by Karen Ranney
"Charlie it is," I said, determined not to think about vampires or witches for a little while. "We need to see about your family, Charlie. I'm sure you had one, but I'll be honest with you, I’m not really happy with them. I didn't see any flyers advertising for you. And I checked the lost pet websites, too. Somebody should have cared enough about you to worry you were gone.”
His tail waved like a flag.
“We’re two of a kind, aren't we? Well, that's okay. I care about you. And you saved me.”
Is that why people got dogs? To give them companionship or cover for talking to themselves? But I could swear that Charlie understood, especially when he reached over and placed his paw on my hand resting on the console.
I blinked back my tears. How pathetic was I, getting weepy about a compassionate dog?
Traffic was heavy but not surprising. I think we’ve had construction on 410 for most of my life. Once they got the airport area fixed, they worked on the loop with I-10. At least I could avoid the 281 and Wurzbach Parkway construction.
Mike was still behind me, the maroon truck easily visible even after he dropped back a few cars.
The closer I got to Nonnie's house, the tenser I became. My stomach was still in knots and I was shaky. I didn't know how much of that was due to the potion or to the recent events in my life.
The questions were mounting up. Pretty soon they'd topple over and bury me.
CHAPTER FIVE
Grandma, what big eyes you have
I pulled into Nonnie's neighborhood, careful to keep to the twenty five mile an hour speed limit. They had a neighborhood watch program here consisting of nosy neighbors, plus they paid an off duty cop to patrol the streets.
I saw the flick of curtains next door as I pulled the car to a stop in front of Nonnie's house. Did the neighbors know she was a witch? Were the neighbors witches? Had I just driven into a residential coven?
I braked, turned off the car, releasing my seatbelt and Charlie’s. I pulled out my phone and called my grandmother again. This time I left a message.
“I’m at your house. I'm not going to come to the front door. I'll go back around to the garden again. If you want to zap me back there, there's not much I can do to stop you. But I need to talk to you, Nonnie, because I suspect you're the only person with the answers I need." Before I ended the message, I added, "I have my dog with me. I just wanted you to know."
I hung up, sat back against the seat, and stared out the windshield. From my glance in the rearview mirror, Mike had pulled in directly behind me. I hope he didn't insist on following me to my grandmother's garden. Her garden was a private place, and I didn't doubt she would do something to banish him. The guy was just doing his job. I didn't want him hurt.
When had I made that transition in my thoughts, from thinking of my grandmother as this warm and loving creature to someone powerful enough to hurt a bear like Mike?
My stomach clenched as I got out of the car, walked around the front and opened the passenger door for Charlie. He followed me to Mike’s truck. After that first night when I'd rescued him in the woods, I hadn't used a leash. But I didn't have to worry about Charlie leaving my side. He was as protective as Dan.
Mike rolled down the passenger side window.
"This is my grandmother's house," I said, sticking my head inside the window. “I’d invite you in but I’m not sure that would be a good idea.”
He regarded me with stony brown eyes.
“That’s okay. I’ll wait here.”
"If I need you, I'll call," I said. “You’re number two on my speed dial.”
He nodded once.
My grandmother’s house was sixty years old, one of the newest in the neighborhood. The rest were homes built in the Victorian era. In the last five years the area had been rediscovered. The neighbors were a mix of young couples getting a steal on huge older homes they were fixing up and elderly owners who’d done the same thing fifty years ago.
Nonnie had the house painted recently. Either that, or she’d arranged a spell to make me think the siding was a deep emerald and the white of the shutters blinding white.
The house sat on a knoll of earth, the approach a short walk from the curb up a short flight of steps carved into the grass. Here there was never a sign of a drought. Plus the Bermuda always grew thick beneath the shade of the two trees, one on each side of the walk.
Another spell? Or simply a green thumb?
The neighbor next door had died about six months ago. Mrs. Flores had been renowned for her garden and her front landscaping she kept pruned to an inch of its life. The house hadn’t remained on the market for long, selling to a young couple with two little children. I'd met them once when they were all out walking. The little boy had been on his tricycle, the infant girl held in a sling against her mother’s chest.
Now a curtain jerked closed in their kitchen. I couldn't help but wonder if they knew my grandmother was a witch. For that matter, were they witches?
A witch could marry and have children. Vampires, on the other hand, were supposed to immediately become infertile when they were turned. It's kind of hard to give birth to a live child when you were dead.
Somehow, I’d broken the rules.
I walked slowly around to the side of the house. I thought I’d never be back here. The last time I'd come to Nonnie’s house it had been dark. Now I noticed things I hadn’t been able to see before. The iron hinges looked oiled. None of the fence boards were loose.
Did she do all the work around the house herself? Or hire a handyman to do these things for her? Or, was she powerful enough to command the rocks to align themselves and the grass to only grow to a certain height? I wouldn’t be surprised if she got rid of weeds with a spell.
I opened the gate, waited until Charlie entered, then closed it behind us. The last time I was here the rocks along the paths had been glowing. Now they looked like plain old Colorado River Rock, but I was going to avoid them just in case.
The fact that the gate hadn't been locked was a clue. When I saw my grandmother sitting on the bench in the back I knew she’d gotten my message.
I made my way slowly down the path, Charlie so close beside me that I could feel his tail hitting my leg as we walked.
My grandmother stared at me wide eyed.
I’d forgotten. Although she’d heard me on the phone during the daytime, I guess seeing me was something else. My stomach tightened, my pulse racing as I approached her.
She was as white as the shutters of her house. Stopping in front of her, I wondered which one of us was more frightened.
Before she could question me about my newfound ability I asked, "Is there poison in the potion you gave me?"
She frowned at me. "If I was going to kill you, child, I would've done so when you were a little girl. I wouldn't have waited until you became a vampire."
I didn’t move. "Every time I take a dose of it, I get sick. Really sick."
"There might be something in it that doesn't agree with your condition," she said. "I don't mean possible pregnancy, Marcie. I mean what you are."
I came and sat beside her on the bench.
"Which is why I'm here," I said. "What am I? Do you know?“
Her smile was barely a curve of her lips. “I thought I knew until a few days ago.” She shook her head before adding, “I’ve never known of a vampire who could tolerate the sun.”
“Or anyone who had a vampire father,” I said.
“That, too,” she said, nodding.
"So you aren’t trying to poison me," I said. Good to know.
"If you suspect me of doing something so terrible, Marcie, why are you here?"
"For answers, Nonnie.” I took a deep breath.
I wanted to believe her, the same way I wanted her to reach over and grab me, hug me tight, tell me that everything was going to be fine, that the last few weeks have been nothing but a terrible nightmare and I had awakened, sweaty and nauseous, but still human and still loved.
&nb
sp; Well, that wasn’t going to happen, was it?
I decided to revert to my other problem.
“I’m a vampire, but I had a period. I’m a vampire, but I’m hungry for food all the time. I’m a vampire, but I can function in daylight just fine.”
I turned my head and looked at her. “So what am I? Not a Pranic vampire because I don’t feed off people’s energies. What?”
"You will not let up until you're the death of me, will you? A fitting end, perhaps, since I defied everyone to protect you. They all said I was a fool.”
She scowled at me fiercely. I stared right back. Words couldn't affect me anymore. I needed information and I didn't have time to feel pity or compassion or any of those other softer emotions that might end up getting us both killed.
“I don’t know what you are, Marcie.” She reached out and grabbed the silver pendant around my neck, holding the Celtic symbol against her palm. “I gave this to you when I thought it would do some good. I was a fool there, too.”
“Why, did you put a spell on the pendant? Something to make me ignore vampires?”
I was trying to remember if I’d worn it the night I met Doug.
She smiled that odd smile again.
Since I was a little girl, my grandmother had arranged her white hair in a coronet around her head. Her pure white hair was thick and long and probably a source of vanity.
Now she reached up and pulled out a silver bobby pin, one of those old fashioned things with the rubber tips. As I watched, she pulled the tip off one end and used it to pry the pendant apart.
I didn’t even know it could be separated.
“I made it to protect you against vampires.”
“It would have been nice to know about it. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She looked over at me. “I thought you were free of your mother’s fixation. You never evinced an interest in vampires to my knowledge. Why did you start?”
“It was once,” I said, annoyed.
She gave me a look but didn’t answer. A moment later, she pried the two halves apart and I looked at the inside of the pendant I’d worn for years. It took me a minute to figure out that what I was seeing was a small needle, folded to fit inside the diameter of the pendant.
“What is that?”
“If you press the outside like this,” she said, “the needle will pop up.” She pressed a spot on the pendant and the needle stood straight up.
“What is it?”
“Something to protect you from vampires.”
“What, no holy water?”
“You know, as well as I do, that holy water is just a myth. Nor are crosses or religious artifacts of any use against vampires. You’d be better served to use your common sense.”
She was right. In Orientation, I’d learned that most of what I knew about vampires was wrong, the result of Hollywood myths and novelists’ imaginations.
“Push this into a vampire’s skin.”
"And it will kill him?" I asked in surprise.
She didn't even kill spiders. How low on the totem pole do you have to be to rank beneath a spider?
"It will make them feel numb for a number of days," she said, thereby reinstating my faith in my grandmother. “But initially, it will incapacitate him, giving you a chance to escape.”
I wished I’d known about the pendant the night Maddock gave me a date rape drug.
"Have you ever killed a vampire?" I asked, thinking of my stepfather. Had she and the coven actually been responsible for his "accident"? Had my mother been right?
"Marcie, sometimes there are questions for which there are no answers."
"Which means you’re not going to tell me."
She didn't respond.
“Is it poisonous to me?”
“I don't know," she said, staring down at the needle. She closed both halves and I wrapped my hand around the pendant, almost daring myself to touch it.
I didn’t know whether to keep wearing it or give it back to her. On one hand, if I was accosted by Maddock again, I might need it, but how safe was it? Could I stick myself and end up a drooling pile of Marcie?
“Come inside,” Nonnie said. “We’ll have tea.”
“Is it safe?”
We exchanged a long look. My grandmother’s face was solemn, the expression one of sorrow.
I wanted to get sick again and it wasn’t the potion this time.
CHAPTER SIX
The dog barks, but the caravan moves on
Nonnie turned and led the way to the back door of her house. I hesitated at the stones, but after a quick look at her, I stepped over them, Charlie following me. He’d been a perfect dog up until then, sitting at my side, ignoring the squirrel chittering at him from the fence, and paying no attention to the butterflies flitting near the bushes.
We followed my grandmother up the three steps to the back porch.
I hesitated at the threshold, wondering if I was going to be zapped. Nonnie had always been my bulwark, my supporter, and the one person in the world I trusted.
Not anymore.
I raised one foot, cautiously placing it on the other side of the threshold. I didn't feel any humming at all, no incipient headache. I wasn't feeling any different from the countless times I’d come into the porch as a child.
She’d erected a clothes line from one end of the long porch to the other to use when the spirit moved her. Ever since she'd gotten a new dryer, the spirit evidently didn’t move her all that much. She used to say that things smelled so much better when they were dried outdoors and never commented on the stiff, razor like towels or the sheets with the odor of mildew.
A stack of bath mats were piled in front of a green, old fashioned metal chair, the kind that bounced when you sat in it.
My grandmother changed bath mats like you changed underwear. I think she had a different set for every day of the week, the colors ranging from bright yellows to rich burgundies that worked well in both stark white bathrooms. Next to the chair was a brand new washer and dryer with cockpit like controls.
Large Amazon boxes were piled in the corner of one side of the porch. I wondered if she was saving those to return merchandise to the online retailer or if she simply didn't like breaking down boxes.
We entered the kitchen, but I waited until Nonnie waved me toward the table before going to sit at my usual place, Charlie flopping to the floor beside me.
The wall was to my back, the window overlooking the backyard to my right. Directly to my left was the door to the dining room used only during holidays. Ahead of me was the long kitchen stretching the length of the house. At the end of the room was a staircase to the second and third floors. One day Nonnie might find it difficult to mount the steps, but I couldn't imagine her living anywhere but here.
How many times had I sat here on the banquette against the wall, staring through the filmy white lace curtains at the backyard, feeling peaceful, calm, and at home?
Everything was the same except for the feelings. Any warmth had been replaced by anxiety and a touch of fear. I wasn't a fool, after all. I knew of at least twelve women who weren't kindly disposed of me. And one mother.
"If you’re a witch, can you be a Christian?"
My grandmother attended church every Sunday, was a member of the Ladies Guild, and occasionally taught Sunday school.
She glanced at me from her position in front of her electric kettle. She was making tea as she always did. Summer or winter, Nonnie enjoyed her hot tea. Never the iced variety, though.
"How can I not believe in God knowing what I do?"
"Don't witches also believe in a goddess?"
She brought the teapot to the table along with the mugs, sugar and lemon.
"You didn't come here to ask about my faith, Marcie,” she said.
Her lips were pursed, her eyes narrowed. The same look I’d been given when I did something wrong as a child. I'm not talking a small infraction, either. I only got that look when I had done something like steal a pack of
gum from Aunt Susan's purse. I had been trotted in front of Susan, made to apologize profusely and offer my services for an entire day.
Susan had taken advantage of the situation. I'd had to vacuum and wash her car. The washing hadn’t been a problem because although the Cadillac was huge, the job went quickly. But Susan was a packrat, holding onto everything rather than throw it away or, God forbid, litter. So she left it in her car.
I found junk mail from two years earlier under the passenger’s seat. I also discovered gum wrappers, old gum wrapped in bits of tissue, clumped up wadded napkins from a fast food place, the desiccated remnants of french fries, and one mummified maraschino cherry.
Aunt Susan was also a slob.
But I had gone past the age of doing penance for my misdeeds. Besides, all I'd done was ask a question.
"Consider this a job interview," I said. “Perhaps I'm interested in becoming a witch."
"You can't."
As an answer, it lacked a little something, like an explanation.
"Why can't I?”
I didn’t want to be a witch, but I felt like being argumentative. Childish, I know.
“My mother has witch blood. You’re a witch, unless you aren’t my grandmother after all.”
I had her ears and her funny little earlobes. I also had her hairline with the widow’s peak. Perhaps I even had her obstinacy.
"You can't be a witch because you’re a vampire. They’re in direct opposition. It is like thinking you can be both a lioness and a gazelle."
"Why do I have the feeling I’m the gazelle in this instance?”
She sat, poured a cup of tea for me first, pushing it across the table, the sound of earthenware against painted wood comforting and familiar. I dumped three large spoonfuls of sugar and a squirt of lemon into it, taking my time to stir, concentrating on the little whirlpool I’d created in the cup.
She sipped her tea and studied the surface of the cracked white paint of the table.
“I know nothing of vampire lore or even their legends. I don’t know of this Pranic vampire you mentioned. Nor have I ever heard of anyone like you. All I can tell you is that from your birth you’ve been the essence of magic.”
