Supernatural Vigilante series Box Set

by D. R. Perry

  "Is Sebastian Caprice getting, er, friendly with Sarah and Leora enough incentive for you?"

  "Valentino Crispo, you've got yourself a deal."

  "A deal?" Frankie walks back through the door, Sparky trailing behind him.

  "Yes." Raven nods. "Go get some graph paper from the study, Frankie. Some drafting pencils too. I’m making a map."

  "I love maps!" Sparky claps his hands, almost dropping the blue bucket tucked under his arm.

  "You're supposed to be somewhere else, kid. Go up to bed, or I send you back to Baba’s."

  "Okay, buddy." Sparky shuffles toward the hall and the stairway. "Whatever you say."

  Frankie follows Sparky up shortly after with some sodas and school supplies. Raven and I work on the map for a while.

  Esther finally arrives, coming in through the kitchen door instead of the front. The green glow of magic tells me she’s either got an alchemy gadget that lets her unlock doors, or she’s activating a ward on the way in here. She doesn’t give me a chance to ask which.

  “I heard some brainless twat-waffle got his fucking arm clawed off.”

  Esther stomps up to the empty chair beside me, then drops the large laundry sack off her shoulder. It hits the floor with a hollow thud. She turns the chair around and sits on it, leaning her arms on the tall wooden back.

  “Yup, that’s about right.” I close the pad I was taking notes on and set the pencil down.

  “Let’s see that shit.” Esther holds out one hand.

  I shrug off my opera cloak, draping it on the chair, and turn toward her.

  For once, Esther is speechless. Eventually, she manages a low whistle.

  “Tell me you’re not about to catcall my stump.”

  “What do you think I am, some kind of twisted shit-turnip?”

  “Well, no.” I stare at the sack beside Esther’s booted feet to avoid looking anyone in the eye. “It’s bad, huh?”

  “I’ve been worse.” She slaps the table. “Seen. I fucking meant seen.”

  “Look, I saw your urn.” I’m talking about the one with the memory of how she lost her arm in it, from Mnemosyne’s vault. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it sucks hairy, wet donkey ass.” Esther leans down to rummage in the giant bag. “But I’ll stop acting like an ingrate turdmonger and pretending you don’t know shit.”

  “You’re welcome.” Honestly, there’s nothing else I can think of to say to that.

  “Fucking-a, you are.” She chuckles, then sits up. “Can’t use any fucking wood on a damn vampire, so this fake plastic crap ought to do it.”

  Esther’s holding what looks like a handful of drafting supplies. She’s got rulers, angles, even a French curve. I blink, looking from her to Raven to the graph paper map on the table.

  “Uh, are you helping Raven with that drawing project or me with my arm?”

  “Well, that’s some coincidental fucking nonsense.” Esther barks out a laugh. “This shit’s not for them. It’s gonna be your goddamned arm.”

  After that, Esther’s so involved in her alchemical spellwork I can’t justify interrupting her. Which is bad because I wanted to ask her about Hargrove’s Post-it note. But a substitute arm is more of a priority for me at the moment. There will be time later on for the other stuff.

  But I’m wrong. The arm rigging takes all night. It’s practically miraculous how Esther took a collection of seemingly random plastic items and made them into a fully articulated limb. Even the fingers move like an actual hand’s.

  Esther’s nodding in her seat at the table. She even snores a couple of times. Raven pauses in their mapmaking to settle the alchemist in on the sofa. Unfortunately, this all happens before she can attach the arm to my shoulder. On the bright side, it’s a good time for me to get some rest as well.

  Before turning in for the morning, I manage to find a magnetic compass in the parlor’s sideboard. I also drop the heavy curtains over the bay window, making the room lightless enough for me to get into the tunnel behind the portrait the next day.

  Finally, years out of high school, I’ll get to satisfy my curiosity and see the inside of hoity-toity Stout Academy for the first time.

  Missing an arm and vamped, but nothing and nobody in this world is perfect.

  Chapter Eleven

  My footsteps echo as I walk down cobblestone-floored tunnels with walls made of pockmarked brick. Most of the human population knows that there are catacombs under Providence but not about the ones that stretch underneath Warwick Neck. I'm alone, so I don't need a light, but I have to hold the map and the compass in one hand. It's not easy, but it's doable.

  Every now and again, I check my bearings against the lines on the graph paper. I'm almost at where the turnoff is for Stout Academy's theater basement, and there it is. A slab of granite juts up from the floor beside the corner I need to turn.

  I bang a right and fold my map, then tuck it away in a pocket of my opera cloak before reaching out to try the doorknob. The compass clatters to the stone at my feet. I bend to pick it up, scooping it from the cold surface into my not much warmer fingers.

  Instead of putting it in my pocket, I take the keyring it's attached to and hook it on my belt loop. You never know when you're going to need a compass while tooling around strange places without being able to see the sky. Not that I was ever able to navigate by the stars.

  I step to one side and reach for the doorknob again. It's not where I think it will be. The right-hand side of the door is as barren as a scorched field. The door feels like maybe it's had that experience, too. Which doesn't make me happy because fire bad, vampire no like.

  I stop and think, wondering how I'm supposed to get in, and what the point of a tunnel is when it's got doors with no knobs, handles, or latches. I know some of the Pickering ancestors had cockamamie ideas, but this is just plain ridiculous.

  Leaning against the door, I contemplate my next course of action. Thinking doesn't do much. I'm uninspired because dammit, I'm a PI, not a contractor. Or whatever you call people who design secret underground doors.

  There's a million-dollar question I always ask myself almost every time I'm this stuck. So I wonder what would Maury do, standing outside the door he’d already know how to just walk on through.

  By Jove, I think I've got it.

  I reach across my body to the other side of the door. Sure enough, there's a minuscule latch blending its bad self in with the old, scarred wood it’s embedded in. A rocket scientist I am not, but that should come as no surprise to you at this point. I lift the latch with my hand, then push.

  Nothing happens. Well, that's not exactly true. The latch moves, flattening down like one of those levers on the back of a garlic press. Except there’s no garlic anywhere, unfortunately, and thank goodness. I simultaneously pine for its loss and curse its presence nightly. But anyway, the door doesn't move forward. So I take the next logical action. No, not busting boards. I’m not some door-kicking maniac.

  There's this old comic, the kind that used to run when everybody read print newspapers. One frame, sight gag, often punny. I used to love those. Anyway, the one I'm remembering has a picture of The School for the Gifted and Talented. The kid outside leans on the door, pushing with all his might. And right above his head, in bold black lettering, is the word Pull.

  Today I feel like that kid, and I'm supposed to be teaching a handful of teenagers. At least their lesson doesn't have anything to do with opening and closing doors. Because apparently, I could still use some more practice with that. Yeah, I'm a freaking genius.

  I pull. It works. I step through.

  The new room is a broom closet. Literally. I know this because I almost stake myself on an errant handle while bumbling around in there. Who am I kidding? I don’t bumble, I flail like my mom when there’s a spider in the kitchen. Well, as much as I can. It’s a broom closet, not a ballroom, after all.

  The door opens, and I’m face to face with the last person I wanted to see in the middle of the day a
t Stout Academy.

  “Tino?” Zack Milano blinks, then throws his head back and lets out a rolling belly laugh.

  I can’t be mad at him, either. I’m literally wearing a mop on my head. I reach up and toss it aside.

  “Guilty as charged.” I shrug, knocking the broom that’s trying to get too friendly with my ribcage against the wall behind me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Volunteering. You?”

  “Same thing.”

  “Ha!” Zack snorts, then looks down his nose at me. “If I let you.”

  “Wow. Really friendly talk, especially considering the solid I did you just recently.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Zack doesn’t hang his head. Which, I mean, he should. I only gave him back his memories about being a powerful magician and all. But he averts his eyes, at least.

  “Yeah.” I put my hands on my hips. Nothing helps a vamp wax assertive like someone owing one of us a favor.

  “Fine, then.” He rolls his eyes, but he meets my gaze afterward. “Coming out of the literal closet?” He steps aside.

  “Yeah, sure, fine, whatever.” I walk right past him, unconcerned about his toxic masculinity jibe or meeting the sun. Because I already know Stout Academy has no place inside its theater where sunlight can reach, thanks to the kids.

  “Hold on, Tino.” Zack paces me as I stride through the broad passageway under the stage. “You can’t do any volunteer work here without a pass.”

  “Okay.” I glance at him. “Where do I get one of those?”

  “The lovely and sunny front office.”

  The words I utter in Italian would get my mouth washed out with soap if my mother ever reads this. So I’m not repeating them here even if Esther might respect them. Zack’s not bilingual, but he gets the gist.

  “I’ll bring you the form and have a student run it back after you sign it.”

  “Thanks, Zack. You’re a pal.”

  “Does that mean I don’t owe you now?”

  “I went into a Titan’s vault to get your memories back, and you think a little form-wrangling makes up for that?” Yeah, Milano is in frenemy territory, like Kayleigh Killarney. I can trust him to act in certain expected ways that benefit him directly, but not the same way I can rely on folks like Frankie or Maya.

  “Well, you can’t blame me for trying.” His smile is toothy, with an eye twinkle his male-admiring broadcast news fans must swoon over. Me, not so much.

  “So, you’re coaching kids too?” Changing the subject is often the only way to keep things copacetic if you know what I mean.

  “Yeah.” He walks up the steps leading to the stage level.

  “Okay.” I follow him.

  When we step out into the wings, I see the house lights are up. For some reason, I had a random and unfounded fear that working lights would be on and I’d get a follow spot the second I step on the apron from the wings. But that doesn’t happen, of course. I glance up to see that nobody’s even in the light booth and breathe a sigh of relief. Yeah, stage fright is still a thing, even when you’re undead.

  And right now, I realize that even without an actual theatrical performance happening in here, I still need to act. Like a regular human, I mean. My kiddos aren’t the only ones around, and I don’t want to be Mister Scary Vampire.

  Breathing and directing some of my focus toward making my skin feel slightly warmer than room temperature are on my mind. But my thought train’s forcibly stopped by something slamming into my midsection.

  “Oof!”

  “Tino! You’re here!” It’s Leora, of course. She would have knocked me over if she weren’t on the small side for her age.

  “Hey, kiddo.” I pat her back until she lets me go and sits beside Sarah, who tolerates her presence.

  “Jeez.” And there’s the Sarah Pickering I know, rolling her eyes at me from the edge of the apron where she’s sitting.

  “Attitude much?” Levi blows a raspberry at his older sister from the front row, where he’s in the middle of a line of other students.

  “What are you, eleven, still?” Sarah turns her nose up at her brother. A few of the others in the row titter, but most smile at Levi instead. He’s outdoing her in the making friends and influencing people department. Good on him.

  “Hello?” The feminine voice from up in the back row is musical and somehow familiar.

  “Um, hi?” I squint, trying to peer at the figure back there, but it’s pretty much fruitless. She’s backlit by brighter lights from the lobby. “Valentino Crispo, vocal coach.”

  “Valentino, as I live and breathe!” The door closes behind her, and now I know who’s in charge of all the adulting here. Another old theater friend from back in the day.

  “Eunie?”

  “Uh-huh!”

  I absolutely know the woman walking up the steps at the side of the apron, arms laden with scripts. It’s Eunice Terry, who was a senior when I was a freshman back at Cranston West. If she hadn’t been there, Maury and I might never have joined Drama Club.

  “Yeah, she ended up teaching.” Zack’s backhanded compliment pulls the corners of my mouth down. He’s a firm believer in the old bullshit adage, “those who can’t, teach.” I’d elbow him in the rib for that, but he’s gotten off the stage and into the front row. I decide to ignore his attitude and greet my old role model.

  “How have you been, Eunie?”

  “Well, technically, it’s Dr. Terry now, but you can call me Eunie once all your paperwork’s in.” She shoots Zack a glare that hooks his attention back her way, then jerks her chin at the door.

  “Hey, who’s going to help me run paperwork for Mister Crispo here?”

  “On it.” The voice comes from behind me and to the right, from the wings I just left with Zack.

  “Huh?” I blink, startled by my own utterance. Because Zack’s little helper is Sparky

  “Hey, b—uh, Mister Crispo.”

  “Hi.” I blink again. The last person I expected to see here is the salamander. “How you doing?”

  “Okay. Gonna help Mister Milano like usual.” He adjusts the ball cap he always wears around mundanes, even though this is a school for supernatural folks, then beats feet to keep up with Zack.

  It occurs to me that Zack Milano has been interfering in my life during the day when I can’t do anything about it. I wonder how long this has been going on, and what his motive is. But Zack’s just a bad friend, not a criminal. Right? The only way to find out is to ask some questions.

  “Like usu—”

  “This is good of you, Tino,” Eunice pats the section of the stage’s apron beside her.

  “Uh, what?”

  “Coming here to help at the school your kids are going to.”

  “Um, well,” I drop into the old familiar seating arrangement as though it hasn’t been over ten years since I shared a stage with Eunice Terry. “You know. Things happen. And Frankie’s definitely not a performance artist.”

  “So Sarah tells me.” Eunice hands the stack of librettos to my oldest and snootiest ward. “Hand those out, if you please.”

  For once, Sarah doesn’t roll her eyes. Either she respects Eunice or fears her. I’m not sure what fright looks like on the girl because she’s never shown it where I can see. Also, my opinion’s a bit biased toward the teacher here, so I opt for respect.

  “So how’d you end up teaching Drama at Stout?”

  “They came looking for me, actually.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, but they hired me for more than this. My post-doctoral work caught their eye.”

  “Cool.” I wait for Eunice to start telling me all about it. She always used to be a chatterbox, absolutely the friendliest extrovert I’ve ever met. But she only nods, watching the students flipping through their librettos.

  The silence isn’t uncomfortable, though there’s something unsaid hanging in the air between us. I don’t want to break it and risk whatever’s unspoken catching fire and burning any bridges. Instead, I just let my feet
swing.

  It’s novel, dangling your legs as a full-grown adult. The gravity between your feet and the floor makes you feel younger, remember the carefree assumption of invincibility almost everyone has up until a certain point in their lives. I close my eyes and Frankie’s there in the red-tinged darkness behind my eyelids.

  He wouldn’t know this feeling I’ve got now if it smacked him upside the head. Because he never had the chance to experience something so untainted by horror. All he wants is for things to be easier on the next generation than how he had it, a sentiment we share.

  And so, I’m here for his siblings and for Leora, trying to sweep whatever shards of innocence they’ve got left back together again. My phone buzzes in my pocket, so I open my eyes and reach for it.

  Think of the Devil, and he shall appear. Frankie’s texting me.

  Tino, I’m not sure I can do this.

  Yeah, you can.

  I’m at the door and want to turn around. I’m not going in there alone.

  He’s talking about his appointment with the therapist, Doctor Young. Which he was supposed to go to after picking my car up from the shop today.

  Just walk on in, my dude. You’ve got this.

  No, I don’t.

  You will. Reschedule for after sunset, and I’ll come with you.

  I’ll do that. Thanks, Tino.

  I send back some emojis. Clapping hands, thumbs-up, and then end with a semicolon. He knows what I mean by that, but maybe you don’t. It’s a long story, told elsewhere, but he’s got a tattoo of that on his wrist, covering some scars. Since he showed it to me, we’ve tossed the punctuation at each other in texts to show each other support.

  “So, Frankie Pickering’s the guy, huh?” Eunice grins.

  “Uh, we’re domestic partners, but platonic.” That silence eases, and I understand Eunice in a way I never considered back in the day. “Corey. Your old pen-pal from Greece. She’s the gal.”

  “Yes. We got married in 2013.” The year Rhode Island made it legal for two women to wed.

  “Congratulations.” I hold out my hand.