by Winter Reid
I wrapped my towel tighter under my arms and fumbled my way through the living room to the peephole. Looking through, all I could see was a grin and a brown ball cap with a patch on it that read U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Leaning on my crutches, I left the chain on, jerking the door open. The man outside was a study in brown: brown pants, socks, shoes, everything brown but his tan short-sleeve shirt. There was another patch on his sleeve and a small brass badge over his left breast. He had a gun. My heart rate sped up.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
He looked me up and down through the crack, eyeing my towel and the garbage bag I’d used to waterproof my cast.
“I’ll wait.”
I closed the door and hobbled into the bedroom, dressing as quick as I could in a long, khaki skirt and cap-sleeved blue button-down. Leaving my hair down to hide my scars, I put on the purple glass and silver necklace I’d gotten from Jackson’s mother.
The man was still there when I opened the door again, unsteadily moving backward to let him in. He walked down the hall to my living room, quietly taking it in, stopping at my desk to pick up the glass paperweight my grandmother had given me and turning it over in his hands. I came up beside him and took it from him gently.
“I’m sorry,” I said, setting it back in its place. “Who did you say you were?”
“Officer Bell, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Law enforcement.” He flashed another megawatt smile in my direction. “You into vampires?” he asked, touching the stack of books by my desk.
“Not really. The museum I work for is doing a special exhibit this Halloween.”
Bell smiled again. “That’s nice.”
I shifted my weight. “Actually, I was just getting ready to leave,” I lied.
“This won’t take long.”
“Okay.” I waited for more, but he didn’t speak again. We stood awkwardly for a moment until I frowned and gestured to the couch. “Would you like to sit down?”
“Sure.”
He didn’t move. I maneuvered around him on my crutches and sat in the chair facing the sofa. Eventually he sat across from me, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. He watched me for a long time. Long enough to make me shift in my seat. A blush crept up from my chest.
“Can you guess why I’m here?” he asked.
I took a quick breath. “I imagine it has something to do with the alligator.”
He laughed, louder than was appropriate and sat back, slapping his knee with his hand.
“Something,” he said. He cleared his throat and leaned in again. “I’m curious as to why you were found bleeding to death draped over a guardrail on a heavily traveled road when your blood trail ended about a hundred and fifty feet from the place we presume you were attacked.”
He might have slapped me. No one had explained to me how I’d been found. I’d figured some jogger had come up on me in the morning. Fighting the urge to bite my lip, I locked my fingers together in my lap.
“I don’t have an answer for that,” I said.
He smiled again, but this time it was different; skeptical, like I was a lying child.
“You know you’ve caused me a good deal of headache the last few days?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to.”
“What did you intend to do?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What were your intentions?” he asked slowly, leaning forward. “When you illegally trespassed onto federal property in the middle of the night and assaulted an animal living on a preserve?”
“I didn’t ‘assault’ anything.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
What the fuck? I leaned forward, too. “Officer Bell, an alligator tried to eat me. I defended myself. The last thing I remember is passing out under a tree. Beyond that, I’m as lost as you are.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Taking pictures of alligators.”
“You’re a woman of multiple talents.”
“You could say that.”
“Any particular reason your memory card was empty.”
“I never turned my camera on. I was just scouting for a subject. I wasn’t sure I’d find one.”
“Well you sure did.”
“I’ll say.”
“And your partner?”
“I didn’t have a partner.”
“Someone,” he said, tapping the coffee table with his finger, “carried you three and a half miles to leave you on a highway. Someplace they knew you’d be seen.”
I let my eyes flicker to the window and back again. “Maybe, but they also left me there. A partner would have taken me to the hospital. Or at least called 911.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to answer questions.”
“Maybe it was just a good Samaritan?” On a midnight walk through the swamp.
Bell laughed. “The good Samaritans usually stick around.” He sat back again and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Have you ever euthanized an eight-hundred-pound reptile?”
I blinked. “No.”
“Goodie for you.”
I took a cautious breath. “Why would I ride my bike if my intention was to poach an alligator? That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?”
He held up his hands. “I don’t know. None of this makes sense to me. Tell me the truth. No bullshit.”
I shook my head. “I’ve told you what I know, and now I want you to leave.”
He took in my legs and nodded. “Mind if I take a closer look at your wounds?”
“I don’t think that’s entirely appropriate.”
“That’s a pretty big cast.”
“Yup.”
“Did he break your leg?”
“You bet.”
“That’s unusual.”
“Is it?”
“Most people who actually get away from gators are missing a limb by the time all is said and done.”
“I guess I got lucky.”
“I guess so.”
We sat for a few minutes without speaking. Finally he stood. “Thanks for your time,” he said.
I nodded. “Sure.”
He pulled a business card out of his pocket and handed it to me. “If you remember anything else...”
“Okay.” I stood up, too. “Officer Bell?”
“Yes, Nadine.”
“Why did you have to euthanize it? Being short an eye doesn’t seem like a good enough reason.”
“It’s not, but the two-foot long festering slash on his underbelly was.”
I frowned. “A slash?”
“Knife wound. He left a blood trail all his own.” Bell stopped at the door and I caught him eyeing the scar on my neck. “I don’t want to see you again.”
A set of light footsteps echoed on the stairs.
“Nadine?” Lacey called out. “You okay, sugar?”
She popped into view behind Bell, carrying a mass of indignant, gray and white fur under her arm and wearing denim short shorts with a spaghetti strap tank top and four-inch-high wedge sandals.
“Olive!” I screeched, reaching out to retrieve my kitty.
Bell cocked an eyebrow, casting a meaningful side glance at Lacey and then back at me.
“Oh! Officer Bell, this is Lacey Wilson. She works with me at the museum. Lacey, Officer Bell. He was just leaving.”
“Billy,” he said, reaching out his hand toward her.
She took it, a slow smile spreading across her glossy, red lips as they shook.
Eye-roll.
“Actually, I have to go, too,” she said, adjusting her embroidered boho purse on her shoulder. “Oh wait!”
She reached inside her bag and pulled out a little box wrapped in red paisley paper and a blue velvet ribbon. “Granny sent this for you. She said she didn’t know why, but you need it.”
I took it out of her fingers and Bell offered her his elbow.
“Allow me to escort you to your car.”
Grinning, Lacey wrapped her hands around his not insignificant b
icep.
“Ma’am,” he said to me sternly before he led her down the hall.
Lacey turned back to look at me from the stairs, silently mouthing, “Oh my God!”
Eyeing the little package in my hand, I set down a desperately wriggling Olive and hobbled over to the couch to open it. It might contain anything from a gris-gris bag to a vial of ground-up roots and bones. Lacey’s mother may have married into our state’s equivalent of the Gold Coast but her granny was still one hundred percent Louisiana voodoo. I peeled away the wrapping paper, revealing a little white jewelry box. Inside was a tiny metal pendant of a saint on a chain, silver, but tarnished. I smiled and slipped it on over my head. A piece of purple paper poked out from inside the lid. I unfolded it, reading her shaky cursive:
St. Patroclus of Troyes. He’ll protect you from demons. Don’t take it off once you put it on. Wear purple.
Love,
Granny
Chapter Eight
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this, you crazy bitch.”
Lacey threw open the driver’s side door on her white Escalade and stomped around to the back, yanking a wheelchair out and slamming it onto the ground.
“That’s not mine,” I reminded her. “It’s a rental.”
She mumbled something like I’ll rent you under her breath as she struggled to open it, wheeling it over to my side of the vehicle. Wrenching my door open, she crossed her arms over her chest and gave me the stink eye. “Jackson would kick both our asses if he knew where we were right now.”
“It’s good he’s working then.”
“Billy would, too.”
“Officer Bell?” I owl-blinked. “Lacey, are you seeing him?”
“Yes. No. I mean, I did once; a few weeks ago. We met in the River Market for dinner. He’s an asshole.”
“Then why do we care what he thinks?”
She threw up her arms. “Why are we here, doll?”
“I just need to see where it happened.”
“Wasn’t that what you were doing when all this mess occurred?” She waved her hand in a giant circle encompassing… all of me. Other than the boot, the only trace of my second near-death experience left on my body was the smaller scar he had left on my neck, which made her gesture a little depressing. Possibly offensive.
I smoothed my hair down with my hand and unbuckled my seatbelt, holding onto the Escalade’s fancy oh-shit handle as I lowered myself carefully out of the SUV and into the wheelchair. “I was going for a bike ride.”
“My ass.”
I grinned. Lacey cussed like a sailor when she was worried. Not angry. Not sad. Just worried. And she was worried about me.
“Fine,” she said, positioning the footrest so I could prop my unwieldy walking boot on the metal. The skin where the cast had been was nearly back to normal, though it had taken a lot of moisturizing and loofa use to slough off my scales.
“Don’t tell me the truth,” she continued. “But, sugar, just you know that I know that you are a lyin’ sack of squirrel nuts.”
It had been almost exactly six weeks since I’d been released from the hospital. The first two weeks hadn’t been bad; once Jackson started speaking to me again, anyway. Though he was still angry and short. To keep busy, I’d watched every burping baby video I could find on YouTube and read all the celebrity smut I could get my hands on. But once the rush of all that baby cuteness and divorce drama wore off, I had to start thinking about things again. And because Kevin was making me use the full remainder of my five years of accumulated vacation and sick leave to recover, I had a lot of time to do it.
I read all my vampire library books. All of them. Twice. I watched vampire movies when Jackson wasn’t around, which was a lot. I sketched my vampire’s face when I woke in the night—every night, just as I had before I went back to the swamp. I waited for the dreams of him that had suddenly stopped coming, and I started to think maybe what I didn’t already remember of our time in the hole together would stay lost to me. And maybe I could live with the blank spot. Maybe it would be easier than knowing.
And yet there I was, bullying my friend into taking me back to where it had happened. Reaching out again for that memory as it danced just outside my vision.
Lacey pushed me across the parking lot and through the gate to the pathway that would eventually lead us to the pond. Since the front of the park was the only area with wheelchair access, we had a lot further to go than we would have if we’d taken the back entrance. The dogwood and redbud blossoms were long gone, replaced by fully mature leaves. The only sign of early spring left was the faded carpet of fallen pear tree petals on the trail, torn and made translucent by rain.
As much as she didn’t understand why we were here, or why I’d want to run in the park in the first place when there were air-conditioned gyms with hot personal trainers, Lacey fell under the spell of the woods before we passed the first turn off. Everyone did. There’s a connection to something ancient within us in the forest; something peaceful and awed. She didn’t speak except to grunt in acknowledgement when I pointed her to another path that split off to the right.
We crossed the land bridge that split the pond until we reached the center, where I asked her quietly to stop. Pushing out of the chair, I walked closer to the bank, into the skirt of cypress trees. Lily pads blanketed everything. Tall ones, big as dinner plates, reached up above the water’s surface, blooming with great white flowers. Algae and fallen leaves made a broken border around the water’s edge like a bathtub ring. Everything was green. Everything was alive. The only sign of what happened to me was a scrape of dark dirt beside the pond that could have come from anything, really. It might not have even been mine.
It seemed like there should have been more evidence of that night, considering what had happened there. It seemed like we should have left more of a mark. My blood. His blood. Its blood. Even police tape—anything to say I’d nearly died there. I took a deep, shaky breath and leaned against the nearest cypress, wrapping my arms around it before I realized I was crying.
“Now see,” Lacey said, picking her way through roots toward me, rubbing my back between my shoulder blades and reaching into her pocket for a tissue. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to come out here. You okay, sweetie?”
I nodded and took the Kleenex, wiping my eyes.
She got right in my face, forcing my gaze to hers. There was a crease between her eyebrows I’d never seen before.
“Did you find what you needed to find?” she asked gently. “Can we go home yet?”
I let her pull me back toward the wheelchair and nodded again. Even though it was a lie. “Yes. Let’s go home.”
Chapter Nine
That night, I woke up to the sound of the air conditioner coming on; its gurgles and sighs. I rubbed my face against the pillow, listening to my hair snap and crackle with static, louder than I’d heard it before. Sitting upright, I ran a hand over my naked leg, the boot beside me on the floor. I’d made Lacey let me walk halfway back to her SUV. It should have made me beyond sore, but it didn’t. My leg did hurt; just not as much as I would have liked. It was too soon to feel so well-healed.
Jackson rolled over, spreading out in the space I had left, making the bed too small for us both. Ever since his residency he’d slept through hurricanes and miracles.
I touched my neck. The new scar was still pink and it ached sometimes, deep inside. I rubbed it with my fingers, hoping to soothe it with their warmth.
And then, I felt him. Out of nowhere, I felt my vampire. There’s no other way for me to say it. And no, I didn’t feel him in a fortune-telling, ghost hunter, misfortunate-psychic-heroine kind of way, but in a holy-motherfucker-there’s-someone-in-my-house way. Heart pounding, I swallowed hard and reached for my voice.
“What do you want?” I whispered to the semidarkness.
“What do you want?” he returned. His voice was slow and coarse, as if it cost him to think of how to say the words, as if he hadn’t used
them in a long time. I squinted, finding him leaning back against the wall opposite my bed. He was squatting, his skin washed pink by the neon outside my window, hands crossed over his arms. Black dirt made crescent moons under his nails, and I had a sudden memory of him touching me, smearing filth across my bare stomach as he held me still. The thought of it made me rage.
“I want to kill you,” I bit out all sassy pants, my chest on fire.
He leapt to his bare feet fast enough it was hard to catch the movement. I scrambled away from him, fighting not to put too much weight on my injured leg as I flopped over Jackson. All things considered, I was surprised I moved as fast as I did. I shot off the bed toward the kitchen, each step reverberating in my healing bones. He caught me in the doorway and I lost my footing. I went down, bringing him with me. I tried to army crawl out from underneath him but he grabbed me by the shoulders, flipping me onto my back, pinning me with his weight across my chest. It’s hard to cry when you can’t breathe but I tried, tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes and into my hair.
I tensed, waiting for a strike that didn’t come. When I unclenched my eyes, he still hovered over me, his too-close face hidden in shadows.
“What have you done to me?” He echoed my words in a whisper, drawing the shape of my forehead with his fingers. They smelled like dirt as he ran them down my nose and across my lips. I turned my face away.
“You can’t kill me,” he said, angry again, pressing something metal into my hand. I craned my head to look and saw my mother’s knife. He trailed his fingers down to the scar at my neck, pressing it gently, and then left, leaving me gasping on the carpet.
Chapter Ten
My breathing was holding steady; more than it usually did five miles into a run, even an easy one. Two weeks had passed since Lacey took me back to the trails; since my vampire came to me in the night. When I decided to start running again, I opted to stay off the trails, not wanting to antagonize either him or Officer Bell.
