by Gayla Twist
The smile slid off the reporter’s blandly pretty face.
A man standing next to the blonde gave a small, vicious laugh. Grandma Gibson turned on him next. “You are cheating on your wife, and your mistress has a communicable disease. Your wife will find out the next time she goes to the gynecologist because you have spread it to her. She will divorce you, and your children will never forgive you for all the pain you caused your family. You will die miserable and alone.”
The man’s delighted smile went the way of his competitor’s smirk. “But,” he stammered. “How did …?”
Grandma Gibson was in no mood to answer his question. She pointed her shaking hand at the next parasite with a microphone and predicted that his lack of acceptance of his gay son would lead to the boy attempting suicide.
The reporters and camera crews all stood there, speechless. The cameras were all rolling, but no one could think of a thing to say. “Come on, Grams,” Mom said, trying to get the old lady in the car. “I think we’d better go.”
But Grandma Gibson had one more thing to tell the stunned mob. She held her head high. She may have been old and feeble, but she was also defiant and had a regal air about her. “Feeding off the pain of others for a living becomes a lot less glamorous when you have to face the tragedies of your own creation. I hope you remember this moment when you must embrace the future suffering in your lives.”
With that, we all got into the car, and mom pulled out of the hospital parking lot. Grandma Gibson let out a loud, satisfied sigh. “I quite enjoyed that,” she said to no one in particular.
Future-predicting grandma was creepy.
Chapter 7
Getting Grandma Gibson back to Ashtabula Elder Care was surprisingly easy. The police were waiting to do crowd control for our arrival, and the reporters at the hospital didn’t follow us. I was expecting chaos, and there was relatively none.
We were both starting to relax as we headed home. Things had been ugly and weird, but it felt like we’d been through the worst of it. There was absolutely no reason for us to expect a renegade camera crew lurking in the bushes outside our home. But after Mom hit the button for the automatic door and we pulled inside, a reporter and cameraman followed us—right into our own damn garage. I couldn’t believe it. My first impulse was to leap out and start yelling at them, but Mom said in a very commanding voice, “Stay in the car, Aurora. Keep the doors locked, and don’t open the windows.”
“What are you doing?” I wanted to know.
“You’ll see,” she said, a hint of a devilish grin playing across her lips.
“Mrs. Keys? Hi, I’m Ed Reid with News Channel Twelve. I was hoping to ask you a few questions.”
Mom ignored him and simply pushed the button to close the garage door, the newsmen still inside. They appeared mildly startled but assumed they were getting an exclusive.
“Who do you think stole Colette Gibson’s body?” the reporter asked, tipping his microphone toward the driver's side window.
My mother just sat there, completely ignoring him. I was about to ask her what the hell she was doing. And then I realized she hadn’t turned off the car.
“Close the vents,” Mom instructed me, reaching for the levers on her side of the dashboard.
The reporter remained completely oblivious for a while. He was either very single minded or not very bright. Possibly both. It took less than a minute for the cameraman to realize what was going on. “Very funny,” he said, knocking on the car window. My mom smiled at him and then spread her hands in a shrug.
“Keep rolling,” the reporter told him, annoyed that the camera was no longer pointed at him. “They have us in here for a reason.”
“Yeah, it’s called carbon monoxide poisoning,” the other man said. He began hunting around the door that led into the house, searching for the button that would open the garage. But the wiring in our garage was a bit wonky, and the button wasn’t where you’d expect.
I was surprised how fast they both started coughing. I couldn’t tell if it was the exhaust from the car or just the thought of the exhaust from the car. The cameraman even tried to open the door to our house, but we were too smart for that one. We always kept that door locked.
Mr. Fancy Reporter became indignant. He rapped on the windshield and said, “Do you know who I am? Open that door immediately.”
My mom looked at him calmly. “You’re a man who forced his way into my home. That’s illegal entry.” There was something about the steadfast expression on Mom’s face that alarmed him; the reporter began flailing at the garage door, not realizing that the emergency cord to open it was dangling from the ceiling just over his head.
The cameraman approached our car, his equipment lowered and a somewhat panicked look on his face. “Would you please open the door? I’m sorry we followed you in, but I’m just doing this for the paycheck. If I had my choice, I’d be working in the movies.”
Mom pressed the button and the garage door opened. She had made her point. Both men scurried out onto our driveway. She pressed the button again to close the door as soon as they’d cleared out. “I think most of the fumes got blown out,” she said turning off the car. “But let’s hurry into the house, just in case.”
I would wonder where my mom got her moxy, but I think it was pretty obvious.
We decided on sandwiches and popcorn for dinner. It was just too exhausting thinking about turning on the stove. As we were just finishing up, the phone rang and Mom answered it. Clapping her hand over the receiver, she said, “It’s for you. Jessie, I think.”
My heart did a loop-de-loop. A thought instantly occurred to me. Jessie had literally never called me on the phone. “Hello?” I said a bit breathlessly, my voice coming out with a bit of a squeak.
“Good evening, Aurora,” Jessie said all soft and warm, the melody of his voice tickling my ear. He was so gorgeous that when we were together, it was hard to concentrate on anything but his face. To hear his voice, isolated over the phone, really brought home how beautiful it was, like listening to a perfectly tuned violin.
“Hi,” I stammered. I couldn’t think of what else to say. It was just so weird to talk to a vampire on the phone. Even one I was madly in love with.
“Would it be all right if I came to see you this evening?” he asked. He paused for a moment and then added, “Something’s happened, and I really need to talk to you.”
My brain started spinning. For the last few months, Jessie had just appeared outside my bedroom window like a phantom in the night. Now he was calling up and asking, rather formally, to visit. My brain immediately went to a threat rating of orange. What was going on?
“Of course, you can come over,” I told him, simultaneously shrugging at my mom from across the room.
“I’ll see you shortly,” he said before hanging up.
“What was that all about?” Mom wanted to know. “You seem a little tense.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I told her, trying to force myself to act more casually. “Something’s bothering Jessie, and he wants to come over to talk.”
“Talk as in ‘we need to talk’ or talk as in, ‘I just need someone to talk to and you’re my girlfriend’ kind of talk?” Mom asked.
“The second one, I think,” I told her, but I could feel a swell of panic building in my stomach anyway. Jessie was always trying to break up with me for my own good. It was a very annoying habit, and the last time he tried, I flat out refused to let him. I appreciated that he had my safety in mind, but sometimes it was a hell of a lot like trying to date Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights.
Fortunately, I wasn’t kept waiting and worrying for too long. It was only about ten minutes before the doorbell rang. “My goodness, he must have flown over here,” my mother said.
I was taking a sip of milk at the time and had several seconds of painful coughing. “I don’t think he called from home.” I told her once I could breathe again. The Vanderlind Castle was on the other side of town.
�
��I thought you said he was the only teenager left in America who didn’t have a cell phone.”
Heading for the door, I said over my shoulder, “There are still a few payphones around, you know. They’re not all in museums.”
I opened the door, both apprehensive and eager. I always wanted to see Jessie, every second of the day, but things had been pretty stressful lately, and I had no idea why he wanted to talk to me.
“Good evening, Aurora,” Jessie said as he crossed the threshold into our home. There was always that moment of hesitation he had before entering. It wasn’t so much reluctance as it was like he was bolstering himself. I didn’t even want to imagine against what.
Jessie had an expression on his face that I didn’t recognize. There was definitely sorrow there, but also something else that I couldn’t put my finger on. Filled with trepidation, I hesitantly reached for his hand. “Hi,” I said. He immediately gave my fingers a reassuring squeeze.
“Good evening, Ms. Keys,” Jessie said, directing his greeting over my shoulder to where Mom sat in the kitchen.
“Hi, Jessie,” Mom said, getting up. “It’s nice to see you again.” She gathered a few papers she had been looking over. “I was just headed into the living room, but help yourself to anything from the fridge.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, once we were seated at the kitchen table and I had provided Jessie with a half-filled glass of orange juice. My mom would think it weird if I didn’t give him at least something to drink.
Jessie sighed, taking my hand again. I tried not to shiver, but his touch always sent tingles through me. “This is so embarrassing,” he began. “And just awful. I mean, truly awful.”
“What?” I asked, starting to sweat a little even though December in Ohio is quite chilly.
In a very low voice, he said, “I know who took Colette’s body.”
“What?” I said, spitting out the word again. “I mean, who? And also, why?”
Running the fingers of his free hand through his hair several times, Jessie finally blurted, “It was my mother.”
“What?” I said for the third, and loudest, time.
“Aurora, would you please stop saying what?” Jessie asked, glancing significantly toward the living room where my mother had gone.
“I will when you stop telling me crazy things,” was my reply. “I’m not sure how else to react.”
“I know. I’m not sure how to react, either,” Jessie said, slumping a little in his chair.
“Did …” I started and then stopped. In truth, I was horrified. I couldn’t imagine what a vampire would want with a dead body that had been drained of all its blood. It was creepy to the extreme. I tried again. “Did she at least explain to you why she stole it?”
“It was to protect our family,” he said with a deep, soul-deflating sigh. “Mostly me, of course, but all of us, really.”
“Why would she take it, though?” I asked. It didn’t make any sense to me. “What did she think was going to happen?”
Jessie’s brow puckered. “Well, I guess she thought the coroner would figure out that Colette died because of a vampire’s bite. And then the police would start putting two and two together as far as who the reclusive family is that lives in the big fortress down by the river. And then …”
“The townspeople would grab their torches and pitchforks?” I supplied. I felt the tension releasing from my body like a deflating air mattress. Mrs. Vanderlind stole the body to protect her son. It was a stupid thing to do but also made sense in a weird way. I knew most moms would do anything to protect their children. A vampire mom was probably no different when it came to that unconditional love, no matter how long she’d been a parent.
“I know. She was being an idiot,” Jessie agreed. “But what I wanted your opinion on is … what do we do now?”
“What do you mean?” I was wondering why he asked me. I didn’t have any experience with body snatching, let alone body returning.
“I mean that Colette is your family. She’s Lily’s sister. What do you think she would want done?” he said, a little exasperated—not just with me, I assumed. “Do we return her? Or do we bury her somewhere? Or what?”
I could tell the whole situation was causing him great pain. It was bad enough that Colette was dead and had been killed by his own kind, but now all this nonsense with her corpse. It was pretty gruesome. “Grandma Gibson would want her to have a proper burial,” I told him. I knew that without a doubt. “So I think you have to bring her back. Is that possible to do without getting caught?”
Jessie nodded. “Very easily. But do we just leave her or give an explanation? How do we handle her reappearance out of nowhere? Do you think if we came up with some kind of explanation it might help get rid of all the media or make it worse?”
I laid my hand to my cheek and gave it some thought. If Colette just magically reappeared, then the mystery continued, and the reporters would stay on in hopes of uncovering the truth. We had to give them something that made sense but wasn’t all that enticing. “I have an idea,” I said after a few moments. “I just need to type something up.”
Our printer is in my mom’s room. It sounds weird, but we have a small house, and that’s just the way we’ve got it set up. Jessie must have made a good impression on my mother because when I told her we were going into her room to use the printer, she only blinked a few times and then said, “Okay, but don’t take too long.”
Our printer was low on ink. We milk out the end of our ink by taking out the cartridge and shaking it around a bit. It’s possible to get a dozen more pages printed that way. As I was messing about with it, Jessie said, “I’m really sorry about this.”
I frowned at the cartridge. “It’s just a little ink.”
“No, you know what I mean,” he insisted. “I’m sure you’d prefer a normal boyfriend who was still human and didn’t have a mom that snatched bodies out of morgues.”
I was crouching by the printer, but his words made me look up at him. He was handsome and brave and rich and generous and had saved my life more times than I liked to think about. But there was more to my love for him than that. The first time I laid eyes on Jessie, I felt something happen inside of me. It was like I had a harp string running through my body and someone had plucked it. I’d known him for over two months, and the string still hadn’t stopped vibrating. I had never been a believer in reincarnation before I met Jessie, but I did know that I was somehow connected to him in a way that went beyond high school puppy love.
“Are you kidding?” I asked, getting to my feet, cartridge still in hand. “You think I’d rather be dating some jock so I could go sit in the stands during his games? I’d get plenty of time to play on my cell phone until the whole boring competition was over with. And then there would be some kind of jock party where they chug beer and talk about the game. Hooray!”
Jessie pressed his lips together. “At least you’d be safe,” he pointed out.
“But there wouldn’t be this,” I said, putting my arms around him and tilting my head back. When our lips touched, I could feel an electric charge through my entire body.
When we finally pulled apart, Jessie gave me a look that was sheer passion. I knew he wasn’t still thinking about foisting me off on a non-vampire so I could have a normal life.
Gathering me in his arms like I weighed no more than a dried leaf, Jessie took a few steps toward the bed. It was insane. We were in my mother’s room and she was in the house. I knew it was wrong, but my body was begging me not to stop him.
There was a knock at the door. “Everything going all right in there?” Mom asked.
“Yes,” I said, answering all too quickly. “Just shaking the ink cartridge. We’re almost done.”
Jessie let out a quiet chuckle and then whispered to me, “Shaking the ink cartridge. Is that what you call it?”
Chapter 8
“Missing Corpse a College Prank,” the headline of the Tiburon Sentinel announced the next day. The arti
cle began with “The body of Colette Gibson was found back in the Tiburon Morgue early this morning with a letter of explanation. The note read, ‘I thought this would be something funny to do as a fraternity prank, but now I realize that it was very wrong and I apologize. Please accept this money to help with the burial of this poor lady. Taking her was a sick thing to do and I feel really bad.’ With the note was an envelope containing five thousand dollars in cash.” The rest of the article went on to review Colette’s history and recent discovery. Someone who worked in the morgue must have tipped off the local paper so they could get the story first before any of the national reporters.
When I typed the note, I made sure to put on some gloves first. I even pulled a piece of paper from the center of the stack for printing so that there was no chance there were any fingerprints on it. I wasn’t sure if prints could be detected on paper, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Jessie insisted on the part about the money. He figured it was a way to get to help pay for the burial without it being known that it came from him. He believed, and I assumed correctly, that Grandma Gibson would refuse any help from the Vanderlind family. But Grandma Gibson had no money, and Mom couldn’t afford a headstone or anything. I was grateful that Jessie insisted upon the money. At least this way, Colette would have a nice resting place. She deserved that.
Mom had to take off early in the morning for a mandatory meeting. She worked way too hard for way too little money, but she helped girls who had survived trauma, and it was a pretty damn important job. I was proud of her, so I didn’t mind that we couldn’t afford to buy a lot of things. It seemed stupid that being in social work meant not getting paid well, but for whatever reason, helping others always seemed to mean making a personal sacrifice. I wasn’t sure why.