“Uh-huh. Good night.”
“Night.”
As the phone dropped to the cradle she could just catch Brad saying, “Did she ask-”. The rest was cut off, though she could guess what it was.
“Damn straight I asked,” she muttered to no one.
“Asked what?”
Her head snapped up and she met Jorick’s curious gaze. “You won’t believe who is at her house at five in the morning! Guess!” Before he could, she finished, “It’s Brad! What in the hell is Brad doing there? They’re not... I mean… Ewww! Brad and my mom! No way! He’s like 27 and she’s… well, she’s old! The age difference is unreal!”
Jorick cleared his throat uncomfortably and he turned his gaze on the recliner as if it was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. “Like a few hundred years, for example?”
It took her a second to switch topics. “What? No, that’s totally different.”
He met her eyes. Something flickered in their dark depths. “How?”
“Because she looks old. I mean you look what? Thirty? Thirty-five at the most. She looks fifty.”
“You say I look thirty, so what happens when you look fifty? Will that make it wrong?”
The conversation had wandered away from what she’d intended, and she waved her hands to make it stop. “That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just… He was dating my best friend and now he’s staying overnight at my Mom’s house? It’s just weird.” He still didn’t seem to understand so she surrendered. “Oh never mind. Let’s go home.”
Safe in the cocoon of the leaky old house, Alistair and The Guild seemed a distant, farfetched dream, and there were more practical things to worry about. The following evening, she sat down in the middle of the living room floor and sorted her rescued belongings into piles depending on what room they went to. A stack of books toppled over and she groaned. If Jorick had to have books everywhere, then the least he could do was consolidate them!
As if summoned, he appeared with a roll of duct tape in one hand. She glanced at him and asked, “Did you get the window covered?”
“Obviously.” He held the tape up as though it was evidence. His eyes skipped to her piles of stuff. “Where are you planning to put all of this?”
“Various places.” She pointed to her make up. “That goes in the bathroom.” Then, to a heap of random silverwear. “And that goes in the kitchen.” Her finger moved to the nearest stack of books. “And I was thinking, it looks bad having books piled up all over. Your ex-shrine would make a perfect library. It just needs some paint and some book shelves.”
“It wasn’t a shrine.” Old regrets flashed in his eyes and she suddenly wished she’d chosen her words more carefully. “The books are fine where they are, they’re more convenient this way. It’s a surprise when I just grab the nearest one.”
“You mean you have it this way on purpose? I thought it was just because you were lazy!”
He hesitated. “I didn't consciously decide to decorate the house with books, but it seems to be working fine.”
“No, not really, and that empty room gives me the creeps. I think a library is perfect. It will make the place look better, and think of all the space it could clear up? Oh! And we could move the desk out of the dining room. And add a window seat! I saw a show on how to build one. It looked really easy!” Her eyes settled on a hole in the living room wall. “That needs patched too. You know, we could repaint the front room. Maybe a nice taupe.”
“No!” Jorick cried with full blown alarm. “It’s fine the way it is! I know I said we’d get some dishes, but-”
“Yeah, we need to do that soon. What about a microwave? I wish Claudius' goons hadn't killed mine. And my blender. That was a helluva blender. It crushed ice beautifully. I got it at a garage sale.” She broke off when she noticed that Jorick's eyes were glazed over. “Maybe we should think about redoing the kitchen.” Her brow puckered as she imagined the work it would take to bring the kitchen up to snuff. “On second thought, not right now. Though, when we get the dishes, we can go ahead and get some bookcases.”
“Katelina, this is not a do it yourself project. I’m really quite happy with it the way it is!”
“I’m sure. The bookcases are really easy to put together. I used to have one; you remember the one in my bedroom that had stuffed animals in it? They look pretty nice, and I think that four or five should do it. That would leave room for the desk, and then we could get some lumber, and make a window seat. Though I’d have to make some kind of a cushion.” She frowned. “Or maybe we could buy one.”
“No. We’ll get some dishes, but we don’t need a library. The room is fine as it is. I was actually thinking of moving some of the stuff from the basement into it.”
Her nose wrinkled in disgust. “And make it into a jumbled mess? A library is much more practical, especially with your book fetish.” He didn’t look convinced and she quickly changed tactics. “Wouldn’t it be nice to curl up on a fluffy window seat and read a book? The sun shining in and a nice cup of coffee?” His snort of contempt answered the question and she hurriedly retailored her scenario. “Okay, maybe not for you, but what about sitting there in the moonlight, rain running down the window, a nice pint of B negative?” She offered him an overly hopeful smile.
“I am not a house decorator. I don’t build furniture, or window seats, and I don’t drink blood while I‘m reading!”
“Maybe you should try it,” she suggested absently, her mind back to its calculations.
It was several minutes before Jorick spoke. “Fine. When you put all of this…”- he stopped from using a word like “junk”- “…away we’ll discuss it. Until then, it’s a moot point!”
Despite his gruff attitude, she knew she’d already won.
It took her most of the night to put everything away, mainly because Jorick kept distracting her. She wished he’d put as much effort into the garbage bagged window in his old shrine. Every time she went past, the bag was flapping noisily in the wind and she sent him to fix it. The fifth time she fetched the tape and did it herself.
She finished and surveyed her work. She superstitiously felt eyes on her back and turned, but there was nothing but an empty wooden chair. It sat in the center of the room, facing the blood stained wall, as though inviting a ghostly spectator to sit and watch the replays of old torture.
Jorick appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Fixing this, since you can’t!”
He rolled his eyes. “I have. Several times.”
“Right, and it keeps coming untaped on its own?” She turned to him, her hands on her hips. “The wind isn’t that strong!”
She left the roll of tape on the windowsill and marched back to the bathroom. She busied herself putting her makeup in the narrow medicine cabinet. It was a tough fit, and she stopped to calculate where a bathroom cabinet could go, when something banged in the next room. The noise made her jump.
“Jorick? Is that you?” Maybe he was fixing the window once and for all.
He didn’t answer and she marched to the old shrine. Jorick wasn’t there. The chair was overturned and the garbage bag was flapping again; held on by only a single piece of tape.
She bent to right the chair and stopped. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She could feel eyes on her. Not the imaginary eyes of earlier, but cold, hateful eyes. Slowly, she raised her head and stared towards the gaping window, but only black night stared back.
Then something moved.
That was all it took. She spun and ran out the door, a scream trailing behind her. In the kitchen she crashed into Jorick, who was in mid-dash.
“Katelina!” He grabbed her and made ready to fling her behind himself. “What is it?”
“Alistair’s here!”
“Where?” Jorick moved around her quickly, his hands tensed and ready to throttle an invader.
“I - I don’t know. I didn’t see him!”
Jorick stopped and turned to face her. �
��Then how do you know he’s here?”
“Well, I, uh, I felt him watching me.” She swallowed. “Look, he was here! He was in that damned room!”
Jorick frowned, but signaled her to stay put as he disappeared to investigate. He returned a moment later, shaking his head. “There’s no one there.”
“He was there!” She grabbed his arm and led him back to the empty room. She stopped just outside the door and pointed through it. “See? He knocked the chair over!”
The only problem was that the chair was sitting upright. Exactly where it had been before. As if no one had ever touched it. “Did you set that up?”
Jorick arched an eyebrow. “No. The bag over the window came loose again. That’s probably what you saw.”
“No! The chair was knocked over! I saw it - I almost touched it!”
“I doubt very much that he came in, knocked over a chair, retreated and then returned to set it back up.” She opened her mouth to argue and he caught her hands. “It’s all right, little one, you’re just nervous. I didn’t know it bothered you this much.”
“There’s someone trying to kill me and you think I’m not worried! Of course it bothers me!”
He pulled her to him. “You don’t need to worry.” He leaned back to look into her eyes. “You trust me, don’t you?”
That wasn’t a fair question. “Of course, but-”
“Then there’s nothing to worry about.” He brushed a kiss across her cheek. “I’ll go to the basement and see if I can find a board or something to nail over this, all right? Why don’t you go rest in the living room?”
She nodded mutely, though she really didn’t see how a board was going to keep a killer vampire out.
Jorick found a couple of small boards and went outside to nail them across the window. When he finished, she was in the living room, sorting through a garbage bag of clothes. He took her to the empty room and, with too much pride, showed off his handiwork. It looked like something from a disaster film.
“What's that supposed to do? It doesn't look very sturdy.” It was no wonder he didn’t want to do-it-yourself, not if that was his idea of fixing a window.
“Of course it's sturdy. Someone would have to take the boards off to get inside.”
“And? What’s to stop him from doing that?”
She suspected that Jorick wanted to say that Alistair wasn’t really there, but instead he gave her a tolerant smile. “It would be much easier to break one of the other windows.”
“Oh, that fills me with confidence. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
She started for the door, but he called to her, “By the way, what did you do with the tape?”
“I left it on the windowsill.”
“No, darling, after you taped it up the last time, where did you put it?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. She was scared, not stupid. “I. Put. It. On. The. Windowsill. You moved it to put the boards on.”
“No, precious, I didn’t. I nailed them on outside. I need the tape so I can put another bag over the window.”
“I put it on the windowsill!”
He held up a hand to stop her. “Never mind. I’ll find it myself.”
She wanted to throttle him, but she refrained. “You do that! I'm going to finish putting things away!”
There were only two piles of things left in the living room. One was a stack of DVDs and CDs and the other was more junk for the bathroom. She stared helplessly at the discs. Apparently Claudius' goons had had it in for her electronics because none of them had survived. She'd have to talk Jorick into replacements eventually. In the meantime, the media was useless, so she stuffed them into the nearby wooden secretary.
That just left the bathroom crap. “I never realized how many beauty products I had,” she murmured as she scooped them up and trailed into the bathroom. She dropped the stuff in the sink. Though she wasn’t sure how she was going to make it fit, she jerked open the medicine cabinet.
The roll of duct tape fell out. It bounced off the edge of the basin and landed on the floor.
She screamed.
“I didn’t put it in the cabinet!” she insisted for the hundredth time as she and Jorick climbed into bed. “Why would I?”
“Because you weren’t thinking clearly. It’s all right, little one. People do strange things when they’re frightened.”
“God dammit! I didn’t!” She pounded her fist into the bed.
“Fine. You didn’t. It walked there by itself, all right? Now can we please go to sleep?”
She glared at him through the darkness. “I don’t understand how you can be so casual when I’m being threatened!”
“Because I haven’t seen any evidence of a threat! Yes, there is a vampire who may or may not be after you at this moment, but I haven’t seen any proof that he’s here. When I do, I will take it seriously. Until then, I’m not worried about it! Now, good night!”
Despite those assurances, the next evening Jorick took Katelina with him when he went to feed. She had to admit to a certain curiosity about what he did on his home turf, but it turned out to be the same thing he did elsewhere. They wandered around the countryside until he found some random wildlife, and then he “enchanted” it using his mental abilities, and drank from it. His dinner choices included an opossum and something furry that she couldn’t identify.
Alistair or no Alistair, she hadn’t forgotten his promise to buy dishes and bookcases. She might be being stalked, but she still needed to eat. When she brought it up, Jorick only smiled and asked, “What about all that laundry?”
“What? You mean my clothes? Good lord, there’s four bags of them! That doesn’t count!”
“Yes, it does. It’s part of your stuff.” His eyes gleamed mischievously. “When they’re put away, we’ll talk.”
She knew he was only dragging out the inevitable because he couldn’t stand to lose outright; and lose he had. If he needed one more day to try to pretend to himself that he’d won, then fine, he could have it. But tomorrow they were going to that store if she had to drive.
Jorick’s washer and dryer were the newest appliances in the house. He’d obviously tried to save money by buying the smallest models he could find. With each load, Katelina stuffed the washer as full as she could. Even so, four hours later she was still at it.
The dryer buzzed and Jorick glanced up from his book. “Better get that. Or, better yet, no hurry.”
She ignored him and trooped purposefully to the kitchen. She transferred loads, throwing the fresh-from-the-dryer clothes on the counter. As everything started up again, she turned to folding. Though she hadn’t bothered to sort the laundry, the load was mostly underwear. She had a neat pile of panties and was just on a bra when she glanced to the kitchen window.
A man shaped shadow moved.
She leapt back and shrieked, “Jorick!”
He was there in a moment, crashing through the doorway, his muscles tense and ready. “What? What is it?”
She pointed a shaking finger at the window. “He’s out there! I saw him!’
“Stay here!” Jorick dashed to the front door and outside. She could hear him crashing through the frosty weeds, and she imagined Alistair waiting. His breath would be heavy plumes on the air and his cold eyes would glitter. Then, when Jorick got close enough he’d-
Something slammed into the window and she screamed and flung the bra at it.
“Katelina!” His voice was muffled by the glass. “I don’t see anyone.”
She relaxed as she realized it was only Jorick. “God damn! You scared the crap outta me! Did you look for footprints?”
“The snow’s gone. I’ll look around some more, but I don’t think there’s anyone here.”
She stopped herself from saying that there was. What was the point?
Jorick returned a few minutes later. He wiped his bare feet off with a towel and tossed it in her laundry pile. “You might as well wash the sheets, too.”
“The
deal was my clothes.”
“I know, but I did just run around in the cold, barefoot, for you.” He offered her a broad smile, but it didn’t work.
“I know damn well the cold doesn’t bother you! Besides, there was someone there!”
Jorick’s smile melted into a serious expression. “Maybe there was, but they’re gone now. I’ve told you before, you’re safe.”
His words only partially comforted her.
**********
Chapter Twenty-Three
By the time they went to bed practically everything in the house had been laundered and put away. With nothing else to be cleaned or organized, Jorick had no choice but to keep his word.
The following evening they drove to the nearest 24 hour chain store. For the first time in days Katelina finally felt safe. Alistair wouldn’t dare show up in public.
Her cheery mood didn’t affect Jorick. A door greeter in a Santa hat offered them a cart and Jorick’s scowl made his smile waver. To make up for it, Katelina replied with an extra enthusiastic, “Merry Christmas” before she grabbed her crabby vampire and steered him towards domestics.
Twinkle lights sparkled over their heads and large trees with shiny green bulbs glittered in conspicuous places. A sanitized version of “Silent Night” hung on the air; the choir’s voices too high and digitalized. Katelina quickly found herself in a Christmassy mood and she steered the cart towards the Holiday decorations and stopped in front of the Christmas tree display.
“You can’t be serious?”
“And why not? It is almost Christmas. I don’t like waiting until the last minute to decorate. It seems pointless then.”
“It is pointless. Why in the world do you want a Christmas tree? Of all the ridiculous wastes of money and time! And they’re plastic!” He jabbed a nearby tree accusingly. “If you want a plastic tree then why don’t you build one with some of your trash?”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that all of your food is wrapped in layers of cardboard and plastic! It’s like you’re looking for an excuse to create garbage!”
Amaranthine Special Edition Vol II Page 28