Eternal (19 page)

I shake my head. “Look out, Jedi.”

For the first time, my girl smiles at me. Miranda is more into fantasy. But her dad, Troy, is a sci-fi fan. So she’s seen all the
Star Wars
movies. She knows her
Doctor Who.
She thinks that
Deep Space Nine
is the best
Star Trek
series and that
Firefly
is sorely underappreciated by the masses.

In middle school, I tried to steer her toward the fandom kids. Lucy was already into the scarier stuff. But it never took. Miranda watched that crowd. She envied how they built their own worlds. But she stayed in Lucy’s shadow.

The hostess calls, “This way.” In her J.Crew long-sleeved black turtleneck, black jeans, and short, sleek ponytail, Miranda looks like any fresh-scrubbed, Goth-lite girl.

Then a Gold Coaster wrapped in a full-length sable elbows in front of us. “Now, wait just a minute!” she exclaims. “We were here first.”

Miranda’s eyes go red.

The matron cringes and clutches her husband’s thick arm.

“Sorry,” I mutter, passing by. “She’s got a big appetite.”

When we’re seated, Miranda glances at me over her open menu. “Freddy will be here any minute, but if you’re starving, go ahead and order.”

I’m tempted to ask what makes her think I’m hungry. But around the castle I’m getting a rep for my appetite. Part of it’s to stay in Nora’s good graces and part of it is that I’m still new to earthly pleasures: food, drink, sleep, sex, the basics. Plus, since coming to Castle Drac, I don’t get enough shut-eye and fornication is out of the question. It is.

“Not everybody is on a liquid diet,” I reply.

When our waiter arrives, I don’t bother to look up from the menu. Instead, I order a light beer, mushroom-and-cheese quesadillas, chicken nachos, blackened shrimp fettuccini Alfredo, and a side of corn succotash because it’s fun to say
succotash.
I’m thinking about the chocolate volcano for dessert.

I glance at Miranda. She’s gaping, practically drooling. At the waiter.

“Will that be all, dude?” Josh stands there in an O’Conner’s uniform with a small notepad and ready pen.

“Dude?” he repeats, and I notice he’s tied his dreads back.

“No,” I say. He shouldn’t be here. Or, to be exact, it’s okay if he’s here. Invisible. Not walking around taking food orders. Now that I think about it, he shouldn’t have shown himself in the Amtrak train hallway either. I’d just been too surprised by his visit and distracted by what he had to say to realize it at the time. “I mean, yeah. I mean, we, uh, have somebody else joining us.”

“We’ll split the quesadillas,” Miranda breathes.

If she eats two bites, I’ll be impressed. Still, I think back to what Nora said about how, among other aspects of his human life, Drac misses eating food. I suspect that the same is true of Miranda.

As Josh saunters off, she isn’t the only one watching him go.

One of the bigger angel perks is our looks. The toned bodies. The hair. There’s something about the hair.

At the next table, a young cutie stands in her too-short hot-pink suit and writes what’s probably her phone number on Josh’s hand. At the nearest booth, a bearded guy waves a napkin. Josh grabs it with a grin and, still walking, waves back.

Once he’s lost in the crowd, Miranda asks, “What’s your secret?”

I do a double take. Did Josh somehow blow my cover? “What?”

“Don’t you ever gain weight? Not to be rude, I’m simply asking. When I was a human, I never could’ve eaten like that. Werehippos couldn’t eat like that.”

I laugh. “There’s no such thing as a werehippo.”

That’s when Freddy, the events guy, shows up. He looks exactly like Harrison, except his hair is bleached and he’s wearing wire-framed glasses. By “exactly,” I mean
exactly.
They’re identical twins.

Miranda stands, and there’s much cooing and air-kissing before they settle down.

“Okay, let’s talk gala!” Freddy says, playing with his PalmPilot. “May 13, 14?”

“We put the fourteenth on the invites,” she says.

“Hmm, we’re already at about twenty days,” Freddy observes. “Not a problem. We have the venue. With Nora, we don’t need a catering staff. If she wants, though, I’ll nab her some backup from servants in the neighborhood. I’m thinking a ‘love bites’ theme — sit down, music — harps maybe.”

“Harps?” I cut in.

“Father has a passion for country music,” Miranda says. She blinks rapidly and adds, “A closeted passion that I didn’t mention, especially as pertaining to the collected works of Johnny Cash.” She glances at me. “Johnny wasn’t a vampire. He just liked to wear black.”

“Dancing?” Freddy goes on, as if our exchange never happened. “We can scatter dime-size rubies on the buffet table or maybe sapphires if you’re thinking red is overdone.”

“So overdone,” Miranda says.

Freddy makes a quick note. “And get this: we serve human hearts, cubed and chilled, with chopsticks over sticky rice on heart-shaped plates.” He adjusts his glasses. “Of course, real hearts aren’t heart-shaped at all. They’re more disgusting and lumpy. Hence the cubing, which solves —”

“You want a drink?” I ask him. I can’t stand hearing this and not being able to do anything to stop it. I can’t stand that Miranda is a part of this conversation. Besides, I need to talk to Joshua. Now.

“I’d love a —”

“I’ll get the waiter,” I say.

The diners are a mixed crowd. Execs and young pros. Families. Couples. College students. Tourists. Rounding the centerpiece bar, I dodge five tray-carrying food servers who aren’t Joshua. It takes me a minute to realize that the men’s room is the most logical meeting place. I find him there.

“Where have you been?” he asks, splashing his face at the sink counter.

“Me?” I check under the stalls. Empty. But the dining room is packed. We won’t have this space to ourselves for long. “You’re asking
me
’”

“It’s hard work, waiting tables,” Josh replies. “The kitchen is running slow, everybody wants to substitute something, and hungry people can be mean.”

“Since when can you just walk around —”

“Covert-ops exception. No showing off the wings, no lighting up, but . . .” He checks out his reflection and messes with his hair. “I’m stylin.’”

I don’t have time for this. “About Miranda —”

“Yeah, after all of your moping, I figured you’d be jazzed to see her again. Cool, huh?” No paper towels. He shakes the water from his fingers. “Uh, except for her now being . . . That sucks. I don’t mean sucks like . . . I mean, sorry, dude. I totally —”

“Shut up. Listen. Can a vampire be saved? Can
I
save her?”

Josh sobers and starts reciting from the Creed. “An angel may encourage, may inspire, may nudge, but each human soul ultimately chooses its —”

I sock him in the gut, just hard enough to break his train of thought.

“Ow!”

“We’re not talking ‘human.’ Does
she
still have a soul?”

“Not in the way you mean. There’s something hanging on, but it’s not the soul of a living human being. What’s left is infected. It’s withering, and every time her vamp nature kicks in, it’ll wither more until there’s —”

Right then two guys in overpriced suits burst through the men’s room door. They’re bitching that neither of them made partner at their law firm.

The heavyset one knocks his shoulder into mine. His colleague in the questionable tie asks if I’ve been hurt by “the assault.”

Josh is gone. I’m sure he didn’t run off to check on my nachos and quesadillas. He’s once again taken a siesta from the mortal plane.

On my way back to the table, Freddy passes by, headed to the can. He stops me with a hand on my forearm. “My brother,” he begins. His voice is different. The way he holds himself. “You know Harrison? You work with him?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Well, not anymore. He’s . . .”

“So it’s true.” Freddy’s head falls forward. “He’s one of them now.”

I realize that everything I’ve seen of Freddy up to this moment has been an act.

“I knew this would happen,” he says. “I tried to tell him it wasn’t too late to walk away. I guess it’s too late now.”

AT CHESTNUT AND MICHIGAN
, we say good-bye to Freddy and I begin toying with Zachary’s black wool scarf. It’s an excuse to touch him. “I suppose we should be getting back.”

“Why?” he asks, bending so his forehead is almost resting against mine. “What are you, a workaholic? What do you do for fun?”

Fun. I have to think to remember what the word means. I’ve never been one of those girls who lives for shopping, but we are standing on North Michigan Avenue, I’m incredibly rich, and there are still another couple of hours before the stores close. “I do need to get Father a gift for his deathday.”

Gift giving isn’t to be delegated. Father took pains to explain to me the restoration he had done to the Impaler so it would be ready for my debut party. He’s harder to shop for, though. There should be a catalog,
For the Exalted Who Has Everything.

“Let’s hit a bookstore,” Zachary says. “Or two.”

We half walk, half run across all six lanes. We’re flanked by business people — men in business suits, dark trench coats, Florsheim shoes, and women in skirt suits, dark trench coats, gym shoes (their pumps tucked into their briefcases).

As we weave through the crowded streets, a cherubic trio of little kids — two girls and a boy, joined by one of those child leashes — stop on the sidewalk. They giggle and point at Zachary. He grins and waves.

I wonder if he wants kids someday. I wonder if that’ll stop him from choosing elevation, if it’s offered. There’s precedent for eternal parenthood, but it’s rare, dangerous, and mystical. I haven’t had a period since I died.

“Hi.” Zachary squeezes my hand. “I’m right here. Where are you?”

“I’m right here, too,” I say, making an effort to appreciate the night, the moment: Zachary’s calloused hand and the exhaust of bumper-to-bumper traffic, the lovers in horse-drawn carriages and the skyscrapers jutting like fangs.

I breathe the chill into my limp, neglected lungs, setting my stride to the tune of a street musician’s saxophone. He’s accepting donations in his open instrument case, set at an angle on the sidewalk. As we walk by, Zachary reaches into the pocket of his black leather jacket and tosses in a twenty. “I love music,” he says.

Before I know it, we’re in a bookstore, and the spell survives when he lets go.

For an hour, perhaps more, Zachary and I wander, skimming spines, flipping through pages, reading quotes on dust jackets. I leaf through a book on the care and feeding of gerbils, wondering how Mr. Nesbit is holding up. It’s not his basic needs that I’m worried about. I’m certain Mom is feeding him and refilling his water bottle and cleaning his cage, but she won’t pet or talk to or play with him. That isn’t her way.

It’s been a while since I read anything but the news or
The Blood Drinker’s Guide.
Last fall, I took a couple of online college classes, but with this spring’s social calendar, Father encouraged me to take a semester off. Even so, he’s supportive of my continuing education. He himself earned an MBA online.

When Zachary moves to another aisle, I pick up a copy of
Curse of the Cubs.

My gaze strays to a lone blonde wearing a V-neck long-sleeved T-shirt, her hair pulled back in a clip. She studies a volume in
POLITICS
as I study the skin above her jugular. It looks smooth. I suspect she uses self-tanning lotion.

With a sigh, I shake off the lesser temptation in favor of Zachary’s company. It’s hard to even think about feeding when he’s around. The section sign reads
THEOLOGY
, and my PA has seated himself on a footstool, his nose buried in
Angels to Zombies.

“Sounds more like occult,” I muse.

Zachary looks me in the eye. “Do you believe in angels?”

“Angels?” It’s an odd question. I know Clarence from
It’s a Wonderful Life,
and the Bible is chock-full of winged guys who start sentences with “lo.” Lucy’s mom has this old-fashioned framed picture of a floating guardian angel, overseeing two children — a boy and a girl — crossing a bridge. Or maybe they’re on train tracks — I don’t remember for sure. When I was little, I used to imagine I had my own guardian angel, sort of like an invisible friend. “Seems like wishful thinking.”

Zachary slips the book — subtitled
The Apocalypse A to Z
— onto the shelf. He reaches for another one, resting on the floor beside him. “Here. Try this.”

Wow the Crowd.
It’s a book on acting. Grandma Peggy gave me a copy one year for Christmas. A remarkable coincidence, but Zachary probably deduced my love of theater from the framed posters hanging in my office back at the castle.

As we pass the in-store coffee shop, I ask, “Do you want to stop in?”

He replies, “How ’bout we go dancing instead?”