Many Bloody Returns

by Charlaine Harris

  There were other cars in Margaret’s driveway, including what looked like unmarked police cars and three silver Lexuses. Lawyers’ cars.

  Margaret was a wreck. Her eyes were deeply bagged and swollen. Her jawline sagged nearly as badly as mine. All my husband’s fine work was undone. I felt petty for noticing. She’s a new widow, I told myself. Show some pity.

  “Katherine!” Margaret ran weeping into my arms, smearing my jacket with makeup.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, patting her nearly fleshless back. I could feel her thin bones. It wasn’t a lie. I was sorry for so many things, including the death of our friendship. Women need the sympathy of our own kind. Margaret had destroyed even that small comfort for me.

  “Come into the garden where we can talk,” she said. “The police are searching Jack’s home office. Three lawyers from his firm and a court-appointed guardian are arguing over what papers they can take.”

  We sat at an umbrella table near a bubbling fountain. Palms rustled overhead. Impatiens bloomed at our feet. It looked like every other garden in Florida. A Hispanic maid brought iced tea, lemon slices, and two kinds of artificial sweetener.

  “May I have sugar, please?” I asked.

  “Sugar?” the maid said, as if she’d never heard the word.

  “You use sugar?” Margaret might be dazed with grief, but she was still surprised by my request. In our crowd, sleeping with a friend’s husband was a faux pas. Taking sugar in your tea was a serious sin.

  “Doctor’s orders,” I said. “Sweeteners are out. Cancer in the family.”

  Actually, I liked real sugar. And it was only eighteen calories a spoonful.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Margaret said. Two more tears escaped her swollen eyelids. “I thought Jack was seeing someone, and that’s why he worked late so often these last few weeks. I was furious, but I couldn’t say anything. I was too afraid.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  She flushed with guilt.

  “My husband went to see Jack,” I said. “So I know how you feel.”

  Margaret had the grace to say nothing. I appreciated that.

  “Do you think Jack’s lover killed him?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know now if he had a lover. One of the firm’s associates found Jack in the parking lot when she came to work at six this morning. Maybe he really had been working late. I had to identify him. Jack didn’t look dead so much as…empty. Someone took all his blood. It wasn’t some slashing attack. Just two holes in the side of his neck. There were bruises, too. Terrible bruises on his wrists, legs, and shoulders.”

  “Was he beaten?” I asked.

  “No. They think someone—or maybe more than one person—held him down while he was—while they—” Margaret couldn’t go on.

  “Do the police think it was a serial killer?” I asked.

  “They won’t say. But the way they’re acting, I know it’s strange. There were other attacks like this in Lauderdale. Jack wasn’t the only person to die like this.”

  “No,” I said. “Eric told me that the woman found off of Bayview had been drained dry, too. He heard that from the medical examiner’s office. The police kept it out of the papers.”

  “It’s like some nightmare,” Margaret said, “except I can’t wake up. Mindy is flying home this afternoon from college. This will be so hard for our daughter. Mindy idolized her father.” Margaret started weeping again.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. If we’d still been friends, I would have folded Margaret in my arms. But she had betrayed me. I knew it, and she knew it.

  I was saved by a homicide detective and a lawyer.

  “Margaret,” the lawyer said, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but we have some more questions about your husband.”

  “I’d better go,” I said. “I’ll let myself out.” I air-kissed her cheek. It took all my self-control to keep from running for my car.

  Once, I would have called my husband and told him the awful news. Now I didn’t. What could I say? You know that lawyer you hired to strip me of my last dime? The son of a bitch was murdered. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

  I suspected Eric already knew about Jack’s death. He was probably looking for a new bloodsucker.

  I spent the afternoon taking calls from Margaret’s shocked friends, pretending to be sad and concerned and hating myself because I couldn’t feel any of it. Instead, I felt oddly excited. I broiled a skinless chicken breast, steamed some broccoli, and waited for my husband to come home.

  At eleven o’clock, there was still no sign of Eric. He didn’t bother to phone me. I didn’t humiliate myself by calling around asking for him.

  What if he turned up dead, like Jack? I wondered. Then my troubles would be over. I felt guilty even thinking that. But it was true.

  At three in the morning, I woke up alone and drenched in sweat. Night sweats, another menopausal delight. I punched my soggy pillow and tried to settle back to sleep. At three-thirty, I gave up. I reached for my jeans, then abandoned that idea. Instead, I pulled out a long, nearly sheer hostess gown that looked glamorous in the soft moonlight.

  I wasn’t going for a walk. I was going hunting. For Michael.

  There was no party tonight. His condo was dark except for flickering candles in the living room and the opalescent light of a television. Michael was alone, like me. He couldn’t sleep, either.

  He was waiting for me down by the Dark Harbor docks. At first, I heard nothing but the gentle slap of the water and the clinking of the halyards as the boats rocked back and forth. It was a peaceful sound. A light breeze ruffled my hair and pressed my gown against my body.

  “You dressed for me, didn’t you?” he said.

  Michael seemed to appear from nowhere. His white shirt, open at the throat and rolled at the sleeves, glowed in the moonlight. His hair was black as onyx, but so soft. I longed to run my fingers through it.

  “Yes,” I said.

  His hand touched my hair and traced the line of my neck. I stepped back. It wouldn’t do to seem too eager too soon.

  Michael smiled, as if he could read my mind. “You don’t have to play games,” he said.

  “I’m not playing games,” I said. “I’m being cautious. I don’t know anything about you. Are you married?”

  “My wife has been dead for many years. I live alone.”

  “You have such lovely parties.” I couldn’t keep the wistful note out of my voice.

  “I have many friends. We enjoy the night.”

  “I do, too,” I said. “I’m tired of the Florida sun. It burns the life out of everything.”

  “You may be one of us,” Michael said. “I’d like to see more of you, before I go.”

  “Go?” The word clutched at my heart. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m selling the condo. Nobody stays long in Florida. You know that. Will you be here tomorrow night? May I see you again?”

  “Three o’clock,” I said. “Same time, same place.”

  There. I’d done it. I’d made a date with another man. My marriage was over, except for the legalities. It was time to face the future. Maybe, if I was lucky, I’d have Michael in my life. If not, I’d find someone else. He’d shown me that I was still attractive. I was grateful for that. I’d let Eric destroy my confidence.

  I turned around for one last look, but Michael was gone. Only then did I realize he hadn’t asked if I was married. I wondered if he knew. Or cared.

  Eric was waiting for me when I returned, tapping his foot like an impatient parent.

  “Where were you?” he said.

  “I could ask you the same question,” I said.

  “I was with a patient,” he said.

  “Administering more special injections?” I said. “Patricia says they’re wonderful for the complexion. I wouldn’t know. It’s been so long I’ve forgotten.”

  “You’re certifiable.” Eric turned the attack back on me. He was good at
that. “Jack is dead. Murdered! Some freak drank his blood. And you’re roaming the streets at night like an Alzheimer’s patient. I should hire a keeper.”

  I should hire a hit man, I thought. But I held in my harsh words. I didn’t need Eric now. I had Michael.

  “Good night,” I said. “I’m sleeping in the guest room.”

  “You can’t—”

  I didn’t stop to hear what I couldn’t do. I locked the guest room door and put fresh sheets on the bed. What I am doing? I wondered. I have a three a.m. rendezvous with a man I don’t know. There’s a murderer running loose in my neighborhood. Yet I’d never felt safer or more at peace. I slept blissfully until ten in the morning. I woke up with just enough time to get ready for my literacy board meeting.

  As I walked into the dark paneled board room, I caught snatches of conversation: “he was drained dry…don’t know when they’ll have a funeral…Margaret is devastated.”

  All anyone could talk about was Jack’s murder, at least until the board meeting started. Then we had to listen to Nancy blather on about bylaws changes. She’d kept the board tied up with this pointless minutiae for the last eight months.

  Once I saw myself as a philanthropist, dispensing our money to improve the lives of the disadvantaged. But I’d sat on too many charity boards. Now I knew how little was possible. Here I was in another endless meeting, listening to a debate about whether the organization’s president should remain a figurehead or have a vote on the board.

  How did this debate help one poor child learn to read? I wondered.

  “Katherine?”

  I looked up. The entire board was staring at me.

  “How do you vote on the motion: yes or no?” Nancy asked.

  “Yes.” I wasn’t saying yes to the motion, whatever it was. I was saying yes to a new life.

  Mercifully, the board meeting was over at noon. I dodged any offers of lunch and went straight home. I spent three hours on the Internet, looking at my career options. Work couldn’t be any worse than board meetings. Then I’d get ready for my date with Michael.

  By four that afternoon, I’d decided to become a librarian. It would only take another three years of college. The pay was decent. The benefits were not bad. The job prospects were good. I’d be a useful member of society, which was more than I could say for myself now.

  I pushed away the memory of Elizabeth’s dreary apartment and made an appointment with a feminist lawyer. Tomorrow, we would discuss my divorce. Today, I wanted to think about my date with Michael.

  I washed my hair, so it would have a soft curl. I applied a mango-honey face mask and swiped Eric’s razor to de-fuzz my legs. Eric hated when I did that. I hoped the dull razor would rip his face off tomorrow morning. I sprayed his shaving cream on my long legs. I was now covered with goo from head to toe. Naturally, the doorbell rang.

  Who was that?

  I looked out the peephole. A young woman with a cheap blond dye job was on my doorstep. Her skirt was some bright, shiny material, and her tight halter top barely covered her massive breasts. I’d seen her before, at Eric’s office.

  “Just a minute,” I called, and quickly wiped off the shaving cream and the mango mask.

  When I opened the door, I was hit by a gust of perfume.

  “Yes?” I said. “You’re from Eric’s office. Is there a problem?”

  “There is.” She boldly walked into my home and sat down on my couch. “My name is Dawn. I’m Eric’s office manager.”

  And his lover. The recognition was a punch in the face. Eric was leaving me for this big-titted cliché. I stood there in silence, hoping to make this husband-stealing tramp squirm. She’d have to do the talking.

  Dawn came right out with her request. “We want to get married,” she said.

  “We?”

  “Eric and I.”

  “He’s married to me,” I said.

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Dawn smiled. She had small, feral teeth, and smooth skin. Eric would revel in that flawless skin. How my husband would love to put a knife into it. He had the gall to try to improve perfection.

  “If you make it easy for me, I’ll make it easy for you,” Dawn said. “I’ll make sure you get a nice allowance. You drag us through the courts, and I’ll fight you every step of the way.”

  “You’re threatening me in my own living room?” I said.

  “It won’t be yours for long,” Dawn said. She looked around at my carefully decorated room. “No wonder Eric doesn’t like to hang here. It’s like a funeral parlor. White couches in Florida. Hello? Can you say corny? This place needs some life.

  “Oh, dear, you’ve got some gunk on your forehead. Those do-it-yourself beauty treatments don’t work. Should have gone to your husband for help. You might still have time. But maybe not. He can only do so much.”

  I sat there, speechless, while the little slut sauntered past me. I picked up the first thing I could find, a delicate gold-trimmed Limoges dish—a wedding present—and threw it at her. Too late. She’d already shut the door.

  The dish shattered with a satisfying sound. Plates, glasses, candy dishes, even a soup tureen followed, until the hall’s marble floor was crunchy with smashed crockery and broken glass. It took me an hour to sweep it up and drop it down the trash chute. I knew Eric wouldn’t miss any of it. He wouldn’t even notice anything was gone. These were the things I loved. I wondered if the slut would be dining off my best china and drinking from my remaining wedding crystal. Over my dead body. Better yet, over hers.

  I cleaned off the remnants of the mango-honey mask and shaved my legs with a shaky hand. I had a date with a man at three o’clock in the morning. What kind of time was that? I nicked my leg and watched a small drop of blood well up. Blood.

  Three a.m. was a good time for a vampire.

  That’s what Michael was, wasn’t he? Who else had drained Jack dry but a vampire? What else could Michael and his sleek, night-loving friends be?

  I expected to feel shocked and horrified, but I didn’t. Michael and his friends did me a favor by killing Jack. If they’d killed Eric, I would have been the center of a murder investigation. Instead, they gave me a little more time to arrange my life before it self-destructed.

  Was Michael a danger to me? I didn’t think so. If he’d wanted to kill me, he’d had many opportunities. No, Michael wanted more than a quick kill. But what, exactly? His conversation was full of innuendoes, invitations, and explanations.

  “I feel your yearning. It makes you very beautiful—and very vulnerable.”

  “My wife has been dead for many years. I live alone.”

  “I have many friends. We enjoy the night.”

  “You may be one of us.”

  Michael had told me what he was, if I had listened carefully. Did I want to be one of his beautiful friends? Could I kill other people?

  Depends, I thought. I could kill lawyers like Jack, doctors like my husband, and that little bitch who waltzed into my house and claimed my husband like a piece of lost luggage.

  I wondered about the other woman who’d been drained dry. Who was she? Did she deserve to die? I didn’t have her name, but I knew the date she’d died and the street where she was found—Forty-seventh, off of Bayview.

  A quick Internet search found the story in the Sun-Sentinel. The dead woman was forty-five, divorced, an IRS auditor. Another deserving victim. Another bloodsucker. Eric and I’d been audited one long, hot summer. The IRS found one small error, but the accountant and lawyer bills to defend ourselves were tremendous. We would have had more rights if we’d been accused of murder instead of cheating on our income tax.

  Yes, I could kill an IRS auditor. I could hand out justice to the unjust. In my new life, I would punish the wicked. I would be super-woman—invisible by day, fearless by night. That beat being a divorced librarian living in a garden apartment.

  I hardly tasted my dinner, I was so excited by my new life. Not that my dinner had much flavor: four ounces of boneless, ski
nless, joyless chicken and romaine with fat-free dressing.

  For dessert, I treated myself to two ounces of dark chocolate and a delicious daydream of Michael. It had been a long time since any man had wanted me. And this man had so much to give me.

  I watched the full moon rise and paced my condo. Eric didn’t come home that night. I didn’t expect him to. I was glad. I was in no mood to confront him.

  I dug out my favorite black Armani dress. It was specially designed to cover my flaws. The high neck hid the crepe under my chin. The short sleeves disguised the unsightly wings under my arms that no workouts could eliminate. The short hem showed my legs at their best. I put on sexy high-heeled sandals. They were dangerous on the docks, but I was living dangerously these days.

  Michael was waiting for me outside my condo. He’d come to me this time. His hair was black as a midnight ocean. His luminous skin was like moonlight on snow. He kissed me, and his lips were soft and surprisingly warm.

  “You know who we are, don’t you?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I want to be like you.”

  “You must be sure. You must have no illusions before you adopt our way of life. You must ask me any questions tonight.”

  “Are you immortal?” I said.

  “Almost,” he said. “We can be killed by fire, by sunlight, and by wooden stakes through the heart. All natural elements.”

  “What about crosses and holy water?”

  He laughed. “There were vampires long before there were Christians.”

  “What will happen to me? How will I become one of you?”

  “I will make you a vampire by giving you my blood. I will take yours. Don’t be frightened. It’s not painful. You’ll find it quite exhilarating. Once the transference is complete, you must make your first kill.”

  “Will I change? Will I look different?”

  “You’ll look like yourself, only more beautiful. Any wrinkles will vanish. Any physical flaws will disappear. You’ll quickly attain your ideal weight. Our people are never fat.”

  Vampirism—the ultimate low-fat diet. I wanted to smile. But suddenly, I couldn’t joke. The changes were profound, and frightening. “I’ll never be able to eat food again.” I felt a sudden desperate pain at what I would have to give up.