by Diana Graves
“I’m home at last,” I whispered to myself. I gave the handle a tug but the door didn’t budge.
I giggled and leaned into the door. I felt drunk with delight.
“Open door,” I asked, laying my cheek flat against the wood. “Adia commands it.” The door moved like it was taking a deep breath and then it let out a-RING!!!!!
26:
I SAT STRAIGHT up in bed. My cell phone was vibrating toward the edge of my night stand. “Shit.” I dashed to grab the phone. My hands felt warm and I could still feel the pulsing of the vines on my fingertips when I grabbed the cold plastic of my phone. My room was pitch-black and the light from my cell phone was blinding, but I forced myself to look at the glowing screen. It said the caller was unknown.
“Hello,” I said and my voice sounded thick with the irritation I felt for having been woken up at…I looked at my clock. Three o’clock in the morning!
There was silence at first but finally, “Raina?” questioned Mato.
“Mato,” I said a little too eagerly.
“Good morning,” he said. “How are you holding up?”
“I could be better. Did you get my fax?”
“Yes and I found some more information on Mark Press.”
“Yes?” I asked automatically. Before last night I craved answers and justice, now I just wanted Mark to suffer. I wanted revenge, retribution, vengeance. I needed it. For the world to make sense, I needed to know that bad people get what’s coming to them.
“An inside source says that Mark’s father has cut his allowance dramatically since marrying a young woman.”
“That had to suck,” I was shaking my head. Daddy gets a new wife and he cuts his son’s funds so he can spend that money on her, not that I felt sorry for Mark in the least.
“Indeed.”
“I don’t think lack of money is enough for an arrest,” I said, not at all happy about it. Suddenly cold, I pulled my covers around me.
“No, it was not, not until the subpoena for Mark’s bank statements came through. It appears he has made several deposits in the past months, and the amounts add up perfectly with the withdrawals the victims made. I contacted EI and gave them what we found, but they have not gotten back to me yet.”
I made and ugly face that I was thankful no one could see. EI was really beginning to piss me off. They seemed to be dragging their feet all over the place. It was like they didn’t want to solve this thing. “So what are we going to do?”
“We?” asked Mato playfully.
“You called me for a reason, and I’m hoping it wasn’t just to tease me. There has to be something else.”
“Yes well, I was contacted by my source. He told me that every time Mark makes a deal he fills a test tube with infected blood and puts it in his cigar case. And, he did that last night.”
“If this person is close to Mark and wants to help us, why doesn’t he just go to the police station and go on record about all this stuff.”
“I do not know this man’s motives. Perhaps it would hurt him in some way to do so, so rather than going to the police openly he feeds us information anonymously.”
“What else has he told you?”
“That Mark is throwing a party tonight and that he thinks he is going to make the sale then. If we want to catch him in the act we should be there.”
“There you go again with this we stuff. I hate to remind you, Mato, but I’m not a police officer.”
“But you are Ruy’s apprentice, are you not?”
“What!?”
“That is what Ruy said to the EI Detectives when they asked why you were there. He told them that the attack inspired you to become a vampire hunter.”
“That doesn’t make sense. I’m a living vampire. Why would I hurt my own kind?”
“The same reason human’s hunt humans down who break the law, Raina.”
Okay, that did make sense, actually. But still, why did Ruy say that I’m his apprentice? I don’t want to kill anybody, ever.
“Come play pretend with us. It will be fun to crash his party and send him to jail.”
“Mato,” I sighed. I felt guilty because the only reason he was going out on the limb for me was because he thought he saw something in my character that he was attracted to. I mean, I hardly knew him.
“You could get in trouble if they find out I’m not Ruy’s apprentice,” I warned.
“It is a masquerade,” he said in an attempt to sway me.
I thought about it. Mato, Ruy and me dressing up and catching Mark in the act. It was tempting.
“I don’t know Mato. I have no training and I’m not really qualified in any way. What if I mess things up for you?”
“Are you scared of the danger, Raina?” he teased.
“Time and place,” I asked. He told me. “Mato,” I said after I wrote down the address, by cell phone light.
“Yes.”
“Should I be scared? Will this be dangerous?”
“No, Ruy and I will be there, and perhaps detectives from EI if they get back to me in time.”
“Okay, I guess I’ll see you tonight then.”
“We will meet you there.” I flipped my phone shut.
After a half an hour of lying in bed I gave up on getting any more sleep. I got out of bed and fixed a large plate of food and read the rest of my last Wanda Winks novel.
In the end she was betrayed by Michigan’s most powerful master vampire to the werewolves. At least that’s what I was guessing. Her last words spoke of mistrusting the master, Rayland, but having no other choice but to take him up on his offer to protect her. She gave her journal, this book, to Sen, her partner detective, possibly knowing she would die. Sen sent her journal to her publisher. I let out a sigh and set the book on the shelf in my closet next to her other twenty-four books. Mom should be up soon and then we’ll be off to work.
27:
IT TOOK ALMOST all morning to figure out how to get away with leaving the house dressed for Mark’s party. My plan was to ask her if I could go to Michael’s vampire birthday party. He didn’t have one tonight but it would make sense if he did, and it was something Mom would believe.
I also decided that I would confront her about who my real father was…after she agreed to let me go to the party of course. I had a real father out there somewhere.
It was five in the afternoon when I finally got up the courage to talk to her. We were closing up shop for the day. Fauna was in the back cleaning up the kitchen. Mom was closing the cash registers, and I was restocking the shelves.
I peered at Mom from over a tall shelf three aisle from the counter she stood behind. “Mom, can I ask you something?”
“What?” she mumbled while counting the till.
“Last night Nicholas had a birthday party,” I said quietly.
“Good for him,” was all Mom said without taking her eyes from her task.
“Well, Michael is having one tonight. Can I go? I’d have to leave early and it’s a costume party,” I lied. I was getting rather good at it. Yippee?”
She gave me a blank stare. “You’re grounded, Raina.”
“I’m twenty-one!” I said without thinking. She gave me a raised eye-brow. Shit.
“I heard about Nil’s party, and what happened to you from your uncle. You sure you want to put yourself through that again?” Her voice was uncaring, uninterested and thoroughly off-putting. She always made it hard to talk to her about anything, because she seemed to not care much about anything you had to say.
“Um, it won’t be like that. Alistair did that to freak Nil out, and he’s not in charge of Michaels party plans. Michael is.” Lie on top of lie, how do people do this? It made me feel uncomfortable, but what else could I do?
“What about class?” Mom asked, finally looking up at me; yay, eye contact.
“I can make it up next week.”
“Fine,” she said, and she didn’t sound at all pleased.
And here it came, the time of truth. I didn�
�t know how to ask my mom if she had cheated on Dan with another man. It was not likely something she would want to confess to; to me least of all. Chances were I was walking into a fight.
Mom slammed the till shut once she was done and started walking toward the back of the store. If I didn’t ask now I wasn’t sure I could muster the strength to do it later. I’d let her walk away and I would never have a chance to ask again. At least that’s how I felt in that moment: impulsive, scared and reckless.
“Who’s my father?” I shouted at her back.
Her shoulders tensed. Right then I would have given anything to be able to read her mind, but I didn’t have complete control over this thing.
“Mom, the doctor says I would have turned like Michael and Nil if Dan was my father.” She didn’t say anything, or give me any sign that she heard me at all. “Did you hear me, Mom? I’m telling you that I know Dan’s not my father. Who is?”
Mom turned and looked at me then, and her eyes were sad. I knew the shock I felt was plain on my face. I had definitely been expecting a different reaction, anger maybe. “Mom?”
“Have you told anyone else about this?” Her words were uttered through thin lips arched in a deep frown.
“No,” I whispered because my head was buzzing with too many questions to focus enough for anything else.
“Don’t” was all she said before leaving me alone, confused.
“But, I don’t understand!” I said to an empty store.
#
We drove home in awkward silence and had dinner together in the same fashion, but luckily my mind was full of other worries too. I had to find a dress and a mask for the party. After I washed the dinner dishes I found myself rummaging through Mom’s closet. My fashion sense was pretty much a touch of Goth and a dash of hippie, but Mom had maybe thirty or more gorgeous elegant gowns.
My plastic cat mask from last Halloween was all I could find in the way of masks. I used a hot glue gun to glue on some silver beads around the outer edge of the mask and then I used a mixture of silver and bronze paints to give it an old metallic look. I needed a gown that matched that. I hid a charm to make my hair pitch black in my bra, and smoothed it back, short sharp bangs and all. Now for the dress, I settled on a black corset with a long black skirt. The skirt had high slits up both sides. Faux-leather, skin-tight, thigh high boots and blue contacts lenses completed the outfit. Mom must have had some wild times in her past to have worn stuff like this.
#
“How do I look?” I asked Mom as I entered the living room all dressed up and ready to go.
Mom was flipping through the very first Wanda Winks book, titled “Rookie.” She did not look impressed, not with the book and not with me.
“No wonder you want to run off with the police and vampire hunters. Look at the garbage you fill your head with.”
She shook her head as she read a line from the book. “He was my lover but he was also my mark. Shane could never have done the things I was hunting him down for, werewolf or not.”
Mom looked up at me, disapproval painted thick over her face and I felt stupid standing there dressed up.
“Um, actually Shane did kill all those people. She sort of had a soft spot for werewolves. Personally, I think it was the fur.”
Her face was blank and I let my arms slap my thighs loosely. “It was her down fall. They killed her in the end.”
Mom just stared at me. I didn’t know what she expected me to do so I walked out the door with her blank stare at my back. Awkward.
28:
MARK’S HOUSE WAS across from Calvary Catholic Cemetery, not far from University Village. It was a large house with red siding and freshly laid sod in an attractive suburban neighborhood.
I left home early but I didn’t anticipate the severity of the traffic on I-5. It was almost ten at night when I parked behind a new metallic white Honda Civic with a UW sticker in the back window. I was at the end of a long line of cars parked along the curb.
For once in my life I didn’t bring a purse with me. My boots were tight enough to carry all I needed: ID, papers, cell phone, and my bank card. I cut the engine and pulled my cell phone out of my boot.
“Damn it Mato.” I had hoped he’d be here by now. I cursed loudly and took a deep breath. I couldn’t just sit in my car. Mato and Ranger would be here soon anyway, so I might as well go inside.
“You’re just another college student come to have some fun,” I told myself as I walked up the slick grass lawn with heavy rain pouring down.
There were two girls making out under the covered front porch. They stopped and watched me as I walked toward them. One was a sexy pirate. She had a patch over one eye and her long purple-red hair was teased half to death. She was wearing a store-bought pirate costume and her hand was a hook that was tracing ever so close to the other girl’s—um, southern regions. The other girl was a mummy, of sorts. Though, the white wrapping left lots of skin exposed and little to the imagination.
“Hello,” I nodded politely as I stepped onto the low porch and out of the rain. I looked at their outfits and almost laughed. I had spent the whole drive here thinking that it was going to be a fancy masquerade and I would be way underdressed.
“Come here,” said the mummy. She dashed over and grabbed me by my arm. “Come on,” she giggled.
She pushed my back against the wall, “I really need to go inside,” I said as politely as I could. They ignored me and pressed their bodies against mine. Four eager hands were exploring my body. Their breath smelled like beer and cigarettes. The pirate used her hook to lift my dress, rubbing the cold plastic against my inner thigh. “Stop it,” I breathed. “Hey, I said no, damn it!” I shoved them away from me.
“Bitch!” shrieked the pirate. Mummy just backed away. Guess she could tell pissed when she saw it. Smart girl. I was so glad Mommy and Daddy’s money wasn’t going to waste. Good for them.
“No means no,” I said grabbing the door handle.
“Bitch,” the pirate repeated. Wow, someone’s using her expensive education to farther her vocab. I looked back at her. She looked like she wanted to fight. I didn’t.
“We all have to be good at something,” I said. The mummy laughed at her friend and thus a cat fight began. The girls were making more noise than they needed to. Screaming high pitched and yelling “Bitch!” and, “Fuck you!” When I turned to open the door I didn’t need to. A horde of college boys dressed as random monsters and heroes had come to the door to watch the fight. I pressed myself into the door frame to let them by. They made a semicircle around the two girls, who were now wearing less clothing, if that were at all possible. Slapping, clawing and tearing at each other’s clothes. Oh, the brutality.
The front door led straight into the deserted living room. The cat fight outside had apparently emptied the room. There was a brown leather sofa and love seat with a bulky wood coffee table and two matching end tables. A large seventy-two inch television sat directly in front of the leather sofa with a PlayStation Three to its right. Posters of women in bathing suits and shelves full of trophies and alcohol bottles occupied every inch of the walls.
Rock music was blaring from enormous speakers that sat where a dining table should have. Even with the heart vibrating bass of the music I could feel my cell phone vibrating against my thigh. I couldn’t take the call here. I could hardly hear the thoughts in my head. I couldn’t take it out in the front either, what with the fighting and shouting out there. I looked around the place for somewhere quiet to answer the phone. I made my way through the mammoth sized kitchen, full of beautiful oak cabinets and slack jawed idiots, with the hope that I’d find a door to a back porch. Eventually I stopped saying “excuse me, pardon me.” No one cared.
I finally found the back door and opened it to find no porch. There were just steps leading out into the rain.
Someone yelled, “Shit, that’s fucking freezing!” It was a skinny guy in his birthday suit. “Close the door!” several different people yelle
d, so I did.
My next best option was to find a quiet room down the hall left of the living room. The hall was full of more intoxicated college students. Bickering, making out, and gossiping.
“Is there a quiet room where I can take a call?” I asked a random guy. He was completely spaced out. He looked at me, eyes glazed. A dumb smile spread across his face. His teeth were perfect. His parents took good care of him physically. Maybe they didn’t think to nurture his mind, because he didn’t seem to understand its importance, hence the killing of many brain cells. “Hey,” I shouted over the music and his drunken and/or drugged stupor.
“Lets hook-up,” he demanded, wrapping his heavy arms around me.
“No, I need a quiet room?” My thigh stopped vibrating, I had missed the call. The boy frowned but pointed at a half opened door. “Thanks,” I said, squirming out of his arms. I had to fight to make my way toward the door. I felt like a fish swimming upstream.
The boy had completely misunderstood my meaning and pointed me to the bath room, where they had turned the bath tub into some kind of large alcoholic beverage bowl. A few kids were dipping cups in the tub, but it was a little quieter in here actually.
“Can I use the bathroom to make a call?” I asked.
More slacked and overly happy faces stared back at me. I was really getting annoyed with these self obsessed spoiled rich kids and their no consequences attitude.
“Shit in the yard,” one slurred, angrily. He had beady eyes and spiky black hair. I remembered him from the picture of the team that was working on the vampire project. Yes! He was the boy standing right beside Mark. I think his name was Crag or something.
