The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires (11 page)

As quick and lethal as a cobra, Sophie slithered toward me. I closed my eyes, concentrating on the scents around me: the spiced tang of geranium, the heady sweetness of honeysuckle and roses. Because passing out under scrutiny would not scream “guileless, innocent bystander” to the vampires clustered around me.

“Are you sure that’s necessary, Ophelia?” Mr. Marchand asked, frowning as I let Sophie step well within the acceptable social-space bubble.

Ophelia was staring at me, considering. I was afraid to show any fear, any hesitation, because I didn’t want to tip my hand. Innocent people didn’t protest telling the truth, even if compelled through abusive psychic means.

After some consideration, Ophelia nodded at Sophie, who didn’t do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye as she wrapped her long, cold fingers around my hands. I winced, knowing that the burning pain of her talent would start singing through my skin at any moment. But other than mild discomfort in the areas where she was touching me, I didn’t feel much. Sophie and I shared a moment of perplexed hesitation. Her hands seemed to slip uselessly over mine, unable to get the grip she wanted. She frowned, grasping my hands so tightly that I whimpered under the pressure.

Was it the geranium oil? Did it have some unknown properties beyond being a stinky natural bug repellent?

Nope. Wait. Blinding, disorienting pain.
Sophie’s filter-crippling powers are a go
.

“Ow!” I shrieked as Sophie’s handprint seemed to sear into my skin. I sank to my knees on the grass, limply wrenching my hand away from her.

“Look into my eyes,” Sophie commanded, her voice stripped of all pretense of charm. Breathing through the pain, I met her gaze. Her irises flared to black, and I was plunging through bottomless space. My head seemed so heavy, too heavy to lift. Images of the vampires standing around me, the house, swirled around my head like jetsam in a tornado.

The sting from Sophie’s grip was venom spreading through my system, scorching from my arm to my chest. Hot iron claws dug into my throat. At any moment, they would begin scraping words from my tongue …

Or would they? Unlike in previous “interviews” with Sophie, I felt a strange sort of detachment from the proceedings. Don’t get me wrong, it burned like the dickens, but I was able to think around it, like a strange little detour in my brain that gave me time to think before I spoke. I blew through the pain like it was a labor contraction, forcing myself to concentrate on Sophie’s questions, on the words coming out of my mouth. I could think clearly with some distance between my brain and the throbbing heat of my skin. I couldn’t prevent myself from telling the truth, but I could keep myself from sharing unnecessary details. I could work around the compulsion to spill my guts.

I heard myself repeat the barest possible account of
my visit to Cal’s house, how I’d arrived a little before sunset, how nothing had been out of the ordinary when I’d arrived. And nothing had been, really. My visit hadn’t gotten weird until I’d walked into the kitchen.

It turned out I was quite the agile liar. That could be considered a skill set, right?

“Had you had any previous interactions with Mr. Calix?”

“It was my first day with him. I was dropping off the contracts. He hadn’t even called for any supplies yet,” I said.

“So you didn’t see anything amiss at the house?”

“Other than the moving boxes, not much,” I said.

“Do you know where Mr. Calix is now?”

Although I’d expected the question, the urge to respond honestly surprised me. The words were like an air bubble trapped in my throat. I could feel them stretching the tissue of my larynx, forcing their way out.
Don’t tell them he’s upstairs
, I commanded my brain.
Tell them he moved to Pacoima to start a commune for vegetarian vampires. Tell them he’s looking into getting a sex-change operation and renaming himself Lulu Pleshette
. I glanced up at the window, but I couldn’t see Cal. “I—I don’t know where he is.” I said.

I blew out a wheezing breath as Sophie relinquished her grip on my hand. It was the truth. I didn’t know exactly where he was. He could have been in the alcove. He could have been in the bathroom. He could have been in the basement. It was all about semantics … maybe I needed to look into law school once this was all over.

Sophie eyed me speculatively, like she didn’t quite believe me. I would have smiled guilelessly, but I couldn’t control all of the muscles in my face yet.

“See?” Mr. Marchand said, offering me a handkerchief to wipe the drool from my chin. “She doesn’t know anything about Mr. Calix’s whereabouts. There’s no reason to subject her to any more questioning.”

“Always the soft touch, Waco,” Sophie murmured.

I cradled my arm against my chest and smacked my dry lips against each other. My mouth tasted like old pennies and Gigi’s volleyball kneepads. I felt a hand at my elbow, leading me to one of the benches so I could sit. I was surprised to find that it was Ophelia, and she was gazing at me intently.

I nodded weakly and smiled at Mr. Marchand, handing him his square of crushed linen. There was a
W
embroidered on the corner and a strange little white-on-white flower. I would remember to ask him about it, once I could produce all of the vowel sounds.

“This is the last time we’ll discuss this matter,” Ophelia told me, her voice official and louder than was probably necessary. “Do not discuss Mr. Calix with anyone outside of the Council office. Do you understand me? Continue with your business as usual.”

Mr. Crown and Sophie left without another word to me—surprise, surprise. Mr. Marchand gave me a little bow before turning to the car to argue with Mr. Crown about the proper etiquette involved in calling shotgun.

Ophelia lingered, her eyes glued to the upstairs window. Without looking down at me, Ophelia said, “If you
should stumble across Mr. Calix, let him know that we are looking for him. But he should stay where he is.”

While the use of the word “stumble” was eerily accurate, I kept an untroubled expression on my face. Behind Ophelia, Mr. Crown had lost the shotgun argument and was currently glowering at me from the backseat. Ophelia threw on a mask of smug indifference, which was her usual expression. Turning to the car, she tossed her hair and sauntered away.

When the SUV was safely speeding down the drive, I called over my shoulder, “Did you get all that?”

There was no answer from the upstairs window.

“Cal?”

Still nothing. I sank my head into my hands and sighed.

“If he’s thrown up again, I’m going to leave him outside and let the sun sort it out.”

A dark blur popped up to my right. I shrieked, picked up another of my mom’s soapstone sculptures—a squirrel—and brought it crashing against Cal’s head. Or I would have, if he hadn’t managed to duck at the last minute. The momentum of the swing carried my arm through the arc, and the statue was slung across the kitchen. Off-balance, I stumbled into Cal with an “uhff.”

I shrank back, sure that this would be enough of an excuse for Cal to sink his fangs into my neck and cease my attempts to brain him with ugly wildlife statuary. But instead, he seemed to think it was adorable that I had tried to drop him like panties at a KISS concert. He grinned down at me, leaning close and running his nose
along my hairline. He murmured, “You’re a vicious little hellion when cornered, aren’t you?”

“No,
you
just seem to bring it out of me.”

“I like it. I do have a question for you, though.”

Cal took my elbow and led me to the little reading alcove near the top of the stairs. My dad had built a special window seat for my mom, who had always dreamed of a place where she could “think and meditate”—also known as hiding from us all.

After culling through most of their paperbacks and secondhand-bookstore finds, I’d filled the shelves with my old college textbooks, the family’s old botany books, the encyclopedias Dad had bought one letter at a time from the local Kroger. Cal was folded up in said window seat, poring over our copy of
Rare Plants of Kentuckiana
.

“Why do you have these books?” he asked me.

“Because my mom was an avid gardener. And I studied botany in college,” I said. “And my dad liked yard sales.”

“Why didn’t you mention that before?”

“Because you were being an enormous asshat?”

He scowled. “An enormous what?”

I ignored the instinct to clap my hand over my mouth at the use of such a naughty word. I shook my head, crossing my arms over my chest. “No, I don’t think I’ll be explaining that. I will enjoy your situational ignorance.”

“It didn’t occur to you that these books might be helpful to me?”

I smiled thinly. “Oh, no, it did.”

“Resourceful and resentful,” he muttered.

“Only toward asshats. Look through the books as much as you want. Though I don’t know how helpful they’ll be. None of them was written with the supernatural in mind.”

I turned toward the shelf and looked for a particularly battered tome covered in red cloth. It was an estate-sale find that my dad had teased my mother shamelessly over:
Metaphysical Aspects of Botanical Aromatherapy
. He’d told her that no matter how much she searched, she wouldn’t find a legitimate spiritual reason to return to her hedonistic college pot-loving ways.

I prayed that he was just kidding. My mom firing up a water bong was not a mental image I needed.

I flipped to the index and looked up geranium oil. I read it to myself:
Thought to affect the users primarily in matters of romance and open communication, geranium is also a powerful protectant that forms a psychic boundary between the anointed and sources of negative energy
.

So, conversely, if someone didn’t want open communication with a vampire who was trying to force a connection, could geranium oil cause some sort of psychic static? Note to self, roll around in geranium oil the next time I met up with Sophie. And Jane, who had occasional psychic flashes into my mind. And Jane’s friend, the vampire Dick Cheney, because it just seemed like a good idea to give him static in any way possible.

Reaching over Cal’s head, I located a bag of Sour Worms that I’d hidden in one of those hollowed-out dummy books people typically use to hide jewelry or liquor. I perched on the opposite side of the seat and opened to the first chapter of the book, wondering what
other helpful little nuggets lurked inside. Maybe there was a plant that could keep vampires from insulting or vomiting on you.

“You’re just going to sit there and read?” he asked, incredulous. “You don’t want to talk about the frightening interaction with Council officials?”

I bit a blue-and-orange gummy worm in half and shrugged. “Nah. You heard what they had to say. The only thing we learned is that the Council isn’t that great at investigating missing persons. And I’m pretty sure Ophelia knows where you are but thinks you’re safer with me. The less time I spend talking to you one-on-one, the less time you have to be a jerk. ”

Given Cal’s nauseated expression as I bit into another worm, he seemed far more concerned about my choice of candy than any offense he might be causing. “It would seem Ophelia suspects something is amiss within the Council offices, too. She wouldn’t be able to make accusations without proof,” he said. “And if she’s found to be building a case against her fellow Council members, it could cause serious political problems for her. It would seem she’s embracing willful ignorance, and we’re on our own.”

“Or she’s the one who poisoned you, and she wants you to stay put so she can come back to finish the job.”

“How do you maintain such a sunny, cheerful outlook on life?” he asked, scowling at me.

I shrugged blithely and returned to my book, reading about cedar oil’s aura-cleansing properties. “I believe in the power of positive thinking,” I told him. “I am positive that this is going to come back and bite us in the butt.”

No matter how much you try to protect your household’s schedule, it’s inevitable that a vampire’s presence will disrupt it. The best course of action is to make small changes over time, rather than resisting it altogether. Resistance is futile.

—
The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires

C
al and I settled into an uneasy stalemate. Now that his nausea had finally eased, it was as if healing took up all of his energy. He slept, rising only to feed and then go back to the master bedroom. After the vomiting and the inappropriate touching, I didn’t have the heart to send him back to the basement. I stayed close to the house, asking Jolene to do the actual daytime running for me while I made as many arrangements as I could over the phone.

The distance I’d put between us seemed to have forced him into a slightly snarky, but polite, persona. He didn’t make inappropriate jokes, but he wasn’t exactly friendly, either. I couldn’t help but feel that we’d lost ground in terms of cordial relations.

My replacement BlackBerry arrived the next morning,
heralded by a loud thump against the door. Joe Wallace, our mailman, did extra-speedy deliveries so he could finish his work early and fit in a few hours of fishing. He seemed to see “Fragile” stamps as a personal challenge.