Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (7 page)

Reginald raised a finger and prepared to open the cover, but just as he did, Maurice jumped as if he’d sat on something. “Oh, I just thought of something.” He set the cigarette in an ashtray and pulled his cell phone from his pocket and held it up.

“You’re going to take a picture of me reading?” said Reginald.
 

“A movie,” said Maurice, a slight smile on his face. “Go ahead; I’m rolling.”
 

Reginald looked back down at the book. “But I’ve read it before,” he said.
 

“Not like this, you haven’t,” said Maurice. “Go.”

Reginald opened the cover and thumbed to the first page of the first chapter. He read about Jack Torrence’s impression of Stuart Ullman as an officious little prick.
 

He looked up. Maurice nodded.
 

Reginald read the first page, then the second. Maurice was probably getting bored, but out of the corner of his eye, Reginald could see him smirking behind his phone. He read more. Then more. After ten pages and probably twice as many minutes, he finally looked up and stared at Maurice. “Okay, this is ridiculous. How long do you really want to stand there while I plod through this?”
 

Maurice wordlessly held up the cigarette he’d lit before turning on the camera. Reginald could still see the square end in the ash from when the cigarette was new, meaning that it was burning very, very slowly.
 

Then Maurice gestured at the clock on Reginald’s wall to show him that it had stopped at some point while Reginald had been immersed in operations at the Overlook Hotel.
 

Reginald shrugged, but something was strange. Maurice was smiling.
 

“What?”
 

“This is good,” said Maurice.
 

“What’s good?”
 

“How did that feel?”

“I don’t know. Normal?”

“How long were you reading just now?”

Reginald shrugged. “Ten minutes?”
 

Then Maurice walked to where Reginald was standing and pressed a few buttons on his phone. Reginald saw himself on the small screen, staring down at the book.
 

The tiny Reginald on the phone said, “But I’ve read it before.”
 

And offscreen, a closer, deeper voice said, “Not like this. Go.”
 

The picture jarred slightly as, Reginald remembered, Maurice had nodded back at him. Onscreen Reginald looked back down, and there was a blur of white at his fingertips. Then onscreen Reginald looked up and said, “Okay, this is ridiculous. How long do you really want to stand there while I plod through this?”

Reginald looked up, his mouth hanging open. Maurice was grinning.
 

“You know how they say that time flies when you’re having fun? It’s vastly magnified for vampires. When you’re doing something you’re good at, you fall into it and you lose track of time… if you choose to perceive it that way. Apparently you can be fast at a few things after all. Faster than me, even. Like I said, this is good.”
 

Maurice pressed his lips together, smiling an appraising half-smile from half of his mouth. He seemed to be truly enjoying himself. He pocketed the phone, set the cigarette back in the ashtray without disturbing the squared-off end of the ash, and crossed his arms.

“Finish it,” he told Reginald, pointing at the book still in his hand.

This time, now aware that he could apparently speed-read, the experience was different. It didn’t precisely feel like it took him hours to read the book, but he
did
feel, somehow, as if he’d sat down with the story and the characters for a day, a week, maybe a month. It was as if the entire experience was suddenly sucked into his mind within the span of a few seconds, but then it dilated in his memory to a much longer period of time. He wasn’t sure if he’d spent a long time reading, or a little.
 

Reginald looked up. The cigarette was still burning where Reginald had set it, still with the square end of ash stubbornly in place.

“How long did that take?” he said.
 

“Less time than I’ve ever seen,” said Maurice. “Maybe I did a good thing, turning you.”
 

Reginald didn’t know what to say, so he bobbed his head in agreement.

“Now,” said Maurice, taking the book from Reginald and opening the cover, “I have a question. What’s the first word of the book?”

That was easy. He’d read it before. “Jack,” he said.
 

Maurice nodded, then flipped to the back. “And the last word?”
 

“Sun.”
 

“Okay,” said Maurice, flipping to the middle, “time to take off the training wheels. What’s the title of the 32
nd
section?”
 

Reginald didn’t know how Maurice expected him to know something so obscure. The book was written in short chapters, and in the edition Reginald owned, the pages didn’t even break between chapters. The chapter headings were like subheads, and there were a ton of them sewn right into the narrative of the story, and there was no way he

“‘The Bedroom,’” he found himself saying.
 

His face must have registered surprise because Maurice chuckled and said, “This is like using a muscle on a limb you never knew you had,” he said. “It’s going to take some getting used to. Just trust yourself.”
 

“But I didn’t know it!” Reginald blurted.
 

“And yet,” said Maurice with a Vanna White wave of his hand, “you did.”
 

Reginald didn’t know what to make of this odd new ability. Even now, he had no knowledge of the individual chapter headings. In any normal sense, he did
not
— even now — know the chapter title that Maurice had asked for. But then, he also kind of did. He could see a strange afterimage in his head, as if he were staring at the page. He closed his eyes, and without the conflicting sensory input, he almost
could
see the page. Right there:
32
, in italics. Below it, further to the right, none of it centered, THE BEDROOM, all in caps. The previous section ended with the word
now
. The first word of Chapter 32 was
Late
.
 

Maurice said, “What message does Halloran receive from Danny at the bottom of page 314?”

Reginald closed his eyes and it was as if he’d turned a page in his mind. He read the sentence at the bottom, all in caps, italicized, framed by parentheses.
 

“COME DICK PLEASE COME DICK PLEASE.” Then, because he couldn’t help himself, he added, “That’s what she said.”
 

“Which word is hyphenated at the end of the first line on page 215?”

Reginald closed his eyes and…
 

“Keep your eyes open,” said Maurice. “It’s not actually visual, so don’t reinforce that idea for yourself. You want to be able to use this while being fully present wherever you are.”
 

This time, the knowledge just arrived at his lips. It seemed to bypass both the visual image and his conscious awareness. “Canvas.”
 

“The last word of chapter 33?”

“Danny.”
 

“The eighth line from the bottom on the sixth complete page of the first section?”

“Was he a college graduate.”
 

“You say that like a statement,” said Maurice.
 

“The question mark is missing. It’s a typo.” Then, surprising himself, he added, “It was fixed by the 1992 mass-market paperback edition.”
 

Where had that come from? One time, sitting uncomfortably in a tiny faux leather chair in a Barnes & Noble bookstore to kill time while his mother got her nails done at a salon in the mall, Reginald had picked up a copy of the book and had begun reading. That had to be ten years ago.

“Interesting,” said Maurice. “Apparently it’s not just new information. You have no idea how rare that is, to pull that kind of recall from the archives of your prior, unenhanced human brain.”
 

Reginald nodded, surprised but pleased. “I’ve never been particularly smart,” he said. “Competent. Organized. But I never took any honors classes or anything like that.”
 

Maurice closed the book and set it on the counter. “Tell me: What’s the square root of
 
sixty-five thousand, eight hundred and ninety-four?”

“Two hundred fifty-six point six-nine-eight… you get the drift.”
 

Maurice picked up his cigarette and drew on it. “I’ll have to take your word for that,” he said, “that not being one of my abilities. You are going to be an exceptionally gifted glamourer. It all goes together. You’ll be good at music, too, if you care to be. Music and math are very closely related.”
 

“It feels like parlor tricks,” said Reginald.
 

Maurice shook his head. “It’s not. This isn’t just recall. It’s
function
.” He locked eyes with Reginald, becoming serious. “And when, over the next weeks, you feel like you’re not a very impressive vampire, I want you to remember something: At this, you are
exceptional
.”
 

“Exceptional?”
 

“Like nothing I’ve seen before. You’ve got a bit of a secret weapon.”
 

With this, Maurice stabbed the cigarette out in the ashtray and rose to his full height, which wasn’t much. He was still wearing the sword on his belt, which Reginald thought ruined the otherwise suave image he’d displayed tonight. But the sword had its purposes, he guessed.
 

“Wait,” said Reginald. “You’re leaving?”
 

“I need to get to work.”
 

“But…” Reginald whined, loathe to be alone with his odd new ability, “… you haven’t taught me anything about how to be a vampire!”

“Stay out of the sun. Avoid wood stakes. Keep a low profile. Feed, but that comes later. And I’ll be back tomorrow night, so don’t worry.”
 

“What about sleeping?”
 

“Do it. During the day.”
 

“Do I need a coffin?”
 

“Only if you’re morose.”
 

“What about silver?”
 

“Silver is bad. It’ll burn your skin and make you weak.”
 

“What about…?” He couldn’t think of anything else.
 

“Relax, Reginald. There’s simply not that much to it, and there’s no real training to be had. You’re kind of like an animal now, and you’ll find that your instincts have become much, much louder. The things you need to know will come to you naturally. Any details about any of it that you need, just ask.”
 

Maurice pulled on his coat, and the doorbell rang. The pizza man.

“The pizza this guy brought you is just oral masturbation now,” said Maurice, inclining his head toward the door. “But see if you can glamour him into giving it to you for free.”
 

“How?”

“Look into his eyes. The rest is like what you did with the book. It’ll come. Trust me.”
 

The doorbell rang again. Maurice took a step toward the door.
 

“You’re going to go out the same door he’s coming in?”
 

“I’m fast. He won’t see me.”
 

“Wait!”
 

Maurice stopped, his hand on the knob.
 

“Um… how old are you, Maurice?”

Maurice shrugged. “Old enough. Let’s just say that I knew Caesar.”

Reginald, thinking of his pizza, said, “As in, ‘Little’?” But the door was already open, the pizza man was pulling a box from the insulated bag he was carrying, and Maurice was gone.
 

H
UNGRY

ON THURSDAY, REGINALD SUCCESSFULLY SLEPT through most of the daylight hours. He woke up around six, ordered Chinese food, ate it while watching reruns on Fox, and then humiliated an entire box of Ho-Ho’s he’d forgotten he had. It was nice to know he couldn’t gain any more weight and that he wasn’t begging for a heart attack or a diabetic leg amputation. So there were some upsides.

Maurice arrived around ten and apologized that he’d gotten a late start and didn’t have much time to spend before heading to work. Then he asked how Reginald had done in his attempt to glamour the pizza man.
 

Reginald reported great success. After he’d gotten the pizza for free and was preparing to send the pizza man on his way, he had, on impulse, told the pizza guy to stick around and play The Sims. They’d ended up playing until an hour before sunrise.
 

“And did you feed on him?” Maurice asked.
 

“Oh,” said Reginald. “No. Was I supposed to?”
 

“I thought you might. I didn’t want to suggest it. I wanted to see if you felt it by instinct.”
 

“I was pretty full from the pizza,” Reginald explained. But then Maurice gave him that look again and he said nothing further.
 

“You’ll need to feed tonight or tomorrow. It’s time. Every few days at most from here on out. The bad news is that I don’t have time to hunt with you tonight, but the good news is that you don’t really need me to. And if for some reason you can’t figure it out, you’ll be fine until tomorrow and I can show you then. Good pickins on Friday nights. That’s when the freaks come out.”

“I’ll wait.”

“I’d rather you at least try on your own,” said Maurice. “Maybe you’ve noticed how I keep trying to get you to learn things through instinct? There’s a reason.”
 

“I don’t know…”
 

“You’ll do fine,” said Maurice. “Find someone alone somewhere and try it out. You’ll know how to extend your fangs, where and how to bite, how to drink, and when to stop. This is stuff that is part of your biology now. Just don’t forget to make
them
forget after it’s over, assuming you don’t kill them. And
don’t
, by the way. Murder is so much harder to get away with now, and you’re not ready to try.”