Dead But Not Forgotten

by Charlaine Harris

  “Why don’t you buzz off? I have no intention of coming out.”

  Toddy pulled his lips back to show all his teeth.

  In her line of work, Bev had run into a few reluctant vampire brides and grooms. But eventually, they all came around to going through the rites of the ceremony in relatively good grace because they knew marriages between their kind weren’t always love matches. All too frequently, they were the results of credits owed and debits balanced.

  But this vampire was saying no. Flat out. Not only to her obligations to Eric, but to Van D.—the same misbegotten son of a bitch who’d dallied with a chorus girl named Bev through an entire off-Broadway season of Kiss Me, Kate.

  “You want me to break down the wall?” asked Toddy.

  “Not yet,” she replied.

  Serves you right, Van D.

  Five months they’d had together. Anton had taught her lots—like how to test a pearl for quality and how to hone her personal taste until it was sharp as a stiletto. And mostly, they’d had fun and naughty times until the night he’d returned home with takeout and her refusal to eat (she had an audition the next day) had culminated in an absurd and final argument about how it was all in her mind; she didn’t look any thinner when she starved herself. She’d snapped back, and he’d huffed off. Leaving Bev to deal with the next month’s rent, a dead human, and the curious feeling that she somehow hadn’t measured up.

  “Stand back,” said Todd. “I’ll break the mirror.”

  “Not this time.” Bev made a fist, then punched the wall with all the anger she’d kept locked inside her since the night she lost that part to Bernadette Peters. Perhaps with a little too much force. On impact, plaster pulverized.

  “Peaches!” Toddy exclaimed.

  Teeth clenched, she cradled her throbbing hand while her bones knitted back together and visibility was restored. When the dust settled into a ground-level haze, Bev inhaled in shock.

  “What is it?” inquired Todd. “Did you ruin your manicure?”

  Her assault had left a large jagged hole in the plaster, exposing a wall behind a wall. The latter was gray, smooth, and metallic.

  “That’s not a false wall,” she said. “It’s a safe room.”

  Todd had done as Todd was prone to do—act first, think last. Diverted by the thought of a secret room, he’d forgotten about the splendor of his attire and attacked the rest of the wall with all the enthusiasm of a sunburned kid peeling off a layer of dead skin.

  He stepped away, dusting his hands. “That’s a big safe room.”

  That’s an understatement, Bev thought, her gaze moving along the sixteen feet of exposed steel wall. She opened the window and leaned out to see how far back it went. The building extended another ten feet, maybe eight.

  “It must have cost a fortune,” she said, as much to herself as to Toddy.

  “Forty grand and the lives of the three mortals who knew of its existence,” crowed Liara through her speaker.

  Bev eased herself back into the room. “Well, bless your heart. It must be nice to be so rich.”

  “Four words,” said Liara. “Buy low. Sell high.”

  Todd fussed with his cuticle while Bev prowled the length of the wall. She gave it an experimental slap. “There’s always a way in. Like a button or something.”

  Eyes gleaming, her production partner pivoted. “Like a secret switch? A book or a . . .” He zipped over to the fireplace mantel. The candlestick on the left end was briefly examined, then tossed. Likewise the taper on the right. Once set on a task, Toddy was gratifyingly OCD. Ever helpful, he picked up everything in the room that could be possibly lifted and tweaked anything that could be possibly tweaked.

  “Stop messing up my house,” Liara shouted through the speaker.

  While her roommate explored, Bev eased aside the panel of polyester drapes flanking the window near the mirror. As she’d suspected, the lock to Liara’s lair was hidden behind them. Mounted at hip height, it was surprisingly small—she’d anticipated a keypad or maybe a big fat red panic button. But there were no buttons, just a small, card-sized, flat touch screen.

  “Shoot,” she said. “She has a fingerprint scanner.”

  Todd dropped the vase he was on the point of shattering against the wall. “This is like a Bond movie,” he cried, thoroughly charmed. He zipped across the room, then leaned over her shoulder to press his thumb on the pressure pad.

  Nothing happened.

  “I’ll go get my Glock.”

  “This is not a mailbox, Toddy. Destroying it will only jam the door lock.”

  Her friend worried his lip between his teeth. Except for the copier that sat on the counter in the RV—he liked to take imprints of his face and other parts of his anatomy—Toddy was a trifle intimidated by electronics. “Maybe I’ll go look around the house. See if I can find anything that will help.”

  “You do that.” She dusted off the chair’s arm before she lowered herself to it and crossed her legs. Neatly, on an angle, so as best to display their length. Then she focused on the pressure pad, thinking hard. There’s always a way in; you just have to find the right lever.

  Liara spoke. “I’m perfectly comfortable in here.”

  “I know that.”

  “And those walls aren’t steel,” called Liara. “Tell your gun-happy dimwit that they’re Kevlar.” Then she chuckled nastily. “You’re never getting me out of here.”

  Bev was formulating a perfectly wonderful reply when she caught the smell of burning kerosene. “Toddy, nooooooo!”

  “What?” Todd skidded back into the room, carrying high his version of the Olympic flame—a kitchen broom, well wrapped with kerosene-doused rags, that he’d set alight.

  “Put it out!” Bev shouted.

  He cocked his beautiful, empty head. “Why?”

  “Because of that!”

  It was almost like the water sprinkler had been waiting to be introduced. No sooner had she jabbed a finger at it than it stuttered to life. Water whipped—horizontal, vertical, everywhere—from its nozzle head. She could have counted each elongated drop of nasty wetness had she not been so busy screaming directions. “Cut the power!”

  “How?” he shouted.

  “Go outside and find the electrical box!”

  Todd and his smoking Olympic flame fled the room. “Box, box, box,” she heard him dither before the lights went off and the deluge from hell abruptly ceased.

  He skulked back into the room. “Peaches?”

  Bev stared at the puddle by her knee for a moment, working up some calm. Then she lowered the seat cushion she’d used as a shield and asked a stupid question. “What were you thinking?”

  “That we’d burn her out.” Toddy lifted a tense shoulder. “You know. Like the old days . . . Burn him! Burn him!” He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment of deep reflection. “You’re really wet, Bev.”

  She didn’t have to glance down to confirm that, though she did. Her merino wool skirt, bought with the aim of outlining her taut thighs, clung like stretched cling wrap. She touched her hair, relieved to discover that its roots were mostly dry.

  A small grace, because Liara’s heh-heh-hehs were eating through her spine.

  Bev eyed Todd fretting over a scorch on the edge of his sleeve. “It wasn’t a terrible idea, Toddy. But what we really need is something like a blowtorch. Why don’t you go get us one? Some farmer has to have one in his shed.” She waved her hand vaguely, hoping that he’d have to fly all the way back to that welding shop they’d passed in Natchitoches to find one. “Off you go.”

  “That’s a great idea,” said Todd with relief.

  “I’m just full of them.” Once he’d left on the mission that would hopefully keep him out of her hair for the next hour, she went into the hall to retrieve her tool kit. When she returned, her teeth were set as tightly as a
Vegas showgirl balancing sixty pounds of feathers on top of her head.

  “Your spray tan is running,” snickered the recluse of Vicksburg.

  Refusing to flinch (though good golly, she wanted to), Bev placed her box of magic on the side table. “Yuk it up, Liara. The full replacement cost of my Stella McCartney jacket is going on the expense account. And if I know Eric, he’ll expect you to reimburse him for every penny we have to spend on your transformation.”

  “Hah,” said Liara.

  Bev lifted the top tier up and out until all four trays were splayed open like a stretched accordion. “If I were you, I’d be more worried about angering Eric. He’s facing a lot of pressure from the King of Nevada. He’s using every connection he has to survive, and he’s not going to tolerate you digging in your heels.”

  Liara’s speakers really were top notch. Bev could hear her unscrew something with a twist top as acutely as if she were standing beside her.

  “Eric’s got people, but I’ve got better people,” the woman replied. “And my people like what my investment advice does to their portfolios.” From the speaker came the distinct sound of something thick and viscous being poured into a glass. “In the end, you’ll find that money talks louder than his old-world connections. Besides, I covered the short in Eric’s account yesterday. If he’d looked, he would have seen that. I don’t owe him a penny, so he’s got nothing on me. You go back and tell him I’m not going to jump just because he snapped his fingers.”

  Bev’s fangs ached to extend. She removed her flipper and placed it inside one of the trays. One only needs to consume enough blood to survive, she reminded herself. A mouthful or two, every other day.

  “So,” said Liara, in a voice that was suddenly flat and hard. “Why don’t you take your pretty boy and your fancy RV and just go? I’ve lived under siege before. I’ve got enough TrueBlood in here to outlast the next presidency.”

  Resolutely, Bev turned to the mirror. Droplets of water beaded it. Deadpanned—as if the sight of her rat-tailed hair didn’t pain her—she inhaled until her empty lungs were filled and her cheeks were hollow. Then, pursing her rouged lips, she blew a thin stream of cold, dead air.

  Right where a line of fingerprints marred the mirror’s finish.

  “You going to huff and puff until these Kevlar walls blow down?” Liara chuckled and then took a deliberately noisy, long swallow of her drink.

  Bev silently cursed the quality of the sound system as her fangs extended with a slick snick. But she kept going—blowing on that polished glass as if her sharp canines hadn’t just pierced her bottom lip—expelling air until its surface was as dry as her throat and all that came from her puckered mouth was a pitiful whistle.

  Her tongue nipped out to tidy her mouth as she studied the mirror. Bev smiled. Amid the smear of prints was one perfect thumbprint.

  “You’re going to discover that I don’t give up easily,” she lisped, turning back to her box of tricks. “By the time we leave here, you’re going to be beautiful.”

  “What if I’m already beautiful?” Liara asked after a few seconds of silence.

  “I’ll be the final decision on that.”

  “Who crowned you Fashion Queen?”

  “The former queen, of course.” Once dumped by Van D., Bev had set upon refining her personal sense of style with a vengeance. She’d studied, she’d sacrificed. For crying out loud, she’d endured nine months as Joan Crawford’s dresser, just to get close to Edith Head. Every single night had been a terrible ordeal, during which she’d silently suffered, clamping down on the acute temptation to drain the opinionated actress drier than the Mojave Desert. But in the end, her self-discipline had proven to be worth it. Edith had become an acquaintance and then a mentor.

  Now Bev knew style.

  No—now Bev was style.

  She selected a pot of eye shadow. “Fortunately for you, I have learned from the best.” She deftly loaded the sable end of her fattest blush brush with a light measure of Dior’s finest taupe. “Unlike you, who wouldn’t know what to do with a tube of lipstick if one were thrust into your hand.”

  “That’s not true. They make wonderful markers.” Somewhere inside the bunker, Liara placed her glass on a table with enough force for Bev to recognize the chink of crystal. “So tell me about this dude that Eric and his king want me to marry.”

  “He’s a vampire of discerning taste.”

  “So, you know him?”

  “I’ve met him once or twice.”

  “A Swede like Eric? Tall and blond?”

  “No, he’s dark and short.” In fact, by modern standards, he was Lilliputian. But if one had looked—and Bev had gazed long and hard at him before his roguish eyes had turned in her direction—his lack of vertical inches was a minor issue. His body was well made, lightly muscled, well proportioned. Tousled hair with auburn highlights. A carefully tended goatee that drew the eye to his wicked lips.

  He’d been the good thing that came in a small package.

  Until he wasn’t.

  Bev bent forward to delicately tap the powder-loaded brush onto the thumbprint.

  “Well, now I’m all a-quiver to meet him.” Liara poured another measure into her glass. Glug, glug, glug. “So, give me more details. What type of man is he?”

  “He’s elegance personified.” Though, when she’d known him, he’d had a weakness for velvet. Which, on reflection, now seemed a tad outré. What would Edith have said about his velvet-trimmed collars?

  “No. What’s he like as a person?”

  He’s alive. The thought slipped in so quickly, she didn’t have time to edit it. That was what had drawn Bev to him. Despite his age—Anton had seen the Renaissance period—he still had the smallest flicker of life inside him when she’d met him in the middle of the last century. She hadn’t read ennui on his face, only curiosity and a restless need to move. Through his eyes, she’d seen things. Like, for instance, the perfection of a well-drawn line.

  Toddy reminded her of him, in a way. Toddy didn’t care much for art—at least not the type that hung in galleries—but his whole body would tighten when he spied a well-executed design. Come fashion week, he’d study the runway photos with the fixed concentration of a nuclear physicist teasing apart a problem of relativity. And let’s not forget the tears—sudden and touching—that had welled in Toddy’s blue eyes the day she’d presented him with tickets for the Alexander McQueen retrospective. Yes, her Toddy understood art.

  Bev carefully blew the excess dust off of the glass. “Anton Van D. is an old vampire,” she said, sidestepping Liara’s question. “Need I say I more?”

  “You wouldn’t have made a dime selling shoes.”

  Bev found the tape, cut a length, then considered just how to position it over the dusted print.

  “That doofus you hang around with is a lot of work. Letting some vamp slash his neck on prime-time television? He made you look bad. You should have handed him his paycheck that night and called it quits.”

  Ignorant, ugly, stupid woman. Bev slapped the tape down. “He’s got great taste.”

  “He’s dumb.”

  “He’s useful.” And he was. In his own way. Come morning, when the faint pink of a new dawn rimmed the horizon, Bev was confident that she’d be sitting cross-legged on her bed in the RV, watching Toddy clean their makeup brushes. And when her lids could no longer stay open, she knew Toddy would say, “Bedtime, Peaches.” Then he’d seal the door and activate the metal shutters, and lie down beside her. They’d talk. About where hemlines should go, or whether they should improve on their test flippers or just give up on that venture and invent a brand-new tooth paint that would successfully whiten some of those old vamps’ yellow teeth. They’d talk until she mumbled. Then Toddy would twine his pinkie around hers, and she’d feel safe to close her eyes.

  And she’d sleep.

  Wi
thout dreaming of stage lights, or men with cruel smiles.

  “What are you doing?” Liara asked with an edge.

  “Getting ready to lift your prints.”

  “You’re presuming that getting that door open is all you need to do to pry me out of this room.”

  “There is no such thing as an impenetrable defense.” Bev teased the tape’s edge with her nail. “All you have to do is keep rooting around until you find the right leverage.”

  “What’s yours?”

  Fear of being alone. She’d never thought of her Achilles’ heel as being leverage, but she supposed it was. It was the sharp-pointed triangle on which her life balanced.

  The motion detectors went off again and light flooded the back garden. Bev flicked a hurried glance to the window. Todd was floating outside, his teeth flashing. He lifted his burden so that she could see it. “Isn’t it great?” he said. “I got it from the neighbor’s garage.”

  “It’s marvelous,” she said, intent on the job.

  “I got the key to this sardine can,” Toddy hooted. With a flash of teeth, her friend pulled the rip cord and the chain saw buzzed to life. He whooshed upward. A moment later metal teeth began to chew through the second floor.

  Machine tools and Toddy. Another poor combination.

  “Just another second,” she murmured to herself.

  The tape lifted, thumbprint intact, at precisely the point of catastrophe.

  From Bev’s point of view, there was no real warning. She’d lived through natural disasters; she knew to duck for cover when the joists creaked over her head. But who could hear anything over the buzz of a chain saw?

  The ceiling collapsed on top of her in a shower of wallboard, dirt, and splintered aged wood. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t a fraction as painful as the time she got cornered by the small mob in that one-horse town in the Midwest.

  But she was covered with ceiling stuff. Hunks of broken wallboard and a hundred years of accumulated dust. Grit—dry as a dead vampire’s ashes—coated her fangs. Once again, Bev waited for the cloud of dust to settle, then looked upward. Todd floated above her, a horrified look on his face. She drew her finger across her throat.