Miss Aleta clucked her tongue and said, “Oh, child.”
I took a deep breath. “Say I get really mad at you, mad enough to want to kill you. So I point my gun at you and pull the trigger. Would that be wrong?”
“Of course. But—”
“The gun jams. It doesn’t go off. Does that mean I didn’t do anything wrong?”
She picked at a fingernail. “You’re saying it doesn’t matter if it would have worked or not.”
“Not if you meant for it to.”
“And if I didn’t? If I really thought it wouldn’t work?” A tear slid down her cheek. Miss Aleta pulled another Kleenex out of her jacket pocket and handed it across the table.
I said, “Then I guess you’re off the hook.”
I asked her about the other players in Razor’s game. I had the basics from the file, but I needed more. She talked, and I scribbled the details in a pocket-sized tablet.
First was Dennis Knight, the pimpled boy from the funeral home. A.k.a. Dark Knight, whose mother had provided an alibi for most of the players. Absinthe blushed when she said his name, and I didn’t have to be a mind reader to see she liked him. Then Barnabus Collins, who slept in a coffin and who had legally changed his name to that of a sixties-era Hollywood vampire.
She paused, and I said, “What about Medea?”
Absinthe’s mouth twisted as if she’d tasted something bitter. “Razor met her a couple of months after he met me. At first, it was cool. Then he said . . . um, he said I was a disappointment. That I wasn’t committed. He said Medea was, like, a ton stronger than me. And since I didn’t go on to the Second Ring, I had to be Medea’s acolyte and do whatever she said.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the Second Ring?”
She pressed her lips together. “Nothing. It’s not important.”
“It was important enough for him to make Medea his top witch instead of you.”
She sighed. Sucked on the inside of her cheek. Finally, she said, “We were neonates. New initiates. Not enlightened like he was.”
“Good old Razor,” I said. “Just like the Dalai Lama.”
She skewered me with a glance.
“Just saying. Go on.”
“Razor said enlightenment was like the bull’s-eye of a target, and as neonates, we were on the outside ring. We had to go up to the next level of existence. The Second Ring. Be, you know,Transformed.”
“Transformed. Into what?”
“Something better.”
I tried again. “This Transformation. Why did he say you weren’t committed enough?”
She untwined her fingers and plucked at the fabric of her jumpsuit. “I don’t know.”
He’d had some reason, and I didn’t buy that Absinthe didn’t know what it was, but she clearly wasn’t ready to tell me or Miss Aleta.
I let it go and said, “So what was it like? Was there some kind of ceremony?”
“Just a regular ritual. You know. Chanting, incantations. And we drank some blood.”
“Really.” I said it matter-of-factly, but the thought made my stomach turn. I thought of HIV, hepatitis, hemorrhagic fevers. Thought of Dylan, dying in a hospital bed, and of Jay, waging war against AIDS. “Whose?”
She hesitated a moment, then said, “Each other’s.”
“Was Benjy there?”
“No, he and Razor split up just before the ceremony.”
“How about Byron?”
“It was way before we met him. Besides, he doesn’t have any powers.”
“Absinthe . . . Nobody has powers.”
“Just because you can’t see it on CNN doesn’t make it not real.”
“You said it was a game. You let me borrow the rule book.”
“That doesn’t mean there was nothing to the rest of it.”
“Razor’s dead. That pretty much puts a cap on the whole ‘Razor was a vampire’ idea.”
She twirled a strand of hair around her index finger. “Maybe he isn’t dead. Maybe he’s on this whole other plane now, and he’s, like, a vampire of the spirit.”
“So you think he’s still floating around somewhere, feeding on people?”
She wanted it to be true, and for some reason this bothered me. I wanted to see her as a reckless innocent swept up in a game she wasn’t old enough to understand. But here she was, still flirting with the devil.
“You don’t get it,” she said. “He was special. Being around him was like looking into the sun.”
“So people say.”
“He was like that angel in the Bible. You know, the one they say God loved the best.”
I was no expert on angels, but I named the ones I knew. Michael. Gabriel. Raphael.
“You know the one I mean,” she said. “Lucifer. The one who fell from grace.”
Miss Aleta looked up from her tablet and shook her head.
I didn’t argue the point. I wasn’t her preacher, her therapist, or her father. Instead, I said, “When you go to court, you should probably keep that part to yourself.”
Miss Aleta pushed back her chair and said, “Amen.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By Wednesday, the snow had begun to melt, and scattered brown patches appeared through the white. I tried Barnabus’s number again, and when I got no answer, decided to hell with the formalities and drove on over.
Barnabus and Medea lived in an exhausted antebellum mansion on Nashville’s west side. I pulled into the driveway, passed between a matched set of soapstone gargoyles, and parked behind a black Mustang with a bumper sticker that said, Honk if you love Satan.
The front porch sagged in the middle and creaked beneath my feet. I shifted my weight to avoid a soft spot and pounded at the door until Medea finally answered, bleary eyes ringed with charcoal smudges, as if she’d slept in her mascara. She wore spiky black heels and black leggings under a dress that looked like it had been cobbled from a dance leotard and a handful of silk scarves.
Beneath the thin Lycra of the bodice, I could see the outline of her ribs and the sharp points of her nipples. Small breasts, but already sagging, as if she’d been starved.
I showed her my license, and she looked at it for a long time before a spark of recognition lit her eyes.
“Your life fall all to shit yet?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here,” she said, crossing her arms tightly across her breasts.
“Better let me in,” I suggested. “Being as how you’re not exactly dressed for the weather.”
With a martyred sigh, she stepped inside, leaving me to close the door.
“You can’t see Barnabus,” she said. “He’s not active in the daytime.” She scuttled around the coffee table like one of Razor’s black widow spiders. “And I’m not offering you anything, either. You’re not a guest.”
“Whatever you say.” I looked around the room. Black velvet sofa and matching recliners, two straight-backed Queen Anne chairs, and a coffee table covered in a thin layer of dust. Crystal ball on the table, perched on a gold stand shaped like a dragon’s claw. The walls were festooned with feathered masks, colored Mardi Gras beads, and a parade of dancing “Day of the Dead” skeletons strung up hand-in-hand like paper dolls.
The air was heavy with cigarette smoke and layers of incense.
“Why the hell would you come over here at this hour?” she said. “Me and my friends, we’re night people. We don’t really come alive until after dark.”
“Uh huh. The vampire thing.”
“At least we don’t preach about love and then burn crosses on people’s yards.” She perched on the edge of a Queen Anne and crossed her legs. One foot bounced nervously, like a metronome. “You want to find out who killed Razor, talk to the Jesus people. Or talk to Chuck Weaver. He runs this vampire game over in Madison.”
“Chuck asked Razor to leave his game.”
“Ha.” She gave me an ugly smile. “Chuck felt threa
tened, is all. Here he and his little friends are, playing vampires, and the real thing comes along. Chuck couldn’t compete with that.”
“You’re saying it was a power thing?”
“Isn’t everything? Sex. Love. Money. Charisma. Razor had it. Chuck didn’t. Doesn’t. Won’t ever have.”
“But it was his game.”
“That was no reason to treat Razor like some kind of bit player.” She picked up one end of a scarf and arranged it over her thigh. “But Razor trashed him good. About a week after the game, Razor came by my place—I wasn’t with Barnabus then—and asked me for a piece of jewelry and a pair of panties I’d worn.” She ran her hand over the scarf. Gave me a sly smile. “He asked me to pose for some photos. Nude photos.”
“Did you?”
“Why not? He took about a dozen. Then he said he was going to teach Chuck life’s two great secrets.”
“Which are?”
“If you mess with Razor, you’re going to get cut.”
“That’s one.”
“The other is, Nobody loves anybody. That’s what Razor always said. And he was right, too.”
“How do you figure?”
“Because his plan worked. He slim-jimmed Chuck’s car, planted the earring in the floorboard and the panties under the seat, spritzed some perfume into the car, and put the pictures in the glove compartment. Then he called Chuck’s wife and told her Chuck was having an affair.”
She fished a cigarette out of the pack and placed it between her lips. It was slim and black and smelled like cloves, and she sucked on it for a moment before pulling a book of matches from between the wrapper and the pack.
“Look,” she said. “Magic.” She struck the match, lit her cigarette, then held the match aloft for me to admire. When the flame licked her fingertips, she shook it out.
“I prefer pot,” she said, giving me a sidelong look, “but tobacco is sacred.” She drew in a lungful of smoke and held it. I tried not to envision what it was doing to her body. Cancer is an ugly death. I know. It ate my mother alive.
“Chuck,” I prompted her.
“Ha. Divorced. Kicked out on his ass. Paying alimony and child support out the wazoo. End of story.” She took another long, orgasmic drag from the cigarette and pushed herself out of the chair. “You want to know the kicker, though?”
I nodded that I did.
She blew a double stream of smoke from her nostrils, preening herself like a cat that had just dropped a dead rat at its master’s feet. “He said he’d kill Razor if he ever got the chance.”
“I’ll check it out. Tell me something. You believe in the Rule of Three?”
She waved the idea away. “That’s a Wiccan thing. They don’t have the guts to embrace real power.”
“What’s real power?”
“Real power.” She leaned forward, resting her palms on my chest, and stood on her tiptoes so that her breath warmed my face. “Real power is doing whatever the hell you want.”
And then she licked my cheek.
“Seducing the company?”A man’s voice, deep baritone with an English accent that was obviously fake, came from behind me.
I turned around to get a good look at him, and Medea teetered on her stiletto heels and grabbed my arm for balance.
He was cadaverously thin, with pale skin, sunken cheeks, and a prominent, beakish nose. Between the open edges of his black silk shirt, his chest was the color of buttermilk.
Medea gave him an exaggerated smirk. “Just having a little fun, my sweet.”
“You can take him for a test drive, but I doubt he’d hold your interest long.” He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his pants and arranged his fingers so they framed his crotch. “So you’re the detective.”
“You must be Barnabus.” I extended a hand, which he regarded with disdain. After a moment,I shrugged and lowered my hand. “Up during daylight, I see.”
He took his thumbs from his waistband and sank into the velvet armchair. “I got your message. You want to know what happened to Razor. No great mystery, really. I imagine his past caught up with him.”
Medea settled onto the sofa, her legs tucked under her. The scarves parted across her thighs, revealing a flash of black panties. I averted my gaze and took a seat on one of the Queen Annes, which made them both laugh.
I said, “What did you mean, his past caught up with him?”
“He had a way of alienating people. Family. Neighbors. Parents of the young men he slept with.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Then there’s Byron. There’s a kid with a troubled past.”
“How about you and Medea? What were you doing the day Razor was killed?”
“Role-playing at Dark Knight’s place. His mother already told the police that.”
“Any rivalry between the two of you?”
“Razor was my Sire, but I’ll surpass him soon. Medea can sense power. Razor’s was waning. Mine is on the way up.”
“Is that why Razor wasn’t playing that day?”
“He wasn’t playing because he was bored with the game. Imagine a real knight of the round table trying to play Dungeons & Dragons. It would get tiresome. And he wasn’t a very good player, if you want to know the truth. He always wanted to run things.”
No surprises there. “Tell me about the Transformation ritual. What did it mean?”
He smiled, revealing a row of white teeth with unnaturally long canines. He noticed my interest and pushed one side of his lip with one finger. “You like them? Porcelain. I had them custom-made.”
“What did the ritual mean?” I repeated.
He blew out an exasperated breath. “It was a symbolic gesture indicating we’d given up the truths and values of our mortal lives and moved on to a new level of existence. A more honest level. One free of false altruism and shallow sentimentality.”
“What? Like bloodletting and human sacrifices?”
He stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. “You’ve seen too many movies. Bloodletting, yes. Human sacrifice? Well, that’s something else altogether.”
“A whole new level, right?”
“Several levels, I imagine.” He stood up, stretched, and sauntered to the window, hands in his pockets. “It’s about embracing the Great Darkness. Razor used to talk about it, and it was clear to anyone who knew him that he’d touched it somehow.”
“The Great Darkness? Is that like Satan?”
“I read somewhere once that God is like an infinite ocean of love and light, and you can just dip into it and scoop up a cup full whenever you like. No matter how much you scoop out, the ocean is still the ocean.”
“Nice analogy.”
He looked pleased. “Well, Razor dipped out of a different ocean. What he called the Great Darkness. And he scooped out a cup full of midnight.”
It sounded right. Razor had been steeped in toxic love since the day he was born. To him, the Light was alien, more frightening than the familiar chill of Darkness. “This next level,” I said. “What did you have to do to reach it?”
“You scooped out your cup of midnight. Pledged to Embrace the Great Darkness, renounce the petty concerns of humanity, and embark on a journey of the spirit.”
“No human sacrifice?”
“Afraid not.” He perched on the arm of the sofa and placed a hand on Medea’s shoulder. “Razor danced at the edge of Darkness, but when it came right down to it, he lacked the intestinal fortitude to leap in.”
“But you don’t.”
“I didn’t kill him.” His hand moved to the back of Medea’s neck. “I suppose I might have, eventually. But someone beat me to it.”
“Benjy Savales disappeared around the time of your great Transformation.”
His hand on Medea’s neck squeezed, released. “He ran away to L.A., I think. Or maybe San Francisco. He called me once, a few months after he left. Said he was waiting tables in some little dive right on the beach. Living like a bohemian, pursuing a career in acting.”
He hesitated, then said, “Unless they’ve made some mistake.”
Covering his bases. I wondered why.
I asked again about the ritual, and he heaved another aggrieved sigh. “Razor made a speech about how we’d been preparing for this moment. Then we all took some vows and Razor passed around a chalice with some blood in it. It was kind of like taking Communion.”
It was an ugly comparison. “Why wasn’t Absinthe included?”
“She was included. She just didn’t ascend, because she wasn’t really serious. And hell, she’s just a kid. I don’t know why Razor even let her hang around.”
“She said she was special to him.”
Medea snorted.
Barnabus shot her a warning look and said, “I think she may have meant something to him at one point, kind of like a favorite pet. But she ended up being a disappointment, and he was sorry later that he’d bothered with her.”
“Why? What happened?”
He shrugged. “Ask Razor.” Then he smiled. “Oh, that’s right. You can’t. He’s dead.”
“You don’t sound exactly broken up about that.”
“You think I should be falling apart?” he asked. “We weren’t that kind of friends.”
“Besides,” Medea said. “Death is an illusion for people like us.”
“Immortality?” I didn’t try to hide the sarcasm. “Like Razor’s?”
She smiled, but there was nothing pleasant about it. “Razor made a mistake that Barnabus will never make.”
“Oh? What was that?”
“He pissed off his witch.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
My reverse phone directory gave Chuck Weaver’s address as a mobile home park east of the city. I eased the Silverado through a maze of broken toys, rusted-out gas grills, and bicycles leaning on their sides. It was too early for Weaver to be home from work, so I sat in the car and listened to Christmas carols on the radio until his white Toyota Corolla pulled in beside me.
He waved in my direction and got out of his car, pausing long enough to retrieve a bulging canvas bag from the backseat.
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