‘Okay, what do you call a group of vampires?’ she demanded.
‘A bunch of suckers. But it’s their companions who are the suckers, right?’
‘Pete —’ But Gaela broke off as Guyye came in. The worry left her face at once. ‘Yes, Guyye, darling?’
‘Table three would like a salad. Senator Grunk is on a diet.’
‘But we don’t offer —’
‘Of course we offer salads, don’t we, Gaela, darling? Senator Grunk is chair of the acquisitions committee. Big decisions will be made here tonight.’
‘Yes, of course we offer salads,’ repeated Gaela obediently. She blinked at the ingredients on the bench. ‘There’s artichoke hearts and olives and grilled capsicum and tomatoes . . .’
‘I’ll run out and get some lettuce,’ I offered.
‘Good boy,’ said Guyye, not quite patting me on the head. He vanished into the main room again.
Gaela stared after him, still vague and adoring, so I didn’t bother going outside to TAP back a few years to when this place had been a deli. I bought two Greek salads, a tub of tabouli, and an Aussie special with lettuce, beetroot, tomato, sliced orange and a halved hard-boiled egg. I had the salads set out on the kitchen bench by the time Gaela came out of her glamour.
She blinked at me, then at the salads, then began arranging parts of each on a new plate without asking questions.
‘To table three?’ I asked, picking up the plate.
‘You’re a customer, not a waiter,’ she protested.
‘I’m a friend.’
She looked at me, surprised, then nodded. I made my way out to table three.
‘Just a small change to the labour laws,’ a vampire was saying to a woman in a tight-fitting dress, ‘would mean that no one needs to pay workers unless they ask to be paid. And ten-year-olds are quite capable of running call centres, which would be an education all of its own, so no need for schools. That would be an enormous budgetary saving . . .’
‘Do bring your colleagues tomorrow night,’ Guyye was saying to the business types sitting either side of him.
I slid the salad onto the table just as Senator Grunk agreed that there was no need to call for tenders for the operation of the new Blood Bank, and, yes, she could have a contract for a Blood Bank manager drawn up by Wednesday night.
Guyye grabbed my arm as I turned back to the kitchen. ‘Get Gaela out here with the next order,’ he hissed. ‘Fast.’
The best pizza in the world had lured these people here. And vampire glamour was conning them into staying. But already some of the non-vampire faces were puzzled, as if wondering exactly what they had agreed to. They needed a hit of Gaela and her selkie magic, and then they would be happy again, I thought, which was why Guyye had ordered me to fetch her.
Just then she came out anyway, a Three Cheese and Two Mushroom in one hand and a Haloumi and Potato (gluten-free) in the other. The room glowed with reassurance again.
Love is a many-splendoured thing, I thought. And now Guyye has found a way to make it profitable as well.
I pushed through the doors into the kitchen and sat at the tiny table next to the oven.
‘Guyye doesn’t want me as a waiter,’ I told Gaela when she came in again. ‘I’d better act like a customer.’
Her eyes sparkled as she nodded. Guyye must have done his wrist-kissing routine again. The glow faded just a little as she asked, ‘What kind of pizza would you like tonight?’
I pretended to consult the menu. ‘Garlic and tomato. Hold the anchovies.’
She really did look at me then. ‘No garlic tonight.’
‘Not even in the tomato sauce?’
‘Never in the tomato sauce. Never has been.’
I stood up. ‘Then maybe I’d better find another pizza shop that serves garlic.’
‘Maybe you should!’
‘Gaela . . .’ I reached for her hand.
She pulled it back, then slowly reached towards me. I wasn’t sure what would have happened next if Guyye hadn’t pushed through the kitchen doors.
‘Table eight wants a steak,’ he told Gaela.
‘A stake? Excellent idea,’ I said.
He looked at me as if I were a slug, then smiled at Gaela. The room filled with moonbeams as she smiled back.
I didn’t know where she was going to get a steak from. And just then I didn’t care. I vanished.
I didn’t go far. There was a seat on the boardwalk about fifty metres from the café door. The air I displaced when I landed next to it only had a tinge of white chocolate fudge.
I’d just got settled when the banshees strolled by hand in hand — or fuzz in fuzz. Banshees were the colour of night — every night and every kind of darkness — so I didn’t notice them till they were right in front of me.
‘Sorry, the Leaning Tower of Pizza isn’t open tonight,’ I said.
The female banshee shook her head. I knew she was female because she had longer hair . . . or whatever that droopy, wavy stuff was. (That bit of knowledge probably isn’t any use to you, because if a mortal sees a banshee it means they’re about to die.)
She pointed to the café. ‘Lights on. Smells good!’
‘It’s only open for special customers tonight,’ I said.
I didn’t add that the Leaning Tower of Pizza would probably never have its midnight sitting again. Vampires had no need to enchant banshees, bunyips, trolls or ogres as they tended not to be elected as politicians or the head of the real-estate zoning board or directors of multinational corporations.
‘We special,’ said the taller banshee, his darkness mingling just a little more with his partner’s.
I smiled at them. I couldn’t help it. Love swam around them like tadpoles in a pond.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you’re special.’ True love, freely chosen love: there was nothing more special in the world. Not that I wanted freely chosen love, I reminded myself, not with all its bickering and jealousy. ‘But your way of being special won’t get you pizza here tonight.’
‘You sad,’ said the female banshee.
I thrust away the image of Gaela’s sea-coloured eyes. ‘I won’t get a pizza tonight either. And I really like pizza.’
They both looked at me with their eyes that were darker than dark except for the faintest glint among their swirls.
‘That not why,’ said the female. ‘You in love.’
I shook my head. ‘Selkie enchantment doesn’t work on fairies. I really am a fairy,’ I added quickly. ‘My wings are under my hoodie.’
The two lengths of darkness both shrugged.
‘Banshee know human from fairy,’ said the male. ‘You not in selkie love. You in real love.’
I shook my head. Banshees specialised in forecasting death, not diagnosing love. And I’d been playing around with love potions since I first learned to fly.
‘Not possible. Only fairy royalty fall in love freely. I’ve never even heard of an ordinary fairy who fell in love before the potion was placed in their eyes. But Gaela is my friend. I care about her.’
The darknesses looked at me thoughtfully. They had almost blended into one now. ‘We care about her too,’ they said. ‘How we help?’
‘I’m trying to figure it out.’
I was also trying to figure out if Gaela needed my help. After all, she knew her love for Guyye was probably just glamour and she’d still chosen to make pizza for his guests. She needed my help, I decided, but she didn’t want it.
‘We think how we help too,’ said the darknesses, then they vanished into the gloom.
I stayed on the bench, hoping to work out what to do. Gaela was my friend. Nothing more than that. But you didn’t let down your friends.
Far out at sea I thought I saw a flash that might be a sea serpent hoping for some pizza. But the sea serpent was out of luck tonight too. And probably forever.
I gazed at the white-frilled waves a while longer. If I could prove to Gaela that Guyye didn’t love her but was only using her, then maybe .
. . Maybe what? Gaela was happy with Guyye, whatever his motives. And that was what mattered, wasn’t it? People being neatly enchanted into happiness.
Look at Titania and Oberon, bickering away the millennia because they’d never had heartsease potion put into their eyes. They could have used the potion and been happy for eternity, but had chosen not to be enchanted into loving each other. Why? Why choose to experience unhappiness when you didn’t have to? Why did people want to choose their own job, or what clothes they wore, or who they could marry? Why not let your King or Queen choose for you, as we fairies did?
Yet Gaela had chosen pizza over her selkie friends and family. Maybe she would still want Guyye if she knew he didn’t love her; knew he didn’t like her pizzas, just the opportunities they gave him. But she had a right to know the truth. She had a right to choose.
And whatever she chose, I decided, I’d support her, even if she chose to live with Guyye and his mob forever.
CHAPTER 9
The vampires, all except Guyye, sauntered out a few minutes afterwards, moving like buttered velvet. No one did elegant saunter like a vampire. They clustered by the lamp post, then zing! A cloud of bats flapped away.
Guyye came out next. I hadn’t expected he’d stay to help with the washing-up. He paused at the door and blew a kiss towards the kitchen.
‘See you tomorrow night, sweet cheeks,’ he called.
Zing!
But this time a bee followed the bat.
I didn’t have to fly far. The vampires were living in a classy-looking apartment building six blocks away from the pizza shop. You know the kind: fifty matching shrubs tortured into square blocks out the front, and a million windows like a movie star’s sunglasses. The vampires had the penthouse, but this penthouse was underground.
I buzzed through the door behind Guyye, then perched on a light fitting on the high ceiling as he zinged back into human shape.
The other vampires were lounging on black steel lounges. They’d changed into an assortment of clothes from thousands of years of fashion — I supposed they chose their favourite outfit from whatever era they’d lived in before they became vampires. There was a Roman toga; what looked like the dress Cleopatra wore to seduce Mark Antony; Queen Elizabeth I’s coronation gown; John Wayne’s jeans and cowboy hat.
Guyye wore an ancient Hittite’s tunic of embroidered leather, with enough gold necklaces and armlets to sink a cruise ship. He pulled the iron door shut and bolted it. Didn’t bother me. I couldn’t go through a locked door, but I could go backwards or forwards in time till the door wasn’t there.
I settled myself on a comfortable twist of steel not too close to the light bulb as Guyye flung himself into an armchair.
‘Humanity is wearing,’ he said, yawning. His fangs gleamed in the light. ‘Such petty, boring little lives. But a year of deals like tonight and we’ll be set up for another millennia.’
A female with a ring on her delicate white finger that I recognised from Julius Caesar’s time held up a crystal glass. I didn’t think the red stuff in it was wine.
‘Want a snack, Guyye?’ she offered. ‘Pure virgin.’
‘He’s already eaten with his little lady love,’ said another of the females snarkily.
Guyye grinned and gave a dramatic shiver. ‘Me, snack on fish bait? Never.’
‘Doesn’t she expect a bit of vampirising?’ asked the first female curiously.
Guyye laughed. His other teeth were yellow, I noticed, only the fangs were white and bright. I wondered how old he really was.
‘She thinks I “respect” her,’ he said. ‘Pass me the flagon.’
He poured himself a glass of the red fluid. Yes, it was far too thick to be wine, or even raspberry cordial.
‘Drink up before it congeals,’ said the female with the ring. ‘I want to go out hunting before daylight. Get rid of the stink of pizza.’
‘But the plans,’ said Guyye.
‘They’ll wait till tomorrow night, won’t they, pretty boy?’
She moved towards him and they shared the kind of kiss I bet he’d never given Gaela.
Suddenly the room was full of bats again, then they were all gone. I didn’t imagine they’d be back till nearly dawn.
I sat there on my light fitting, thinking. What if I could project that scene for Gaela so she could see Guyye kissing the other vampire? She’d learn that not only did he not love her, but he didn’t even like her or respect her. He didn’t even enjoy pizza.
Could I do it? I’d flicked up images for Queen Titania a thousand times, but that was in Fairyland with the power of her court around me. Could I do it by myself?
Suddenly I knew: whatever power I had, I’d use it to help Gaela. I could do this.
What would happen if Guyye turned up in the middle of us watching a scene from the past? He might convince Gaela I was playing a trick. She’d believe him too. She loved him. As long as Guyye was there, she’d never believe me.
And even if I did convince her, what then? Guyye would still turn up tomorrow night and she’d be under his glamour again, even if she didn’t want to be.
I had to stop the vampires altogether. But how?
I also needed time to think.
I smiled. That, at least, I knew how to do.
In a true manipulation of time and place, I swiftly TAPed forward in time to the Moon, followed by a great storm of choc cherries scent. So much for Guyye’s iron door, I thought smugly. By this future time, humans had created a couple of settlements on the Moon, but there were still plenty of empty-space craters where I could perch, return to my own shape and size, and simply think. Moon dust rose around me as I sat myself down, then settled slowly. I kept my wings still so I didn’t dislodge any more.
What were my choices? Could I use a potion to ruin the vampires’ plan? Fairy magic didn’t work on vampires, but not all potions were magic. Non-magic potions still needed to be eaten or drunk though, which ruled them out. The only way to get a vampire to drink enough of such a potion would be to force the vampire’s victim to take it before the vampire sucked their blood, and that would make me worse than a vampire.
Perhaps I could rub itching powder on their skin? I grinned. That would be fun. No way could they corrupt a pizza shop full of important patrons if they were scratching every ten seconds. Even vampire glamour couldn’t cover that. Itching powder was easy to make too. You just needed to pick a giant stinging nettle, let it dry in the sun for six months or so — I could TAP that easily — then grind it into a powder while wearing protective clothing. (You did not want to breathe in that stuff!) And dust it over the naked vampires . . .
But did vampires ever get naked? They seemed to change their clothes as easily as their shape. And everyone knew that female vampires slept in long white nightdresses and males in nineteenth-century evening clothes. I’d never get a chance to dust them with the itching powder. I bet they didn’t have to hang their clothes in wardrobes either, so I couldn’t even contaminate the fabric instead.
What other options were there? An armed attack? Fairies were safe from vampires, but how much damage could a fairy do to a vampire, even if it was in bat form? I could make myself a hundred feet tall, TAP back to ancient Athens and borrow King Theseus’s sword, but as soon as I raised it, Guyye would only need to zing into bat shape and fly away.
No magic then. No violence either, which I was glad of as I’d never actually attacked anyone in my life. I even removed the ants from Her Majesty’s path with care and dignity.
Which left . . . I grinned.
Garlic.
I TAPed back to the vampires’ penthouse. It would be sunrise in an hour, and I didn’t think they’d want to cut their return too fine and risk crumbling to dust in the first ray of light.
The first one back was the vampire Guyye had kissed. Her lips were even redder now, and wore a smile of deep satisfaction. I watched as she zinged into a white nightdress, then went through another door. That must be where they kept their coffin
s.
Guyye was next, looking well-fed and smug. He also looked far too handsome when he’d changed into evening dress and headed for his coffin.
I waited till the last vampire had returned, bolted the door, yawned and headed off for a nice safe sleep. And so they were safe in their underground luxury penthouse with a securely bolted door and no windows. Sort of.
I TAPed to the nearest supermarket and filled my trolley with all the garlic in the place. The other customers looked at me a bit oddly, as did those in the next fourteen supermarkets I visited. But at last I had enough garlic.
Okay, focus time. I TAPed each trolley-load of garlic back to the vampires’ living room one by one. The place was a metre deep in garlic cloves when I’d finished.
I stood in the middle of the garlicky room and grinned. Garlic wouldn’t kill a vampire — only a wooden stake in the heart did that, or sunlight — but it would make them nauseous and weak. Not a single vampire would be able to walk through this room to open the iron door. And there were no other exits from the apartment. No windows underground. They were trapped by the very measures that made them safe.
I knew it wouldn’t be forever. Vampires were strong — as long as they stayed away from garlic. They could burrow out of their coffin room, but it might take them a week to do it.
Even if it only took a single night for them to escape, it was enough time for me to show Gaela my recording and give her a free choice. Did she want to live in an enchanted happiness forever?
I bit my lip, wondering what she would choose.
CHAPTER 10
Time to return to the Leaning Tower of Pizza, before Gaela went to sleep. I TAPed back two hundred years before the apartment had been built, to get past the locked door, then TAPed two hundred years forward again.
I flew slowly towards the café. An owl hooted at me, annoyed that I’d invaded his evening patrol; and a few possums eyed me warily.
My Name is Not Peaseblossom Page 7
