Moon Dragon (2 page)

Chapter Two

Her aura glowed a light blue.

She was telling the truth, and yet my warning system was still chiming slightly. I’ve learned to listen to this warning system. The problem was, well, it wasn’t precise. I didn’t know exactly
why
it was ringing, only that something about this woman presented a threat to me.

I thought about that when I said, “Why not go to the police?”

“I can’t prove anything.”

“Then how do you know?”

The girl with the stage name of “Sugar,” but whose real name was Nancy Pearson, was having a hard time sitting still. She crossed and recrossed her legs in, let’s admit it, a fabulous display of dexterity. I could see how someone as feeble-minded as Danny would get seduced by such athleticism. She had probably worked the stripper stage impressively. None of which made me like her any better. Now, her high-heeled foot jiggled and bounced hyperactively. She looked like a woman with a secret, or someone who had to pee, or...

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

“I do.”

“Seriously?” she said.

“Seriously,” I said.

“Please?”

“No.”

“Pretty please?”

“Okay.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“You’re mean.”

“You have no idea. Now talk.”

She took out her packet of cigarettes anyway, opened it, removed a slightly bent one, stuck it between her teeth, and said, “Then let me at least pretend.”

“Pretend all you want.”

She did just that, sucking on the end of it like a real pro. She even exhaled. She did this again and I tried not to laugh.

“It’s not funny,” she said.

“I tried not to laugh.”

“Well, you didn’t do a very good job of it.”

I waited as she inhaled again on her unlit cigarette, exhaled some nonexistent smoke. Her foot bounced at the end of her ankle like a fish dangling from a line. Then, she actually asked for an ashtray.

“There are no ashes,” I pointed out reasonably.

“Please,” she said. “It helps.”

I sighed and rooted around a bottom drawer and found something Anthony had made back in arts and crafts when he was in first grade. I use the words “arts and crafts” liberally. Whatever it was—a hand or a butt cheek—I set it in front of her. She shrugged and proceeded to tap off some invisible ashes.

Our last encounter was a memorable one. Sugar had tried to stop me as I approached my then-husband’s office. Tried being the operative word. I might have hit her hard enough to break her nose. And I might have enjoyed it way too much.

“I said sorry about that,” said Sugar. She had picked up on my thoughts and assumed, like most people did, that I had spoken. I had not. And, yes, earlier on the phone, she had apologized again about sleeping with Danny.

“So you said.”

“I mean, you aren’t still mad about that, are you? That was, like, years ago.”

“Two and a half years ago. And, yes, I’m still mad.”

“Well, I’m sorry. If it wasn’t me, it would have been any of the other girls. Your husband was, like, into all of us.”

“Good to know.”

“Besides, I haven’t seen him in, like, over a year. Have you?”

“On and off,” I said, referring to his ghost who appeared occasionally in my home. I usually found him in the kid’s rooms, standing over them as they slept. Sugar didn’t need to know that Danny had been murdered by a vampire who had been out to get me, too. Or that Danny had aligned with the wrong team...and had gotten himself killed. Which is why I blocked those thoughts.

She said, “Okay, well, tell him I miss him.”

And I saw it there, on her face, and heard it in her voice. She truly had feelings for him. Sadly, I didn’t miss him so much. Rarely, in fact. Perhaps only once or twice, tops. Not like the kids, who still mourn for their daddy. At least someone had loved Danny before he died, because it sure as hell wasn’t me.

“I’ll tell him,” I said, and my voice might have softened a bit, dammit. Yeah, I have a bleeding heart for sure. “Now, why do you think your ex-boyfriend is a serial killer?”

She picked up the unlit cigarette and held it loosely between her fingers. “Because he told me.”

Chapter Three

“And why would he do that?” I asked.

Yes, she looked ridiculous with the unlit cigarette hanging from her lips. Admittedly, I admired her commitment to her habit, unhealthy as it was. I decided not to let her know that, I, too, smoked from time to time, but never in the house. Usually in the car or on long stakeouts. Even if cancerous cells did develop in my lungs, the vampire in me eradicated them instantly.

There were benefits to being what I was. And these days, now that I could go into the sun and eat and drink and be merry, the benefits far outweighed the risks.

“He talks in his sleep,” said Nancy.

“And this was recently?”

“Yes.”

The word
slut
might have slipped through my mind, although I wasn’t one to judge. I’d had two relationships since my divorce from Danny, and three, if you counted my mental relationship with Fang, which I kinda did.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” asked Nancy. Oops, the “slut” part might have slipped out. Might have.

“No,” I said. “Not really.”

“You’re probably wondering why I came to you and not, say, another detective.”

“The thought occurred to me.”

Yes, I could probe her mind for the answers I wanted. The thing was, I didn’t
want
to probe her mind. I didn’t
want
to dip down into her thoughts and see what made this woman tick. I also didn’t want to stumble across any memories of her and Danny. At present, such memories were probably brewing on the surface...all of their lies and deception and sneaking around and not-very-good-sneaking around.

“Danny talked, too,” she said, looking away.

“Not in his sleep,” I said.

“No, never in his sleep. I guess we both know that.” She laughed at that and kicked her leg a little; we were just two girls sharing memories of the same man in bed. A man she had taken from me, although he went willingly enough. Actually, I imagined him running from me. Turned out his instincts were partly true. Had Danny and I continued to sleep together, he would have been bonded to me as a sort of sex slave, as had been the case with Russell. I shuddered at the thought.

“Danny would tell me things,” she said, sucking ridiculously at the end of the unlit cigarette and blowing out her pretend smoke. I wondered if she was even aware that the fag wasn’t lit.
Yes, I’m channeling my inner Brit.

“What things?” I asked. My eyes might have narrowed suspiciously.

She took the cigarette out of her mouth and looked at it, wrinkling her nose. Then looked me directly in the eye. “He said you’re a vampire.”

“Did he now?”

She nodded vigorously. “And he was scared of you. Like, irrationally scared of you.”

“Because I was a vampire?”

“That’s what he said.”

“And did you believe him?”

“I really, really want to light this cigarette,” she said.

Suddenly, I wanted one, too. I stood and said, “Follow me.”

Chapter Four

We were in my back yard, smoking.

We sat side by side on the broken cement stairs that led from the kitchen down into my back yard. Despite being broken, the stairs sported a coat of gray paint. That had been Danny’s answer to all of our home improvement needs: paint the crap out of it.

One of us was smoking because she had an addiction. The other was smoking because she still had a need to feel normal. There was a chance I was the latter. Of course, the entity inside me wanted nothing to do with normal.

The entity inside me could go to hell.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” said Nancy, aka Sugar.

I inhaled, peering through the smoke rising before me, obscuring the neon Pep Boys’ sign that itself rose above my backyard fence. Yes, I shared a backyard fence with the Pep Boys’ parking lot. Handy for when I needed an emergency fuel filter. Danny did get one thing right: he got us a big back yard, which had proved to be kinda fun, back when we were a real family.

We’re still a family,
I thought,
just minus the Danny part.

Of course, Danny still came around, just minus the body part. In fact, he came around more in death than he did when alive. Funny how being dead made him a more attentive father. Better late than never.

“Did you say something?” asked Nancy.

Oops. Sometimes, despite my best efforts, my thoughts leaked out, especially when I was bonding with someone.

Oh, bloody hell,
I thought.
Please don’t tell me I’m bonding with her.

“I’m not that bad,” said Nancy, inhaling and looking around. “And who are you talking to?”

“Sorry,” I said, inhaling deeply on my own cig. “I do that sometimes.”

“Do what?”

“Think out loud.”

She giggled. “So do I!”

Great.

I sighed and looked at her and exhaled a plume of smoke in her direction. I had been tempted to do so in her face, but realized the longer I was with her, the more my hate for her was quickly ebbing. Above, a seagull squawked. I was fifteen miles from the sea. This time, I kept my thoughts purposely open.

“Maybe it’s lost,” said Nancy. “Wait a second...your lips didn’t move.”

“No.”

“But I heard you...”

“Oh?”

She thought about that. “Actually, I heard you directly in my head. Just inside my ear.”

“How cool is that?”

“I...I’m not sure it’s cool. How come you aren’t blinking?”

“I don’t need to blink,” I said.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“He might have blinked,” I said. “But then again, I’m not an historian.”

“Then it’s true,” said Nancy.

“That I’m not an expert on Jesus.”

She slapped my arm, a gesture that surprised both of us. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“You really are a vampire.”

“I’m something that has vampiric traits,” I said. The suggestion always rankled me, although, to be honest, few people suggested it. “What, exactly, I am is open to interpretation.”

“You’re not going to, like, kill me, are you?”

“Only if you sleep with my next husband.”

“I’m really sorry about that.”

I nodded toward my house. “You didn’t sound sorry earlier.”

“I guess I was feeling a bit defensive...and didn’t think about your feelings.” She made a small face at the word
feelings
. Speaking of feelings, I had a strong feeling that Nancy didn’t much like talking about her own.

“And how do you think I feel?” I asked.

She scrunched up her face at the question, as if she’d bitten into a sour grape. “Well, it’s like...I can feel how you felt. It’s weird.”

“Go on.”

“You felt abandoned. Alone. Jealous. Scared. Heartbroken. And I...”

“And you what?”

“And I contributed to a lot of that.”

We were silent some more, each sucking and puffing and sitting closer than I ever thought I would sit next to my ex-husband’s mistress.

After a moment, she said, “It’s no secret that I was a stripper. And when Danny showed an interest in me...I mean, he was a lawyer, for Christ’s sake.”

“You couldn’t help yourself,” I said.

She shrugged and I sensed her getting defensive, so I mentally pushed her to continue. If anything, hearing her side helped me to heal a little. Helped me understand a little more, too. Danny was a shit, but I had been in love with him and his actions back then had been a dagger to the heart. Mercifully, not a silver dagger.

“I had a rough life,” she went on. “I’d been turning tricks since I was fifteen, after I left home.”

Despite my best efforts to shield myself from her own memories, I saw them now, flashing through her mind, each more disturbing the next. She had been abused by her parents and grandparents. Her memories made me want to never let my kids leave the house again.

“How did a hooker...” My voice trailed off.

“Go on, you can say it.”

“Fine. How did a former hooker end up as Danny’s legal secretary?”

“I have a funny how-we-met story.” She paused. “I had a car wreck when I was hit by a drunk driver on the way home from the strip club. I had to be cut out of my car with the Jaws of Life and Danny was there when they took me to the hospital.”

“Let me guess. He wanted to take your case on contingency.”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“Lucky guess. Did someone rich hit your car?”

She nodded. “I was hit by a local politician who desperately wanted to settle out of court. Danny told me that during the case, I couldn’t work as a dancer, since we were claiming disability, so he gave me a little job as his legal secretary at one-tenth of what I made before, you know, to show that I had lost earning power.” She paused. “Danny got me a nice out-of-court settlement and he used his part of the proceeds to buy out the strip club where I worked because I told him it was a gold mine. I used my part of the settlement to get a little condo in Beverly Hills. I went back to dancing at the club he now owned and the rest is history.”

Now the pieces were coming together about why Danny had left lawyering to own a strip club. I tried not to let my eyebrows go up. “And you and Danny got pretty close, I guess,” I said, not bothering to hide my irritation.

She shrugged. “Danny seemed like he liked me. And he told me he was getting a divorce from you, and that you were this horrible person. He made me not like you in return. And then...”

“And then he told you about me being a vampire.”

“Yeah.”

“What did you think about that?”

She looked at me long and steady before she replied, “Let’s just say that I wasn’t as weirded out by it as you might think.”

What I saw next in her mind made me gasp. I snapped my head around and stared at her. “Your ex-boyfriend...”

“Is not so different from you, Sam...”