Vampire State of Mind (2 page)

I didn't go back to the office in the end, I went home.

Just because I work with Others – what the District Council in a superfluity of PCness keeps trying to call the Differently Vital – doesn't mean I have to live like Igor's second cousin, so I share a riverside flat with my best friend, Rachel. But then I bet even the best vampire-slayers have someone to record
Desperate Housewives
and load the washing machine when they're out. It can't all be moody silence and classical music, however much they'd like people to think that.

‘You're late.' Rach spoke without looking up from the disinfectant bucket, where the Dettol-scented steam was making her hair curl into blonde ringlets. ‘He's ill again, must be that old lady next door feeding him, I've
told
her and
told
her about his allergies, but she will keep doing it!'

The place smelled like a hospital ward. The patient was curled in a complacent cushion-shape on top of the fridge, purring slightly and looking anything but life-impaired.

‘Okay, yeah. Is there anything to eat?'

‘I left you some couscous. Oh, and somebody came over looking for you.' Rachel went back to scraping and sluicing. ‘Some bloke.'

‘What did he want?' I opened the fridge in search of something I felt like eating, closed it, opened a cupboard and then went back to the fridge.

‘Didn't say.'

‘What did he look like?' There was some cheese and salad, which would have to do. Rachel was into everything healthy, so even finding cheese was a bit of a triumph. Too much to hope that she'd weakened and bought some HobNobs.

Rach stopped scraping and sat back. ‘Browny eyes, hair down to here,' she indicated her shoulders, ‘tall, skinny. A bit …'

I poked the cheese. Things had a tendency to live in our fridge until they evolved, and I wanted to know if the cheese would poke back. ‘A bit what? Warty? Like Tom Cruise?'

She bridled. ‘Tom Cruise is
not
warty!'

‘There was a full stop in there. What, for the love of God, was he “a bit”, Rach?'

She wrinkled her nose and her body twitched as though trying to shake off the memory. ‘A bit … he made me go all goose pimpled. Good looking, though.'

My stomach rolled.
Sil? Here? But why would he?
‘Did he look like a client?' By which I meant ‘vampire', but Rachel is sensitive to mentions of my work. She prefers to keep the illusion that my job consists of acting as a kind of PR officer for the Otherworlders, rather than filling them with chemicals 'til they stop moving.

‘You
know
I can't tell! He asked if you were in and I said no, and we chatted a bit, then he left. Friendly. Strange but friendly.'

Probably not Sil then. Friendship and he were mutually exclusive and he couldn't really be described as ‘strange'.
And,
whispered that dark little memory,
his eyes aren't brown, are they, Jessie? They're the colour of skies in winter, of a cassowary egg, of a brewing storm …
‘You didn't let him
in
, did you?'

‘Of course I didn't let him in! Honestly, Jessie, you must think I'm stupid or something! We had a quick chat on the doorstep, then he went away. Didn't leave a message or anything, so I thought you'd know who he was.' She stood up and tipped the bowl of water down the sink. A cloud of steam puffed up, reminiscent of the mist in the graveyard. ‘I'm only saying what happened, all right? I can't vet your visitors all the time you know. I do have a life.'

I manfully refrained from pointing out that her life consisted of working in a chemist's and looking after Jasper, the world's only Munchausen's-by-proxy cat. ‘Sorry. I guess I'm just a bit weirded out. Daim Willis' demon popped by with some misguided warning. Even if it can't be true, it's still freaked me a bit.'

Rach stared. ‘God, Jessie, that is sooo
cooooool
!' She wrapped her arms across her significant chest, hugging herself in a silent delight. ‘What was it like? Was it hideous – they're supposed to be hideous, aren't they? And how did it speak, is it, you know, actual
words
and stuff or was it that kind of mind-to-mind thing?' She gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘I can't believe it, my friend, my really ordinary friend, gets to talk to demons!'

No wonder the vampire-slayers live alone with Beethoven's
Greatest Hits
.

‘Imagine Jasper shaved, boiled and sneezed on.
That
is a demon. I'm going to bed, okay?'

‘Are you taking that cheese?'

I stared at the block of Wensleydale in my hand. ‘I seem to have lost my appetite,' I said, ‘unless by some huge fluke and complete character switch you've got biscuits?'

Rachel pursed her mouth at me. ‘They're bad for you.'

I tried
really hard
not to let my eyes flicker, but somehow they did. Rach gave me a mean look. ‘Okay, all right, rub it in. I'm the mound of blubber and you look like a pencil in a wig, with boobs on, but even so! Think of the cholesterol.'

‘I rarely think of anything else.' I shoved the cheese back on the fridge shelf, but my flouncy exit was spoiled by Rach's shouting after me.

‘I read today that they think the five per cent of people who can spot vampires are all a bit weird. Did you read that, Jessie?'

I shut my bedroom door, pacified my rumbling stomach with half a bar of Fruit and Nut and then sat on my bed feeling sorry for myself. Here I was, thirty-one, not bad looking (not exactly stunning, but no-one had screamed yet either), responsible job and … nothing else. What I really wanted was a cuddle. Or at least – I stared at my ruined shoes and laddered tights – an expense account at Next. What I actually got was another night in with the telly and my best friend regurgitating
Daily Mail
headlines at me. Sometimes, just
sometimes
, I wished I'd handled my whole life differently.

‘Bloke was here for you last night.' Liam hung his jacket over the back of his chair and sat down, pulling the filing pile across the desk towards him. His dark curls hung like an untidy tablecloth over his face. ‘Said he wanted a word.'

‘Ambidextrous,' I said, peering at the computer screen.

‘Was he?'

‘It's a word. Honestly, you do
have
a sense of humour, don't you? I'm sure it said on your job application.'

‘Yes,' Liam said pointedly, ‘
I
do. Anyway, he left a card.'

‘Journo?' I turned away from the computer, which was currently running the tracker programme, telling me that all our designated vampires were exactly where they were supposed to be, and that in the city of York the temperature was a cool 18 degrees. It was also, on a minimised screen, showing the Jeremy Kyle show, but Liam didn't know that.

‘Didn't say. Don't think so; looked a bit clean to be from the local rag. Hold on, I put the card in the pile for filing.'

I stared across the desk at Liam. He was the most efficient man I'd ever met. He'd worked for me for five years, since he'd come at nineteen as a Work Experience placement and never left, and in all that time he'd never lost a single piece of paper. He wasn't bad looking either, as long as he never stood next to a vampire – but then, standing next to a vampire even Johnny Depp would come across as a bit
meh
– with dark hair and eyes and an onboard twinkle that made people warm to him. ‘You were going to file a
card
? No, I'm sorry, that's just weird.'

An outflung arm indicated the knee-deep squalor that was the office. ‘You ever want to see anything again round here, you file it. Well, I do. You drop it and wait for archaeologists. Cards go on the Rolodex … ah, here it is. Might make sense to you.' He passed me the small square of card. ‘Looks expensive. 'S funny that, don't you reckon, the more expensive those things are, the harder they are to read.'

‘Mmm,' I said, without listening, tilting the white oblong back and forth to catch the light. ‘Liam, are you pulling some kind of stunt?'

Liam rolled his eyes at me. ‘Jessica, I am not pulling
anything
. Look, both hands, all right?'

‘Ha. But this card is blank.'

‘Nah. That would be stupid, dropping in a blank card.' He took it from me and squinted at it. ‘What would be the point?'

‘And
how
long have you been around the Otherworlders? Come on, Liam, if there's an opportunity to be posey and mysterious, have you ever known one pass it up?'

Liam frowned. ‘I'm not actually sure he
was
an Otherworlder.'

I took the card back again and dropped it on the edge of the imminent landslide that was my desk. ‘You couldn't tell? And here's me thinking you were one of the five per cent … So what did he look like?'

He shrugged. ‘He was a bloke – contrary to what you might like to believe in your dirtiest dreams, I don't really notice blokes.'

Same man as called at the flat? Could be. Definitely not Sil then. Liam and he were …
had been
friends; even after a night on the Pernod and black Liam would have recognised Sil … ‘Did you tell him where I was?'

‘Course not. I said you were out, that was all. If he
was
a journo didn't think you'd thank me for having him turn up all over a tagging, and if he's not, well, he'll find you.'

‘You didn't mention where I live, or anything?'

‘Yes, of course. I also told him that you like reading, you're a Gemini and you want a man who's sensitive and smart – of course I didn't bloody tell him where you live!'

‘Sorry. And what makes you think I want a man who's sensitive and smart?'

Liam rolled his eyes.

I pointed in the general direction of the card. It had already been subsumed by paperwork and vanished somewhere under a pile of reports. ‘So. He wants me to know he's been here, but the ball remains in his court.'

‘Being mysterious on purpose. Get your curiosity going.'

I curled my lip. ‘Come on, Liam, did he look like he might want me for something urgent or just as a matter of interest? Or was he competition?'

‘You mean, did he look like a Hunter? Not really. Not enough of the Hugh Jackman thing going on, too skinny.' Right, yeah, Liam, Mister ‘I don't notice blokes'. ‘And if he was a vamp, he's not one of ours – didn't look right for a vamp anyway, didn't
feel
right, if you know what I mean. Oh, and you're due in that school in twenty minutes, to give your talk.'

Great. Not only do I have to tag the bastards if they get out of line, but I have to do their PR, which is how I regularly find myself standing up on a stage in front of a bunch of kids, giving them the ‘Otherworlders are quite safe, that's why we have a Treaty,' spiel, tempered with a little ‘but it's not cool to be a vampire. Honest. Don't let the being gorgeous, rich and successful fool you.'

We don't know how it happened, even after a hundred years we're still not quite sure
where
they came from, but we do know this – when it all kicked off, the vampires were at the heart of it. Oh, they weren't the only species to come through, or pass over or whatever you might call it, the werewolves came too, and wights and Shadows and ghouls and zombies – we got the full set, but the vampires were the ones that fronted it. The acceptable faces of an alternative dimension, at least that's what the
NME
call them, but they've always been good at the sound bytes. I just call them bastards and have done with it.

The thing that most people don't understand about vampires is that, basically, when you get right down to it, they're transport. That's all. Transport for a nasty little demon, its eyes and ears and food supplier. In their home dimension, apparently, all the demons live without hosts, and even here they can get by on their own but … well, there's a limit to the amount of fun you can have when you look like an irradiated rodent with an ooze problem and no form of protection. So in this dimension one of the enhancements that having a top-of-the-range demon on board tends to give you, is physical attractiveness. Vampires can be abso-bloody-lutely drop-dead-and-swivel-on-the-ground gorgeous. Demons need that kind of thing, something to do with all the hormones sloshing around, they get off on adrenaline, dopamine, oestrogen, testosterone, the whole alphabet of human regulators gives them a huge high, so they make sure that they are first in line for the thrills.

Here's how it works – you get bitten by a vamp and you have one of three options. If you're lucky it just feeds – leaving you weak, lightheaded and looking favourably upon nearly raw steak for a month or two, also wearing a mark that you're
never
going to get away with explaining as a love bite. Or, they just kill you, because to a vampire another vampire is competition, but sometimes, you know, if they're feeling procreative, you get really unlucky, and they inject demon-seed into your blood. Then you've got, probably, an hour – ninety minutes tops – to get to a hospital which has a blood-wash system, otherwise, in the words of Liam who tends to panic about these things, you're screwed. It's happened to me twice and, believe me, blood-washing
hurts
, so you try not to get bitten, right?

If
the worst happens and you end up with demon-seed in your bloodstream, then you hatch a demon. Inside you. And like any other parasite it forms links within you so that if it dies, you die. And, because if
you
die, and they separate from you in time, it leaves them unprotected and vulnerable, they like to keep their hosts in tip-top condition, so being demon-infected means that you get a kind of super-human strength, great vision, hearing, speed, all that kind of crap. Oh, and you tend to live a long, long time – not quite immortal, but the Queen's going to get writer's cramp doing your telegrams.