Vamp-Hire (22 page)

He began trying to memorize the faces he saw
and the clothes the people wore. If he sensed he was seeing repeats
of any kind he would run, knowing it would probably already be too
late. Nick didn’t want to be taken. The one consolation was that if
he were being followed, they probably wanted him alive. The one he
wouldn’t suspect would probably be a fellow vamp who would tear his
throat out if he could. Nick gave himself a minor amount of comfort
by telling himself that more than likely wouldn’t happen while the
sun was out.

There was only one instance where a man in a
camouflage jacket coming out of a Dairy Queen had given Nick way
more eye than was comfortable. He was a vamp, which was glaringly
apparent by whatever sense that allowed him to identify his own
kind. It was too cold for ice cream, but there he was, standing
outside with chocolate soft serve, one hand stuffed inside his
jacket, watching the minor amount of foot traffic until his gaze
settled on Nick.

He tried to tell himself it was the chocolate
and that the cold didn’t bother vamps the way it did humans. Both
rang true, however, it was just the sort of thing the killer might
have counted on to put Nick at ease. They had tuned in to his
brain, was it that much greater a step to locate the rest of
him?

He was ready to run, forcing himself to
continue in a straight line. It felt like they were two north
magnets coming into proximity of each other, tension building
between them like a spring that would eventually shoot them both in
random directions. Except the other vamp didn’t really seem to
notice that part. He went on licking his ice cream.

Nick passed him, fully expecting a hand to
clap on his shoulder and spin him around. When that didn’t happen,
he felt the man step onto the sidewalk and begin following him. His
eyes danced left and right for the other two who would begin
converging on him so there was nowhere for him to go. He forced
himself to walk a full block before he turned to see behind
him.

Nobody was there.

The sun had begun its slow crawl over the
horizon, the sky a handshake of blue and violet. Nick wanted to run
the rest of the way home, he was a couple stones’ throw away. Just
in case, he weaved left and right at the next few corners to be
sure there was nobody behind him.

Then he realized he had no way of being sure.
Nick had never felt so insecure in his life. This was the city he
had grown up in. He’d gone to school here and presumably made
friends here. Nick didn’t believe you were supposed to be this
afraid in the place you knew better than anywhere else. It made
everything around him feel like the complete opposite of home, like
it had been spoiled.

He made it to his house from the opposite
direction he usually came. All seemed quiet. In fact, if he were in
a movie he’d say it was too quiet. The neighbors directly across
the street tended to be outside their house right around sundown
having one last smoke before being locked in for the night, the two
of them puffing away in each other’s faces like a toy surprise had
been packed into a random cigarette. Smoking to him was as
effective at warding him off as garlic or sunlight had been to
actual vampires if such a thing had ever been true.

Nick strolled across the lawn, up the walkway
and stairs, and rang the doorbell. He was surprised when Phoebe
yanked open the door and stared, like she’d been waiting for
him.

And crying. Her eyes were red and puffy and
for a moment he thought he saw a flash of anger before she turned
and walked away from him toward the kitchen.

“Phoebe, what’s wrong?” Nick chased after
her. Randy was sitting at the nook table playing with some of his
toys. Had Nick not been distracted by the boy—who never seemed to
take joy from anything, and was playing and actually making little
child sound effects—he might have seen her coming.

“Hi, Nick!” Randy said and he was caught off
guard. He would have guessed the boy had spoken a total of a dozen
words in front of him in the last three months.

“Hey!” Nick said. “Randy!”

“Why aren’t you with him?” Phoebe said in a
low voice. For a moment, he thought she was talking about her son.
Nick wasn’t just smiling—he felt genuine happiness radiating from
the center of him as he watched Randy take his hand, parted the
pinky and thumb from the rest of the group and buzzed it over a
cluster of traffic-jammed Hot Wheels, looping the fleshy jet back
around for a repeat buzzing.

It was simply too wonderful to ignore.

Nick had heard what Phoebe had said to him,
but with his attention so divided in Randy’s favor his ear hadn’t
broken the words down into digestible pieces. There were wrappers
of the same kind of chocolate Dolph had given him rolled up into
little balls on the table, outlining a wide weaving highway where
several cars were randomly parked.

That was wrong. Phoebe was a no frills, no
shortcuts, holistic type who didn’t allow her son to deviate from a
strict diet. In fact, now that he thought about it, it was very
similar to the type of diet prescribed to him by the dieticians at
the Center, further evidence of Randy’s condition.

Nick dragged his eyes away from the boy. He
saw from the look in her eyes she wasn’t happy about the current
situation, no matter how miraculous it appeared on its surface.
There was something skewed here he couldn’t place, Phoebe’s
expression the only indication anything was wrong.

“My grandfather is in the hospital.” A tear
spilled from an eye and she swiped it away.

“I know, he ate something with peanuts.” The
words spilled from Nick’s mouth and he felt he should have been
filtering himself somehow.

“So, it was you there.”

Whoa. Nick didn’t like the sound of that. It
sounded like an accusation.

“Well, yeah,” he said, sounding as if he
wasn’t certain.

“And you didn’t think to go with him?”

“Go with—what could I do?” Nick felt like he
was still catching up, but it sounded a lot like he was catching
blame.

“I need you to leave.”

“Phoebe—” Nick was about to say something
along the lines of ‘but he’s not here’. That would have put her in
the red, though. “I—” he began, attempting to change direction.

“—you’re going to tell me you couldn’t go
with him? That you asked and they just left you there?”

“No, I—yes, but—”

“—didn’t think, right? Oh, but you thought to
call me after then, right? On the off-chance my Pop-Pop died?”

Nick’s stomach went cold. He could have done
that. He’d certainly thought to call her about Randy. He silently
hoped that jab didn’t come.

Rather than continue her verbal attack her
mask of anger melted into agony. She dropped her face into her
hands and wept. Nick had already lost the fight before he’d known
he was in one.

He tried to wrap his arms around her in a
hug. He thought he understood. She was angry and afraid, not at him
in particular, Nick had just been in closest proximity, both to
Dolph and her. She needed to vent, and considering he’d done pretty
much the same thing to Lucky, this was due penance.

Phoebe didn’t resist and didn’t mold into him
when he hugged her. She remained as she was, silently crying and
quaking beneath his arms. Nick allowed himself to feel her for the
first time, sipping at the fountain of emotion pouring out of her.
It filled him quickly and he was soon tearing up, wondering if this
was some sort of Skill to co-opt another’s emotion or if he truly
did understand and feel what she was feeling. Was it like she’d
touched a live wire and by virtue of making physical contact with
her the current was surging through him as well or was there
something more sinister?

Could he only be pretending to have these
sour emotions?

As oddly disjointed as they’d been, they were
a family of some sort. He’d been trying so hard these last few
weeks to earn money to pay his share of the bills and others Phoebe
couldn’t afford and though he’d paid them in secret, he thought it
made him feel even more like they were together in some sort of
mutual situation.

He loved her.

Not in a boyfriend-girlfriend sort of way, it
was more familial than that. Not siblings, but something in that
direction. He realized this was one more thing about his life that
was undefined and the added feeling of self-pity widened the
aperture of his sadness.

She was finally beginning to relax when Randy
tugged on Phoebe’s pant leg.

“Mommy, Nick, don’t cry!” he said. Nick was
shocked. He didn’t think he’d ever heard the boy string so many
words together. He’d never encountered any vamp children so this
was all new to him.

Phoebe went stiff again. She lifted her head
from his chest and looked at her son.

“I need you to leave.” Her voice was flat and
dry. Nick half-smiled, for a moment thinking she was talking to
Randy. The boy looked at them quizzically, his still raised hand
hovering near his chin. Then she turned her hazel eyes on him.
“Now. Tonight. I need you to go and not come back.”

“What?”

“You need to find someplace else to
live.”

He took a step back from her. “Phoebe, we
have an arrangement.”

“I don’t care. If you want to press it and
say this is your house, so be it. We can let whatever authorities
sort it out and if they say Randy and I have to leave, we’ll go.
Tonight, however, you have to leave.”

He stood there watching her, not believing,
like she’d just divided in two by mitosis. Randy took a step toward
him and Phoebe swept him behind her. She gave Nick a fiery look
that melted somewhat a second later.

“Please,” she said. The word was loaded.
She’d do what she’d said if he made her and she’d battle him if he
wanted to argue. Probably fight him physically if she felt
threatened.

In that moment, Phoebe was like a wild cat
protecting her cub. He could see in her wet eyes she meant it and
would come as close to death as necessary to fend him off.

“All right,” Nick said after a long, pregnant
moment. “I’ll go.”

He nodded as if in acknowledgment of what
he’d just said. He had nothing to pack, all his things were in the
bag he had on him. Nick felt lower than at any point since leaving
the Center. He felt worse than being in the Pens with those things
that had been people in name only. As low as he felt right now he
may as well have been right back there.

Randy began to cry, sensing something wrong.
The knife in Nick’s guts twisted even more. He’d never heard the
boy cry. Randy held out a hand that Phoebe didn’t notice, holding
her steely gaze on Nick.

His eyes felt like they were boiling. Nick
turned away before the tears came and was out the front door before
a whimper escaped him. His throat closed around what felt like a
jagged stone as he fled in no direction in particular.

That thing was outside again, in the same
spot. Tonight he didn’t care. He passed it either without it
noticing him or it had simply watched him in curiosity.

Nick didn’t know how many blocks he’d walked
before realizing it was fully dark. The purple of the sky was being
uncurtained with each passing second. If he didn’t have someplace
to go he’d have to find someplace to hide. Then he remembered the
money Valerie had given him. He had enough to stay at a motel.

Nick looked around to find his bearings. He
was still on Square Lake. He’d rarely traveled this far east. There
probably was something on Big Beaver or Maple. He would have to
walk the three or four miles to find out. Nick realized he’d been
in this exact same situation almost a week ago and the smile that
met his lips was bitter.

So be it.

He was feeling careless and empty at the
moment even though he hadn’t stopped crying. He felt in the mood to
dare the world to try something with him and he’d be ready for it.
Even if it took him down, that would be fine too, so long as he
didn’t have to feel anything, so long as he didn’t have to
recognize the certain knowledge that he had no place at all. Nobody
wanted him and there was nowhere for him to go where he would
matter.

It wasn’t about the house. If anyone should
have it, it should have been Phoebe. She had a child and Randy
deserved to have a place with a backyard he could play in. Nick
realized what appealed most about the house was the two other
people in it.

He’d decided to continue walking east,
crossing the street and into Sterling Heights. The motels would
probably be just as far and less expensive. He needed to keep his
thoughts rational, he was on his own and had to look out for
himself now.

A wolf howled somewhere behind him. It
sounded lonely to his ears and he felt a kinship. He had no pack,
either. The creature didn’t bother showing itself. Since the
Conflict, the animals had encroached into the cities, probably
sensing that humans were no longer the dominant species they once
were or that they were much too occupied with trying not to become
extinct.

Nick decided he would feel so much better if
he could punch something. The bitter air helped somewhat. He
exhaled hot, directionless anger and inhaled cool, crisp
detachment. Never would he let someone close to him, emotional
proximity to people left a vulnerability to the parts of him no one
had a right to. Especially when they never opened up in return.

Even though he’d never said it out loud or
realized it before today, Nick had fallen for the two of them. He
didn’t know when, it had probably been gradual. He’d adopted them
as his family and felt an ache in his heart now. However, he’d
never gotten any sense that Phoebe had felt anything close to what
he had.

Headlights flashed somewhere up ahead and
Nick ducked then scuttled to the side of a house, crouching beside
a bush until the vehicle passed.