by Molly Harper
Page 3
I was one of a few vampires in the Hollow who chose to maintain relationships with the living after being turned. Studies showed that most vampires who had turned since tax consultant/vampire Arnie Frink outed us with his right-to-work lawsuit dropped out of sight and moved to big cities such as New York or New Orleans. They became assimilated into the large populations of vampires and learned how to adjust to their new lifestyles … or they became addicted to chemically enhanced blood, passed out in a gutter, and woke up as the rising sun fried them to a crisp. At least, that’s what Mama told me when I mentioned that I might go to St. Louis for a seminar called “Emerging Issues for the Postmillennial Undead. ” Apparently, Oprah did a whole show on “Vampires Led Astray. ”
And somehow, I’d made it onto the undead junk-mail radar. I started receiving advertisements for Sans Solar sun-blocking drapes and specialized vampire “sleeping compartments,” which were basically coffins. But at least I’d stopped getting credit-card applications. After the government considers you dead, credit-card companies are less likely to extend a credit line to you. It’s the one discriminatory attitude toward vampires that’s fine by me.
But even the undead could appreciate the magical air in the Hollow as Christmas approached. The early December temperatures, always a crap shoot in western Kentucky, were hovering in the mid-40s. As a human, I’d been a summer person. But when “getting a little color on your cheeks” could leave you with third-degree burns and/or permanent death, you learn to appreciate the joys of winter. The days were getting shorter, meaning that I could get up and around earlier. The cold brought a sharpness to the scents of the living, bright splashes of scent against a misty gray.
The chill also gave me an excuse to wear the sleek new black coat I’d bought on a rather disastrous shopping trip with Andrea. She took me on a tour of these nice underground shops (not literally) on the outskirts of Memphis. And I didn’t buy a damn thing but the coat. But at least I no longer looked like I was walking around in a big puffy sleeping bag.
Christmas in the Hollow means spitting snow that never amounts to anything but still sends everyone running for bread and milk. It means exchanging decorative tins of cookies with acquaintances you don’t like that much. It’s mall Santas who arrive in fire trucks and challenging your neighborhood to a round of competitive outdoor decorating. Because you’re not really celebrating the birth of Jesus unless your house can be spotted by passing aircraft.
I stamped the whopping half-inch of snow (mostly sleet and mud) from my boots as I neared the door of Specialty Books. The familiar smell of dust and crumbling paper greeted me as I called out to Mr. Wainwright. The shop was much cleaner than it had been that fateful night when I had wandered in and narrowly missed a shelf collapsing on top of me. Well, the mess was newer. We had at least lined up the bookshelves so that customers could navigate without climbing. The soft hum of fluorescent lighting flickered over piles of browning paperbacks and splitting leather bindings. Gilt titles, rubbed away by loving fingers, glinted dully from their piles. I slid my shoulder bag behind the counter and surveyed the damage Mr. Wainwright had wrought since I had left twelve hours before.
Trying to organize the shop was an uphill battle, and I was making no progress. It wasn’t that Mr. Wainwright ignored my efforts, but when he looked for something, he had this way of tearing through like a tornado. We had a system: I spent three days painstakingly arranging a subject section; he destroyed it in less than an hour. It was like working for a slightly dangerous three-year-old.
I was, however, proud of the fact that there were no longer dead spiders occupying an entire shelf in the reference section. They were now occupying a jar in Mr. Wainwright’s office. He’s a nice man. I try not to ask questions.
Our evening routine consisted of two hours of cleaning and boxing the online orders. Then, with no customers to speak of, he would make tea or warm bottled blood, and we would sit at the counter. He would tell me stories of his travels across the world seeking demon artifacts, vampire horde houses, and packs of rare were-creatures. He even spent five years in Manitoba searching for Sasquatch.
“Hello? Mr. Wainwright?” I called again. I would never get to a point where I could call him by his first name. A person who knows that there was more than one Brontë sister deserves to be addressed with respect.
“Back here, Jane,” came a muffled voice from the rear of the shop.
I followed his voice to the stockroom, which we had only rediscovered the night before. Mr. Wainwright had “misplaced” the door behind a rack of old Tales from the Crypt comics sometime in the mid-1980s.
“Mr. Wainwright?” I saw two brown loafers sticking out from under a carton in a horrible parody of The Wizard of Oz. Mr. Wainwright’s about eighty years old and looks as if you could snap him like kindling. His being pinned under a giant box of heavy books was not going to keep my paltry part-time employment checks coming in.
“Are you all right?” I cried, lifting the box off him with little effort.
“Oh, thank you, Jane,” he said, sitting up from his spot on the floor. He seemed to have made the best of his predicament. His ever-present lumpy gray cardigan was pillowed under his head. Clutched in one hand was an old dog-eared copy of Stephen King’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes. “Fortunately, when the box fell on me, this bounced off my head. I haven’t read it in years. You must admire the universal accessibility of Mr. King. He scares the bejesus out of me every time. ”
“And he’s the reason I have clown issues,” I said, shuddering at the thought of It. “How long have you been down here?”
He rolled his shoulders. “Oh, three or four hours at the most. ”
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“I’m tougher than I look,” he said as I lifted him up and set him on a dusty folding chair.
“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to try to move things around without me here? After yesterday. When the other box fell on you,” I said, struggling to keep a patient tone. I couldn’t believe I was the practical one in this relationship.
“Well, yes, but I wasn’t trying to move anything, I was searching for the light switch, you see, and knocked the shelving unit over. I remembered a book I left in here that I thought you might be interested in,” he said.
“You remembered a book you left in here twenty years ago?” I asked him. “What am I saying, of course you did. Why don’t you tell me where it is, and I’ll get it for you?”
“Yes, I think that would be best,” he said. “Top shelf. In the box marked ‘Bell Witch. ’ ”
I spider-climbed nimbly up the wall and plucked the box from the top shelf. Mr. Wainwright was grinning like a kid with a new comic book. He always got excited when I manifested my vampire powers. I unfolded the top of the carton and then thought better of it.
“If I put my hand in this box, is there anything that will bite, sting, cut, burn, or turn me into dust?”
This is one of the problems with working in an occult store. The previous week, I nearly lost a digit to a diary whose lock clapped a silver trap around keyless fingers. Vampires are allergic to silver. Touching it feels like a combination of burning, itching, and being forced to lick dry ice. If Mr. Wainwright hadn’t come along with the suspicious little lock-busting gizmo he carries in his pocket, I wouldn’t be able to make all those shadow puppets I like so much.
Mr. Wainwright chewed his lip. “Just to be safe, I’ll do the honors. ”
From the cobwebby, mouse-stained cardboard, Mr. Wainwright pulled a book titled The Spectrum of Vampirism. “Here we are,” he said, handing it to me. “I thought you might find this useful. It’s very good, written by a Harvard fellow named Milton Winstead in the 1920s. ”
“Harvard?”
“Well, they can’t all be law scholars and presidential candidates. ” Mr. Wainwright shrugged.
“There are actual shades of vampirism?” I asked, rea
ding over the table of contents and flipping to a chapter.
Vampires do not produce their own blood cells, which is why they must consume blood. The ingested blood is infused with the vampire’s essence when metabolized, giving the vampire the ability to turn others. A vampire’s power depends on the amount of vampire blood consumed during transformation. To make a childe, a vampire will feed on a victim until he or she reaches the point of death. The sire must be careful not to leave the initiate unconscious or unable to consume the blood needed to complete the transformation, usually two to three pints. The process is literally draining for the sire, meaning that a vampire will create only two or three children in his or her considerable lifetime.
The stronger and older a vampire is at the point of creating a childe, the more likely that childe is to be a “healthy” vampire. A quick or careless turning can result in a sickly vampire, who may suffer from the vampire’s weaknesses—sensitivity to sunlight and silver—but few of the strengths. Some humans seek this level of vampirism to achieve eternal youth and enhanced beauty. Several devotees of the theatrical profession have been rumored to have partaken in this ritual over the years.
“Huh, I thought vampirism was pretty much a yea-or-nay proposition. ”
“Oh, no, no,” Mr. Wainwright said. “There are many subtle levels of vampirism, of power and ability. You see, there is so much for you to learn. It’s so exciting for me to be here with you for the journey from bloodthirsty neophyte to sophisticated veteran vampire. ”
“Happy to oblige,” I said, shrugging amiably. “Although technically, I’ve never been what you’d call bloodthirsty. ”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, dear,” he said. “But don’t you see how lucky you are? Vampires are among the few beings who trace their history as they live it. You can see the past, present, and future. You know who your great-great-grandparents, great-grandparents, and grandparents are. As your children or, in your case, nephews—now, don’t make that face, dear—as your nephews have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, you’ll be able to watch them grow and live and die, each generation, if you take care of yourself, for eternity. ”
Staggered by the depressing nature of that thought, I patted his hands. “But you can do that, too, just on a smaller scale. I mean, everybody around here knows who their great-grandparents are. And you have your nephew. You’ve been able to watch him grow up and have children. ”
“My nephew moved to Guatemala for mission work nearly five years ago, and I rarely hear from him. I don’t see him having children, if there is a just and loving God. ” Mr. Wainwright shook his head fondly at the mention of Emery, his late sister’s Bible-thumping, personality-free son. “And I don’t know who my great-grandparents were, at least not any relatives in this area. My mother was from up north, upstate New York, and my father died when I was very young. I’m afraid their union wasn’t a very happy one, and she didn’t keep many of his things. He rarely spoke to her about his family. And it seemed to upset her to talk about him. It might have been nice to have relatives, but from what I can see, it’s a sort of genetic crapshoot. You’re not likely to end up related to people you like. ”
“Case in point, my grandma Ruthie. But then you have wonderful chromosomal coincidences like my aunt Jettie and my dad. ” He smiled. “How about I start clearing through these boxes and you can get back to the Internet orders?”
“Wonderful,” he said. “And Jane, dear—”
“Don’t throw anything away without showing it to you first,” I repeated. “How was I supposed to know that was spirit writing? It looked like a bunch of doodles on a cocktail napkin. ”
By the time Mr. Wainwright brought me an ancient Limoges teacup filled with microwaved pig’s blood, I was covered in a fine layer of dust but had cleared away most of the stock into “Keep,” “Throw Away,” and “Burn on Consecrated Ground” piles.
“Thanks,” I said, accepting the cup with a grateful nonbeating heart.
“There’s a young man asking for you up front, Jane,” he said as I sipped. “I think he’s one of your kind. He looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t quite place him. ”
“Did he mention working for the council?” I asked. “Things tend to go badly for me when they drop by for a visit. ”
“I doubt it,” Mr. Wainwright said. “He’s wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor. ’ I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vampire in a novelty T-shirt before. Extraordinary, really. ”
That could only be one vampire.
Richard Cheney, whom I delight in calling Dick, is an old friend of Gabriel’s—about 150 years old. Buddies from the cradle, they split over a gambling debt in their early twenties. Dick was turned eleven years later, also over a gambling debt. Do you see a pattern here? Dick is the local center for not-quite-legitimate commerce. If you want something, just ask Dick. But don’t ask where, how, or which international laws he broke while procuring it. Also, you’ll want to pay in cash.
It wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected to blend my one living friend into my new undead circle. Dick and Zeb got along famously. As Dick put it, Zeb “grows on you, like a stray, spazzy puppy that followed you home. ” And Zeb and Gabriel built a friendship on the shared experience of saving my ass from Missy, Dick’s murderous ex. Even better, Zeb had somehow formed a bridge between Gabriel and Dick, former childhood friends who had turned eternal life into a prolonged male pissing contest. Thanks to the time they’d spent with Zeb, Gabriel and Dick had declared something of a ceasefire. And while they certainly weren’t going to be getting matching tattoos anytime soon, at least Dick had stopped leaving silver shavings on Gabriel’s furniture.