Singled Out (12 page)

Stop it, Cass.

That unnerving way his eyes had seemed to flash green-blue in their deep sockets was clearly just a trick of the lantern-light, and I bet they are that shallow light blue really, like Jane’s. It’s interesting though, because you somehow expect dark eyes to go with black hair, and it doesn’t always follow. I can use that:

‘Keturah!’ whispered Sylvanus, but where the soft hazel eyes of her lover should have been, burning-cold orbs of aquamarine shone instead.

What a coincidence that Emma should have made him promise to try and bring her back, just like Sylvanus and Keturah! Though in Dante’s case, clearly, he was just meant to contact her beyond the grave, not actually try and raise her from it.

It’s also fascinating on a personal level to meet someone even more consumed with guilt than me, though I don’t understand why he is so guilty about his wife’s death, when he wasn’t there. What did she die of? An accident, illness, or one of those rare but horrific pregnancy complications that I’ve read about in that book Orla gave me? And even being the hostage that survived seems to be making him feel guilty too!

He has already taught me one valuable lesson (more than one really, but the rest are locked in the Pretend It Never Happened box), for until last night I hadn’t realised it was possible to take an instant dislike to a man but still find him scarily attractive.

I’m going to infuse all that frightening sexiness into the Vampire of the Manor character, an updated Dracula in a biting saga about blood relatives.

Come to that, my vampire can bite Keturah too, because for some mysterious reason she’s gone wimpy on me and I’m getting quite tired of her.

At least then she’d actually have some power to battle with whatever evil thing came back in the shape of Sylvanus … unless my vampire could choose to take over the form of what was once Sylvanus? Or maybe one of his female vampires was the one who fancied Sylvanus so much that she called him back when Keturah had failed him?

A vampire love-triangle – or pentagram. Mmm. Must think about it a bit more.

And I’m going to call
my
Dracula Vladimir.

*   *   *

By ten it was quite impossible to stop my head slumping forward over the keyboard, so not wanting the alphabet permanently embossed on my cheek I went to bed.

Despite the neighbouring Surround Sound I fell instantly into a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep, and might have slept on and on for ever had a delivery driver not practically beaten my door in, determined not to have to turn his van round in my thread of a lane twice in one day.

While normally paler than pale in complexion, after the night I’d had I must have looked like the living dead, because he silently and nervously thrust the pad for me to sign, shoved a parcel into my arms, and left at high speed on smoking tires.

My heart sank when I saw it was the proofs of my next novel,
Shock To The Spirits,
because whenever I’m getting really into the new novel, the last epic keeps turning up in some ghastly resurrection shuffle; first for a bit of rewriting, then copy-editing, then for proof-checking like now.

It just won’t give up and go away.

Still, this should be the last of it, and then hopefully it will march its denizens of the undead into bookshops all across the country with no further help from me.

After another long, hot shower I felt almost human myself, and settled down to do the proofreading so as to get rid of the damned thing fast and return to
Lover, Come Back To Me.
I just couldn’t wait to get to grips with my new character, Vladimir: all bite and no bark.

I read through the proofs of
Shock To The Spirits
twice, then repacked it and sent it on its way just before the post office shut.

Westery post office is also Emlyn’s garage, hardware, and twenty-four-hour shop, having expanded to cater for all things as the village businesses vanished one by one, to be replaced by entirely useless antique shops such as Jason’s.

Emlyn has a prime position right by the village green and Haunted Well, which is in the garden of Orla’s big Victorian house. Today, instead of tourists, clusters of daffodils were standing brazenly about on the green, but it’s early in the season yet.

Westery is one of those villages on the Welsh border that is not so much a destination as a stopping-off place en route to somewhere more interesting. There is a nice old church, the pub, five antique shops, one second-hand bookshop, and Orla’s Haunted Well B&B, and that is about it.

Emlyn’s Dutch wife, Clara, was serving behind the till of the supermarket section, and we had a nice chat while I bought a pizza (chorizo with black olives), which I heated and ate as soon as I got home.

Then I settled down to some hard work on
Lover, Come Back To Me,
which went very well once I realised that Vlad’s crucial mistake was biting Keturah just as the sun began to rise, because the whole vampire-transformation thing wasn’t nearly completed when he had to make a bolt for home in his flashy black sports car.

Keturah is now not quite human and not quite vampire, and a whole lot more interesting.

Go, girl.

*   *   *

Orla rang, very late and not quite sober, to say that she’d just had a drink with a gorgeous man, and all he wanted to talk about was me.

‘I don’t know any gorgeous men,’ I said vaguely, what mental faculties I possessed still focused on the alternative universe inhabited by Vlad, Keturah and Sylvanus. ‘Apart from Max, and he’s in America.’

‘Not Max, idiot!
His
patina may be authentic, but his veneer’s crackled.’

‘You’ve been hanging around Jason too much, Orla. Or drinking. Or both.’

‘Both. But I’m sober enough to recognise a good thing when it walks into the pub and strikes up a conversation with me. This man is years younger than Max – younger than either of us, come to that – and he said he bumped into you last night, and he understood you were some kind of writer. Tall, slim, longish floppy dark hair, and sort of greeny-blue eyes.’

‘Oh
him
’ I said shortly, with a sudden weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, compounded of panic, guilt and embarrassment. ‘He’s not gorgeous, he’s got a huge beak of a nose!’

‘Aquiline, and just the right size. And I love those hollow cheekbones, and the way his lips are so straight they make a sort of arrow shape when he smiles.’

‘He can
smile?
’

‘Are we talking about the same man?’ Orla demanded. ‘He says he’s the new owner of Kedge Hall, but his name’s not Kedge, it’s Gabriel something.’

‘Dante Chase?’ I suggested dubiously.

‘That’s it.’

‘But that’s nothing like Gabriel!’

‘Yes it is – I knew it was something to do with Rossetti.’

‘He’s nothing to do with Rossetti.’

‘You know, the Dante Gabriel bit – don’t be obtuse. He looked familiar, too, and after he’d gone I remembered where from: he was in the news about eighteen months ago, because he was a hostage somewhere or other. South America, I think, but I’m going to look him up on the internet.’

‘So, did you give him the Orla Third Degree interrogation?’

‘No, because he wasn’t there long, and he made most of the conversational running, bringing the subject back to you all the time. He wanted to know if you were married or anything, so I told him you were in a committed long term relationship.’

‘You did?’

‘Of course. He’s
my
type, not yours: tall, dark, clever, tricky, and younger than me. And although he asked me a lot about you, he seemed most interested in the Crypt-ograms and the mind reading and prediction stuff, and your knowledge of the local spooks, than anything more personal about you.’

‘I don’t suppose he told you why?’

‘Well, no, but I suppose it’s natural he should be interested.’

‘He’s going to let his sister run part of the Hall as a sort of guesthouse doing Ghastly Weekends for Ghost-hunters.’

‘But he can’t do that, the rat!
I’m
the local B&B!’ Orla exclaimed indignantly. ‘And he can’t need the money: Miss Kedge was loaded.’

‘A man can never be too thin or too rich?’ I suggested.

‘Huh!’ she said inelegantly.

‘But it sounds more like an occasional weekend thing rather than a regular business like yours, so it shouldn’t affect you, Orla. I don’t think he really wants to do it either, it’s more his sister talked him into it.’

‘You seem to know an awful lot after “just bumping into each other.”’ she said sarcastically.

‘I spent the night with him,’ I confessed.

‘What!’

‘In a non-carnal way,’ I assured her hastily, lying through my teeth. It was
almost
true, after all, and if I said it enough times even I might believe it.

I told her the Jack and the Enormous Door Key tale and about the abortive ghost hunt, but left out the brandy, the bed, and the black guilty heart bit. (Dante’s, not mine.) I need another hands-on session with concentration before I pass judgment on that one, and now he knows I can do it he’s unlikely to give me another chance even if our paths cross, which I sincerely hope they don’t.

I wonder if I should try reading Jason’s mind, as a sort of guilt-comparison? And a couple of random men too, perhaps? Orla knows quite a few random men.

She listened avidly to my story, then asked me if I didn’t fancy Dante Chase?

‘No, you get him, you can have him,’ I said generously. ‘He’s not my type, as you said.’

‘Actually, he
is
your type in that you both look a bit the same.’

‘You know, that was
my
first impression too – apart from the nose,’ I added hastily. ‘And the thin lips, and the square chin, and – no, forget it, we’re not alike at all.’

‘You both have lovely bones, deep-set eyes, hollow cheeks and straight dark eyebrows,’ Orla pointed out. ‘You’re beautiful, he’s sexy.’

‘I’m
not
beautiful, and he’s not sexy,’ I said stubbornly.

‘Oh, come on! And he’s got one of those lovely, gravelly, slightly gin-and-cigarettes voices, while yours is melodious but mournful even when you tell jokes.’

‘Thanks.’

‘It’s all right: part of your charm is that you’re not like everyone else.’

‘It certainly never charmed my parents.’

‘No, but it isn’t your fault you take after some tall, dark, wicked forebear while all your brothers are medium-sized blue-eyed blondes, is it?’

‘You’d think so,’ I said. ‘My sister Jane’s a little Goldilocks too, so it’s just me with the unhealthy white pallor and dried ox-blood hair.’

‘Darkest auburn.’

‘Whatever. Anyway, you’re the beautiful one. Mike must have been out of his mind to leave you.’

‘For a younger version of me? You know, I’ve just had one of my brilliant ideas!’ she added.

My heart sank

‘We’re such a terrific contrast to each other that we should put a lonely hearts ad in a magazine
together.
That way, one man out of every two we pull might be halfway decent.’

‘No thanks, I’m not doing anything hasty until I’ve seen Max after the funeral.’

Anything
else
hasty, that is.

‘Funeral? Which funeral?’ she said, baffled. ‘Who’s died?’

‘Oh Orla! Haven’t I told you? I’ve had so much to think about that…’ I stopped. ‘But I’m
sure
I told Jason, so why didn’t he pass it on?’

‘I haven’t seen Jason, he’s off at some country house auction.
What
funeral?’ she repeated patiently.

‘Rosemary’s. She had an accident a few days ago and died. Max is coming back for the funeral next week.’

‘My God! Does this mean you can get married at last? Do you still
want
to marry him?’

Trust Orla to ask the million dollar question!

‘I don’t know any more, and I don’t know how he feels after all these months apart. He didn’t even phone me to tell me the news, Orla! I found out from my sister Jane first.’

‘That is pretty bad,’ she conceded, ‘though I suppose he had a lot to do?’

‘I expect so, but he wouldn’t let me go out there to help. He’s supposed to be coming to visit me after the funeral, and then we will see. I’m just so confused about everything right now.’ I confessed. ‘And by then too, I’ll have performed the last fertility rite.’

‘You won’t do anything rash, will you?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Too late!’ I thought; but according to the charts, the wrong man had been combined with the wrong time of month, fortunately.

‘Seeing Max after so long you might get carried away,’ she suggested.

‘Max is the one who is always careful about taking precautions: he’s got condomania. He’s never got so carried away that he forgot,’ I said bitterly.

‘Right. Anyway, even if there
are
only one or two eggs rolling around in the bottom of the basket, you still don’t want to do it at your age. It’s too risky. Get a lover and a dog.’

‘I’ve got a lover – I think. But I’ll consider the dog. It might
have
to be a dog.’

‘Much less trouble. By the way,’ she added with seeming casualness, ‘have you decided about the Wonder Woman thing yet?’

‘Give it up,’ I advised her wearily. ‘There is no way I’m going anywhere in that outfit.’

‘I could do with some new ones. My Tarzan’s getting a bit long in the tooth for a leopardskin.’

‘He could be a Geriatric Tarzanogram. Wrap some fake vine leaves round his zimmer frame, and it would go down a treat with elderly ladies.’

I was joking but she was quite taken with it. ‘That’s a great idea! And I could advertise for a new young Tarzan, couldn’t I? Do you want to sit in on the interviews?’

‘If I ever get off this phone and finish the book,’ I said. ‘Goodnight. Orla!’

But by then I was definitely jaded, and so went to bed instead.

Chapter 9: Somersaulting Backwards

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