Fright Court

by Mindy Klasky

  “He’s not just— “ He started to contradict me, his words spiked with anger, but he caught himself at the last instant. I could almost hear him counting to five. If he were human, he would have exhaled deeply before continuing. “Sarah, you cannot trust him. Believe me. There’s more to Chris Gardner than meets the eye.”

  James was actually pleading with me. I heard it in his voice, saw it in the minute lines beside his eyes. How long had it been since he’d asked someone to believe him, since he’d begged someone to take his side? How long had it been since he’d been human?

  I thought I understood how much it cost him to speak to me that way. But I couldn’t give in. I couldn’t accept what he said.

  “James.” I cupped his jaw in the palm of my hand. “He’s not a vampire. You can’t understand the way he thinks. Not completely. Not anymore. Not like I do.” He started to disagree with me again. I felt him tense, but before he could pull away, I shook my head. “Trust me. You hired me to do a job here, and now you have to trust me to do it well. We agreed, weeks ago, that I should be interviewed, that the Banner article could help the court.” I repeated, “Trust. Me.”

  He raised his hand to mine. His fingers were cooling rapidly, now that our blood transfer was complete. I wanted to look at his wrist, to see if he’d already healed his own wound, but I couldn’t break the bond between us. “Just be careful, Sarah,” he said at last. “Don’t accept everything he tells you at face value.”

  “I won’t,” I promised, holding his gaze. I understood the importance of James’s concession, of his agreeing that I just might be right. But there was still one more thing I had to tell him, one more thing he had to accept. “You should know, though. Chris is coming here tomorrow. He wants to watch a full night of proceedings in the courtroom.”

  “Sarah —”

  “I tried to convince him not to. I told him that nothing happens after midnight. He’s not going to give in on this, James. Judge DuBois will have to suspend the Schmidt case for one night, keep processing whatever human cases come in. If Chris doesn’t observe enough tomorrow, he’ll just come back the next night, and the next. He’s stubborn. Holding the Schmidt case for a single night won’t hurt anything in the long run. And then Chris will be out of your hair forever.”

  I watched the battle between trust and suspicion play out in James’s eyes. I watched, and I waited.

  “Fine,” he said at last, the single word coated in resignation. “Tomorrow night. We’ll be ready for him then.”

  A little thrill of surprise skipped through my chest. I hadn’t actually expected to win the argument. I started to thank James, caught myself just before the words could skew the balance between us. Again. Instead, I said, “I’ll do everything I can to make it work.”

  He nodded. I could tell that his thoughts were already traveling elsewhere, already slipping back to the night’s other challenges, to lost sanctums and Richardson’s attack and everything else that was spinning out of control. I wasn’t surprised to see him flow to his feet, to find a new balance. I was grateful, though, that he extended his hand to me. I let him pull me upright. I didn’t expect him to use the motion to pull me close to his chest, to use his free hand to encircle my waist.

  “Sarah,” he said, and he lowered his chin to rest against the crown of my head. A shudder rippled through him, so fine that I would have missed it, if my body had not been pressed against his.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  He pulled me closer for a timeless moment, the gesture more intimate than any hold we had shared on the mats, because of all the words he didn’t say, all the thoughts he didn’t reduce to concrete meaning. Without planning to, I edged away, just enough so that I could settle his arm between us, so that I could trace the white line on his wrist, the scar that was already fading away to nothingness. He shivered at my touch, and his voice was strangled when he said, “I have to go upstairs.”

  “I know.”

  “Shower,” he said. “Then go home.”

  “I have work to do!”

  He shook his head. “Not tonight. For all the world knows, Judge DuBois called in sick, too late for a substitute to take the bench. The human defendants will be kept overnight for arraignment, and Schmidt…”

  I heard the threat implicit in that single syllable. “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  He waited for three of my breaths before he said, “Nothing. Not yet. But Schmidt will be brought to justice soon enough. And then it will be time to go after Richardson.”

  “And now? Tonight? Where are you going to live, now that they’ve burned down your sanctum?”

  His face tightened into a mask of tamped-down rage. “I’ll create a new sanctum.”

  “Where?” I asked the question reflexively. I wanted to know. The answer would tell me more about his vampire life, more about the strange world that I was only able to glimpse from the edges. Besides, I couldn’t help but wonder how close he was going to be to me, to my home.

  “I can’t tell you that.” His words were flat. “It wouldn’t be safe. Richardson and his men can’t force you to tell them what you don’t know.”

  That was absurd. If I were caught by Richardson and his men, they wouldn’t let a little matter like actual ignorance stop them from pushing for information. Pushing hard. Anyone who was willing to burn down four buildings in broad daylight, anyone who was running a blood herd—to hell with “allegedly”—wasn’t going to leave me alone, just because I said I didn’t have the facts they wanted.

  But I already knew that James wasn’t going to change his mind. He wasn’t going to tell me where he settled, and I’d only get more frustrated if I pushed him harder.

  “You’ll be careful?” I asked.

  He raised his hand to my cheek. His fingers were cold, like stone. “I’ll be careful,” he confirmed.

  I let him go then. I stepped away from his icy embrace. I purposely crossed my arms over my chest and watched him walk to the door. When he stood on the threshold, he looked back, and for just an instant, I thought that he might change his mind. He shook his head, though, and left the room without another word. I heard his key turn in the lock, keeping me safe from any physical harm.

  All the same, I shot the deadbolt on the locker room door before I started to run the water for my shower. As I raised my arms to shampoo my hair, I stopped, staring at the limb that had been broken not an hour before. I would never forget the stricken look on James’s face, when he realized exactly what he’d done. I’d never forget his desperation as he offered up his blood to me, his power, his healing.

  But as I washed away the shampoo suds, I pictured my fingers running through another man’s hair, through caramel-colored curls. I envisioned Chris’s easy human smile, the effortless precision that made every second I spent in his presence familiar and comforting and balanced.

  I shook my head as I turned off the water and started to towel-dry my hair. Vampire master. Human reporter. Neither one of them was fully available to me, fully open to be mine. My heart ignored the facts, though, bouncing back and forth between James and Chris as I headed up the stairs to the real world. To home.

  CHAPTER 13

  “THAT WAS INCREDIBLE,” I said to Allison, barely resisting the urge to lick my plate. My best friend had outdone herself, cooking an elaborate “breakfast for dinner” feast that had included brie-and-roasted-asparagus omelets, homemade sourdough toast, and a citrus fruit salad with basil vinaigrette.

  In deference to my crazy work schedule, we were eating early, but we’d had plenty of time to talk. As expected, Steve was in New York yet again; he’d told Allison not to expect him until Friday night. At the earliest. Perhaps in reaction to that disappointing news, Allison had shipped Nora off to her grandmother’s house for the night. I was a little disappointed not to see my goddaughter, but I was thrilled at the chance to talk to my best friend without the constant interruption of a busy one-year-old.

  And talk, we did. We cover
ed recent developments on Capitol Hill regarding a possible new bill that would affect funding for public schools. We talked about the hideous fashions that stores were showing for winter, absurd outfits that made us unsure if we were supposed to look like competent, successful professionals, or merely another type of pro. We worried about the cold front that was supposed to come through that night, and the inch-an-hour rain that we’d been warned to expect. We debated which new-release movies were worth spending a small fortune to see in the theater, and which were perfect DVD fodder, come spring.

  In short, we talked about absolutely nothing that was important. Nothing that was going on in either of our lives. Nothing that we cared about.

  Until we got to dessert.

  I had glimpsed the cardboard box on the counter the moment that I walked into Allison’s kitchen. Allison had discovered the Cake Walk bakery a few years before—it was hidden on a side street in Georgetown, and it regularly provided the best baked goods that I had ever eaten in my life. Especially the bite-sized cupcakes. Al and I could identify the flavor of every treat based solely on its appearance.

  That ability made us experts at Cupcake Tarot.

  Allison was the one who first came up with the game, three years before, when I’d been struggling with my decision to leave my job collecting signatures for the Penguin Rescue Campaign. Exasperated, Al had grabbed a pen and the box of a baker’s dozen cupcakes she’d bought for dessert. She wrote down numbers—one to thirteen—beside each of the treats. Then she scribbled the same numbers on a notepad, tossed the numbers into a bowl, and said, “Go ahead. Draw three—your past, your present, and your future.”

  My past was a Rocky Byway—chocolate cake with walnuts, topped by a thick swirl of marshmallow frosting. My present was a Yellow Brick Road—golden cake with fudge icing. My future turned out to be a Berry Jumble—chunks of strawberry in white cake, with triple-berry frosting glistening on top.

  Obviously, I was leaving a difficult past, with a clear path to follow now, heading toward … um, chunks of strawberry in white cake, with triple-berry frosting glistening on top.

  Okay. Cupcake Tarot wasn’t an exact science. But it was fun.

  Now, Allison went first, drawing the number “4”, a Sweet Angel. She stared at the single bite of airy vanilla cake, topped with a swirl of honey-flavored frosting.

  “My past,” Allison said. “So sweet it makes your teeth ache.” I smiled, until I realized that her lips were flattened into a grim line. She downed the dessert as if it were medicine.

  “Your turn!” she commanded. “Go ahead and draw!”

  I selected my own “past”—cupcake number thirteen. A Nutty Karma. The rich caramel cake was studded with candied nuts, generously finished with dulce de leche frosting.

  “Makes sense to me,” I said after swallowing the first mouthful. “My life was crazy before I landed the Court Clerk job.” I downed the second bite and licked my fingers clean, trying to ignore the fact that I drew Nutty Karmas more often than I should have, strictly speaking, statistically.

  Allison rummaged back in the bowl of numbers. “One,” she said at last, holding up the marker. I cocked my head to view the cupcakes more closely, and I realized that the first treat in the box was a Dark Heart—bittersweet chocolate cake, with a 72% cacao square baked into the core, all finished with an espresso glaze.

  Allison laughed harshly. “That is just perfect.”

  I ignored the bowl of papers that she pushed toward me. “Al?” I asked. “What’s going on here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Um, you don’t seem very happy right now?” I’d meant to make that a declarative statement, but my worry turned the words into a question.

  She sighed and waved her hands, taking in her recently-renovated kitchen. “How can I not be happy? I have the perfect house. The perfect daughter.” She twisted her wedding band around her ring finger. “The perfect marriage.”

  “Maybe it’s just where I’m sitting, but it looks like there might be a few cracks in all that perfection.”

  For a long time, I didn’t think she was going to answer me. When she finally did speak, her voice was so soft I had to catch my breath to hear her. “I ran into Kathy McMullen at lunch today, from Steve’s firm?” I nodded. “She said she was surprised I wasn’t out somewhere fancy, celebrating.”

  “Celebrating?”

  “The contingency check for the Langerhans case arrived at the firm this morning.” A contingency check. Payment of legal fees after a court victory, one third of whatever the client won at the end of litigation. One third of the final court award—in a case that Steve claimed to still be litigating up in New York. Until Friday, at least. Al stared at me with stricken eyes. “Kathy said I must be thrilled, to have Steve home all week. That the partners must have been really impressed with his work to give him that sort of unplanned vacation time.”

  “Allison,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to add, so I stammered, “I’m so sorry.”

  She plucked the Dark Heart out of the box and downed it in one bitter bite before pushing the bowl of numbers toward me again. “Come on,” she said. “Draw your ‘present.’”

  I wanted to protest. I wanted to make her tell me more, to share what she was thinking, how she was feeling. But the tight lines besides her eyes told me she was through talking, for now. I shoved down a feeling of helplessness, and reached into the bowl. “Six,” I said. But then I turned it upside down. “Or nine. Which is it?”

  Al’s lips twisted into a frown. “I should have drawn a line beneath it. What are the cupcakes? Maybe when you see the flavors, you’ll know which one is yours.”

  I looked at the box of desserts. Six was a White Hot Chili Pepper—rich white chocolate cake generously spiked with the heat of cayenne, all topped with a soothing swirl of creamy vanilla frosting.

  Nine was a Caramel Castle. More a petit four than a cupcake, the Castle was a careful construction of yellow cake sliced into four precise layers, each separated by a perfect disk of boiled caramel icing.

  “You have got to be kidding. You rigged this, didn’t you?”

  “What do you mean?” She honestly looked surprised.

  “James?” I said, pointing to the Chili Pepper. “Chris?” I eyed the Castle.

  Despite the sorrow that lingered in Allison’s eyes, she pounced on my indecision. “Aha!” she said. “I knew we’d get around to talking about them!”

  Sure she had. That’s why she’d bought the cupcakes in the first place. I was half surprised that she hadn’t filled the box entirely with White Hot Chili Peppers and Caramel Castles. “There isn’t anything to talk about!”

  Allison nodded, as if she believed me. “Which one are you choosing, then? Was it a six or a nine?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it?

  Was my current life wrapped up with the dark, brooding vampire, the creature who intrigued me, who had revived me with the spiced infusion of his blood, who had melded with me so thoroughly that my entire body craved him, was attuned to him, knew him completely, inside and out?

  My body—but not my mind. My mind still longed for more information—the story of how James had Turned, the life that he had led before he was a vampire. My heart didn’t dare trust a man who kept so much of his past hidden.

  No, my heart kept turning me toward the human man, toward Chris. I was so comfortable with the easy-going reporter who instinctively understood my need for order and organization, who didn’t question my twitching the world into a specific shape, even when I didn’t consciously know what was right, what would make things perfect.

  I shoved the box of cupcakes across the table. “I don’t want either of them.”

  Strike that. I actually wanted both, in different ways. I just didn’t want to make a decision.

  Al gave me a knowing smile. “Come on. You brought Chris to Nora’s birthday party. It seemed like you two had a really good time together.”

  “We di
d. And when he drove me home, I kissed him. And it was a really great kiss.”

  “And?” Allison prompted when I trailed off.

  “And nothing. He’s writing an article about me. He’s not allowed to get involved. He recited his journalistic code of ethics to me, chapter and verse, and then he left. And I considered moving to a convent.”

  “But you still like him,” she said with a wistful smile.

  I nodded. “But there’s something about James, too.” He made me feel off-center. Alive. On edge. But I couldn’t put those sensations into words. Not without telling her the truth, telling her about the secret world of vampires. And I couldn’t do that, ever. James had Enfolded her, precisely because I’d already told Allison too much, too soon.

  She shook her head. “Should I remind you that he’s your boss? That if he’s tried anything at all, you can charge him with sexual harassment?”

  “It’s not harassment!” I thought of him pounding on the locker room door, demanding that I come out to the training room. I felt his legs hook around me, his thighs tight against mine. I tasted his blood, hot against the back of my throat.

  “Oh my God!” Allison said. “You’ve slept with him!”

  “I haven’t slept with him!”

  “When I called yesterday morning, you said that he was right there.”

  “And he was. But he slept, um, on the couch.”

  “I have sat on that couch, Sarah. It’s the most uncomfortable piece of furniture known to man. No one could sleep there.”

  I scowled as I insisted, “We didn’t sleep together.”

  “Then why are you blushing?”

  “I don’t know!” Drinking James’s blood had been nearly as fulfilling as sex. But could I really get involved with a guy who could never join my friends and me for a matinée movie?

  Allison shrugged and said very seriously, “You realize that there’s only one thing to do.”

  “What?”

  “Eat both cupcakes!”

  I laughed, because I really didn’t know what else to do. I ate the White Hot Chili Pepper first, relishing the way that the smooth vanilla icing took the edge off the spicy cake. The Caramel Castle was a little two-bite taste of heaven—creamy and balanced and measured.