The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires (13 page)

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much cash at once, Miss Iris,” confessed Posey Stubblefield as she counted out five thousand dollars in hundreds for Gigi’s tuition fund. A recent hire, Posey had been fired from her job at the Half-Moon Hollow Public Library for setting the reference room ablaze with a badly planned Halloween display. Lit jack-o’-lanterns and newspapers were, apparently, a dangerous combination. With this in mind, I kept my very flammable stack of money close until it was absolutely necessary to hand it over.

“I’ve been saving up here and there for a while,” I told her quietly. “Sort of a cookie-jar savings account.”

“Must have been one hell of a cookie jar,” she muttered. “Do vampires really tip that well?”

I chuckled. To most humans who worked for them, vampires were notoriously horrible tippers. Most of them had been turned long before the practice became popular and seemed to resent the idea of rewarding humans for “doing their jobs properly.” But instead of bursting poor Posey’s bubble, I just nodded and signed the slip for Gigi’s deposit.

“Do you need any extra help at Beeline, Miss Iris?”

Thinking of the many jobs Posey had lost because of mysterious workplace fires, combined with the general flammability of my clients, I shuddered. “Sorry, Posey. I’m just starting out. I don’t need anyone else just yet.”

Posey shrugged and grinned good-naturedly. “Oh, well, but keep me in mind, will you?”

I booked it out of the bank lobby before Posey managed to ignite her nameplate.

Eager to make up for missing the day before, I was meticulous in my attention to detail. I double-checked invoices and triple-checked blood types. I entered my clients’ houses carefully, straightened area rugs, and left each place tidier than I found it.

I was not looking forward to going into Cal’s house later. I had a weird sense of foreboding, like a black spot hanging over the end of my day. I chalked it up to anxiety over the bank deposit and whether Posey would flap her gums about my “tips.” Anyone who knew vampires would see through that ploy right away.

I tried to think of something else, focusing on the tasks at hand. But finally, just around four, I pulled into the driveway four doors down from Cal’s house. I dialed my home number on my cell and actually hoped that Cal wouldn’t pick up, so I wouldn’t have to go in. But damned if he didn’t pick up on the second ring, sounding somewhat coherent.

Silently mouthing curses, I tucked my earpiece into my left ear and got out of the car. I pulled a slip of paper and a blue plastic card out of my purse. I punched the
code into the keypad near the door. But the light over the buttons flashed an uncooperative red.

“I told you, the Council has changed your door code,” I said, checking the paper and retyping the code listed.

“That’s why I gave you that blue card,” he said, yawning.

“What does it do?”

“I can’t tell you.”

I cocked my hand on my hip and glared toward the earpiece as if he could feel my irritation through the cell connection. “I get really tired of that answer.”

“Place the card between the wall and the lockbox, and shove it until it’s between the metal plates. It will interrupt the signal to the lockbox without alerting the alarm company.”

I was about to follow his directions, but I withdrew my hand from the keypad. “Will that shock me in any way?”

I heard him yawn again. “It shouldn’t.”

“Also not a great answer,” I told him dryly as I slipped the card into place. The indicator lights flickered once and turned green. I yanked the card out and stuffed it into my pocket. The house was dark. The sunproof shades were down, and I didn’t think it would be a good idea to raise them or turn on the lights. I stilled, blinking rapidly to let my eyes adjust to the darkness.

“Cal?” I whispered into the headset. “Are you awake?”

“Barely,” he muttered. “Why are you whispering?”

“I really don’t know.” I allowed my voice to rise to a normal level. “Where do I need to look?”

“My office,” he said. “Top of the stairs, first door on the left. There should be a white cardboard file box on the desk.”

“Seriously, you just left your files out on your desk?” I asked, climbing the stairs.

“No, that’s my decoy box. I just want to see if they took it.”

“Your mind is a dark, scary place,” I murmured as I turned into the hall.

I looked into the office. The room was practically sanitized. The spare black console desk had been stripped clean. The filing cabinet had been emptied, its drawers standing open. I was surprised the Council had left the desk lamp behind. “They took your decoy box.”

He snickered.

“What was in it?” I asked.

“I hand-copied about a year’s worth of
Penthouse Forum
letters into steno notebooks.”

“Ew.”

“In Serbian,” he added. “By the time they figure out what they have …”

“They’ll think you stole a bunch of notebooks from a perverted Serbian,” I said. “I’m not sure whether to be impressed with you or concerned. Where are the real notebooks?”

I could hear him rolling over on the bed, the sheets rustling against the phone. This called to mind images of Cal naked and barely covered by sleep-rumpled sheets, which was not good for my powers of stealth and concentration. He cleared his throat, as if he could sense my
indecent thoughts through the phone connection. “Front bedroom closet, in a box marked ‘Receipts 2009.’ ”

“Vampires never save receipts.”

“So it should be easy for you to find,” he retorted.

I stepped into the hallway. I heard a strange sort of shuffling noise downstairs, then a light thud. I stopped.

“Iris? Your breathing’s changed. What’s happening?”

“Shh,” I whispered, listening.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, his voice suddenly sharp.

The house was silent. When I didn’t hear so much as a creaking floorboard, I shook my head, stepping toward the bedroom. “Nothing. I thought I heard something.”

“Get out,” he commanded. “Get out of the house, right now.”

I listened for a moment, wondering what happened to “no emotional connections” and using me as a human shield if necessary. “No, it’s OK. It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I said, approaching the closet near the front window of the bedroom. “I’m probably just being paranoid. B and E isn’t exactly an everyday occurrence for me.”

“If you feel uncomfortable, I want you to leave.”

“It’s fine.” I closed my fingers around the closet door and opened it. It was completely empty. Not so much as a dust bunny.

“Cal—” A hand closed over my mouth. I shrieked, inhaling an unpleasant combination of woodruff and lime that stung my nose. I was pulled back against a
solid, hard body. The rough fingers stretched across my mouth, the taste of his skin making me gag.

“Iris!” I heard Cal’s voice yell from the earpiece, which was now dangling from my collar.

I took a deep breath, but before I could scream, the hand closed over my throat, cutting off my air. The earpiece clattered to the ground, bouncing across the carpet. The only sound I could make was a strangled croak. Another hand slipped down my ribs and pressed hard, squeezing me back against him.

“Sweet little thing.” The cold, rough voice slipped down the side of my neck. I tried to shrink away, but he just pulled me closer. He ground his hips against my butt, letting me know exactly how much he was enjoying toying with his food. Hot, humiliated tears gathered at the corners of my eyes.

“Iris?” Cal called, his voice small and far away. “Iris, answer me right now!”

I whimpered as his grip tightened on my mouth. Fangs dropped, sounding like a knife being unsheathed. I felt the points scrape against the flesh of my neck.

“What are you doing here, pretty thing?” he whispered, his lips clammy and wet against my skin. “You woke me. No one is supposed to be here.”

His voice slithered around in my head, constricting, smothering. My head felt so heavy, full and numb, like an overblown bloom on a weak steam.

“Do you work for him?” he asked. “Do you know where he is?”

“Wh-who?” I stammered, whimpering when he wrenched my neck.

“Don’t play stupid with me, pretty thing.”

“I work for Ophelia,” I whispered. “For the Council. I came to close up the house.”

“For the Council?” He chuckled. He sniffed my neck. “You’re untapped. No one’s ever taken a bite out of you?” I shook my head frantically.

Please, please, please, just let me get out of this “untapped,”
I prayed.
Gigi is too young to be left alone. I haven’t filled out her Free Application for Federal Student Aid yet. And she still doesn’t understand that the “check engine” light is more than just a sparkly greeting from her car
.

His voice was flowing over me now, pulling me under an oily surface. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. He murmured, “I’m so hungry, and you smell just mouthwatering. I think I might keep you with me so I can drink you all up. You don’t mind, do you? After all, it’s the neighborly thing to do.”

The hazy brain-fog cleared enough that I found that I didn’t mind giving him my blood. It didn’t seem like such an unreasonable request. It seemed rude somehow not to offer him something to drink. I tilted my head so he would be able to access my neck. He chuckled, pressing a smacking little kiss over my jugular before sinking his fangs into me.

A stuttering gasp rippled through my chest as he broke the skin over my vein. Pain, a bright, hot, pulsating
flower, bloomed through my nerve endings. I felt a trickle of blood soak through the neck of my cardigan. He moaned, making loud slurping pulls at my skin. I whimpered at the burning, tugging sensation of my blood being drained away.

His enjoyment of my blood was so complete that he wasn’t even bothering to hold my arms. My eyes rolled back, and I fought the need to pass out. Breathing deeply, I snuck my hand into my pocket and wrapped my fingers around the silver handle.

I inhaled sharply, jerking the silver pie server out and shoving it over my shoulder. There was a horrible screeching noise as the pie server met a little resistance, sinking into the vampire’s flesh. The pressure at my neck slipped away.

I stumbled out of the closet and toward the window, pressing the button that released the sunproof shades. The room was flooded with sunlight, temporarily blinding me as the vampire screamed in rage. I turned to face him, a canister of silver vampire spray in hand. I couldn’t make out his face, just the smoking outline of a very angry vampire.

The smell of burning popcorn sizzled through the air as the combination of silver and sun burned his flesh. Wrenching my shoulder, he shoved me back toward the open closet, cursing and sputtering. I pressed the spray button, aiming for eye level. He screamed, growling viciously as I added another layer of pain to his suffering. Howling, he threw me back into the open closet. Flailing,
I caught the doorknob with my sleeve, inadvertently slamming the door behind me.

For a second, I panicked, thinking he might be in the closet with me. I kicked and struck out, swinging at nothing but air. Lunging for the rattling doorknob, I held it in a death grip as he yanked on it from the outside. Although the strain on my arms burned, exposure to the sunlight had obviously weakened him. I held on, despite the guttural stream of graphic, anatomically impossible death threats he threw at me.

The growling and shaking stopped suddenly, but I kept my grip on the door for another minute. I only let go when my legs gave way. Slumping against the wall, I sucked in huge, gulping breaths, closing my eyes and willing the panic to die down. My stomach rolled, and I pitched to my knees, praying that I wouldn’t vomit on the floor in Cal’s closet.

Though, clearly, I owed him a few yarks.

I pressed my fingertips into my eyes, willing myself to wake up if this was a nightmare. Because this couldn’t be the way Iris Scanlon departed this earth, huddling in a closet, waiting for the angry, weakened vampire outside to recover enough to swoop in and devour her. At this sad point, my options were:

1. Go charging out of the closet, screaming Xena-style, and hope that the vampire was weakened by the sunlight or doubled over laughing at my weak attempt at overpowering him.

Likely result:
Death or, at the very least, humiliation.

2. Duck out of my closet just long enough to grab for my purse, hoping that the vampire didn’t catch me, and then call 911 … and carefully explain to the police what I was doing in a vampire’s home where I had no legitimate business.

Likely result:
Three to five years for breaking and entering. Which was inconvenient, because I looked really washed out in orange.

3. Hide in this closet overnight until sunrise.

Likely result:
Being yanked out of the closet and drained as soon as the vampire recovered.

I split the difference between options 1 and 3, waiting until I had the nerve to crack the door open and scan the room for Gropey Groperson. All was quiet in the bedroom. I couldn’t see the silver pie server. I wondered idly whether it was still stuck in the vampire’s chest.

From the other side of the door, I could hear the faintest impression of Cal’s voice calling. I waited several long minutes, listening for any sound of the injured vampire. I grasped the can of silver spray firmly in front of me and kicked open the door. The well-lit bedroom was empty. And my mom’s silver pie server was gone.

I was so glad she wasn’t around to ground me for this one.

“Iris!” Cal yelled, his voice tinny and remote from the earpiece on the floor. “Answer me!”

“I’m fine.” I wheezed, putting the module back in my ear. “I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“I, uh, I just got spooked,” I told him, carefully poking my head into the hallway and flicking on the light switch. I didn’t see any evidence of a smoking vampire’s trail, but there was no way he had gotten out of the house in broad daylight. I went to the window and pushed the button to lift the shade. A breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding rushed out of my chest.