“Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t.”
“I saw you too,” Evan said.
“No, troop, you saw something.”
The black man spun his wheelchair around and headed toward the rowhouses. Evan walked alongside him.
“You and your mom Section-8?”
“I don’t know what that means,” Evan said.
“Means you’re in a bad way. Ain’t got two nickels to rub together. See, only the poor and folks on the run from something coop in these here houses, so which one is it?”
“Guess we’re a little down on our luck.”
The black man chewed on his lips.
“You got a name, light skin?”
“Evan Devine.”
“Well, I was born George Desmond Brown, but someone told me George in Greek means farmer and seein’ that I ain’t tillin’ no ground, I go by Dez.”
“Thanks for helping me out, Dez.”
“Ain’t no thing. White lives matter too, right?”
Evan smirked and they continued on until they were close to Evan’s rowhouse.
“Your moms in the construction business? I seen you two carryin’ that big ole box in.”
“No, that was clothes,” Evan lied.
“She in the clothing business?”
Evan stopped and put his hands on his hips and sighed.
“Actually, that was a lie. The truth is we’re Familiars, my mother and me. Just like my grandparents were and my great-grandparents before that. We’ve always worked for the Redmayne family which was originally from the south of France but came over in the early Nineteenth Century.”
“Familiars, huh? You don’t mind me asking, what kinda work ya’all do?”
“We watch over the youngest son. Gideon. He’s kinda the black sheep of the family. A reformed vampire that lives in our basement. A lot of the old rules and superstitions about them are crap, but they still need someone to safeguard them during the waking hours. That’s what we do, protect him from the sun, from people who are trying to kill him, stuff like that. You’ve probably seen that in the movies.”
Dez stared at Evan, mouth adroop. A few seconds of awkward silence and then Evan smiled ear-to-ear.
“Just kidding.”
Dez’s grin was so wide it made him appear like a ventriloquist’s dummy come to life.
“You ain’t right dude,” Dez said, chuckling.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Evan replied softly.
“Well, I think I just made me a new friend, Evan Devine.”
Dez held up a fist that Evan bumped before climbing the front steps of his rowhouse.
“Evan.”
Evan looked back at Dez.
“Where’s your pops?”
“He’s out of town,” Evan said after a brief pause.
“Well if you and your mom need anything, you let me know, okay? Us weird ones gotta watch out for each other.”
Evan smiled and nodded, trotting up the stairs. He opened the front door to find Lucy waiting for him.
“You’re late.”
“I was accosted.”
“By what?”
“Um, have you taken a look around outside?”
Evan took a step to move past Lucy and she grabbed his arm.
“I saw you talking to that man out there. The one in the chair.”
“His name’s Dez.”
“You know the rules.”
“Fear not, he’s neither an ally nor an enemy, mom.”
“Miss Lucy.”
“I’m off the clock and I’ve decided not to call you that anymore so goodnight, madam.”
Evan shrugged off Lucy’s hand and did a quick bow before strolling around the first floor. The rowhouse was narrow and long with a family room up front and a kitchen in the back.
Evan could see that Lucy had already started placing foil over some of the windows. Not enough to draw notice, but a sufficient amount to create little pockets of darkness during the day for Gideon to move about if he was so inclined.
Evan entered the kitchen and peered up a staircase that led to the second floor. Below and to the right of this was a door that led to the basement. The door had a pair of heavy bolts thrown across it. Evan heard something thump downstairs and so he bounded up the stairs to a short hallway dotted with four doors. He poked his head into a bathroom and then examined the three bedrooms, finding one at the end of the hallway with his belongings.
There was a mattress on the floor and a few suitcases and a duffel bag, stuff that had been delivered by the moving company contracted by the Gentry.
Evan closed and locked his door and deposited himself on the mattress. He fought to think pleasant thoughts, but he brooded, as he always did, on the days ahead. He fretted about his mother and about whether he’d be able to convince her to see there wasn’t a future in what they were doing. And if he was able to persuade her to start a new life, how would they do it? And what would be the price? Would the Gentry just let them walk away from what might be considered a lifetime commitment?
Time slowly passed, but sleep didn’t come. A gunshot echoed somewhere outside, but Evan wasn’t concerned. The only thing that worried him was hidden twenty-five feet below in the basement.
Chapter Eight
Evan woke early and found Lucy in the kitchen preparing a steaming pot of greens mixed with herbs, hardboiled eggs, and turkey bacon.
“Sleep okay?”
Evan nodded, tapping some ketchup onto his plate as Lucy shuttled past, frying pan in hand. She plopped the grub on Evan’s plate and he commenced to wolf it down.
“I put up the sun blockers and changed the locks on the front door.”
“I saw,” he said, food dribbling down his chin.
“When you’re ready maybe you can see about getting us some new wheels.”
“The five-fingered kind?”
She shook her head.
“The Gentry’s allotted twelve thousand.”
“That’s it?”
“Hey, kiddo, everyone was affected when the economy tanked.”
“What happened to them being ageless and full of wisdom?”
She shrugged.
“I’ll need a ride for the Gathering so get something that doesn’t stand out.”
“No candy-red Mustangs, huh?”
She mimed laughing and then set the frying pan down in the sink.
“He asked about you.”
Evan paused, fork in hand.
“Who?”
“Who do you think, silly? Him. He wanted to know how you’re doing or if you needed anything.”
Evan’s eyes quickly catalogued the room.
“But it’s daylight. Isn’t he supposed to be asleep?”
“He said the move threw off his biorhythms or something.”
“So get him some sleeping pills.”
“You’re a laugh a minute.”
Evan placed his fork on the plate and stared at the small mountain of ketchup which was dark and shiny. He felt his stomach turn over.
“So… where is he?”
Lucy’s eyes rotated toward the floor.
Evan thought about running out at that moment. Of just gathering up what little he had and making for the front door, but he suspected that if he left that abruptly, things might not end well for his mother.
The Gentry might be liberal in thought and purportedly gentle in disposition, but Evan had heard that they kept a close eye on those who served them (“Like Scientologists with fangs.” Lucy had quipped). There was an unwritten understanding that children would follow after parents, serving the same families, doing the same work. Year after year. If a child strayed from the fold or chose not to follow in his or her parent’s footsteps, the Gentry might hold the family responsible (though it was unclear what that meant). Evan didn’t normally like to use double negatives, but bailing on a vamp family was a not insignificant act of defiance.
Rather than cause his mother additional heartache, Evan finished his food and turned
to the kitchen door, pulling the bolts back on it. Motes of dust sprang free from a staircase that would have felt at home in one of those old Universal horror movies.
There was a bare bulb overhead connected to a pullchain that Evan yanked down. He took the steps one by one, staying to the outer edges of the stairs, keeping his tread as light as possible.
Farther down, the light from behind dimmed, the walls transitioning from drywall to stone. The stairs ended at a wooden landing which opened to an open, unfinished space. Evan stopped to orient himself and then moved past old filing cabinets and rusted tools, a forlorn water heater, and a fuse box fixed to the wall.
He stumbled along at the outer edge of what little light remained. There was a discord of voices up ahead, people chattering. He moved past the columns that supported the house and spotted a door that was ajar. A blue light glowed from within and somebody laughed.
Evan crept closer, striding by cast-iron pails and small wooden tools that lay on the ground next to a forgotten coal furnace. He surmised that the room must have been the place they stacked the little briquettes of fuel back in the day.
Evan tiptoed a few steps closer, past an empty whiskey bottle and dozens of rat corpses that looked like deflated balloons, as if they’d been sucked clean of fluids. Something shimmered off to his left and he caught sight of a handful of the bloodbags from the night before. Jesus, he thought, how much did the guy need to get by?
Reaching a hand out, he pushed the door back to see two chairs and a tiny television perched atop a rickety table. The space looked like a homeless person’s crash pad, but Evan knew the Gentry would find a way to remodel it in the coming weeks and months.
The TV screen was snowy, the volume amped, a gameshow on. Some porcine woman was cackling and sweating because she’d just won a small car. Evan immediately wondered how she would fit into it.
“The lord of the manor,” a voice boomed from behind and Evan whirled so quickly it felt as if he was levitating.
The man from the box, Gideon Redmayne, all six foot and several inches of him, was standing in front of Evan. Gideon’s head nearly scraped the exposed ceiling boards, but otherwise he appeared robust and in fine spirits: color in his cheeks, flesh firm, looking well-rested with a broad smile that gave him a veneer of trustworthiness.
“You – you’re a-awake,” Evan stammered.
“I’m always kind of awake,” Gideon replied with a wink. Evan chuckled nervously.
“What do you think of the place, Master Evan?”
“Pretty shitty if you want to know the truth,” Evan said.
“It is now, but in ten years the yuppies will lay siege to this block and the whole neighborhood will be condofied with enough funky coffee joints to drown a Guatemalan farmer. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times.”
Gideon tapped his forward, eyes straying toward the roof as if running down a mental checklist. He had a habit of doing this and chalked it up to living what amounted to five or six normal lifetimes.
“I remember the same thing happening in France in the Fifteenth Century. There was this stretch of hovels that pilgrims rented down the street from the monastery of Saint-Jacques. The location was fabulous and much prized by a group of burghers and their Blackfriar brethren. You know what the Blackfriars were?”
“Dominicans?”
“Good man,” Gideon said with a smile. “Now both of them wanted the hovels to tear down and build bigger homes, so they demanded a thousand livres from the pilgrims.”
“Pilgrims don’t have money.”
“Precisely. So they couldn’t pay and refused to leave. Do you know what the burghers and Blackfriars did?”
Evan shook his head.
“They accused them of heresy. First known instance of gentrification in the modern world.”
Gideon grinned, waiting for Evan to do likewise and when he didn’t, Gideon twirled a finger in the air as if conjuring a spell before adding, “true story, true story.”
He said this in a kind of bewildered reminiscence as Evan slumped in one of the seats. Gideon did likewise, angling his body in such a way that his movements looked more feline than human.
“You get the stash from last night?”
“Indeed I did and it was just what the doctor ordered,” Gideon said with a nod.
Evan found himself staring at Gideon’s skin. Luminous and glowing under the light cast from the TV, as if he was a creature carved from marble. Gideon pointed to the screen where a bald man was jumping for money inside a glass booth.
“There are two universal truths in life, Evan. The first I can’t share with you because you’re not old enough, but the second holds that life is precious. And how does that chucklehead on the screen choose to spend it? By jumping up and down like a trained cur.”
“I’m gonna be leaving soon, Gideon,” Evan blurted out for no good reason.
Gideon’s expression darkened. He held up a remote control and muted the TV.
“Leave as in… leave the nest for good?”
Evan nodded.
“Does your mom know about this?”
“Yep,” Evan replied, trying to will away the quivers that were making his fingers tremble.
“What was her reaction?”
“About what you’d expect.”
Gideon sucked on his teeth, his decidedly ordinary-looking teeth (which, contrary to lore, did not enlarge unless he was on the cusp of feeding).
“She’s a tough lady, Evan. She has to be given the business we’re in.”
“But I’m not like her.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, Gideon, it’s not that I don’t think I could be tough like her, it’s that I don’t want to be.”
“But your grandfather, your father-”
Gideon knew he’d made a mistake the moment he mentioned Evan’s dad Clark. He could see it in the anger that flashed in Evan’s eyes.
“I’m sorry about that, I really am. I know it’s still pretty raw. There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t say a prayer for Clark.”
Evan sat corpse still. He fought to stifle a flash of anger, but the words slipped out:
“But he’s still not here is he?”
“I tried to save him, I want you to know that. I told him that I had the power to bring him full circle right up until the end and he turned me down.”
“Because he didn’t want to end up like you.”
Evan couldn’t be sure, but for a moment Gideon’s eyes seemed to glow like the tips on a pair of knives. He looked simultaneously wounded and pissed, his smile stitching to an anxious grimace.
“Is your decision to leave because of something I did, Evan?”
“No.”
“Because I’ve always tried to help.”
“I know.”
“Remember all those projects with your classes? Remember how I always gave you the inside scoop?”
There really were only two projects, Evan thought. Both were for an online class on American history. The first project revolved around the English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (with Gideon providing Evan very specific information on what truly caused the so-called “starving times”), and the second project concerned internment camps.
Gideon had told Evan about how the very first one in America didn’t involve the Japanese (as commonly assumed), but Native Americans. A camp had been established for Indians in the 17th Century during King Philip’s War on Deer Island in Massachusetts. Gideon claimed he knew another vampire who’d been imprisoned on that horrible spit of land and provided Evan with numerous details that even the teacher was unfamiliar with.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”
Gideon’s cheeks flushed.
“Well, then you’re free to come and go as you please, Evan. It’s always been like that.”
“You won’t stop me?”
Gideon shook his head. Evan stood to leave and Gideon’s hand shot out like an adder and gripped his wrist, nearly jerki
ng his arm from its socket.
“But do me one favor, por favor?” Gideon said, letting up on Evan’s arm a bit.
“A-anything,” Evan said.
“Tell your mother not to put so much garlic in the greens next time.”
“H-how c-come?” Evan mumbled.
Gideon’s nostrils expanded.
“Because I can smell it in your goddamn blood.”
Gideon’s lips pulled back and Evan nodded and for some reason refused to turn his back on Gideon as he made his way out. He stumbled and bumbled backward, Gideon watching him go as he fled the basement. Evan hit the landing and took the steps two at a time as he hustled back up to the kitchen.
Chapter Nine
For Evan and his mother, the rest of those first few days, like most other days, were spent planning and preparing and fortifying the house.
There were locks to purchase and install, a new wireless security system to engineer, and maps to pore over and highlight. Being the most tech-savvy member of the household, it was Evan’s job to download every nearby location that might conceivably contain food for Gideon: vet clinics, industrial stores, human bloodbanks, and collection centers. These were juxtaposed on Lucy’s smartphone with avenues of escape and addresses for a Gentry safehouse if things got particularly hairy.
In additional to his regular routine, it was Evan’s job to monitor the six motion sensors strategically placed in the backyard. The sensors were camouflaged and positioned to capture every conceivable point of ingress. Evan checked and rechecked the sensors every morning, afternoon, and night, ensuring that the signals were true and beaming back to a small smart-phone-sized tablet that Lucy kept in a hip holster.
Even though they were of dubious legality, the tablet was additionally synched to two traps positioned in the rowhouse. The trap in the back was comprised of a section of one inch thick plywood mated to a torsion spring hanging above the back door. The wood was linked to a strand of ankle-height wire. Once set, anyone unlucky enough to break through the back door would find themselves shishkabobed by a dozen sharpened carriage bolts.
The trap near the front was far more insidious, involving a length of metal leader fastened to the door-knob and hooked to a battery from a diesel truck. The knob was fine if you remained on the other side of the door, but, if you forced your way in all bets were off. A break-in, for instance, would propel the leader down into the door’s metal strike-plate, sending enough electricity into the trespasser to cause unconsciousness. Or death.
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