Sunrise in a Garden of Love & Evil (7 page)

Gideon, who hadn't moved a muscle or changed expression, sighed. "Christ, Willy, not jumping in the sack with every turd that makes a move on her doesn't make her a dyke."

Willy Wyler took another drag of smoke. "Promise you won't hit me?"

"I promise I
will
hit you if you don't tell me what I want to know."

"You're not gonna like it." He flinched as Gideon leaned forward. "Okay, okay. The thing is, man, she likes kids. I ain't got nothing against dykes, fags neither, but they gotta stay away from kids, and my kids in particular."

Gideon held his breath, gripped Willy's shirt, and yanked him forward, though getting in the smelly old dude's face was the pits. "Tell me the truth, asshole."

"I swear," Willy babbled. "She took nudie pictures of my girl Joanna, real disgusting stuff. The kid's only thirteen, man, and she's got her posing like some slut. There's even one of little Connie in the bathtub. No big deal, but still, who knows what she'll do next? I couldn't put up with that!"

What smelled like genuine anguish had bled through the stink, and Gideon eased up, frowning. "Go on." He motioned to the bartender, who had wisely decided to wipe the far end of the bar first. "Bourbon, straight up."

"I told her to stay away from my kids. That was a couple weeks ago." Willy paused, evidently trying to think again and succeeding to a limited extent. "Long story short, I was all coked up this morning and I sorta lost it." He slumped. "But goddamn it, she's got no right touching my girls!"

Gideon let go of Willy and leaned back far enough to take a proper breath. "How'd you happen to see these pictures, Willy? Ophelia come by one day and show them to you?"

"You don't believe me, man, but it's true. Ophelia dropped off some of Lisa's CDs to be printed at the photo shop, and she must have mixed up her roll of film with our stuff. In fact, I know she did, because my name was on the fucking envelope, and--"

"And what?" As if he needed to ask. While Willy tried thinking again, Gideon traded the whiskey for a five and offered it to Wyler. "Did Joanna say Ophelia took the pictures?"

"Of course she--" Willy's eyes flicked this way and that. "She didn't have to, poor baby. She cried her eyes out and said she was sorry and...She didn't say Ophelia
didn't
take them!"

Gideon lifted his eyes to heaven. "Who put the dead cat on her doorstep? One of your jackass friends?"

Willy downed the shot of whiskey. "No clue, man. Lots of guys are pissed off at her, and maybe she's been messing with other people's kids, too. I dunno." He shook his head. "I don't want nobody thinking that was me. Or that it was me took those pictures." His voice rose close to panic. "I'm a druggie, man, but I'm no pervert. My career would be in the toilet, and they'd ship the kids off to foster homes and Lisa'd kill me."

"Your career's already headed for the toilet," Gideon said. "Look who you're working with. Not getting as much session work as you used to, either, but you could fix that if you got off the drugs. Have some pride. While you're working on that, keep your head down, don't trash anybody's place or beat anybody up--blackmailers in particular. You hear?" He grinned as Willy's jaw sagged in surprise. "I'll take care of the blackmailer and find out who really took those pictures, but you better clean up, or those kids'll end up in foster homes regardless."

He escorted Wyler back to the band and signaled to Burton to accompany him to the door. "Get rid of the underage chicks," he said when they were alone in the corridor. "You know the law."

"I know, dude, I know, but my kid brother--"

"Your brother's not a kid anymore. You want him to keep his nuts?"

"Jeez, Gideon, c'mon!"

"This isn't me talking, Burton. When it comes to the clubs, the underworld applies the rules. One, no one under eighteen. And two, no unwilling participants."

"They're my brother's girlfriends, dude, and he wants them here. I need him in the band. He's got the voice."

"You looking for a soprano? That's what he'll be once Leopard's goons cut off his balls."

"Jeez, Gideon, kids get into some of the other clubs, so why not here?"

"People sometimes die violently in those other clubs, Burton. You want to take chances, take your brother and his groupies and get a gig there."

They emerged into an open area that held the tattoo, piercing, and mutilation facilities and gift shop, where workers were gearing up for opening time. Above the bustle rose a laughing voice. "It's a cute flogger, Joe, but pink? I need something macho."

"Whoo, baby!" Burton stuck out a paw. "I'm all the macho you need."

Ophelia whirled, brandishing the flogger. Burton held up his hands, giggling, to fend her off. Her foot connected instead, and he fell gasping to the floor, hands to his crotch.

"You should have listened to me earlier, Burton." Ophelia dropped the flogger on the counter. "And so should you, Gideon O'Toole. Show the cop what I came for, Joe."

The man in the gift shop snickered, pulling items out of a silver shopping bag one by one: handcuffs, fake fangs that were weapons in their own right, weights, clamps, and chains.

What an act. Gideon chuckled, folding his arms.

Ophelia snapped, "Give me a proper whip."

Joe handed her a leather monstrosity that would cut through elephant hide. "There you go, darling. Gonna be a big night?"

"You bet." She dropped the bullwhip in her bag. "Pack it all up."

"Almost makes me wish we were of the same persuasion," Joe said. "Can I come watch?"

Ophelia laughed. "How about that pink vibrator at the back? The one with the feathers."

Gideon felt a flush of anger and something ridiculously like hurt. He leaned against the gift-shop counter, hoping he at least looked cool. His voice came out calm enough. "What did Burton do to you earlier?"

"He groped me." She didn't look at him. "As he has done too goddamn many times." She took the end cap off the vibrator. "Batteries."

Joe dug under the counter and handed her two double-A's, looking appreciatively from Ophelia to Gideon and back.

Gideon said, "I seem to recall doing the same thing, honey."

"Just because you're in a different class from Burton doesn't mean you're up to scratch." Ophelia twisted the bottom of the vibrator and said, "A nice gentle buzz for some nice gentle girl. Go find one of your bimbos. You can be damn cute together in the buff." But as she turned the vibrator off and finally raised her eyes to his, something must have shown in his face, because her expression changed to sadness and her voice filled with regret. She put the vibrator in his hand and closed his fingers around it. "You're a good guy, Gideon, but I'm not what you need. For your safety and mine, please stay away."

Then she picked up her shopping bag, said, "Put it on my account, Joe," and left.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

Ophelia dumped the bag on the mauve marble tiles of her sister's kitchen floor and reached for a cookie. Violet slapped her hand.

"They're Zelda's! Anyway, we have to ice them first."

Ophelia sat down. "I don't know what's gotten into me, Vi. I look at that damn cop and go weak at the knees."

"Nothing's gotten into you." Her half sister set an elegant Japanese cup of steaming green tea down before her. "Or, rather, no
body
has. Sorry, angel, but I'm running out of sympathy. I could see doing without when none of them turned you on, but you wanted this guy at first sight." She poured tea for herself. "I almost envy your desperation. I'm so jaded, I'm considering sleeping with Donnie. I've been toying with the poor man for years. It would be an act of kindness, and I have to do it with
someone
. Who knows, he might be interesting."

Ophelia made a face. "I doubt it."

"On the downside, he might be impossible to get rid of afterwards. It's safer to stick to my regulars." Violet took the fake fangs out of the bag. "Just like the good old days." She peered deeper and sucked in a sharp hiss. "You know I don't like anything to do with bondage in the club."

"No one will see it but us," Ophelia said.

"Yes, but you look marvelously sexy just dressed as a vamp, angel. You used to draw scads of customers..."

Ophelia suppressed a retort about scads of nutcases following her around. Instead she said, "I don't want to look as if I'm going to a costume party. I need to look like a dangerous domme. Halloween isn't blackmailable, but BDSM is."

Violet set the paraphernalia on the table among three plates of cooling cookies, the whip last of all. "Eww. Why not get a cute little flogger?"

"Because Gideon showed up at the Chamber. You know what he was doing there? I didn't figure it out till after I left. He was harassing Willy Wyler, when I expressly told him not to. He's impossible. He doesn't listen. He doesn't give up. You know who he is? Donnie told me." She ignored the tea and eyed the cookies. "He's the cop who took all that flak from the media when there was no evidence Constantine killed his wife. Everyone said he'd been scared away or bought off, but he wouldn't budge."

"That should make you like him even more. You go for the morally upright type."

"I think he resents Constantine. Constantine got to exploit the bad-boy thing for his image, but Gideon was left looking wimpy." Ophelia's fingers hovered over a cookie. Violet pulled the plate away just in time. Ophelia sighed. "I was so pissed off to see him again when I hadn't had time to recover from that amazing kiss--"

"He
kissed
you? And you
let
him? You didn't tell me that when you called."

It had been a miracle Ophelia had even been able to talk at the time, thinking of Gideon.

Her half sister giggled. "How'd he deal with the fangs?"

"He didn't get that far." Ophelia heard her own disappointment and tried to be thankful instead. No point getting a taste of his blood and then having to deal with him freaking out. "I'd barely got myself calmed down when he showed up at the Chamber. They had some nice red leather floggers at the gift shop, but I thought the whip would scare him off." She curled her fingers around the teacup to keep them away from the cookies.

"And?" Vi twinkled at Ophelia while drinking her own tea.

"It didn't work." She scowled. "He thought it was funny, so I insulted him instead. I gave him a pink vibrator with feathers on the end."

Violet gaped. "He must have thought you were insane."

"No, he knew exactly what I meant, and I put it in words to make sure...and it was such a lie, and I felt like slime for the gazillionth time today." She clutched her teacup and gazed hungrily at the bare, boring cookies and knew she was losing her mind. "I've always been in control before. I've always been able to say no and mean it. I've learned not to care about whatever guy I'm brushing off, because I can't afford to." She took a gulp of tea and swallowed down the tears that threatened, inexplicably and out of character, to overcome her. "But with Gideon I do care, and even when I say no, I mean yes, please. Even when I'm enraged. Even when I'm terrified."

"Yum. Go for it!" Violet said. "You can't ignore chemistry like that. And don't worry about the vibrator. He'll bounce right back and use it on you." The buzzer on the oven went off. "Where is Zelda? She's supposed to be making these cookies. I've told her not to stay out after dark until she gets her fangs."

"
If
she gets her fangs," Ophelia corrected, grabbing a cookie unnoticed and scarfing it down.

"When,"
Violet said with finality. She took the baking sheet out of the oven and shoveled cookies onto a fourth plate.

The front door banged open and shut, and Zelda careened into the room. "Hi, Mom, Ophelia. Sorry I'm late." She took in the cooling cookies and said, "Mom, you're the absolute best. I'll get the icing." She beckoned to someone in the front hall. "Come on, don't be shy. Welcome to our den of sin."

Artemisia O'Toole came slowly into the kitchen, nervous as all get-out.

"Hel-lo," Violet said. "You certainly do look like your brother. I hear you need sex. Have some tea. Don't worry, I'm not after your blood. I only do men. Are you any good at icing?"

Artemisia took the chair Ophelia pulled out for her. "Um, sure," she said. "I won a cake-decorating contest once." She stared as Violet repacked the shopping bag. "Cripes, Ophelia. Couldn't you have got a cute little flogger?" She blushed up to the roots of her hair.

"My, my, you really
do
need work," Violet said.

"We're not doing cute," Ophelia said. "We're doing twisted. And scary." She poured Art some tea. "Not that it bothered your pain-in-the-butt brother," she muttered. "You told me he'd be scared of fangs. He didn't even blink at a whip!" Defiantly, she took another cookie, snapped it in two, and shoved it into her mouth.

"Hey! Those are for school!" Zelda set three bowls of colored icing on the table, along with parchment cones and tips. She surveyed the three women and sighed. "This is about sex, right? Or lack thereof. Mom, hurry up and sear Ophelia a steak. I can only spare a few cookies, and Ophelia's already had one."

"Two." Violet went to the fridge. "How would you like your steak, Artemisia? We eat them extremely rare."

"Lightly singed," Zelda said. "I'm actually beginning to like it that way."

"Of course you are, sweetie. It's the vamp gene, just like I told you." Violet threw Ophelia an I-told-you-so look as she cut into a thick, juicy steak. "But this is an emergency." She put a thin slice, red and bloody, into Ophelia's mouth.

Delicious,
Ophelia thought, licking her lips ecstatically. Would Gideon would laugh at this, too, or turn away in disgust?

Art didn't seem to mind. In fact, she was blushing. "Make mine medium."

"Sweetie, what you really need is raw," Violet said. "Or very,
very
well done."

"Well done," Art repeated, squirming but clearly determined. "You're absolutely right." She palmed her cheeks and glanced uneasily at Zelda. "Golly, this is so embarrassing."

"Don't mind me," Zelda said. "I am old beyond my years. Do you want to do roses? Leaves?"

"I'll take the green." Art snatched thankfully at the icing with the leaf tip on the end. "What's the occasion?"

"Spring festivals around the world," Zelda said. "Easter, Ostara, Naw-Ruz...Our teacher's a blast."

"I can do tulips and daffodils," Art said. She topped a cookie with broad, flat tulip leaves and a stem. "And irises, but if you want purple ones, you'll have to make more icing."

"Coming right up." Zelda hauled out the shortening, sugar, and food coloring.

"Give me the pink," Ophelia said. She did a tolerable rose on one cookie and then another.
Boring.
She drew a heart.
Dumb.
Painstakingly, she constructed an erect pink penis piercing the heart. She glowered at the cookie. Violet snatched it up and showed it around. "Symbolism, anyone?" Ophelia grabbed for the cookie, but Violet had already eaten it.

"Yum," she said. "Do you suppose Gideon's is pink?"

Ophelia choked on a laugh. "He's quite a bit darker than Art."

"Purplish, then. You can eat his when Zelda gets the icing done."

"Too bad there's no black icing," said Art in a strangled voice. "I've always wanted one of those."

"Double yum," Violet said. "I'm sure we can arrange something."

Art blushed again and said to Ophelia, "I thought you weren't interested in Gideon. What got into you on Andrea's porch?"

"He's a hunk," Ophelia said. "I'm a horny vamp." She shrugged. "No biggie." Though maybe it was. It looked like a biggie, from what she'd noticed.

Art said, "I have some news for you. I still can't believe it. Mrs. Cotter says Gideon wants to marry you!"

"You see?" Ophelia banged her fist down. The cookies jumped and angry pink icing squirted onto the table. "It's the same damn thing all over again!"

"What same thing?" Art swooped a finger into the pink icing and smeared it on her tongue, then went back to drawing leaves. "I think it's a great idea."

"Calm down, angel," Violet said from the grill. "She may be right. You'd get plenty of sex. Good sex, too, I bet."

Art executed a last set of tulip leaves on her plate of cookies and took Ophelia's depleted icing sac. "That's what all his bimbos say, even after he dumps them and breaks their hearts. They say, 'Oh, Art, I'll die without him, he's so much fun in bed.' " She drew a tight little tulip. "Why can't
I
get a man like that?"

Violet dropped a steak on the grill, put some rolls into the cooling oven, and came over to look. "You will, sweetie. Think open. Think uninhibited. Look at that sorry little flower you just drew. Not happy. Not having fun."

"Right." Artemisia swiped the icing into her mouth and tried again.

"As for you," Violet told her sister, "Gideon is exactly what you need. You take everything too seriously. It's about time you had sex with someone fun. Well, it's about time you had sex, period, but if you don't enjoy it, it's not much fun."

"Very profound, but how can I have fun when the whole time I'm thinking down the road? If he doesn't freak out afterward, thinking he's got HIV or been bitten by the devil, he'll get possessive, and then when I tell him to leave me alone he'll get depressed and suicidal, or obsessed, and he'll start stalking me or--"

"Gideon would never stalk anyone," Art inserted, offended. "If you want to get rid of him, all you have to do is talk too much." She grimaced. "Our mother talked all the time, like me, and our father was a pigheaded old grump. Gideon's terrified that's where he'll end up, so his relationships never get past having sex."

"What could be better, angel?" Violet said. "Indulge yourself and then dump him without a second thought. He'll handle it. He looks perfectly stable."

"My father looked stable," Ophelia said icily. "Then he killed himself."

Art's hand froze in midair. "Oh, my God. I'm so sorry!"

Violet made a disgusted noise. "Your father was a jealous fool, Ophelia. We're half sisters, by the way, Art. My father was Mom's first husband. Ophelia's dad was her second. He was obsessed with the thought that she was cheating, although she never looked at another man until the day she left him. After that, of course, she went wild, until she married a religious pervert who thinks drinking blood is a sin. Fortunately, he's willing to put his soul on the line to have sex with her." She flipped the first steak over and put three more on the grill.

"I'm not marrying anyone," Ophelia said.

"Speaking of perverts," Zelda remarked, looking uncharacteristically solemn, "I had coffee with Joanna Wyler this afternoon." She set down a bowl of neon purple icing.

Ophelia glanced up. "Did you find anything out?"

"Sort of," Zelda admitted. "It doesn't make any sense, though. She says her dad says you're a bad influence. Does he know you're a vamp?"

"I don't think so," Ophelia replied. "That would make him even more persistent. And it's not like I can turn Joanna into a vamp. You're either born with the gene or you aren't." She searched Zelda's face. "What? Does he think I'm lesbian because of my rep for hating men?"

Zelda shifted uneasily. "Something like that."

"So what?" Violet turned three of the steaks over. "It's not a crime. Not that a law would stop any of us. But Willy's not a gay-basher. Lisa's sister is lesbian. They have gay friends." When Zelda still held back, she added, "Spit it out, for God's sake!" She reached into the fridge for a salad.

"It's majorly dumb," Zelda said. "Put the salad down, Mom. Step back from the counter."

"Tell me!"