Always the Vampire (7 page)

“Cesca, this is Dan Kelley.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Cesca.” Dan’s full head of white hair and a tan I pegged as golf course golden made his eyes a startling shade of green.

“And these gentlemen”—Millie gestured toward two more athletic types—“are Hal Lipkin and Joel Granger.”

We murmured greetings while Millie continued, “The guys couldn’t get tickets to the Jaguar game, so we’re treating them to the ghost tour tonight.”

“Then I’ll do my best to be extra entertaining,” I vowed.

Dan took Millie’s hand, Hal smiled at Grace, and Joel lightly touched Kay’s back. Ah, mature romance!

Though at my age, I should talk about mature. Even Saber isn’t quite the young stud I’d assumed he was when I met him.

As I turned away to take ticket stubs, I noticed another elderly couple staring in a size-me-up way. Wearing colorful, tourist-casual slacks, shirts, and walking shoes, they looked older than Millie, perhaps in their eighties. I worried for a moment about them traversing the uneven pavement along our route, but the man nimbly dodged a teenaged boy who nearly backed into him. Okay, the man seemed surprisingly spry. Still, I’d keep an eye out. Subtle bursts of vampire speed had helped me keep more than one tourist from taking a tumble.

I paused to speak with Carol and Nancy when I took their tickets, two special ladies who’d become known around town simply as “the sisters.” They’d only been in St. Augustine a few years, but were enthusiastic community volunteers and hard-core Pittsburgh Steelers fans. Good thing they weren’t wearing Steelers gear or Millie and the Jag Queen ladies might’ve done some trash talking.

Grinning at that image, I went to the tour substation, a wooden structure with a cabinet behind padlocked doors. I keyed the lock open, stashed the tickets stubs in a manila envelope, and grabbed my battery-operated lantern. The lantern doesn’t provide much light, but it’s a beacon of sorts for people to follow and part of the ghostly ambiance. The cabinet relocked, I waved my tour group closer.

“Good evening, and welcome to Old Coast Ghost Walk. I’m Cesca Marinelli, your guide. St. Augustine is regarded as one of the most haunted cities in America, and tonight we’ll visit the ghosts as I tell you what we know of their history.

“Feel free to take photos and ask questions when you like, but please watch out for uneven ground as we tour.”

We started by greeting Elizabeth, the redheaded teen ghost at the City Gates, then crossed the street to the Huguenot Cemetery. The group gobbled up the stories of Judge John B. Stickney and Erastus Nye, and of the Bridal Ghost when we reached the Tolomato Cemetery. We spotted orbs in both locations, too. I suspected the orbs in the Huguenot Cemetery were caused by the reflections of headlight beams, but who was I to spoil the fun?

After leading my tourist troupe through most of the square mile of the historic district, almost an hour and a half had passed, but no one seemed tired.

“Our last stop,” I said as I paused before a house on a downtown side street, “is Fay’s House. Now Fay might be our crankiest ghost, but she’s also one of my favorites.”

I relayed what I knew of Fay’s life and death, and saw a hand shoot up.

“You have a question?” I asked the young man.

“Isn’t this where the French Bride killer shoot-out and capture went down?”

“Yeah,” another man said. “And you caught the guy, right? You’re the vampire Nancy Drew.”

I blushed at the reference, especially since I fervently hoped my Drew days were over, but answered the question.

“It’s true I was here, but the police made the arrest.”

“Have you worked any more cases since then?” the first guy asked.

The case of the vanishing vampires at the comedy club hadn’t made the news. Saber had arranged a quiet cover-up, with the public blessedly none the wiser. I wasn’t about to change that, so I waved off the question.

“The papers exaggerated. I’m more interested in mystery reading than mystery solving any day.”

“You’re being far too modest,” Millie put in. “Our guide is also a whiz at interior decorating.”

Which Millie knew because she’d seen my place during the housewarming in August. I smiled and thanked Millie, and caught the strange old couple suddenly beaming at me like I’d created a cure for cancer. Talk about easily impressed.

I led my group back to our starting place near the waterwheel, ran through my closing spiel, and turned to put my lantern away as the group dispersed.

Except for Millie who edged closer on a Shalimar cloud.

“Cesca, dear, do you have a minute?”

“Of course,” I said as she darted a gaze over her shoulder.

The rest of her party stood ten feet away chatting easily, so why did Millie look frightened?

When she didn’t speak up, I moved deeper into the shadow of a towering pink bougainvillea.

“What’s wrong, Millie?”

She stepped closer. “Did Maybelle Banks say anything special to you at bridge club last week?’

“Not that I remember. Why?”

Millie bit her lip, and now I was thoroughly mystified.

“It’s silly, really, but she said she’d do my astrology chart to see how compatible I am with Dan.”

“And she forgot to do it?”

“Oh, no, she did it, and it turned out quite wonderfully. The thing is, I asked her to do your chart as an anniversary gift from me.”

I blinked. I’d celebrated my first anniversary out of the coffin on August thirteenth, but Millie hadn’t given me an astrology chart.

Millie straightened and gave me a rueful smile. “I’m making too much of it, I’m sure. Astrology is fun, but it’s not a science, right?”

“Millie, what is it you’re trying so hard not to tell me?”

“It-it’s just that Maybelle said she did your chart three times and had very odd results,” Millie said in a rush. “That’s why I got you a different gift.”

“Odd results how?”

Millie gnawed on her lip again, looked over her shoulder again, and finally spit it out.

“My dear, you disappeared entirely from your own chart.”

 

 

By the time I soothed Millie, promised to be careful, and sent her off with Dan and the rest of her party, it was nearly eleven thirty. I set off for the Cordova parking lot where I’d parked, taking the Orange Street route. The walk took me past the oldest drugstore, the Love Tree, and the Tolomato Cemetery, but I paid no attention to the hovering ghosts. Instead I thought about how I could rearrange my schedule once Cosmil’s friend Lia hit town.

Thursday Maggie and I had a meeting with the florist and a cake tasting. Friday we were leaving to meet Maggie’s friends in Fernandina Beach for the bachelorette weekend. Amelia Island was less than two hours north if the traffic was with us, and was convenient for her Florida and southern Georgia friends. The weekend was a must do, no room for negotiation.

If Lia arrived before Sunday, Triton and Saber would just have to start training without me. I’d allow nothing, no one, no how to stand between me and—

“Aaarrrggh!”

I squealed at the man suddenly looming in my path. He smelled like jalapenos and cheap cigars. My very own stalker, Victor Gorman.

“Surprised you, huh?”

I hadn’t seen him since he’d tried to kill me. Or was it when we caught him breaking into a hotel room? Didn’t matter. Between his bad breath and his gravely voice, ripe with malicious overtones, my last nerve threatened to snap.

“Gorman, what now?”

“What were those two vampires doin’ on your tour?”

I blinked. “What two vampires?”

“The old, wrinkled couple.”

Did he mean the ones who’d stared at me?

“Gorman, those people had to be eighty.”

“So? I saw ’em fly off.”

I reached for patience. “You actually saw them levitate and zoom away into the night?”

“They were there on the sidewalk, then they weren’t. Old people don’t move that fast.”

“And vamps don’t just disappear. They also don’t Turn senior citizens.”

He narrowed his eerie light blue eyes. “Why not?”

“Because there’s nothing to gain. No power, no prestige, no money.”

“That’s it. Money. Vampires could steal old codgers blind.”

“Vamps could enthrall them to do that.”

He frowned, and I could almost see the wheels
thunk
in his brain. How Gorman got into the Covenant, I’d never understand. Originally a search-and-destroy-vampires group, the Covenant had now scaled back to watch and report to the VPA. At least the St. Augustine branch had, and two of the Covenant members I’d met were relatively pleasant. The most pleasant thing about Gorman was that, tonight at least, he didn’t also reek of garlic.

I moved to step around him, but he blocked me.

“I’m warnin’ you, don’t bring no more of your kind into town.”

That did it. The slow fizzle of my temper flared.

“Gorman, listen up. Knock off the threats and corny lines. You don’t impress me, and you don’t scare me. I’m sorry if some vampire did you or your family wrong, but it wasn’t me, and I’m tired of taking the crap for it.”

This time I stormed past him, only to stop when I heard him say, “You’re wrong, bitch. You started it all.”

When I spun to challenge him, he’d melted into the shadows.

I thought about Gorman’s comment for about five minutes on the way home then dismissed it. For one thing, he had shadowed me, threatened me, and generally annoyed me for months. Even his attempt to kill me with a well-aimed shot from a crossbow had angered more than frightened me. His antics were old news.

For another thing, I had bigger concerns, which came into sharp relief when I opened my cottage door. Snowball, the four-pound rescue cat, flew across the floor headed straight for me with Pandora in her twenty-pound house cat form smack on Snowball’s tail. Snowball dove under my full skirts and a beat later thudded into the wall behind me. Pandora braked at my feet, morphed to her panther size in time-lapse-photography style, and calmly lifted and licked a dinner-plate-sized paw.

Then I saw Saber from the corner of my eye. He sat at my laptop housed in the computer cabinet tucked into an alcove in my living room. A few keystrokes later, he swiveled to face me.

I huffed a breath and dropped my car keys on the entry table. “What’s going on?”

“Pandora brought a message from Triton.”

I stared. “You’re talking to the animals now?”

Pandora sat on her haunches and gave me a “you’re a moron” gaze. Snowball, now at Pandora’s side, mirrored the pose as if mimicking an adored older sibling.

“The note was in her collar,” Saber clarified as he swung back to the computer screen.

I’d never seen Pandora wear a collar, and she wasn’t sporting one now, but I let that pass.

“So what was the message?”

“Cosmil is better, but no word on when Lia will arrive.”

“Why didn’t Triton just call?”

“Maybe because he didn’t want Cosmil to overhear him on the phone.” He punched a key and swiveled back to me. “I asked him to get the names of the other Council of Ancients members.”

“Ah, you’re searching for anyone suspicious.”

“Yeah, but I’m getting less than nothing.”

“No handy-dandy COA website, huh?”

Saber and Pandora snorted in unison, and Snowball sneezed.

I ignored all three of them. “Do you know anything about astrology?”

“Why?”

“Oh, I saw Millie tonight,” I said, waving away the question and my concern. “She brought it up. I talked to Gorman, too.”

“You what?” Saber pushed out of the desk chair. “Did he have a weapon? That order of protection against him is still in force. We can lock him up for a damn-long time if you report the contact.”

I held up a hand. “No weapons and I don’t want to file a complaint. Gorman is imagining a vampire invasion again. He thinks he saw a couple of eighty-year-olds fly.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Could I make that up?”

“I can’t decide if Gorman is an idiot, a paranoid idiot, or an idiot on some seriously disturbing drugs.” He pulled me into his arms and nuzzled my neck. “Did I mention I like this dress on you?”

“I believe you said you’d like it better off me.”

His cobalt eyes darkened, and his sexy smile smoldered me to my toes.

“I do.”

The moment hung suspended until Pandora chuffed.

“Downsize so you won’t freak the neighbors,” I warned as I opened the door.

She did and slipped out. Derived of her playmate, Snowball twitched her tail and headed for the kitchen.

I batted my eyelashes and sashayed into Saber’s embrace.

“Now where were we?”

Within the space of a long, deep sigh, he stripped me of my Cinderella dress and carried us to our own fantasyland.