by Mary Hughes
“We’ve learned the strangest things can hide electronic bugs.” Twyla pointed at the bag of chocolates and then at herself. I tossed her one and she unwrapped it thoughtfully. “Holiday used the v-word?”
“Well, no, not the word. He said he was a ‘night person’, wink-wink nudge-nudge. And that Camille was a ‘night person’ too. Guys, enough with the secrecy.” I crossed my arms. What had the world come to when the ad man was more truthful than my friends? “Since I’m battling Camille for the freedom of Meiers Corners, stop pussyfooting around and give me some useful facts. What did Bo mean, not another one? And what did Camille mean by Alliance boys?”
“Lotta questions in those questions.” Twyla tossed the chocolate in her mouth. “You have the time?”
“No.” Bo underscored the word with a jabbed finger. “The more people we tell, the more likely the secret will get out.”
Nikos raised a brow. “Have we a choice?”
“I vote we tell her,” Elena said.
“Me too,” Twyla chimed in.
“This is not a republic.” Bo’s dentures were getting kinda pointy and his eyes glinted a peeved violet. “I said no. We’re not telling her anything.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll just phone Dolly Barton.”
Silence. Four sets of eyes swung to me and glued, the mix of expressions from awed to annoyed to amused.
Dolly Barton wasn’t a vampire, at least I didn’t think so. But as the queen of gossip, she was a real threat. Nobody knew more about the lifeblood of Meiers Corners than Dolly.
Although to say Dolly was a gossip was like saying an MRI machine was a magnet with aspirations. Dolly knew everything that went on, sometimes even before it happened. Some people said Police Chief Dirkson got most of his arrest tips from Dolly during his weekly mustache wax.
Bo folded his arms, his gaze slashed to the side in disgust.
Elena gave the nod to Twyla. “Tell her.”
“I wanted to explain long ago,” Twyla said. “But if the secret gets out, the v-guys are as good as dead. In a manner of speaking.”
“I’m not going to blab. I just want to know what’s going on. What did Camille’s ‘not another one’ mean?”
“That’s the rare human who’s immune to v-guy compulsion, which is a hypnotic combination of eyes and voice, though some older ones can do it by voice alone.”
Elena said, “All of us spouses are mostly immune to it. Well, we’d have to be to have a chance of a true relationship with a particular v-guy.”
“Okay.” I didn’t get the strange music in her voice when she said “a particular v-guy” but I was going for the executive summary right now. I’d get to the refinements later. “And the Alliance?”
“Bo can explain that one best.” Elena struggled to sit up.
“I don’t agree with this.” He helped her up. “I’m not going to be an active part of it.”
“You refuse to make me into a v-gal. The least you can do is give Synnove a few facts.”
“That’s different.” He narrowed his eyes at her.
She snared a bottle of oil from her beach bag and held it out to him. “Isn’t.”
“Is.” He held his scalding stare a moment longer before sighing and taking the oil. “It’s too dangerous to turn you now. Hell, it’s too dangerous, period.”
“Language, Viking.” She grinned and pointed to her swollen belly. He started rubbing oil onto her skin. A pleasant coconut odor filled the air.
“Heck, then.” He turned to me but kept rubbing. “To make my wife happy, I’ll tell you. But if you ever spill it—”
“I won’t.”
“You’d better not. The Alliance is the Iowa Alliance, a group of us who hold common ideals, the most important of which is that humans are our equals. I stand for the Alliance in Meiers Corners.”
“Why the ‘Iowa’ Alliance?” Again, I’d get the humans-as-equals later.
“That’s where Kai Elias, the Ancient One who leads the Alliance, lives.”
“Okay. And everyone belongs?”
“No. Not everyone holds our ideals. The Chicago Coterie would treat humans like blood cattle. The Alliance stands against the Coterie.”
“Great.” I rolled my eyes. “V-guy politics.”
“No.” Nikos stirred. “Elias stands against Nosferatu. We follow.”
Nosferatu? That shocked me straight. “What does Nosferatu have to do with…oh damn. Nosferatu leads this Chicago Coterie dealie?”
Twyla said, “Nikos thinks the dispute between Elias and Nosy is more personal than philosophical.”
“Like the Trojan war,” he agreed.
I wondered who starred as Helen. “Okay, it’s Elias against Nosferatu. And only the Coterie v-guys suck blood? Or do you use us for food too?” I hoped that part wasn’t true. Although the idea of Ric’s hot mouth, sucking at my neck…I shivered.
“We do,” Bo said. “But not for food. For our veins.”
“Like humans who can’t make their own blood,” Twyla said. “They take transfusions.”
“By mouth,” Nikos said.
“Really? You can’t make your own blood?” Now we were talking my field. “You guys don’t drink daily, do you? You’d have to take, what—about three pints a month?”
At that, both Bo’s and Nikos’s heads snapped toward me, weirdly fluid. Creeped me out—although not as much as Camille. Everything is relative.
But for the first time they looked at me, really looked. Even Elena gaped as if seeing me for the first time.
Twyla only grinned. “Synnove’s a doctor. Got her M.D. and everything.”
Elena blinked. “A doctor, Bo. Like I’m police.”
Bo frowned at her. Nikos cocked his head. She’d said something significant.
“Okay, I feel like there should be a whuh-whuh. What’s so good about me being almost a doctor?”
Bo said, “We used to have problems keeping v-issues from the attention of law enforcement. Elena smoothed all that over. We’ve had questions about our physiology for a long time, but no one we trusted to ask.”
“Until now,” Nikos rumbled.
“What…wait. Me?” This called for fortification, and I dug out a chocolate. Immediately two other hands went out. I tossed Twyla and Elena their own fortifications as I considered it. “Like, I’d be a v-guy doctor? I don’t think so. Research is all about sharing information. Just the opposite of v-guys and their big secret.”
“Don’t think of it as a secret,” Twyla said. “Think of it as controlled information.”
“Wiseguy.” I threw another chocolate at her. She caught it one-handed, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth with a smile. “I don’t see why we can’t say the word vampire though. It’s not like anyone’s listening—”
Bam-bam-bam.
We exchanged horrified looks. Someone was at our door.
Chapter Ten
Twyla was elected to handle things by the simple expedient of Elena and Bo nodding toward her and Nikos picking her up and depositing her in front of the kitchen door. I followed to rescue the purse I’d dropped at the door when Twyla pulled me inside.
Bam-bam-bam. Nikos growled. Whoever it was, was strong and persistent.
Cautiously, Twyla cracked the door. “Hello?”
A short, round woman with blonde hair lacquered into a beehive, a long nose, and sweeping fake eyelashes stood on the stoop. “Hello,” she said brightly. “I’m town chairperson Michelle Llynn Tiyers, two Ls, two Ls, two Ns. Confidentially, my parents wanted a unique name for me.”
Twyla smiled and nodded. I could almost hear her thoughts. Some names were unique, some parents wanted their children to grow up forever scarred.
The woman handed Twyla and me each a card. Under her name and title was a slogan that read, “Chipmunk Lake. We’re better than you think we are.”
I looked up from the card. “You look familiar.”
“You must remember me from the Miss Wisconsin pageant in ‘70…I mean
‘80…I mean ‘92. I was Miss Up North.” She pronounced it Oop Nort’. “Not to be confused with Miss Northwoods.”
“No, I don’t think so—”
“I won Preliminary Talent and Preliminary Swimsuit. The only thing I didn’t get was Miss Congeniality, but isn’t that the kiss of death.”
Twyla said, “So why—”
“Of course, that self-important little cheerleader won the state pageant. But she’s nothing now, and I’m chairperson of a whole town. And, mind you, a town that’s going places. Well, it will be if I have anything to say about it.”
“But why are you—”
“We’ve got our own Chipmunk Lake YouTube channel and everything. Why, our video of ‘Best Billy Bass Impressions’ got five hundred hits.” She put her hands on her cheeks and waved them like fish gills. “Roll me over in the clover, roll me over, lay me down and swim upstream,” she warbled. “Such fun. Confidentially, I think we’re going to get picked up by America’s Got Talent.”
“Whyareyouhere?” Twyla yelled.
Michelle Llynn blinked. “Why, to welcome you big city folk to our little home. Here’s a coupon for 25% off all fireworks and worms at Chipmunk Lake Supplies.” She handed Twyla a paper. “Make sure Roy puts them in separate bags. Confidentially, some of the fireworks are hair-trigger. It can make a mess.”
Inside my purse, my cell phone deedled. Saved. I fumbled getting the thing out and nearly missed the call. I’m not saying I carry a lot of junk in my day purse but in a pinch I can use it as a traction counterweight.
Walking away for privacy, I hit talk. “Hello?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you.” Ric’s voice was deeper than I remembered, richer. “I need to see you. I’d like to take you to dinner. My treat.”
I glanced at the living room where two sets of overly inquisitive eyes stared at me like cats or dogs waiting to get fed. I schooled my voice into nonchalance. “Twyla’s planning dinner here.”
“My treat,” he said again. That deep, coaxing tone slid over my skin like silky lotion. “I have reservations for a private balcony at Rustermann’s.”
He’d named only the most expensive restaurant ever, the kind of place run by a rock-star chef where there are three menu choices, each a signature special, memorized by the waiter with prices that are never mentioned because if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
“I’m in,” I said. “If only because my cuisine for the last eight years has been macaroni and cheese and vending machine pretzels. And with my student loans I won’t have anything better for the next twenty.”
“Excellent.” Strangely he sounded, not triumphant but almost relieved. Like he expected me to say no.
Who said no to gorgeous Ric Holiday? Well, me. But the fact that he’d heard “no” more than once was another clue there was more to him than met the eye.
“I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”
“I have a better idea. I’ll meet you there.” I was staying with a couple of real live vampires. I had no idea what would happen if Ric came into their territory.
Really. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that Twyla would have been all over him, pumping him for embarrassing details.
“You’re not driving alone. Camille—”
“Doesn’t know where I’m coming from. And unless your phone is bugged, she won’t know I’m coming into town at all.”
“My phone isn’t bugged. She could get wind of this in other ways though.”
“Fine, then I’ll get one of the guys here to accompany me, okay?”
“Guys?”
“Twyla’s and Elena’s. They’re more than a match for Camille.”
“Well—”
“I’ll meet you there.” To forestall any more arguments, I hung up. Then I went to rescue Twyla and Nikos.
“Roy is my second cousin twice removed,” Michelle Llynn was saying. “His son by my third cousin’s daughter Michelle Lluane—two Ls two Ls—is named Craigg—two Gs—and he minds the general store—”
“Sorry to interrupt.” Mostly sorry. But from the glazed, slightly ill look—two Ls, two Os—on Twyla’s face and the low, dangerous growl coming from Nikos, it was an emergency. Although now I knew why Michelle Lynn looked familiar. Everyone was related. “Our contact in Minneapolis wants to meet with me. Could I get a ride into the city?”
“Ooh, Minneapolis,” Michelle Llynn said. “I could drive—”
“I need a few things,” Twyla cut in quickly. “Nikos can take you.”
“Right.” Nikos hustled Michelle Llynn out the door.
“But I—”
“Thanks. Bye.” He shut the door in her face. We all sagged in the silence.
Twyla said, “Nice save.”
“Um, it wasn’t a save. I’m having dinner with Holiday.”
Her eyebrows shot into her hairline.
“I’m sure he only wants to cover more sales stuff.”
“You keep telling yourself that, honey. I’ll get my shopping list. Nikos can drive you to Minneapolis, drop you off, do the shopping, then pick you up.”
The nice thing about being tall was that the few chocolates I’d eaten hadn’t made much of a dent in my appetite. I donned my business skirt but borrowed a soft lilac blouse from Twyla that gave the skirt an evening social cast.
And maybe I snatched a matching purple satin bikini underwear set while she wasn’t looking.
Rustermann’s sat atop a downtown skyscraper, a lush dining room with a large bank of windows overlooking the beauty of the city at night. But instead of one of the tables, the maitre d’ led me along a back corridor and out a door.
I stepped onto a small balcony, open to the sweet summer air, with a single intimate table set for two.
Ric was waiting.
He smiled the moment he saw me, a complex mix of relief, boyish excitement, male interest and pure masculine sex appeal. He rose and pulled out the other chair for me. “I’m glad you made it here all right.”
As I sat, he slid the chair smoothly under me. Very nice manners, this vampire had. “So, more coaching?”
“No. I wanted to spend time with you. Try the scallops. I’ve heard they’re exquisite.”
Then, to my utter shock, throughout a long, flawlessly served, superbly cooked meal, he set about entertaining me. He regaled me with humorous stories of the clients he’d snared, and strangely, also clients who got away. He told both with equal amusement, as if it wasn’t the money that counted, but the game.
Food disappeared from his plate. When I asked him about it he simply smiled. I never saw him eating. The doctor in me wondered where, if he didn’t eat, he got his energy.
He didn’t try to seduce me overtly. But the entire meal was an exquisitely sensual experience, almost a seduction in itself. The thick silk napkin slid fluidly over my knees. The heavy brushed metal cutlery was cool to my heated touch. The scent of hothouse flowers, roses and orchids and freesia, came with each quickened breath. Wineglasses of thinnest crystal shivered against my lips. The wines—a different one with each course, from crisp white to full-bodied red with hints of oak and pepper—made me light-headed, almost giddy.
The food on the translucent china was a delight to both the eye and the mouth. I dined on everything from creamed spinach tortes to pan-seared scallops almost as big as my fist. The pièce de résistance was the ten-layer chocolate cake drizzled with raspberries and sin.
Gradually, under the spell of rich elegance and delightful company, I became so totally seduced that I forgot my troubles, forgot even The Incident.
Sipping a fruity dessert wine, I eyed Ric. It wasn’t only the meal, I decided. It was the man who made the meal possible. Vampire. Whatever.
He’d somehow known I needed the luxury of time away from my issues, forgetting about my mental and emotional problems in sheer physical delight, and simply set about making it happen.
A bandage instead of a cure, the illusion of happiness, but still lovely.
&
nbsp; If only illusion would hold up for a lifetime.
I was pleasantly sated and sporting a slight glow when I stood. “I have to go. It’s been three hours and a guy like Nikos can only do so much shopping.”
“Before you do.” He came and took my face in his hands, as lightly as if I were precious. “May I kiss you?” I could only nod.
He dipped his head and brushed my lips, so softly, so tenderly, my insides melted. It was the perfect kiss to end the perfect date.
With the illusion of the perfect man.
He escorted me to the door. “You look delectable in purple, by the way.”
“My blouse? It’s lilac…” I looked down. The top buttons of the blouse had come undone, exposing a lot of me cupped in purple satin.
“Sorry.” He grinned and rebuttoned my blouse. “Fingers slipped.”
Okay, that made him more real. Somehow I liked it better.
Back at the cabin, Twyla tried to pry details of the dinner out of me and I parried with questions about v-guys. Now that the secret was broached, they told me some amazing, startling things…things that spoke directly to the physician in me.
It was after two a.m. when Nikos gathered Twyla for a walk around the lake and I finally crawled into bed. I’d just drifted off to sleep when a clank popped my eyes open. I lay in bed, listening to a few hoots, rustles and other non-city animal sounds.
Then a hissed swear.
More clanks, scrapes and swears. I kept absolutely still and tried to gauge where the noise was coming from. I couldn’t quite tell.
But after another, louder swear, I could tell who. That was the troll who had tried to stop me on the bridge this morning. I got up, crept to the window and nudged open a peephole between the blinds—and got a great view of the log siding of cabin next door. I dropped the blinds and tiptoed out of the bedroom into the kitchen and peered out the back door.
The cabins had a central garbage and recycling area across the drive from cabin five. Sure enough, the troll crouched next to a bin, a lumpy black plastic bag lying on the gravel next to him. Just taking out the garbage, though it was rather late for that. I thought about asking him what he was doing, remembered his ominous shouting to stay out of the woods and decided not to go socialize.
