by Pearl Cleage
“Now they don’t want to go,” Judy Hughes said. “But you know what? Nobody twisted their arms, Mr. Hamilton, just like nobody twisted ours.”
She fiddled with her cup for a minute then put it down. “The truth is, Stan Hodges owes me. He owes me big time.”
“And why is that?” Blue said quietly.
“Because he stole my research.” She practically spat out the words. “Freshman year, we were lab partners. He was good at chemistry, but not as good as I was, so the professor asked if I would tutor him so he wouldn’t lose his scholarship. He said he really appreciated it, and asked me a lot of questions about my work since I was already doing independent research. I was trying to get a grant so I could stay in school and he knew that, so when I shared my research with him, he was always so interested and supportive. And you know what he did? He stole everything and used it to submit an early submission grant to the same foundation I was trying for and he got it! When my proposal came up for review, they not only turned me down, they cautioned me about claiming another student’s work as my own.”
“Why didn’t you show them your original research?” Regina asked. “Wouldn’t that have proven you were the rightful owner?”
“There was a fire in the lab where I had been working,” Judy said slowly. “Everything was destroyed. There was some talk of arson, but nobody could ever prove anything. I couldn’t pay my fees so I had to drop out of school and get a job.”
There was silence for a minute, and then Blue had a question. “Do you consider what he did to be a capital offense?”
“I don’t know what kind of offense it is,” Judy said. “I know I wanted to be a doctor and now I’m working at Macy’s. When he put my name down on that contract, we were friends. I never would have considered saying a word against him. But after the way he treated me? I don’t care what happens to him.”
“I don’t think you would say that if you knew all the facts,” Blue said. “There’s no way to make this any easier, so I’m just going to tell you what I know. This person who came to see all of you with that contract you signed is not a woman. She’s a vampire.”
Regina had expected them to recoil, maybe even to faint or scream or start calling on God for protection, but they didn’t. They just sat there, waiting, as if Blue had said, “She likes to eat at the Waffle House.”
“Do you understand what we’re saying?” Regina said, wondering if they were in shock. “She’s a vampire!”
Still no surprise. They nodded slowly, but no one said or did anything. Did they need Blue to spell it out, she wondered? Did they already know about the sex-slavery part of it? Even worse, did they know about the head-biting thing?
“I don’t think you understand what’s going to happen to these boys,” Regina said. “These vampires are looking for smart men to impregnate them. That’s why they came to Morehouse.”
“They got robbed,” Kendra muttered, rolling her eyes at Jennifer.
“And then when they’re finished with them, when they’ve had babies to keep themselves going for a while, they’re going to bite their heads off.”
She said each word slowly and distinctly. Alice Smith shuddered a little and closed her eyes, but Judy didn’t blink.
“I thought vampires drank your blood,” she said, looking at Regina.
That’s when Regina understood. She drew in her breath so sharply that she heard it herself. “You already know about the head biting and you’re still not going to speak up for them?”
In the silence, Mrs. Solomon spoke up quietly. “I have something to add.”
They all turned in her direction.
“I’m here because Jackson Stevens put my name down. I’m seventy-six years old, on a fixed income, so I rent out half my duplex to students to help with my expenses. I rented the place to Jackson the second semester of his freshman year. He told me he had just inherited some money and he wanted to pay six months in advance. The place had been empty for a while and, to tell the truth, I was having some problems making ends meet. Everything is up so high these days.”
“And did he pay in advance?” Regina interrupted Louise gently before they got sidetracked into the details.
“Yes, he did, and I made some improvements to the place, and then he paid some more in advance and things seemed to be working out fine. I didn’t bother him and he didn’t bother me, but then one night real late, I heard somebody hollering next door at Jackson’s, shouting and carrying on something awful. Well, I am a respectable woman, so I put on my robe and I went outside and rang the bell. I could hear his voice, but there was a woman there, too. She sounded like she was crying. When they heard the bell, it got real quiet. Jackson came to the door. He didn’t open it very wide, but over his shoulder, I could see the place was all torn up, broken things lying around like they’d been throwing stuff. And I said, What’s going on? And he said she got mad about a text he got from some other girl and went crazy jealous and jumped on him. Where is she? I said, and he said she was fine, just too embarrassed to come out because she’s not dressed. So I told him to take care of his business with a little more decorum, and I went back to my side of the house and went back to bed.”
“Go on,” Regina said.
“Well, he paid another six months in advance just when my taxes were coming due and I really needed that money, so I was glad to get it. But then he started hitting them.”
“Hitting them?” Blue’s voice was hard and cold.
She nodded. “I never actually saw it, but I heard enough, and I saw a couple of them afterward. Big ol’ sunglasses on their face, like that’s going to cover everything. He used to bounce them off the walls, sounded like to me, but seems like there was always another one to come in whenever he sent one packing. That’s the part I never understood.” She ran her hands over her hair and patted it nervously. “Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. You know how it is when you know something, you can’t just pretend to yourself that you don’t know it, even if you want to. So I just asked him to move out. He really raised a ruckus, too, but I couldn’t take it anymore, even if I did need the money, especially when he said he wanted me to pay back everything he’d paid in advance. That money been gone, Mrs. Hamilton. You know how it is with everything so high.”
“I understand. Go on.”
“Well, a couple weeks later, Ms. Mayflower came by to tell me Jackson had listed me as some sort of beneficiary and handed me fifty thousand just for signing something.” She looked around at the others who were nodding at her. “So I figured he was sorry for how he’d been acting, and I signed.”
Regina looked at Jerome Smith’s grandmother, who was the only one among them who hadn’t spoken yet. “What about you, Mrs. Smith? Are you really prepared to let them take Jerome?”
“This is the hardest thing I ever had to do,” Mrs. Smith said softly, as every head turned in her direction. “But I am alone in this world. I gave that boy the best years of my life, taking in laundry and catching the bus out to Buckhead to clean up after these white folks whenever I could get the work. I had already raised six of my own, but I didn’t mind doing it. I knew Jerome was a bright child and he deserved a chance, so I got another job cleaning up one of those office towers downtown, and I sent him to the same private school where the smart white kids went and he made the honor roll and the dean’s list and every other list they got. And when I’d come home bone tired, he’d rub my feet and tell me how much he appreciated everything I was doing and how he was going to take care of everything as soon as he graduated and got a job and then I’d never have to work again. I was really glad to hear it because my heart wasn’t so strong anymore and my doctor told me I needed to stop working, but how could I? After high school, Jerome needed money for college. He only got a partial scholarship to Morehouse—he wouldn’t even consider Georgia State!—but no matter how much I worked, we just couldn’t save enough.”
“Was he working, too?” Blue said.
Kendra snorted and tos
sed her ponytail. “Not likely.”
“I didn’t want him to,” Mrs. Smith said quickly. “He needed to study.”
Kendra rolled her eyes.
“Go on,” Regina said.
“But then once he got to Morehouse, he got a scholarship—he wouldn’t tell me from who—and he changed.”
Her voice cracked a little and Louise Solomon reached over to pat her hand. “Take your time, honey.”
“He stopped coming home to see me, and when he did, he didn’t have a good word to say. Finally, he said he was too busy to keep coming just to sit around with me and said he’d send some money when he could.”
“Did he?” Regina said.
“He sent me forty-two dollars. That was it. I didn’t know what I was going to do. That’s when that tall woman came to see me. When she told me about the money, I almost cried. I figured it was his way of making it up for how he’d treated me, and even if it wasn’t, no way I was in a position to look a gift horse in the mouth.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “I’m an old woman, Mr. Hamilton. I didn’t abandon that boy. He abandoned me.”
The accusation hung in the air and Regina tried to come up with something that could refute it, but she couldn’t.
“I know it sounds awful, Mrs. Hamilton, but look at it from our point of view,” Louise said. “Each of us in our own way opened up to these boys. By blood or by love or whatever, we bound ourselves to them and tried to do right by them. But what did we get in return? Respect? Kindness? Protection?”
“Love?” Kendra said. “Did a sister ever get a little love?”
“We got none of those things,” Alice Smith said.
“What we got was lies,” Jennifer said. “And betrayals.”
“And bullshit,” Kendra added. “Don’t forget the bullshit.”
“But now,” Judy said, “you are asking us to turn down a quarter of a million dollars because these guys might have to finally take some personal responsibility for how they’re living?”
Regina looked at each of them in turn. “I’m asking you,” she said quietly, “to take a stand on the side of some flawed human beings whose bad choices should not be punishable by death.”
“Well, that’s the thing about bad choices,” Kendra said. “You can’t undo them just because they come around to bite you in the ass.”
Judy stood up then and so did Jennifer. Louise offered an arm to Alice Smith, who accepted it, and they stood up, too. Regina and Blue stood to face them. Regina had been preparing to hear about outrageous sins, apocalyptic transgressions, epic lapses of honor, but what she was hearing was so ordinary. These crimes were nothing unique or spectacular. Just the slow wearing away of affection and respect and trust and love. And once those were gone, they were gone. There was nothing more to say.
Chapter Thirty-one
A Bad Precedent
“I can’t believe they hate those boys that much,” Regina said when the last woman had climbed into the stretch limo without a backward glance so Sam could drive them home.
“They don’t hate them.” Blue pulled out a chair for her at the table where he usually sat alone. “They’re just tired of them.”
“That’s even worse!”
He poured them each a cup of espresso and sat down across from her.
“Why didn’t you talk to them harder?” she said. “Why didn’t you paint them a picture of how those boys are going to die, headless and alone, on some uncharted, vampire-infested island?”
Blue dropped a cube of sugar into her cup. He took his black.
“Because it wouldn’t have done a bit of good. If they still had enough feeling to hate them, I might have had something to work with, but when a woman is really and truly tired of a man, there’s nothing else to be said.”
Regina stirred her coffee and looked across the table at Blue. She knew he was right. He had learned that from her.
“So what are we going to do?”
He swallowed the espresso in one steaming gulp and set the cup down gently.
“Serena and her girls are coming to the benefit on Saturday night to pick up those guys,” he said. “I’ll let them come, and then we’ll take care of it.”
“During the benefit?”
“They won’t be staying until the end,” he said. “I’ll arrange to have a helicopter pick them up on the golf course at ten thirty. They’ll think it’s taking them to Hartsfield-Jackson so they can make their connection.”
The benefit was always held on the grounds of the old Lincoln Country Club. The helicopter pad at the far end of the golf course was there to accommodate Blue and his guests who required a little more privacy.
“Where is it really taking them?” Regina asked.
Blue slid his cup aside and reached across the table for her hands. “We don’t have to talk about this anymore.”
“I don’t want to talk about it any more than you do,” she said, “but anything I make up on my own is probably going to be even scarier than whatever you’ve got in mind, so why don’t you go ahead and tell me. I can take it.”
He looked at her and she could see him considering the options. Their deal was that any question she had nerve enough to ask, he had nerve enough to answer. And she was asking this one.
“All right,” he said. “There’s only one way to kill them and it hasn’t changed as long as they’ve been around. You have to drive a wooden stake through their hearts and bury them nine feet deep.”
Regina put her hands over her ears without knowing she was going to. She had asked the question and he had definitely answered it. She just needed a minute of silence to absorb the words. To think about how that whole scene would play out. What would it look like? Would they run? Would they fight back? Would they bite?
Blue was watching her silently. His eyes were the clearest turquoise, as if his soul was at peace with what he was now required to do. She pulled her hands away slowly and drew in a deep breath.
“They’re not human, Gina,” he said. “I can’t let them take these guys, as sorry as they are. It sets a bad precedent.”
“I know,” she said, “but they look like women. Really tall, weird-looking women, but still the idea of you driving a stake through a woman’s heart …”
“They’re vampires, baby,” he said gently. “They’ve got to go.”
How could she tell him how much the pictures flashing through her mind frightened her? A fight to the death between the man she loved and a bunch of vampires? She found herself wondering more and more about the specifics. How big a stake? What kind of wood? She closed her eyes again.
“I’m going to call Ms. Mayflower to tell her she was right about the witnesses,” Blue said. “And tell her she can collect her boys at the benefit just as she had requested. That will be her last chance to call the whole thing off.”
Neither one of them considered that a real possibility.
“Isn’t there any other way?”
“I don’t think so,” Blue said. “But if you come up with anything, let me know.”
Chapter Thirty-two
A Good-Man Story
Wednesday
Before he met Blue and Henry at the West End News, Peachy went by Club Zebra to check on preparations for the benefit and found Iona Williams, this year’s chairperson, overseeing the delivery and proper arranging of additional tables and chairs to handle the overflow crowd. Tickets were already scarce because everybody in West End had to be there. Tables went first, then single tickets sales, and then people started begging for standing room at the bar. Then the Too Fine Five announced their intention to grace the proceedings and to drop the largest single donation the benefit committee had ever received. After that, the phones started ringing off the hook, and so many people wanted to come that Zeke Burnett, the club’s creator and proprietor, set up a giant video screen in the upstairs ballroom so that anyone who couldn’t get a seat in the club, which took up most of the building’s ground floor, could still be close enough to mix and
mingle.
Miss Iona, as everyone in West End called her, stopped giving directions to her crew long enough to hug Peachy and assure him that she was on top of things. Not that he had doubted it. When his responsibilities at Sweet Abbie’s didn’t leave him enough time to pull together the benefit, Miss Iona was the only person he called. She had been working with him from the beginning, and for the past few years it was her vision that took things to the next level.
When Peachy told her that Blue was going to add five Morehouse seniors in tuxes to her staff for the night to help with the overflow crowd, she was delighted. “They can be our official greeters,” she said, making a note in a tiny spiral pad hanging around her neck on a silver chain. “Nothing makes people feel special like being greeted by a man in a nice tuxedo. Tell Blue I owe him one.”
“How about me?” Peachy said in mock reproach. “I’m the one who’s going to have to find them some formal clothes at the last minute.”
“Stop complaining, Peachy Nolan,” she said. “You got enough white dinner jackets in your own closet to outfit half the men in West End without ever darkening the doorsteps at Genghis Formal Rentals.”
“They ain’t ready for my look yet,” Peachy said. “First they gotta master the basics.”
The basics were about all they could expect only two days out, Peachy said when he got the request, but Blue said it was important to keep the vamps as tranquil as possible. If they arrived and didn’t see the guys right away, they might suspect something was up. This way, with all five boys in plain sight, the vamps would relax and whatever went down would be a lot easier to handle. That made sense to Peachy and he called around to a few places and got things lined up for a fitting that evening and a rush job on the alternations so he could pick everything up on Saturday morning.
Once he got that straightened out, he stopped by the lumberyard and picked up six hardwood stakes, all sharpened to a point at both ends. At just under two feet, the length Blue had requested, they fit perfectly into a bright red souvenir golf bag somebody had given Peachy after a Savannah golf tournament that concluded with a banquet on the island. He had tossed it in the trunk of his car intending to pass it on to one of his friends who actually played the game. Now he realized, he might have a use for it after all. He dropped the stakes carefully into the bag. He didn’t want to think about what they were going to have to do with those sharpened sticks and he sure didn’t want Abbie thinking about it. He stashed the bag in the back of a closet at Abbie’s house, safely out of sight, until he got further instructions from Blue.
