Helens-of-Troy (47 page)

“See, there’s that mean streak in you
again. You forget I couldn’t hear properly as a child. Speech, just
like hearing, is relatively new to me. I’ve been reading some
historical romances just to get the hang of it.”

Ellie laughed harder. “Now I know two
people who actually read them.”

“Well, you read what is around.
Bookstores don’t keep my hours.”

“I’m just kidding. Don’t you need a
light to read? Doesn’t that bother your kind? Nothing personal—a
friend of mine said that to me the other night.”

“Audio books,” Gaspar
answered.

“Gotcha,” Ellie nodded.

“Now I’m kidding,” Gaspar laughed.
“Don’t believe everything you’ve read about us. I can handle light.
Just not for long. It burns me, much like a sunburn does you, but
it burns me beneath the skin. I try to stay out of it. Sunscreen’s
not much help.”

“Even the pink lights?”

Gaspar looked at her oddly.

“Never mind. You had to be
there.”

“Would you like me to bring you a
pillow and a blanket?”

Ellie weighed his statement. Why would
he bring her that if he was going to kill her? On the other hand,
if he was offering to bring her bedding, it meant he wasn’t going
to let her go anytime soon. He was getting comfortable. Or horny.
Neither of which was appealing to her. She contemplated her chances
of both life and escape.

She could feel tears forming in her
eyes again, and blinked them back. This was no time to be a
cry-baby. She had to keep her wits about her as much as any fifteen
year-old could when faced with this situation. If he didn’t like
mature, mature she would be.

“What are you wondering, Ellie?” he
asked, as if reading her mind. “Are you wondering whether it’s
better for me to kill you now or later?”

“I was, yes.”

“And what did you decide?”

“I was thinking later would be
good.”

“Me too.”

“So, you’re going to let me go?” Ellie
asked hopefully. “We can still be friends. Maybe even go to a movie
sometime.”

“Go?” he laughed. “What ever gave you
that stupid idea? I’m still going to kill you. Someday. We’re just
going to take a little detour. I’m going to take you to hell and
back, and then it’s off to grandmother’s house we go.”

He pulled a switchblade from his
pocket.

“What are you doing?” she asked,
terrified to hear the answer.

“You’re too perfect, Ellie.”

“What’s that supposed to
mean?”

“They’d never believe it. The rest of
them. They’d never believe that girl like you would want a boy like
me.”

“Then they’d be right.”

He grabbed her arm and pushed up her
sleeve. The edge of the knife was cold as he very lightly drew the
blade across her wrist. No blood flowed, but it scared the shit out
of her, he could tell.

“There’s this thing that happens,” he
began to explain, “when one of us wants one of you. Forever. We
make a nice little slice in an artery, like this vein hidden so
delicately under your skin. Then we suck the consciousness from
you, almost to the bitter end. But just before you take your last
breath, we give you back one.”

He saw the the terror in her
eyes.

“Which means?” she asked, her voice
barely audible.

“Which means I bring you back to life.
And then you are my slave.”

He took the edge of the knife and gave
her skin a poke. Droplets of ruby red blood rose to the surface. He
raised her arm to his lips, his tongue darting to the blood in a
slow, deliberate lick.

She felt a warm uneasiness run through
her. The initial unpleasantness was replaced by something she could
only describe as anesthetic-like. She felt euphoric. Her senses
were going into hyperdrive. She could see the miniscule pores on
his skin. She could smell his perspiration. She could hear his
heartbeat. She found none of it unpleasant.

“Does that give you some idea, Ellie?”
he asked. “Of how magical it could all be?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Helena went back into the neighbor’s
house and found her daughter sitting at the kitchen table, flipping
through an older issue of National Geographic. The pages were
crinkly and sticking together, indicating it had most likely fallen
into the dishwater at some recent point during the magazine’s
life.

“Brushing up on the ‘Wraith Riders of
St. Paul de Vence’ issue?” Helena chided. As much as she tried to
forget that Helen told her she had dealt with some nasty demons,
she couldn’t.

Helen had the pages open to the
centerfold. It had her totally transfixed. “Take a look at this
photo,” Helen said, sliding the magazine towards her
mother.

“You want me to look at a group of
naked women in Papua New Guinea?” Helena asked, sliding it
back.

“No,” I want you to take a closer look
at the tribal chief who is standing there with the naked women from
Papua New Guinea. Is it just me, or does he look familiar?” The
magazine made another trip across the wooden table.

Helena looked at the picture and
sighed. “Trust National Geo to take a magnificent photo of your
father.” She looked at the date on the issue. “I guess I now know
where he was that time he missed your elementary school Christmas
pageant. His loss, you were an excellent sugarplum fairy.” She
turned the magazine over and looked at the cover. “Yup, this goes
back a few decades. Betty must have been cleaning out the attic
recently.”

“Aren’t those tribes cannibalistic?”
Helen shuddered. “I hate to think of Dad being offered up as a
human burger.”

The idea was not nearly as distasteful
to Helena. “We should be so lucky,” she sighed.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said we should look so plucky,”
Helena covered. “Forget about the cannibals. I need you to try and
focus on Gaspar.”

“Who?” Helen asked. She rocked her
chair backwards, tipping it precariously against the wainscoting on
the wall.

“The vampire. He has a name.” Helena
stood her ground on the other side of the table. The chair-tipping
maneuver was something Helen had always done when she wanted to get
into an argument. It had started when she was four and didn’t want
to eat her peas and progressed through to her teens when she didn’t
want to do anything.

“How do you know this?” Helen asked
suspiciously. Her mother was avoiding her gaze, a certain sign that
something was amiss. “You know,” Helen added mischievously, “I had
some time to think while you were back at your office locking
up.”

“Oh really?” Helena replied.

“Do you know what’s bugging me?” Helen
asked. “When you told me the whole ‘Marita blows up on the Fourth
of July’ story, you never mentioned what happened to her son.
That’s kind of ironic now, because I seem to recall her son’s name
was…”

Helena tapped her fingers nervously on
her other arm. “Gaspar. So? Don’t look at me like that, Helen.
Gaspar is a common name.”

“Where? In Portugal? Come on, how many
other Gaspars do you know?” she waited for her mother to come up
with a name, but Helena was too slow. “I thought so,” she smirked
with satisfaction.

“Yes, Marita’s son was named Gaspar,”
Helena admitted. “However, I remember she was Spanish, not
Portuguese.”

“Do you know what I remember? I
remember that he had a lot of issues,” Helen continued. “What
happened to him? Did he die?”

“Sort of,” Helena replied. “I still see
him around from time to time.”

“What?” Helen asked, moving forward so
that her chair legs touched the ground again. “What do you mean,
sort of? Is he dead or isn’t he?”

Helena glanced at her wrist watch and
sighed. “Okay, Helen. I’ve got something to tell you, but we need
to make it fast. We’ll just wrap everything up in one shot, okay?
We’ll talk about your father, that rat-bastard, and how he always
has to make a scene wherever he goes. And we’ll talk about Gaspar,
Marita’s son, and why, up until you and Ellie came here a few
nights ago, he lived with me. Sort of. And we’ll talk about how we
LaRose women have to stick together, come hell or high
water.”

Helen sighed. “I’m not going to like
this, am I?”

“Not much,” Helena admitted. “Let’s
start with your father, Alexander.”

Helen raised her hand. “Mother, I know
he’s not your favorite person. You’ve made that clear over the
years, and it’s unnecessarily clouded my opinion of him to some
extent. That’s another reason I don’t talk to Ellie about her
father. I want her to have her own imaginary version of Jules. It’s
easier that way.”

“You called him Julian earlier,” Helena
reminded her.

“No I didn’t,” Helen protested
weakly.

“
Yes, you did. You told me I
was crazy for suggesting his name was Jules.” Helena noticed
Helen’s lower lip start to tremble.

“I did, didn’t I?” Helen winced. It was
her turn to be slow with a suitable cover story.

“Fine, Helen. I don’t really care who
Ellie’s father is or isn’t. One thing’s for certain though, your
J-man whoever he is, might have been perfect, but Alexander is at
the other end of the scale, let me tell you. You are old enough
now, Helen, to know the bitter truth.”

“You know I’ve got this line from ‘A
Few Good Men’ going through my head right now…” Helen admitted.
“I’m not so sure I want to hear this.”

“
He was an animal,” Helena
declared, sitting down in the chair across from Helen. “Handsome as
hell, but an animal all the same. I couldn’t satisfy that man if I
tried. And try I did. ALL THE TIME. Morning, noon, and night.
Hellsbelles, that man was driving me crazy. Come here, Helena. Bend
over, Helena…”

“Mother, please!” Helen said, putting
her hand over her ears. “Some thing should just be left in the
closet.” She had always imagined her mother as the sexpot in the
family, and she wasn’t ready for another family myth to come
crashing down.

“Stop being childish,” Helena insisted,
waiting for her daughter to listen to what she was saying. “As much
as I enjoy a good physical release to this day…”

“I figured that out the other night,”
Helen reminded her.

“Helen, let me finish. Alexander was
sleeping with every woman that he could within a five mile radius
of the house. I was mortified when I found out. I was a clichéd
woman. I was a Betty Lachey, for God’s sake. So I tossed him
out.”

“To tell you the truth, I figured it
was something like that,” Helen admitted. She had seen her father
sneaking out of her best friend’s house one grade ten afternoon.
She had never told Helena about it. “After you two had divorced, he
came with someone new every time he came to see me.” Helen
admitted. “He came to visit a lot after Ellie was first born, but
then he just stopped. Ew…I hope one of the ladies he brought with
him wasn’t from his cannibal-fetish days.”

“Forget the cannibals, will you?
There’s something I need to get off my chest.” She stood up again
and walked over to the kitchen counter, where she stood facing
Helen, putting some distance between the two of them in case the
fur started to fly. “It was Alexander who messed up the exorcism,”
Helena said, watching for Helen’s reaction. Willie would have been
disappointed. Helen barely flinched at the news.

“It was Alexander who accidentally
killed Marita Harbinger,” Helena continued. “Seriously, I wish
people would just leave the supernatural problems to the
experts.”

“Experts like us?” Helen asked. The
tone of her voice was sarcastic in nature.

“Yes. Whether we like it or not,”
Helena replied, sincerely.

“So, Dad just popped in to say hello
and wound up killing your neighbor, my ex-nanny?”

“She wasn’t just your ex-Nanny,” Helena
started to explain.

“I know. You told me. She was a demon,”
Helen screamed at her. “Why can’t anything be simple with
you?”

“Me? It was your father who had the
affair with Marita Harbinger. It was your father who tossed her
out, when she became pregnant. Marita knew where I lived because he
had flaunted her in front of me the summer before. You count your
lucky stars that at least he continues to acknowledge you. He
ignores the rest of them. Anyway, that’s why I felt sorry for
Marita, and why I inadvertently sent a demon over to your house to
babysit Ellie. I swear I just thought she was your father’s
ex-floozy who needed some help, not an escapee from
hell.”

“Back up,” Helen said angrily. She got
out of her chair and unblenchingly approached her mother. “The rest
of them?”

“The rest of his illegitimate children.
I guess he makes an attempt to stay in touch with you every so
often because I’m the only woman he married.”

“Exactly how many children does he
have?” she asked hesitantly. She had grown up thinking she was an
only child, so the news that she had other siblings opened a flood
of emotions for her. Her father had told her he was a government
spy who had to change his identity and whereabouts from time to
time for their protection, and she had chosen to believe him. Their
rendezvous were always clandestine. She knew now it was probably to
avoid her mother, but it had given her father an air of mystery and
intrigue, and a reason for forgiveness, all the same.