by Mary Hughes
Or tried. Emerson was a thousand years plus. He’d probably put up a bit of a fight.
Glynn’s fangs started to throb at the thought of Emerson putting up a fight. As tense as Glynn was, he might have enjoyed it.
But Emerson said nothing. And when they rounded the corner onto Fourth and met the annoying flying tube with the grinning mad head and Glynn slashed it to pieces with his bare claws, Emerson said nothing again. Good thing, because the flying tube had only whetted Glynn’s vampire urge to destroy.
He half expected Junior to shriek in protest when he shredded the tube, but she only choked back a laugh. It made him smile. He found himself doing that far too often around her. She smiled at him in return.
Their smiles died, and they stared for an awkward moment at each other. Her scent became pungent with arousal and he hardened in response. He did that far too often around her, too.
He had to remember they had no future. She wanted it that way. And he had his own dreams.
So he motioned Emerson to walk her to her door while he stood at the mouth of the narrow, dim walkway, scowling when she fumbled her key into the lock. Before he left Meiers Corners, he was damned well putting in a better light.
Mishela glided up next to him. “You want to tell Mr. Elias about tonight or should I?”
Glynn turned his scowl on her. “I don’t want to tell him. But better me than you. You get overly dramatic.” Then he realized Mishela was supposed to be guarding Emerson’s wee tornado of a wife. “Where’s Nixie?” He kept his voice low.
Mishela’s was equally low. “She wanted to scope out Camille’s club.”
“Cock. That’s incredibly dangerous.” Glynn glanced at Junior. She’d finally gotten the key to work. Emerson waited stoically at her side, but the lawyer’s jaw clamped with a male’s imperative to be with his lover and a vampire’s need to protect his vulnerable human.
Still, he’d stay with Junior until she was safe inside. Glynn strode across the street, Mishela trailing. He muttered, “If anything happens to Emerson’s wife—”
“Relax, Glynn. Nixie’s the logical choice. If anyone can do goth, it’s her. And Camille’s not going to risk starting all-out war in her own club.”
“The Coterie risked war trying to kidnap you.”
“Using a masked man, so we couldn’t prove it. This is different. They won’t want any fingers pointing.”
“I hope you’re right.”
At Fangs To You’s mirrored doors, two males in identical tough-guy black blocked Glynn’s way. The Tweedledum and Tweedledee of bouncers. One smelled human, the other vampire, but it mattered little. Glynn bared his fangs with a snarl and the men fell back. It gave Glynn the instant he needed to slip them a hypnotic suggestion. His simmering irritation made it a bit harsh—one male cupped his crotch and the other bent over puking as Glynn strode through the doors.
Inside was dim, crowded and loud. People mobbed a long lacquered bar to the left. More ringed a corner bar, hazed in smoke. Not cigarette. Glynn tested the air, scented smoke cloyingly sweet. Illegal, but Camille always enjoyed pushing the boundaries. She’d have a battalion of lawyers standing by to get her out of any real trouble.
Red light played over a full dance floor where youngsters, human and vampire, thronged, hopping like a bunch of demented chickens. Glynn wondered if it was modern dance or they were having some sort of fit. Probably dance, though he’d stopped learning popular steps before the waltz. Nixie wobbled in their midst.
She saw him and immediately started over. Good thing or he’d have waded in to drag her out. Emerson would be livid. The small tornado should have known that, having been married to her vampire for several months now. Yet she’d chosen to enter this den anyway. Glynn hoped it was worth it.
Sure enough, Emerson stormed in, eyes blood-red and fangs barely restrained. “If anything the fuck has happened to my wife—”
“Yell later,” Nixie shouted over the music as she bustled up.
Emerson turned his snarl on her. “I leave you alone for one moment and—”
“Yell later, Julian,” she repeated, motioning them out. “This is bigger. Camille’s smarter than the average Lestat. We may be in real trouble.”
“What?” As they hit fresh air, Emerson’s eyes cooled to a blue Glynn recognized as pissed but in control. “What did you find?”
“Buddy kicked us out of Nieman’s at two,” she said. “Bar time. Fangs To You should have closed too.”
“There’s no law requiring it,” Emerson said. “Only to cease serving alcoholic drinks—” He stopped mid-stride. “Correction. Only to cease selling alcohol.”
Nixie nodded as she kept going, looking as grim as Glynn had ever seen her. “Which is why Camille was giving the drinks away free. Open bar for everyone who came early and stayed late. In other words, for everyone who missed our show.” She held out her hand. The stamp of a stylized black vampire was on the back. “If I’d come before eight, this would be red. And I’d be drinking my weight for free.”
Mishela made a disgusted noise. “That’s why our audience didn’t come back.”
Emerson’s long strides caught him up. He picked up his wee wife and they all set off at a more comfortable pace. “The Ancient One isn’t going to like this. Who’s going to tell him?”
All three looked at Glynn with a mixture of pity and relief.
Glynn sighed. “I suppose. After which I will escape immediately to Wales.”
“If it helps any, Mr. Elias probably already knows,” Mishela said.
Nixie nodded. “He’s an eerie ancient fucker that way.”
“He doesn’t know,” Glynn said. “But the way his mind works, I’m sure he’s thought of the possibility.”
They traversed the nine blocks in just over a minute and headed in through Emersons’ driveway entrance. A door led from the underground parking directly into the basement hallway. Inside, Emerson set his wife on her feet.
Glynn said, “I don’t suppose you’d care to wait with me while I make the call? In case Elias really can shoot lightning through the phone?”
“Um, love to. But, um…” Nixie gestured at the first door. “I’ve got a thing.” She disappeared inside.
“Me too.” Mishela edged toward the second door. “Got a thing, that is.” She slid into her room and slammed the door shut. The lock clicked home.
“I would, but I’ve got to ride herd on my wife. Good luck, old sap.” Emerson cuffed him on the arm. “I mean, old chap.”
With a grin, he dropped into mist and ran under the first door.
Glynn sighed and pulled out his phone.
Chapter Twelve
Saturday was the usual mix of regulars and tourists at the Wurstspeicher Haus. But the day itself was anything but usual, and I don’t just mean the mayor showing up in full Swiss Family lederhosen and laced boots—although that happening right out of the gate probably should have warned me.
The doorbell tinkled at eight and my body tingled hopefully. But instead of Big Dark and Dangerous with a growled babi, I heard, “Und so here we are the premiere wurst shop ge-having.”
Mayor Meier marched in, jolly in the aforementioned lederhosen and boots and slathering his “charming” DeutscheGlish on with a backhoe. Behind him marched half a dozen clog-stomping, embroidered-suspender-wearing, beschnitzeled refugees from Folk Fair.
I put aside my immediate reaction, which was to hide under a really big slice of bologna, and pasted on my best sausage smile. “Hello, Mayor! How can I help you today?” And who are these evacuees from Freddy’s Oktoberfest, I wanted to add but didn’t. There’s a reason “Tell the customer, not what you want to jabber about, but what they need to hear,” made it to the Top Eight.
“Hello, Gunter Marie,” the mayor said. “These are mayors in my German League of Bürgermeister Towns. The GLBT are here gekommen for the PAC opening und I showing them the sights was.”
It took me a moment to parse that, even knowing gekommen meant come and
und meant and. I was never quite sure what language the mayor spoke. Not English, but not German either. Not even what you’d expect from a native German speaker trying English. It was like the squeezings from a sponge that had absorbed both languages, Local Color for Dummkopfs and way too much beer. Eng-Glitch, maybe.
Twyla said he played it up on purpose, part of the jolly German act. I think, like the little boy warned not to cross his eyes, he’d done it once too often and had gotten stuck.
“We have several lovely gift items,” I said when I figured out these were visitors. “Sausage boxes, sausage-making spices and supplies, and mugs and scarves.” Yeah, sausage scarves. What can I say? They sell well so I stock them. Remember, not broke.
One of the mayors nodded. “Oh, just what we looking for are.”
“Ri-ight.” I smiled. Apparently the Eng-Glitch bug was not only catching, it could escalate to fevers, hacking and mucus on the brain. “Far wall, feel free to browse.”
They wandered into the gift corner just as Mrs. Gelb came in for her Saturday hot ham and rolls.
Hot ham and rolls was our Sunday special, but Sunday was sauerbraten night in the Gelb household. Mrs. Gelb’s great-grandma had sauerbraten on Sunday and her grandma and ma had sauerbraten on Sunday and bei Gott (by God) she had it on Sunday too. Corners folk elevated tradition to Sistine perfection.
As I rang Mrs. Gelb up, she raved about some new bar. I didn’t pay much attention until she chirped, “It’s called Fangs To You. Isn’t that clever?”
My fingers froze on the cash register. “Clever.”
“Alba Gruen and I are going back tonight. Free drinks, you know. Not just with that flyer. If you arrive before eight and stay past two, the whole bar is open. Free snacks too. Isn’t that clever?”
“Very clever.” Winter swept through the store, lights going blue and my whole body constricting with cold.
Somehow I finished that transaction. I took her money with numb fingers and fumbled it into the drawer. Stood like an ice sculpture as she took her bag and left. Clever, very clever, beyond clever.
This was how Camille was pulling our audience and keeping them. By taking ruthless advantage of Meiers Corners’s weakness—free stuff.
I put on a sweater and restocked blood sausage. The repetitive task calmed me—and reminded me we were selling a lot of blood sausage, reminding me of vampires, reminding me of visiting vampires, Big Dark and Dangerous—after which I peeled off my sweater, shivering again but for another reason. When the door tinkled, my shiver changed into a shudder of anticipation.
But instead of one special vampire, a trio of humans entered. Three people, one door…a scuffle broke out. “Hey! Get out of my way.” The door slapped wider. Some jostling, some shoving. Oh well, tourists were rude—they didn’t know better.
“Move yer frickin’ butt.” A tourist barreled through, a scowl marring her face… Not a tourist.
My jaw hit countertop. It was Mrs. Roet, wife of Police Lieutenant Roet and mother to eight young kids, including rambunctious triplets just starting to toddle, but that didn’t account for this level of belligerence.
Since when were Corners people anything but disturbingly polite? Whap-you-upside-the-head courteous?
Mayor Meier bustled over and attempted to soothe them. While he was doing that, the bell tinkled again. Before I could get up a good Big Dark Dangerous tingle, Rocky Hrbek slid in. She came directly to the counter. “Junior. I need more blood sausage bribes.”
We were running low, but this was Rocky. “How much?”
“Another pound. For my supervisor. She’s acting weird.”
“Oh?” I got the sausage.
“I rated a couple policies yesterday. I did it right, I know I did. But she made me change them.”
“Rated?”
“You know, assigned risk factors to determine the cost. I had two taverns, both Meiers Corners, similar in risk, so I rated them the same. But my supervisor changed them—jacked up one to ten times the cost, lowered the other practically nothing. It’s Nieman’s, Junior. CIC is charging so much that the bar will be driven out of business.”
“That’s terrible.” In many ways, Nieman’s was the heart of our community. What would Meiers Corners do without a heart?
Then an even worse suspicion hit me. “What’s the other business?”
“Some new club called Fangs To You.”
Shocking. But then came the biggest shock of all.
Rocky went to look at sausage spices. The mayors were discussing the various merits of ginger versus mace. The locals had bought their regular meats and were gone.
I was wiping down counters when the doorbell tinkled. I tingled like all the other times, even though I knew Big Dark and Dangerous was only my imagination.
But this time big was bigger. Dark was darker. And dangerous was deadly, real and standing in the doorway.
Glynn had come.
Er, arrived.
He looked a little frayed around the edges, like he’d been zapped with lightning. But he came…er, glided right to me. His sapphire gaze ran over me like he was starving for me, dropped to my mouth and flared that bright violet.
Almost as if he couldn’t help himself, he bent and kissed me.
Whoa. The amount of tongue on impact? I think he was as focused on “coming” as me.
And then Glynn added hands and I wasn’t thinking at all.
“Was ist hier passiert?”
My eyes flew open. Mom and Pop were emerging from the office catacombs. (“In the Hall of the Mountain King” bopped through my head. You don’t have to know the tune, just picture trolls lumbering from a cave’s depths.)
Bad news. Pop was in the lead.
It was horrible timing. Maybe all parents have a sex alert, something that goes ding when their offspring is up to hanky-panky. Or maybe they just remember their own youth.
Ick. That hurt to think about.
Glynn and I sprang apart. Customers milled around the wares—studiously looking anywhere but at us. Except for Rocky, who was staring like she’d just realized The Story of O wasn’t a kid’s alphabet primer.
My mother went immediately to soothe her, leaving me to deal with my dad.
“Gunter Marie Stieg. Ich habe gesagt, was—?”
“English, please, Pop.” And a little less than jet-engine decibels.
“What are you doing? Messing around with your young man while on the job?”
I blinked. Pop wasn’t upset that I was kissing, just that I was taking precious work time to do it. “Glynn’s not my young—”
“We didn’t get formally introduced the other evening, Mr. Stieg.” Glynn stepped forward, hand extended. “I’m Glynn Rhys-Jenkins.”
My dad took Glynn’s hand.
Time stopped.
A stick will appear jagged or even split into two when poked into a lake. But it’s a single stick. These two men, so different—Glynn the druid prince, Gunter the jolly merchant—felt the same to me. I stared at them, side by side, my father and my…well, I wasn’t sure what Glynn was, but the way my heart was reacting, he was just as important as the man who’d given me life.
That scared me.
“Guten Morgen, Glynn. Where do you come from and what do you do for a living?”
Time snapped back into motion. “Subtle, Pop.”
Glynn’s mouth curved. “I’m a citizen of Wales and the United States, Mr. Stieg, but as a consultant, I travel all over the world.”
My father did not look suitably impressed.
Until Glynn added, “I consult for Kai Elias.”
“The great businessman?” My dad slapped Glynn on the back, resulting in meaty thuds and not moving Glynn one millimeter. Pop looked even more impressed at the muscle. “What do you think of our sausage, young man?”
“I sampled the blutwurst at Julian Emerson’s. Very nice. Just the right touch of marjoram.”
My father beamed. “Ach, we are very selective of our importers for just that. And
you know Emerson? He helped save our town, I heard.”
Loud as he was, the whole country heard. It meant he was happy. My dad got louder as he got happier, as if jolly were a volume knob on his voice box. (On Christmas Eve at church, he got so happy he outsang the organ. Little kids turned to stare at him during the hymns. Embarrassing growing up, as an adult I took a perverse pleasure in it. In at least this, he was the biggest thing in our little town.)
My dad clapped Glynn on the back again. “I am glad to have met you, Glynn. Take good care of my daughter. Now I must get back to work, ja?” And he left.
I nearly choked. Leaving us alone, together, behind the register? Holy Schnitzelbank, he had us married already.
My mother had finished settling Rocky and the other customers down. Though my dad was the jolly merchant everyone loved, Mom was the one who fixed all the problems.
She caught my eye, flicked a glance at Glynn and made little finger-nudges at me, a nonverbal “get him while he’s hot”. Then she followed my dad out.
Gott im Himmel. Married and bedded, with a dozen grandkinder on the way.
Glynn said, “Your father’s nice.”
I shook my head like it’d rattle sense into it. Like it’d settle CIC’s disparate ratings or Glynn’s desperate kiss or even my parents’ nonparental behavior. But some things are murky and incredibly dangerous and shouldn’t be attempted except by professionals on a closed track. “Loud, maybe. Twyla calls him boisterous, but she’s the daughter of a diplomat.”
“He has a certain joie de vivre. He’s bigger than life.”
“So’s a clown. Why are you here, anyway? Awake. Shouldn’t you be in a”—a coffin or grave—“dark place somewhere?” Which reminded me that, no matter how close I felt to Glynn, I really knew nothing about this man. Male. Sweet exploding sausages, I didn’t even know what to label him.
