by Chism, Holly
“Good to know,” Andi said. “That was kind of my plan, anyway. Your reading? Where did you find information about vampires to read? Are you sure it’s credible information?”
I nodded. “Apparently, there’s a whole set of websites that have extra parts to them that you have to have a newspaper obituary at least, if not a death certificate, to be given a code to be able to access. I was given the link when my contact started chatting with me on my page.”
“Wow,” she said, following me into the library and sitting down. I moved to the coffeemaker and set it up, but didn’t start it. She watched me for a moment, then continued, “Did it give you any information that you didn’t know?”
“Quite a bit, actually. Like the fact that there are groups of vampires in a lot of places in this country, that they have laws that aim to prevent them from killing regular people, or turning and abandoning new ones, like what happened to me,” I said absently. “It was inferred, but I wasn’t finding anything actually codified. I asked straight out, just to make sure I wasn’t breaking any laws and setting myself up for bad things from my contact.” I dug through my filing cabinet, looking for a memo book and a pen. Found both, after a lot of hunting, and scribbled down a list. One which started with pens, notebooks, and memo books. Because I was just about out of note-taking supplies. “I’m not.”
She blinked, and shook herself. “You mean, having me living here with you isn’t frowned on?”
“Not that I’ve noted indications of, and I’ve been looking for exactly that,” I said, shrugging. “I got the impression from my reading that it’s semi-common to have daytime help for pretty much the reason I’ve been so glad to have you here.”
“Oh, before I forget again, I got a whole bunch more blood bags ordered,” Andi said, snapping her fingers. “They’ll be here tomorrow. I’ll put ‘em in my fridge when they get here.”
“That’s fine,” I said absently as I fiddled with my roller ball pen. It was nearly empty, so I underlined pens. “I can move them down when I wake up, or you can bring them down and put them in my fridge, if there’s not enough room in yours.”
“Okay,” she agreed, with a little relief. “I was wondering how I was going to manage, with the actual, real food I’ve got in there. Hey, I figured out how to fry eggs without burning them. Makes great sandwiches, and I went to the grocery store today and got a couple dozen. And cheese slices.”
“I think I’m done with my list,” I said thoughtfully, chewing on the click part of the pen I’d been using. “Is there anything you need?”
“Yeah,” she said. “We need a large, municipal map. Can be done by using a copier and enlarging the one from the phone book. We also need sticky tack, paper flags, string, and toilet cleaner.”
“Toilet cleaner?” I asked, blinking. “Wow. One of these things is really not like the other.”
Andi rolled her eyes. “I know. I didn’t realize you didn’t have any in the supplies closet off the kitchen, where you keep the paper towels and stuff. I got toilet paper, but didn’t realize we were utterly out of toilet cleaner.”
“I’ll get some, then. Since I’m going to Staples, it’s going to be industrial strength,” I warned.
“Kinda what’s needed,” Andi replied, making a face. “The downstairs toilet doesn’t wash its own skid-marks like the upstairs ones do.”
I shuddered. “Ew. I’m so glad I don’t need to do that anymore. A once-a-day flush with the tabs inside the bowl do the trick for keeping my toilet downstairs clean.”
I gathered my purse, coat, and keys, and made the drive into town.
*
When I got back home, the upstairs lights were on, and the downstairs lights weren’t. I parked and started moving my stuff into the house. I’d just finished hauling the bags, and had the paper and toner balanced on top of the printer when the other two realized I was back. The front door opened just as I reached it. I peered awkwardly around my load of stuff. I couldn’t see who, exactly, had opened the door past the stack of printer, paper, and toner. I said, “Thanks. This is awkward enough as it is—balancing it while opening the door would have been a nightmare. All the bags are in one of the chairs in the library, including the stuff you asked for.”
“I didn’t ask you for anything,” Ray said.
“No, but Andi did,” I replied. “Give me a sec to get these things set down, and I’ll dig through for her stuff.”
“Need me to take anything?” Ray asked, concerned.
“Yeah,” I said, as I felt the toner start to slide. “Grab the toner before it falls off the top, please.”
The warmth in the library felt incredible after the sub-zero temperatures outside. I set the boxes carefully on the table in the middle of the room, and shucked out of my coat, edging past Ray to go hang it up. Andi poked her head out of the kitchen. “Hey, you look like you’re freezing,” she said. “I washed your coffee cup—I’ll bring it in when I come. Go ahead and set your coffee maker cycling.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “Thanks.”
I puttered around, pulling the old printer out and swapping it for the new one. The new one would print duplex, and was wireless. I’d probably hook it up to the desktop with the USB cable, but it was one more thing prodding me toward getting a laptop. Especially some of the ones the kid at Staples had shown me earlier. There’d been some serious strides made in the last twenty years in smaller sizes and bigger capacity.
“That looked like you weren’t having any trouble with the weight,” Ray muttered, eyeing the printer I was switching out. “The printer, and the paper together.”
“No, it didn’t seem heavy,” I said. “Awkward as hell, especially when I can’t see over the top of my stack, and hard to keep stuff from sliding around, but not particularly heavy.”
Andi trotted in, set my coffee cup down, and boggled. “You got a printer.”
“I said I was going to,” I said mildly.
“I thought you were going to be pricing them, not getting a new one tonight,” she said.
“Nope. I already knew what I wanted, figured out last night that Staples had what I wanted marked down by a good bit that put it below what Amazon was selling for, even figuring for sales tax, and that tonight was their last night to have it on markdown,” I said. “Otherwise, I’d have just ordered it and everything else I needed, and avoided going out while it was so cold.”
“Ah,” she said faintly. “Hey, this is wireless!”
“Yep. If you’re printing anything for your current case, I don’t mind. Just do it while I’m downstairs,” I said. “And get it off the printer and out of my sight before I get up.”
*
I spent the next two days not hanging out with Andi while we were both up. She and Ray spent all their time up in the spare room/office, while I spent all my time busy with the auctions of the goods we’d found sealed in a hidden part of my basement, working with client accounts, and ignoring my own curiosity urging me to go up and take a look at what they were doing.
One of the auctions finished for one of the bottles of ‘shine, so I got that, and photos of where it was found and the box it was found in, together, and packaged it for shipping. I took that to the UPS Store and got it sent out on the second evening, before I got into my accounts. The low four-digit boost to my personal checking account was nice, and I wrote out a check for half of that, and left it on the kitchen table for Andi.
I got everything done that I could get done, and went downstairs, still considering a laptop for use down in my small apartment. Or maybe just a tablet or reader. In the meantime, I had that book I’d started reading the night Ray had showed up, and I’d hustled back downstairs to avoid hearing more than I’d already heard. I was a bit under halfway through.
And…I couldn’t get into it. I just couldn’t focus. I fidgeted, trying to figure out what was bothering me, then I realized what was wrong. I didn’t want to read. I wanted to watch a movie with Andi. And maybe Ray, but
mostly Andi. Or something.
I missed my best friend. My best friend, who was working on something with her FBI buddy that I couldn’t know anything about.
And she was doing this half as a favor to me. And I was unhappy about it. Damn it.
I sighed, set the book aside, and went back up to surf around on Amazon, and window shop.
It ended up not being window shopping. I ordered a Kindle Fire and a laptop. The happy anticipation did much to drown out how much I missed hanging around Andi, and I made note of several books I wanted to download from Project Gutenberg.
*
I dreamed. I knew I was dreaming when I “woke” in the dream. Ass-face sat on a chair at my bedside, hunched over, elbows on knees, staring at me from below a confused frown framed by greasy, nasty, dirty hair. Something in me knew he wasn’t really there. I couldn’t smell him. “Get out.”
“Ungrateful spawn,” he shot back. There was no emotion in his tone, or in his expression. His eyes were utterly empty as they looked into mine. His were a watery blue. “You are without a doubt the worst child ever.”
“I was an accident,” I said.
“You were,” he agreed.
“Why me?” I burst out. “Why did you attack me? Why are you attacking all those girls?”
“Because you remind me of my wife,” he said. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, pushing his greasy, dirty hair impatiently away from where it fell in his eyes. “You know you can’t stand against me.”
I shrugged. “I’m staying out of your way.”
“You’re not doing what I want you to!” he yelled.
I jumped. “That was sudden,” I commented. “Of course, you should have known I won’t do what you want me to,” I continued. “Anybody sane would have realized that long ago. You murdered me.”
“I didn’t murder you,” he said. “I tried to murder you, and you, you vicious little hag, took a chunk out of me. It scarred. I want the piece of my arm back, my blood back, and I don’t want a child.”
“Fucking waah, I didn’t want you to rape me, murder me, and turn me,” I snapped. “Get the fuck out of my HEAD!”
And I woke. Snapped awake.
Looked at the clock.
It was just slightly more than two hours before sunset.
I scrambled to the toilet and threw up. Hard. Really threw up, too, not just dry-heaves. Kept heaving even after nothing else came out, not even that weird fluid that made me feel like I was bleeding inside when I vomited up anything with calories. Finally, it stopped, though. I still had the urge, but my muscles weren’t cooperating with heaving… or even staying up over the toilet. I slid down the side of the toilet to lay on the cold tile. I reached up and managed to hook my middle finger tip over the handle and flushed.
There. My toilet was clean.
I, on the other hand, felt disgustingly filthy, inside and out. I crawled over to my shower and scrubbed until my skin felt raw, then shut it off and ran a hot bath. I went to my kitchenette and heated a big mug of blood to sip on while I was in the tub. After the puke session, I was more than a little shaky, and starved. I considered for a minute, then pulled out the powdered milk I’d gotten to add to baths for a little bit of extra pampering. After that dream, I needed the soothing.
I added a cup of powdered milk to the bathwater, and stirred it with my foot before I climbed in and sat down, setting my mug on a small table near the back of the tub. I let the water fill up the rest of the way. The milk bath soothed where I’d scrubbed my skin nearly sore, and I was thankful I’d thought of it.
I climbed out when my mug was empty, and the water edging toward tepid, and wrapped up in a thick, new, terrycloth robe. I wandered out and set my mug in the sink for a later wash, and into my bedroom.
Yeah, that chair I’d picked out—the padded guest chair with the exposed wood arms that I’d chosen because it was the perfect height for sitting on to put on my socks—was going into the other room. I didn’t want it next to my bed anymore.
It was more awkward than heavy, and pulled the tie on my bathrobe undone when I set it down in the living room. And then I thought about it. Moving it meant he won. I groaned and moved it back. Because I would not rearrange my home just because of some bad dream he starred in. When I set it back down where it had been, it pulled the tie undone again, so I shrugged out of the robe to get dressed.
I pulled out some heavy, fleecy pants and a thick, soft sweatshirt, and my slipper socks. I wanted comfort, tonight. Glanced at the clock as I pulled on my clothes, and found that I’d taken long enough that it was almost sunset. I wound my still-damp hair up in a knot on the back of my head, and wandered back into my bathroom for bobby pins. I found a scrunchy instead, and used that to secure the knot of hair.
I grabbed a double-thick, reversible, faux-sheepskin/velvet blanket, and shuffled up the stairs. I wrapped it around my shoulders before I slouched into my library, and built up the fire. I set up my coffeemaker, and grabbed a legal pad and the pretty Cross fountain pen I’d picked up off the sale table on a whim, remembering the cheap, student’s fountain pen I’d had in college. I couldn’t remember what kind it was, and it had been left behind in my apartment as a lost cause. The fountain pen was pretty, and felt nice in my hand as I set the nib to paper.
I set about making a list of things I needed to research, and a to-do list ordered by priority. The coffeemaker gurgled to a stop about the point I was finished, and I shuffled over to my desk and sat down, still wrapped in my blanket and clutching my lovely new pen and legal pad.
I set to work methodically, avoiding thinking. I didn’t want to think, didn’t want my brain working on anything but making money for my clients.
I checked my email, and found an invitation to a conference for young professional vampires in Topeka for next month. I raised an eyebrow, and checked the details—networking, presentations over setting up a legal identity to work under while dead, interacting with the still-living…looked interesting. I signed up and paid the fee, but declined a hotel reservation. I enjoyed driving, and an hour and a half one way, two times per day for two days wouldn’t be too bad. I’d have signed up for the hotel reservation if it had stretched any longer than that. The itinerary and program hit my inbox minutes later.
Something to look forward to.
I pulled up my social media accounts, and sent a message to my contact, letting him know that the ass-bag had decided to invade my dreams exactly an hour before local sunset. I assumed there’d be something that he could glean from that information.
And then, I checked the status of my order from Amazon from the night before. It had hit Lenexa, and would likely be delivered sometime during the next day. I wrote Andi a note and took it in to leave it on the middle of the kitchen table, glad that it seemed they weren’t home.
I seriously didn’t feel up to company. Not after the way I’d woke up.
I gave up the attempt to focus my attention on my accounts, and went back downstairs to read.
It was closing in on midnight when I heard Andi’s Mustang pull into the driveway and the engine shut off. I listened as two sets of footsteps came up the front steps and in through the front door. Ray said something to her, and she replied, sounding relaxed and happy.
I heard the thud of something heavy being dropped in the kitchen, and turned back to my book.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door at the top of the basement stairs. “It’s not locked,” I called, setting my book aside.
Andi came down waving the slip of paper I’d written the note on. “I can’t read your handwriting,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked. “Did your school not teach cursive?”
“Oh, they taught cursive, all right, but they didn’t teach chicken scratch,” she shot back. “What did you write?”
“I’ve got a laptop and a Kindle being delivered sometime tomorrow,” I said. “I’d appreciate it if you could make sure they got in. Not sure what the stupid cold wo
uld do to electronics left out on the front porch until I was able to get to them.”
Andi sank down into the chair I’d moved back out of my bedroom a few minutes after I’d come back downstairs. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Ass-bag wants to know what you’re up to, and stepped into my dreams to bitch me out for not falling for his attempts to get me to go look,” I said sourly. “He was in that chair, the one next to my bed right now, in my dream. And it woke me up, two hours before sunset. I’m two hours short of what passes for sleep, I’m tired, and I feel like there’s a chunk gone out of the middle of me, and it’s bleeding,” I finished.
Andi pushed herself up out of the chair, grabbed a handful of either side of my blanket, and hauled me to my feet. “Well, come on, then. We’re going to watch movies tonight. I got Blazing Saddles. I’ve heard it’s one of the classic comedy greats, but I’ve never seen it.”
I sniggered. “Oh, please tell me Ray’s gonna watch with us,” I said.
“Probably,” she replied. “Why?”
“You’ll see,” I said, giggling. I pulled my blanket out of her hands, and hurried up the stairs. “Come on.”
Something Happenin’ Here
The rest of the projected week before the vampire cop arrived passed uneventfully. No more nightmares, no more nearly-unbearable curiosity. And I didn’t go out unless I had to (thanks to Andi’s genius idea to try heating blood bags), and stayed the fuck away from Walmart when I did go out. At least, I did until the evening came where I had to go and meet Robert Richmond. I parked at the far end of the parking lot, at one of the parking lot stop signs. Ray and Andi had followed in Andi’s car, to keep the mileage off of Ray’s rental car.
I got out when they did, and stayed beneath a street light, giggling at them throwing chunks of snow at each other.
Another vampire, the one I’d been chatting with, appeared in the night. Yeah, it sounds corny, but it was just about that sudden. I stiffened with the urge to flee that he warned me I’d feel, and Ray noticed. He jumped forward, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me behind him as he reached under his coat.
