The doorknob opened, and Lucia flew off Mindy like a scared cat, flipping instinctively before she hit the ceiling so she dug her nails into the plaster and held herself there. And the door began to open, and while Mindy was still staring upward in total bafflement, Lucia must have realized how she looked and let go, landing on the mattress just as Mindy’s mother walked in.
“You kids want some chili?” Mrs. Murphy asked. “We’re having chili for dinner.” A little trickle of shredded plaster landed on the still-creaking bed. Mrs. Murphy paused. “What are you girls doing in here?”
“Having sex?” Mindy offered.
CHAPTER 13
The hamburger pizza, Dragon Pizza’s new contribution to the world of Italian cooking, was boxed and placed on top of the restaurant’s conveyor oven. All the drivers and in-stores were invited to take a slice to familiarize themselves with the taste. Mindy sneaked two, putting them on a paper plate and carrying them out atop the hot bag her order was in. She carried the order slip in her teeth.
Mindy didn’t drive, though. Once out the door, she went across the grass that divided the Dragon Pizza parking lot from that of the pawn shop they neighbored. Parked behind the storefront so it couldn’t be seen from the road or Dragon Pizza or anywhere except out the backdoor of the pawn shop, Lucia laid on the hood of Mindy’s car. She wore her own khaki pants—much better fitting than Mindy’s—and Mindy’s spare Dragon Pizza shirt. The hat they traded off, Mindy planting it on Lucia’s head as she slid beside her on the hood.
“It’s 818 Sycamore,” Mindy said, handing her the hot bag along with the order slip. “But Sycamore Cove, not Sycamore Lane. It’s gonna be the cul-de-sac.”
Balancing the hot bag masterfully with one hand, Lucia tossed her a salute and blurred off, leaving Mindy’s iPod atop the hood. Mindy picked it up, slotted one earbud in, and switched over to her audiobook. A few minutes later, Lucia was back, and Mindy switched back to their music—Kanye West, Nicki Minaj—holding out the other earbud for Lucia to take. They both plugged in.
“This is so good for the environment,” Mindy said, taking the signed slip from Lucia.
The order slip had directions to every address for those not blessed with a GPS system, and included with that was a laughably inaccurate count of how long it would take for the driver to get back to the store. The computer never seemed to account for the fact that running red lights was frowned upon.
Still, at the very earliest, it would take eleven minutes for Mindy to get to 818 Sycamore and back. The system wouldn’t let her clock back in until those eleven minutes were up. Since Lucia had made the run in four minutes (literally), they now had nothing to do but relax under the evening sky.
“Here.” Mindy spun the paper plate between them, a still-warm pizza slice onboard. “Our new hamburger pizza.”
Lucia eyed it. “Is it a hamburger or a pizza?”
“It doesn’t belong in either world. It has no place. Take pity and eat it.”
Lucia picked it up, turning it this way and that—eyeing the ‘burger sauce’ that replaced the familiar marinara. Then there was the ground beef and dill pickles. There were also Roma tomatoes. All in all, Mindy didn’t think Lucia found it trustworthy.
Mindy suddenly snatched it back from her. “I’m sorry, I should’ve asked. Do you have to eat?”
Lucia shook her head. “Nah, I think I can get by just on blood, which is great for my thighs. I’m thinking of writing a book. The All-Blood Diet.”
“But can you? Eat?”
“Sure. This is almost pizza, after all.” She took it back, had a bite. “This…is not as good as blood.”
Mindy checked her watch. Five minutes until she would supposedly get back from her run. She didn’t want to appear too eager—she liked hanging out with Lucia. They’d rigged the system three times this week, which had already saved Mindy a metric buttload on gas money, and left her lots of time for watching cat videos with Lucia on her phone.
But sometimes, she felt like Lucia was a time bomb. Somehow, the ticking was soothing, but Mindy didn’t want to chance setting her off. She wanted to be close, this close, in fact, but she didn’t want to send Lucia into another panic.
Lucia picked off a pickle, flicked it away. “Okay, not so bad without the pickles.”
“But then it’s just a pizza.”
“Exactly.” Lucia finished off the crust in an uncomfortably large bite. “Hey, Mindy?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m hungry again. No, not hungry. Thirsty.”
The pawn shop’s sign shot up over the store, standing vigil, its LED scoreboard flashing red to passing cars. GLOCK 17S – HALF OFF.
“Okay,” Mindy said slowly, wondering what Lucia was suggesting. “How often do you need blood?”
Lucia blew a brief raspberry. “It’s like my period. I just get it and then I have these cravings and I need some fucking blood, okay?”
“Okay,” Mindy said again. Her arm was coming off her Taurus’s cold, dead hood. “So… what do you need?”
Lucia gave her a look. The whites of her eyes were almost as bright as the fangs protruding ever so slightly from behind her upper lip. “Well, since my needs aren’t a secret anymore…I was thinking you could…”
“Yes?” Mindy’s heart was pounding, trying to get out of her chest, up to Lucia’s mouth. She’d had her blood drawn before—you had to make a fist, pump it. That was if Lucia bit her arm.
“Pick who I bite.”
Mindy blinked. “Who you…bite?”
Lucia opened up her wallet, pulling out some of the receipts she’d collected from Mindy’s glove compartment. All bore signatures, but no tips. “Who would you like me to go after? How about Lawrence Roberge?” She pronounced the name with a school-play accent. “I delivered to him last night, got him his pizza halfway across town in ten fucking minutes. He gave me a tip as big as his dick. Want me to eat him?”
“No!” Mindy turned off her iPod, which put Lucia in a pouty mood, slumping down the windshield and crossing her arms. “I told you, no feeding! We’re about to find the guy, you don’t need to—”
“Vampire!” Lucia interrupted. “Pretty sure I do.”
“Are you sure you do? What if you’re just bored?”
“You sound like one of those weird bulimia people right now.”
“Models?”
“No, listen—” Lucia seemed to teleport, she moved so fast, now perched on the chain-link fence that separated the pawn shop’s lot from the wilderness behind it. “I’m a growing girl. Blood is my calcium. My mother’s milk. I was sick until I drank from Quentin. And every time I’ve drunk since then, I’ve gotten faster, stronger, cuter… What if I need so much blood because my body’s still changing? Making me a better vampire?”
“Is that a good thing?” Mindy asked. “Being better at…that.”
Lucia walked off the fence, bobbing down to the ground with a lazy tug of gravity. “You don’t have to choose if you don’t want to. But c’mon—how many times do you get a chance to inflict emotional trauma and bodily harm on people who were mean to you, all for a worthy cause?”
“Making you cute?”
Lucia flashed her a smile. “You don’t have to pick for me, just, like, blink once for yes, twice for no.” Suddenly leaning on the Taurus’s cab, she flipped through the receipts. “Oh, this one I know, you complained about her! You were going to make a blog post about her, but you were worried you’d get fired.” Lucia gave Mindy a pout. “Netsanet Hopkins of Skyview Terrace… I know her. ‘Five chins that all come together to form a whole greater than the sum of its parts—sorta like the Jackson Five.’”
Mindy finished for her, standing. “And just like the Jackson Five, it would be better if there were only one of them doing its thing and the rest just faded away. I remember. That was me venting.”
“This is why women don’t run the world—we vent while men wrestle each other and shoot each other and run each other over with cars.”
<
br /> “And I’m pretty sure that’s why Florida doesn’t run the world. Come on, El, I need to get back to the store—”
“Worried I’ll step out on you?” Lucia teased, but with the almost-seriousness that she was easily master of.
“I’ll get you some blood, okay? Tomorrow. Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“Stupid?” Lucia repeated. “You don’t know what it’s like, Minz. Needing something to live and hearing that you can’t have it.”
The hell I don’t, Mindy went back to the store.
That night, Mindy spent an hour watching videos of blood being drawn on YouTube to get it right. She even checked the comments, before realizing that some people had really, really weird fetishes. Then she phoned Seb to see if his host family would be working tomorrow afternoon.
They would be.
* * *
“Mindy, Lucia, come in, come in! Come all over my home!”
Seb’s house was one of those homes that papered the walls with crosses and Home Sweet Home type signage, like a parish church run by TGI Fridays. Lucia kept her distance from the crosses, eying them like an ex-boyfriend whose appearance made her want to be better dressed than she was at the moment.
“So-ing… What assistance may I be helping you with to-Monday?”
Mindy opened up her purse, digging out a shrink-wrapped syringe needle and a rubber hose, plus an empty cream soda bottle that she’d washed out. She had, stuffed into a Ziploc bag, blood collection tubes, cotton balls, The Lion King Band-Aids, and alcoholic wipes. “We’re gonna need some blood.”
“Yes, that is what I thinking you said last tonight. But…why?”
“School project,” Mindy said. “Extra credit.”
“Which class would needing blood?”
“Buddy, try all of them,” Lucia sighed.
“We’ll pay you twenty bucks,” Mindy said.
Lucia showed the twenty.
Seb bobbed his head, thinking about it before he drew a chair from the dining room table and sat down. “How much will you needing?”
“Just a pint,” Mindy assured him. “You won’t even know it’s gone.”
“Not…two pints?” Lucia asked.
“Just one,” Mindy said certainly. She mouthed don’t be a pig.
Lucia scratched her nose with her middle finger.
Seb rolled up his sleeve. Mindy set his arm on the dining room table and tied the hose over his elbow. “Make a fist.”
He did. Veins began to come to the surface, Mindy tracing them with her finger like Wikihow had told her to. Lucia slunk in to observe, but Mindy shooed her with a look. She told Seb to wait while she washed her hands. When she came back, Lucia hadn’t ripped Seb’s throat out.
Lucia nodded to her. “Your friend’s a real Chatty Cathy.”
“I am not this named,” Seb interjected.
Mindy gave Lucia a look. “Be cool.”
Faking a yawn, Lucia squeezed her thighs together before opening them up. Mindy ignored her pumping her legs. Seb didn’t. Mindy prodded him with the needle, making him wince, then undid the tourniquet. “Okay, this’ll just take a minute. Pump your fist like you’re holding a squeeze toy.”
“Or your dick,” Lucia added.
Seb nodded. “Your friend is seeming nice.”
The blood slid through the needle and down its tube, into the glass bottle. “She can be,” Mindy said, too low for anyone but Seb to hear, but she knew that wouldn’t stop Lucia. “When she wants to be.”
Looking away, Lucia flipped up the piano’s fallboard and plinked a random note on the keyboard.
“The bottle actually holds three hundred and fifty-five milliliters,” Mindy told Seb, “so it won’t be quite a pint. Does this hurt any, by the way?”
“No—it pinched a littles.” Seb pumped his fist. “Are you friends with her again?” he whispered.
“It’s complicated.”
“You are not friending with her? Just—study mates?”
Mindy did not want to have this conversation with Lucia in the room, in the house. She lowered her voice more out of politeness than thinking Lucia wouldn’t hear. “She needs me. For the assignment. And I need her to be okay.”
Seb nodded along before smiling. “I am thinking you will work things out.”
“Wish I had your confidence, partner.”
“She is friending you, you are friending her—y’all are liking each other too much to stay mean.”
“Y’all? Really?” The bottle was about to overflow. “Open your hand.” She drew out the needle, popped a cotton ball onto the puncture mark, and folded Seb’s forearm up against his upper arm, pinching the cotton in between.
Lucia stood, bouncing on her heels with anticipation. She tried to play cool. “Where’d you get all this junk?” she asked loudly.
“Amazon,” Mindy said. “Overnight delivery. I had to sign up for a free trial of Amazon Prime, so remind me to cancel that before they actually start billing me.” To Seb she said, “Could you give us a minute?”
“Suring. Would you like some bites of pizza?”
“Yes,” Lucia said. “Bake them in the oven. Take your time.”
Mindy pulled away the cotton ball and slapped two Band-Aids on him. “Tell me if that starts bleeding. Plan B is a handful of cotton balls and duct tape.”
Nodding uneasily, Seb slipped away. Once he was gone, Lucia blurred onto the dining table, knotting her hands in front of her face. “Hey, Minz?”
Mindy tapped on the tube, getting all the blood out into the bottle. “Yeah, El?”
Lucia took a deep breath, out of habit. “How do we know Seb isn’t the vampire? He’s from Transylvania.”
“He’s from Romania,” Mindy corrected gently.
“Romania, Transylvania, same thing. He’s a transperson.”
“I don’t think that’s the right word,” said Mindy, who knew it wasn’t the right word.
“No, I’ve seen it used a lot on my Facebook feed, it definitely is. You know that really tall woman on Orange Is The New Black? She’s a transperson, from Transylvania, that’s why she’s so mannish.”
Mindy held out the bottle. “Drink your blood.”
“Chug?” Lucia asked teasingly.
Mindy shook her head. “I don’t care.”
“You don’t care because you don’t think I can chug this or…”
Mindy put her finger on the bottom of the bottle and tilted it. Lucia threw her mouth under the rim before it could spill, filled her mouth, only a little spilling onto her chin, Mindy held the bottle still as she began to swallow. Then she spat, wheezing, sticking her tongue out, flecks of blood hitting Mindy’s face, the mass of it slapping her shirt and dribbling toward her pants. Mindy didn’t care, concerned as she was for the spitting, heaving Lucia.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Lucia fell off the table, onto all fours, hacking now like a cat with a furball. “Prune juice—” She forced out. Mindy slapped her back. “Tastes like prune juice!”
Hearing the commotion, Seb rushed back, finding Mindy holding Lucia’s hair as Lucia raspberried out the contents of his veins onto the carpet. The dining room looked like a cross between a slasher movie and a cooking show. The bottle, set down in all the confusion, teetered on the edge of the table. Seb ran, catching it before it fell. Lucia’s lipstick clung to the rim of the bottleneck.
“Did you…drinking my blood?”
Lucia aimed a finger squarely at him. “You have the Peach Schnapps of blood!” she told him, wiping her mouth off. “You actually have this running through your body? God! I’ve drunk Mexican people who taste better than you!”
“Okay, that was racist—” Mindy remarked.
“They eat spicy foods, Mindy!”
“You’re drinking blood! Why…” Seb half turned, almost hiding the bottle behind his body. “Is this a sex thing?”
“No!” Mindy said.
“Yes,” Lucia said at the same time.
M
indy looked at her, got a look from Lucia, and said, “Yes, it is. This is very…” Lucia hocked out a loogie with the last of Seb’s blood in it. “Sexy.”
“Maybe it’s the bottle,” Lucia said. “Did you wash it out?”
“Yes, I washed it out—”
“Because that tasted like—like blood mixed with bug spray…”
“I am taking medication for sleep apnea,” Seb said.
“You have sleep apnea?” Mindy asked.
“One in five Americans have it,” Seb told her. “It’s nothing to be ashame from. Wait.” His face darkened. “You couldn’t come in. You couldn’t come in before I invited you!”
Mindy gave Lucia a panicked look, which Lucia was already ignoring. “Dude, stop changing the subject from your skank-ass blood.”
“And you drank it! And you couldn’t come in without an invitation.”
“I told you, I’m just very ladylike,” Lucia said, before burping.
“You are the wampyr!”
Lucia chuckled, slapping her thigh. “Your friend is so funny, Mindy!”
“Yes, he is, we should go.”
Shielding his blood in the crook of one arm, Seb lanced out with one finger. “Creature of the night! Nosferatu! Undead!”
Lucia rolled her eyes. “Like, whatever. I’m out during the day, I can’t be a vampire.”
“Sunlight only weakens the wampyr!”
“Oh my God, does everyone know more about vampires than me?” Lucia stood. “Look, you can’t prove I’m a vampire, so I’m just gonna go. Don’t tell anyone your dumb theory.”
“Or what?” Seb demanded. “You will kill me?”
“No, you’ll just be that weird kid who thinks the head cheerleader is a vampire. In social terms, you might as well start wearing Crocs. C’mon, Mindy, let’s leave this loser and his weird blood alone.”
Seb puffed his chest out. “I revoke your invitation!” he bellowed.
It was like someone had hit rewind on a remote control. Lucia was suddenly walking backward, almost being dragged along by an invisible force, until she hit the front door, swinging it open to be deposited on the porch.
Mindy watched in complete shock. “That was… Seb, invite her back in! Invite her back in, right now!”
Ex-Wives of Dracula Page 18