by Mary Hughes
Camille knew about the tchotchkes, knew how important they were to Glynn. She had, at one time, been close enough for him to feel hurt and betrayed now. Close enough that he remembered her scent.
Close, to guys, usually meant sex.
Damn.
Yes, Glynn wasn’t mine. And yes, I knew he was eight hundred years on this earth and had to have had sex before me.
But it hurt. Not because Glynn had belonged to someone else first. But because he might still belong to her. The male I loved so much that he’d become a part of me, might still be part of someone else. Wouldn’t he have forgotten her scent otherwise?
I wanted Glynn to belong to me.
Well, mostly I wanted him to be happy. And maybe he wouldn’t get that belonging to me—but he sure wasn’t going to get it with her.
Damn it, I just wanted him to be happy.
Oh God. I loved him. The real deal—not just first-blush euphoria or giddy sex, but the nitty-gritty, daily grind, your-happiness-matters love. I’d run away from it, then deluded myself that it was a business decision. I’d lost both those battles. Having never felt quite this way about anyone, I thought maybe I’d lost the war as well.
And there went my rainbow dreams.
I was singularly less impressed with losing them than I’d expected. Maybe shock. Maybe because Glynn was still here, at least for a few more days. Or the sense of inevitability. Mom had fallen, so would I. How many children actually ended up completely different from their parents? How many molecules escaped the liquid as gas? All of them whispered my brain, but I hadn’t done that well in chemistry and couldn’t trust the answer I wanted in the face of the answer I had.
“I’d smell her,” Glynn said again, sounding lost.
I put my feelings to one side. I could deal with them later. Glynn was suffering now.
I stroked his hair. “You just need to do a more thorough search.”
His eyes focused on me like I’d thrown him a lifeline.
“Start in this room. Go over every inch again, using all your senses. Search the entire basement, both townhouses, and the yard.”
“Why?” He made a half-gesture at the table. His eyes dulled. “They’re gone.”
“You’ll find traces. Clues to what happened.” I took his beloved face in both hands. “Get Julian to help you, and Nikos and Rebecca. Even if you’re distracted, they’re good. They’re sure to find something.” I put more certainty in my voice than I felt. If the thief were human, I’d have had no doubt. But I had no idea what a vampire could hide.
He nodded and I could practically see his intellect come online. “I’ll ask Mishela too. Both her acting and Elias have trained her to observe.”
“Great.” Now came the tricky part.
Glynn and I might have no future, but my love demanded I do at least this much for him. I needed to at least try to get Glynn’s pieces of home back. But I knew what would happen if I told him I was going to visit Fangs To You. He’d try to stop me. I couldn’t let that happen.
Safer for me if I asked him along. But he still remembered Camille’s scent, was still lost and hurt at just the thought that she might be the thief. He was so vulnerable my heart broke.
Besides, I didn’t think I’d be in any real danger. Hey, I wasn’t intending to announce myself. A little luck and she’d never know I was there.
I released his face. “Look, since you’re using vampire senses, I’ll just slow you down. I’ll head home.” He frowned again, so I added, “If you come up with anything, give me a call.”
“Well…you must be tired. You work too hard, Junior.” He managed a small smile. “Thank you. You’re good for me.”
I covered my embarrassment by pressing a kiss to his gorgeous lips.
Enough of Glynn’s protector self was left to insist on driving me home. I managed to not give myself away on the drive home, but his sad face made it hard. With a quick kiss I jumped out and ran inside. I ran to the front store window and watched the limo purr away. Then I wrote a note explaining where I’d gone and slipped it onto my dad’s desk. I wasn’t expecting trouble, but I was going into the lair of a she-bitch vampire.
For Glynn. For the pain she’d caused him.
I took a deep breath. Showtime.
I locked the door behind me. Because a vampire owned the club across the street from my parents, sure. But the Cheese Dudes lived right next door and they were tricky.
Stoking my courage with my love, I walked across the street.
I didn’t have one of Camille’s flyers, so I had to fork over twenty bucks cover (and show half a dozen forms of ID to prove I was underheight, not underage. Stupid long-lived vampires. I bet they thought two hundred was still jail bait).
Inside, the smoke and pulsing light made it hard to see. But when my vision cleared, I saw it wasn’t just free drinks Camille was offering.
Barely clothed women and men strutted around, offering customers trays of rancid-looking cheese curds—and themselves. I sucked in a surprised breath. How had this gotten past the planning commission?
I nearly choked on that breath. The smoke was nauseatingly sweet. Marijuana sweet. I coughed. Hookers and drugs? How was our good, upstanding MC citizenry not only not up in arms over this decadence, but participating? Body snatchers?
I needed to focus. I’d come to find Glynn’s pieces of home. I looked around to orient myself.
The long bar to the left was stocked with the standard taps and bottles, littered with bowls of peanuts. The only unusual things were the near-nudity of the bartenders and the plates of cheese being gobbled by everyone in sight.
I frowned.
Shouts from a nearby table turned my head. A pumpkin-headed man knocked cards and chips off the table with an angry sweep. A woman in skin-tight leather leaped to her feet, snapping out a whip.
No, not Camille’s lackeys, or even tourists, but Police Captain Titus and the mayor’s secretary, Heidi.
Tempers escalated. More shouts. I thought things would get messy (Heidi could do more damage with her whip than most people could with a Mauser), but she threw aside the quirt to shove Titus. Snarling, Titus shoved back.
The ensuing fight was not much more than grade school butting. I looked away, embarrassed for them.
And caught the action at another table, where a woman reached for a card tucked in her shoe. The card was a queen of clubs, and the hand was Anna Versnobt’s, Miss Better-than-everyone in school.
Meiers Corners folk, brawling and cheating. Good grief. I needed to find Glynn’s tchotchkes and get out of here before whatever it was affected me too.
Fangs To You was built like a hotel atrium, with an open main floor facing a two-story, motel-like front, upper walkway shading a lower. On the ground floor was an elevator and a door through which staff shuttled with their ever-freshened trays of cheese. The kitchen. There’d be restrooms and storage and maybe offices nearby. Good place to start. I wound my way through tables toward the gallery.
One of the waiters stopped me on the way. “GObubble?”
Actually he shoved his tray of curds in my face. Lucky I’d had all that martial arts training. My head recoiled just in time to save me an impromptu nose job. “No, thanks.”
“Are you sure?” He teased the tray in front of me. “They’re Go-go-goooood.”
About to refuse more vigorously, I caught sight of his eyes. His pupils were blown like popped balloons. Drugged, and more than mere weed.
“Okay then.” I snatched a couple cheese curds. They crackled in my fingers, like bubblewrap. GObubbles, huh. I grabbed a napkin from the tray, wrapped the curds, stuffed them in a pocket, and headed on.
I slowed as I crossed the main floor. The whole place was low-light, but I’d seen staff step down a few feet out of the kitchen. Searching with my toe, I discovered raised marble.
I stepped up, was dazzled by a thousand tiny lights.
The underside of the upper walkway was studded with them. The overhang had blocked
them like a cloud covering the stars.
The elevator was right in front of me, doors wide like a hungry maw. I swallowed, sidled away from the bloody gullet. To my right were four doors labeled in red. Fangs. Blood. The hair on my nape went up. The Dungeon. My scalp prickled.
Storage.
Okay, that was soothingly prosaic.
Fangs and Blood were subtitled Men and Women. My hair settled. The Dungeon was the kitchen.
Storage was my first search target. Since I wasn’t dressed in the official uniform of lederhosen and pasties, I backed up to the door and watched The Dungeon for a break in the tray traffic. The instant no one was looking I pulled open the Storage door and spun inside.
And jumped back, spine against the door, horrified. Ye gods, whoever did their shipping and receiving should be shot.
Haphazardly stacked boxes of expensive wines and cheap booze cluttered a hallway far too narrow for fire safety. (My father’s cousin’s wife’s half brother Herbort was in the assessor’s department. Why keep a family Bible for genealogy when you can use the phone book?)
Several boxes were stamped with stylized fangs and a red slashed circle over a man stick-figure. Vampire-only rotgut? I edged in until I could see the printing. In red letters was the slogan “Bomb your blood with Vamka!” Maybe a play on the word vodka, but the small print simply said mannitol hexanitrate. I made a mental note to look that up on the Internet.
They were plenty big enough to hide a few small knickknacks, but none of the boxes looked opened. I tested the seams on several with my fingers. They all seemed solid, factory-sealed. I moved on in my search.
Four more doors lined this narrow hallway, helpfully labeled Cool, Cold, Office Supplies and Props. I guessed Cool was storage for cheese and preserved meat, and Cold for uncooked foods. Office supplies seemed self-explanatory.
But Props?
I peeked. It was a moderate-size room with garage-style shelves loaded with boxes of studded leather, lederhosen and personal lubricant—strawberry. And, strangely, a whole rack of chainsaws on the back wall.
Oh boy. I didn’t want to know. But for Glynn, I started for the first box.
The door slapped open behind me. A big goon filled the doorway, dressed in the black-on-black of security. “You. Come with me.”
“I just got lost—“
“Now, Ms. Stieg. Or do you want me to carry you?”
I grinned and followed him. He led me, not to the exit, but to the open maw of the elevator. I gulped, stepped inside. It rose smoothly but when the door opened, the guy held it and gestured me out.
Camille was there.
She wasn’t looking at me. She stood at the balcony railing, the overlord surveying the scurrying ants. Paying ants, by the avaricious twist of her lips. Hey, I’m in business. I value good service above profit, but I know the grin o’ greed when I see it.
I looked over the rail, tried to see the floor action from her perspective. Slow, dull-sensed humans, their lifetime not much more than a pet’s. To her we were merely animals, deserving no better treatment.
But that didn’t explain what she’d done to Glynn.
“Camille.” I growled her name.
She turned. “Well, well. Glynn’s little human whore, come to save the day.” Her carmine lips curved, more sneer than smile.
I saw then that even the most perfect features can be ugly.
I sneered back. “Says Glynn’s discards.” It was a shot in the dark, but by the thunderstorm in her eyes, it scored.
Another clue was that she seized my ear, nearly pulling it off my skull.
She tried to yank me in, but I’d studied hapkido with Mr. Miyagi. I grabbed her wrist to control our distance, then used my other hand to seize her little finger. With a firm grip established, I wrenched on it.
Vampires, I was pleased to prove, were actually more sensitive than humans. She let go with a squawk.
And the score was Junior two, Vampbitch zero.
“Why are you here, slut?” She stepped back with a glower.
Apparently we were getting right to the point. Fine with me. “Where are Glynn’s tchotchkes, asswipe?”
“How should I know?” She rolled her eyes. “Glynn’s missing little trinkets have nothing to do with me. Why would you think they do?”
“You like people vulnerable, Camille. Glynn rejected you, you wanted to get even, so you took them.”
“Nonsense. I rejected him.”
Her nonanswer was answer enough. “Give them back.”
“Or else what?” She spat it. “You’ll simper at me? Cast your human stink on me?”
“I’ll figure something out. Just know I’ll get them eventually.”
She snarled. “You think to buy Glynn’s affection with his little pieces of home, but he’ll leave you anyway. You’re a flash in the pan. I’m eternal, with centuries of experience pleasing a male. I’m built for sex.”
“And I’m built for love,” I snarled back. “Besides, you’re not eternal, just long-lived. I’ll get his tchotchkes back, Camille, if it’s the last thing I do.” I nearly smacked myself. I was talking like a bad vampire soap opera. So I offered her a combination of my father’s and mother’s best sign language instead, a stiff middle finger and a slapped arm. “Sit and twirl, Camille.” Spinning on my heel, I hit the elevator and jabbed down.
The black-clad security goon caught me by the shoulders as I steamed out. Ham hands clasping me tight, he hustled me through the gambling, boozing and fighting. The bouncer at the door saw us coming and swung the door wide just in time for the goon to toss me through.
I stumbled out onto the pavement. Gathering myself, I brushed specks of indignity off my sleeves. Then I glared at the black marble facade. This was worse than I thought.
She had Glynn’s tchotchkes; I was sure of it. But how would I find them now that she knew I was looking?
And what the hell had happened to the good folk of Meiers Corners? What I’d seen in there wasn’t just free drinks gone wild nor temporary madness. That was the complete corruption of our small-town values.
And our good folk embracing that corruption.
I slapped dust from my pants. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe this was just the inevitable backlash from all our straitjacket niceness. Taken to the extreme, Meiers Corners was inbred, narrow-minded, and valued cleanliness and efficiency über alles, sieg heil.
But if this backlash went on too long, well. Beyond killing tourism, it would kill the spirit of the town itself.
As I slapped more dust, I heard a crackle. Those damned GObubble cheese curds. I pulled them out of my pocket, unwrapped the napkin and sniffed. Stench burned like nasal buckshot. My head spun. Wheeling, I braced myself against marble, breathed anywhere but that napkin. Gradually my dizziness faded.
The memory of the stink, sharp as crystal, didn’t. It beckoned, urging me to take another whiff. To bite into that juicy pungency. I lifted the napkin. Opened my mouth. Extended my tongue…
My cell rang. It snapped me out of it. I stared at the curds. What was in this stuff? I rewrapped the curds, rammed them deep into my pocket, smashing them. Pulled out my phone. It was Twyla.
“Junior. What the hell is going on?”
Stink rose from my hip. The aroma was so bad it was good. Tempting. I wanted a taste so much. I swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”
“Glynn looks like he was hit with a bus. What did you do to him?”
“Nothing. It was Camille.” I touched my pocket. It crackled slightly. I needed to get these curds analyzed. And not by eating one. I fled across the street, dissipating the stink. “She stole his tchotchkes.”
“Ouch. Sorry. Nikos smelled you and we jumped to conclusions.”
“It’s understandable. But maybe you can do me a favor.” I hopped up onto the other curb and told her about the curds. Twyla would know what to do. She had connections with the whole world.
“Drugged, addictive bar nibbles?” Twyla tched. “That would explain w
hy everyone’s so crazy. My cousin Synnove is studying to be a doctor in Chicago. I’ll get her to look at them.”
“It has to be fast.” What with vampire Armageddon coming and all. “Oh. And if we’re right, we’ll need an antidote.”
“Believe me, I understand. I’ll be there in five to collect the sample.”
As I waited for Twyla, I replayed the confrontation at Fangs To You. I was angry that Camille had stolen the symbols of the only home Glynn had ever known. But then to pretend she hadn’t? She was playing emotional head games with little pieces of Glynn’s heart, and I was furious at that.
Camille was going down.
The purr of an engine caught my attention. Julian’s limo pulled to the curb. The passenger window buzzed down, revealing Twyla, a couple large posters resting against her knees. Her sig-O Nikos was at the wheel.
I handed her the napkin of cheese curds.
“I’ll get these to my cousin tonight, after Nikos and I hang these posters.” She started to buzz the window back up.
“Wait,” I said. “I want to help shut Camille down. What can I do?”
She nailed me with a stare. “Don’t go back to Fangs To You.”
“Sure,” I said like she hadn’t read my mind. Besides, it wouldn’t do any good. The bouncers knew my face now. “But I have to do something.”
“Julian and I are working on legal ways to get her out. In the meantime, there’s not much you can do.”
“I could hang those posters for you.”
She grimaced. “I suppose. These go on the front and back of the PAC.”
I understood the grimace only after she’d opened the door and slid the posters out. They read Closed until further notice. “What’s going on?”
“CIC.” Her expression was as angry as I’ve ever seen it.
“Demanding full payment by the end of the month? I know.”
“No. Demanding the PAC’s full payment now. Unless we fork over the money, the PAC’s insurance policy is canceled effective midnight tonight. No coverage, no show.”
“What about another insurance company?”
“Frankly, to get coverage bound by tomorrow night, we’d have to walk in to that company cash in hand. And cash is one thing the city is short of right now.”
