“I know all that. One of your ladies is en route.”
“My nine P.M.? Corrine? Good. She has a calm nature. No hysterics from her.”
I can see Miss Delilah register that at least one of his ladies is hot-headed.
Speaking of hot-headed ladies, Damien lifts a pallid hand to stroke Vesper’s little pink ears, earning a slit-eyed purr. Pitty-pat goes my heart.
Miss Delilah sits on the foot of the bed. I see Damien’s shoes have been slipped off and he is in stocking feet, like Vesper and myself.
“Tell me about your clients,” Miss Dee says. “I know their names and appointment times from your Blackberry.”
He shuts his eyes to save strength to talk, and perhaps to picture the seven mistresses on whom his undead life depends daily.
“Corrine is a widow who deeply loved her husband and wants no other spouse. The Midnight hour belongs to Violet, a Goth girl who is dying to live the part. Dawn brings Petra, a career woman with no time for human love. Nine in the morning is Tess’s time. She is an artist. Noon means I lunch on Suzanne, a retired nurse who enjoys ministering to the needy. At three, Nelda arrives for tea and sympathy. She has multiple sclerosis, but is doing well now. The ancients thought blood-letting beneficial for disease. Sunset falls when Vyrle comes. She is a chorus girl and finds our activity energizing.”
Miss Delilah snaps Damian’s Blackberry shut and rises.
“I will admit your nine P.M. appointment when she arrives.”
“Corrine.” He smiles, relieved. “What a lovely person.”
It is hard to pull myself away from the vision that is a red-velvet reclining Vesper with her pink nose and ears and very sharp white teeth. I could certainly spare a little blood for a rendezvous with a hot tamale femme fatal....
Miss Delilah shuts the bedroom door and pulls a Mama-san chair with a huge round rattan back against the wall and sits. It provides an impressive background for her white skin, black hair and morning glory-vivid blue eyes. She would make one gorgeous blue-eyed black cat.
“The only thing to do, Louie,” she addresses me as I arrange myself formally at her feet, “is to put each of Damien’s ladies to the test. I urgently texted them all to come here. We must find out where hatred hides behind their vampire-loving exteriors, because that surely was the motive.”
Hatred of Damien? I wonder. Or someone jealous of his attachment to his other lady friends? Human emotions get so messy when it comes to sex. My kind avoids that sort of trap thanks to a little inborn thing called “heat.”
The door to Wrathbones opens to admit a roar of laughter and the reek of booze, smoke and blood. In walks Miss Corrine. I see right away that Miss Delilah Street is dumb-founded. Me too.
Miss Corrine is at least sixty, which can mean well-preserved these days, but still silver-haired and sedately respectable. One would not imagine her in abandoned intimacy with a vampire, but life is like that and it takes a lot more to surprise Midnight Louie.
“Who are you?” Corrine demands suspiciously. “I know it is nine-thirty. I was not on time for my nine o’clock, but he was not there…”
“I am Damien’s…agent,” Miss Delilah says. “I am afraid that he has been injured—”
Corinne ingests a gasp of horror.
“—and he needs a full measure of replacement blood at once. Perhaps a client would be willing to…give all to save him. As you know, a future eternal life as a daylight vampire would not be insurmountable.”
“Oh, no! How terrible. Poor Damien. He is a dear, but I have several grandchildren. Surely my usual allotment would help?”
“Not enough fast enough.”
Miss Corrine glances to the closed door and shudders. “I am so sorry. I live for my grandchildren. They need me. Several are in half-vampire, half-human families. I cannot give them up.”
“I quite understand. Would you mind waiting at the reserved table outside the door? Damien’s other clients are arriving. One may make the ultimate sacrifice and save him. Or…he may wish to bid you goodbye.”
“I do not know….”
“Drinks, of course, are on the house.”
“The others are coming? I know nothing about them. We have never met.”
“Now is your opportunity.”
It looks as if Miss Delilah Street knows females almost as well as Midnight Louie does. I have never seen a one who did not want to at least eyeball a romantic rival. Or maybe do her in. Or their common object of affection.
No sooner has Miss Corrine, the widowed grandmother, departed then another knock comes.
The entering woman wears an expensive navy power suit and high-heeled pumps. Her skirt and hair are short but sleek. She is a handsome forty-five but already consulting the Rolex on her wrist
“Petra, I assume,” Miss Delilah says.
“The message said Damien needed me. That is some role reversal. I have had an amazingly long day. Damien knows I start at 7:00 A.M. and go until whenever. He is the only thing that relaxes me, but once a week is all the time or blood I can spare. What is the ‘emergency?’ ”
“He is dying.”
“Oh. Is that possible? He is, you know, immortal. And unbelievably durable in bed, I might add. Are you another client?”
“His agent. He needs an entire blood replacement. I am sure the woman who volunteers would find the intensity ecstasy.”
“Impossible. My schedule.”
“Would you pause for a drink at the reserved table outside, then? He would wish to say goodbye if none of his other clients can accommodate him.”
Petra eyes her glittering watch. “‘Other’ clients. He never would say a word about them.”
She also falls for the cocktail table gambit and leaves.
I rub against Miss Delilah’s leg to express my approval as we await the next woman.
The bold knock announces a thirty-something woman sporting a long red braid down her back. Her tie-dyed leggings are turquoise and emerald under an oversized bat-wing tunic bearing the motto “Arty Party.”
“Oh, gosh,” Miss Tess Tampa says when told the situation. “Damien is the sweetest, sexiest thing and our sessions really free up my creativity. The whole point of our arrangement is no strings. A performance artist cannot be tied down to, like, rules. Vampires have lots of tiresome rules. Sorry.”
“You did religiously keep the nine A.M. meeting slot,” Miss Delilah observes.
“Nothing else was religiously kept once I got there, though.” Wink.
News of the drink table has her heading towards it with a “Sorry” shrug I do not buy.
The following knock is tentative and the opening door admits a human version of Wasp-Wing, a petite woman with brown hair in a wispy cut.
“You must be—” Miss Delilah begins.
This one speaks too fast and too much to hide her nerves. “Nelda. I have never been to the Sinkhole before. It was…hard to find.”
“That is the point. But you did it. You were brave.”
“Well, for Damien. He has done so much for me.”
“I hear your MS is in remission.”
“Yes, my parents are so overjoyed. If they knew what I had been doing these past two years…I was so afraid. I mean, I never…before. But Damien is so gentle and kind. I feel like a new person each time.” She blushed. “How can I help him?”
She listens to Miss Delilah explain, sinking onto the chair near the door.
“How,” Miss Nelda asks, “could he go without blood for so long? I know…there are others.”
“That is a very good question, Miss…?”
“Livingstone. Nelda Livingstone.”
“You came…ah, your usual appointment is at three P.M.?”
“Yes. We have tea and talk and…lots of time. Such a wonderful break in my day.”
“And what do you do during your day?”
“I am a computer tech at the Inferno Hotel. I will have to change to the night shift now, though.”
“Are you saying
you are willing to give Damien all the blood in your body?”
Her hands twist on her lap. “To save his life, yes.”
“It is an undead life.”
“Oh, he is far more alive than most people I have met in my so-called ‘real’ life. Is he in there?” She rises and heads for the bedroom door. “I should start now. I know what it is to feel weak and like your whole body and mind are deserting you. I am very strong now.”
“Yes, you are.” Delilah Street manages to step in front of the determined young woman. “This must be done carefully, not impulsively.”
“But why delay? His existence—”
“We must give all the clients a chance to volunteer.”
“All?”
Miss Nelda seems stunned, as if she had forgotten the others. My sincerity meter registers one hundred percent. She thought only of Damien and their relationship, and had from the first.
Miss Delilah is not ready to end her serial interrogations, though.
“Nelda, you can finally meet the others at the reserved table beyond these rooms, share a glass of wine. The situation does not need to be addressed until, oh, midnight.”
“But why wait—? I could at least start him on the road to recovery.”
I rise to stand before Miss Nelda, who is giving Miss Delilah a push-to-push resistance.
“Damien’s wishes must be consulted,” Miss Delilah says.
“Oh.” The idea wilts the slender young woman’s starchy resolve. “You mean he might choose another to join him for eternity. I…I had not considered that. Of course. I will wait outside. Whatever he…Damien…wants. Needs.”
She leaves in the same shocked condition as she had arrived.
“One,” Miss Delilah says triumphantly. “She truly loves him. Whether it could turn the other way, I doubt. Yet strong love can breed stronger hate.”
Me, I am not a huge believer in what humans call “love.” Cupid is not my middle name. My usual stoic expression must appear dubious because Miss Delilah Street deigns to look down at me.
“I appreciate your adding your not inconsiderable weight to keeping Nelda’s determined feet from heading right for Damien.”
Another knock, followed quickly by a louder one. We peek out the open door to see two very different women arriving at once.
Va-va-voom! One is certainly my cup of sizzle on the hoof. The other is as different as she could be.
Ms. Goth Grrrl struts in first, almost as tall as Miss Delilah, wearing high-heeled black patent leather boots laced-down the back in scarlet. Her hair is a Bad Witch Glinda fall of artificial red, her stockings striped and her torso corseted.
“The name is Violet,” she announces. “Where is my handsome vampy boy? I hear he needs some physical therapy and I am the gal to give it to him.”
“I am his agent,” Miss Delilah claims again. “And who is this?”
“I do not know,” Violet huffs. “Some mundane broad.”
“Young woman,” the second lady answers for herself, “dressing over the top does not give you license to talk over the top. I am Suzanne. I am a nurse. And I can certainly minister to the needy better than you.”
“Violet,” Miss Delilah says, “you are the six P.M. client and Suzanne has the noon slot.’
“Whatever,” Violet says with a shrug. “Damien loves me best. Show me to him and let the games begin.”
Suzanne steps in front of the buxom Goth girl. She has curly brown hair and must be fifty to Violet’s twenty-two but her wiry frame is steel and so are her gray eyes.
“Look and listen, Missy. Damien is not a bone and a hank of hair to be fought over. He is a sick man and, as a nurse, I am best equipped to help him. I always was.”
“Interesting,” Miss Delilah notes. “Suzanne, you always considered Damien ill and your relationship like nurse and patient?”
“For heaven’s sake, the man has a blood disorder.”
Violet rolls her eyes. “He is a vampire, baby. Get real. That makes him a sex machine. That is what you craved, not some namby-pamby nursing fantasy.”
Miss Delilah takes them both by the upper arms. “All his clients cherished a fantasy Damien fulfilled in many different ways. The question is, will you give him all your blood and your mortal life to keep him meeting with you, and the others?”
“Hey,” Violet says, shaking loose. “I am in it for hot sex and the make-believe. Let her empty her veins; they look cold enough.”
“Ah,” Suzanne hems on the way to hawing. “My real patients need me with such a nursing shortage, and the hospitals do not even allow daylight vampires on their staffs. Conflict of interest. Sorry.”
Miss Delilah keeps their upper arms in custody and gives them the joint bum’s rush while I silently cheer her on. Miss Six P.M. and Miss Noon equally disgust me. Not even one tremor of concern for Damien. Or his bereft Vesper. Or little Wasp-Wing. Maybe they do not know about his dependents, but tough. I bet he knows about theirs.
“One more,” Miss Delilah said, peering out the door at the assembled women. “And here she comes, I think. Last but clearly not least.”
I am curious enough to jump off the side chair and peer through my temporary partner’s bejeaned legs.
Miss Delilah probably brushes six feet in her stilettos, but she is wearing low-heeled mules now and the oncoming female is likely six feet barefoot. She catwalks through the door in an off-the-shoulder red spandex top and Capri pants. She strides into the room on wooden platform sandals that tie around her ankles. Her hair is a blond ponytail that falls to where her tail would start were she feline, literally as well as figuratively.
“Vyrle, the six P.M. appointment, I presume,” Miss Delilah says.
“Who are you?”
“The name is Delilah Street. I am helping Damien with his condition.”
“Which is?”
“Terminal.”
“A dying vampire? That is a new one.” Vyrle hungrily eyes the closed bedroom door. “I can bring him to life again.”
“So can anyone who will sacrifice all her, or his, blood to Damien and live as a vampire forever.”
“Not my ambition.”
“What is your ambition?”
“To earn fifty thou a week at the Karnak Cleopatra spectacular show, and I am doing that. Damien was one of my daily pre-show energy-pumping techniques. And that alley cat is sniffing my shoes! Scat! Sultans have bid hundreds of thousands for a one-time onstage-used pair.”
Eeew. My nose retreats in haste. There are shoe fetishes, like some women’s high heel collections, and then there are creepy shoe fetishes, which this lady’s wealthy fans indulge.
Besides, I have learned all I needed to know. My first impression from her overbearing perfume has been confirmed by her stinky feet.
The nose knows. This Vyrle dame is the dart thrower, live and in person. All I need now is a way to tip off Miss Delilah.
But my partner seems to be following her own line of inquiry. “So you would not renounce all that fame and fortune to save Damien? If you were a vampire you would get to bleed your admirers physically as well as financially.”
Vyrle snorts her disdain and tosses her pony tail so haughtily I am tempted to leap up, tangle my shivs in it and pull hard.
When Miss Delilah mentions the reserved table and the free drink while she checks Damien’s condition, the Karnak high-kicker amazes me by accepting the offer.
“Excellent,” Miss Delilah tells me, or the room, just herself after Vyrle sashays out. “All our suspects are corralled for the denouement. Now to approach our would-be victim again.”
Hot dog! As tragic as the situation could become, I will be able to feast on Vesper’s beauty again.
Inside the bedroom, Damien lies, the usual pale and wan.
Miss Delilah arranges herself on the foot of his bed. “We have a candidate for your full revival.”
“My clients came when you called?”
“To a woman. Everyone. They are a varied bunch.”
He smiles faintly.
“And some seem to owe more to you than you to them. Are you tamed predator or prey?”
“Neither, I hope. I am fond of all my clients, each in her own way.”
“Well, one of them is not fond of you. Midnight Louie has tagged the dart thrower for me, and you.”
I may swoon. I am actually being given full credit for my sleuthing powers. What a novel experience! I must work with this wonderful lady more often.
Damien frowns. “You know the motive?”
“Jealousy.”
“How? I see them separately. They never meet.”
“Now they have.”
He winces.
“But none of that matters. I have found one who will happily give blood and be turned for you.”
“That is amazing. I would never ask that of anyone.”
“She volunteered.”
“Was it Violet? I would think she would be thrilled by the opportunity.”
“She was not, alas. The Goth stuff is a pose, not a true vocation.”
“Vocation?”
“The word surprises you?”
“It is just an…odd way to put it.”
“I never mind being odd.”
“Then,” he says, “it must be Corrine. A sad, lonely woman with no hope of a human romance after losing her beloved husband. She would make a loving daylight vampire.”
“So you consider your role as therapy as much as a survival and sexual exercise?”
“There must be more than just sex for any relationship to endure, no?”
“I am asking what you think.”
“I could not do what I do, give passion, if I had no compassion.”
“Alas, not everyone is like that. Not every woman. But you will pleased to know that your secret enemy is not an ordinary woman.”
“If Violet and Corrine are not willing to become vampire, it must be Suzanne. She is the soul of tenderness.”
Miss Delilah Street smiles. “Your expectations do you honor, Damien, but then it is always about honor for you, is that not true?”
“What little honor one can find in these days,” he mutters.
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