Just Wanna Testify (16 page)

Serena had never liked revolving doors. Maybe she came upon them too late in life and just never had time to familiarize herself with them enough to know when to step in and when to step out. The ones you had to push were so narrow that she often found her knees knocking against the glass in front of her and the self-propelled ones were always too slow. She preferred to alight from a limo and have someone in uniform open the door for her. The smiling bellhop in front of the Four Seasons was only too happy to oblige.

“Welcome back, Ms. Mayflower,” he said. Serena tipped the guy twenty dollars every time she saw him, which would have earned her such personalized service even without her startling beauty and the notoriety of the Too Fine Five.

She nodded without speaking, swept into the lobby, and headed for the elevators before the gawkers could work up enough nerve to
approach her. As she pushed in her security card to gain admittance to the penthouse level, she was thinking about Aretha Hargrove, trying to understand what had made her back out of what Serena had thought was a done deal.

The explanation that Regina had offered apologetically but firmly did not make any sense. Nobody was forcing any little kids to stop scarfing down their Happy Meals. What the hell did negative body images have to do with anything? High fashion wasn’t even about the body. It was about the clothes. She had thought any fool would know that, but obviously she had thought wrong.

When Regina asked if she could have a word after they finished the last shot of the day and Scylla had taken the girls back to the hotel, it had never occurred to Serena that she was going to cancel the contract. Not that she cared one way or the other. Aretha had just been insurance to neutralize Blue Hamilton. Now that the portfolio shoot was off, they would stick out like a sore thumb.
Six
sore thumbs.

The elevator doors opened at fourteen. She walked soundlessly down the heavily carpeted hallway and slipped her card in the door of her suite.

“There you are!” Scylla was standing at the wet bar mixing up a big pitcher of Bloody Marys. She had changed into a pair of impossibly skinny jeans and a black cashmere sweater that exposed one smooth shoulder. Her black stilettos were still lying beside the door where she had kicked them off as soon as she walked in. “I was starting to worry.”

“I had to clear up a few things with Regina Hamilton.” Serena watched Scylla pour two Bloody Marys over ice. “Are we having a party?”

“Sort of,” Scylla said, handing one glass to Serena and flopping down on the couch to take a long swallow of the other one. “The stylists are packing up the clothes. The girls are downstairs with plans to gather in Sasha’s room later to torture the room service
operator, and, as you can see, I have already washed that crap out of my hair and off my face and made us a pitcher of your favorite drink.”

Serena dropped her coat on a chair and sank down gracefully on the couch beside her friend. “I am forever in your debt,” she said, using a phrase vampires don’t take lightly, and taking a big swallow of her own drink. Scylla had tired of the tiny little bottles provided by the minibar, and Serena could see six huge bottles of Campbell’s tomato juice and a Texas fifth of Absolut standing at the ready. Scylla had laid in enough supplies for the duration.

“We should toast,” she said, looking at Serena.

“What are we toasting?”

“That the first part of this charade is over,” Scylla said. “In seven days, we’ll be back on our own lovely little island with our own organic, homegrown tomato juice and a fine new batch of absolutely brilliant boys, guaranteeing our immortality for at least another five years.”

Serena clinked her glass lightly against Scylla’s. “I wish it was that simple.”

“It is,” Scylla said. “All we have to do now is wait out these next few days, gather up the boys with a minimum of confusion, and get back to where we belong.”

Serena sighed. “And where is that, do you think?”

Scylla cocked her head to one side. “What’s wrong?”

“Ms. Hargrove has decided she doesn’t want to do any more fashion photography.”

“You mean after she does our fake portfolio?”

“I mean as of today.” Serena kept her voice even. There was no use setting Scylla off any more than was absolutely necessary. “Regina Hamilton said she’s concerned about us being a bad influence on little girls because we’re so thin.”

Scylla just looked at Serena for a minute and then she fell back against the couch cushions and threw her arms up gracefully as if in defeat, while at the same time emitting a deep guttural hiss.

“What’s so funny?”

“We’re vampires!” Scylla said, wiping the corners of her eyes even though they were incapable of shedding tears of either joy or pain. No longer necessary, the gesture survived only as an evolutionary tick, on its way out like tails and webbed feet. “Being thin is the least of it, don’t you think?”

Serena had to agree, glad they had broken the tension of the moment so they could start strategizing.

“This is not really a problem, is it?” Scylla said. “We don’t need a reason to be here. We’ll go shopping. We’ll see the sites. Tourists come here all the time, don’t they?
Gone with the Wind
reenactors? King groupies? We’ll
blend.
”

“That’s not going to make Blue Hamilton put out the welcome mat like giving Miss Aretha her big break would have done.”

Scylla hissed her displeasure softly. “Please! What’s he got to do with anything? All he controls is a tiny little neighborhood in a half-ass southern town.”

“You’re underestimating him.”

Scylla turned back and a small frown made a tiny wrinkle in her very smooth forehead. “So what do you suggest? We can’t make her work for us if she doesn’t want to.”

“Let me think for a minute,” Serena said, and closed her eyes.

The reason she was the team leader was testimony to her courage, tenacity, and quick thinking. This was a moment that called for all three. Scylla knew it, too. She moved over to sit closer to Serena, happy to wait as long as it took, settling down so gently, she barely dented the cushion. It didn’t take long.

“We’ll stay for the benefit,” Serena said slowly, the idea not yet fully formed, but good enough to share.

“What benefit?”

Serena tried to remember the details of her brief exchange with Regina before some unscripted conversation about Blue Hamilton’s eyes threw everything out of whack. “He hosts a big benefit once a year to raise money for a worthy cause. Everybody who is anybody
shows up. We’ll buy a couple of tables and promise a great big check.”

“What good does that do?”

“He’s not going to run us out of town on a rail if we’re his biggest contributors. We’ll call the press and say we’re going to make our first charity appearance.”

“You think he’ll believe in our sudden philanthropic urges?”

“Of course not. All I’m trying to do is shine a little more light on us so people will want to know where we’ve gone if we suddenly disappear.”

Scylla looked at Serena and narrowed her eyes. “He doesn’t have that kind of power.”

“He’s had more than five lifetimes, remember? Who knows what kind of power he’s got?”

“Okay,” Scylla said reluctantly. “We’ll go to the benefit. When is it?”

“On Saturday, the same night we’re taking off with the guys. It would be a perfect place to meet them. Keeps down confusion if they’re all in one place.”

“They’re not going to come voluntarily,” Scylla said. “They’re already scared shitless.”

“That’s why they’ll be there,” Serena said, seeing it more clearly by the second. “So they can be under Hamilton’s protection.”

“But he can’t protect them.”

“Exactly.”

Scylla hissed softly, recognizing a good plan when she heard one.

“I’ve got the plane lined up to meet us at the airport Saturday night at eleven thirty,” Serena said, sipping her drink delicately. “We’ll be gone before midnight.”

“Fine.” Scylla nodded, but she sounded unconvinced.

Serena stood up gracefully and headed for the door. Scylla didn’t move.

“Do me one favor,” she said. “The next time you go see Blue Hamilton, take me with you.”

Serena turned, her hand on the doorknob. “Don’t you trust me alone with him?”

Scylla raised her eyebrows slowly. “No.”

Serena’s expression didn’t change. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good.”

As she pulled the door open, Serena realized that Scylla was still sitting on the couch, watching, but making no move to join her. “Aren’t you coming?”

“I don’t think so,” Scylla said softly. “I’ve had enough bullshit for one day.”

Serena looked at her for a long moment and then stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind her.

Scylla sat motionless as if listening for the words they hadn’t said. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Finally, she stood up, sighed, stretched, grabbed her bag, stepped back into her stilettos, and opened the door. They were too close to the end of this long, strange journey for her to let Serena get distracted by some blue-eyed immortal with a godfather complex.

She picked up her pace, moving toward the elevator quickly with the awkward grace of a long-legged seabird running to take flight. If she hurried, she’d get to Sasha’s room before they ordered, which was a good thing. The girls didn’t like sharing their sushi.

“When were you going to tell me they were vampires?” Regina said, as Blue bent down to kiss her at the front door. Her tone brought him up short, but Blue being Blue, he answered the question as directly as she had asked it.

“When it was time for you to know,” he said, as she stepped inside and tossed her purse on the hall table.

She couldn’t believe her ears. He was going to play this like a scene from
The Godfather
, but she wasn’t feeling like a good Mafia wife at the moment. She was feeling like a righteously indignant African American woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

“How can you not tell me I’m doing business with the
undead
?”

Her voice sounded high and tight, but there was nothing she could do about that. On the way home, she had worked herself up with a potent mixture of fear, confusion, and anger. She definitely needed a better answer than that.

Blue closed the front door and stood watching her, but offered no further explanation, which only increased her agitation.

“If Sweetie was here, would you have told me?” she said. “Or would you have let our daughter hang around with them, too?”

“They’re not dangerous, Gina.”

“How can they not be dangerous?” She heard her voice go up another octave. “Don’t they live on—”

Blue cut her off quickly. “Not anymore. Now they drink tomato juice.”

“Tomato juice?”
Regina didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Are they really vampires?”

He nodded. “Yes, baby, they are.”

“Like Dracula?”

“Sort of.”

Suddenly she felt dizzy and confused and she swayed on her feet like she was about to faint. Putting his arm around her waist quickly, Blue guided her over to the couch and sat down beside her as she leaned back and closed her eyes.

“Why don’t you just bring me some wolf bane and a garlic necklace?” Regina said, opening her eyes.

“You know I would never expose you or Sweetie to any danger,” Blue said quietly. “They are not here to do harm to random humans.”

The phrase
random humans
did nothing to reassure her. “What do you call making a bunch of college students their sex slaves?”

“That hasn’t got anything to do with you,” he said. “Those guys made a deal as grown men. Now they have to take responsibility for it as grown men.”

Regina’s thoughts were swirling around in her head so fast, she couldn’t pick just one to bring forward. The whole scene was surreal. She never argued with Blue, and here she was acting like she had just discovered he had a girlfriend stashed somewhere in Buckhead. They had found a way to talk about everything from rehab (her) to reincarnation (him), and all manner of things in between without ever forgetting that they were on the same side. If Blue hadn’t told
her something this important, he must have a good reason. All she had to do was stop freaking out long enough to let him tell her what it was.