by Debi Matlack
His brows drew together and he gazed at me steadily. “What do you mean, ‘setting me off’?”
I wasn’t going to back down to spare anyone’s feelings. That’s not my style. “Last night, watching that nature show, when that big-ass tsunami wave hit the car and I made this little gasp…?” I held his gaze. “You stiffened like I’d poked you with a fork. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.”
He rolled his eyes and huffed out an annoyed growl. “One time.”
“Many times the past couple of weeks.” His head swiveled right back to me. I kept it up. “You sit with your back to the wall, where you can see exits. You push me behind you when we’re going out a door, or into a building. You’re sleeping less and dreaming more.” His eyes widened and I saw a dawning realization tinged with fear in them. I tipped my head to catch his gaze again. “And now you’re going out on dawn patrol wearing a .45 and two magazines in a pissant little Florida town. What’s going on?”
He shook himself and turned toward the back door again. “Don’t you have to open the store?”
“No, I don’t. If someone wants in, tough shit. This is more important.”
He took a step away from me and I snagged the tail of his jacket. He whirled, brow furrowed with annoyance. I let go his jacket and held out my hand.
“What?”
“Give me the pistol.”
“No.” He took a step toward the back door again.
I shook my head. “Then you can get your shit and go home.” My heart suddenly weighed several metric tons and plummeted straight through my belly and sat there, burning like molten lava.
Barrett froze and turned slowly back to face me. Never breaking eye contact, he pulled the holster from his waistband and removed the magazine and cleared the chambered round, handing me the loose bullet, the pistol and the magazine. Snagging his keys from the kitchen counter, he strode down the back hallway, clattered down the stairs and was gone.
I had no idea if he was coming back.
I passed the whole day in a surreal haze of suspended anticipation, though I didn’t know if there was anything to anticipate. I got no call, not text, and no email from Barrett, even though I’d initiated contact with all three. He’d left this morning with only his keys, wallet and the clothes on his back. He still had his own home with his belongings there, had he just decided to cut his losses and go? The loose bullet was in my pocket, reminding me of this morning every time I touched it, not that his abrupt exit was far from my mind at any moment. His pistol was locked in the safe in the back, if Barrett didn’t return for it I planned to take it to Mike to lock in his gun safe. It was the only thing resembling a plan I’d managed to come up with in my distracted state. I had no experience with a pistol like that; if I needed a gun I had Poppy’s old Colt Police Special. It’s what I’d learned to shoot with and I was used to it.
Reluctant to mention anything to Mike about Barrett’s abrupt departure lest he take it upon himself to resume his self-appointed role as my personal bodyguard or show up to drag me home with him, I tried to busy myself around the shop, but every time the door opened, the phone rang, I simultaneously hoped and dreaded it was him or some news. Unable to stand the stress any longer, I resorted to calling Scott. I’d managed to wait until ten o’clock in the morning.
“I’m really worried about him.”
“You did the right thing calling me. I’ll see if I can track him down. You okay?”
“Only fighting simultaneous urges to cry, vomit and get in the truck and hunt him down myself.”
A subdued chuckle came through the phone. “I’ll let you know if I hear from him. Just stay put. I suspect he’ll come looking for you before too long.”
“I hope so.”
Closing time came and went. I was too edgy to head upstairs and go through the motions of a normal evening routine. This was one of the more abnormal evenings I’d ever spent. Barrett was the first real, decent man I’d ever dated. Sure, I thought I was in love a few times as a teenager, had been in lust a lot more than that, but that was all there was to it. I had wasted a lot of time on losers, mostly to kill time and to piss off Poppy. Barrett was a good guy, and I cared for him, more than anyone else besides my family.
The lights were out, the shades drawn and I sat in the store, surfing the web to distract myself. I posted a few pictures of some new pieces I had for sale on my blog and a cursory description of how I’d made them, had a wander through Facebook and finally sat back, staring at the screen and seeing nothing.
A key rattled into the lock, startling me, and the door swung open to admit Barrett. I had to force myself to let go of the panic button around my neck. His face turned toward me, illuminated by the glow of the computer.
“Why isn’t the alarm on?” His eyes were dark and tired, but the expression in them was clear.
“Because I was still downstairs.” I didn’t get up, instead I watched him, trying to discern his next move. He seemed to be doing the same with me.
“Can we go up now? I’m really tired.”
“So, you’re staying?” I kept my voice impartial. I honestly didn’t know if he wanted to stay.
A flicker of caution and apprehension ran across his face before it resumed its own carefully neutral expression. “Do you want me to go?”
“No.”
His eyes closed in relief and I finally shook myself into motion. I set the alarm and we went upstairs.
It was too late to cook or go next door for sandwiches so I scrambled some eggs and made toast. I brought him a plate to his place on the sofa and sat down beside him. He ate slowly, quietly as I stole glances in between the few mouthfuls of my own food I was able to manage. When he finished, I put the plates in the sink and sat back down.
“Don’t you want to know where I’ve been?”
“Do you want to tell me?”
He quirked half a smile at me. “I guess I’ll have to, sooner or later.” He pressed his lips tight together and took a breath, preparing himself. “At the risk of making you angry…-er, I went to see my ex-wife.”
I wasn’t sure how to process this information. “Okay.” A long pause. “Why?”
He took a deep breath and blew it out through his teeth. “She’s a psychiatrist.”
I felt some relief and a new sense of inadequacy. If you cared about someone, shouldn’t they confide in you first? Of course, I wasn’t a psychiatrist, either, but I felt like I’d failed somehow, been passed over in favor of someone he trusted with that part of his life. A part that he didn’t trust me with. I was a failure again.
“Did she help?”
He turned to face me, an expression mixing mild amusement and disbelief. “Why aren’t you upset? Aren’t you going to grill me about where I’ve been, what I’ve done?”
After being worried sick all day long, his challenging tone sparked a deep, suppressed anger. I struggled not to explode in his face like a grenade.
“You just told me where you’ve been, what you were doing. Am I supposed to be jealous? Accuse you of screwing around with your ex?” I bit my lips. “I am upset. I have been all day.” The meltdown I’d fought all day was building. “The last thing I said to you was to get your shit and leave. And you left. I didn’t know if you’d just decided to vanish into the sunset, if you were coming back, if you’d gone home and gotten another gun, done God knows what with it, I didn’t know!” I clapped a hand over my mouth to contain the sob I felt rising in my throat. Being unaware of what had happened to him all day, that’s what hurt the most. With all the shit that had been going on in my life lately, I was scared, but possessed assassins and evil hammers had nothing on how profoundly terrified I’d felt at Barrett’s unexplained absence all day. I was worried that I’d lost him, and even more, that he’d lost himself.
He reached for me and I backed away, gritting my teeth and stopping my tears by sheer force of will. He got to his feet, crossed his arms and turned away, to look out the window at the rising
moon. When I could trust my voice again, I asked. “So, would you please tell me what the fuck is going on?” It came out harsher than I intended and I shook my head. “I didn’t mean it to sound so—”
“It’s okay.” He held up his hands to forestall any further comment from me. “I owe you an explanation.”
Gingerly, I sat back down on the couch and waited.
His gaze shifted from the moon to the ceiling, his mouth opening and closing while he sought the right words.
“I was in pretty bad shape when I was discharged from the Army. Dana and I hadn’t spent half the time we were married in the same country, let alone together. I thought I had everything under control, until I had a flashback one day.” His gaze was still off in the distance and I could tell he wasn’t seeing the room we sat in.
“I was working as a tech in a hospital and in school for my RN. That day I was helping in the ED. There was this young kid with a bad sinus infection. He made this weird snort, trying to clear his nose, right? Except suddenly it wasn’t some snotty kid in a hospital emergency department, it was a buddy of mine in Afghanistan, and he was dying in my arms.” Barrett blinked, his gaze still remote.
“He’d taken shrapnel from an IED in the neck and drowned in his own blood. I was absolutely helpless to do anything except hold him while he died.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment before coming back to himself and giving me a quick glance.
“It was only a second or two, but I guess I must have frozen, staring at the kid. One of the doctors stopped and asked if I was okay. I said I was fine.” A self-deprecating smirk twisted his lips for a moment. “I was lying.
“Dana was starting her residency and I guess I became her pet project. Since we were married, I was with my therapist 24/7. You’d think that would help, but it made things worse. I couldn’t open up to her like I should have because when I needed my wife, she was too busy being my doctor. So I left.”
“But you found someone that could help?”
He nodded. “I did, but it was too late for me and Dana and we both knew it. I finished school but I couldn’t work in the hospital, too many triggers. Shot down my chances of being a paramedic too.” He quirked a smile at me. “I started teaching instead. That gave me enough distance that I could use my training and experience but not get caught up in the moment and risk a flashback.”
“But today, she helped?”
He nodded. “Yeah, she helped. We’ve stayed friendly, but now we can both be objective. Besides,” he shrugged, “my old therapist got transferred to Fort Bragg. I wasn’t quite willing to drive that far, not if I was going to be back here tonight.” He looked at me. “If you still want me here?”
That look, full of hope and apprehension and old ghosts, killed me. Without a word, I held open my arms and he sank into them.
We talked until the wee hours of the morning. Both of us exhausted, we inadvertently fell asleep on the couch, arms and legs entangled. I woke to his muttering in his sleep and drew the afghan back up over us. He shuddered, blinked and we lay quiet, looking at one another in the slanted shadows reflected from the streetlights below. A deep inhalation sighed out again and with that motion, he settled back into sleep.
“Will you need to keep seeing her?”
Barrett shrugged and pulled his coffee cup closer. “It’s probably not a bad idea, just to make sure I keep this under control.” He met my eyes. “You don’t have to worry about me and Dana.”
“I’m not.” Okay, so I was lying a little, the fact that he was seeing his ex-wife in any capacity was a blow to our still-young relationship. I raised a brow at him. “Because, if I thought you were screwing around on me, you’d already be out the door with a bootprint on your ass.” I lifted my foot to display the tread on my size 6 Doc Marten’s. The flowers printed on the leather belied the rugged sole and their ass-kicking capability.
He cringed dramatically. “Ouch.” He was already more relaxed than he had been for a few weeks, just for having realized what was happening to him.
“Well, whatever you need to do to get better, count me in, okay?” That sounded a little clingy. “What I mean is do what you need to do. If you have to keep seeing— what is her name, by the way. I can’t just keep calling her ‘she’ all the time.”
Barrett nodded. “Her name is Dana. Dr. Dana Tobin. And you’re right, you guys should meet.”
“Whoa, I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet. Meeting someone’s family is one thing, but meeting their ex?”
He held up his hands in surrender. “I just thought that if it would make you feel better about me seeing her, strictly professionally, then you should.” I pushed my coffee away and got up to kiss him.
“If it helps, then that’s all I need to know.”
Chapter 23
Mike, Karen, Barrett, and Scott sat across from me at the worktable in the back of the shop. At my request, the kids were farmed out for the evening so that we could have another of our drink-beer-and-talk-about-the-weird-shit-I-could-do sessions. This one I arranged to have at the store, because I had an ulterior motive and a special guest. I was witnessing the effects of my ulterior motive and it was universally gobsmacked, all four of them staring at Adam, my special guest.
“So, you say you’re related to us how?” Mike, loudmouth that he was, recovered his voice first.
Adam breathed a quiet chuckle, as close to outright mirth as he got. “Fourth great-grandfather.”
“But you look like you’re maybe my age…oh my God…” Mike turned his wide-eyed gaze on me. “Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?”
“If you think I’m telling you that Adam is a vampire, then yes.”
Mike shot to his feet to pace a few steps. Scott watched everyone carefully and Barrett kept looking between me and Adam. Karen got up to put her hand on Mike’s arm. “Come sit back down.”
He stared daggers at me for several long seconds before complying, sitting at the edge of his seat like an antsy child. Adam was carefully positioned toward the closed end of the room, leaving the exits available for any who wished to utilize them, his expression calm and neutral.
“I hate to be the designated skeptic again, but, how do we know for sure?” Barrett turned his attention back to Adam.
“Garlic, mirrors, sunlight, holy water!” Mike surged to his feet, eyes pinned to me. “I know you had some around here, you said you did.”
“Sit down, dumbass. What I said was that I had soaked that cloth over the trunk with holy water. You don’t exactly buy it by the gallon in the grocery store.”
“You can get garlic in the grocery store,” Adam observed mildly. Mike’s gaze shot back to him. “I like it with chicken the best.”
Unblinking, Mike sank back down to his seat. “You eat chicken? With garlic?”
Adam nodded. “I still like the taste of food, it just doesn’t sustain my body anymore.”
“But blood does?” Barrett leaned forward, more fascinated than frightened. For once, his scientific bent worked in my favor as he strove to understand and there was no trace of his resurgence of anxiety. Adam nodded.
“I imagine there’s all kinds of chemical reasons and medical things about us that would be interesting, but I don’t really socialize with other vampires, because there aren’t any more living in this area. From what I’ve heard, and this was years ago, the only medical examinations on vampires ended badly, for the examiner and the examinee.”
“Why is that?” Karen, as always, kept an open mind, waiting to draw her conclusions based on all the evidence she could gather. Thank God, because something needed to balance Mike’s knee-jerk reactions. Single-minded and stubborn as a rock, just like Poppy. I was going to start calling him Woodrow.
Adam gave her a quiet smile. It was a rare expression from him. “Partly because sometimes the doctor didn’t know the body he was examining wasn’t truly dead, and a new vampire wakes with a terrible hunger.” A distant expression and a shudder told me he was r
emembering his original family. “Some doctors knew what they were dealing with and did awful things to the vampires in their custody.” He took a deep breath. “Those got what they had coming to them.” Then his eyes met Mike’s again.
“As for the other stuff, I’d have a hell of a time shaving if I couldn’t see my reflection, sunlight does make me ill, but I can tolerate it for short periods of time and holy water, well, it’s just water to me. But,” he dug in a pocket to pull out a pocket knife, “I can do this.” He flipped the blade open, grimaced in anticipation and abruptly drew it down his arm, from elbow to wrist. The flesh was laid open to the deep red muscle, pale tendons gleaming.
“Jesus Christ on a pony, Adam!” I reached for his arm in a panic. Barrett leaped to his feet, his training taking over.
Blood welled from the deep cut, then stopped. As we watched, the slit seemed to pull together from the inside, closing like a zipper. Barrett stared, then looked up at Adam. Glancing back down at his arm, Barrett asked, “May I?”
With a hint of amusement, Adam nodded his consent. Barrett grabbed a wad of paper towels and strode into the restroom. I heard water running, then he returned, pulling on a pair of nitrile gloves he always kept in his pockets. Taking Adam by the wrist, he wiped the blood away. The skin beneath it was clean and unmarked. Barrett’s fingers probed the site and he shook his head. “Wow.”
Mike blinked several times, still poised to flee or fight. He stared in morbid fascination at Adam’s arm, then his gaze rose to meet mine, a challenge shining in them.
“Why did you bring it here?” He crossed the distance between us to overshadow me. “Why are you introducing us to something that can kill us all?”
“First off, this looming thing doesn’t work, never did.” I clapped both hands to his chest and shoved, rocking him back on his heels, off balance. “It just pisses me off.” I closed the space and pushed him again, forcing him to give ground. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Adam’s brow cocked and Scott’s open grin. “Second, Adam is a person, not a thing. You’re being an asshole.” I reached up to push him once more and he deflected my arms. I settled for standing toe to toe and glaring up at him. “He saved my life that night at the store. Tony or whoever he is these days had me down and was choking me. The only reason I’m not haunting your ass right now is because of Adam.” Mike’s expression morphed from anger to reluctantly shamefaced and he flickered a glance at Adam, mumbling, “Sorry.”
