La Vida Vampire

by Nancy Haddock

  We were meeting at Shelly Jergason’s in Crescent Beach. I stopped for gas on the way, cringing at the price and the fumes that rose from the tank.

  Shelly, in fact, had invited me to join the club, and we’d met because of the Vampire Protection Act. One of the strict provisions was that vamps had to take a Human Lifestyle Appreciation class, then participate in some sort of community activity. A garden club, library guild—the organization didn’t matter as long as we interacted with mortals.

  I’d met Shelly at the Historical Society and mentioned in passing that I was learning to play bridge on the Internet—a game that evolved from whist, so it wasn’t that hard for me. Next thing I knew, she called me to substitute a few times, and when one of the ladies went back to nursing on the night shift, I joined as a full-fledged member.

  Traffic was light, so I arrived at Shelly’s early. Jenna Jones blew in right behind me in her red power suit, her mouth in high gear as usual.

  “You would not believe the new clients I’m trying to find houses for!” Jenna paused dramatically in Shelly’s huge kitchen, then dropped her purse on a rattan barstool and fluffed her short hair. “And the creepiest thing happened on the way back from my closing in Palatka. I swear it must be the full moon.”

  “New moon,” Maybelle Banks corrected. She’s the grand dame of the group. Sixty, dabbles in astrology, and cracks a wry wit.

  “What?” Jenna asked with a blank look at Maybelle.

  “It’s the new moon,” Maybelle said, “not the full.”

  “Whatever!” Jenna said. “I’ve shown this one woman every darned house on the island, and she’s not—” She made quote marks with her fingers. “—feeling any of them. And the man I’m searching for! He’s in California now. Says he grew up here but can’t decide if he wants a place downtown or on the beach. When I mentioned property on Vilano, he had no idea what I was talking about. Vilano Beach has been called Vilano for a long damn time, and this guy doesn’t sound over forty. How can he not know where Vilano is?”

  Goose bumps broke out on my arms as Jenna ranted about her California client, but I had no clue why. The nearly dark moon messing with me again? The Gift resurging?

  “That explains your difficult clients,” Shelly piped in, “but what’s creepy about Palatka? There’s not much but farm country between here and there.”

  “Exactly!” Jenna exclaimed yet again. “I stopped to look at a property another client asked about. Some land with a shack on it. Well, I found the road tunneling through this tangle of trees and vines, but when I got to a clearing, there’s no shack, no nothing but empty land in a ring of trees.”

  We all waited expectantly. Shelly ran out of patience first. “And?”

  “When I turned the car around, I happened to glance in the rearview mirror, and the shack was there!”

  “Faeries,” Maybelle deadpanned. “They don’t want the place sold, so they hide the shack when you’re looking straight on for it, reveal it when you’re not.”

  Jenna blinked. “Are you shitting me?”

  Maybelle half smiled and patted Jenna’s shoulder. “Honey, you need a day off.”

  “More like a month. Have some wine, and chill out, Jen,” Nadine Houseman advised and handed her a glass of Chablis. Nadine is medium height, in her fifties, and is the perennial chairwoman. She sees a problem, she solves the problem.

  Jenna accepted the goblet with a cute glass dolphin ring on the stem—the kind meant to help tell glasses apart at a party. If I ever hostess bridge, I need to get some of—

  “Cesca!”

  I blinked at Jenna. “What?”

  “Is Maggie ready to put the condo on the market?” Jenna demanded, apparently for the second time.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, Jenna,” Shelly said. “Stop nagging Cesca about the condo. If you really want to make some money, sell that oceanfront house up the block. Those owners rent to the craziest people.”

  “More spring breakers?” kindergarten teacher Missy Cox asked.

  “No, a couple who yell at each other in some foreign language half the time. And talk about rude? They ‘borrowed’ the Berrys’ rowboat without asking permission. Gene was furious.”

  “Who was furious about what?” Kathy Barker asked as she breezed into the kitchen with Daphne Dupree behind her. Kathy’s an artist, Daphne a pastry chef, and they both carried white bakery boxes. I smelled chocolate and lemon already.

  “Never mind,” Shelly said, as the ladies set the boxes on the island counter. “Let’s talk about good stuff. Cesca, you first. How did your tours go this week?”

  I doubted these ladies would hear differently, so I smiled and fudged. “Great. We had ghost sightings up the wazoo.”

  Missy laughed. “One of my students was in your tour Monday. A little pistol named Robbie.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said, smiling. “He’s adorable.”

  “Not when he talks that loud in a closed classroom all day, but he sure was high on you and the animal ghosts.”

  “We have animal ghosts in town?” Kathy asked and shuddered.

  “We do,” I said. “Your turn, Kathy. How was the art festival in Deland?”

  “I won a first place ribbon and even sold enough to make the show worthwhile. Daphne has good news, too.”

  Daphne nodded. “Bridezilla Barbie’s wedding is over, and the cake from hell was a success,” she said to a chorus of woohoos. “And we’re celebrating,” she continued, “with lemon cake and chocolate coconut bars. Eat up before we deal the first hand.”

  While Maybelle and Nadine shared cute things their grandchildren had done, I sampled both goodies, grabbed my sweet tea, heavy on the ice, and was ready to play when Shelly called us to order. One table was set in Shelly’s dining room, the other in her small den.

  Maybe it was the moon phase, maybe it was Jenna’s energy, but I had the heebie-jeebies all the time I played at the same table with her. It didn’t help my concentration that my cards were so-so until the end of the night. But when luck turned, it turned inside out. Shelly and I bid and made a grand slam in hearts—doubled—and I got to play the hand. What a rush.

  On a victory high, I car-danced to the Beach Boys’ greatest hits as I zipped home in my precious SSR. Maggie was out—presumably with Neil—so I changed clothes and sprawled on the living room sofa to watch HGTV, then switched to TV Land to catch Night Court.

  Maggie came in at half past midnight, dropped her purse on the Victorian side table, and flopped on the sofa with me.

  “How was bridge?”

  I clicked the TV off. “Shelly and I bid and made a doubled grand slam. How’d the new design go over?”

  “I quit. Told that woman she had to decide what she wanted before anyone could finish the job. You should’ve seen her Botoxic face. Scary.” She paused and shuddered. “On the up side, I have a new client in Gainesville, and I can focus on our Victorian more.”

  “That reminds me. Jenna Jones, the Realtor in bridge club, may call you about the condo.”

  “To buy it, list it, or show it?”

  “List it or show it, I’d imagine.” I clasped my arms around my knees. “I told her I didn’t think the Victorian was close enough to finished that you’d want to put the condo on the market.”

  “It’s not, but it may be in another month, depending on how much lead time I want to sell before we move. What do you think of Jenna?”

  “She talks about house hunts and closings all the time, so it sounds like she sells like tourists buy T-shirts.”

  “But?”

  “Is there such a thing as being overanimated?”

  Maggie laughed. “Thanks for the heads-up. You already take your landscape test?”

  “Not yet. It’s matching garden designs with period home styles.”

  “Timed or open-book?” Maggie asked around a yawn.

  “Timed, but I know my stuff. Then I have a new book to start before I meet Neil to surf.”

  “You feeling any bet
ter about Holland having a gun?”

  “No, but out of sight, out of mind. I’m restless, though.”

  “The new moon or the storm?” She does know me well.

  I shrugged. “Both, I guess. I may go out for a walk later. Or ride my bike.”

  “Take the cell, and be careful. That Holland guy may be harmless, but Stony isn’t.”

  “No sweat. I have super senses.”

  “Yes, when you use them.”

  “Stop fretting. As long as Stony keeps eating garlic and jalapeños, I’ll smell him coming.”

  I took my test but couldn’t settle into anything else. Not the lecture I’d printed to review, or my new mystery novel either. Deciding it was time to blow the cobwebs out of my brain, I pulled a light gray hooded sweatshirt out of the closet. It matched my sweatpants and didn’t clash with my tennies. What kind of fashion do you want at two in the morning? I snagged my cell, key, and my aqua zippered change purse with the five-odd dollars I keep handy. Hey, even a vampire needs emergency money.

  With all I needed in my deep sweatpants pockets, I maneuvered my bicycle out of the storage area in the outer foyer and rode the elevator down to the lobby.

  At night the wind usually dies down, but it had risen more in the hours I’d been home from bridge. It blew from the east-northeast over the bay and into town, which made it cooler than it had been earlier. The surf should be bitchin’ when I met Neil at dawn. Rip currents might be stronger, but I could handle that.

  I rode north toward the area now called uptown. Past the ancient Castillo de San Marcos, a fort of massive coquina stones that the British had barely dented when they bombarded it. Past the Huguenot Cemetery and Nombre de Dios, site of another cemetery, a chapel shrine, and a 208-foot cross erected where the first Spaniards had purportedly landed.

  Maggie’s under-construction Victorian was on a side street near the Fountain of Youth complex, but I didn’t go by it. I’d spent enough time underground there, listening to other people live their lives. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure I’d like living aboveground not fifty feet from where I’d been buried, but Maggie was excited we’d still be neighbors. It would be an insult to move away, even if I could find my own safe place within five miles of her.

  I rode on, reveling in the wind, the hum of bike tires on concrete, and the quiet of the small city all but shut down for the night. I cruised to San Carlos Avenue where the carousel stood in tiny Davenport park. The carousel itself dated from the late 1920s, and I loved the brightly colored horses. I turned west for a block, hit U.S. 1, and rode back south toward King Street.

  The bars closed at one in the morning, most restaurants, earlier. Cars whizzed past me, but not many at this hour. Walgreens and Wal-Mart were open all night, but I hadn’t brought enough cash or a credit card to seriously shop. Besides, if I went to Wal-Mart, I’d need my truck to haul stuff home.

  I turned east onto King to complete my big loop and grinned at the wind lifting my hair away from my neck. I still felt antsy, though, and pedaled by the plaza half looking for Cat. No sighting, no head-splitting meow.

  I wasn’t tired enough to go back home, so I decided to cross the Bridge of Lions to the island. That’s Anastasia Island, and it’s the temporary bridge at this point. The Bridge of Lions had been deemed unsafe, but the city wanted to save it, so a temporary bridge spanned Matanzas Bay while the 1920s structure was being fixed.

  The island is where I used to sneak off to as a teenager. Take one of my papa’s small boats and row to the beach. Not that Matanzas Inlet was a straight shot from the ocean to the bay back then. I’d rowed around and through shoals to get to the beach, but it was worth it. Especially on a moonlit night.

  The moon was dark now. Low clouds raced across the sky, and darn it, I hit a piece of glass on the sidewalk near the British Pub.

  The nearest open gas station was the Gate station on 312 more than three miles away. The tire didn’t seem to be losing air, and the station was only a short detour.

  One of the guys on duty at Gate was a surfer I’d seen on the beach.

  “How’s it going?” he asked when I entered.

  “Good, except I need to check my bike tires.”

  “That’s fifty cents, and we don’t have gauges.”

  Another guy glared at me as if air weren’t worth buying, and I had to agree. I added two boxes of mints to the bill and pocketed the change and receipt. Within five minutes, I’d inspected for damage (nothing I could see), aired up a little anyway, and headed east to the St. Augustine Beach pier.

  I left my bike in the covered pavilion and walked under the pier. The beach had eroded somewhat in all the hurricanes and storms of the past few years—so much for beach renourishment—but it was low tide. I sat on the fine, cool sand and let myself think about what I’d been avoiding.

  Cat, Jenna’s California client, and the disappearing shack. Faeries. Magick.

  Triton.

  Found on the beach by a Greek fisherman who adopted him, Triton was four and I was three when he came to live in the Quarter. We grew so close that we read each other’s minds, shared each other’s nighttime dreams, and never questioned why we shared The Gift. Or parts of it. Everyone in the Quarter expected us to marry, including me. I didn’t remember a day without Triton and couldn’t imagine a future without him.

  Then puberty hit and, while Triton and I were playing in the ocean one new moon night, he shifted from a man to a dolphin. That would be a shocker even in this modern age when magick is more or less accepted. Back then, let me tell you, we were freaked.

  The change, we soon learned, only lasted one full day and only at the new moon each month. Good news, right? The better news was that the telepathic connection we’d shared since childhood became even stronger during his shift. Triton taught me how to follow him in my mind, to astral travel the seas with him. Talk about magical.

  We kept his secret, of course, and I still would’ve married him and been happy. It was Triton who couldn’t be happy with me. Month after month, as he searched for his own kind, my girlhood dreams died, and our friendship changed.

  It changed again when the vampires caught me. I was the lookout for Triton that night and didn’t sense the vampires closing in until it was too late. After I was turned, I contacted Triton on the sly a few times, but the weight of his guilt for not protecting me became a burden for both of us. When Normand threatened to kill my parents to bring me in line, Triton helped them escape. He did the same for my few other family members until he was the last close tie to my old life.

  I urged Triton to leave St. Augustine, too, and we promised to stay in telepathic touch. For fifty years, I could still reach out and sense him—even from my coffin. Then one day, nothing. Total shutdown. I hadn’t heard from him since.

  Logic told me he was dead. Hope made me believe otherwise, but, in all my Internet searching, I couldn’t find him.

  Which was probably for the best, I told myself firmly as I mounted my bike and pedaled back to the penthouse. The new afterlife I was aiming to make normal would turn upside down if Triton came home.

  Interesting fact: Surfer buns look great in wet suits.

  Not that I looked at Neil’s when there were ten others on the beach at dawn on Thursday morning.

  We parked in the Crescent Beach parking lot by South Beach Grill and hiked down the beach access ramp toting our boards. The nor’easter wasn’t full on us yet but, with the wind driving rough waves, making high tide higher, only a narrow strip of sand rose above the waterline. The hearty souls on sunrise walks took the elements in stride.

  The frothing sea blew foam on the beach that tickled my ankles as it brushed by. I thought I saw a small boat out past the breakers right before we hit the water, but it could’ve been a stalwart pelican riding the swells. I didn’t bother looking with any vampire vision. Between the blowing mist and sand, I paid more attention to being sure my leash was secured to both my board and my ankle.

  We all dropped onto o
ur boards within seconds of each other, but Neil paddled a bit south of the others, I guess to give me more learning room. Like other sports, surfing has its rules of etiquette. Even though I’d been in the water with at least six of these same guys, I wouldn’t want to tick them off by accidentally dropping in on a wave or doing something else to brand me as a novice kook.

  After riding three sets of waves almost until my board fins scraped bottom, Neil and I straddled our boards out in the swells, waiting for a fourth run. That’s when something bumped my right foot.

  I jerked my feet up, thinking, Shark.

  Instead, a dead body surfaced smack between us.

  SEVEN

  Facedown. Nude. Slender back bruised. Long, dark hair floating like a living thing, hiding the body’s face.

  The impressions snapped through my brain before I screamed like a girl.

  Or maybe that was Neil.

  Or both of us.

  It could’ve been seconds or minutes before I heard him shout and looked up.

  “Grab an arm and ride her in.”

  I shook my head. Not on your sweet life, bub.

  “Come on, Fresca, buck up,” Neil yelled over the roar of wind and waves. “We can’t leave her.”

  I failed to see why not, but Neil already had her right arm. I swallowed hard and flailed for the dead woman’s waxy white left wrist. At Neil’s signal, we flattened on our boards to let the waves carry us in far enough to stand. Balancing so we didn’t crush the woman between us was iffy, but we managed.

  In chest-deep water, Neil shouted for me to hold the body while he unfastened his leash. I hugged her to my board, grimacing at the feel of bare icy skin, puffy under my hands but not as bloated as I’d expected from reading mysteries. When Neil was free, I slid off my board and grabbed his longer one so it wouldn’t smack into the body.

  “You have your cell phone?”