Fright Court

by Mindy Klasky

  “Ah,” the driver said, nodding. “True love. Yes. We go now. I get you there in time.” And he slammed on his meter, floored the cab, and shot through three consecutive intersections as yellow lights switched to red. Of course, the guy wasn’t so intent on being Cupid’s helper that he neglected to accept his fare when he squealed to a stop in front of the courthouse. The Washington Banner supplied him with a generous tip too, mostly to cut short his extensive—and blushingly explicit—marital advice to my so-called fiancé.

  Chris was laughing as we dashed through security. “So, Mrs. Gardner. I hope you remembered to bring our marriage license.”

  I would have responded, maybe even with something witty and entertaining, but there was an attorney waiting for us, right outside the clerk’s office. The regulars knew I didn’t unlock the door until 9:15. This woman wasn’t a regular, though.

  This woman was a vampire.

  I recognized her status immediately, even though I’d never seen her before. Hoping that Chris would remain oblivious, I tried to figure out how I could tell that my patron was not human. There was her obvious pallor, but plenty of women had light complexions. There was her impeccable grooming, but most lawyers who came before the court practiced good hygiene. There was the watchfulness in her eyes, the careful way that she measured me as I approached. Lots of nervous attorneys monitored my every move, though. They knew that I could reject their filings on any petty whim.

  No. It was the stillness that set her apart, her perfect calm as she waited beside the door. Without pausing to check, I knew that she wasn’t breathing, that she would never breathe again.

  “Good evening,” she said, eyeing us carefully as Chris and I approached. She glanced at the keys in my hand and concluded correctly that she should address her next words to me. “Is this where I file a complaint and summons, to open a new case?”

  “Yes,” I said, absolutely intent on keeping our conversation professional. Not only was I talking to my first vampire customer, but I was on display for the city’s leading newspaper. I stood straighter and said, “You’ll need to complete a civil cover sheet.”

  She flashed me a tight smile. Even though her fangs were completely hidden, there was something predatory about her expression. “I have one,” she said.

  I finally got the office door open and the light switched on. Ducking behind the counter, I began the laborious process of booting up my ancient computer. I could hear the disk grinding away inside the machine’s plastic casing. Chris stepped to the side and leaned against the wall. I saw him reach inside his pocket, and he edged his recorder into his hand. He raised a questioning eyebrow at me, but I shook my head. I didn’t want him recording my conversation with the vampire. Not when I wasn’t one hundred percent certain what she wanted. Not when I didn’t know what I was going to have to say. Not when I had no idea if an inanimate object like a tape recorder could somehow be Enfolded if everything went horrendously, spectacularly wrong.

  Chris shrugged at my denial and hid away the device. He took a step closer to the vampire, though, as if proximity would help him observe our interaction better. I wanted to warn him to edge away, but my customer wasn’t showing any outward signs of aggression. In fact, she had done nothing more threatening than take a sheaf of papers out of her briefcase.

  “Great,” I said, feigning enthusiasm. “Let’s see if everything is in order, Ms….”

  “Causey,” she said. She tapped one perfectly manicured nail against the line on the cover sheet where her full name was spelled out. Jennifer Anne Causey. Esquire, of course.

  I was going to have to learn more about vampire lawyers. Like whether they had their own law school, or if they just took night classes in regular human programs. Not that it really mattered. A lawyer was a lawyer was a lawyer. If she was licensed to practice before the Night Court, I had to accept her filing.

  “Ms. Causey,” I said. My fingers brushed hers as I picked up the papers. As I expected, her hand was ice cold. I tamped down the urge to shudder. There was no reason to be nervous. No reason to be afraid. But, of course, there was every reason in the world.

  I was preternaturally aware of Chris watching me. He’d folded his arms across his chest, and his eyes were slightly narrowed, as if he were concentrating, memorizing every single thing I was doing. A tiny voice yipped at the back of my mind, reminding me that Jennifer Causey was the first vampire I had ever talked to in the so-called wild. We weren’t in the relative safety of Judge DuBois’s courtroom. James was nowhere in sight. Even the griffin Eleanor was absent, with her terrifying makeup and her omnipresent gun. And Chris wasn’t going to be a bit of help if Jennifer Causey became an aggressive, ravening beast in front of me.

  I took a deep breath, and I tasted a hint of lemon at the back of my throat. That memory of citrus immediately calmed me, somehow reminded me that I was in control. There was a counter between the vampire and me. Even if she managed to leap over it, I knew how to defend myself. I could remember my muscles moving exactly how James had trained me—was it only last night? I could feel my hands grappling against the arms of Jennifer Anne Causey, Esquire. I could sense the weight of her as I pulled her down to the linoleum floor. I could measure her body against mine, shift to get an advantageous hold, to lock my legs over hers, to restrain her.

  Not that I needed to do any of that. All I needed to do was make sure that she had completed form 2485/E properly. I checked to see that she had signed the declaration at the bottom of the page, that she had added her bar number. She had, and she’d attached a certified check for two hundred and fifty dollars.

  “Everything seems to be in order, Ms. Causey,” I said. If my vampire patron sensed that I had other things on my mind, she gave no sign. Instead, she waited for me to hand over a time-stamped copy of her filing, along with an instruction sheet for accessing her case online.

  And then she left. Just like any other lawyer in the clerk’s office. Just like a human.

  Chris waited until she’d disappeared down the hall before he stepped up to the counter. He spread his fingers across the Formica evenly, bearing down just a little on the pads of his fingertips. “So, what do you do with the papers now?”

  Somehow, it was comforting to find him there. I’d been so derailed by my flash of memory—no, not memory, not precisely. Awareness. Jennifer Causey and I had never fought. And now it seemed that we never would.

  I shrugged. “I create a computer record for the case and scan in the complaint. She can file everything else electronically, from here on out.”

  I knew his next question before he asked. He wanted to watch me complete the case. He wanted to see me create the official file, the one that I would maintain behind the imperial firewall. The file that absolutely, positively, one hundred percent had to be kept secret.

  Before I could dream up a diversion, the Regulars filed in. That’s what I’d taken to calling them, the human attorneys who hung out at the court every night. There was Davey Callahan, who absolutely never, ever had a pen. He was talking to Eugene Roberts, a die-hard liberal who started each night by asking if there were any prospective police brutality cases he could pick up. Alicia Moran trailed behind them—drifting in a cloud of bourbon fumes and Wint-O-Green Life Savers. I greeted each of them by name as if they were long lost friends.

  As Chris stepped to the side again, the lawyers worked through their usual round of jokes, checking up on their pet causes, making sure that every arraignment was scheduled to go forward without a hitch. I stamped the appropriate papers and made a show of looking up the records they requested, swinging around my monitor so that Chris and my customers could see exactly what I was doing. Everything was easy. Familiar. Absolutely, utterly mundane.

  Toward midnight, predictably, the flow of work slowed down. Chris waited until the last lawyer had stepped away before he leaned against the counter. “You’re good at this,” he said.

  “Aw.” I pretended to dig my toe into the floor in embarrassment, bu
t I was secretly pleased that he thought so. “I bet you say that to all your interview subjects.”

  He laughed. “Only the ones I’m married to.”

  “Yeah,” I said, blushing at the memory of our matchmaker cabbie. “About that. I assume stuff like that never makes it into your article?”

  “I want to show the real you. Talk about the way working the night shift affects your real life.”

  “Hailing a cab on a rainy night isn’t my real life!” I protested. “I take the subway! You saw a dozen things more true-to-life about me tonight.”

  “Like what?” he challenged.

  I clutched at straws. “Like, I’m a vegetarian.”

  “That’s one,” he agreed. “But seriously, the rest of what I got tonight is you, being perfectly professional. You, being the clerk of court. That’s great, but I want more. Our readers want more. They want the human interest side to all this.”

  I rolled my eyes, trying to express exasperation. My glance fell on the hand-print card from Nora, the congratulations that Allison had given me for landing this job. Veering firmly away from taboo interview topics like vampires and the Old Library, I blurted, “Like what? Going to my goddaughter’s one-year-old birthday party?”

  Chris sprang to attention like a well-trained pointer. “Exactly like that. When is it?”

  “Oh, come on! You can’t possibly be interested in something that boring.”

  “Please?” His eyes were earnest. “It would be the perfect complement to what I can observe here.”

  I’d mentioned Nora out of desperation, but now that I thought about it, taking Chris to the party was a pretty good idea. Allison and Steve were planning a casual cookout. It wasn’t like they had to hire an extra footman if I brought Chris along. And Al was sure to love the idea—anything to get me out on a weekend, with an eligible, single man.

  I presumed eligible.

  I presumed single.

  At least he was human.

  “Fine,” I said, when I realized how long the silence had stretched between us. “This Sunday. Five o’clock.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and the seriousness of his brown eyes made me feel like I’d just rescued a puppy from the pound. “So? Is it all right if I come back tomorrow to watch you work? Ask some more questions?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’d like that.”

  And I wasn’t lying. I would like that. My evening with Chris had turned out to be a lot of fun, even with the crazy matchmaker cab driver. And despite the fact that the Night Court truly was my dream job, I did long for a normal social life.

  As Chris shouldered his messenger bag, he glanced at the stack of papers on my desk, the pages that I’d accepted from Jennifer Causey hours before. I’d taken care of every other filing, entering data into the human database on my computer, stapling together pieces of paper, placing documents in fresh manila folders. I’d set the vampire papers to the side, though, hoping that Chris would forget about them.

  A frown darted between his eyebrows. There was no way for him to know that the imperial filing was different from any other. He had to be reacting to the disorganization, to the slight fan the papers made across my desk. If nothing else, the evening had taught me that Chris was as much a stickler for neatness as I was; he probably felt the exact same urge to twitch the documents into a perfect stack.

  I distracted him by extending my hand, offering a perfectly professional end to a busy evening. “Thank you for dinner,” I said.

  He shook his head a little as his fingers closed around mine. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, and he smiled.

  I stared after him as he left, thinking that he had to be exhausted. He had worked all day, while I was sleeping. It was already after midnight. I flexed my fingers, remembering the warmth of his hand against mine. Shaking my head, I turned back to my desk. There was plenty more work to be done. And none of it involved spinning daydreams about a surprisingly distracting obsessive-compulsive journalist.

  CHAPTER 8

  STILL FULL FROM my beet and goat cheese breakfast, I didn’t bother eating anything at my scheduled lunch break. Instead, I focused on entering Jennifer Causey’s case into the imperial database, making sure that I had every detail perfect, every field in the computer file properly completed. Halfway through the project, I realized that I could use that document as the model for everything else I had to do, for all the vampire court clean-up work that was to come. It was worth double- and triple-checking.

  Once I had the document one hundred percent accurate, I called up the Karl Schmidt file. Using the Causey case as a guide, I filled in some of the blanks on the Schmidt records, adding filing dates and making a note that DuBois was the presiding judge. Pleased with the results, I pulled up the interlocked Richardson cases as well, subjecting them to the same treatment.

  I was staring at my screen so intently that I jumped like water on a hot skillet when I heard James’s voice beside me. “What are you doing?”

  “Updating records.” I tried not to sound defensive. “I’m implementing a template, so that we can track parallel data between cases.”

  James’s quick eyes took in my computer screen. He reached over my shoulder to click my mouse, moving deftly between files. I saw the instant that he discovered the typographic errors I had corrected, the links that I had made explicit between the most recent Richardson case and the older ones. Nevertheless, he asked, “What is this?”

  The cold fire in his voice made me defiant. “This is why you hired me. This is an update for one family of cases, showing connections that have been lost over the years—either by mistake or on purpose.”

  “Are you certain this is correct?” I nodded, and he shifted his icy blue glare back to the screen. “Show me where you found the data.”

  I walked him through the records, pointing out the references to older cases, noting the spelling inconsistencies. I demonstrated how to use computerized links between files, showing how they could be done automatically by any clerk with an interest in organizing information, in building order out of chaos.

  James nodded as each new record fell into place. I could see him processing the information, accepting the new connections that I’d made. At last, he pulled up my email program, opening a new message and typing in his own name. He sent himself a direct link to all the records that I’d pulled together in the Eastern Empire database.

  “Good work,” he said, and I realized that was as close to a “thank you” as I was likely to get from a vampire. Before I could preen at the praise, he added, “Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  His fingers flexed across my keyboard, typing Control-Shift-V to hide away the vampire records.

  “I want you back in Judge DuBois’s courtroom. It’s been over a week. Time to get back on the horse.”

  The opposite of a flush swept over my face—James’s words left me cold and clammy. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that I was afraid to go back into the courtroom. I thought that I’d just been busy, preoccupied, that it was pure coincidence I hadn’t made it there since Brauer’s, um, outburst.

  Why should I be afraid, anyway? All of the imperials—at least the ones employed by the court—had spoken to me. They’d each apologized for their role in the, um, incident. I truly believed that I could trust them. And even if I couldn’t, I had faith in my training with James. Hadn’t I just accepted a filing from a real, live—well, dead, um, undead, whatever!—vampire, not four hours earlier? Accepted it, and kept it confidential from Chris? I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone.

  Except I did.

  I needed to prove to James that I had the composure to head back into the lion’s den. And even more importantly, I needed to prove it to myself. To prove that I was over the attack.

  Attack.

  There. I’d finally let myself think the word. Only when I formed the two syllables in my mind did I realize how hard I’d worked to avoid them, finding euphemisms for days. I s
quared my shoulders. “Great!” I lied. “I was going to ask you about that. About when you’d let me back in.”

  He didn’t bother to contradict me. Instead, he held the door, then led the way down the deserted corridor. In an effort to fill the increasingly tense silence, I said, “Chris Gardner was here earlier.”

  James’s nostrils flared, and I realized that he’d likely already known that Chris had been in my office. James’s voice was elaborately casual as he asked, “The reporter? How is that going?”

  “Fine,” I said in my most reassuring tone, lowering my voice because we had reached the doors to Judge DuBois’s courtroom. “Everything went smoothly. He was even there when I accepted a filing for —” I cut myself off. Here in the open courthouse, I couldn’t say “the Eastern Empire.” I couldn’t admit our secrets. I settled instead for the phrase “the Night Court”, trying to emphasize the words just enough for James to understand.

  I needn’t have worried. He understood perfectly—as if I’d spoken with a megaphone. His fingers closed around my elbow. “I don’t want that man observing Night Court filings.”

  I barely resisted the urge to pull my arm away. “I don’t have any control over that. The attorney showed up. She gave me the papers. I couldn’t tell her to go away and come back after midnight.”

  “Of course you could. You’re the Court Clerk.”

  “And she came to the clerk’s office to conduct her business!” My answer was sharp, despite the fact that I was whispering, that I was purposely trying to keep my voice down so that I didn’t interrupt the proceedings on the other side of the courtroom door.

  James edged closer to me, eliminating the comforting cushion of space dictated by ordinary social interaction. Ordinary human interaction. His voice was ominously low as he warned, “I don’t want that reporter noticing … details.” He dug his fingers into my arm for emphasis.