Liz Jasper - Underdead 02

by Underdead in Denial

  And why not? So there were vampires outside. So what? I’d been out with Will last night and survived, hadn’t I? Granted, that outing might have made Natasha and her vampire arm candy even more determined to kill me today. But the mood I was in? After the day I’d had? Just let them try! I dared them!

  Full of defiance, I turned into the driveway of a fast-food place within spitting distance of the ocean and parked. I got out of my car and walked inside to the counter to order my burger. No drive-thru tonight, not for me. I was living on the edge. A few minutes later, burger bag in hand, I strode triumphantly back out. And kept going. Tonight, I was having a picnic dinner on the beach.

  The sun had gone down, but the beach was far from deserted. Joggers, walkers, and cyclists puffed up and down the cement strip paralleling the shoreline. I hustled across the path through a gap in traffic, pulled off my black flats and trouser socks, and squeaked quickly across the cold sand to the lifeguard tower. At this time of night, I had it all to myself. I climbed up the ladder and sat down on the platform, letting my legs dangle over the side.

  I ate my burger slowly, watched by a sharp-eyed night heron who seemed to be of the opinion I was eating his dinner. Despite my insistence that I wasn’t sharing and that he didn’t want people food anyway, he kept edging closer. I finally tossed him a few lettuce leaves from my side salad so he could decide for himself. He picked at one and drifted away, but not too far, in case I was holding out on him.

  I sat there for a long time thinking of nothing, watching the twinkling lights of the offshore oil platforms.

  I might have stayed there for hours, except my cell phone rang. I fumbled in my pocket for it, hoping it was Becky. I wanted to say all the things I should have said that morning instead of just standing there like a pole while she reached the wrong conclusion.

  It wasn’t Becky calling. Of course it wasn’t. Becky wasn’t one to waffle. I’d been cut out of her life, well and good.

  Gavin was trying to reach me. Again. I turned the phone off, fished the lettuce leaves out of the sand and walked back to my car. I got in and headed home.

  Will was waiting at the curb in front of my apartment, leaning against his car like something out of a movie.

  I thought about driving on. The cat bowl held enough dry food for a week and Aunt Bertha had sprung for one of those filtered-waterfalls, so Fluffy would be fine. It wasn’t as if the cranky beast pined for my company. I could crash at my parents’ tonight.

  And tomorrow?

  My best friend would still hate me and Gavin—I didn’t know what Gavin was. Not my friend or he’d have shut the door behind him so Becky wouldn’t have had to witness her boyfriend responding to a vampire trait I wasn’t aware I had.

  The past twenty-four hours had been scary, confusing and depressing. But mostly, overwhelmingly, it had been lonely.

  There was a space at the end of the block. I parked and got out of my car. A few minutes later, I was driving off again. In Will’s car.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After a short drive inland, Will pulled into the parking lot in front of a large beige apartment building. Just looking at it made me depressed. It was a no-frills rectangular box covered in thin, gritty stucco that collected grime like it was worth money.

  “For you.” Will handed me a pair of thin, black leather gloves and drew a larger pair over his own hands.

  I fingered the gloves. The leather was sumptuous. “Why are we here?”

  Will was getting out of the car and didn’t answer. I opened my door and got out, intending to ask again, but the question died on my lips as a skeletally thin man in his mid-twenties pushed himself off the side of the building and sauntered over to us.

  It wasn’t the best part of town. You wouldn’t want to drive through it at night unless you lived there and even then most inhabitants stayed inside, behind locked doors and barred windows.

  He wore giant baggy pants that, by some miracle of gravity defiance, remained attached to his colorful boxers by the bottom of his butt. It was jacket weather, or at least long-sleeved shirt weather, but he wore a tank top that showed off wiry muscles and a decided taste for snake tattoos.

  “Nice ride,” he told Will. “I’d like me to have a sweet ride like that.”

  What he meant was, “I’ll be taking that car off your hands now, chump.” His fingers hovered over a deep, bulky pocket as if it contained a weapon that backed up his claim to the car. I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled out a bazooka.

  Will was wearing impeccably tailored black pants and the sort of thin black sweater that is made of rare, hand-pulled cashmere from special sheep only found in valleys ten thousand feet above sea level and collected by monks under a full moon. His clothes couldn’t have concealed anything more than a pocket knife, and even that was doubtful, as it would have ruined the elegant lines. His gloved hands held nothing more than the car keys on a simple silver ring.

  Will tossed his keys as if the scary gang banger were a parking valet. “Excellent. Keep an eye on it while I take care of some business.” Placing a warm hand between my shoulder blades, he propelled me forward. We headed into the apartment building without looking back.

  That is, Will didn’t look back. I couldn’t help it. The man stood frozen by the car holding the keys as if they were a bomb about to go off.

  Through thin apartment doors placed far too close together, I could hear the blare of televisions and the occasional cadence of real people talking. Smells of cooking—fried chicken, grilled onions, pizza and microwave popcorn—competed with less pleasant smells of urine and alcohol.

  “Why are we here?” I asked again in a low voice as we turned a corner and headed deeper into the building. The narrow hallways were brightly lit by harsh overhead fluorescents. Crime deterrent, I thought.

  “Tom lived here,” Will said.

  We passed a girl’s bike with a pink seat and a white handlebar basket with daisies on it. I’d had the same one in purple, growing up.

  “How do you know where Tom lived?” I asked.

  “Phone book,” Will said, stopping before a nondescript door marked 18A. He slanted a blue gaze at me.

  “And where did you get his apartment keys?”

  “I didn’t.”

  I perked up. I should have been appalled to learn we were breaking in, but all I could think was that finally I was going to see Will work his vampire magic.

  He pulled a long, oddly shaped key out of his pocket and stuck it in the lock. A few twists and jiggles and something went click and we were inside.

  He flicked on a light and turned to look at me. “Disappointed?”

  “Confused.” About so many things. Will constantly refused to fit the pictures I formed of him. “I thought you couldn’t go inside a place unless invited.”

  “Tom’s dead.”

  Right. I pulled my attention from Will and looked around. The place was a shambles. Everything that could have been searched had been, and messily.

  “I don’t think we’re the first ones here.”

  “No,” he agreed. “But did they find what they came for?”

  I held up my hands, clad in the black gloves, and wiggled my fingers. “I take it we’re going to conduct our own search?”

  My statement didn’t come out as cool as I’d planned.

  Will was standing close to me, thoughtfully studying the apartment layout and the mess around us as if planning the most efficient mode of attack. He shifted his attention back to me. “You don’t have to do anything.” He meant it.

  “I’ve already ‘broken and entered.’”

  “You didn’t know where we were going. I brought you here. I picked the lock.” He would have made a good lawyer.

  “Well then, I guess I can sell you down the river if it comes to that. Now, where do I start?”

  This got me a full-blown Will grin. I swayed like a Sixties-era teenybopper at a Beatles concert and he grabbed my arm to keep me upright. His smile widened.
/>   Will began his search methodically at the farthest end of the apartment. I tagged along to get the feel of things. He looked for the manuscript in places I would never have dreamed to look. Inside the toilet tank—in case Tom had gotten creative with the zip top bags—and in tiny places like the garage sale cookie jar collection on the bedroom bookshelves, as manuscripts can be divided. Obviously, Will wasn’t leaving finding it to chance.

  As he moved on to patting down every item of clothing in the closet, for what I could only assume was secret compartments sewn into linings, I assigned myself the kitchen. I went through everything, including all the cereal boxes. Tom had preferred the ones with cartoon mascots on the boxes and sugar as the primary ingredient, and there were enough boxes in his cupboards that he could have concealed the entire works of William Shakespeare.

  All I had left was a sticky set of ugly, patriotic-themed canisters on the counter next to the stove when Will rejoined me. He was holding a thin file folder and there was a keen, almost excited expression on his face.

  “Any luck?” I asked, dusting rancid flour off my gloves. Some of the canister gunk had transferred itself to my gloves and the flour was sticking like glue. “Ick. I hope you weren’t too attached to these gloves.”

  “The manuscript is not here. These are some of Solaire’s notes.”

  “So it does exist.” His enthusiasm was catching. “What next?”

  Intelligence and curiosity danced in Will’s blue eyes. I realized he was having fun. I was too. It was an unexpectedly sobering thought.

  “What?” he said.

  “Sometimes I forget you’re—”

  In two steps he crossed the tiny kitchen to stand in front of me. Clutching a blue-and-white-striped canister with sugar written on it to my chest, I shrank back against the counter.

  I was unable to look away. I stared up into Will’s eyes and felt a queer, unresisting floating feeling come over me. It was a little like how I felt the year I’d jumped into the freezing ocean on New Year’s Eve for a swim. After the initial shock of cold, my body had gone numb and I’d stayed in long enough to swim out to the buoy and back.

  “I don’t.”

  The floating feeling disappeared so suddenly that I gasped. Will plucked the container out of my hands, put it gently on the counter, drew me close and kissed me. When he let me go, I had to clutch the countertop to keep from sliding to the floor.

  He turned and headed for the door. “Time to go.”

  With shaking fingers, I picked up the sugar container, but instead of replacing it against the wall as had been my intent, I opened it. Just to be thorough. Or maybe it was to pretend to myself that I wasn’t as rattled as I was.

  “Of course.” Not only was the canister empty of anything related to Solaire, it didn’t have so much as a grain of sugar left in it. A brittle laugh came choking out of my dry throat. Tom had probably heaped spoonfuls of sugar on his morning marshmallow puffs and frosted honey bombs.

  Will’s car was exactly as we’d left it in the parking lot. So was the attendant. Will plucked the keys from the gangbanger’s outstretched hand and it no longer seemed funny to me.

  By the time we returned to my apartment building, my wildly conflicting thoughts had been reduced to a simple goal—get inside my apartment. The moment the car stopped, I punched my seat belt free and rocketed out of the car.

  My mind took a moment to catch up with my fear. And when it did, I realized a five-second head start wasn’t nearly enough. Will and I walked up together. I think we chatted about some book we’d both read, but I wouldn’t have been completely surprised if someone had told me no, you were talking about lima beans.

  I had a bad feeling that Will knew exactly what was going through my head. Every time I hinted that it was time for me to go inside, he found a way to keep me outside. Desperate, I was about to embark upon the world’s fakest yawn, when a passing car screeched suddenly to a halt on the street below. A woman bolted out, leaving the car double parked. She sprinted toward us, moving faster than I would ever have imagined was possible in three-inch heels. She was no more than a pinkish-brown smudge in the night as she passed under the fluorescent streetlights.

  Will and I were too stunned to move. Which is why my purse-wielding mother made it all the way up the stairs and got in a hard whack to Will’s chest before he could defend himself.

  He staggered back in surprise. “I beg your—”

  My mother hauled back and hit him again. Her purse probably weighed twenty or thirty pounds, and this time something sharp seemed to catch him on the bony part of his forearm. His eyes darkened to black.

  “Mom, stop!”

  “No!” She was a demon possessed. “Jo, you must hold strong!”

  She cocked her arm back and readied her purse for another swing. “I’m sure he told you he’s reformed, but don’t believe it. Men like him are good at lies. That’s how they start. They alienate you from your friends and family and the next thing you know, you’re living in a trailer park with a man in a sleeveless undershirt!” Her arm, honed from many dedicated hours at the gym, released like a shot.

  This time, Will was ready for it. He grabbed the purse and held it so she couldn’t swing again.

  My mother pulled hard against the strap. “Let go, you coffee-shop stalker!”

  Will dodged a sharp kick to his shin. “Coffee-shop stalker?”

  He had directed the question at me, but my mother answered. “Oh, I know all about you, second-rate coffee boy!”

  Will’s eyes bugged a little. If there was any vampire mind control going on, it was bouncing right off my mother. She was on fire.

  “I suggest you go back to your job at the diner and leave my daughter alone, or I’ll have a restraining order slapped on you so fast you won’t be able to move two feet in this town without the cops breathing down your back!”

  Will handed back her purse. “You must have mistaken me for someone else,” he said coldly. “I don’t work at a coffee shop.”

  “Don’t you patronize me, young man. I—”

  I felt it was time I intervened before my mother got thrown over the railing.

  “He no longer works there,” I said.

  Her scathing gaze swept Will in disgust. “It took you five years to get that promotion and you couldn’t even keep it?” She turned to me. “Really, Jo. You can do better than a man who can’t even keep a junior manager position at some cheap little restaurant.”

  It was as if a light had flicked on behind Will’s eyes. Comprehension dawned. “Mrs. Gartner.” His bland smile held a barely cloaked wickedness that sent the hairs on the back of my neck quivering upright. “I believe I see the misunderstanding. When I met Jo, I was in one of my coffee shops.” His eyes flicked to me. “On occasion, I liked to get out of my corporate office and do some…research…of my own.”

  My mother sniffed. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re not a stalker, either?”

  Will crossed his arms over his chest, leaned comfortably back against the wall and raised his eyebrows at me.

  He knew. He knew why I had spun her that tale, just as he knew I wanted nothing more than to drag my mother inside the safety of my apartment and lock the door behind us.

  I said reluctantly, “That was a bit of a misunderstanding. He’s the human resource specialist from an old international firm. And, no, you’ve never heard of it. It’s a private company and they keep a low profile.” I stuck out a hand for Will to shake. “Thank you so much for a lovely evening. It was nice to see you again.”

  “It’s always a pleasure to spend time with you, Jo.” Will took my hand and kissed me softly on the cheek. His lips landed squarely on a sensitive spot. He murmured in my ear, “We will talk later, you and I.”

  He shook my mother’s hand as if she was an old, dear friend and not a crazy, overprotective mother who had just dented his arm with her purse. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you ladies to your evening.”

  I nearl
y sagged against the door in relief. It would be okay. He was just going to walk away and leave us.

  At the top of the stairs, he stopped.

  He turned back, the picture of polite regret. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gartner, but I believe you’ve parked me in.”

  “Oh, I…oh!” Her eyes zeroed in on his two hundred sixty-five thousand dollar car. Will was back in.

  “How silly of me.” She pulled out her car keys and, flashing him a bright smile, accepted Will’s arm as he accompanied her down the stairs.

  “Oh, this is just great,” I muttered, clattering after them.

  My mother had that look again, the one where she was imagining the handsome children Will and I would have. The expression on Will’s face was victory itself.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next day was Friday, and Halloween, as far as our school was concerned. The rest of the world would celebrate on Sunday.

  Not wearing a costume would have been tantamount to announcing I had no school spirit, something Roger would have attacked like an overzealous pep club president. Not that he ever wore a costume. It was beneath his dignity as science department chair.

  He was such a troll.

  Going as a bustier-wearing vampire vixen was out so I dug my old standby out of the closet. A nun’s habit. As I pulled on the shapeless black dress and strung a rosary around my neck, I felt nice and safe for the first time in weeks. It reminded me comfortingly of Sister Gerald Gervaise who ran my high school like a well-oiled machine. If anyone could have stared down a vampire, it was she.

  If only I could borrow her for a little bit, everything would go back to normal in no time. Whoever killed Tom wouldn’t last a half-hour in her company before he or she was prostrate from guilt and confessed on the spot. It goes without saying that I had spent a lot of quality high school time in her office. Sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder if she had used her clout with The Almighty to give me the most ill-behaved possible combination of students in my classes. A little penance for all the trouble I’d put my own teachers through.