Fangs for Nothing (Vampire Hunting and Other Foolish Endeavors) (2 page)

“I’m thinking L.A. next time,” Xander said as Rini got up to
release me from the backseat. The top was still down, so I could have just hopped out, but Xander doesn’t like it if I stand on the upholstery.

“Why would vampires be living in L.A.?” I wondered
aloud as I unfolded myself. “It’s sunny all the time there, isn’t it?”

“I still say they’ve got to be somewhere in New
York,” I heard Rini say as Xander unlocked the trunk and I hauled my suitcase out. “I mean, that’s where you find all the cool clothes and all the nightlife. If you think about it, it’s the only American city that really makes any sense.”

“Yeah, whatever,
” Xander replied. “I’ll do some more research, but I’m still feeling L.A.”

Rini snickered a little. “I think you want to go t
here to try and get discovered. Wear a tight sweater and sit at the counter at Schwab’s kind of thing.”

“
You want to be the next Robert Pattinson.” I laughed.

Xander snorted
as he hopped back into the car. “I do not. That guy’s a poser.”

“Why is he a poser?” Rini
demanded with a little more force than the comment seemed to warrant. I had my suspicions that Rini was harboring a secret crush on the actor. After all, she’d seen
Twilight
like a zillion times.

“He just is.”

“But why?”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Xander groused. “I’m tired from crazy chicks trying to run us off the road.”

I crouched down next to the car to talk in a lowered voice, just in case Grandma was in the kitchen and had the window open. “Thanks for the trip, Xander.”

“Yeah, no problem.
Remember, Young Lords at the Agora Saturday night.” The Agora show had been sold out for weeks, and we didn’t have tickets, but for Xander, that was never a problem. Say what you will about him, but the guy was incredibly generous with his dad’s money.

“Okay
.” I stood up. “See ya.” Something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. It was a car sneaking up on us with the lights off. It was
the
car. The girls must have somehow followed us. “What the hell?” I blurted.

A girl was hanging out the open window of the car. She had a black ski mask covering her face. “You
’re next.” She pointed at me. I felt something hit my chest. It was a sharp then dull pain. As I looked down, confused, the car peeled off.

Xander was instantly out of the Dart and by my side. “Are you okay? What’d they
throw at you?”

The front of my black vintage blazer was slimy and wet. I had a
flash of panic thinking they’d somehow shot me and my brain hadn’t yet registered the pain of my guts spilling onto the sidewalk. “I don’t know.” I brushed away the goo. The slime felt familiar. “An egg. A bloody egg.”

“What?” Rini got out of the car
, and Xander bent down to examine my jacket.

“They just egged me, but it’s red.” I
viewed my stained hands under the streetlamp. “Gross.”

“
Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Xander straightened himself.

“I
’m fine,” I said, feeling more bewildered than anything else. “I hope it doesn’t stain. This is my favorite jacket.”

“Run cold water on it,” Rini advised. “Don’t use hot. That’ll just cook it
on there.”

“Okay
.” I scraped off as much of the slime as I could and flicked it on the tree lawn. Bending over, I wiped my palms on the grass.

“Well, if you’re all right, then we’re taking off,” Xander said as he
turned to get back in his car. “What do you think she meant by ‘you’re next’?”

Standing up,
I grabbed Grandma’s suitcase. “I don’t know. Next to go to the drycleaner.”

Chapter 2

I
came in through our back door intentionally so I could stash the suitcase in the laundry room and let some water run on my jacket. I’d empty my luggage and fully deal with the egg later after my grandmother fell asleep. I just didn’t want it to dry on there. It was one of my only jackets that fit me like it was custom made. Plus, the blue silk lining was in perfect condition. Not torn or anything.

“Is that you, Herbie?”

“Yeah, it’s me, Grandma.”

“How was the slumber party?”
Her voice wafted in from the living room. Grandma persisted in calling anything a slumber party if I spent the night away from home. I knew she did it just to bug me, so I didn’t rise to the bait.

“It was good, Grandma. Lots of fun.” I opened the fridge and
poked around inside to see if there was anything I felt like eating. I’d filled it with a bunch of Grandma-type supplies before I left. She’d cooked everything, broken them down into meals, and neatly stored the food in generic Tupperware-style containers.

“Were there any cute girls there?” Grandma called from her
burnt-orange Barcalounger, which was permanently parked in front of our ancient television. She spent the night on the thing half the time.

“A few,” I called, grabbing
a tub of what I thought was probably pot roast out of the fridge. “Rini was there.”

“Oh, Irene,” I could hear her mutter. “She’s not so cute.”

“She’s not bad,” I called, not willing to let her get away with putting down one of my friends.

“Don’t you settle for a plain girl, Herbie. Let me tell you something, you could do a lot better than that Irene.” My grandmother was the only female on the planet that
suffered under the delusion that I was attractive. Of course, all the other females on the planet usually saw me when I was standing next to Xander, so that didn’t help my cause any.

“I won’t, Grandma,” I said as I dumped the contents of the Tupperware onto a plate and shoved it in the microwave. The way my
love life was going, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to settle for someone plain. To prevent Grandma from launching into a rambling lecture on my physical attributes and attractions to lure the opposite sex, I distracted her with, “Xander was there.”

“W
as he?” Grandma tried to keep the spark of interest out of her voice.

“
Sure. He said to say hello.”

“
Did he, now?” Grandma chuckled. “Boys like Alexander put the smirk on the Mona Lisa.” She would never admit it, but Grandma had a bit of a crush on Xander. Just like every other female in the northern hemisphere. I entertained her with a few of the latest Xanderisms, all the while neatly avoiding the fact that I’d just spent the last four days in San Francisco. As far as Grandma was concerned, I’d been at a slumber party. I guess if she’d thought about it, she’d realize that slumber parties don’t usually last 96 hours, but she chose to ignore that detail, and I chose not to point it out. It was the glue that held our relationship together. Grandma wanted to raise me properly to be a well-brought-up young man. That included good table manners and a college education. I, on the other hand, wanted to go and do whatever I felt like doing, which I pretty much did if I could afford it. With that said, I’d always been an “A” student and had a part-time job. I’d never even been close to getting a girl “in trouble” unfortunately. And besides trying a little pot, I was living drug free in America. Okay, so I drank. Sue me. I had to have some vices. America was fooling itself with the whole 21 being the legal age for drinking, anyway. I didn’t know of a kid in our class that didn’t imbibe at least at parties and stuff. The way I saw it, at seventeen, I was legal to drink in most of Europe. Really, I was just trying to be more international.

After a while, I could tell Grandma wanted to get back to her shows, so
I wolfed down the rest of my pot roast and wandered off to my bedroom. I logged on to my dial-up account and waited for a connection. That’s right, dial-up. There was no way Grandma was going to pay to get broadband for something she essentially considered a fancy toy. I’d tried explaining to her a million times that I needed the Internet to get into a good college, but she wasn’t having any of it. I tried pointing out that with cable television she’d have a lot more programs. Still no. That’s why I paid for dial-up out of my wages from working at Auntie Agatha’s Pretzels in the mall. The job pretty much sucked. Unless I was working with Rini, of course. She had recently been promoted to assistant manager, which meant she did the scheduling most of the time and made sure to put us on the same shifts when she could.

There was an instant message waiting for me as soon as I’d managed to log on.

Bar-B-Trix: You there?

Sherbert
: Just logged in.

Bar-B-Trix:
Any guff from Grandma?

Sherbert:
No. I’m not even sure she realizes how long I’ve been gone.

Bar-B-Trix:
That’s good. I guess...

Sherbert:
You grounded?

Bar-B-Trix:
Yep.

Rini’s parents didn’t feel as flexible about their daughter disappearing for four days as my grandmother. Especially
her taking off with two guys, even though we were all strictly platonic. I had my suspicions that Rini would like her relationship with Xander to be much more than friends, but she never said anything about it to me.

Sherbert: 
Still going to Young Lords?

Bar-B-Trix: 
You bet your combat boots.

Sherbert: 
How long are you grounded for?

Bar-B-Trix: 
For this offense or grand total?

Sherbert: 
Grand total.

Rini kept a log of how long her parents grounded her and how much time she
’d actually served.

Bar-B-Trix: 
Closing in on two years.

Sherbert: 
You’ll be in college.

Bar-B-Trix: 
I’ll have to stay in my dorm room.

Sherbert: 
What’cha think of SF?

Bar-B-Trix: 
It was okay. Pretty cool, I guess. Except for the poo.

Sherbert: 
They should make fertilizer.

Bar-B-Trix: 
Impossible. Dog poo kills any plant it touches.

I did a quick Google search while we were chatting
, and it turns out she was right. Dog poo is surprisingly toxic.

Sherbert: 
Think there’re vamps in L.A.?

Bar-B-Trix: 
No.

Sherbert: 
Where are they, then?

Bar-B-Trix: 
Washington State?

Sherbert: 
That’s right, Bella.

Bar-B-Trix: 
Fuck off.

Sherbert: 
Not very ladylike of you.

Bar-B-Trix: 
Please, fuck off.

Sherbert: 
Much better.

My laptop informed me that a new person wanted to chat.

Xan-Z-Bar:  What are you and Rini talking about?

Sherbert: 
You.

Xan-Z-Bar: 
Naturally. She grounded?

Sherbert: 
Naturally.

Xan-Z-Bar: 
She still going to Young Lords?

Rini interrupted.

Bar-B-Trix:  Are you IMing Xander? STOP FAVORING HIM!

Sherbert: 
He paid for my ticket.

Bar-B-Trix: 
But I make your work schedule.

Sherbert: 
You’re being a bully.

Xander sensed that I was taking too long of a pause in my typing.

Xan-Z-Bar:  STOP FAVORING RINI!

Sherbert: 
That’s just what she said.

Xan-Z-Bar: 
I’m the one who paid for your ticket.

Sherbert: 
That’s what I told her.

Xan-Z-Bar:
  Besides, you’ll see her tomorrow at work.

This wa
s the way our conversations usually went via IM. Xander and Rini rarely IMed each other directly, that I knew about, but that probably had something to do with my secret crush suspicions. They preferred to both badger me for attention, but only if they believed I was favoring the other person. Hey, at least it’s nice to be wanted. Now, if I could only transform my powers into something that attracted girls. I mean, girls that weren’t Rini.

*****

I had rinsed the egged part of my jacket in the bathroom and hung it in my closet with a towel on the floor beneath it in case it dripped. I didn’t want to have to explain to Grandma that I’d been egged right in front of our house. That would really send her on a major tirade about “kids today” and I just wasn’t in the mood.

My grandmother
once told me that back when she was a kid, everyone went downtown to do their shopping. There weren’t any malls in the suburbs, and there weren’t any national chain stores. Cleveland had a couple big department stores called Halle Brothers and Higbees. These stores had stuff made especially for them from all over the world. A bunch of my vintage ties have labels that say things like, “Made in Florence, Italy, especially for the Halle Brothers of Cleveland, Ohio.” And I guess there were department stores like this all over the country. So if you went shopping in Atlanta, you’d find completely different stuff than you’d find shopping in Chicago. To me, that sounds totally cool. It would be so much more interesting traveling in America if there wasn’t a Gap at the corner of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco exactly like the Gap at Terminal Tower in downtown Cleveland. And don’t even get me started on chain restaurants. Bluk.