It was so serious the way Lucia looked at her. So sad. “Alright, you’re taking this a lot better than I have, but I think we’ve hit peak Mindy, so let’s get you to bed and in the morning we can talk more about it. I’m actually kinda glad I can share this with you now. It’s not like this is the sort of thing you can blog about. Start telling the Internet you’re a teenage vampire cheerleader, you get real weird e-mails real fast.”
“Oh, fuck…fuck, Lucia.” Mindy ground her hands into her head. “This isn’t happening, this is—I’m having a nightmare. Or some really bad acid trip. So bad I don’t even remember taking acid. But it makes sense. I mean, we have this lesbo thing between us, vampires are historically known for their queer sexuality, it’s in Carmilla, Dracula…”
“Oh God, when you get high, do you seriously start talking about literature? Sometimes I can’t believe we’re friends.” Lucia reached over and turned off the spigot. “Okay, beddy-bye and a couple Ambien for the party girl. Climb onto my back, I’ll take you up.”
“What?” Mindy said flatly.
“I can stick to walls too. I told you, I’m Spider-Man. Well, at least as much Spider-Man as Andrew Garfield. God, those movies.” Lucia stood, turning away from Mindy. “C’mon, little monkey, hop on. Unless your parents don’t care what you’ve been doing out this late either, which would be a pretty big coincidence.”
* * *
What a wonderful morning Mindy woke up to. She could think it had all been a dream. And it had been. Had to have been. Vampires? In Texas? Maybe in Austin, maybe. But not here. Not Lucia. It was just a combination of Tex-Mex before bed, Lucia’s goth phase, and a fetish or two Mindy was just finding out about herself.
Then Mindy looked out her window. Lucia’s blinds were up. The girl had a Sony Handycam aimed at her, the view-finder flipped around to display its screen to Lucia as she filmed herself…applying foundation.
Noticing Mindy, she waved at her with a white hand. Mindy was so relieved. It-was-all-a-dream-or-was-it? She could even put up with the cliché, if she could finally be on speaking terms with Lucia again.
So she waved back. Even if Lucia was a vampire.
Her best friend, the vampire.
She washed up, put on something mildly flattering and went downstairs. “Hey Mom, Dad, what’s for breakfast?” The casual words sounded like a foreign language to Mindy.
They were sitting at the breakfast nook, talking in the hushed tones of the adult world. There was a third person there, a blocky man in a seersucker suit, bolo tie. She thought the white Stetson on the table was his as well. He looked familiar to Mindy, but she couldn’t place him. That was going to bug her.
“We were just going to get you, honey,” her mother said, then: “The police are here.”
Well, every mother wanted to say that to her daughter. “Hi, police,” Mindy replied. Still too in a state of shock to be nervous. It was her last set of finals all over again.
The man stood. “Lou Card, Texas Highway Patrol. I’m here about the attacks we’ve been seeing lately in this county.”
“The animal attacks?”
He looked at her coolly. “Some people say that.” He picked his hat up off the table, held it in his hands as he circled his chair. “Last night, 911 got a call from your cell phone reporting a DUI. Did you place that call?”
Be cool, don’t look like you’re being cool, be uncool. “Yeah,” Mindy said readily, “I couldn’t sleep, I saw a car…um, pickup truck, driving all weird, so I called it in. See something, say something, right?”
“Right.” Card perched the hat on his head. “The driver of that vehicle, Daryl Koontz, was found last night. He’d been attacked—something practically tore his throat out.”
“That’s horrible,” Mindy said. No acting required. “Is he okay?”
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Card said noncommittally. But present-tense. Card took a notepad from his jacket pocket and prepared a pen.
“Mindy.” Her father held his cup of coffee like a talisman. “Now, you don’t need to talk to this man if you don’t want to.”
“I know, Dad, it’s fine,” Mindy said, like a liar. “I wish I could help you, but I just saw his truck.”
Card’s pen scratched at his pad like he was chipping ice. “You saw him turn onto North Bell?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And is that your room upstairs with the window over the garage?”
“Yes.”
“So how is it you saw him getting on North Bell, to the North, when your bedroom faces south?”
Mindy shrugged. This was easy. It was like he wasn’t even trying to crack her. “I couldn’t sleep, I was walking around. I saw him out of a back window.”
Card nodded agreeably. He clicked his pen, drawing the tip back in, and Mindy saw Lucia’s fangs disappearing into the shadows of her mouth. “Two things. One, we did a blood test on Mr. Koontz. He had a 0.02 BAC.” He looked to Mindy’s parents. “That’s about what you would get drinking some table wine out on the town. Not something that would impair driving.”
“Maybe he was a lightweight,” Mindy said, and instantly regretted it. Defending her story—that made it a story.
“Second,” Card said, “I’ve been asking around, and no one else saw Mr. Koontz driving erratically.”
Did they see me? “It was pretty late.”
“Yes, it was. Do you always stay up that late on a school night?”
“I had trouble sleeping.”
“Bad dreams?”
“Trouble sleeping.”
Mindy’s father stood, his hands on the table like all the times she’d asked for a puppy. “Mr. Card, I’m not sure what the point of badgering my daughter this way is. She’s told you all she knows; if she knew anything that would help you figure this thing out, she would tell you. Wouldn’t you, sweetie?”
Her mother broke in. “But if you’re not telling the detective something because you think it’ll make us upset, you don’t have to worry. Just be honest. Whatever it is can’t be as important as solving the case. Is it a boy? A girl?”
Card’s eyebrow raised.
She thought she recognized him now. Less shaved, less preened, but she’d delivered a pizza to him. He hadn’t tipped. She wondered if she could report that to Internal Affairs. “I couldn’t sleep, so I walked around the house, I saw someone driving weird out the window, so I called it in. Then I went back to bed.”
Card tapped his pen against his lip. “That’s what you want me to put down in my report? Nothing else?”
“There’s nothing else to put.”
The pen and notepad slid back into his jacket. “All right then. Thank you for your time, Miss Murphy.” He nodded stiffly to her parents. “And the coffee, Mrs. Murphy. If any of you think of something you’d like to share, be sure and place a call.” He gestured to the business card he’d left on the kitchen table. “Take care now.”
CHAPTER 12
Mindy wasn’t surprised when Lucia called soon after. “What did that loser want?”
Sitting on the toilet, she put her phone on speaker and set it on the counter next to her. She wasn’t dropping it in like that time at Barnes & Noble—with the plumber. “He was a cop, El. He was asking about you.”
“Oh.”
“Not you, specifically. Just…last night.”
“Oh, okay.” Lucia sounded blandly relieved. “You listen to the new Britney? It’s super-gay, you’d like it.”
“Are you not worried that I’d tell him…something?”
“Nah, I trust you. Besides, what would he do, go up to a judge and say ‘Give me a warrant, this girl’s a vampire’?”
Mindy bit her lip. “I could stop you. If I had to.”
Quiet on the line. “Wow, Mindy, I’m feeling really attacked right now. I’m not going to respond to that, because it’s not what Jesus would do, but you’re really lucky you didn’t tell him anything. I’m saying this as a friend.”
“Fine, whatever. You
still wanna meet up?”
“Yeah, but I have to babysit my dumbass little brothers. You mind hanging at the dog park with the fanny pack set?”
“See you there.”
“Later, hooker.”
But Mindy wouldn’t be going to school. She had shopping to do.
Most reputable gun stores did not carry crossbows. Totally overlooked market.
You could fill an empty Ozarka bottle with holy water at St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church, but the priest gave you a look and asked if you had something you would like to confess in a really insinuating tone. If they sold crucifixes there, Mindy certainly wasn’t going to buy from them after that.
Stakes were easy. Go to the junkyard, find a sturdy chair leg, and then whittle a stake out of it. Though whittling was a lot harder than it looked. It took Mindy about an hour and a half to get a good one done—so much for the bandolier of stakes she had planned.
It turned out Wal-Mart did have UV flashlights. Mindy had thought she would have to trick Lucia into one of those UV manicure lamps. Not that she thought an ultraviolet light would do much good when she’d seen Lucia walking around in the sun, but it had helped in the Blade movies.
So did silver, even if Mindy was pretty sure that was werewolves. Still, she took a photo of her Grams in a silver frame with her.
Box cutter, pepper spray, her mom’s stun gun, a rape whistle, and fuck it, a good-sized rock. She emptied her purse of everything, including way more candy wrappers than she would’ve thought, and filled it with an arsenal.
She didn’t want to hurt Lucia, or slay her, or whatever, but she wasn’t going to talk to a vampire armed only with the sharp Hello Kitty knucks on her keyring.
Mindy decided to wear a scarf as well. Just in case.
* * *
“You look like fucking Harry Potter in that scarf,” Lucia said.
“And you look like a Tim Burton movie. Do a British accent, I’ll think you’re Johnny Depp.”
Lucia wore Keds Royal Hi Canvas sneakers, Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, a white V-neck beater stenciled with a Sex Pistols logo like spray-painted graffiti, with her prize black leather jacket and a set of black skinny jeans. Even as a vampire she had a better fashion sense than Mindy. It was frustrating.
The dog park was a fenced-in quarter mile of pond and grass. It was sparsely populated today. Mindy and Lucia sat on a bench under the shade of a cypress tree. They were supposedly watching as Lucia’s younger siblings ran around with their dog, a young scrapper of a Yorkie that Lucia referred to as Malty with a bit of a wince.
Mindy had her purse in her lap. She held onto it tightly.
She’d been on the school paper, she knew how to interview someone. Okay, what first, what first—a simple question, to put the subject at ease. Yeah, she could do that. “So, as a vampire…can you, like, stand garlic?”
“No, but I couldn’t before either.” Lucia ran a hand through her darkened hair. “Don’t try to bullshit me, Minz. You wanna know how it happened.”
“If you want to talk about it.”
“Of course I want to talk about it. Who wouldn’t want to talk about it?” Lucia asked dryly. “It’s such a cool story, I can’t wait to break it out at parties.” Her nails tapped on the slats of the bench. “Ever had one of those nightmares it seems like you can’t wake up from? You know you’re in it, you know it’s not real—just keeps happening to you? Well, mine’s still happening. It just used to be less…” Lucia stared straight ahead. “I remember being with you at Lake Travis. You left, I stayed. Next thing I know, I’m at the bottom of the lake, chained up, wrapped in plastic.”
Mindy’s hand twitched to her mouth. “Jesus.”
“Don’t think he’s too interested. It was very hazy. I was scared. So I thought I’d go to your place. And I must’ve done that, because then I was there and you were trying to help.” Her eyes shifted under her sunglasses. “Thanks for that, by the way. Appreciate ya.”
“What happened then?”
“I was sick.” Lucia held up her hands, staring at the dappled shadows the cypress leaves put on her pale skin. In the bright sun’s shade, they were almost their usual tone. “Really sick. I almost thought everything that’d happened was some sort of fever dream. You visited me, you know how it was. But I was hungry. Really hungry. And eventually I figured out what I was hungry for.” Her eyes went back to Mindy, who felt her veins throbbing under her skin.
“I know,” she said. “I know you didn’t want to hurt anyone.” Mindy’s voice sounded different, even to herself. Grown up.
“Yeah, well—nightmares about being bitten, sudden thirst for blood, sensitivity to light. I may not have your grade point average, but I got it figured out.”
“Lucia.” She was still looking at Mindy, but those sunglasses were like an impenetrable barrier. She seemed to look through her. “The sun didn’t kill me. It purified me. My skin came off, Mindy. Hell of an exfoliation. Then I realized that I couldn’t leave Abe and Artie and…everyone. I had to stay, and I had to take care of this. So I went to Quentin.” Lucia’s eyes focused briefly. “I’d sucked plenty for him. Why not for me?”
“You…drank him?”
“I let him live, didn’t I?” Lucia scooted where she sat, adjusting herself. She held onto the bench on either side of her legs. Looking down now: “Do I get to ask a question? Are you gonna kill me?”
“What, no, Lucia, I wouldn’t—”
“I can feel the cross in your bag. I’m not offended. You bring protection when there’s a predator on the loose.” She held up her right hand, palm facing Mindy. “Yeah, the thing about crosses is right. First day I got sick, I tried praying to God.” Mindy could see it now. On the heel of her hand, the imprint of a small crucifix was burnt into a faded scar, almost like a brand. “Oops.” She lowered her hand. “God doesn’t want me anymore.”
Mindy made a choice. She set down her purse between her legs, kicked it under the bench. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just have to be able to defend myself.”
“I would never hurt you, Mindy,” Lucia insisted. Her voice finally sounded strained. “We’re BFFs forever.”
Yeah, that is part of the acronym. “So why’d you say it was a good thing I didn’t say anything to that cop?”
Lucia took off her glasses. “Oh, you thought—no, no, I just meant it would look bad. But they’d probably figure out you’re not guilty, like, eventually.”
“Not guilty? You mean, of the attacks? Why would they think I was involved?”
Lucia had turned away. “Oh my God, look at that dog with the Frisbee, he is going nuts!”
Mindy’s brow furrowed. “El, why would they think that? Why is that a thing they would think?”
Lucia stood, holding her elbow in her opposite hand, looking so sheepish and yet somehow exuberant in that sheepishness that Mindy could see the old Lucia in her. She wished she could pull that Lucia out of…all this. She paced to the cypress tree and leaned against it. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘ain’t nobody fucking with my clique’?” she asked Mindy.
“Yes, El, I’m not that white.”
“So, you’re in my clique—congratulations—and if people fuck with you, they’re fucking with my clique. And then it’s on! I have to serve them!”
Mindy stood up slowly. “Who’s fucking with me?”
Lucia gritted her teeth together nervously, hemming and hawing with her head. “Okay, Mindy, you know those receipts you keep of bad tippers in your glove compartment? And you know how you don’t lock your car, which is really pretty irresponsible. I mean, my cousin did that, went to Atlanta once, bam, no speaker system, and he had a great speaker system…”
Mindy held up her hand. For once, Lucia was silent. “Are you drinking the blood…of people who stiff me on tips?”
Lucia kneaded her hands together. “We roll deep, Minz. We roll deep.”
For a split second, Mindy looked around to see if anyone was looking. Then she had Lucia by the lap
els. “The cops! Check on that shit! They connect things! To people! Haven’t you ever seen Law & Order?”
“I have basic cable, I’ve seen like a million Law & Order. And it’s okay if you want to keep Batman-grabbing me, that’s fine.”
Mindy growled in frustration, giving Lucia a shake. “I could get arrested, Lucia. I could go to jail!” Lucia’s eyes brightened. “And do not even think of making an Orange Is The New Black joke, because you are being enough of a slag without taking this seriously! Un-seriously. Either one!”
Lucia took Mindy’s hands where they were fisted in her shirt. “Mindy, come on, I bet those people never tip, ever, so if the cops want to check out people they’ve stiffed, there’s Starbucks and China Café and like a million other places that could’ve attacked them just as much as you did.” Now Lucia reached up to Mindy’s face, petting her cheeks, twisting her bangs between her fingers. “And let’s say the cops do finger you.” Lucia didn’t say it, but she cracked a small smile, clearly at some private ‘fingering’ joke. “So what? If they send someone to arrest you, I’ll just drink him. I’d drink a whole SWAT team for you. I’d chug ’em like I was at a frat party.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” Mindy said. Yet her lungs let in a deep breath. “Why couldn’t you just tell me what was going on? I could’ve helped.”
Lucia spun Mindy around, wrapping her in a hug. Her arms were like steel bands around Mindy’s chest, but that was reassuring in a way. She wondered how much Lucia had missed—them. “I didn’t want you involved, okay? If you knew how close I’d come to—”
Lucia was looking out at the dog park’s pond. Malty had taken a dip and now was shaking himself off, splattering Artie and Abe with water.
Lucia’s voice turned hard: “It’s not gonna come to that.”
Ex-Wives of Dracula Page 16