t surprise me none. After all, I thought he’s the devil. But then he opens his long black coat, and I see he’s dressed like a preacher man. ‘I’m not here to take your soul,’ he says, ‘I’m here to save it.’ I get mad, I tell him, ‘Saving is the last thing in this world I want, so if you aim to save me, you well’s to kill me.’”

  He puffs for a bit while he plucks a different tune.

  When the notes fade into the air, Monroe says, “The man took my word. He took my blood, he took my life. He made me what you see here, and if I walk this earth a thousand year, I’ll never master the blues.” He takes a long drag and grins through the smoke. “But it’ll master me forever, so I reckon that’s something.”

  He launches into “Baby Please Don’t Go,” and the crowd applauds slowly and reverently.

  I turn to David. “Shane said they never tell their stories.”

  He lifts his glass in a toast toward the stage. “Anything to please the crowd.”

  I wonder if Monroe’s telling the truth. How could a vampire hold fire in his hand? Maybe he was a super-ancient one. But didn’t I also read somewhere that it wasn’t the soul-buying devil that blues players went to see, but a hoodoo trickster spirit?

  Anyway, it makes a great yarn, and that’s all that matters.

  We listen to the next few songs without speaking. The weight of the music, made of pure emotion, sinks my mood into the cellar. I take a few forlorn sips of my beer. Finally David holds up two fingers to Stuart.

  “Jack Daniel’s,” he says. “Leave the bottle.” Stuart raises his eyebrows but obeys without comment, plonking the half-empty bottle in front of us, along with a pair of two-ounce shot glasses.

  “That’s more like it.” I pour us shots and settle in for a long night of commiseration.

  At the end of the next song, I say to David, “It’s sad, huh?”

  “Yeah, even the happy blues songs have that effect.”

  “I mean Monroe’s story. Did any of them want to be vampires?”

  He wags his finger at me. “No, you don’t. It’s not up to me to tell their tales.”

  “And no one else can tell yours.” I tip the whiskey bottle into his empty glass and dribble out the amber liquid.

  David just rotates the shot glass, fingertips on the rim. Monroe strums and croons, weaving his misty magic with “Gallows Pole.”

  Finally David gets tired of staring at the Jack and downs it. He wipes his mouth, then takes off his leather jacket. A trio of nearby women join me in admiring the contoured biceps revealed by his sleeveless black T-shirt, but he’s oblivious to the attention.

  “My father died suddenly when I was a college senior.” He drapes his jacket over the back of the bar chair. “I was away at school and didn’t get home to see him in time.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, because I’m supposed to.

  He nods. “He was Control. Growing up, I hated all the secrecy and the moving around. I just wanted a normal life.”

  “I know the feeling,” I mutter.

  “I majored in broadcasting and was managing the college radio station when I was only twenty years old. But after Dad died, there was no question what I would do. I signed up for the Control as soon as I graduated. On my first day I met Elizabeth.” He falls silent after saying her name, confirming my suspicion.

  I pour him another shot for strength. “So she was human at the time.”

  “Human, all right. We were in love.” He slams back the whiskey. “She’ll never admit it now.” He takes a long sip of beer, then swishes the glass in the condensation puddle left behind. “Wh
en she was turned, she—”

  Applause and hollering erupt as Monroe leaves the stage. Rather than stay for drinks and adulation, he grabs his guitar case and heads out the front door without a word for anyone.

  Noah takes the stage and slides his smile over the audience, clearly relishing the whispers of female admiration. “I am Noah. N-O is ‘no,’ and A-H mean ‘pain,’ so Noah mean no pain. When I bite, you don’t feel a thing but happiness.”

  “It’s true,” David says. “I don’t know how he does it.”

  The crowd rises and falls to Scratch Perry’s “Dreadlocks in Moonlight.” I guess Noah’s not telling his story, at least not yet.

  Despite the change in music and my compulsive foot-tapping, the mood at the bar stays dark. “So Elizabeth was turned ...” I remind David.

  He frowns. “It happened on a raid in the Ozarks. A cadre of older vampires had gone rogue and started preying on a little town in the tail of southern Missouri. We went in, captured a few of them. But we were underdeployed.” He leans his head on his fist and forces out the next sentence. “The lead vampire’s name was Antoine. Some say he was a century old, but he looked maybe fifteen or sixteen. I think Elizabeth was fooled by his apparent youth, couldn’t bring herself to neutralize what appeared to be a kid. He dragged her off.” He clutches the empty shot glass. “She showed up at my place the next night.” He closes his eyes for a long time.

  “She bit you.”

  “She was so strong. I thought I was going to die, and after a while I didn’t care, because it felt—” He glances at me. “Well, you know how it feels.”

  “Only the stabbing pain part.” I lean closer, knowing the liquor is loosening his tongue. “What’s the rest like?”

  His eyes unfocus. “Like the far side of an orgasm. You feel complete, like you found something you never knew you needed.”

  I wonder what kind of power it would give someone who could make you feel that way. “So then what happened?”

  “When I was almost unconscious, she tossed me aside and told me that was the only way she’d ever touch me again.” David’s lip curls into an expression I’ve never seen on him before. “Revenge was the only thought that kept me alive. I went against orders and hunted Antoine, alone. One night in a Memphis alleyway, I staked the fucker.” He puts his head in his hands. “I never meant to hurt her.”