Wicked Game (8 page)

“So how does the station keep that from happening to—” I almost say “our vampires” “—to your vampires?”

“The music links them with their past, and the news and weather reports they have to read link them with the present.” He tilts his head. “At least on the surface.”

“So where are all these other decaying vampires?”

“All over.” He pulls a tiny pair of scissors from the suture kit. “But as far as I know, our six are the only ones in Sherwood.”

I catch his use of “our.” “Do they usually hang out in groups like the DJs do?”

“Some are loners, but most try to find a community of like minds.” David makes a quick snip with the scissors. “There’s a big group out in the hills about an hour from here, but they’re pretty fanatical about keeping to themselves.” He smooths an adhesive bandage over the wound. “All done.” He hands me a tube of goop and a foil pack of antibiotics. “Start these, and keep the wound dry for at least a day.”

I read the directions on the packages. “I’m an idiot. I didn’t even think about infection last night.”

“Shock makes people temporarily stupid. But don’t worry—vampires are technically dead, so their saliva has no germs.” He looks at my grimy couch. “Though it might have gotten infected overnight. Any questions or problems, my office door is—well, it’s usually closed, but just yell.”

I scoff. “I’m not coming back to the station.”

“Yes, you are.” He latches the red bag. “It’s either that or go back to conning old ladies out of their nest eggs.”

The freeze starts at my spine and goes upward and outward. How could he know … ?

The Control. A group like that would have access to more than an everyday background check and credit report.

I stare at him and wish words would come out of my mouth.

“But I think you’re over that, Ciara. I think you’re ready to put your talents to more legitimate use.”

My voice is low. “I never stole from old ladies. Not once.”

“All predators pick on the weak.” David collects the gloves, bowl, and bloody washcloths as casually as if we were discussing the Orioles game. “Why should you be any different?”

I tug the blankets over me again, up to my shoulders. “Who else knows?”

“Just the owner and me.” He carries the supplies to the kitchen sink. “So far.”

I hold back a shiver. “So you’re blackmailing me into working for you.”

He looks up then, startled. “No. It’s your choice. But you need a real job, and we need someone who can sell.”

“Who can trick.”

“Whatever.” He turns on the water and scrubs his hands. “The point is, our interests coincide.”

The “old ladies” comment ricochets around my brain, stinging me with each bounce.

“You think you know all about me.” My voice stays as cold as my skin feels. “You have no idea.”

“Maybe. But I never will, if you chicken out.” He turns off the water, then towels his hands dry. “We’ll call today sick leave, with pay, even though it’s Saturday. It’s the least I can do.”

“The least you can do is leave.”

“Before I do, can I fix you something to eat?” He opens the refrigerator. “Oh.” His voice echoes in the emptiness. “Maybe I should get us some bagels.”

My stomach growls without my permission, and I stuff the blanket against it. After the things he said, after what he’s trying to manipulate me into—damn it, I’m hungry.

“Egg and cheese on sesame seed.”

He rubs his hands together. “Good. Be right back.”

“Cheddar cheese. And sausage. Sun-dried tomato if they don’t have sesame seed. If they do, I’ll take one of each. And a large coffee, three sugars. The Kenyan blend, if they have it.”

I hear David murmur, “Students,” under his breath as he leaves.

The moment he’s out the front door, I limp to the hall closet. I yank my suitcase from beneath a fallen coat and unzip the flap.

“Shit on a stick.”

Time was, I had a bag packed with all the essentials so I could skedaddle in five minutes flat. I was Ready. The
Department of Homeland Security would have held me up as the paragon of preparedness.

The suitcase still contains my important papers, of which a person like me has very few. But over the last year I’ve raided it for underwear, shirts, and crackers when I’ve run low on laundry and groceries.

Comfort begets contentment. Contentment begets complacency. Complacency begets carelessness. My folks taught me that family tree even before King David through Jesus. But the crowds only heard me recite the latter.

I haul the nearly empty suitcase into my room. A handful of clothes from each drawer should cover it. A trip to the bathroom with a wrinkled shopping bag gives me a month’s worth of toiletries. I dash back to the bedroom, fast as the pain will allow. As my feet slip into my kindest pair of jeans, I’m suddenly glad there are no pets to leave behind.

My CDs lie scattered on the shabby rug, where Shane left them last night.

I remember the look on his face as he organized them, like something else had a hold of him. It wasn’t his choice to put Peter Gabriel before Godsmack. He was in the grip of something that was carrying him farther and farther from this world.

I turn away from the stereo. Why should I care?

Car keys lie on my desk next to the computer monitor. As I grab them, something snags my memory. A small thing that shackles my feet.

If I leave now, I’ll never get it back.

Without sitting down, I slam the space bar to wake the computer out of standby. The monitor blurts to life to
show my e-mail reader, where the M folder stands in bold with a “1” after it. I click.

Ciara honey,

I told you they’d let me have Internet access again if I was a good girl. If there’s one thing I excel at, it’s being a good girl. I trust the same can still be said of you
.

Did I tell you about the picture I have of you?Ikeep it wedged into my cellmate’s box spring so I can see it last thing before lights-out
.

In the picture you’re seven or eight—when your hair was so blonde, it made a halo when you stood in the sunlight. You’re wearing your pink Easter dress, showing off your new Bible. You remember the white one with your name in gold letters, the one with all the tho’us and thees in it? Back then, proper people still ‘used the King James
.

My body grows heavy, but I don’t sit down.

The picture’s not square, because I had to tear out the legs of people walking by in the background. People ready for miracles
.

I miss the miracles, Ciara. We don’t get many of them in here
.

Let me know if your father contacts you. Let me know if he doesn’t. Phase just let me know anything. That you’re still okay, even though I know it’s silly to worry. You always take care of yourself, don’t you, Sweet Pea?

Hope you’re enjoying lots of fresh air this summer
.

Hugs and kisses and more hugs
,

Mama

* * *

I sink into the chair and close my eyes. My con artist’s caution is prodding me to run, protect myself, wrap my ass in anonymity. But that path is theirs, not mine. Not anymore.

The last ten minutes move in reverse, so that when David returns, my suitcase is back in the closet, empty. I’m sitting on the sofa in same place as before, but he seems to know something’s different, besides the fact that I’m wearing pants.

He sets the bag of bagels and cups on the coffee table next to me. “I meant to ask, when was your last tetanus shot?”

“I had to get one for school.” My voice rings hollow in my head. “Six years ago.”

He opens his red bag and looks at me apologetically. “I have bad news for your needle-phobia.”

I roll my sleeve above my left shoulder and look away, wondering how many other vampire victims he’s treated this year. The needle drives liquid fire into my muscle.

Bitten, stitched, and pierced, all in less than twelve hours. Welcome to the straight life.

He picks up his bag and his own cup of coffee. “Are you going to be okay?”

His words remind me of my mother’s, bringing a bitter smile to my lips. “I’m always okay.” I finally look up at him. “I’ll see you Monday.”

The phone jolts me out of my nap, late in the afternoon, judging by the sun’s angle through the living room window.

Groggy-minded, I heave myself off the couch, limp to the phone, and pick it up.

“Tell me everything.” Lori emphasizes the last word. “Starting from the chocolatini you threw down her shirt.”

I hesitate. “That’s pretty much where it ends. Nothing to tell after that.”

“I’ll buy you dinner and drinks.”

“See you in an hour.”

It turns out that dinner and drinks aren’t just payment for my juicy story. My friend has tricked me into helping her sort costumes for some Civil War reenactment thingy.

“That guy you left with?” Lori hands me a musty uniform. “I’ve never seen him before.”

I thump the blue woolen coat, raising a cloud of dust. I use my ensuing coughing fit as an excuse not to talk about Shane. “Can we open a window?”

Lori clomps across the wooden floor of the antique-shop attic. She pulls on the sill of the window at one end, but it’s stuck. “Sorry. We’re almost done.”

In the light of a bare bulb, I regard the pile of old clothes, nearly as tall as we are. It looks like we’ve just started.

I wipe the sweat from the back of my neck and sigh at the dust covering my shirt. “Any restaurant we go to tonight better have a no-skank policy.”

She gives me a sheepish smile. “I’ll buy you Chinese takeout, a six-pack, and any DVD you want to rent.” Her grin widens on the bottom, showing all her teeth. “Pal o’ mine?”

I pick up a stack of hangers. “I needed to get out, anyway.”

She hands me a long green-and-white dress. “So you don’t want to talk about Mystery Man. Tell me about your radio station. Sounds cool.”

“In the same way autopsies are cool. My immediate boss is like Eeyore in a man-suit, and the station manager is a fanatic. The DJs are—” I cut myself off. How to describe them without using the word “vampire”?

Lori folds a bonnet and stuffs it in a zippie bag. “They’re what, party animals?”

“It’s not that.” I pin the bag to the dress. “Do you know any obsessive-compulsives?”

Lori drops a box of medals, which go skittering across
the floor. “Damn it!” She scrambles after them. “Why do you ask?”

I kneel to help her scoop up the medals, biting my lip at the pain in my leg. “I think I know someone with it.”

“Me, too. My mom.” She lays the medals carefully in the box without looking at me. “It started when I was six. She would go around the house at bedtime and make sure all the doors were locked.”

“So?”

“So then she started checking windows, even in the middle of the winter when they hadn’t been opened in weeks.” She sits cross-legged on the floor, oblivious to the layer of dust and dead bugs. “Then all the smoke detectors had to be tested.”

“Every night?”

Lori nods. “Over the years, she kept adding more, and she had to do everything in order. If you interrupted her, she’d start all over.” She wipes her wrist across her forehead. “By the time she got help, her bedtime routine would start at three in the afternoon.”

“What kind of help?”

“Medicine, therapy. At first they told us just to play along with her ‘truth,’ as they called it. We were already good at that. Then little by little, we helped her find a new truth.” She smiles. “I know, it sounds all mystic and existential. But it worked, and we got her back. Mostly.”

“I’m glad.” I squeeze her shoulder. “How come you never told me?”

Lori tugs at the collar of her shirt. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.” When I don’t let her off the hook, she says, “I felt bad complaining about my mom when yours is, you know … ”

“Yeah.” I look away, blinking hard. She probably thinks it’s tears, but really it’s just the dust.

She clears her throat. “Have you heard from your foster parents lately?”

“Just a few days ago.” I smile at the memory of the two normal years of my life. “They just got another new kid, which makes it eighteen total.”

“Which one were you?”

“Number thirteen.”

She laughs. “But you weren’t unlucky to get them.”

“I don’t believe in luck.”

“You don’t believe in anything.”

“Not true.” I angle my head. “I believe, for instance, that you’re sitting on a cockroach.”

Lori squeals and leaps to her feet, frantically brushing her butt. She looks at the floor and sees nothing larger than a ladybug.

“Just kidding.”

She smacks my arm. “Just for that, you’re buying tonight.”

“You’d make a poor little orphan girl buy her own dinner? Heartless wench.” We get back to work, laughing.

Like all my friends, Lori thinks that when I was sixteen, my real parents died, when in fact they just took a ten- to fifteen-year hiatus from my life. I never thought I’d have friends long enough for Mom and Dad to inconveniently reappear, but the possibility looms.

Because there’s always parole.

It’s after sunset when Lori and I finally stumble from the sidewalk into my dark stairwell.

“Sorry the light is still burned out.” I shift the Chinese takeout bag into the crook of my arm so I can hold the banister on my way up.

At the top of the stairs I unlock the door and push it open. The light in my bedroom is on.

I never leave it on.

I freeze. Lori runs into me from behind. “Ciara, what the hell?”

“Someone’s here,” I whisper, though it’s too late for stealth.

“Oh my God, are you sure?”

From my bedroom comes a familiar rattle of plastic, along with the faint thrum of a Liz Phair tune.

“You have got to be kidding me.” I stalk down the hall.

Shane sits cross-legged on my bedroom floor, an island in a sea of CDs. He brightens when he sees me. “Hey, Ciara.”