by Nancy Warren
It still seemed wrong, and I was about to say so, when Rafe said, “We also have a connection at the hospital. The blood that’s no good for transfusions, because it’s stale or infected, doesn’t end up in the incinerator. It comes to us.”
“You drink tainted blood?”
He shrugged. “What’s it going to do? Kill us?”
I supposed he had a point.
“The lovely, fresh, young blood Dr. Weaver provides is so much nicer, though,” Alfred said. “Have you got the new supply with you? Is there lots of A positive? I’m very partial to A positive. I wish there weren’t so many daywalkers with Type O. It doesn’t agree with me. Gives me pains in the tummy.”
Rafe still hadn’t sat down, and if he had a knitting project I saw no sign of it. “We’re getting off-topic. Lucy wants to know why her grandmother is a vampire.”
“Yep. That’s about the size of it.” Also there was the mysterious cousin, Violet Weeks, but I felt that of all the revelations from the last few hours, that one I could noodle out later. Preferably when I had Gran alone.
Sylvia sighed, put down her knitting, an exquisite shawl in blues and purples, and pushed her silver hair behind her ears. She really was the most elegant woman. “It’s my fault. I turned your grandmother.”
And this was the woman who’d wrinkled her nose at animal blood? I let the sarcastic notes seep into my tone, “And by turn, I assume you mean that you bit my grandmother on the neck and sucked all the blood out of her body?”
The woman’s eyes grew deadly and she rose out of her chair with icy fury so fast that I wished I hadn’t left the garlic in the other room. I was fumbling in my bag for the crucifix when Rafe put himself between us. “Sylvia! You forget yourself.”
For a second she continued to glare at me and then she folded herself gracefully and resumed her seat. “I certainly didn’t kill your grandmother. She’s one of my dearest friends. It was the only way I could think of to save her.”
Gran was watching her with affection so clearly she didn’t harbor any resentment toward the woman who’d killed her.
I asked the obvious question. “Save her from what?” The most dangerous thing in the area had to be this nest of vampires. To my surprise, Sylvia reached for my grandmother’s hand and spoke, not to me, but to her. “I’m sorry to put you through this again. I know it will be painful to listen to.”
Gran nodded and I could see her fingers fold over as she squeezed the other woman’s hand. “It’s all right. Lucy needs to understand.”
Sylvia paused before speaking and I felt that she was marshaling her thoughts. Again, I was reminded of an actress. There was the dramatic pause, as she made sure she had everyone’s attention. Apart from the quiet, rhythmic clicking of knitting needles there was no sound. The stage was hers. “It was only by chance I was there. I woke early and thought I’d finish the border of the dress I’d been working on. I’d run out of the blue handspun wool I needed and so I came upstairs.”
She paused, pressing her lips together as though the memory were painful. “It was about eight in the evening, I suppose, so the shop was closed..”
“Upstairs?” I was interrupting but I couldn’t get my head around this idea that she lived downstairs. “There’s nothing under here.”
Rafe spoke again, somewhat dryly. “As I believe I mentioned, we’ve had plenty of time to work on our projects, such as our home. There are subterranean living quarters underneath the shop.”
Did they call it a nest? I pictured rows of coffins tucked away but I was too eager to get back to the story to pry any more.
Since I seemed satisfied with his answer, Sylvia continued her story. “I paused on this side of the curtain, as I always do, to make sure the shop was empty. I heard a crash, a cry of pain. I thought I heard Agnes’s voice. I didn’t think, I ran into the shop calling her name. Her attacker fled out of the shop. A human man.”
“You saved my life,” Gran said. I wasn’t sure how she was doing that math but I kept my mouth shut.
“I only wish I could have.” Sylvia looked at me now. “Your grandmother was on the floor, moaning. At first I thought she’d interrupted a burglar who’d panicked and struck her with his fists. The shop was in chaos, baskets of wool on the floor, cabinets knocked over. ,I went to Agnes’s side to try and revive her and get her to a doctor. Then, I saw the blood.” She paused again, and I wasn’t certain whether it was for dramatic effect, or because the memory was so painful. “She’d been stabbed.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Stabbed? You mean with a knife?”
“Yes. I knelt by her side and started grabbing balls of wool, anything I could find, but I couldn’t staunch the bleeding. She was near death when I got there and she was going fast. She said, “Tell Lucy. Must tell Lucy.” I could feel that her spirit was about to leave her body and I acted instinctively. I turned your grandmother into a vampire. It was the only way I could save her.”
I put my hands to my temples, the pink wool hot and squished in my hand. There was so much new information in my brain that I was afraid my head would burst open if I didn’t hold it all together. “You’re saying that you turned my grandmother into a vampire just before she died of stab wounds?”
“Yes. It was too late to save her life. All I could do was make her immortal, one of us.”
“I don’t want to be rude, but how do I know that’s the truth? Maybe you were hungry.” I stepped back, behind Rafe, as I waited for that icy fury to come at me. She definitely glared at me, her eyes like two points of burning ice, but this time she controlled herself. “Doctor?”
“It’s true,” Dr. Weaver said. “Sylvia called me and I examined the bod—your grandmother. She was stabbed. Nothing could have saved her.”
“But, if that’s true, then you’re saying that my sweet, beloved, grandmother, who runs a knitting shop, was, was—”
Rafe spoke the word I couldn’t manage to say. “ Murdered. Your grandmother was murdered.”
Chapter 10
I felt as though all the air had left my body, like an elephant had stepped on my chest and flattened my lungs. I’ve never fainted in my life but I think I was about to when suddenly Rafe was there putting his arm around me and leading me to one of the empty chairs. I sat and gently but firmly he pushed my head down between my knees and I sucked in air until the swirling black dots receded and my vision cleared.
I raised my head slowly. “I don’t understand.” I had said those words before. I felt I would say them many times yet to come. “Who would want to murder you, Gran?”
Gran shook her head, looking as confused as I felt. “I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”
I rose and went to my grandmother’s chair and squatted down in front of it. The cat eyed me, still purring. Gran looked troubled. “I wish you hadn’t come. I don’t want to think that you’re in danger.”
I laughed somewhat hysterically. “Apart from finding myself in the middle of a nest of vampires, why would I be in danger?”
“Don’t be silly, dear, the members of the knitting club are our friends. But someone wanted to hurt me, and I can’t get rid of the feeling that the danger may have passed to you.”
“Why? Gran, who stabbed you?”
She shook her head. “I can’t remember.”
“All right,” I said. “I want you to tell me everything you did that day.”
She shook her head once more, regretfully. “That’s the trouble. I can’t remember that day at all.”
Dr. Weaver pulled up a chair in front of mine. He wore the same expression he’d worn earlier when I went to see him in his office. I suppose it was his doctor-to-patient expression. “I believe the attack caused some kind of amnesia. The blow to the head, loss of blood, and the change, well, it’s not surprising your grandmother’s memory is impaired.”
I put a hand to my forehead. “But you lied on an official government form and said that my grandmother died peacefully in bed. There’s a murde
rer walking around free because of you.”
Rafe spoke, cool and authoritative. “What would you have had him say? That your grandmother had been stabbed and then bitten in the neck by a vampire? We live peacefully here because we have a safe home and a ready supply of food, but make no mistake, if we ever find ourselves under attack, we will do what we must to protect ourselves.” His words caused a chill to envelop me. I couldn’t imagine the damage that a dozen, or two dozen or however many there were of them could do if they were hungry and enraged. They gave the term hangry new meaning.
I looked at Sylvia. “You said my grandmother’s last words were about me?”
“Yes. She said, ‘Tell Lucy. Must tell Lucy.’”
I was pleased to hear that she had repeated the words the second time exactly the same way I had heard them the first, which suggested that that was, in fact, what she had heard my grandmother say. I turned to Gran, “What do you think you meant?”
“Oh, how I wish I knew. I’ve racked my brain to try and remember something, anything.”
Once more I spoke to Sylvia. “And the person you saw running out of the shop? The attacker. Can you describe them at all?”
“It all happened in such a blur. It was one person, I only saw their back briefly, I was more worried about your grandmother. I think they wore black boots.”
In a college town like Oxford, that was going to narrow it down. “Male or female?” I asked.
“I assumed male but now, now I don’t know.”
“Were they tall? Or short? Fat or thin?”
She closed her eyes and I could see that the effort she was making to come up with something. “The boots were shiny. I think they were new.”
Dr. Weaver said. “You’d be surprised how many of the freshers come to school wearing new shoes.”
“You think a student did this?”
He shrugged. He didn’t know. None of them did.
And a murderer had gone free.
I studied the circle of knitting vampires. Apart from being rather pale, they could have been any knitting circle anywhere. No, I thought, as I looked more carefully, they were knitting with astonishing speed. One woman’s fingers moved so quickly they blurred my vision. She wore her hair piled on top of her head and a drab looking dress with long sleeves and a high neck. Its skirt went to the floor. On her feet were leather button-up boots. She sat so straight in her chair that she might have been wearing a corset. Or perhaps she was. She was chattering away to the woman beside her in a low voice, but I heard snatches of conversation. “The doctor was ever so good. He thinks it’s my rheumatism acting up.”
I turned to Rafe who was standing at my side. “Rheumatism?”
“That’s Silence Buggins.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Silence?”
“It was one of the virtue names common in Victorian times. Not a virtue this woman is noted for, however.”
Silence, in fact, seemed to be a chatterbox. Also a hypochondriac. She’d now moved on to some vague stomach complaint. I wasn’t very up on vampire lore and, anyway, as in the garlic myth, some of it had to be wrong, but did they really have all the aches and pains of humans?
“Rheumatism?”
He glanced at me. “She likes the attention. Dr. Weaver sees her regularly and always gives her a tonic that makes her feel better.” He leaned in, “Placebo effect.” I imagined I knew what was in the tonic.
Clara, the sweet older vampire said, “Well, this has been a most eventful evening. I barely managed two rows.” She folded her work and put it into a large tapestry knitting bag. “If you don’t mind, dear, I’ll pop out front and choose some wool. I’ve got an idea in mind for that sweater for you, with your fair hair and pretty blue eyes.”
I had no idea how this worked. Did Gran let the vampires help themselves from her stock? That wasn’t much of a way to run a business.
As though she had read my mind, Clara smiled at me. “We have a very simple system. We keep track of what we take and once a month we pay up our accounts.”
“How do you pay?” I had this image of being handed Doubloons or pieces of gold fished out of ancient leather bags. She said, “Direct debit is easiest. But lately I’ve been experimenting with Bitcoin.”
I could see that all the vampires were gathering their knitting and putting their projects away. “Are you all leaving?”
Alfred, the sharp-nosed vampire who was allergic to garlic, said, “Normally at this stage of the meeting we do a show-and-tell and discuss our projects and what we’re planning to work on next. But, we’ve gone over time as it is.”
I looked at Rafe as though he could explain this bizarre behavior. These knitters were undead and immortal, what were they in a hurry to get to? He said, “You have to remember that we’re cooped up all day. There are only a few hours of complete darkness, and that’s when we go out and take our exercise, or do our visiting.”
“Visiting. Right.” I envisioned the lady vampires sitting over a teapot discussing the merits of Type A and Type O as though they were Earl Grey and Darjeeling. No doubt they drank their favorite type out of china teacups.
Gran, as the newest vampire, looked a little unsure of what she was meant to do. I was about to ask her to come upstairs with me. I imagined that we could talk and catch up, but Sylvia took her arm and helped her to stand. She said, “Come on, Agnes. A good brisk walk will do you good. And then there’s that new exhibit at the Ashmolean we’ve been wanting to see.”
Gran turned to me. “Try and get some sleep now, love. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I didn’t want to let her go. “Promise?” I asked.
“Yes, of course.”
Rafe said in a low voice, “It’s important for her to develop routines and work out how she’s going to get along in her new life. Sylvia will look after her.”
I nodded, but it was hard for me to see my grandmother walk further back into the shop with the other members of the vampire knitting club. The man with a sharp nose shifted the old rug and lifted a trapdoor that I wouldn’t have known was there and one by one they disappeared down below the shop. Rafe remained. He looked at me and said, “This has been a lot for you to take in.”
And wasn’t that the understatement of the millennium? Now that my grandmother had gone and taken her lap with her, Nyx returned to my side. Rafe said, “Why don't we go upstairs and I’ll answer some of the questions you’re no doubt dying to ask.”
I’d rather it was my grandmother explaining things to me, but I got the feeling that she probably didn’t know. She was a baby vampire. And Rafe was, what? I looked at him. “How old are you?”
He smiled briefly. “One day I’ll tell you.”
I didn’t know that vampires were vain about their ages. But then I didn’t know much about vampires at all.
He said, “In all the drama of hearing about your grandmother’s death, I think there’s one piece of information tonight that you may not have taken in.”
I stood with my hands on my hips and looked at him. “You mean the part where my grandmother told me I’m a witch? No, I didn’t miss that at all.”
Rafe and I, accompanied by Nyx, went upstairs. There was no point standing in the knitting shop after hours, not with this new knowledge cloaking me like a curse. Yesterday I’d been far too careful to invite a sexy stranger up into my living space. Today, the world was a different place. My grandmother was a vampire and I, apparently, was a witch.
“What kind of witch gets to be twenty-seven years old and has no idea of her powers?” I felt like an abject failure. “Shouldn’t there have been some kind of signs? Mysterious happenings? Like I might get angry and suddenly a tornado would appear? Or a boy would break my heart and suddenly be turned into a toad? Wait, there was this guy named Todd—”
“I doubt very much you’ve turned anyone into a toad, or started any tornadoes or bad weather patterns. Being a witch isn’t like being a vampire. You don’t one day get bitten and next thing you’re wandering
around immortal and undead. Witches are born special, but spells must be learned and practiced, and I believe turning a human into an amphibian is one of the more difficult of the spells.”
I rolled my eyes, “Do you know everything?”
“I’ve had a lot of years to study, a lot of time to read. I know a great deal.”
“Did you know I was a witch? When you first met me?”
He sat on my grandmother’s couch, the one across from the window, even though it was full dark outside. I imagined it was force of habit. I sat across from him and Nyx jumped on my lap.
“When I saw that cat prowling outside your door, I had a pretty good idea.”
“I don’t know the first thing about being a witch. Will I grow warts on my nose and have to live in a stone cottage way out in the woods somewhere? Will children run in fear when they see me?”
“You’ve been reading too many fairytales. You will learn to heal, possibly to help people in trouble, and you may get ideas about the future.”
“I could go to medical school for most of that.”
“You could.” He seemed to think the idea of me suddenly going into med school with no prerequisites a normal idea. I suspected that where he came from, and when he came from, becoming a doctor was a lot easier. Besides, I had no aptitude for science or any desire to take years of training.
“It’s been quite a day. I think I need a drink.” I went into the kitchen and dug through the cupboards. I brought out the Harvey’s Bristol Cream, which seemed to be the only alcohol my grandmother kept in stock. I waved the blue glass bottle in his direction. “Would you like a glass of sherry?”
He grimaced. “I don’t think I could choke down another glass.”
“The way shocks keep coming my way, I’m going to have to invest in a bottle of brandy. Maybe a case.” In the meantime, I poured a large glass of sherry and sat down across from Rafe. I was too much Agnes’s granddaughter not to be upset that I was enjoying refreshment while my guest had nothing. “Can I get you anything?”
