“Shane is nothing like Elizabeth was. Besides, I’ve only known him as a vampire, so there’s no humanity for me to miss.”
“You haven’t known any of them long enough to understand what time does to them. Over the last decade, I’ve seen them fossilize. I’ve watched their compulsions get worse.”
I folded my arms, giving in to defensiveness. “And I’ve lived with Shane for two years. I love his idiosyncrasies.”
“It’s only the beginning.” David clenched his fists. “What will you do when he fades to Regina’s level, or God forbid, Spencer’s? What if he gets erratic like Jim? Have you thought of that?”
A shiver snaked up my spine at the thought of Shane drifting back and forth over the border of sanity. “Maybe he won’t get that bad. Since he’s been with me, he’s learned a lot of new things. He even sends text messages. And last week he was listening to the Killers.”
“Which CD?”
I shifted my weight. “Hot Fuss.”
“That’s six years old.”
“But nine years newer than Shane’s vampireness. You don’t see Spencer listening to Jimi Hendrix, or Regina tuning into Limp Bizkit.”
“Ciara, listen.” David’s voice dipped. “Be Shane’s girlfriend, live with him as long as you can stand it, but don’t take this step. If you could look ten or twenty years down the road, you’d see all the things he can’t give you.”
“Like kids? I don’t want them. They scare me. So I can’t babysit yours until they learn to change their own diapers.”
“Maybe you feel that way now, but by the time you hit thirty—”
“I’ll, what, hear my biological clock ticking? Why can’t you understand that I don’t want the same things other people want? Stop putting yourself in my place.” I realized I was nearly yelling, so I softened my tone. “Whether you agree with my choice or not, please be a friend and support me.”
“I wouldn’t be a friend if I supported you. I admire your optimism, but between this and the Immanence Corps, you’re coming off way too innocent.”
“Me, innocent? You’re talking to a former grifter. I get the world, David. I get how tricky it is.” I went back to my desk. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”
“You don’t get anything. You think because you were a criminal, you’ve seen it all. You think you know all the ways people can be hurt.” He stalked away, into his office. “But you have no idea.”
9
Mr. Brightside
At lunchtime, I dug into my homemade sandwich, determined to plow through another dozen business e-mails now that I was finally alone.
Franklin appeared from behind his office door. He spoke on his cell phone as he put on his suit jacket. His voice pitched high and lilting in what he called his “faux faggot” act, which meant he was talking to a client.
“Oh, that would be fabulous!” He shifted the phone to his other ear and tried to find his other sleeve, while giving me an eye-rolling smirk. “I absolutely cannot wait to hear your ideas for the new spots. Of course we can talk bulk discounts. You know I live to please.” He motioned firing a pistol to the side of his head. “See you at three… yes, with bells on!”
He slapped his phone shut and shoved his arm into the remaining sleeve. “Welcome back again. I hope at some point you’ll consider working two days in a row.”
I held up my sandwich. “I’m not even taking off for lunch.”
“Good, because I’m meeting Aaron.” He smoothed down his thinning blond hair. “How was your kidnapping?”
“Shane and I got engaged.”
“Huh.” Franklin turned to fetch his coat from the rack, which was currently a sturdy cardboard cutout of Jerry Garcia making a peace sign. “When’s the wedding? I’m busy that night.”
“I was hoping you’d be my maid of honor.”
“Sorry, I’m allergic to taffeta,” he said without missing a beat. “And what about Lori?”
“David will probably make her boycott the wedding.”
“What do you mean?” Franklin asked in a flat voice that told me he didn’t care—or at least wanted to give that impression.
“He kinda freaked about me marrying Shane. I don’t know why.”
Franklin stared at me. “You don’t know why.”
“No.”
“There’s a thing called an EQ—emotional quotient.” He fished in his pocket for his keys. “EQ is like an IQ, but instead of intelligence, it measures how in touch you are with emotions. Your own, but especially others’.”
“Yeah?”
A knock came at the front door, and Franklin moved toward it. “You’re an emotional retard.”
“That’s impossible. I was a con artist. I know what makes people tick.”
He put his key in the lock to open it. “Friends aren’t people.”
The phone rang. I looked at the screen. “Your line, and your favorite client.”
He cursed as he opened the door for Aaron. “I gotta take a call. Don’t let Ciara give you any ideas.”
Aaron stepped in as Franklin hurried back to his office. “Nice to see you, too. Dearest darling.”
Picking up his phone, Franklin gave his boyfriend the finger.
I locked the front door. “Remind me again why you put up with his crap?”
“Same reason you do. We know that his affection is inversely proportional to his courtesy.” Aaron gasped and intercepted my hand. “What’s this? You got engaged?”
“I did. To Shane, obviously.”
His face lit up into a smile. “Congratulations!” He tugged me over to Lori’s desk and examined the ring under her lamp. The stones shot blue and white sparks of light across the wall. “Your man has exquisite taste.” He winked at me. “In rings, too.”
“David thinks I’m crazy.”
“He’s just jealous.”
“No way. He’s totally in love with Lori.”
“Not jealous of Shane. Wow, conceited much?” When I blanched, he gave me a playful tap on the shoulder. “I mean he’s jealous of you. Didn’t David used to have a vampire girlfriend?”
“Elizabeth.” I looked into Franklin’s office, which had once belonged to the former station owner. “She wasn’t his girlfriend after she turned. More like his parasite.”
“So it didn’t work between them, but it’s working for you and Shane. When David sees you two, he realizes he can’t blame their breakup on the fact that she was a vampire. You’ve succeeded where he failed.”
“So you don’t think marrying Shane is crazy?”
“It’s definitely crazy. But a good crazy, the kind most people wish they had the guts to be.” Aaron moved to the whiteboard on the wall, where the day’s morning and evening twilight times were written. “Let me tell you a little story.” He uncapped two pens and sketched a yellow male symbol next to a green female symbol. “I spent the first two decades of my life letting the world tell me whom I should love. Did I find acceptance by dating women? You betcha.” He drew a happy face next to the female symbol. “But did I find happiness? Hell, no.” He drew a frowny face next to the male.
“Then one day when I was twenty years old, I got hit by a bus. Literally.” He uncapped the black and red pens and started to draw. “Go ahead, laugh. I was riding my bike, not watching where I was going. Due to the immutable laws of Newtonian physics, I was transformed into a splotch on the pavement.” He stepped back to reveal tire tracks drawn over the male symbol, with drops of blood spurting out.
“How horrible. Nice visuals, though.”
“Thanks, they teach that at Yale. Anyway, I was in the hospital for ten months, a rehab facility for another year.” He added a grimace to the frowny face. “Every moment when I could forget the pain, which was about three or four seconds a day, I vowed that if I survived, I wouldn’t hide who I was anymore.” With the blue pen, he sketched another male symbol next to the first and drew a happy face between them.
“Talk about clarity.”
“We have to gr
ab our happiness where we can, when we can, and let the future take care of itself.” He tapped the board. “Because the future might come in the form of a Thirty-fourth Street crosstown.”
“Lesson learned, professor.” I lowered my voice. “Would you marry Franklin if you could? It’s only a matter of time before they make it legal here.”
He recapped the pens one by one and returned them to the board’s aluminum shelf. “I’m up for tenure next year. If I don’t get it, I’ll have to find another job, which means moving, which means… asking him to come with me. Maybe.”
“And if you do get tenure and don’t have to move?”
“Then we’ll probably grow old here the way we are.” He smiled, but his eyes were tinged with sadness.
In his office, Franklin slammed the receiver into the cradle. “Fucking idiots!”
“What’s wrong?” I asked him as he stormed into the main office.
“Nothing. I just like calling people that.” He reached for Aaron’s hand. “How are you? I’m a bitch today.”
“I know.” Aaron gave him a quick kiss as they headed out. “But you’re my bitch.”
“Ugh, you make it sound like we’re in prison.”
“Some days that’s exactly how it feels.”
“I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”
Aaron turned to wave at me as Franklin unlocked the front door. “See you tonight. Congrats again.”
“Don’t encourage her,” Franklin said. “Another year of centerpiece discussions and I’ll shoot myself.”
I watched them walk hand in hand to Aaron’s car, arguing over whether to hit Panera Bread or try that new kebab shack on Main Street. Then I closed and locked the door, pondering the irony that I could marry a dead man but not a live woman.
Aaron’s illustration caught my eye on the way back to my desk. Especially the part with the blood.
I called Shane, hoping he was still awake. To catch up on production work, he was spending the day in the DJs’ apartment downstairs, where he still had his old room.
“Hey,” he answered, “it’s the future not Mrs. McAllister.”
“Did I wake you?”
“I like when you wake me. Want to meet in the supply closet for a quickie?”
“In the abstract, yes. But I need you to look up something for me. You guys keep records of the donors you visit, right?”
He was silent for a moment. “I know what this is about.”
“Can you tell me—”
“Got it,” he said quickly. “Receipts from the last WVMP gig. They’re around here somewhere.”
“You can’t talk?” I whispered.
“Right. I’ll send you that information as soon as I find it.”
“Just text it to me if you can’t say it out loud.”
He hung up. I continued to eat my sandwich, though I couldn’t taste much.
Soon my phone vibrated with a text from Shane:
JIM W/SUSAN SUN NITE. B4 SHE DIED.
Before I could unfreeze my fingers to respond, another message followed.
LET US HANDLE IT.
10
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
When I got to class that night, Aaron was sitting behind the desk, reading the newspaper.
“Good evening,” I said in a bad Bela Lugosi impersonation. “Heh, get it? Because of my paper?”
He looked up and nodded. “Okay. Yeah.” Then he put his head back on his hand and continued to peruse… the comics? His usual reading material was the New York Times international section, if not The Economist.
“Are you all right?”
“I think I’m getting a cold.” He gave a wan smile that even in his muted state managed to score in the ninety-ninth percentile of Stunning. “You’d better stand back if you don’t want to catch it.”
I held my breath and hurried to a desk in the rear of the room. With Lori’s bachelorette party in two days, I couldn’t afford to be sick. Doing body shots and stuffing dollar bills in G-strings requires lots of stamina, or so I’d heard.
I reviewed the assigned reading, trying to blot Jim and his possible heinous deed out of my thoughts, while the other students filed in.
“Where were you?” asked a sharp voice beside my desk.
I looked up to see Turner Jamison, who could’ve been the long-lost fourth Jonas Brother. He was leaning away from me like I might explode.
“Job training.”
“Oh.” He slumped behind the desk next to me. “I thought maybe you had the swine flu-monia.”
“Nope. But thanks for caring.” I turned back to the chapter on Montenegro.
“I guess you wouldn’t be contagious anymore, anyway.” He pulled an economy-size bottle of antiseptic gel from his book bag. “But just in case.” He poured out a huge glop and rubbed it on his hands and forearms.
“Well, doctor, you’re all prepped for surgery.”
He glared at me. “You’d be germophobic, too, if your little brother almost died of the flu.”
My face flushed hot. “Sorry. Is he okay now?”
“Finally. He spent a week in ICU.”
Aaron cleared his throat at the front of the class. I turned toward him for the beginning of the lecture.
His voice rasped like an emery board across a broken fingernail. As he leaned on the podium, sweat beaded on his temples, turning his dark brown hair black against his paling skin.
“Last week—” He cleared his throat again and took a long draft from a water bottle. “Sorry. Last week we discussed the medieval roots of the Bosnian conflict. If you’ve read chapters three through six of—” He stopped, breathless, and wiped his forehead. Then he focused on the textbook on the podium. “Of the Berkower book, you’ll note that he makes an interesting point about the stabilizing influence of the Ottoman Empire.”
Aaron rounded the podium and began to speak in a stronger voice, though nothing near his usual animation. I shared a worried glance with Turner, then wrote down the gist of Aaron’s point.
“But what Berkower misses,” Aaron continued, his breath growing shallow, “is the very essence of the conflict. In my opinion… it would be inaccurate and… irresponsible to overlook the inherent…”
Thud! I looked up to see Aaron clutching the podium, trying to stay upright. His mouth opened and closed, gasping for breath.
I leaped out of my seat to help, but two students in the front row got there before me, breaking Aaron’s fall as he collapsed.
“He’s burning up,” said Pamela, holding his head. “Krista, call 911. Allie, go get a cold cloth. Make that lots of cold cloths.”
I pushed past the small crowd of classmates to kneel by Aaron’s side. When I took his hand, it seemed to singe my skin, and I almost dropped it. “I’ll call Franklin,” I told him, “have him meet you at the hospital.”
Aaron looked past me, as if my voice had come from across the room. “Hot.”
“You, yes. Franklin, not so much.” My attempt at an encouraging smile faded quickly.
“Ughhhh.” Aaron jerked his hand out of mine and started to claw at his stomach like a flea-ridden dog. His other hand tugged at the collars of his V-necked sweater and button-down dress shirt beneath. His skin flamed as red as a sunburn.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Mark, the guy on his other side. “Pam, you got a clue?”
“I’m just a bio major,” she snapped back at him. “I won’t be a doctor for like five years.”
“Let’s think.” I kept my voice steady. “He’s itchy, has a high fever and a rash.”
“Oh my God.” Lauren covered her mouth. “This is just like I was sophomore year.” She looked at her roommate. “When I had chicken pox, remember?”
I dropped Aaron’s hand. “Chicken pox?”
“Help…” Aaron finally won the battle with his shirt, jerking it out of his waistband. He shoved it up and scratched deliriously. Across his taut abdomen lay a crooked line of red bumps, their centers swelling white.
“That looks like what I had.” Lauren’s voice shook. “But I didn’t get every symptom the same day. By the time I got those spots, I didn’t have a fever anymore.”
I stood slowly, holding my breath.
“Maybe it’s not chicken pox,” Mark said. “Shit, maybe it’s smallpox.”
“Smallpox is extinct.” Pamela placed her folded sweatshirt under Aaron’s head.
“Terrorists might have it.”
“And release it here in Sherwood instead of a big city? Brilliant tactic.”
“It could be a test run. Or maybe he got it when he was in Hungary last week. They probably have terrorists there.”
I backed away toward my seat, fear stiffening my limbs into slow-mo.
Krista slapped shut her phone. “Ambulance is on the way.”
Mark turned to Lauren. “You didn’t have chicken pox until you were a sophomore in college? How is that possible?”
“I was homeschooled,” she said, “and my parents thought vaccines cause autism or something. So I almost died.”
“Shut up!” Pam hissed. “Professor Green’s still conscious. He can probably hear you.”
I finally reached my desk, where I fumbled in my bag for my cell phone.
Turner had already shoved his books into his backpack. “Good luck,” he muttered to me as he hurried for the door.
I pressed the 4 key, Franklin’s speed dial. He answered gruffly as always. “What?”
“Has Aaron ever had chicken pox?”
“I have no idea. Why?” He drew in a sharp breath. “Is he sick?”
“Fever, itching, rash. We called 911. Can you meet him at the ER?”
“I’m on my way.” I heard the jingle of keys in the background. “Why do you think it’s chicken pox?”
I told him what Lauren had said.
“I have no idea if he’s had it.” Franklin shifted the phone. “I thought everyone got it when they were kids.”
My throat clenched around my words. “I haven’t had it.”
Through the front door of my apartment I heard the distinctive introductory riff of the Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man.” Shane was rehearsing for his next gig with Vital Fluid, the band he’d formed with one of his donors and another human.
Bring On the Night Page 8
