For a long second, no one even dared to breathe, even Prudence, at what had been said. A muscle in my brother’s cheek twitched, just once, and he got up, very silently and deliberately, and walked out of the room for the second day in a row.
I looked at my sister. I agreed with her, but we were coming at this whole situation from such polar opposite directions that it didn’t even seem to matter that we were meeting at this point—it was just the happenstance intersection of two lines that would otherwise have nothing else in common. Frankly, that we were agreeing at this point seemed like a pretty bad thing. I got up and slowly began to head out myself, saying to her as I went, “I’ll get the tithe information from the accountants, and I’ll drive up—” Just outside the door, I froze. Sitting patiently on a small chair in the hallway was Jon Einarsson, reading a copy of Wired magazine, looking like he was in a doctor’s waiting room. I hadn’t seen Jon since the day that Prudence invited him to her town house in order to use him as a live feeding example for me. He still had that fit and square-jawed appearance of a former college athlete that no amount of legal education could completely exorcise, but there was a slight change in his pallor. Perhaps no one who didn’t know what they were looking for would’ve seen it, but while Jon was still blond and handsome, there was a hint of sickness to him, an air of vulnerability that hadn’t existed a month before. Being my sister’s source of fresh human blood was taking its toll on him.
He caught sight of me, and set his magazine down immediately. “Fort!” he said cheerfully, and reached out to give my hand a firm shake. “Good to see you doing well!”
“Yeah . . . so, are you here to see my sister?” Inwardly I cringed a little—somehow that felt even more awkward than if he’d been my sister’s hired gigolo.
“Oh, Prudence asked me to come by today,” he said, that friendly smile almost welded into place.
Behind me, Prudence emerged from the room, looking very pleased with the situation, her previous irritation set aside. “Jon, punctual as always,” she complimented him. “Yes, I was wondering if you’d be willing to let my brother drink your blood today.”
“What?” I squawked, taking an automatic step backward.
Jon’s eyes never left Prudence’s face. She’d tricked him into ingesting some of her blood, which at her age created a powerful sense of unwavering loyalty in his regard of her. It was a frightening, insidious thing, which made him so willing to give up all sense of self-preservation and allow her to feed on him, and even hide the evidence of it from anyone else in his life as she slowly killed him, one bite at a time. “Oh, if that’s what you’d like, Prudence,” he said, as if she’d asked him to let me borrow a pen, rather than open up a vein. “It doesn’t seem like it would be a problem.”
“Prudence,” I started, then looked at Jon’s open, friendly expression, and just couldn’t take it. I grabbed my sister by the elbow and towed her to the other side of the hallway, then turned my back to Jon and hissed, “Prudence, what exactly are you doing here?”
She looked at me very seriously. “Little brother, you will need to drink from the vein very soon to maintain your health, so why not do so with Jon? He is present, and I have already made certain of his loyalty, which you will be unable to do with your own victims for many years yet.”
My sister was never more terrifying to me than when she was showing her affection. I knew that, in this instance, there was no ulterior motive—that her primary concern was for my physical well-being. It made me want to vomit, but I forced myself to be calm as I answered, “I appreciate the offer, but I’m going to handle this in my own way.”
She sighed, the perfect image of a put-upon sister with a bratty little brother. “I wish you wouldn’t be so stubborn.” Her expression turned sympathetic. “And how are your teeth today? I know that Chivalry was looking around online for remedies, and purchased some kind of small terry cloth octopus that can be put right into the freezer for when you—”
“No, no, I don’t even want to know. I’ll talk with you later.” I turned and left.
As I walked away, I could hear Jon ask Prudence, “Well, if he isn’t interested, would you like to drink my blood today?” and hurried my steps so that I couldn’t hear her response.
* * *
After collecting the tithing files from the accountants, and double-checking the location of the ghoul-owned business in question, I drove up to Providence and picked Suzume up from the downtown area, where she’d just wrapped up a business lunch on behalf of her grandmother.
“Was this one of those business lunches?” I asked her as she carefully maneuvered herself into the Scirocco. All I could see of her was a long black wool coat that came down to the tops of her calves, and a pair of black stockings ending in a pair of perfectly acceptable business pumps, but I could tell from her movements that she was almost certainly wearing her usual business uniform of a knee-length pencil skirt and a silk blouse.
“Silly vampire,” she said affectionately. “I told you that Midori got the short straw and is doing client interviews now. That was a meeting with the state attorney general about how happy Green Willow Escorts will be to make a sizable donation to his campaign fund when he announces his candidacy for the Senate in a few months.”
I snorted. “Another great example of money in politics.”
“Don’t be grouchy,” she replied. “Look, I even brought you my leftovers.” She held up a leftovers box. “Scallops!” Withdrawing a napkin from her pocket, she unrolled it to reveal a clean fork, then popped open the top of her container and was in moments holding out a forkful of incredibly decadent-smelling scallop to me.
I was admittedly kind of hungry, so after I had merged the car safely back into traffic, I leaned over and begrudgingly ate the bite she was holding out to me. It was delicious. “I’m surprised you aren’t taunting me with surf and turf,” I grumbled as I chewed. “That’s what you used to always go for when someone with deep pockets was footing the bill.”
“I normally would’ve,” she agreed, “but I got your text about going to shake down the ghouls right before I ordered, and given where we’re going to end up going, even for me it seemed like a good day to avoid red meat.”
I made a face and had to agree.
* * *
The era of the local butcher shop—where professional butchers took huge sides of meat that were delivered to them directly from the slaughterhouses and broke them down themselves for customers, able to answer any and all questions about the meat in question—was one of the sad casualties of the modern big-box grocery store, where precut, packaged, and frozen meats were shipped in from hundreds of miles away to be thawed and presented for sale by glorified stocking clerks. The small butcher shops that remained were fighting the long defeat against an opponent that would always be able to undercut them on price, and whatever edge the butcher shop had in terms of customer service or basic competence was invariably lost when customers weighed that against the ability to also be able to buy eggs, panty hose, laundry detergent, and just-released DVDs while they waited for their order to be put together.
The butcher shop that we entered was one of this dying breed. With no frills or shiny pizzazz, it nevertheless had a long and gleaming selection of meats, and the chalkboard that ran the entire length of the counter showed a rather staggering breadth of both meats and cheeses. Looking over the counter gave the customer a full view of the three men currently working. One was breaking down meat from the full half of a cow into specific cuts to be sold, another was mixing ground meat in a large bowl, and a third was at the slicer making deli cuts. The only woman was standing at the counter, waiting on an elderly customer, but from her red-flecked apron, she was also no stranger to the butcher’s knife.
If I hadn’t known that this shop was owned and entirely staffed by ghouls, and that some of the offal meat that was cut, ground, or sliced on those workstations was
from animals that had walked on two legs, I probably would’ve bought as much cheese as my budget could allow out of the sheer desire to express solidarity for the locally owned store. As it was, of course, I had to work to keep my stomach under tight control. Even living with Dan couldn’t shake me of the feeling that it was just kind of gross to eat human organs.
I was aware of what a hypocrite that made me, given my very regular consumption of human blood smoothies (the crushed ice and fruit didn’t exactly improve the flavor, but it did distract me a little more than when I warmed it). However, that didn’t make it any less true.
The ghouls knew who I was. From that mixture of outright terror and pants-wetting relief that crossed each of their faces, it was also clear that they’d known this visit was coming, and that they were aware just how lucky they were that I was the one to show up rather than my sister. I’d never exactly wanted a reputation—frankly, I’d spent most of my life just trying to fade into the background of almost every situation I was in—but I’d apparently, despite my best efforts, secured one for myself. Fortitude Scott—Holy Shit, We’re Glad You’re Not Your Sister.
Suze and I were hustled immediately to the back room, given the nicest seats, and then spent the next half hour trying to get everyone to stop promising speedy repayment and repeating babbled apologies so that we could actually figure out what was going on. After they finally caught on that—just as they’d barely even dared to hope—I wasn’t planning on using my sister’s method of persuasion, they calmed down enough that I could get them to actually walk me through the background.
What finally came out was that a year earlier, a large supermarket chain had bought up some defunct warehouse just one street over from the butcher shop, and had announced plans to raze the old building and construct a beautiful new grocery store with an emphasis on environmentally sustainable practices, excellent foods, wide varieties, and, among other things, its own in-store butcher station. Realizing the danger that this posed to their business, the ghouls had sent an appeal to my mother to use her political connections to make certain that the supermarket never moved in. They had received assurances that this would happen and had settled back, certain that Madeline Scott’s hands would soon be manipulating the levers of power like a seasoned organ player.
The problem came, however, when that never happened. Why my mother never became involved was unclear, though I wondered if many small items might’ve begun slipping through the cracks as my mother’s health trickled away over the last months, but the ghouls realized too late that Madeline Scott wasn’t going to intervene as promised. They attempted a local protest against the plan, and made quite a lot of fuss at city meetings, but they were simply the owners of a small, threatened local business, and without a big and powerful ally in their back pocket, they ended up in the situation of every other small but beloved local business since the beginning of time—steamrollered by the incoming supermarket chain with its very deep pockets and slick advertising campaign.
The supermarket had opened five months ago, and the butcher shop had lost half of its business virtually overnight. At first, the ghouls had put their savings into the shop to try to ride it out, hoping that those who had gone to try out the new supermarket got tired of getting a much lower quality of meat in exchange for a little bit of savings and convenience, and would return to the store. That didn’t happen. They had to cut back on some of the variety that the store offered, and lost more customers as a result. They still had the local ghoul population, which relied on the store to break down and distribute the human organ meat that they needed to maintain their health, but the problem there was that the ghoul community treated the human meat as a shared commodity—it was obtained by those who owned funeral homes or worked in professions that gave them access to the organs, then passed along to the butcher shops, then distributed to all the households, all without money changing hands. The ghouls of course did do all their other meat purchases at the stores that were ghoul-owned, but that wasn’t enough to offset the loss of the human patronage that had made up such a vast percentage of the customer base.
When the autumn tithe to my family was due, the butcher shop had already been struggling and didn’t have the money to pay the bill. They’d turned to others within the community, who had gone around and raised the money by each business and individual household putting forward what they could spare, which had allowed them to get by that time. But when the winter tithe had been due at the end of December, the butcher shop’s profits plunged even further, and on top of that the other businesses were facing tight times as well, and hadn’t been able to offer an equal amount as in the autumn, leaving the butcher shop owners with a large shortfall to make up. They’d stretched as long as possible, and were in fact in the middle of acquiring a loan, with the owner using his house as collateral.
“That’s completely unacceptable,” I said bluntly.
“No,” the owner said frantically, “if you just give me a few more days—”
“That’s not what I mean at all!” I replied. “That grocery store isn’t going away, and the last thing that should be done is for the tithe to be the deathblow to your business. No, what I mean is that I’m going to have one of our accountants come up here today, and you’re going to go over all your records from the five months since the supermarket came in. The tithe is going to be readjusted to reflect the difference in what is a real-case bottom line in the current market conditions, not what existed before in the best times.”
The owner looked at me, so incredibly grateful that it hurt to even see it. “That’s amazing, Mr. Scott,” he stammered, “and we’re so—”
I cut him off, anger filling me. “No,” I said. “We dropped the ball on our end, and you’ve had months of stress and hard decisions as a result. If we hadn’t been able to stop the supermarket, then adjustments should’ve been made to the tithe immediately. So I’m also going to be telling the accountant that you need to be issued a credit for the tithe amount that you essentially overpaid. I also want credits issued to all the businesses and households that put money forward to help you when you almost went under in the autumn.”
They stared at me, unable to process what I’d said at first. “You mean,” one of the younger men said finally, almost forcing out the words, “that you’ll be talking to your family, and that this is your recommendation that—”
“No. This is what’s happening, and I’m getting that process started today.”
The owner began to cry, fat tears sliding down the deep wrinkles in his face. And I was suddenly surrounded by all four of the ghouls, all of whom were clasping my hands and thanking me in as many ways as they could say it. I nodded, uncomfortable but knowing that they needed to do this, studiously ignoring the expression on Suzume’s face.
We didn’t leave the butcher shop for several hours, not until Dulce Scarpati, the accountant who was the Black Sabbath fan, had arrived, somewhat surprised at my unexpected call, but well conditioned to follow Scott orders without question, and had made as much headway as she could on the numbers and tithe recalibration for the day. I signed off on everything, making my signature large and unmistakable, the whole time trying to hide from the euphorically relieved ghouls just how unbelievably pissed I was.
Once Suze and I walked back to the car, and were out of sight of both grateful ghouls and a mildly bemused accountant, I tried to get out some aggression by kicking at a wall of iced-over snow that had been created by multiple plowing passes through the parking lot. Suze watched silently as I chipped away at it, not commenting. Finally I felt at least ready to get into the car, if not exactly drive safely, and unlocked the Scirocco.
We sat silently beside each other as the car slowly warmed up. After several minutes, Suze slowly turned to look at me, her face very grim. “So, you know that your family is not exactly going to take this well,” she said at last.
“I don’t give a shit about the
m right now,” I said through gritted teeth.
Suze continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Even if they end up agreeing with you in the larger sense about reducing the tithe and attempting to keep the business alive in order to maintain a long-term stream of revenue, you should’ve brought this one back to the group to discuss and agree on.”
“We couldn’t agree on whether or not to eat ice cream at this point.”
“They’re going to be pissed, Fort. Pissed at you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, fed up at last. “This is an unsustainable situation, and I know it, Prudence knows it, and Chivalry is trying as hard as he can to not know it.” I took a deep breath and looked out the window at the ice and snow for a second, then turned back to Suze. “It’s time to just accept what things are, Suze, rather than what we’d like them to be. So that’s why I actually did something for the ghouls, even though I know it’s going to cause trouble with my family.”
Suze watched me steadily. “If that’s true, Fort, and how you really feel, then how far does it go?”
I frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
“Your hands are restless when you’re listening to someone. Your pupils are wider than they should be. I don’t think you even notice it, but I’ve seen the way that you’re tracking all the people around you today.” She reached over and touched my arm, very gently. “In another day or so, you’ll notice it yourself. But by then you might be getting dangerous.”
I wanted to yell that this wasn’t true. I wanted to beg for just a little more time. I didn’t do either, because she was right. “You’re saying that I need to feed,” I said, forcing the words out.
“I’m saying,” she said, her eyes so brilliantly dark and lovely, so sharp and knowing, “that you need to accept what things are, rather than what you’d like them to be. And accept that it’s not your fault that you are what you are.”
Dark Ascension: A Generation V Novel Page 28
