Ella relaxes. “You may be right. We’ve brought more food into the house in the last day or so than we usually eat in a week, and it all smells so good.”
“Where are you throwing the trash?” I ask. “They love to pick in the trash bins.”
“Oh, yeah. That must be it.”
“So, I think we should take Dominic over to the nature center,” I tell Ella.
Ella looks surprised. “Why?”
“Because last night we think we saw a wolf out on the rocks,” I say.
“It could have been a German shepherd,” Dominic adds.
“Oh, no!” Ella whips around and grabs my arm. “When? Ceil and Edgar were walking on the beach last night. Scary!”
“Calm. Calm,” I say. “Ceil and Edgar were fine this morning, right?”
She takes a breath and laughs. “Yeah. But I’m going to have to tell them not to take night walks if you really saw a wolf. What time was it?”
Dominic and I look at each other like, err.
“Pretty late,” I say. “It was dark. Anyway, that’s why we want to go to the nature center. Mom says Ben’s uncle will know if there are wolves around here.”
“Okay.” Ella is completely on board for this. “Oh, and the trash. I have to remember to tell them about not putting food in the trash bins.” She taps out a note on her phone. “Don’t put food in the trash bins. Gulls get into it.”
Gulls and who knows what else.
9
After the fifteen-minute walk from Ella’s place, Ella, Dominic, and I turn onto the rutted sand driveway that leads to the nature center. Soon we’re hemmed in by the woods, and the pine and balsam branches overhead make it as dark as late evening. The walk sends my mind tumbling back to Jonathan’s trip to the castle. I shiver and pick up my step. Once we reach the clearing, the farmhouse comes into view. A small sign hanging from the porch railing says Becker’s Wood Nature Center.
“Hey. What’s up, kids?”
John Denby steps through the nature center’s front door, wiping his hands on a rag like he’s cleaning off motor oil.
“We’ve come to ask about wolves,” I say. “My mom said you’d know.”
“What do you want to know about wolves?” John Denby asks.
I realize that Dominic is about to talk and I haven’t introduced him. “Oh, and this is Dominic—” I start, but John Denby is more interested in the wolf topic.
“You know, you’re the second folks to ask me that today.” He waves us onto the porch. “Sister Ethel called about it this morning.”
Sister Ethel?
“They lost one of the cats last night to an attack. She thought it might have been a dog, but it was pretty messy.”
“Oh, no!” My chest knots up. “Sister Rosie must be sick about it.”
“I guess she’s pretty tore up. Cat had a name and everything.”
“Not Esmeralda!” Sister Rosie has loved Esmeralda so much she’s never let the cat be adopted. “Please not Esmeralda.”
“May have been, but I don’t recall.”
“So was it a wolf?” Ella asks. Her eyes are wide like saucers. I know she’s calculating the distance from the cat rescue lighthouse to her house, just on the other side of the rocks.
“Did you see the cat? Esmeralda? I mean, how did it happen?” I ask.
Ella looks at me like I’m being a little creepy, but Dominic has a flicker of curiosity behind his eyes.
“I didn’t see it myself,” John Denby says, “but Sister Ethel said the throat was ripped.”
I shudder. “Could a wolf do that?” I ask.
“No. No. Couldn’t ’a’ been. No wolves around here. Maybe a mad dog, but I haven’t seen any sign of one. More ’an likely it’s a starving coyote.”
“Would a starving coyote do that?” I ask.
John Denby tips his head back and forth, weighing the possibility. “That’s the thing . . . not usually. When it’s a long, cold winter, they run outta food, get desperate, start coming into the settled areas. But they tend to eat their prey right up. Maybe leave the tail and the innards. I checked around, though. No other reports of coyotes taking domestic pets.”
So that dog was no dog or coyote.
“Quinnie and Dominic saw it,” Ella blurts.
John Denby cocks his head in surprise. “Where? And when?”
Great. So much for not getting outed for being on the beach in the middle of the night.
Dominic starts, “We were walking on the beach last night and saw what we thought was a dog, maybe the size of a German shepherd, on the rocks between the beach by Ella’s house and Pidgin Beach.”
Here it comes. “When was this?” John Denby asks. “That cat happened early this morning.”
I know it’s going to get right back to Mom, but my voice cracks it out anyway. “Maybe four a.m.?”
Ella looks at me with a sly smile. Dominic has somehow shrunk beneath his hat.
John Denby’s eyebrows are up in his hairline. In true Maiden Rock old-guy form, he doesn’t flip out, but he says the most threatening thing he can say. “Hmm.” That means he’ll take it up with my mom. “Ears pointy or roundish?”
What can I do? The truth is out. I’ll have to explain myself to Mom. Worse than that, Dominic will go under her microscope. “We weren’t close enough to see the ears.”
“It was climbing the outcropping?”
“Yes, it went from the Maiden Rock side to the Pidgin Beach side.”
“Could it have been a big cat? Cougar, maybe?”
Dominic somehow finds his voice. “Now that you mention it, the ears may have been a little roundish. I’m not sure.”
“The cougar pups have more oval ears,” John Denby says. “But a grown coyote looks a heck of a lot like a German shepherd.”
I am losing interest in this conversation, since I’m full-blown fantasizing that the wolf turned back into a vampire and sucked the cat’s blood. “Well, thanks,” I say. “We ought to go.”
“Ayuh.” That’s all John Denby has for a good-bye.
Back out on the road, my stomach starts to churn. Sand is all up in my Vans, but I don’t care.
“Hey!” Ella yells. “Is somebody going to tell me what you guys were doing on the beach at four in the morning?”
I walk on for a bit, wandering over onto the shoulder of the road. The vision of a vampire attacking poor Esmeralda is running through my brain. I don’t want to say anything to Ella about it yet, but she’s stopped us in the middle of the road, hands on her hips.
“I was reading Dracula, and I got scared, and I . . . I texted Dominic, and he said, ‘Let’s go for a walk’ . . . and it seemed like a perfectly good idea—”
“Until we saw the . . . whatever,” Dominic says.
“You guys are so busted,” Ella says. Pretending to get hysterical, she adds, “OMG, you were out there with a starving coyote! You could have been killed.”
“Okay, shut up,” I say, then make the sign of the cross and point two fingers in her direction.
10
Dad comes home early, which is a really bad sign. I lean against the upstairs wall and strain to hear my parents’ conversation in the kitchen. I’m not officially on lockdown yet, but I know it’s coming.
Dad tells Mom that the sisters didn’t come in for pie today because Sister Rosie was so upset. And then there’s the talk about me.
“Four o’clock in the morning, Gus. What could she have been thinking?”
“I don’t know, Margaret. Is it this Dominic? Where’d you say they were from?”
Not good. Dad’s calling him “This Dominic.”
“Were Ben and Ella out there too?”
“If they were, no one’s talking,” says Mom.
“Have you spoken with Dominic’s parents?” Dad asks.
“Yes. They are as concerned as we are. These kids shouldn’t be out at all hours of the night, coyotes or no coyotes. It’s just not safe.”
“You’re going to talk to Quin
nie?”
“Oh, yes,” Mom says.
There is nothing like listening to a jury discuss your fate. One thing I know is that my mom will take her time before she comes upstairs. She always plans out her lectures.
I text Dominic.
Me: Have they done anything to you yet?
Dominic: They told me I was not allowed out of the house between the hours of ten pm and seven am.
Me: That’s not so bad.
Dominic: They also said I embarrassed myself and them by endangering you on the beach.
Me: How could you have known we’d be in danger?
Dominic: I asked that.
Me: And?
Dominic: Bad question. My dad’s face went bloodred. I guess I was supposed to know the answer.
Me: I don’t think they’d be this crazy if there wasn’t a coyote/wolf.
Dominic: If there wasn’t a coyote/wolf, they’d never have known we were out there.
At a knock on my door, I toss my phone under the covers. My theory is that if Mom doesn’t see it, she won’t think to take it away as a punishment.
“Quinnette?”
I don’t say anything because I know she’s coming in anyway. I just sit on the bed and wait.
Mom enters with a familiar look on her face. Worry-wrinkles between her eyebrows. Jaw set in a determined position. She doesn’t make eye contact.
“So.” She looks out my window to the ocean before sitting down at my desk. She considers my papers, laptops, scrunchies, beach rocks, hairbrush—everything—like they’re going to reveal something important. After flipping through the pages of Transylvanian Drip, she finally turns to me. “You heard about Esmeralda?”
My nose burns. Tears are coming. That means it was definitely Sister Rosie’s favorite cat.
“That could have been you and Dominic. You could have had your throats ripped open.”
Too graphic, Mom! I want to say, How could I have known? It was just a walk! We’re fine! But she has a point. Coming face-to-face with a hungry coyote would’ve been bad. And a wolf, well, that would’ve been worse. And if that wolf were a vampire? Wait—what is my Dracula-drenched brain jumping to?
Mom says, “Stay off the beach. Until this coyote is captured and I know the beach is safe, you’re sticking close to home. The main road, Gusty’s, and Ms. Stillford’s.”
I notice that Ella’s house isn’t on the list. Trouble is, that’s exactly where I need to be if I’m going to learn more about vampires. I mean, there are two serious bloodsucking experts in that house at this very moment, and their knowledge might come in handy with this . . . this whatever-it-is on the loose. Besides, who will deliver the takeout orders?
“Give me your phone,” she says.
Groan. I reach under my covers and pull it out. Her hand is waiting.
“I’ll just keep this until tomorrow,” Mom says. “And until I decide to give it back, there’ll be no phoning, no texting, no emailing, no messaging—no contact with Dominic, Ben, or Ella.”
Whine. I expected Dominic, but why Ella and Ben?
“You will stay home and think about the decision you made to sneak—don’t even try to tell me you didn’t sneak—out of the house in the middle of the night.”
She turns my phone off in front of me, which I think is particularly harsh, and tucks it in her pocket before she walks over to kiss me on the head. “I love you. I want you to grow up in one healthy, unscarred piece.”
On her way out, she says, “I’m glad you told John Denby where and when you saw the coyote. That was the right thing to do,” then quietly shuts the door.
My first reaction is to reach for my phone and text Ella—but forget that. And I definitely can’t go to her place, which means no asking Edgar and Ceil about what they might’ve seen last night. Then it hits me that I should actually read my copy of Transylvanian Drip. It’s basically the next-best thing.
At first, I have to practically read out loud to pay attention.
This is the story: Count Le Plasma is a seven-hundred-year-old guy vampire who travels all around the world going to fancy events, including international film festivals like Cannes and Sundance. He likes these places because they are crowded with beautiful people like actors and actresses. He especially likes the actresses at the premiers who have low-cut dresses with their necks exposed. Ella says that if you read all the Count Le Plasma books, you’ll be able to guess which actresses–turned–bloodsucking vampires are thinly-disguised versions of real Hollywood stars.
Anyway. The Count has two helper vampire seductresses. They are gorgeous, of course. They’re kind of knockoffs of Bram Stoker’s beautiful vampiresses. They follow Count Le Plasma from one premier to another, and he lets them have the actors, since he only wants the actresses. The problem is, the actresses and the actors are getting so skinny that they don’t supply enough blood for the Count or the helpers. So the Count makes a plan to rob the Red Cross Blood Bank in Park City, Utah, while everyone is busy with the Sundance Film Festival.
Count Le Plasma’s grand scheme is to make the night guard at the blood bank let him in so he can pack up all the blood bags and beat it. Since the guard won’t just do that voluntarily—it’s his job to be a guard, after all—the Count decides to kidnap the guard’s prize-winning Persian cat, Fidela. You guessed it: Le Plasma holds the cat hostage until the guard lets him into the rare-blood-type vault. I guess rare blood types are gourmet items for vampires. Okay.
At 9:20 p.m., I get up to go to the bathroom, and I’m laughing to myself. I really should have read this book more closely before. It’s hilarious. And so ridiculous, it’s believable.
I dive back in.
It turns out that being the Count’s helper is a raw deal. Count Le Plasma makes the vampiresses do all the hard work. They have to snatch the cat and hold it hostage until he says they can let it go.
So the Count’s assistants rent a windowless cargo van from U-Haul. These vampires may be like six hundred years old, but they never took a driving lesson or a driving test, so they drive like crazy people. I’m wondering what will happen if they get stopped by a patrolman. Uh-oh. They do. Oozing neck gore follows.
After that, the vampiresses—whose names are Treen and Vera, by the way—break into the guard’s house while he’s working at the blood bank. It’s not much of a break-in. They have superhuman strength, so Treen flicks the locked door open with a stiletto fingernail. She and Vera find the fancy Fidela and stuff her in a carrying crate and cover it with a blanket. They’re almost ready to leave the guard’s house when Treen realizes that if they’re going to keep the cat in the van for a few hours, they’d better bring along a poop box.
They didn’t plan for that, so they have to scramble around the house for the pan and liners and litter.
They also didn’t count on Fidela being such a whiny, complain-y thing, and they worry that the noise might make the neighbors suspect something, so they find a blue tarp in the garage and throw it over the crate.
Under instructions from Count Le Plasma, Treen and Vera park the van in a vacant lot about three blocks from the blood bank. After a couple of hours, Fidela’s constant meowing convinces the assistants she wants food. So at midnight, Treen goes to the local convenience store to get Gourmet Tuna Delight Dinner for the mewing, annoying hairball of a cat. Unfortunately, Treen doesn’t have cash or credit cards, so she’s obliged to steal the cans.
When the clerks try to stop her . . . oh, the poor clerks. More oozing neck gore follows. I’m not sure exactly why they get in her way. Anybody that has ever seen a vampire movie should be able to recognize those fingernails, the white skin, the arched eyebrows, and those protruding incisors.
I admit it. I’m reading every word now. I’m totally into the story. I can hear the Transylvanian music. I have goosies all over my arms and the back of my neck. I cannot wait to find out what goes down with Fidela. But first, I have to find out more about the kind of weirdos who would write something like this—espec
ially since they’re hanging out a few houses away.
I turn to the back flap. There’s no picture of the author, “Victoria Kensington,” just this paragraph:
Victoria Kensington is the author of sixteen bestselling Count Le Plasma novels. She has been voted the No. 1 horror writer for twenty years in a row by Horror Readers of America and has received the title Lady of Horror by the Vampire Society of England. She lives in London and is very private about her relationship with Count Le Plasma, who imparts to her the details of his life, which form the basis for her books.
Who believes this? Do thousands of Victoria Kensington fans imagine that she actually knows a real vampire who tells her stories about his bloodsucking adventures? Am I one of those fans? Because right at this very moment, I’m kind of thinking that maybe I do believe it. Or I could believe it. I mean, I know Edgar and Ceil are Victoria Kensington. So, if they are the ones who talk to Count Le Plasma . . . well, that would explain why a wolf was near their house last night. And not just any wolf—a wolf who ripped the throat of a cat and drained its blood. A wolf who’s really Count Le Plasma!
I am so tired. I have to go to sleep. I’m starting to hallucinate.
Is that a wolf howling? Yep, I’m definitely starting to hallucinate.
But I’m sure I hear a high-pitched yip-howl in the distance. And then some kind of fierce crack. Was that a gunshot?
11
I sit up in bed Sunday morning with another headache, and now my bones ache too. Thinking too much about vampires really takes a lot out of you. Outside, rain’s falling on a gray ocean, and no one is on the beach. Mom must have put out the word.
I vaguely remember hearing howling and a sharp crack in the middle of the night. I reach for my phone to text Ben. Oh, right—I’m in a communications prison. I groan and fall back onto my pillow. What exactly did Mom say? No contact with Dominic, Ben, or Ella. But there’s no reason I can’t do a little research on Edgar and Ceil.
I grab my tablet and start a search. I know that Edgar and Ceil write as Victoria Kensington, but does the rest of the world?
I search “Who wrote Transylvanian Drip,” and the screen goes nuclear with 12,500,000-plus results. One of the first is a YouTube link to “The couple behind the Vampire Count Le Plasma novels,” a clip from Celebrity Dish with Buddy Denton, a daytime talk show.
Vampires on the Run: A Quinnie Boyd Mystery (Quinnie Boyd Mysteries) Page 5