Authors: Clare Willis
Sunni stared at him, not believing her ears. “Sherman Wong? What the hell does he have to do with …”
Jacob left the room before she could finish her sentence.
She was numb, drained of any feeling, lifeless. She welcomed this lack of emotion. It was so much better than anger or sadness. If she felt nothing Jacob could never hurt her, never disappoint her. No second chances.
“We’re getting married,” Isabel trilled.
“Isabel’s here,” Carl belatedly announced, trailing Isabel into Sunni’s office. He raised an eyebrow, silently asking Sunni if she wanted him to get rid of the intruder. Sunni had come in early that morning, yelling that she had a dozen fires to put out and he should hold all but her most urgent calls.
“It’s okay,” Sunni said, her hand covering the phone receiver.
She’d been talking to the curator of a small museum in Paris, trying to establish the provenance of a Gustav Klimt painting that had just come up for sale. A Jewish family in Poland had owned the painting before the War, but it fell off the radar screen in 1942. She knew two other dealers wanted the painting and if she didn’t put in an offer soon she’d lose her chance. Sunni told the curator an emergency had arisen, apologized, and hung up.
“Sorry, Isabel,” Sunni said. “What did you say?”
“Richard and I are engaged.” Isabel shook off her crutches and sat down in Sunni’s visitor chair.
Hearing it twice didn’t make it any less unbelievable, so Sunni decided not to make Isabel say it a third time. She just stared at her with her mouth open.
“When it’s right, you just know it,” Isabel said.
Sunni did a swift mental recap. The dinner at Gary Danko had been on Monday, Isabel’s date was on Tuesday. Today was Friday. It was absurd how fast it had happened. But of course it seemed absurd. It had happened in vampire time.
“I didn’t realize you even saw him again after you went to the symphony. I know he asked you, but you didn’t tell me you’d gone out.”
“I omitted a few things,” her friend admitted.
“Why would you do that? ”
Isabel shrugged. “You’ve been busy.”
Sunni’s stomach felt like she’d swallowed a dozen live goldfish. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry, tell me about it now.”
Isabel leaned back against the chair. A giant, bejeweled brooch in the shape of a leopard twinkled above her left breast, a gift from Richard, no doubt. It wasn’t Dennis’s taste.
“We were at Jardiniere last night, and during dessert he got down on one knee. My heart almost stopped, I tell you.”
“I believe it,” Sunni muttered, cursing herself for letting Isabel out of her sight.
“‘Isabel,’ he said, ‘I would like to request your hand in marriage.’ Did you ever hear anything so romantic?”
Sunni stared at her friend. Something about her was distinctly off. Even though she was talking about how wonderful everything was, her face was immobile. She barely smiled, and she spoke as if she was reading the words off cue cards.
“We’re getting married on Sunday. Richard worked it out with the priest at St. Sebastian’s. The church was already booked up for the next six months, but Richard convinced him to add another slot at the end of the day. The ceremony is at seven o’clock.”
So vampires could have church weddings? Sunni thought about the cross Enzo wore around his neck. It was starting to seem as if none of the stories humans told about how to vanquish vampires were true.
“You’re getting married. At St. Sebastian’s. Great.” Sunni concentrated on breathing slowly and deeply while her stomach roiled.
“And Sunni,” Isabel reached across the desk to touch Sunni’s hand, “I want you to be my maid of honor. ”
“No,” Sunni blurted out.
Isabel’s brows dropped in confusion. “What do you mean, no?”
Sunni pulled her hand free. “Isabel, don’t do this.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sunni jumped up and circled around the desk. “It’s too fast, don’t you see? You don’t know the guy at all.”
“Richard says we know everything we need to know about each other,” Isabel pouted.
“He may know everything he needs to know about you, but you know nothing about him.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about our relationship.” Isabel’s words were angry, but her reactions still seemed muffled, as if she was half asleep.
“I know a lot more than you think.” She lifted both hands. “Look, I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m just saying take your time. What harm could there be in that?”
“Richard says it has to be on Sunday. ”
“It doesn’t have to be on Sunday. It doesn’t have to be anytime!”
“I know why you’re doing this …” Isabel said slowly.
Sunni felt immense relief. Maybe even in her altered state Isabel understood that Sunni always had her best interests at heart.
“It’s because of my illness. You don’t think Richard could love me because I have MS, so you’ve decided he only wants me for my money.”
Sunni looked at her friend’s glassy eyes and slack mouth. She thought about what Jacob had said about his ability to hypnotize people. Glamouring, he had called it. Richard had done it to Jacob’s wife in order to drink from her night after night. Realization slowly set in. Lazarus must have glamoured Isabel so deeply that she remained under his spell even when he wasn’t present. It would do no good to argue.
“I’ve changed my mind.” Isabel stood up, gripping the back of the chair.
“About what?” Sunni asked.
“About you being my maid of honor. I don’t even want you at the wedding if you can’t support me.” Isabel shoved her arms into her crutches. Her long blond hair swung to the side, momentarily revealing her neck.
Sunni gasped. She skirted the chair and grabbed Isabel by the arm, pulling her hair aside. Two tiny wounds two inches apart, pale pink like the inside of a seashell, adorned Isabel’s soft white neck. Richard had left her a calling card.
Fifteen minutes later Sunni charged through the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. She was at the elevators before she realized that she had no idea which room Richard was in. She took a deep breath and walked to the reception desk. A balding, middle-aged man wearing mascara held up one finger as he spoke to someone on the phone. Sunni shifted from foot to foot. She was afraid if she had to wait too long she would lose her nerve. The man put the phone down.
“How may I help you?”
“Could you give me Richard Lazarus’s room number, please?”
“I’m afraid we don’t give out that information.” He smiled apologetically.
“Right, of course. Could you call him for me?”
“I can do that. Who shall I say is here?”
“Isabel LaForge.”
The flicker of his eyelids told Sunni that he knew the name. Of course he did. Dennis owned the Mandarin Oriental. Sunni looked away, wondering if the man knew what Isabel looked like, but he seemed not to know or care. He dialed the phone. After a few words he hung up and smiled at her.
“Mr. Lazarus says you can go right up. Room twenty-two twelve.”
The hallway was long, quiet, and lavender scented. The door to 2212 swung open seconds after Sunni knocked. Richard looked at her with an implacable expression, and then stepped back to admit her.
“Surprised to see me?” Sunni asked.
“Not at all,” Richard said.
He was wearing a blue silk smoking jacket over a blindingly white shirt, open at the collar. His hair was not its usual perfect shell: it looked mussed, as if he’d been running his fingers through it. Sunni looked at Richard’s handsome face and realized that it was a mask, hiding his true nature from his victims. Sunni had previously considered herself a good judge of character, but Richard had duped her. Maybe not as completely as he’d fooled Isabel, but enough that she had let her guard down long enough for him to take over her friend’s mind. And just because she now knew what he was didn’t make him any less dangerous. Richard was a viper, and as long as he was alive he was deadly.
Sunni followed him into a living room that overlooked Union Square. He walked to the window and pointed to the statue in the center of the square, a female figure in flowing robes mounted on a pedestal several stories high.
“Do you know what that statue is called?” Richard asked.
Sunni shrugged.
“Victory,” he replied. “I’d like to buy her, but I don’t suppose the mayor would part with her. Can I offer you a drink?”
“Yes, I’ll have a whiskey. Do they have single malt in that little wet bar?”
He laughed quietly. “Are you mocking me?”
“How so?”
“That’s Jacob Eddington’s drink.”
“I would never mock you. This is far too serious. ”
“Fine.” He opened the cabinet and pulled out two little bottles. Without asking he added ice to a glass and poured the whiskey over it. He gave her the glass and sat down next to her on the couch. “What do you want, Sunni? I thought you made your position quite clear earlier.”
“I want to know why you asked Isabel to marry you,” Sunni demanded. “What does she have to do with this?”
When the vampire smiled it was like a wolf baring its teeth. Sunni could barely hide the shudder that went through her body. How had she ever found him charming?
“It’s not Isabel I want, although I admit, her fortune will be a nice dividend.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You, Sunrise, you’re all I want.”
Sunni fought off the fear that threatened to overwhelm her by focusing carefully on his words. “What are you planning to do with me once you have me?”
He came even closer and she forced herself not to move away. Now his face was inches from hers. It was masklike in its perfection, smooth and hard as stone, with not a hair or a pore in sight.
“I want children.”
Sunni gulped hard. The air in the room had just gotten considerably thinner.
“Your bloodline, combined with mine. Our offspring would be undefeatable. All I would need was one or two and I could rule the vampire world.”
“My
bloodline
?” Sunni jerked backward. “You know who my father is! Tell me!” She grabbed his lapels and shook him. “Tell me!”
Richard gripped her hands so that they were immobilized. “Oops,” he said. “I slipped, didn’t I?”
Tears leaked out of Sunni’s eyes. “Please,” she begged.
“You’re on the wrong track, Sunni. It’s not your father who gave you the vampire genes,” he said. “It was your mother. ”
Sunni sat on a bench in Portsmouth Square Park, across the street from the Golden Dragon restaurant, waiting for Delia to come out and meet her. It was a cool but sunny afternoon and the park was full of people. A cluster of older men played chess under a pagoda-style roof and another group of elderly people performed tai chi exercises under a cherry tree. She could hear the happy shrieks of children in the playground nearby.
Sunni stared at the pebbles set in concrete under her feet, chewing an already ragged fingernail. Richard had given her just enough information to shatter her equilibrium, but not enough to do her any good.
Rose had been a vampire.
Thinking back, it made sense of certain things, like the fact that Rose never ate with her. She made sandwiches and bowls of canned soup, and then sat, absently smoking cigarettes while Sunni ate. As an adult Sunni had rationalized that it was the drugs that robbed her mother of her appetite, but now she knew the truth. But who was her father, and was he still alive?
Richard had also, perhaps inadvertently, let loose one other fact. His story, coupled with Jacob’s, led Sunni to the inevitable conclusion that Richard had killed her mother. Jacob had failed to save her, but Richard had actually squeezed the life out of her. When that knowledge burned its way into her consciousness she had looked long and hard at Richard, smug in his smoking jacket, and resolved that she would have to kill him. And for that she would need help.
Delia hurried across the park, shivering in her short-sleeved cheongsam dress. She sat down, looking longingly at a refreshment cart parked nearby. “Man, I wish I’d brought my wallet. I could use a hot dog.”
“I’ll get you one. Do you want a soda?”
Sunni bought two hot dogs and two cans of Sprite, and then led Delia to a distant bench under some trees, out of hearing distance of the other people in the plaza. She knew many of them didn’t speak English and the rest of them didn’t care, but she just couldn’t risk it. She popped open her can and took a long drink, buying time to organize her thoughts.
“Delia, I need to ask you some questions that might seem strange.”
“Shoot.” Delia spread the pickle relish more evenly on her hot dog and then took a bite.
Sunni inched closer and spoke softly. “Are you half one thing, half something else?”
“Half Chinese, you mean?”
“No. I mean half human, half… vampire.” It sounded so absurd that she half expected Delia to laugh in her face
Delia spoke through a mouthful of food. “You’ve figured it out, have you? You know you’re a dhampir?”
“You knew what I am? Have you always known?”
“Duh.” Delia slurped her soda. “Daddy knew as soon as he saw you.”
Sunni put her hot dog in its little paper bowl on the bench. “So Sherman is a vampire?”
Delia looked around, making sure no one was within earshot. “Don’t use names. Everybody knows him around here.”
“Why didn’t you guys say anything?”
“Daddy’s on the down low.”
Sunni peered at Delia in confusion.
“The vampire world thinks he’s dead, and he wants to keep it that way. ”
“Not all of them. Jacob Eddington said I should go to your dad for help.”
Delia’s expression went from confused to angry. She grabbed Sunni by the collar of her fleece jacket and twisted it so that it choked her. “If you’ve put Daddy in danger I’ll kill you.”
Sunni coughed. She reached up and gently removed Delia’s hand.
“Jacob’s been watching me for years, Delia. He’s probably known about Sherman for years as well. If he was going to get him into trouble he’d have already done it.”
Delia licked her lips. Her red lipstick was smudged from the hot dog. “Okay. What did this Jacob Eddington think you needed help with?”