Once Bitten, Twice Shy

by Jennifer Rardin

  “You’re making me feel old,” I told him.

  He just grinned. He sat on the granite-topped coffee table that visually connected the seating area to a redbrick fireplace that held dozens of white candles.

  “You okay?” he asked, inspecting me closely, perhaps to see if I’d grown an extra appendage during our brief separation. “You look better than I expected you to.”

  “I feel better than I probably should.”

  “So things are squared away?”

  “For the moment.”

  “Can I get a ride back to my truck, then? I really do need to clean that pool or they’ll think something’s up.”

  “Okay, but no snooping. Call me when you’re done, too. I want to see those pictures.” I checked my watch. “Jeremy ought to be up by then. I’ll bring him along.” I looked at Bergman, raised my eyebrows. “Follow us?”

  He nodded. “Then you and I need to talk.” He looked pointedly at Cole. “Alone.”

  I wanted to snarl, “Well, of course, alone. We already established that Cole would be going somewhere else!” Sometimes Bergman’s paranoia made me want to break things. Like his neck. But being a neurotic—I mean sensitive—genius, Bergman continued to benefit from my best behavior. For now.

  “Of course,” I replied. “I’m anxious to hear what you have to say.” I rose and looked at Cassandra. “Thank you for saving my brother. It was . . . wow . . . thanks.”

  She nodded graciously. “I’ll see you later.”

  “You will?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t elaborate, so I let it go. No sense in chasing more problems. “Until then, I must ask you to be very careful.”

  “Who, me? Gosh, Cassandra, I guess I should’ve told you, there’s no need to worry about me. At work they call me Safety Sue.”

  She gave a very unladylike humph, which made me like her lots better.

  The four of us trooped downstairs and, maybe seeing the way I’d ogled her fresh-baked foods, Cassandra gave us each a free box of blueberry muffins for the road.

  “I love girls who bake,” sighed Cole as we drove back to his truck, with me behind the wheel this time. He launched into a rapturous monologue that featured, I kid you not, his mom’s apple pies. From there he moved to his boyhood, oatmeal-cookie-stealing stories, and by the time we reached his truck I’d inhaled two of Cassandra’s freebies. I’d also decided that if I ever met Cole’s mom I’d just come right out with it and ask her to adopt me.

  I let him off at the corner. Bergman pulled alongside me and yelled, “Follow me!” out the window, so I did. He drove a dark green work van with no windows in back and tinted ones in front. The words “Flaherty’s Fine Foods” were stenciled on the side in big gold letters that circled a picture of the sun, complete with curvy yellow beams, Blues Brothers shades, and a big, toothy smile.

  He drove to a large deserted park. No kids played on the red and yellow jungle gym. The benches were empty and so were several of the flower beds. He parked beside a pond with a working fountain and I got into the van beside him.

  “Thanks for coming, Bergman. I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” he said, though we both knew better. “I’m sorry about all the secrecy, but you said to bring all the bells and whistles, and I didn’t want anyone else to get a look at your new toys.”

  I felt a smile chase away my earlier irritation. I love new toys.

  He reached behind his seat and brought out a silver case with black combination-lock latches. Just the kind of thing inside of which you’d expect to find a top-secret weapon or two. Grinning in response to my excitement, he unlocked the case and set it on my lap. “You open it.”

  I raised the lid. Inside, cushioned by a casing of black foam, sat three smaller cases, also gleaming silver. I nearly jumped up and down in my seat, but confined myself to a short round of applause.

  “You don’t even know what they are yet!”

  “Look at this,” I demanded, bringing his attention to the case with a Vanna White–inspired flip of the hand. “Stuff that starts out looking like this always ends up awesome. Didn’t you ever see I Spy?”

  “Come on,” he said, his long, pale face twitching with anticipation. “Open them up.”

  “If you insist.” The first case snapped open to reveal a necklace made with shells, beads, and an arrow-shaped item that looked an awful lot like a shark’s tooth. I pulled it out of the case and looked closer. Finally I said, “Okay. I give. Why is this not any other souvenir-store rip-off?”

  “I’ll show you,” Bergman said, the brown eyes behind his glasses gleaming with techno-passion. He took his keys out of the ignition and traded them for the necklace. He stuck the shark’s tooth into the keyhole and wiggled it a little. Then he turned it sharply and the van started. To his delight, all I could say was “Whoa. That’s cool.”

  He turned the engine off and handed the necklace back to me. The shark’s tooth was now in the shape of a key, but even as I held it in my palm it reformed to its original shape. “What’s your secret?” I asked, although I knew he wouldn’t tell me, not even if his feet were bleeding and his hair was on fire.

  “Caffeine,” he replied, and we both smiled. I put the necklace on and he said, “Oh, yeah, the line everything’s threaded on is superstrong. It’s been tested to six hundred pounds.”

  I fingered the beads and the stretchy cord they hung on with wonder. “Cool! Now I can steal some rich old coot’s Ferrari and go fishing for marlin with the same piece of jewelry.”

  “Not many women can say that, you know.”

  “There’s no doubt I’m blessed among them. What else have we got?” I opened the second case. It held a couple of hearing aids like the one I’d just used and two round items that looked like mints. “Listening devices?” I guessed.

  “And transmitting,” Bergman agreed. “The round piece is made to stick to the roof of your mouth. The receiver goes in your ear. The second set is for Vayl. When you’re both equipped you can talk to each other without the bother of radios and headsets. The only downside is the sound is a little distorted.”

  “Yeah?”

  Bergman grimaced. “It’s like somebody pumped up the bass. I’m working on cleaning that up.”

  “What’s the upside?”

  He pointed to two items I hadn’t noticed because they were nearly the same color as the box’s lining. “Careful,” he warned, as I picked them up. They looked like the fake tattoos retailers sell to little kids who haven’t yet heard of hepatitis. One resembled a line of barbed wire. The other was a long, serpentine dragon. “These adhere to your skin and are indistinguishable from tattoos once they’re on. They’re transmitters,” Bergman explained. “They should allow you to hear each other from a distance of about two miles.”

  “No kidding? That far?” Bergman bobbed his head, looking like a rooster who’s just discovered the henhouse.

  I opened the last box. It contained a simple gold watch with an expandable band. I turned it inside out and upside down, but it looked completely normal. So I put it on.

  “Snap the band,” suggested Bergman.

  I did and my hand immediately began to tingle. The face of the watch turned blue, though I still had no problem reading the time. It turned white again and the tingling stopped. “What’s up with this?”

  “I’m still researching all the possible applications, but at the moment I can tell you the watch absorbs the energy your body movement creates and kicks it back out as an electronic shield. When it’s fully charged you can walk through a metal detector carrying a bazooka and no bells will go off. It also masks the sounds your natural movements cause.”

  “So you’re saying all I need to do is snap this band and I’m in stealth mode?”

  “As long as the face of the watch is blue. As you can see, it didn’t stay blue long because it hasn’t had much time to absorb your energy. It also has a limited storage capacity.”

  “How long?”

  “Five
minutes at the most.”

  “Not bad when thirty seconds is all you need.”

  “So you like it?”

  This was the side of Bergman I’d never figured out. The guy could make a lead door do backflips, but he still needed his pats.

  “Are you kidding me? This is the finest stuff you’ve ever given me to work with. You’ve really outdone yourself this time.” Minus the weight of that worry, he sat a little straighter. “Have you got a place to stay?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t tell me where, which came as no surprise.

  “Great. But look, before you go back there, I have a couple of requests.”

  “I’m at your service.”

  I told him about the bad blood and Vayl’s need for a clean supply. “So is there any way you can process the tainted blood? See what exactly Vayl’s smelling?”

  “No problem.” Bergman jerked his thumb over his shoulder, bringing my attention to at least forty bags and boxes that filled the body of the van. “I pretty much brought the office with me since I wasn’t sure what you’d need.”

  My next request didn’t want to roll off my tongue like the first, but I forced it. “How about a willing donor for Vayl?”

  Bergman’s eyebrows shot up. “Skirting Agency supplies?”

  “For now.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “I think I can arrange that by tomorrow. But there’s no way I can get him a supply any sooner.”

  “Tonight’s not a problem,” I said. I had shed my bandage when I’d donned my costume, but Bergman’s eyes still tracked to my neck. If he could see the puncture marks between the gathering gloom and my mane of hair he didn’t comment.

  “The blood’s at the hotel,” I told him. “Follow me back?”

  “No problem.”

  I jumped out of the van and into the Mercedes. To soothe Bergman’s concern that we might be followed and, I admit, to give myself a few extra minutes behind that smooth leather-clad wheel, I took the long way back to Diamond Suites. Bergman approved of the digs right up to the point when our exclusive elevator opened into our exclusive entryway and we discovered neither was as exclusive as advertised.

  “Son of a bitch!” I whispered, pulling Bergman into the corner. The scene reminded me of Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Parkses’. The smell of cheap aftershave. The trashed living room. The sound of voices coming from the bedroom, two of them, hissing at each other like a couple of pissed-off geese.

  I motioned for Bergman to stay put as I pulled Grief from its holster. He nodded at my watchband and held up his fingers, telling me I might have twenty seconds of stealth built up by now. I snapped the band and moved through the open door toward Vayl’s bedroom.

  “Look in the closet,” said one of the intruders, a woman whose accent made me think of those overcrowded trailer parks that attract cops and tornadoes in equal doses.

  “Vampires do not sleep in closets,” said her male partner in an equally thick drawl. “Besides, I already checked.”

  No movement or sound came from any other part of the suite, so I decided these two had arrived without reinforcements.

  I edged along the wall until I stood next to the open doorway.

  “We never shoulda taken this job, Rudy,” the woman whined. “Killing the undead is no way to make a living.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to go straight, Amy Jo, not me. I’d be just as happy popping cheating husbands and rich old uncles.”

  “Now what kind of folks would we be if we kept going around murdering other people’s folks? Did you look under the bed?”

  “Yes, I looked under the bed!” Rudy’s voice held that defeated note of exasperation sung by henpecked husbands the world over.

  “Sounds like it’s just not your day, Rudy,” I said as I stepped into the doorway and took careful aim. I picked the target closest to me, knowing in a moment the shock would wear off, they’d react, and I’d better be ready to shoot. Unfortunately, my target was heavily pregnant, so my own initial shock offset theirs, and we all recovered at pretty much the same time.

  “Don’t shoot!” Rudy yelled, jumping in front of Amy Jo and, no doubt, scoring lifetime Brownie points in the process.

  “Behave yourselves and I won’t have to,” I said in the most professional voice I could muster considering Amy Jo reminded me strongly of Evie, and she and Rudy both wore black clothing covered with bright yellow fabric-painted crosses. “You guys look like you should be representing the letter T on Sesame Street.”

  They traded a look that said they’d had the same discussion.

  “Who are you?” Rudy demanded, rather haughtily, I thought. After all, he was not only dressed like a letter of the alphabet, he looked like a young Mr. Magoo.

  “CIA,” I replied, sounding as crisp as a new fifty-dollar bill. “And you two are flirting with a long list of felonies that will put you behind bars until that kid of yours needs knee replacements.”

  “We’re just doing our job,” said Amy Jo, flipping her strawberry-blond hair away from her face with one hand while the other guarded her distended belly.

  “Who are you working for?”

  Rudy squinted his eyes tightly, until all you could see of them behind his Coke-bottle lenses were glittery black pinpoints. “Who wants to know?”

  I sighed. “The C—I—A.” I said it slow so they wouldn’t misunderstand. Our acronym can be so confusing.

  Amy Jo jabbed her right elbow into Rudy’s left love handle. “She’s the one with the gun. Tell her what she wants to know!”

  It was Rudy’s turn to sigh. “We don’t know. They hired us over the Internet, mailed us half the cash and promised the other half after we nailed the vampire.”

  I lowered Grief until it pointed straight at Rudy’s crotch. “You two wouldn’t recognize the Internet if a server fell on your heads. So give it to me straight this time, Rudy, before I lose my temper and make sure Junior grows up an only child.”

  Rudy let out a very Homer Simpson-like yelp and crossed his hands over my target. “All right! All right! This couple came into the bar where we hang out.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “She had big boobs and bright white hair that went down to her butt,” said Amy Jo, peeking around Rudy to make sure I heard her right.

  “And he had longish reddish hair,” finished Rudy. “I think they were both vampires.”

  Aidyn and Liliana. Should I be surprised? Yeah, I thought so. You don’t hire a couple of local yokels to off two of the best assassins in the world. Unless that’s not really what you want for your money. Maybe it’s well spent if all you want to do is distract said assassins from their original mission. It made sense, especially if you took it as an incident totally unrelated to all the other assassination attempts, which had seemed entirely genuine.

  “The vamp you’re after is already smoke,” I told them.

  “What?” the two of them squawked like a couple of irritated blue jays.

  “Yeah. Thought he needed a suntan, I guess. Walked right out into full daylight this morning.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Amy Jo punched poor Rudy in the arm because, well, he was there.

  “Look,” I said, before she threw another jab Rudy couldn’t duck. “Tell them you bagged the vamp. He’s gone, so it doesn’t really matter if you take the credit. Then get out of town. Way out. You’ll get the cash and help the CIA at the same time.”

  Amy Jo looked a little doubtful, but Rudy grinned and rubbed his palms together as if they’d already been greased. “We can do that.”

  “And, uh”—I motioned to their costumes—“I’d rethink the vamp-smoking biz. The old ones are too smart to allow themselves to be staked in their sleep. Most others keep tougher goons than you around to guard them while they’re vulnerable. Why don’t you go straight and, uh, open a liquor store or something?”

  “Wow,” said Amy Jo, “how did you know?”

  Because you are me and Evie minus college and Granny May. T
he words sat silent on my tongue. I just looked at her, and when her eyes narrowed I knew she had me pegged. “You’re a Sweep, aren’t you?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not familiar with that term.”

  “Like a chimney sweep. You dust vamps and get rid of the ashes. Dust people too, I’m betting,” she said, nodding wisely, like an old Chinese monk.

  I accepted her metaphor, despite her ignorance of what actually happens when a vamp goes bye-bye for good. “Yes,” I said, “I do.” I let her see in my eyes what all my victims had seen in their time. She was already a tough old bird, though I wouldn’t put her age past twenty-two, but I backed her up a step. “Someday you might even be as good as me, if a vamp doesn’t rip your throat out first. Of course, Junior there might not appreciate that.” I motioned to her belly. “There are Moms and there are Sweeps, Amy Jo. You can’t be both.”

  I stopped, mentally kicking myself for falling into lecture mode. Either she was smart enough to figure it out for herself, or she was too damn dumb to waste my breath on.

  “Throw the room key on the bed,” I told Rudy, too tired to be polite anymore. He fished the card out of his back pocket and laid it on Vayl’s crumpled comforter.

  “We’ll be taking the stairs down.” I motioned them out of the bedroom. “You come too,” I told Bergman when he caught my eye. He nearly leaped out of our way as we moved to the entryway, a nervous gazelle smelling predator in all directions. To give him credit, however, he didn’t rush to his ride once we reached the parking lot. He stood slightly behind me as Rudy and Amy Jo boarded their beige Chevy van, circa 1975, and pulled away. Even from a distance I could see Amy Jo talking into her cell phone, hopefully reporting Vayl’s final demise.

  “Come on, Bergman, let’s get you that blood sample so you can get the hell out of here.”

  “So Vayl’s okay?” he asked as we took the elevator back upstairs.

  “Of course. If you’ve taught me anything, it’s to be perfectly paranoid when it comes to securing sleeping quarters. He’s snoozing in the basement.”