Love Bites

by Adrienne Barbeau

  The implications, on the other hand, I should have taken seriously. Since when did I bring a semistranger into my parents’ home for a visit, let alone on a major holiday? What did this mean? I’d dated Jenny for nine months before we ran the family gauntlet, and even then I’d only started with my mother.

  Ovsanna was having a major effect on me, fangs and all.

  I wondered if she could control my mind. Didn’t Dracula do that in one of those movies? Maybe she’d put a spell on me right from the beginning. From the first time I’d interviewed her. Maybe she’s got bad breath and body odor and I can’t tell because she’s messed with my senses. Do vampyres have magic powers? I mean, apart from the transformation and teeth thing?

  I’m a detective. I’ll do a little detecting and find out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I called Peter to tell him I needed a little more time to get ready. I didn’t tell him why. I didn’t want him to think I was battling monsters on a weekly basis. And I definitely didn’t want him thinking I needed him to save my life again. I should be able to take care of myself.

  But until I knew who this werebeast was and why he was after me, I didn’t want to involve a man I was hoping would stick around. I knew from past experience that creature attacks and romance don’t mix. I lost Lord Byron that way. As fascinated as he was with my Armenian heritage—he even learned to read our language so he could write about us—once he saw me take on a werebeast, he turned tail and disappeared. It didn’t matter that I’d sliced and diced the were to bits and made sure no leftovers remained.

  Peter didn’t seem to be afraid. In fact, from the way he’d asked me out, I suspected my genus was an attraction.

  We’d been standing in front of the charred remains of Lilith’s house in Palm Springs. The gelatinous ooze drying on my boots was none other than one of my former lovers, a famous film star and one of my clan—the Vampyres of Hollywood. All the life-threatening wounds I’d sustained at the hands of the Night Hag had healed almost instantly, but I was covered with ash and mud, my leather pants were shredded, and my hair looked like a used Brillo pad. Not the kind of thing to inspire a dinner invitation. Or take home to mother.

  “Do vamp— Do . . . do you . . . celebrate Christmas?” he had asked. Why he’d thought of Christmas, or me and Christmas together, at that moment is beyond me—maybe because the fireplace chimney was the only thing left standing?

  “Are you asking about vampyres in general? Are we Christian—is that what you want to know?” I couldn’t keep from smiling; I swear he was actually squirming.

  “No, no. I mean, well, sure, I’d like to know that, too, sometime. There’s plenty I want to know, but not right now. This definitely isn’t the place. No, I mean, you . . . do you have plans for Christmas Eve?”

  “Nothing specific. I’ll probably go to the office for a few hours.” I unstuck a blob of drying dhampir from my jeans—it looked like part of an ear—and threw it into the ash.

  “Come have dinner with us.” He had such a nice smile.

  “Us?”

  “My family. My mother and dad. And a couple of sisters and brothers. Do something normal after the horror you’ve just been through. We start in the late afternoon and go all night. It’ll be very casual and a lot of fun. No paparazzi, I promise—not even an Instamatic.”

  I laughed. I didn’t know what to say. Was he asking me out on a date?

  “My mother’s a great cook. Do you like to eat Italian?”

  I looked down at my former lover’s crust on my boots. He’d been Italian. Rudolph Valentino. I should never have turned him; his blood had been as disgusting as his personality became. “Uh, Peter . . . I’m not much on eating. Or drinking, for that matter. I can explain it all to you another time, but I don’t think—”

  “Look, you don’t have to eat. You’re an actress—no one expects you to eat. No one expects you to do anything normal. You can do whatever you do when you’re at any kind of party. You must have something you do to keep your secret. It’s not a sit-down dinner anyway, we all just fill our plates and hang out. No one will notice. Just come. You and Maral, if you want.”

  That was nice of him. Maral is my personal assistant. She’s worked for me for nearly ten years, and we’re rarely apart. She makes sure of that. Just days before, Peter had been investigating her, wondering if an incident she’d been involved in when she was younger had anything to do with the case he was working on. He’d cleared her of suspicion, but she’d been pretty snotty to him since. She was going to be even nastier when she found out he’d asked me to his parents’ house and she couldn’t go. Her mother was having trouble with her younger brother, and she’d begged Maral to spend Christmas with them back home in Louisiana. Maral doesn’t think of it as home anymore—as far as she’s concerned, her home is with me—but she couldn’t disappoint her momma. She was flying to the bayou early on Christmas Eve.

  I accepted his invitation. From the moment the day before when I’d accidentally cut him and had had to tend to his bleeding hand, I’d been seduced by the sight and smell of his blood. Watching him deal with everything we’d been through since had only heightened my estimation of him. He seemed like a good man. Honest. Capable. And he didn’t take himself too seriously.

  He had offered me his wrist when I needed it. Now, once again, I could feel the Thirst coming on me. This time it had nothing to do with need and everything to do with attraction.

  I put the suede pants back on the hanger. Time to show a little leg.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I carried all the presents out to the car, went back and grabbed my jacket, and locked the house. It was a beautiful night, crisp and clear, with a quarter-moon showing. The wintersweet had its first spicy-scented blooms. I stood for a moment just to take it in. I had plenty of time. Ovsanna had called to say she’d been delayed. She didn’t say what had happened, but I got the impression she’d had to chew someone out.

  I left SuzieQ’s gifts on her doorstep. Her shades were drawn, which meant she was still asleep. She works nights. She’d said she might stop by my mom’s later in the evening, but I wasn’t counting on it; she’s flaky when it comes to social engagements. She’s been my tenant for the past five years, renting the guesthouse in the back of my three-bedroom Beverly Hills bungalow. Over the years, she’s become a good friend. My closest friend, probably, now that Jenny was gone.

  SuzieQ is an exotic dancer. She dances with snakes—that kind of exotic dancer—and she’s really good at it. She keeps them in cages in her big front closet, which sort of freaked me out at first, but I guess I’ve gotten used to it. She barely bothers to close the door anymore when I go over there.

  I hoped she’d like the gift I’d bought her. It was a signed first edition of some coffee table book she’d been talking about. Dancing Women. It set me back $135. Plus, I’d gotten her a turquoise cashmere sweater. I knew she’d like that.

  There was no traffic on Sunset, so the drive to Ovsanna’s took ten minutes. She lives high up on Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air, in a pretty magnificent Spanish estate. The gates alone must have cost half my yearly salary. They look like the Moors designed them a couple of centuries ago.

  I had the code to the gate (thanks to a paparazzo named Steady Eddie who’d been hanging around Ovsanna’s during the Cinema Slayer case), but it’s against my cop nature to let on everything I know. Plus, I didn’t want to start the afternoon with Ovsanna thinking I’d been spying on her. So I pressed the button on the intercom and waited for the massive iron barriers to swing open.

  She was standing outside the front door when I pulled up. She had her back to me and was staring into the darkness. What a great ass. It was just about perfect. Then she turned around and smiled, and my heart started pounding. I mean really. I could feel it. She looked fantastic. All that black curly hair and pale skin and those dark eyes. She was wearing a clingy, cream-colored dress made out of some sweater material that stopped just above her knees. And legs. Great legs.
This was the first time I’d seen them; she’d had on jeans the day I’d interviewed her and leather pants the day of the . . . well, whatever we were calling what happened in Palm Springs.

  “Hey,” I said, scintillating conversationalist that I am. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” she answered. “Merry Christmas.”

  “That’s right. You’re right. It’s almost Christmas. Merry Christmas to you, too.” Boy, we were off to a brilliant start. “Are you ready?”

  She had a tall gift bag in one hand. “I wasn’t sure what your parents might like, so I took a chance. . . . Do they drink wine?”

  “They’re Italian, Ovsanna. At least my mom’s side is. They drink wine like you drink—”

  Oh shit, I thought. This could be a long night.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Peter’s parents’ house was charming. On a corner lot, with a huge pepper tree shading the driveway and a white picket fence all around it, covered in climbing rosebushes. The fence wouldn’t keep out a wolf—hell, my twelve-foot wall hadn’t—but I didn’t think there was much danger I’d been followed. Still, I needed to keep my eyes—and ears and nose—open. And not let on to Peter what was worrying me.

  There were more roses lining the brick walkway and a well-tended lawn. The house was two stories, with dormer windows above and a big bay window to the right of the front door. White wooden shingles and red shutters. Santa Claus was driving his reindeer and sleigh across the black shake roof. As we pulled up, I could see smoke coming out of the chimney.

  Cars lined both sides of the two streets bordering the house. I pretended to notice them while I scanned the yards in the neighborhood. I smelled a long-gone skunk, but nothing lupine. No werebeast in hiding.

  “It looks like someone’s having a party,” I said. “Look at all the cars.”

  Three little kids came screaming out the front door and raced for Peter’s legs. “Uncle Peter! Uncle Peter!” The smallest one threw herself into his arms. “Did you bring us presents?!”

  Peter said, “That’s not a party, Ovsanna. That’s us. Just my sisters and brothers. Hey, Sofia, Merry Christmas!” He swung her into the air, and she screamed in delight. “You know I brought you presents! Gobs and gobs of ’em.” He freed one arm to pick up one of the little boys. “Merry Christmas, Stefano.”

  “Who’re you?” The second little boy looked up at me with the biggest brown eyes I’d ever seen. He could have modeled for one of those Keane paintings back in the 60s. “Who’s she, Uncle Peter? Is she your girlfriend?”

  “No, Jeremy, she’s my friend. This is Ovsanna.”

  “That’s a funny name. I can’t say that name. Did she bring us presents, too?”

  “Listen, buddy, I’ll bet there are plenty of presents under the tree. And there’s a bunch in the trunk of my car. Can you help carry them in?”

  Peter put Sofia and Stefano on the ground, and all three children ran for his Jaguar. “Just press the button on the back of the car and you’ll see them all.” He turned to me with a rueful grin on his face. “Sorry about that. I should have warned you. Imagine an Olive Garden restaurant ad with better food, and you’ve got my family. Think you can handle it?”

  “I don’t know. I barely survived the Night of the Living Dead Smackdown we just went through. Is it going to be much worse?”

  Peter laughed. “Only the noise level. Oh, and maybe my aunt Adelaide.”

  He was right. As we entered the house, the noise was overwhelming. I damped down my hearing instantly. This was one instance when my heightened senses would only annoy me. Thirty or forty people screamed at one another from across the room. Bobby Helms was singing “Jingle Bell Rock” on the stereo, five children shrieked in a game of hide-and-seek tag, two more wrestled over the back of a sofa, and a baby covered in spaghetti sauce was pounding away on her high chair, with a spoon in one fist and a plastic sippy cup in the other. The decibel level rivaled a rock concert.

  Until little Jeremy ran past us with packages in his hands and screamed, “Uncle Peter’s here with a lady and she’s got a funny name, but she’s not his girlfriend and there’s lots of presents in his car!” Every adult in the room turned to stare. And as soon as they recognized me, the room went totally quiet.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I should have thought of it before I walked into my mother’s house with a movie star. I was so busy worrying about how to deal with what Ovsanna was that I didn’t think to tell anyone who she was. I hadn’t even told my mother I was bringing someone with me. My family’s pretty cool, and God knows most of them have been around celebrities at the family catering truck for years. If I’d warned them in advance, they wouldn’t have reacted like thirty-five rubes outside Grauman’s Chinese. Instead, we were faced with dead silence and a lot of dropped jaws. I think my showing up with anyone was as much a conversation stopper as the fact that the woman I’d brought was who she was. But as soon as my mother crossed the room with her arms outstretched and gave Ovsanna a kiss on both cheeks, everyone went back to their normal screaming and the conversations picked up where they’d left off.

  My mother launched into her story of meeting Ovsanna’s mother when Mom was catering the set food for The Twilight Zone. Mom couldn’t get over how young Anna Moore had looked at the time, even though it was toward the end of her career, and how much Ovsanna looked now the way her mom did then. Mom dragged Ovsanna off to meet my older brother, Connor, and two older sisters, all partners in the family business my mother started back in the 1960s: King’s Catering—The King of Caterers.

  Then Connor introduced her to his wife, and Suzanne and Callie introduced their husbands, and then the cousins and then my younger sister, Quincy, and her partner, Deirdre. My uncle handed her a glass of red, and someone grabbed a picture off the mantel to show her my other sister, Rosalie, who’s hiking the Himalayas, and by the time I caught up with her again, my father had her corraled out in his workshop, where he was showing off his handmade chess sets. He’s a pretty talented woodworker.

  “Peter, these pieces are remarkable. I love this one especially. Your dad did all the famous silent film stars—and look, he’s even got my mother as a queen.” She had the oddest glint in her eyes, and when I looked down at my father’s latest collection of carvings, I saw he’d used Orson Welles as a king. Orson was one of Ovsanna’s vampyres, and the last time I’d seen him, just two weeks before, he was a werebull with huge, curling horns—and he wasn’t a carving.

  “Well, my wife was a big fan of your mom’s, Ms. Moore. She’s the one who suggested this whole set. They sell a whole lot better than the presidents. I don’t know if Peter’s told you, but Angela has a big collection of movie memorabilia. I used some photos she has of your mom and Mr. Welles to copy the likenesses.”

  Ovsanna picked up the rook. It was Peter Lorre, another of her Vampyres of Hollywood. If my father only knew what he’d chosen to re-create, he could devise a whole new marketing plan.

  “I’d like to buy it, Seth,” she said, admiring the expression Dad had captured around the eyes. “Not only because it’s my mother, but because some of these actors you’ve carved were friends of hers. I knew them when I was growing up.” She put Peter Lorre down and picked up a pawn. Gloria Swanson. I wondered. Another vampyre? Ovsanna gestured to the whole set. “I’d really love to have this in my home. And you have to call me Ovsanna. Please.”

  _________

  Ma had food on the table from the time we walked in the door: antipasti, stuffed mushrooms, fried artichoke hearts, marinated mozzarella, clams oreganata, breadsticks, Parmesan crisps, roasted peppers, caponata, tapenade, aioli, chips and dip for the kids, and a wheel of provolone. At seven thirty, she served the first course—farfalle in pesto, linguine in white clam sauce, gnocchi in red sauce, eggplant Parm, manicotti, and vegetarian lasagna for my cousin Camille. Of course, Ovsanna didn’t know that was just the first course, and when the turkey and dressing came out, she looked at me as though we were the ones who weren’t q
uite human.

  It was all buffet. Everyone was so busy piling up food, no one noticed when Ovsanna put down her plate and excused herself to go to the bathroom. By the time she came back, Aunt Adelaide and my mother were going at it.

  “Where’s the thirteen fishes, Angela?”

  “Nobody eats them all, Addie, I only made seven this time.”

  “How can you only make seven? You gotta have thirteen! What, you wanna burn in hell?” Adelaide is my ma’s older sister. Way older.

  “It’s a stupid custom, Addie, and it’s gonna go the way of purgatory and fish on Friday. And that last saint they decided wasn’t really a saint.”

  “Madre di Dio!”

  My sister Suzanne chimed in. “Oh, Aunt Addie, it doesn’t have to be thirteen. It’s just got to be an uneven number. Look, Ma’s got baccalà, clams in the shell, white clam sauce, scampi, peppers and anchovies, fried oysters, lobster fra diavolo—it’s enough already!”

  Adelaide’s face was getting blotchy. I couldn’t tell if it was the wine she was drinking or a stroke. “Basta! There were twelve apostles and Jesus, that’s thirteen at the Last Supper, there’s gotta be thirteen fishes! Let me tell you, Angela, if Ma were alive, God rest her soul, she’d be turning in her grave!” It was the wine.

  Ma said, “What the hell does the Last Supper have to do with Jesus’s birth? We’re celebrating Christmas, not the end of his life!”