Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires (103 page)

“Licorice.”

“Two things.”

“Licorice and religion.”

“Religion, because of your parents?”

“Yes. No. That makes it sound like they're responsible
for everything I am. I've thought about religion, even studied it in school, and come to the conclusion that it's pointless and dangerous. I don't get why people need it to give their lives meaning. Isn't life enough?”

“You're asking a dead guy?”

I take a sip of wine. “This is all just my opinion, of course. What about you? Before you were a vampire—”

“I was a Catholic.”

“Oh.” I wonder if now is the time to ask him about his story. “But when you become a vampire, you end your life. Isn't that kind of a no-no in Catholicism? Suicide?”

His face goes sad, sending a stake of regret through my heart. I feel like I'm about to meet Elizabeth's fate, inverting and twisting into a hole that will swallow me up. “You don't have to talk about it,” I say. “I shouldn't have asked.”

“Yes, you should have.” He lays his hand over mine. “And no, I don't.”

He continues to drink the wine. I wait for him to continue. After the first minute I sit back and take a few sips, waiting. After five minutes I realize there's no winning the waiting game with an immortal creature.

“You don't what?” I ask.

“Have to talk about it.”

He doesn't look mad, but he doesn't look happy either. He just sits and drinks, as if I've left the room. Great. First I play games with his brain, then I accuse him of being a bad Catholic. How else can I demean him today?

A change of venue might break my streak of asininity. “Hey, you know what I could go for? Ice cream.”

This snaps him out of his meditative state. He looks at me, smirks, then sings the first line to “Mean Woman Blues.”

I cover my face. “I forgot you can't taste food. Never mind.”

“It's okay.” He sets his empty wineglass on the night-stand. “You've had a bad day, you deserve ice cream.”

We dress in silence on opposite sides of the bed, though we might as well be on two sides of a wall. I remember how I opened myself completely to him, let him do whatever he wanted with my body and my life. What do I have to do to get that kind of trust in return?

Besides not being a total shitheel, I mean.

“My car's at the station, so we'll have to walk.” I sift through my jeans pockets for change. “And my purse is in Elizabeth's car, so you'll have to buy. Sorry.”

He looks up at me from the bed, where he's tying his shoes. “Come here.”

I sidle over to him. “You want to extract payment in advance?”

“No.” He takes me in his arms and kisses me softly. “Ciara, I promise one day I'll tell you my story. But I don't want to ruin this night.”

My dread dares to thaw around the edges. I attempt a nod and a smile, and we head out for ice cream.

I know there are other reasons why he won't tell me. Some are about me, and some are about him. To get past all the reasons at the same time could take careful choreography, an endless emotional negotiation.

This is why I don't do boyfriends. Too much work.

The diner glows purple, inside and out. The Baltimore Ravens are in town for summer training camp, so every business drapes themselves in the team colors to draw
in tourists. It might be fun one afternoon to go see the team practice, get some autographs. I turn to Shane to suggest it, then remember we can't ever have a daytime date. Oh well. He's a Steelers fan, anyway—or “Stillers,” as he would pronounce it.

We stand in the lobby holding hands, just like any normal couple out for a postcoital midnight breakfast, in search of caffeine and carbs to keep the energy up.

A young waitress with a drooping brown ponytail shows us to our booth. Shane sits across from me as she dumps the menus on the table. We order black coffees and a banana split.

When she walks away, Shane props his feet on my bench, one on either side of me. I sit back and rest my elbows on the toes of his boots. The diner's harsh fluorescent and neon lights accent the feeling of oth-erworldliness about this evening, the sense of time out of time. Tomorrow—later today, I mean—we'll have plenty of problems to sort out. Right now, I sign a truce with life.

I run a thumb over Shane's left sole. “Are your feet ticklish, too?”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “No.”

“Liar. I'm going to play with them when we get back in bed.”

“Only if I can do the same to you.”

I shrug. “I'm not ticklish at all.”

“That's because nothing ever surprises you.”

Was that a dig at my conniving nature? “‘Surprise' is just another word for disappointment.”

The waitress arrives with our order. I nudge aside the maraschino cherry and dig in. “They use real whipped
cream here, not that canned stuff.” I lick my spoon and mentally catalog the places on Shane's body I'd like to apply the condiment. Maybe I can get some to go. “Please, try it.”

He nabs half a spoonful of mint chocolate chip, takes a tentative bite, then shoves the spoon back into the bowl. “Tastes like Maalox.”

“Darn, I guess it's all mine.” I pull the split to my side of the table and keep eating. “My parents used to buy me ice cream after a revival show. I'd always get as exotic a flavor as I could, because I knew the next town might only have chocolate and vanilla.”

“So it wasn't all bad, then, your childhood.”

“Not at the time.”

He pulls his feet off my bench and leans forward. “What were some of the other things you liked about it?”

I eye him carefully. “I don't want to go there right now.”

He slides the banana split toward him, out of my reach, then picks up his spoon. “For each good thing you can remember, you get one bite.”

“It'll melt.”

“Then you'd better hurry.”

“Passing out fliers.”

He hesitates, holding back the spoon. “Explain.”

“In little towns I'd stand on street corners, or go from shop to shop, telling people about the revival. Sometimes the shop owners would give me candy or a flower or a bag of chips, because I was so cute and holy.”

“Good.” He feeds me a large spoonful, consisting of banana, chocolate almond ice cream, and whipped cream. “Next?”

“The carnival atmosphere.”

“Good. You get a bite for each detail.”

“The barkers, selling Bibles and tambourines and prayer books.” Another bite, this one from the mint chip side. “The roadies and the local guys working together to put up the big tent.” Ditto, this time a bit of each ice cream. He's got the hang of it now. “People from the town setting up booths to sell lemonade or homemade crafts or funnel cakes.”

“I remember funnel cakes.” His mouth opens, moist inside, as he spoons me another bite. “Add that to the list of things I miss tasting. Go on, what else?”

“Testimonies.”

“What's that?”

“People would stand up and talk about how they were healed, or how they used to be sinners until they discovered grace and shit.” I take another bite. “Some of them were shills, but some were believers.”

“What's a shill exactly?”

“It's the grifter partner who plays the bystander. In a game of three-card monte, it'd be the guy you see winning. It makes the mark feel more secure. The herd instinct. Do I get a free bite for my lesson?”

He sighs and scoops another spoonful. “Only because of my undying love for you,” he mumbles.

“What?”

He looks up. “What?”

“Your un-whatting what?”

“Huh?”

My eyes narrow at him. “What did you just say?”

“When?” He holds out the spoon. “Come on, it's dripping.”

I accept his offering, my whole body running hot and cold. My memory flits back to his remark that nothing ever surprises me.

“So what else?” He digs the spoon into the bowl. “We've still got half a banana split here.”

I collect myself in a hurry. “I remember ...” What else? Counting stacks of money at the end of the night? Watching the dupes return to their ramshackle homes with empty wallets? “The hope in people's eyes.”

“Sounds big. Give me more.”

“They'd come to the revival so beaten down, by the bad crops or the factory closings. After a couple hours of listening to my parents shout and sing, and watching their neighbors be healed onstage, they'd go home believing anything was possible.”

Shane feeds me. “Your folks, they were something, huh?”

“My dad, he was the best in the business. Charming, fast-talking, great-looking. He worked like a magician, full of misdirection and illusion. But he would've been nothing without my mom. They were like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Like two halves of the same person.”

When the next spoonful comes, I turn my head away. “But maybe even their marriage was just part of the show. He hasn't called or written her in two years.” My stomach tightens around the last bite of ice cream. “He's never called or written me. Fucking asshole creep pig-weasel.”

Shane puts the spoon back in the dish. “Are you sure he's still alive?”

“They would've told us if he died, as his next of kin. They would've told me if he were paroled. I testified against him, after all.”

“They think he might come after you for revenge?”

“I would if I were him.”

Shane moves to join me on my side of the booth, bringing the bowl of ice cream. “Here, you've earned it.” He sits close to me and sips his coffee while I consume the banana split with renewed urgency.

To distract myself from thoughts of my parents, I turn to a slightly less odious topic. “The station is screwed.”

“Yeah. Our only hope is to find a will that says Elizabeth left everything to David. But then we'd have to prove she died, which is hard to do without a corpse.”

I grit my teeth at the unfairness. “She was going to make it work. If Gideon hadn't staked her, she could have canceled the deal with Skywave.”

He frowns into his mug. “When she doesn't show up for that meeting on Friday, they'll know something's up. Sooner or later there'll be an investigation. We should start looking for a new home.”

“We can probably postpone the meeting, but that'll just be a temporary—” Breath stops in my throat. My spoon clatters to the table, then the floor.

Shane picks up his own spoon and holds it out to me, but my hand is frozen. All of me is frozen but my mind, which spins like a gyroscope.

“Ciara, you okay?”

I grab Shane's wrist, spilling his coffee. “I know how to save the station.”

When devising a long con, the first revelation comes as a spark, a firecracker of an idea. The rest takes time and planning to perfect the entire game. Every player must learn his or her part, every loophole must be tightened, and every possible setback must be accounted for. This process often takes weeks.

I don't have weeks. I have until the day after tomorrow.

David and I sit in Elizabeth's office, searching for scraps of information about Friday morning's phone meeting between her and Skywave. Luckily, her files are well organized, and her ancient computer has no security, since she was using Windows 95 as an operating system.

“Let's see if we can buy some time.” I hand David a piece of paper with a name and number on it. “Call Sky-wave and ask if we can postpone Friday's conference call until next week. Tell this guy's assistant that Elizabeth is ill.”

I sit back in the chair while David navigates the labyrinthine phone tree to reach the Skywave head office.

After a short conversation, he punches the hold button. “The soonest they can reschedule is in a month. But by then someone else might figure out she's missing, and this charade won't play.”

“Then tell them never mind.”

He puts the phone back to his ear. “Rather than postpone, Ms. Vasser would prefer to keep the meeting as scheduled.” He listens for several moments, then his eyes widen. “Oh, no. I mean, no, I'm afraid that won't work.”

“What won't?” I whisper.

He shakes his head vigorously.

I lean forward. “What won't work?”

He holds up a finger. “One moment, please,” he says into the phone. He puts them on hold. “They want to meet in person,” he tells me. “They have something they want to show Elizabeth. Obviously we can't do it.”

“Why not?”

His jaw drops, then his head shakes slowly. “No, Cia-ra. We can't do what you're thinking.”

“Maybe we can. Tell them we'll call back.”

As soon as he's off the phone, I grab it and dial the vampires' extension, which rings several times.

Shane picks up with a groggy tone. “Yeah?”

“Hi.”

“Hey.” He lets out a sigh like the one I heard as I fell asleep with him curled around me. “How are you?”

“Overcaffeinated. Is Travis there?”

He hesitates. “You called to talk to Travis?”

“I'll explain in a minute. Stay by the phone.”

“Here he is.”

“Yes, ma'am?” Travis's voice is steadier and warmer than I expected.

“It's Ciara.” I congratulate myself for not adding, “The woman you tried to kill.”

“What can I do ya for?”

“Lots. First, I need to know if any Skywave execs ever met Elizabeth face-to-face.”

“Not that I know of, but it's hard to prove something didn't happen.”

“Those photos in your camera, were they the only ones you took?”

“I downloaded a bunch to my laptop, but I haven't shown them to Skywave yet. I was just about to give them a report when I was, well, butchered.” His voice dips for a moment, then picks back up. “Do you still have my camera? I want it back.”