Liz Jasper - Underdead 02

by Underdead in Denial

  Will shot me a lazy, wicked grin that made me tingle all the way down to my toes. “Alone are we? I’ll walk you to your car.”

  Dan and Becky had driven over together in Becky’s car. I had followed in mine. And parked in a different row. Stupid.

  Will chivalrously let me exit through the door first. I bolted for my car. If I could get inside before Dan and Becky drove off, I would be safe. Assuming that “no entry unless invited” thing worked on cars as well as dwellings.

  Will followed unhurriedly, but his slow, gorgeous stride covered a remarkable amount of ground.

  Becky and Dan reached the Mustang. She called out, “You want me to stay to make sure your car starts?”

  “That would be great.” I didn’t look up. I was fumbling with my keys.

  I found them as Will rounded the back of my car, lithe and powerful as a jungle cat on the prowl. I stuck the key in the lock and turned it. It was too late.

  Without breaking stride, Will turned me around and pulled me tight against him. And he backed me against the car and kissed me. The whole of my body was pressed up against his and I nearly passed out from the hormone rush when our tongues touched.

  I barely heard Becky laughingly say, “I guess not,” before she got in her car and drove off.

  If it were a movie, this would be the scene where the audience yells, “Run, you fool! Run!” But I wasn’t running. Far from it. My hands were twisted in the silky-crisp cotton of his shirt, pulling him closer. His hands were…

  “Hey!” I said. “We’re in public.”

  “I wanted to make sure you are still in one piece.” His lips brushed, whisper-soft, against my ear. “You had an accident this evening.”

  “I’m fine.”

  In reply, he poked a finger through a hole in the shoulder of my sweater, from where I’d hit the ground so hard the rough pavement had torn right through. His somber gaze took slow, silent inventory of all my scrapes and bruises.

  “Well, maybe I need a little Bactine. Wait. How did you know about the set falling?”

  Just then the door of the bar opened and a woman’s laughter danced through the cool October air. A memory I’d suppressed washed back over me like a flash flood. I hadn’t seen anything when the set fell, but I had smelled something. A cloying, musky perfume. Only one woman of my acquaintance wore a scent that trashy. Natasha.

  I knew the vampiress wanted me dead and out of the way. Was tonight’s “accident” her way of reminding me? The line of sharp nails a subtle sign that pointy things can be dangerous?

  I opened my mouth to complain to Will and then hesitated. The reality was, no matter what my gut told me, I had suspicions but no proof. And that wasn’t enough. Not with him.

  Will tolerated my dislike and distrust of Natasha, even found it a little amusing. Because he just thought it was me being nervy.

  He didn’t have a weakness for Natasha so much as a convenient blind spot. He bought her well-honed “sweet little me” act because it suited him. He liked the idea that they were all a “big happy family” with him as its genial leader. It sort of made sense, when you considered how long vampires had to live with one another. They weren’t like a regular family who could count on death giving the family tree a thorough pruning every so often.

  If Will realized that I was the cause of real trouble in the ranks? The simplest solution was to finish turning me. I would be brought into the undead “family” on equal footing and it would be really hard to kill me.

  I clamped my mouth tightly shut before any feeble accusations could make their way out. Sharing my theories about Natasha with Will was a very bad idea. My problems with Natasha were something I was going to have to work out for myself.

  As if he’d read my thoughts, Will said suddenly, “You need to be more careful.”

  His jaw was set tight and the way he said it was odd. As if there were an unspoken “or else” hanging off the end of it. Before I could ask what he meant, he shifted his attention from my cuts and bruises and reached a hand to my neck. His fingertips softly traced the small twin scars he’d put there. A strange longing rose up inside me.

  It scared me so much that I shoved Will away and clambered into the car, barking my shin painfully on the door.

  He had plenty of time to stop me. But he didn’t. He stood aside, radiating power and iron control. His voice was low and, as it did sometimes, vibrated with a faint European accent. “Free will has a way of bending to destiny.”

  “Then it’s not really free, is it?”

  I punched the door lock. When I looked up, he was gone.

  I drove home slowly, feeling as if I’d downed a handful of tequila shots instead of half a beer. As usual, Will had managed to discombobulate me beyond rational thought.

  But then, Will’s whole existence was irrational. Everyone knows vampires don’t really exist outside of movies, books and TV shows. Except they do.

  Will was irrefutably real, only he wasn’t acting at all like a vampire was supposed to act. Why? Why hadn’t he bitten me again? Completed my transformation? It certainly wasn’t for lack of interest.

  As I waited at an intersection for the light to turn green, I thought about Ralph Winkerstein who had lived down the hall from me in college. Ralph had a large, ravenous pet boa constrictor. You always knew when it was feeding day by the steady stream of beer-holding guys ambling into Ralph’s room to watch. After about twenty raucous minutes of shouting and dollar bills changing hands, there’d be a loud cheer and everyone would file back out.

  One time, a couple of hours passed and the mouse was still in the cage. Alive. It was still there the next day. And the next. After a week, Ralph named the mouse Lunch and the snake had a new roommate. We all—including, apparently, the snake—became rather fond of sweet little Lunch.

  A few months later, Ralph came home from class, whistling and rattling in his hand a crumbled cookie he’d saved for the little mouse. Lunch was gone and the snake’s abdomen bulged suspiciously.

  That, I thought, accelerating through the intersection, was my relationship with Will. He was the pointy-fanged predator and I was Lunch, running free in the cage.

  How long until Will remembered the natural order of things?

  Chapter Ten

  “Thought you could use this.” Becky came into my classroom and held out a cup of coffee.

  “They have the criteria for sainthood all wrong,” I said, reaching for it gratefully.

  “Don’t get too excited. It’s only from the cafeteria. How are you feeling? Did the gorgeous, not-gay man’s kisses make you all better?” She fanned herself with a What is a Red Shift? handout from the counter. “Lord, that man is smokin’ hot! And the way he just strode over and kissed you…” She sighed dreamily.

  “I never said he was gay. I said he wasn’t my type.”

  “Right. And you were kissing him back because…? Never mind. We’ll have to deal with your denial later. Come downstairs. I’ve something to show you.”

  She darted back in to the hallway.

  “Come on,” she urged when she realized I wasn’t right on her heels.

  “Oh all right,” I grumbled. “Hold your horses.” I grabbed my sun-protection gear off the hook by the door and followed her out, trying to sip my coffee without spilling it down my front.

  “Let’s go, pokey. I thought you were a runner.”

  “I’d like to see how fast you move after a set falls on you. Where are we going? It better be good. Here, hold my coffee while I get this stuff on.”

  Becky took my cup and waited impatiently while I tugged on gloves and wound my scarf around my face and neck. As soon as my sunglasses were on, she handed me back my coffee and strode ahead.

  “Trust me, it’s worth it. Assuming we can ever get there.” She trotted nimbly downstairs, as if trying to hurry me along by example. I limped along after her as best I could and caught up to her at the door to the bottom floor of our department.

  She whispered, “We’l
l pretend to be having a conversation on the way to my classroom. When I stop, look to your left.”

  “Okaaay. What are we pretending to talk about?”

  “Never mind that! Leave it to me. Now shush.”

  We were about halfway to the chemistry lab when Becky suddenly stopped and turned toward me.

  “You think so?” she said conversationally. “Hmm. Now, I’m of the opinion that middle schoolers should take finals, so they don’t freak out when they get to high school.”

  She jerked her head a fraction toward a ponytailed high school girl rooting around in her locker. I looked back at Becky in confusion and she widened her eyes meaningfully and jerked her head again.

  Becky droned on, “But I do agree that it puts a lot of pressure on them. Maybe if finals counted for a smaller fraction of their semester grade? No, I see your point that if it’s too low, they won’t take them seriously…”

  Becky’s monologue faded into the background. I had caught sight of the girl’s locker door.

  It was a Dan shrine. The actual door of the locker was invisible behind its thick papering of playbills featuring Dan on the cover, in various roles.

  Becky nudged me and surreptitiously pointed at the row of photos. Dan in doublets. Dan as a pirate. Dan’s headshot.

  Most of them I’d seen before, when Becky had made me look at Dan’s page on the LBP website. It was the other, unofficial photos that caught my attention. Dan leaving the theater from a play. Dan grinning, his arm around… I leaned closer and jumped back as the locker door clanged shut.

  Becky pulled me toward her classroom. “I think you’re right that the middle school final schedule merits serious study by the faculty and…” She shut and locked her classroom door behind us.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Did you see the picture where she photo shopped out my head and put hers in?”

  “That’s what was wrong with that picture. I thought I recognized your lab coat.”

  I also recognized the girl. She was the fake-axe-wielding student volunteer who had helped me carry sets last night.

  “Who is she?”

  “Surely you can guess.”

  “How would I know? Oh…”

  Becky nodded. “Shelley Stevens. The president of Dan’s fan club.”

  *

  I arrived in the parking lot a good thirty minutes before the haunted house’s grand reopening and already the line stretched around the corner. Apparently, the murder coverage in the papers had indeed been excellent advertising for the haunted house.

  Marty had sent a few costumed actors out to the sidewalk to work the line. They had gone for campy rather than serious. A good idea for the mostly teenage line, in my opinion. Marty had parked himself at the front of the line and was deflecting questions with good-humored non-answers such as “Thank you for your concern”, “Enjoy the haunted house” and “The show must go on.”

  One kid in line, egged on by his friends, called out, “Is the dude who got murdered still in there?”

  “Ghouls,” Angelina said, flouncing off. As she disappeared through a gap in the black sheets that were strung over the parking lot gates, I caught Marty doing a “why me” eye roll at her retreating back.

  I tried to follow Angelina into the haunted house area, but Marty caught sight of me and motioned me over. “You’re doing tickets again, aren’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. We can use someone with a little experience dealing with kids. This crowd is going to get a little rowdy tonight.”

  The line surged forward. Marty raised his voice and told them to knock it off. It seemed to work. For the moment.

  I didn’t want to burst Marty’s bubble, but I wasn’t exactly the “go-to” person for managing teens. Threatening to send the entire line to the principal’s office wasn’t going to work on a crowd this large.

  I merely nodded, trying to look as much a responsible adult as I could in a bustier and cape. His critical gaze fastened on my mouth and before he could produce yet another set of plastic vampire teeth, I ducked behind the black sheet “door” someone had strung over the gate entrance to the parking lot.

  “Holy cow.”

  I stopped and stared in amazement. What had been an ungainly stretch of mismatched sets and black sheets had been transformed into a huge black serpent with glowing yellow eyes and sharp white fangs. Its cavernous mouth—the haunted house’s entrance—yawned black and ominous. Last night’s cheery yellow floodlights had been covered with red filters that cast the dark parking lot with a hellish glow.

  “Want to take a walk through?”

  I was so caught up in the illusion that I jumped at the sound of a voice at my left shoulder. I twisted my head to find Ian hunched in his Igor outfit, grinning at me.

  “Pretty effective, huh?”

  “I’d say so,” I said, stepping into the yawning maw and fingering a fang as big around as my waist. “Is everything the same as before? I mean, inside—the homicidal mummy, Frankenstein and his monster, a hungry witch with a giant cauldron?”

  “More or less.” Ian shrugged in a comical rise and fall of hump. “I think the innocent victim getting sucked into the giant spider web is a lot better this time round. C’mon, I’ll take you through. You have to use your imagination a bit. Not everybody’s in place yet.” He hunched over and listed toward the snake’s black mouth. “Walk this way.”

  His Marty Feldman impression was dead-on. I told him as much and he broke character to grin at the compliment.

  “Jo! There you are.” Marty, followed by actors who’d been working the crowd, came through the black sheet and shut the gate with a clang. He motioned for a couple of them to guard the entrance so no enterprising teens could sneak through. “Where’s your ticket basket?”

  “Um…” I was pretty sure it was behind the crime scene taped doors in the out-of-bounds part of the theater.

  “Never mind,” Marty said, as if reading my mind. “I’m sure you can find another one in the rehearsal room.”

  I guess I was on my way to the rehearsal room. “I’ll take a rain check on that walk-through,” I told Ian. “Maybe I’ll tag along on one of your tours so I can get the full effect.”

  “As you wish,” he said, lifting his shoulders and hump in an exaggerated shrug. I was halfway to the rehearsal room before I realized Ian’s hump had moved to his other shoulder.

  The door to the rehearsal room was open. In the light spilling into the parking lot, I caught sight of two people, one wearing a familiar fright wig, standing outside the actor’s back entrance to the haunted house. Dan and Becky. I headed over to say hi and realized I was wrong. It wasn’t Becky caressing Dan’s chest, but Angelina.

  I felt as if I had a tiny version of my mother on one shoulder and a tiny Becky on the other. Mom was reminding me it was rude to eavesdrop and Becky was threatening vile things if I didn’t find out whether Angelina had designs on Dan.

  I refused to consider the possibility that Dan might also have designs on her.

  Angelina’s voice was husky with worry. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Her hand shifted to his shoulder. “That set came down really hard on you last night.”

  I guess she hadn’t lost any sleep over my cuts and bruises.

  “I’m fine,” Dan told her. He patted her upper arm.

  A pat. What the heck did that signify?

  I must have made some sort of noise, for Dan turned toward me. He let out a breath and his shoulders dropped. “Hey, Jo.” He smiled and looked expectantly past me. “Becky with you?”

  Angelina muttered something I couldn’t hear and stalked through one of the side openings into the haunted house.

  I shook my head. “We took separate cars. Becky’s probably in the rehearsal room getting ready. If I see her, I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.”

  “Thanks, I— Hold on. No need. There she is.”

  He jogged off toward the entrance in an encouraging display of Becky interest. I
was almost a hundred percent positive he wasn’t putting it on for my benefit.

  The rehearsal room had a row of storage closets along one long wall. As I hunted through them for something I could use for tickets, I couldn’t help but compare Angelina’s quiet concern over Dan’s bruises with her histrionics the night of Tom’s death.

  She had most certainly amped up her response to Tom’s death to get attention. But exactly whose attention was she trying to get? Dan’s? To show him she was over him?

  That might have been the plan then, but it was pretty obvious that Angelina still wanted him.

  Killing Tom to get Dan back was a little excessive, even for my imagination, but what if she’d merely tried to make Tom sick? All that comforting in times of grief had brought exes together before. Were we overlooking the simple explanation?

  Someone outside shouted the “fifteen minutes to opening” warning. I realized I was standing in the rehearsal room staring at an open locker of plastic Grecian army breast plates. If I didn’t get back to the snake’s head with a basket soon, Marty would spend the rest of the night complaining.

  Stowing my purse under a pile of yellowing crinoline, I grabbed a small, empty plastic trash can for the tickets and headed out at a slow jog. As I rounded the serpent’s head, I saw a small crowd of new volunteers ready to be put to work, but no Marty.

  It was cowardly of me, but the last thing I wanted to do was make small talk dressed as a sexy vampire with high school students and their parents. I spun away before they could see me and went to look for Marty.

  I hadn’t searched long when I heard his voice coming from up around the front of theater. What was he doing there? I took the stairs from the parking lot up the hillside and followed the tree-lined path around toward the front of the theater. I was about to round the corner, when the tenor of Marty’s voice made me stop and shrink back into the shadows. Marty wasn’t just somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, he was having an argument. Positioned myself behind a shrub, I peered cautiously around the corner.