A Taint in the Blood (15 page)

He smiled at her, and she gritted her teeth. The kids were smiling too, and one nudged his slightly younger companion; it was more than the usual teenaged-male leer.

“Just another block north up Brézé Avenue; left on Armand. It turns into Lucy after the intersection with Auvergnat.”

“Thank you,” she said between clenched teeth.

Lucy Lane was a cul-de-sac curling around the hill the mansion rode, backing against the perimeter wall. The sidewalk was the same herringbone-pattern brick, and the houses were overshadowed by old plantings that included orange trees in fair-sized front gardens and little walled inner yards. She passed one man sitting on a bench with a set of weights nearby. He was black, tall and impressively built without being bulky, which she could see because he was stripped to exercise shorts, and he had a shaved head and narrow hook-nosed face.

“Hi!” she said brightly.

He looked at her impassively, then lay down on the bench again and began a series of vertical lifts.

Number Five had a newish Volt in the open garage, with the hood up and the charger cord extended and plugged into a pole-mounted outlet by the garage door.

“You Ms. Tarnowski?” a young Latino said around the open hood when she halted uncertainly.

He was about twenty, in jeans and cowboy boots and a white T-shirt that showed his taut-bodied build, an inch or so under six feet. He let the hood fall with a
clunk
and wiped his hands on a rag; when she shook she felt workingman’s calluses.

“Don’t mind Jamal,” he said, nodding towards the black man two houses up. “He doesn’t talk much. I’m Jose Villegas. I’m in Number Three. Just checking your car. Welcome to Lucy Lane!”

“I get a
car
?” she blurted.

He grinned, white teeth in a light brown face. “Sure, Ms. Tarnowski—”

“Ellen,” she said automatically.

“All the fixings, Ellen,” he said in perfect California English of a small-town, blue-collar variety. “Me, I’m a mechanic when I’m not . . . you know. So I was checking it for you. Looks good. You need anything done, though, just bop over. Come on in.”

The house had the feel of a place that had been cared for but vacant until recently; it was about two thousand square feet, with a living-room that gave on a rear court through sliding-glass doors and restrained furniture of the type that American Home Furnishings tried to imitate. A slender blond man a little below her height was finishing the connections on a wallscreen TV. He had a handsome triangular face and pale green eyes, and dusted off his hands before offering one.

“Hi!” he said. “Peter Boase, in Number Two. TV and display here, PC in the study, omnidirectional Bose speakers here, there and in the bedroom. All networked to the content library. You’ve got a high-capacity fiber-optic Internet connection. Hey, it’s the President’s plan, right?”

“Peter’s an egghead,” Jose said. “Forgets his own name sometimes. But he sure can make anything electronic dance and sing.”

The slender man shrugged. “PhD, physics, so I should be all thumbs and baffled by putting a CD in a player. But you need to be able to handle equipment the way grants are . . . were . . . these days. Come on in. Monica will—”

“Coming through!” a woman’s voice said.

She came through the front door with a baking tray in gloved hands. Ellen judged her to be the oldest person present, thirty or a hair either way, dressed in slacks and shirt and a checked bib apron. She had pleasantly pretty features that reminded Ellen vaguely of someone, and curling dark-brown hair held back by a barrette. She was very slightly shorter than Ellen’s five-six, and very slightly heavier; they might have been sisters as far as face and figure went, coloring aside.

“Hi! Monica Darton, in Number One,” she said. “Come on through to the kitchen. That’s where a house starts to turn into a home!”

“Monica’s our den mother,” Peter said. “She’s been here longest, eight years.”

Peter, Jose, Monica
, Ellen thought; she had a good memory for names, and you needed one dealing with the public at the gallery.
And Jamal is the black guy. With me that makes five, so that’s all five houses on Bloodbank Row . . . pardon me, Lucy Lane.

The kitchen was south-facing, with a glassed-in breakfast nook, and a small dining room separated from it by a pierced screen. Monica set the tray down on a counter. Then she took off the oven mitts and shook hands in turn.

“Do you want us all to clear out?” she said. “While you settle in peacefully?”

“Ah . . . no, no,” Ellen replied hastily.

So I could sit and look at the wall and try not to scream? Call Giselle and lie to her? Wonder where Adrian is? End up lying facedown on the floor drooling with an empty fifth of vodka in my hand?
Seriously
consider slitting my wrists? So . . .

“Please, stay for a while.”

“Good. I’ll make some coffee to christen your machine . . . unless you prefer decaf?”

“No, premium grade is fine.”

“. . . and these are the
best
homemade brownies in town! All local ingredients. Except for the chocolate and vanilla and sugar, of course, but the nuts and flour are, we have the most wonderful farmer’s market. I’ve stocked your pantry and fridge with a few basics and staples, bread, butter . . .”

She bustled them into seats and set out plates and cups and cut the brownies into squares, then brought the pot over from the filter machine. Ellen felt her nose twitch; there was some
seriously
good coffee in there, and if she couldn’t have a stiff drink, she could use a cup. Monica went on:

“And I put a lasagna and a salad in the fridge too, in case you just want to throw something in the oven for dinner instead of cooking or going out. There’s laundry stuff and basic linens and so on, and a few clothes, jeans and sweats and underwear in the bedroom, and toiletries. You can get the rest of what you need anytime, of course, but we wanted to, you know, help.”

Ellen looked at her beaming smile and dazedly bit into one of the brownies. They
were
good.

It’s June Cleaver and the Welcome Wagon of Nosferatu Manor,
she thought.

“Ah . . .”
If resistance is futile, so’s tact
. “You’re all . . .”

“Lucies?” Jose said cheerfully. “Yeah.”

“
Lucy
is an exclusionary stereotype. I prefer to think of us as
helpers
,” Monica said, a slight trace of primness in her tone for a moment.

Yeah, helper as in Hamburger Helper,
Ellen thought.

“It’s not as much of a hard-and-fast distinction as the renfields like to think, either,” Peter said.

Ellen went on: “This place was empty? Who was here before?”

A ringing silence fell. Everyone looked away for an instant, except Peter, who coughed and explained:

“Mmmm, there’s sort of a Lucy Code; you don’t ask questions like that, about people who are . . . gone. Though in fact Dave used to live here, before he got promoted.”

“He’s up at the Company Security barracks now, teaching unarmed combat to the rent-a-cops,” Jose said. “And the
Doña
takes him along as muscle sometimes. Good riddance.”

A laugh. “Though Peter kicked his ass!”

She looked at the slight blond man with surprise. He smiled slightly and shrugged.

“Only because he was surprised I knew anything at all. I could never have taken him if he hadn’t gotten overconfident. He’s a professional.”

“That’s how he ended up here. Came to a tournament up in Paso Robles, and the
Doña
was there. Decided
Hey, I want some of that
and what she wants she gets. No accounting for tastes, I guess,” Jose said.

“David could be difficult,” Monica conceded.

Her smile broadened and she leaned forward to pat the newcomer’s hand.

“I’m so glad there’s another girl here now! Some people in town are very nice, but some are a bit standoffish with people who, you know, live on this street. I’m sure we’ll be such great friends, Ellen!”

Yeah
, Ellen thought.
We can exchange recipes and do each other’s hair and compare fucking bite marks
,
maybe. “Can I borrow a cup of sugar? Or a pint of blood? I’m out.”

“So,” Peter said. “What do you think of our little town?”

Impulse made her honest: “It’s like Stephen King, illustrated by Norman Rockwell with ads from
Town & Country
magazine.”

Peter coughed, apparently choking on a crumb of brownie. Jose pounded him helpfully on the back, looking puzzled but goodnaturedly so. He rose and went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of beer as an alternative to the coffee; it was some local microbrew with an Art Nouveau label that incorporated part of a Mucha poster.

“OK?” he said, raising it and glancing at her.

“Sure,” Ellen said, and he popped the cap and drank with a satisfied
ahhh!

“Norman Rockwell is right!” Monica nodded, apparently utterly without irony. “I love it here. It’s a wonderful place to raise kids.”

Ellen blinked. “You . . . have children?” she said neutrally.

“Two. Joshua, he’s ten, and his sister, Sophia, is nine. They’re the cutest kids! Adrienne . . . the
Doña
, we usually call her . . . thinks so too and they adore her. I’m dying for you to meet them.”

Peter evidently heard the quiver in Ellen’s question and understood the sudden tension of her hand on the thick porcelain of the cup. He leaned close and whispered:

“
They
don’t feed on children. The blood doesn’t taste right. Sour. Green.”

Ellen let out a little grunt of relief; it was a welcome alternative to starting a scream she wasn’t sure she could stop and trying to kill the other woman with the mug.

Monica went on without pausing; Ellen judged she was the sort of person who found it easier to talk than listen, anyway, in a pleasant-enough fashion:

“I knew that it was the best place right away. Well, after a little while, I was a bit scared at first. It’s so quiet and pretty here, and there’s no crime, and the streets are safe for children and the schools are just
wonderful
. All charter, you know, with free preschool, and the best facilities in the state, no cutbacks. And there’s the health plan, too.”

“That’s . . . ah . . . why you moved here?” Ellen said aloud.

The lucies—
the other lucies, let’s be honest
, she thought—laughed.

“I ran out of gas!” Monica crowed. “Well, Tom left us after he lost his job and couldn’t find work, he wasn’t a bad man but he was
weak
, this was down in Simi Valley where we lived, and we lost the house, and Mother wanted to try and move in with her sister in San Jose but we just ran out of gas outside town. And this lady in a Land Rover pulled over, it was about sundown, and asked if we needed help. That was Adrienne. I thought it was so kind of her to put us up.”

“Until she dropped by your room that night for a snack, maybe a little hubba-hubba too,” Jose said with a grin.

“I thought it was all dreams at first. Nightmares. Everything was so strange. And it
was
kind, I still say. Just . . . there were other reasons, as well.” Coyly: “She says my blood smelled attractive.”

Ellen sat slowly upright. “Wait a minute!” she said. “You’ve been here eight years?” Monica nodded.

Then how old is she? How old is
Adrian
, for God’s sake?

She took another bite of the brownie.

Maybe these would be better with hash,
she thought.
Oh, Christ . . .

“Me, I was born here, went to school here, graduated Sangre High here,” Jose said. “Theresa, you met her, she travels with the
Doña
? She’s my mother’s cousin, but she went away to Cal Poly for a while—she’s got most of the brains in the family and I got all the charm. We’ve been here since before the Brézés came—”

“1862,” Monica filled in helpfully. “That was Don Justin. He was from France. I’ve been doing a little local historical pamphlet for the library. I work there as a volunteer.”

“—yeah, we were
vaqueros
and all that good sh . . . stuff, before they bought the
Rancho
. Hell, the
Indio
part of us has been here
forever
. My uncle was a lucy here for a while on the lane; I figure with any luck it’ll be a couple of years for me; then I get a pat on the fanny and told to go get a girl and make some babies to work for the next generation. Meantime I work on the cars and stuff uphill, when I’m not, um, busy.”

He grinned. “Hey, you know, some of the girls, they sort of think it’s cool for a guy to be a lucy for the
Doña.
Think you pick up stuff.”

His smile died for a moment and he took another swig of the beer.

“And no money worries making your stomach twist up so you shake every month. And then there’s the travel,” Monica went on. “I’ve been to, oh, London and Shanghai and Paris and Rome and Cairo and
everywhere
. On that wonderful plane.”

Taken along for snackies
, Ellen thought.
For those midnight cravings when room service is over and you can’t go out.

“I did my graduate degree at MIT. I was at the National Lab in Los Alamos when I started getting some anomalous results,” Peter said.

He grinned ruefully. “And I wouldn’t stop trying to get people interested, no matter how heavy the hints were. They sent Adrienne in to kill me with a nice little perfectly genuine heart attack or stroke or getting hit by a truck, since she was in the neighborhood on personal business—they’re informal about things like that, I’m told. But she decided to give me another option instead. You
bet
I said yes! Actually, I’ve done some more work here, for her. She can get me all the computer time I need and I’m mostly a theoretician.”