by Mary Hughes
Behind me, Julian sucked in his breath. I have to say, the boy is quick on the uptake. “Nosferatu.”
“Exactly. So let’s get going, guys and gals. Logan—you keep the ringers here to guard the blood. Elena, Bo, Julian…let’s hope it’s not as bad as I think it’ll be.”
While we were dealing with the Ruthiettes, Nosy’s Lestats had free run. I bolted out of the Blood Center, afraid of the havoc they might already have wreaked.
“Oh, shit, there’s a couple vampires.” Bo pointed to the Deli Delight. “Four more.” In front of the Fudgy Delight.
We ran down Fifth. “Three over there.” Julian indicated Nieman’s Bar. “And I smell at least half a dozen in the beer tent.”
Nosy’s lieutenants were everywhere. Like cockroaches. Spread out all over the four blocks of the festival.
How would we stop them? Especially, how could we stop them without scaring away the tourists?
Rounding a corner, we saw Cutter and his three leathercoats—headed directly for us.
Well. Stop these four, first. Worry about scaring tourists later.
Bo and Julian tensed, eyes going fighting violet. Elena unhooked her SMAW. She looked discreetly around her, realized she couldn’t blow up Lestats without torching a couple handfuls of tourists. Put the SMAW back with a grimace.
Cutter and his gang were fangy and snarling. Red-eyed and clawed.
But people passed them fearlessly. Some of the tourists even waved and called out good-natured ribald comments. Huh. Maybe they thought fangs and claws were festival costumes.
As the Lestats got closer, though, I realized something odd.
That wasn’t snarling.
They were singing. Poorly and off-key, but singing nonetheless. They sounded amazingly like the drunken teenage geeks.
And as the Nosy Quartet reeled up, a smell of beer and brats washed over me. “Hello, pretty lady,” Cutter called to me. “Hello, pretty lady with the bazooka,” he said to Elena, a goofy smile on his face. He actually sloshed over to Julian and tried to embrace him. “Julian! My very good bestest friend in the world!”
“You’re smashed,” Julian said, holding Cutter firmly away.
Cutter’s eyes widened. “I am?”
“He can’t be,” another Lestat said. He was young and fresh-faced, sort of like I thought Bart was before I found out Bart was a puke. “He didn’t have any beer. Or liquor or Red Specials or antying…anthying…anything.”
“What have you all been doing?” Elena asked suspiciously.
“I don’t remember.” Cutter blinked. The other Lestats echoed him.
“Do you remember anything?” Bo asked the fresh-faced Lestat.
“Nothing much,” the vampire said. “We were supposed to cause trouble. So we bit a few people.” When Bo growled, the young vampire added, “Not much! Not to hurt them or anything. Just to scare them a little.”
“Oh, no,” I said, a giggle bubbling up.
“This is hardly a laughing matter, Nixie,” Bo said.
“No, of course it isn’t.” I was trying to control myself and failing utterly. “So you bit a few people?” I asked the Lestat.
“Just a little,” he admitted, eying Bo warily.
“Which people?”
“Well…” He waved his hand vaguely around him. “People. Tourists,” he added, as if he’d just thought of the word and was proud of himself.
“Tourists. On the streets?”
All four vampires nodded.
I pursed my lips. “Hmm. Tourists…at the festival events?” They nodded harder. “At Nieman’s bar?” They nodded like spring-loaded goony birds. “In the beer tent?” They nodded so hard Bludgeon threw up.
Both Elena and Julian were laughing by this time. Even Bo was starting to smile a little. “Tourists with a blood alcohol level well into intoxication,” I said. “Do you suppose a vampire could get crunk on alcohol-laced blood?”
Julian and Elena were laughing too hard to answer. Bo said, “We learn something new every day. In fact—”
He was interrupted by a loud bray. “Mr. and Mrs. Strongwell! Mr. and Mrs. Emerson! Nixie, nice to see you and your little hubby!”
Julian took one look at Lew Kaufman, bearing down on us, and turned heel to run. He was stopped by Bo’s and Elena’s wide-open mouths. “Mr. and Mrs. Emerson?” Bo gasped, starting to laugh. “Oh, now that is rich.”
I blushed. Elena clapped an arm around my shoulders. “Congratulations, Nixie! You got yourself a keeper.” At that I flushed hot. I couldn’t look at Julian.
“Mr. Kaufman!” one of the Lestats called, distracting me from my embarrassment. “Mr. Kaufman, remember us?”
“’Course I do, m’boy!” Lew said. “I always remember a customer!”
“Customer?” I echoed, more to turn the subject from me and my little “hubby” than anything.
“I was at the Deli Delight and couldn’t believe it,” Lew said. “Someone packed all those perfectly good cheese balls away in back!”
“Cheese balls?” I asked faintly. “Which cheese balls?”
“The LLA’s, of course! Well, we couldn’t have that, could we?”
“We couldn’t…? Oh no. Lew, what did you do?”
“I sold them!” Lew chortled gleefully.
“Sold…them?” I asked in horror.
“Sure. Well, the head cheese and blood sausage ones.” He shook hands with all four Lestats. Gestured toward the other vampires reeling around. “My new best cheese ball customers.”
I looked around me with fresh eyes. Sure enough, several people were bent over like they were sick. Only now I knew they weren’t people.
They were vamps with tummy aches.
“Here’s the money, Nixie.” He handed me an envelope. “Well, got to run. Got to make sure the regular cheese ball shipment is good for tomorrow.”
Monday morning we sat in Bo’s kitchen, Elena and me, Julian and Bo. Counting money. “Four hundred ninety thousand, four hundred ninety-one thousand.”
“Here’s another three thousand,” Elena said, pushing a stack of money over.
“And the bank just called. We got a thousand in change.”
“Four hundred ninety-five thousand.” Bo stared at the money. “That’s not enough.”
“Damn.” I’d failed. Tears gathered in my eyes. I had worked so hard. But I had failed.
“It’s okay, Nixie.” Julian put an arm around me.
“No it’s not!” I wiped my eyes. “Fuck. I didn’t want to run this. Why did the mayor put me in charge? I know about organizing, not fundraising and shit. Did he want us to bomb?”
“We’re not beaten yet.” Elena squeezed my hand. “We’ll get the other five thousand somehow.”
“How?” I said bitterly. “Raise taxes? Ask for a donation from Chicago? Put on a relief telethon for Needy Attorneys?”
“Nixie.” Julian rubbed gently between my shoulder blades. “We’ll figure out something.” The soothing hand moved down. Rubbed my spine, the small of my back. Tickled my hair further down. Slid into my low-cut jeans…stopped suddenly.
“What’s this?” Julian pulled out an envelope, held it in front of my face.
I took it from his fingers. “Oh, just the money from Lew. For selling those god-awful cheese balls.” I tossed it onto the pile, unopened.
“But how much is it?” Elena asked.
“Come on, Elena. We’re talking LLAMA pusballs. We’ll be lucky if it’s not a class-action lawsuit.”
“You should at least open it,” Julian said.
“Forget it. You open it. I’m done with this being-responsible shit.”
“Pouting doesn’t become you, little girl,” Julian said softly.
“Who cares?” I groused back.
“Aren’t you even curious?” Bo asked. “I know I am.”
“Then you open it.”
“I think I will.” Extending claws, Bo slit the envelope. Pulled out a sheaf of bills.
Two Ben Franklins wer
e on the outside. I snorted. “A Kansas City bankroll.” Lew was a salesman to the end.
Bo fanned it open. “No. Looks like turtles all the way down.”
“What?” Sure enough, even from across the table I could see every bill in the pack was a Franklin. “Fuck. How many?” My heart beat faster.
“Well, let’s see, shall we? One hundred.” Bo laid down a bill. “Two.” Another. He made ever so sure the edges of the two bills were square.
“Stop that.” Elena smacked her husband in the shoulder. “Just count the damn things.”
Bo looked across at Julian. “No sense of drama.”
“It’s the shorter life span. Always in a hurry.”
“Ah.”
“I’ll give you drama,” Elena said, eyes narrowing.
“How’s that?” Bo peeled off another $100, set it carefully on top of the other two.
“No sex,” Elena said distinctly.
“Well, that’s different, isn’t it?” Bo began to count quickly.
Fifty Franklins later, I was ready to kiss Lew Kaufman. “We did it,” I said, hardly believing it. “We made five hundred thousand dollars!”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Bo slipped the stack of hundreds back into their envelope. “That the funds that put us over the top were contributed by Nosferatu’s own gang?”
“I’d say justice,” Julian said.
And so Meiers Corners had a happy ending.
But not me. I tried to be grateful. Truly I did. Meiers Corners was safe from the bad guys. The public had won. And Guns and Polkas would get their shot at stardom.
But at an astronomical personal cost. My baby was gone.
Oscar had died nobly, saving my life. But I was a little lost without him. It felt like part of myself was missing. I’d bought Oscar with the first money I ever earned. He was with me most of my life. I loved him more than many people.
I missed Oscar, terribly.
I had a feeling I’d miss my snarky lawboy more.
Chapter Thirty-one
I hoofed out from Bo and Elena’s alone. No need for Julian to chaperone me. Vampy guys were all dug into snug graves nursing their hangovers. Or wherever v-guys slept when out of town. Was there a vampire motel chain? The Vampada Inn? The No-Tell Motel? Swan-necked Sylvia’s Bed-and-Breakfast?
Even without the threat of gang guys, Bo pressed me to use the limo. I nearly took him up on it, thinking I’d get farewell sex.
But Julian said he had to pack.
I hung around a bit before going. I thought maybe Julian would try to get me to visit Boston again. Even invite me to leave with him tonight. But Julian had phone calls to make.
And he had to pack.
So I left Julian to his packing. I wondered if he would even come say goodbye after sunset. Or if he was eager to just get the hell out of Dodge.
Maybe I should suck it up and visit him on my own. He’d asked once, after all. Visit him in his blue-blood, country-club Boston environs, where I’d see the Stuffius Lawyeranous in its natural habitat. Where both of us would see how painfully I did not fit in. I could go home and we could both move on.
I wiped my strangely wet cheeks. Hell. Maybe I could go to Boston but just hide out in Julian’s bedroom. After all, we fit there well enough. And on the sidewalk. And in limousines…double hell. How would I get along without him? And why hadn’t he at least tried one more time to get me to come?
As I passed each of the festival’s venues the sense of loss deepened. There was Nieman’s Bar, where Logan Steel had tromped everyone at sheepshead. Good Shepherd Church, where Thor and Gretchen “just said no” to a couple vampires and made it stick. The Fudgy Delight where Rocky Hrbek won the beauty contest and Elena got the crown. The Roller-Blayd factory where the music—
Where the music was still going.
I couldn’t quite hear details. Curious, I tried the door.
A saxophone was playing “Take Five”.
“Dirk?” I ran in. “Dirk, it’s Nixie! Oh, Dirk! You can stop now.”
On stage, Dirk Ruffles took his sax from a mouth so swollen it looked like a collagen implant gone wrong. He was wringing wet, sweat and spit both. He tottered to the edge of the stage where he didn’t so much sit as collapse.
“Dirk! The festival’s been over for hours. The bands were done days ago! Why were you still playing?”
“‘Ooo ’old ’ee ’oo ’ay,” he said in a voice thick from disuse. His swollen lips made the consonants into mush.
“What?”
“’oo,” he said, pointing at me. “’old,” making a talking motion with one hand. “’ee,” pointing at himself. Then he just pointed at the sax, lying on the stage.
“Me?” I said, getting it. “I told you to?”
When he nodded tiredly, I thought back. I’d asked him to cover for me, sure. But what exactly had I said that Dirk would still be playing days later…shit.
Wing it until I get back.
I had never come back.
Julian and I had been so busy chasing Lestats, protecting the blood, and protecting the festival that I had never come back.
And Dirk went on winging it.
“Oh, Dirk, honey!” I sat next to him on the stage, put an arm around him. “You must be exhausted.”
He nodded mournfully.
“I know just what’ll take care of that.” I dragged him to his feet. “Let’s go put something cool on those lips.”
“’ere?”
“Nieman’s Bar.” When he perked up, I knew I had a winner. And hell, I could use the amnesia.
I was pleasantly wasted by sunset. When Granny Butt came to dance I barely even noticed. I did swivel slightly on my stool, to watch the door. Sun was down, now. Any moment. Any moment he would come to say goodbye. Maybe he would even come in the limo. We could do a lot of goodbying on the way to O’Hare.
Two hours later I was totally crunk. Julian had not come.
“I don’t care,” I repeated to whoever would listen. “He’s just a stupid shrink-wrapped shark. A vacation fuck. I don’t care he didn’t say goodbye. And I especially don’t care I didn’t get goodbye sex. Buddy, gimme a refill.”
“That’s your fourth pitcher, Nixie.” Buddy was sweeping up after Granny’s latest promenade knocked all the peanuts to the floor.
“So? I’mn-not goin’ anywhere. Gimme a refill.”
“Why don’t you get a little fresh air first?” Buddy gave me a sympathetic look.
Sympathy, because a snarky lawyer stood me up. Skewer me and call me shish kabob, why don’t you? “I wanna refill!”
Buddy’s answer was to quietly take my glass and pitcher and put it in the washer.
“Fine. No tip.” I slapped a few yuppie food stamps on the bar, to cover both me and Dirk, who was still anesthetizing. I swung off my barstool and stomped away.
Only to find out I didn’t have my hoodie and jacket. Nothing spoils a dramatic exit like not exiting. When I finally found them ten minutes later (groping blindly like a Ph.D. in stupid), I left quietly.
It was dark out but no one cared. No one was going to sneak up on me and inform me in that highly aggrieved tone that I should not be out alone at night. I blinked rapidly. I was glad! I was glad oppressive Daddy was gone. I was…fuck.
I fell back against the brick of Nieman’s. My breath huffed out. I was not glad. I missed him. Only a few hours, and I missed Julian Emerson so much it was like a knife in my chest.
“There you are.”
The voice was female. I peered into the wet mists. Wiped my eyes with an angry swipe. Elena strode up to me.
“What are you doing here?” She took a sniff. “Have you been drinking?”
“I was drinking. Buddy cut me off.”
“Just in time. How are you going to enjoy the party if you’re drunk?”
“Party? What party…the mayor?” It occurred to me the mayor must have put together a shindig for the people who worked the festival. Strange that it was on a Monday night. But ma
ybe that’s the only time he could get caterers to come. “No thanks. I don’t wanna drink bad wine and eat pusballs.” I stumbled toward home. My empty home, with no vampires in the basement…or in my bed.
Elena hooked my elbow. We spun like a mini merry-go-round, with me as the tiny pony. “Whoa!” She caught me by the shoulders. “You’re drunk already, aren’t you? Why?”
“Why?” I practically bleated it. “I’ll tell you why. And it has nothing to do with that hoagy lame-ass lawyer you brought in who turned out to be neither hoagy nor lame-ass.”
Elena marched me across the street. “You mean Julian?”
“It has nothing to do with him! Just because not-hoagy not-lame-ass dipped out without even a poke at goodbye sex—”
“Julian hasn’t gone anywhere.”
“But…but…” Finally I managed, “He was packing.”
“Well of course,” Elena said. “That’s what you do when you move.”
“He’s moving?” I blinked, my brain apparently still on daylight saving time. “Emerson’s moving?”
“I thought you knew.”
“You mean…he’s moving in with you and Bo?” Was it possible that Julian was staying in Meiers Corners?
But before I could even get a single hope up, Elena said, “Let me explain something.” She dragged me into a nearby doorway (it was the local comic book shop, closed for the night) and propped me up against the door. Casting a glance around her and apparently seeing no one, she said, “You need to house at least six human donors for each vampire. Our household is full. So Julian’s starting his own.”
“Joy and rapture.” Julian was starting a “household” in Boston. A household with sexy Julian and his human minions. Bye, Nixie. Hello, minions. Minions…and sex slaves too, no doubt. “How kewl. Another nest of vampires.”
“Nest of…certainly not!” Elena looked almost insulted. “A household is more like a co-op.”
“A co-op, uh-huh.”
