by Peter Glenn
Ah yes, Charmaine. That was it. Nice girl. Both her and her husband were quite personable. Oh, and they were both vampires.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Vampire. Duh. That’s where the blood came from. But she’s not that kind of vampire. Or at least, she told me she wasn’t a few weeks ago when I’d seen her hanging out at Mei’s. Still undead and all, but she didn’t drink human blood. I mean, she could if she wanted to, I supposed, but according to her, she’d sworn off the stuff years ago and gone vegan. Her and her husband both, actually.
How a vampire could go vegan exactly, I wasn’t quite sure. Assuming she woke up, it was a question I’d have to ask her.
But more importantly, now that her face was clean, I could clearly see there were no marks on it at all, and no other kind of indication of an injury. Meaning the blood probably wasn’t hers.
Which left a lot of questions, like who it belonged to, and placed a nagging sensation at the back of my mind that she might not have been alone when she’d come here.
“Keep looking for a cause for that blood,” I told Isaiah. “And Mei, see if you can rouse her. I’m going to check outside, see if anyone followed her.”
Mei and Isaiah nodded, and got to work. I patted Grax’thor a couple times and headed up the concrete stairs as quietly as I could.
When I reached the entryway, I found the door to Mei’s wide open. There was a bloody handprint on it, likely from Charmaine coming in. It looked about the right size for one of her hands.
I peered outside carefully without actually going out there, looking around for anything curious or out of place. There were a few people scurrying about on the other side of the street now, compared to the practically nothing there’d been before, but I didn’t see anything odd or unusual.
A glint of something metal caught my eye, and I braced myself, then took a step out of the bar to get a better look at it.
Part of me expected to get blasted on the spot. The magic of Mei’s bar meant I would be safe as long as I stayed inside it, but even one step outside the bar and all bets were off. But nothing happened. I remained fully intact.
I walked over to the glinting metal object on the ground. It was a rectangular shape with some sort of picture of balloons on the back of it. Curious, I picked it up. It was a cell phone, and there were blood smears on the front of it. Behind the smears, I could make out a picture of two people kissing next to a balloon stand. The girl in the pic looked a lot like Charmaine.
Likely her phone, then. Had she been trying to call me on the way in here?
I put the phone in my back pocket and pulled my own phone out of the other one. I’d turned it on do not disturb earlier so I could enjoy Mei’s party. A party that had never happened. I’d still have to get her back for that someday.
The message indicator was on so I checked it. Sure enough, there were three missed messages.
I peered at the first one. It was from LaLuna. Thinking of you. Aww. A small tear formed in the corner of my eye. She was thinking about me on my birthday. Not that I’d told her it was my birthday or anything. Could you imagine what a maybe girlfriend would do with that kind of ammo? I shuddered just a little at the thought.
Still, it was sweet. I’d have to go see her tomorrow. Bring lunch or something.
The other two messages were from an unknown number. I checked them out.
Damian? Are you there? I need to speak with you right away, Damian. It’s a matter of life and death, the first one read.
I can’t explain over the phone. Too many listening ears, but I need you. Please reply. That was the second one.
Well, damn. The one time I turned my phone on silent, and I missed one hell of an excuse to stop speaking to my mother…
Reason suggested those two messages were from Charmaine, but she’d have to wake up before I could be certain of that. Her phone was locked, after all.
I took another look around the street and the people walking past for anything else that could be considered suspicious, but came up empty. Nothing felt out of place, just ordinary people rushing from street corner to street corner, oblivious to the potential dangers that crept around on dark, foggy evenings like this one. Or the several powerful people in the bar they couldn’t even see, any one of which could have killed the lot of them in the blink of an eye.
A chill blast of wind blew past me, then, smacking into me from behind and reminding me how cold it was out here tonight. I shivered and rubbed my arms as I headed back to the beckoning warmth of Mei’s bar just a few feet away.
Thankfully, nothing happened, and I made it back in due time. I went ahead and closed the door on the way in. It wouldn’t really make much of a difference to the bar patrons, but it might help save Mei some on her heating bills. And I knew how expensive those could get; especially on a cold fall day like this one was shaping up to be. Of course, unlike me, Mei never seemed to have a problem paying her bills. Some people were just on top of things like that.
Why was I concerned about her ability to pay her bills? Wasn’t I mad at her for the birthday shenanigans? I shook my head. It was the nice thing to do, and deep down I was a nice guy. That must be it.
Resigned to my fate, I sauntered back down the stairs and the skin on my arms tingled from the abrupt temperature change.
“Find anything?” Mei asked once I was visible.
I shrugged. “Just a cell phone. I think it’s Charmaine’s.” I took it out and held it up for all to see. “Any change in our patient’s condition?”
“Nothing yet,” Isaiah told me. He was looking at her with a stern expression on his face. “She’s still out cold. I think from shock more than anything. There’s not a mark on her.”
“Freaky.”
I looked down at her body. They’d managed to clean the blood off her arms and hands, but there wasn’t anything they could really do about the blood on her clothes. She’d need a new outfit, and soon. But with the blood cleaned off her skin, she looked relatively normal.
Well, normal for a vampire. They were all a little paler than your average human, and they tended to be on the skinny side. Neither of which were out of place for a town like Seattle, which was probably why there were several of them up here.
A stirring motion in her left hand caught my eye. “Did she just–”
“Move?” Mei finished for me.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Mei scrunched her nose and narrowed her gaze. “I think so. It could have been a spasm, though. It’s hard to tell.”
“Let me see her,” my mother said, shoving her way into view.
I jumped at the sound of her voice. I hadn’t realized she’d been right behind me until just then. “Thanks for joining us, Mother.”
She shoved my arm out of the way. “Just let me through.”
Using her arms like weapons, she shoved Mei and I out of the way and made her way over to where Isaiah was holding Charmaine on the floor.
“I will help us get to the bottom of this mystery,” she said with a smug look on her face.
“Mom,” I whined, “she needs space and time, not smothering.”
My mother turned her head and glared at me, then returned her attention to Charmaine. She stroked the woman’s cheek gently with one of her bony fingers. “Don’t listen to the men, darling,” she said in quiet tones. “I’ll take care of you.”
I saw a hint of something flash or spark between the tip of my mother’s bony index finger and Charmaine’s face, then the vampire twitched again.
Was that…? Had my mother learned magic and never told me? “Mother, are you…?”
She waved me off. “This is a woman’s work, Li. Leave it to the professionals.”
“Ugh. Mom, this is the twenty-first century. Gender roles no longer apply.” This wasn’t the first time I’d tried to tell her that, either. It never stuck.
“Shush!” She shooed me away with a frantic wave of her other hand and went back to tending to Charmaine.
I rol
led my eyes and looked away, feeling a little huffy. I wanted to tell my mother off, but we all knew that was never going to happen. She had a stranglehold on the family. But hey, at least she was no longer bugging me about my brother. Bright side and all that.
The sound of someone coughing roused me from my inner thoughts, and I turned to see Charmaine’s eyes fluttering open. The brown dots still looked a little unfocused, but there was consciousness behind them.
“My head,” Charmaine uttered. She tried to reach for her face with one of her hands, but my mother made a shushing motion and forced it back down.
“Easy now, child,” my mother said, brushing her face. She called most people “child.” In fairness, she was older than almost all of them. “You’ve been through a lot. Try not to move too much.”
“Wh-where am I?” Charmaine looked down at her own blouse, which was still coated in blood and I could see what little color was in her cheeks fade. “Wh-what… happened?”
“Shh, child,” my mother said. “It’ll all come back in time. Just take it easy.”
“Daequan?” Charmaine asked, her face puzzled. “Where is Daequan?”
That was her husband’s name. The other vegan vampire. I had to admit, it was kind of odd seeing her here without him. The two tended to be inseparable when they were out and about.
Granted, I didn’t really know that much about them, but they at least always came to Mei’s as a couple.
“I don’t know,” I told her. I leaned in closer so she could see me. “You came here by yourself a few minutes ago.”
Charmaine looked puzzled. “But where… where is this?”
“Mei’s bar.” I shrugged. “As for why or how you chose it, that’s anyone’s guess.”
Charmaine’s eyes narrowed and she stared straight at me. “Damian?” Her voice seemed hesitant.
I nodded and pointed to myself. “In the flesh.”
“Oh, Damian, thank heavens! The most terrible thing happened! I came here to… to…” Charmaine’s voice trailed off and she furrowed her brow as her head fell backward a little. Thankfully, Isaiah was still there behind her and caught it before it hit the ground.
“Shh, child,” my mother repeated. “Like I said, you’ve been through a lot. Just take your time. Focus on getting better first.”
“But Daequan, he’s… he’s in trouble and I…”
“And you what?” Mei asked. “What’s going on?”
“I…” Charmaine’s voice went quiet. She pushed herself up a little bit until she was no longer leaning on Isaiah. Both he and my mother tried to keep her down, but she warded them off with her left hand. “I… I think I should sit down for a bit. My brain is still fuzzy.”
“Good call,” I told her.
I reached out a hand to help her up, which she readily accepted. It took a minute, but with a little help from me and Isaiah, she was able to get onto her own feet and stumble over to a stool. I took the one next to her and let go of her hand once we were both seated.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother looking a little flustered that there wasn’t an empty stool next to Charmaine, but that only made me feel happier about the whole thing. Maybe I’d finally get a moment without her.
Now that would be an awesome birthday gift.
“Let’s just start from the top,” I told Charmaine when we were both settled. “What’s the first thing you remember before waking up here in Mei’s bar?”
“Hmm,” Charmaine said. She put a hand on her forehead to brace it and shook her head a little. “It’s all so foggy.” She paused for a moment. “I remember I was with Daequan. We were in our apartment watching the latest episode of our survival TV show. You know the one where they’re stranded naked in a forest?”
“Yep.” I nodded. “I’ve heard of that one.”
It wasn’t one of my favorites, but it had a following, for sure. I liked shows with weapons in them better. When I wasn’t wasting my time playing shoot ‘em up video games, of course. That was my real passion.
“What next?”
“Umm…” Her eyes rolled back into her head. “There was a knock at the door. I remember that much.”
“Okay. And?”
“And then…” Charmaine paused again and put a finger on her bottom lip. “And then I’m not too sure.”
Oy. This was going to take a while.
“Here,” Mei said, pushing her a drink. It looked thick and white, with a little slice of pineapple at the top, like a pina colada. “Drink this, it might help.”
I laughed. “Alcohol has worked many miracles in my day, but helping me remember things isn’t one of them.”
Mei shot me an icy glare. “It’s not alcohol, doofus. It’s ice and coconut water.”
“Coconut water?” This time I was thoroughly confused. “Why would a vampire want coconut water?”
“It has some of the same compounds in it as blood,” Charmaine answered. She took a big drink of the liquid. “Plus, it tastes a lot better.”
A little bit of color started to return to Charmaine’s cheeks as she drank more of the concoction.
“Tastes better, huh?” I asked. I’d been meaning to ask about her vegan habits earlier. Now was my shot.
“Uh huh,” she replied. “You don’t see blood coming out in flavors like ‘Mango Tango’ or “Maui Wowie’, do you?”
Another short burst of laughter bubbled out of my throat. I had to give her that one. “No, I suppose you don’t.”
“And besides, it’s so much better for the environment than drinking real human blood, even if it does mean we don’t get all the normal vampire benefits.”
“Oh?” That piqued my curiosity. “Tell me more.”
Charmaine took another pull of the coconut water drink and set it down. “Well, most vampires have superhuman strength and speed. But you can only get the full benefits of those from drinking real blood. I still have more strength than a normal human, but not by a lot. And no super speed. No one’s quite sure why, exactly. They think one of the proteins in the blood is what does it, but even synthetic blood doesn’t grant anything extra, so why remains a mystery.”
She took a deep breath. “But truth be told, I don’t really miss it. I’ve lived just fine without it for years now. And I’m not really fond of the taste of real blood anyway, so when we found a viable alternative in coconut water, I was all for it.”
“Huh. I would have never guessed.”
“Yeah, I mean, you’ve never seen me drink a glass of blood here before, have you?”
I thought back on the handful of times I’d seen Charmaine at Mei’s before. In each instance, she’d been nursing some fruity drink. I’d always assumed it was a way to relax and unwind and not sustenance, but hey, I’d just learned something new.
“Very well,” I conceded. “I guess you have a point.”
Charmaine snorted. “Even if Daequan does sometimes call it ‘coconut pee’.”
“He calls it what now?” I burst out laughing, as did half the room.
“Coconut pee. You know, since the water comes from the coconut itself. It’s like it’s a bladder holding all the pee inside.”
I scanned Charmaine’s face for a hint of a smirk or some other sign that she was teasing, but her expression was completely serious. “Y-you’re not teasing me, are you?”
“Nope.” She flashed me a grin. “Believe me, I wish I was. I cringe a little every time he calls it that. So of course he does it all the time.”
I smiled at that thought. I wondered when LaLuna and I would start to develop our own little inside jokes like that one. Hopefully sometime soon. “Sounds cute.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Daequan sounds like a pretty great guy.”
“He is,” Charmaine agreed. Her smile faded as she sat there, nursing her drink. “Yeah, he really is.”
Charmaine took another sip of the coconut concoction, and the room went quiet for a minute. I glanced over at my forgotten Manhattan.
My throat was suddenly dry, and I reached for it, eager to gulp it down.
Then, all at once, Charmaine’s head shot up, and she stared straight at me. “Daequan!” she shouted. “He’s in trouble!”
“Yes,” I replied. I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, keeping her from flying off the seat. “You said that earlier. How is he in trouble?”
“I have to help him!”
Charmaine tried to stand again but my hand kept her down. “Easy now. You’re still a little unsteady, remember?”
She shook her head vigorously. “No, I’m feeling much better. And I have to go help Daequan. He’s… he’s in jail.”
A collective gasp spilled out from everyone’s mouths. Even my mother seemed shocked for once.
“In jail?” I repeated. “What happened?”
Charmaine rocked back and forth gently in her stool, her hands holding her knees. “I remember now. I remember the whole thing. There was a knock on the door. It was the police. They said they were arresting Daequan for murder. I told them I’d been with him all night, but they didn’t believe me. They didn’t believe me, Damian!”
“Oh, wow. I can’t imagine what that would be like.” I patted her shoulder to try and comfort her and relaxed my grip. It didn’t look like she was going to jet off anymore.
Besides, we were finally going to get to the good part.
Charmaine nodded. She squeezed my hand and smiled at me. “Thank you, Damian. I knew I was right to come to you.”
From somewhere in the room, I heard an affirmative grunt from my mother, like she approved of my actions. Humph. Like her opinion mattered.
Grunting, I returned my attention to Charmaine. “Look, I know this must be hard for you, but please continue.”
She nodded again and began talking in a slow, shaky voice. “The police, they took Daequan away in cuffs. Said that a vampire had murdered one of our neighbors, and since he was a vampire, he must be the one responsible. They’re not sharing what other evidence they might have. Can you believe that? Being carted off merely for being a vampire?”
I shook my head. “That’s not right.”
Her voice grew stronger as she continued. “Naturally, I had to help him out. Prove that he wasn’t the one. So I went to the scene of the crime.” She put her hand up. “I know, I know, probably not my best move. They’d have people watching it, especially since the murder was fresh. But as a vampire, I can make myself pretty close to invisible. That’s one of the powers that I get to keep, even as a vegan.”