Lust for Life (7 page)

“It’s just me here. Sorry. So be honest—how does WVMP measure up compared to other
stations?”

“It’s, um, rugged.”

“Yeah, when you look up ‘low-budget’ in the dictionary, there’s a picture of WVMP
too broke to afford their picture in the dictionary.”

Adrian laughs, which makes me glow a little inside.

“It’s worth it, though,” he says, “to be around other vampires. Being oneself is a
beautiful freedom.”

I jut my thumb at Franklin’s office. “Plus, we have a hot sales-and-marketing director.”

Adrian actually blushes, which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a vampire do. “I like Franklin.
He’s different.”

I lean over to see his feet. Yep, still bare. “You’re one to talk.”

“But Franklin’s different in a different way than I’m different.”

I wiggle my toes in delight at his repetition of the word, and an anagram of “different”
flits across my mind (
FIFE TREND
!). Then I remember I’m not supposed to care about words. Clinging to them to feel
sane is tantamount to giving up.

“Are you guys actually going on a date,” I ask him, “or are you skipping straight
to happily ever after?”

“I thought maybe some musical dinner theater.”

“Franklin hates musicals. He does like dinner, though, so if you leave before everyone
starts singing, you might come out ahead.”

Adrian chuckles. “He might be more open to new experiences than you think.” He turns
Lori’s desk chair around and straddles it, a move that reminds me of Jim (but without
the sinister threat of imminent assault). “Franklin told me you saved his life in
that bomb blast. I think it changed him.”

“How would you know? You met him after the bombing.”

“I can tell when someone’s struggling with a new reality, especially life and death.”
Adrian picks at the threads on the chair’s top edge. “Before I was a vampire, I was
studying to be a doctor. In med school I dealt with a lot of terminally ill patients.”

“Oh.” I turn away, shuffling papers to cover my reaction. “That must’ve been hard.”

“Hard, yes, but sacred. The closer they got to death, the more they believed they
were going somewhere afterward.” He sighs. “That’s one trade-off to immortality. Vampires
don’t have that certainty that there’s anything beyond. We get that one glimpse of
white light as we change from alive to undead, and that’s it. No vampire’s ever come
back from a second death.”

“I did.”

“You’re kidding.” Adrian folds his arms on the top of the chair and rests his chin
on them. “Tell me.”

Something about this guy makes me want to speak, with none of the inner resistance
I feel during therapy sessions. I set down the papers and turn to him. “I was
in a battle, and someone unloaded a round of holy water right here.” I open my mouth
and point my finger up toward my palate to demonstrate. “Boom—burned straight into
my head, completely annihilating my brain.”

“Whoa.”

“Exactly. For a few seconds, I wasn’t anyone or anywhere. I was just . . . suspended
in a place—no, ‘place’ is the wrong word. It was more like a state of being. Like
there’s solid, liquid, gas, and—that.”

“Fascinating.”

“Whatever and wherever I was, I wasn’t alone. There was a presence, but not a singular
presence like people think of God. It wasn’t one being. It was like everyone and everything
was in one place and time. Does that sound too far out?”

Adrian gestures to his clothing. “Do I look like I know the meaning of ‘too far out’?”

I laugh for the first time today. “Anyway, if my experience is any indicator, vampires
do have something to look forward to when they die for good.” My heart sinks as I
remember the new reality. “Then again, I’m not like most vampires.”

“How so?”

I shrug, not ready to reveal my weakness to everyone yet. “I don’t know. I’m not afraid
of dying as much as I’m afraid of fading. Drifting through the world with no comprehension,
becoming a monster.”

He nods sadly. “I heard Jim faded early. That’s why he was taken away.”

That is ultimately the truth, so I don’t deny it. “It was bad.”

“His listeners still miss him. I got thirty-one calls during my show asking when he’ll
be back.”

“We’ve told listeners he’s gone for good,” I say with a sigh. “Maybe you’ll be the
one to finally satisfy their hippie vampire DJ needs.”

“I could never take Jim’s place. He’s a legend.”

I try to remember Jim at his best: jamming at a gig to the Doors, weaving a spell
as magical as Morrison himself. But all my memory shows is his half-melted face surging
toward me while I struggled beneath him. Instead of music I hear my own screams as
he plunged his fangs into my throat.

Was Jim crazy only because he was fading, or was there something wrong with him to
begin with? Will
I
turn into a monster who has to be carted off to a Control nursing home? Will Shane
be allowed to visit me?

“You think they’ll ever let Jim out?” Adrian asks.

I hope not.
“Fading’s a one-way trip, right? The Control can only slow the process or keep old
vampires from hurting people.”

“Hmm, maybe.” Adrian glances at the mantel clock on the never-used fireplace behind
me, then stands and puts Lori’s chair back under her desk. “I gotta scram now. But,
Ciara, I still think there’s hope for Jim, and for all the old vampires.” He fingers
the tassels of his jacket sleeve. “I’m probably just naïve. One of the side effects
of living in a time when we believed anything was possible.”

“I almost envy you.” I pull out my keys. “Here, I can let you out the front. It’s
quicker.”

Once outside, Adrian turns to me, his hair shimmering gold in the porch light. “It
was good talking to you, Ciara.”

“It was.”

As I close the door and lock it, I realize I wasn’t just being polite. It
was
good for me to talk to Adrian. He’s the first person I’ve met who didn’t know me
as a human.

The lightness he leaves me with doesn’t last, though. Within minutes, the dread of
what I learned from Lanham last night forces its way into my mind, laying a heavy
gray blanket over every thought.

I’m going to fade.

Suddenly I know who I need to talk to.

•  •  •

In the downstairs lounge, I make a new pot of stronger-than-dirt coffee, then pour
two cups.

In the adjacent hallway outside the studio, I find Shane and Monroe in quiet conversation.
They look at me, faces tight with tension.

“You told him?” I ask Shane.

“Was I not supposed to?”

“I was just coming down here to do that.” I hand the extra coffee mug to Monroe, who
takes it with a kindly nod.

Shane leans forward and kisses my temple. “I’ve gotta get back in. Song’s ending.”

My maker and I walk in silence down to the heavy steel door that leads to the DJs’
apartment. It’s almost too heavy for a human to budge, and even I have to pull with
both hands. Monroe opens it with one dark finger curled around the handle.

The apartment has six small dormitory-type rooms that lead off from a common area,
which includes a small kitchen to the left and a big living room to the
right. Most of the decor is vintage seventies, though the kitchen appliances hail
from the late nineties, when this bunker-style apartment was built beneath the ancient
shack upstairs. Beyond the kitchen is a small hallway containing the bathroom and
laundry area.

The apartment isn’t glamorous, but it is safe—from fire, the sun, probably even a
nuclear detonation. Best of all, there’s always music playing.

I sit at the small dining table across from Monroe and wait for him to speak first,
which is usually a losing bet.

“I’m sorry, child.” He takes a sip of coffee. “It ain’t easy getting old at any age.”

Monroe still has the face of a twenty-seven-year-old man, though he comports himself
like the ancient vampire he is. An aspiring Delta-blues guitarist back in the thirties,
he went to a Mississippi crossroads at midnight to meet the devil, in the hopes he’d
become a prodigy. Instead he found the vampire who would give him a different kind
of immortality.

“What do you do to stay sane?” I ask him. “You’re almost a hundred now, and you’re
not crazy like Jim was.”

“I probably am, just in a different sorta way.”

“In a way that doesn’t kill people and make a million maniacal progeny.”

The station’s phone rings. I glance at the extension on the nearby side table. It’s
the studio line, probably someone making a request. I let Shane answer it.

“One thing I do,” Monroe says, “is I keep to myself.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

“It’s hard when you got friends. They take it personal,
like you don’t like them anymore. But you gotta take care of yourself first. No one
else will.”

“Shane will.”

“For now. But he’s fifteen years older than you. What if he fades first? What if he
dies?”

It’s hard to breathe when I picture that. “I can’t think about it when I’m trying
to survive myself.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Let him worry about him and you worry about you. Then you
worry about each other.”

That makes a strange kind of sense, and reminds me of the way I used to think years
ago when I was a con artist. I put myself first, but I wasn’t a total bitch. I cared
about people. I had Lori.

“So you’re saying if I want to stay sane, I need to be alone?”

“Not be alone. Be by yourself.” Monroe sets down his coffee cup and slides it slowly
across the table, just past the halfway mark. It comes to a halt two inches from mine,
his fingers still resting on the handle. “You ain’t never gonna be alone.”

I slide my own mug to close the gap, leaving my hand on the smooth ceramic surface
after the soft clink.

The phone rings again. Shane is still on the line with his caller. I sigh and go to
answer it, irritated at the interruption to a rare moment of genuine connection with
my maker.

“WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ’n’ Roll.” I keep my voice chirpy. “How can I help you?”

For a moment, nothing. Then a woman’s sob.

“Hello?” I try not to sound annoyed. People request songs in all moods, but especially
heartbroken.

“Is Shane there?” she asks.

“I’m sorry, he’s on another line. May I take a message or—”

“What about Jim? Where is that son of a bitch?”

Beside me, Monroe tenses visibly.

“Jim no longer works here,” I tell the caller.

A shocked gasp. “Where’d he go?”

“I’m not sure which station he moved on to. But he’s not coming back to WVMP.”

“Then I need to talk to Shane.”

The voice sounds vaguely familiar. “Can I have your name?”

“It’s Deirdre.”

My heart flutters. “Shane’s, um, friend who used to live off Greene Street?”

“I’m still here. What’s left of me, anyway, after Jim was through.”

Deirdre was once one of Shane’s donors, but he traded her to Jim after we started
dating. The vampire’s bite is such an intimate experience, Shane wanted to show his
commitment to me as a boyfriend by not putting his mouth on other women.

But after Jim went into Control custody, we contacted his donors to let them know
he wouldn’t be visiting them anymore. According to Jim’s records, he hadn’t seen Deirdre
in months because she’d supposedly moved away.

The studio line goes dim. “Deirdre, Shane’s free now. Hang on.”

I put her on hold and race down the hall to the studio. The
ON THE AIR
sign is dim, and a Robyn Hitchcock tune is playing over the speakers. I peer through
the studio window to see Shane flipping through a stack of CDs.

He motions me inside. “What’s up? Who’s on the phone?”

“Deirdre.”

Shane’s fingers freeze, their tips barely curled under the flipped-open CD. “My Deirdre?
I mean—Jim’s Deirdre?”

“Yes, your Deirdre.” I clear my throat to erase the jealousy. “Something’s wrong.”

He slowly picks up the phone. “Deirdre, what’s wrong?” He listens for a moment, then
holds out his palm, as if she’s standing in front of him. “Slow down. What do you
need?”

Through the receiver I hear the word “blood.”

“I’m sorry,” Shane says, “you can’t be my donor anymore. Maybe Regina or—oh. Oh God.
Oh, no.” He leaps out of the chair, smacking it against the table holding the DJs’
equipment. Good thing he was playing a CD and not a vinyl record or it would’ve skipped.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him.

His head jerks up so he can see the clock. “I’m off at three a.m.,” he says into the
phone. “We’ll come help you.”

7

Sour Girl

The nature of Deirdre’s emergency sounds time-consuming, so before heading to her
place, Shane and I stop home to feed our vampire dog, Dexter, and take him for a walk.
I offered to come home on my own to take care of Dexter, but ever since the Halloween
bombing, Shane won’t let me out of his sight unless absolutely necessary.

Deirdre lives in the same cute town house as always. But no flowers line the walkway
now, and the roof is missing several shingles.

A rolled-up note on blue paper protrudes through the curved handle of the screen door.
I pull it out—just to bring it to her, I tell myself, not to snoop. In big print,
the words
FINAL NOTICE
catch my eye.

“It’s open!” she says when Shane knocks.

Deirdre greets us in the dark kitchen just inside the door, a bottle of red wine—the
cheap stuff, nothing like what she used to have—in one hand, a pair of wineglasses
in the other.

“I started without you.” She sets the bottle on the counter with a hollow clonk. “Oh,
you brought her
again. Just like old times.” Her laughter is weak, like the rest of her. Deirdre slumps
against the counter, pawing through a forest of empty wine bottles and plastic shopping
bags.

I head to the microwave and start heating one of the servings of blood we brought
from the station. I refrigerate the other four servings in their brown paper shopping
bag.