Stamps, Vamps & Tramps (A Three Little Words Anthology)

by Rachel Caine

  She knew the issue would come up sooner or later, Carson was a catch and he knew it. He’s handsome and successful and they watched British comedies in bed together. And the guy’s name is Freddie, for Christ’s sake, what kind of man goes by the name Freddie?

  “I know,” she said. “I tried calling him Fred for a while, see how he took to it, tried Rick too, but that was way weird.” Charlotte knew she was avoiding his question, it was obvious, caught in the air like there was never any music, just sourness and champagne.

  She waited, hoping he would relent.

  In those extending, flexible seconds, the clouds fell low and tight. The sun slipped through in straight banners, majestic, cinematic even. It was all so artificial.

  Carson let loose a laugh, and sound and time and everything else too came at Charlotte at full force. It was like spilling a whole tray of drinks. She felt—fine.

  Finally, with resolve, he said, “Girl.” The word had a million elastic exaggerated syllables. “He’s not the only one who’d be all freaky freak with you.” The violinist soloed in ragtime, her up-beat swinging, her down-beats crumpled fenders, easy. He blushed. “I’m just saying that you didn’t even ask me, like, if that was some deciding factor, you didn’t even ask me.”

  Freddie rolls whatever it is around the glass. It clings. “Char, I can’t.”

  “Sookie,” she corrects.

  “Charlotte.” His firmness is uncomfortable.

  She pushes her lips towards a pout, trying to be sultry. “Bill Compton, aren’t you just ravaged?” She bends her neck to the right, tosses her blond hair. At the last minute, she just had to give it a washing and conditioning and rehydrating and drying and curling. “Can you smell my temptation?”

  “Look, Char,” Freddie loosens his tie, “I mean, this is fun every once in a while.”

  She tries, “Like once a full moon?” It’s pathetic. Beggarly. She’s so pathetic.

  “Seriously, okay? Just look at you. And this!” He pours the drink into the sink. It comes out in curdles. “What the fuck is this?”

  “It’s—”

  “No. I don’t even want to know and I for sure don’t want to know how much time you wasted on this shit.”

  Hours.

  Charlotte had spent hours.

  Jello and food coloring.

  Blood isn’t strawberry.

  “I’m not saying that it isn’t fun because it is. And I’m definitely not saying that I’m not into it because I’d be lying, it’s just, you can’t expect me to do this every single night. I’m not playing dress up just so you can get off, okay?”

  “Me? You think this is about me?”

  “Oh, so this is about me.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “All you do is blame other people. If you like doing this kind of shit, fine. I’m cool with it. I’ll play along. Just not every night, okay? I’m tired. I work.”

  “Fuck you, Freddie, like I don’t work or what?”

  “Can’t we have just one night where we pretend to be an actual couple?”

  “What the—”

  “Like just pretend we’re in a real relationship, cook dinner and watch a movie and not even fuck, I don’t even want to fuck, I just want to cuddle up and touch your skin and maybe we can bake some cookies or eat ice cream in bed and set our alarms and drink coffee together in the morning. Do a boring goddamn crossword together, I don’t know, normal shit.”

  “Normal shit.”

  “Yeah, like, I’m almost forty.”

  “That’s so irrelevant.”

  “Stop it. Just stop, okay? I’m almost forty and I want a normal boring life. I want to come home from work and know that you’ll be here and that you’re not going away because you find me too boring. Char, don’t you get it?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Let’s get married.”

  Charlotte was too busy dreaming about her first kiss. She hadn’t heard him, but he’d proposed, too, and when her teacher said no, he pushed the barrel tighter on her skin, offered a chance to reconsider. He was a stranger. They didn’t know each other. That’s what the newspaper said, all news reports too.

  It wasn’t really the type of story to deserve national—or even regional—attention, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t important.

  Charlotte almost never thinks about it. It was so long ago and her recollection of the events is underwhelming at best. At the time, though, she must’ve been devastated. Miss Salerson was handily her favorite teacher, everyone’s, she was smart and she wore the coolest threads and like all of her other teachers were so yesterday—more like three decades back—and a snooze, whereas Miss Salerson made books and reading seem cool, like totally cool.

  When Charlotte actually thinks about the event though, she recognizes that there had to be some sort of consequence, for her, to her. It should have been a turning point, a moment that she revisits and spins in her head, but there was no impact, barely even a residue, the memory shaped more through news and gossip than memory.

  According to her best friend’s kind of boyfriend, he wasn’t a stranger though. The news got it all stupid, he saw the two of them necking in the Martin’s parking lot, or, at least it looked like her hair—and he could recognize her from behind, easy—but it was for sure him.

  According to her other best friend, he was her high school sweetheart. According to Jessie, who Charlotte hated because she knew everything about everything and everyone, he’d been following Miss Salerson around for years—in fact, she only moved to the Bend to get away from him—and she was scared of him, like really really scared. Jessie was the reason she started going by Charlotte in high school, the truncation of her name plus ie was too close to Jessie, not that she could recall any specific reason for her hate, girlhood doesn’t work that way.

  Neither does memory.

  From that year, the most important memory should be Miss Salerson’s shooting, but there’s only the lack of first kiss and Jessie.

  She had wanted to explain everything to Carson, but he wouldn’t get it, there was no way he would’ve understood. She doesn’t even understand.

  Undressing, Charlotte forgives her parents for their negligence, stops being mad at Jessie for no reason at all, wishes Carson could just get it already. She fingers a few strands of loose hair along her neck, their loneliness.

  Bill Compton will keep them company.

  When he bites down, her skin releases.

  HIS FACE, ALL RED

  By Gemma Files

  “You’re up very late, my dear,” the old man said, when Leah came over to hand him a menu and pour some complimentary water. It was 3:37 a.m. by the clock above the range, and the place was pretty much deserted—just her, him, and Amir and Gue back in the kitchen.

  She shrugged, indicating the sign in the front window. “Twenty-four hours. Means somebody’s always gotta be up all night, and that’s me.”

  He turned to study it a moment, quizzically, like he hadn’t even realized it was there, even though he must’ve passed right by it to get to the front door. Then replied, without much surprise, or interest—“Oh, well, yes.”

  The old man had one of those crazy accents, prissy and kind of hot at the same time, every vowel struck like a bell—sounded like Gandalf, basically, or maybe Jean-Luc Picard. Leah couldn’t begin to reckon his actual age. Also, the nearer she got to him, the more she saw how his skin was kind of… flawless, creepily so. Eyes like blue glass, narrowed by smile-lines; perfect teeth, too, and wasn’t that weird, for an English dude? When he smiled, he looked like everybody’s favorite librarian. But he was wearing a decrepit, faded Lamb of God T-shirt that’d seen better decades and a pair of bright pink sweatpants, both much too big for his hawk-slim frame, with a cracked and battered set of Crocs Leah swore to God she could see his (slightly over-long) toenails through.

  “What’s with the clothes, sir?” she asked, trying to make it sound funny, charming even—but she had to guess it probably d
idn’t sound like either of those things, because his good cheer faded on contact; he frowned slightly and looked down, studying the outfit like (again) someone had stuck it on him without his noticing.

  “What is with them?” he repeated, genuinely baffled. Then: “Oh, these aren’t mine; I found them in a trash-bin, I think. The one at the end of that alley beside your fine restaurant, with ‘Twister Relief’ written on its side.”

  “I don’t think that stuff is meant for… somebody like you,” Leah began, immediately feeling even sillier; now it was the old man’s turn to shrug, however, giving her an excuse to change the subject. “What was wrong with what you were already wearing?”

  “Oh, it simply wouldn’t have done at all, my dear, not for a public venue. For one thing, my suit was almost completely covered in blood. And for another, I had been wearing it a good twenty years already, at least.”

  Leah only realized she was staring at those amazing teeth of his—so white, so straight, so sharp—when he snaked his tongue out, unexpectedly, and licked them, like an animal. Completely out of left field, and gross, too; perverted, somehow, or at least profane. For anybody that age to be getting such an apparent charge out of being hungry, breathing in deliberately, holding it like a mouthful of weed-smoke… tasting the air itself, sensually, as though it were a steak he longed to take a bite out of…

  “‘Covered in blood,’” she hear herself mimic as he stood up, seemed to almost eddy forward, near enough to touch. “‘C—covered in—’”

  “Yes, dear. Just like that.”

  “Whose… blood was it?”

  “Oh, I don’t believe I ever got their names; professionals, you see. No element of friendliness about that transaction, I can tell you. Not like you and I.”

  “…can’t move.”

  “No, of course not. That’s what the hypnotism is for, you see.”

  Perfect teeth, so straight and white and shiny. She felt a tear streak down one cheek, and thought, He’s such an old man, and I’m not. I could—I should—

  But she didn’t, of course, for far too long. And then there was a sudden, terrible pain, a tearing just above her collarbone, quickly followed by nothing at all.

  When Leah came to again, everything hurt: her eyes, her guts, her skin. It was bright outside, enough to make her wince and flinch at the same time, cowering back, shoving herself as far underneath the table the old man’d been sitting at as geometry would allow for. Thank God, though, the two women standing in front of her seemed to have already figured out they should probably close the blinds before she woke, or lose their only witness to spontaneous inhuman combustion…

  (What?)

  …and oh, such an additional pain, so sharp and coring, to even think—let alone voice—that name. The one she was now forbidden access to, forever.

  I don’t know where this is coming from, any of it, Leah realized, suddenly sick. Or how I know it… what I think I know, even…

  Eyes flicking first left, then right, as though bracing herself for further attack; hands fisting so hard she could hear her nail grate on the floor beneath, scratching the linoleum, like claws. But the vertigo that immediately welled up made her want to put her head between her knees and moan, like a poisoned dog, so she did, while the women—sisters, they were definitely sisters, she could smell it on them—simply stood there and watched, the taller one projecting an aura of quiet authority and genuine sympathy even as the smaller simply rocked back on her bootheels, her sniper’s gaze never wavering from Leah’s face and one hand sneaking behind her back, feeling for some kind of weapon.

  Better put me down quick, bitch, you want to keep me there, the unfamiliar mind-voice (that doesn’t sound like me) whispered in her head, gleefully sly, all its worst instincts pricking up in anticipation of slaughter. Better not let me get a good jump in, ‘less you want to be wiping little sis’s blood off the wall…

  Leah shook her head again, just once but sharply, to dismiss it. And made herself look back up, trying her level best to not only look harmless, but be so.

  “That old man… is he still here?”

  The taller one shook her head, blonde braids swinging. “Long gone, I’d say. Given the temp on your friends.”

  “Gue—Amir?”

  “That’s what their badges said, yes. And you’re Leah, right?”

  Leah nodded, sniffed, eyes blurred and stinging. But when she put up a hand to wipe away the tears, she drew it away smeared with red.

  “Oh Jesus,” she said, staring at the result, no matter how the word hurt to use. “Oh God, oh Christ. What happened to us all?”

  The taller woman sighed, and took a moment, like she wanted to choose her next words carefully. In the meantime, Leah found her eyes drawn to the tattoos she could suddenly see crawling up along the woman’s arms, weaving underneath the sleeves of her shirt to climb the sides of her long neck like vines. They were snakey, deep-carved things, some of them roughly keloided as though self-inflicted, a strange contrast with the woman—girl, really, Leah now understood—herself, who seemed gentle, almost sad. I want to help, her gray eyes seemed to say, though they both knew that was impossible.

  (Yes, yes we do)

  (How, though? Why?)

  “His name is Maks Maartensbeck,” the tall girl began, reluctantly. “Professor Maartensbeck. Highly respected, in our field; did a lot of good, once. Saved a lot of lives. But he hasn’t really been that man for a very long time, now.”

  “Then… what is he?”

  “Oh, Leah, come on. You’ve seen the movies. He came in here at night, put you to sleep with a look, drank from your neck, then ripped your friends apart. So if you just let yourself think about it for a minute, I kind of think you already know.”

  (Running her tongue along the inside of her lips, across her teeth, and feeling skin part, seamless. Knowing without even having to check how they would shine just as brightly as the old man’s, now; white-sharp like the new moon. Her empty stomach contracting, and the rush and pulse of blood—not her own—rising in her ears, more beautiful than any remembered song.)

  The smaller woman was visibly tensed now, biceps gone hard beneath the sleeves of her many-pocketed East Coast gangsta parka; she had thighs like she pumped prison iron, so cut Leah could see definition even through her jeans. Such a tough little cookie, with her narrowed brown glare and her dirty blonde Boot Camp haircut, and Leah felt herself beginning to fairly long to see what exactly she was reaching behind her for, the roots of all Leah’s brand new dental accoutrements set aching at once. With the bad voice whispering yet again, up and down the dry rivers of her veins, Yeah, go on ahead and whip it out; get it over with, ’cause I’m tired of talking. Sun’s up, my head hurts, and better yet, I’m—I’m just, just so, so—damn—

  (hungry)

  But: This is NOT ME, she told herself. Not while I can still refuse to let it be.

  Then added, out loud, like she was arguing the point, “That stuff’s not real, though, is it—not outside of… True Blood, and whatever? It just doesn’t happen.”

  The taller woman cocked her head slightly, neither confirming nor denying—though one tattooed shoulder did hitch just a tick, automatically, a movement perhaps only kept from blossoming into a full shrug by some arcane version of politeness.

  “Not usually,” she agreed. “But sometimes. This time.”

  “But… ”

  Now it was the smaller woman’s turn to shake her head, punchtuating it with a snort. “Just skip the counselling, Sami,” she told her sister. “You were right the first go-’round—she gets it, just doesn’t like it, ’cause who would? Now get your whammy on, and let’s do what’s gotta be done.”

  “Dionne—”

  “Samaire.” Turning to Leah, she said,“You got a bad case of the deads, kid, and it stops here, before you start treating the next diner’s staff like your private buffet. Nothing personal.”

  “Dee, Jesus.”

  “What about him? Oh, that’s ri
ght, not here. As usual.” The thing behind her back was a machete, carving fluid through the air, already nicking Leah’s throat; Leah felt the creature inside her leap, vision red-flushing, and knew her teeth must be out, lips torn at their corners. But Dionne didn’t flinch, barely turning to yell, over her shoulder, “DO it, goddamnit, ‘less you wanna be doing me next!”

  (Yes yes and FAST do it FAST)

  Something caught Leah then, square in the back of the skull, like a hook; it lifted her up and soothed her slack at the same time, a novocaine epidural. She was sewn tight, paralyzed, unable to fire a single nerve—the voice, the hunger, all drained away, replaced by a smooth, warm feeling of peace. Behind Dionne, she saw Samaire’s long fingers flicker, drawing symbols on the air. Her many tattoos were glowing now, right through her clothes, each too-black line somehow rimmed in vitriolic green and sulphur yellow-touched at the same time, like light reflected off a shaken snake-scale.

  I didn’t ask for this. Yet even as she willed her lips to shape the words, failing miserably to bring them to completion, she already knew Samaire could hear them anyhow. And thought she heard, in reply—echoing, as it were, from another part of her too-full head entirely—

  No. No one ever does.

  Seeing the cores of the tall girl’s eyes twist sidelong, little black swastikas at the center of two pearl-gray pools. And letting her own drift shut, letting go of everything at once; barely feeling the pain as Dionne’s blade slashed through her spine, severing her new-made vampire head with one quick, expert blow.

  Take the night shift and lose your life, maybe your freaking soul; wake up with a killer hangover and a cannibal thirst, catapulted into a world where the best you could hope for was somebody like Dionne and Samaire Cornish to put you down before you did the same to anybody else. That was their cross to bear in a nutshell, Dee knew: the family curse, spelled out coast to coast in monster-blood and mayhem, still-live warrants for prison break and felony murder notwithstanding. But at least they could trust the Maartensbecks to use all that career vampire-killer money of theirs to cover their tracks for them this time, supposedly, so long as they returned the favor…