by ID Johnson
“Okay, so the glossary says it can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months, depending upon how bad the infection is,” Emma explained to us.
“That’s not helpful,” I stated before I realized I was talking about vampire infection—how could there be trustworthy information about that?
“I’ve found a post that says this guy thinks his girlfriend was bitten and that she started acting weird a couple of days later and another one where the guy says his wife went to sleep and woke up after a week acting all weird.”
“What happens to these people?” I asked. “Do they just go off into the night?”
“No, their neighbors douse them with garlic salt,” Lucy replied, her face perfectly straight until I started laughing. “I don’t know.”
“That is a good question, though,” Emma pointed out. “Because… here’s the thing. If vampires are real—and obviously that’s a big “if”—wouldn’t they have to have been around for a very long time? Either that or they’re new and biologically engineered.” The last part seemed to be a whole new train of thought, and she shook her head, returning to the original idea. “What’s stopping them from just wiping out humanity completely?”
“Maybe there aren’t a whole lot of them?” Lucy offered. “Maybe there just aren’t enough of them to kill all the people.”
“Wouldn’t they just make more then?” Emma asked. “If all you have to do to make a vampire is bite someone, then that seems easy.”
“Unless it’s super hard to restrain yourself from just killing them.” Lucy shrugged, like we were talking about the rules of etiquette or how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of baby vampires.
“I wonder if it’s possible….” Emma stopped talking as she started typing.
“What?” Lucy asked, her voice screechy. “You wonder if what is possible?”
Emma continued to be silent for a few moments. She shook her head. “Not finding anything.” She raised her eyes off of the screen and looked at Lucy before she said, “What if the reason there aren’t millions of vampires killing all of us mere humans is because they’re held in check by something, a force, or a group of people who keep them at bay?”
“You mean like, Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” I asked, finally getting back into the conversation.
“Or President Lincoln?” Lucy laughed, remembering how silly that movie was.
Emma’s face was straight. “Why not?” she asked. “I mean, if we’re going to go off the deep end and decide that it’s possible that there’s a such thing as vampires, then why not go all the way there and say there are also vampire slayers?”
The three of us stared at each other in silence for several seconds before my phone rang causing all of us to jump. “It’s my sister,” I said, scooping it up off of the arm rest. “Hello?”
“Hey, Cass. Sorry I missed your call.” She sounded tired and not very chipper at all.
I looked at both of my friends, and they were still watching my every move. I’m sure they wanted to know what Cadence had to say. “That’s okay. I just wanted to see how you were doing. How is everything?”
“Ugh, not good,” she replied. “I, uh, I’m in Lincoln. Jack’s sick.”
I felt my stomach rise up into my throat and then go slamming right back into my gut. It took me a moment to formulate a sentence. “He’s sick? What’s wrong with him?”
“Who’s sick?” I heard Lucy say, as she grabbed my arm, but I sloughed her off.
“It’s some sort of an infection,” Cadence explained. “They’re not sure how he contracted it. They think it might’ve been through a foreign exchange student. He’s stable right now, and they think he’ll be okay in a few days. But I came out here to be with him. I think the rest of our friends are headed this way. I got in yesterday.”
I wondered why my parents hadn’t mentioned this to me. “Have you talked to mom?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t tell her it was this serious.” I could hear the exhaustion in her voice. She seemed exasperated.
“I’m sorry, Cadence,” I said quietly. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Pray.” I knew she meant that, too. “No, not really. I mean, if he continues to stabilize, they say they’re going to take him off of some of the equipment in the next few days. But… I have a work thing I have to go to, so I won’t even be able to stay here.”
It wasn’t like my sister to let work interfere with her friends. “What kind of work thing?” I asked.
“Well, I’m going to Paris,” she said, her voice uneven, like she wasn’t sure she should tell me. “I’ll be gone a few days. I’ll come back here as soon as I can.”
I remembered Elliott mentioning he didn’t think that my sister would be with them too long before she went back to school and everything returned to normal. I thought, if they were sending her to Paris, maybe something else was going on. “Paris. That sounds cool. What for?”
“Oh, just some… a client.”
That was a very vague, non-answer. Before I could question her further, she said, “Listen, Cass, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to tell you much about what’s going on, but everything’s fine, I promise. I’ll be able to tell you more when you get a little older and you can understand all of this a little better.”
Elliott had said something similar, that I wasn’t old enough. I wondered what that even meant. If my sister really worked for a security company, it shouldn’t matter how old I am; security secrets were security secrets regardless of my age. But all I managed to say was, “Okay.”
“I’ll tell Jack you said hi,” she offered. “I love you, Sis.”
“Thanks,” I replied, meaning for the message to Jack. “I love you, too.” I hung up and realized there were tears in my eyes. I turned back to look at my friends.
Lucy reached over and patted my arm while Emma stood, walked over to a tissue box, plucked out two, and handed them to me without a word. I took them and dabbed at my eyes. “Thanks. I don’t even know why I’m crying.”
Wrapping her arms around me, Lucy pulled me over to her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said quietly.
It took me a few moments to get the tears to stop. I really didn’t know what it was about my sister’s words that had gotten this reaction out of me. “She said Jack has some sort of infection but he’s getting better.”
“That’s good,” Lucy commented, “I mean, that he’s getting better.”
“And she’s going to Paris?” Emma asked. “I assume you mean France, not Texas.”
That had me giggling. “Yeah, I think she meant France. She didn’t say.”
“Well, let’s take some notes, and then, there’s not much else we can do for now. I hope Jack is okay.” Lucy let go of me and picked up her laptop.
“Do you think….” Emma stopped, not able to say the rest, what all of us were thinking.
“I hope not,” I replied. I knew what she was going to say. Is it possible Jack was sick because he was becoming a vampire?
My phone was ringing again. With a sigh I looked down at it and then held my breath for a second before I managed to pick it up and swipe. “Hello?”
“Cassidy?”
“Hi, Dr. Sanderson,” I said, mostly for my friends’ benefits. They both froze and put their laptops aside again.
“I was just calling to check on you, lil girl. How are you doing?”
“Fine,” I muttered. What are the chances he would be calling to check in on me just a few minutes after my sister told me about Jack and that she’s going to Paris? I didn’t think this was a coincidence.
“You been leavin’ well enough alone?” he asked. I glanced down at my computer, which was currently pulled up to the vampire website.
“Uh, yeah,” I said, glancing over my shoulder out Lucy’s window. Could he see me?
“Good.” His tone conveyed that he might possibly believe me. “Remember what I told you about letting all of this go, Cassidy. There ain’t no sense in you tryin’ t
o figure out a bunch of stuff that doesn’t concern you.”
“Okay.” What else could I say?
“We’re taking a little trip and will be pretty busy for the next few days, but once we get back, I’m going to come and visit you again, okay? I know you’re a little confused about all of this, and I’m happy to tell you what I can, but between now and then, just let it be. All right?”
“Sure.” I hoped my voice sounded compliant. Maybe he was right. Maybe I should just let all of this go. I mean, if I wasn’t going to find any answers anyway, maybe it would make more sense for me to concentrate on what was going on at school, or Wes’s birthday party, or Christmas, which would be here in a few weeks. Why was I bothering with all of this? “Wait,” I said, shaking my head to clear it, “does your voodoo stuff work over the phone?”
“Huh?” he asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’ve been leaving everything alone anyhow, but… while you were talking, I was thinking about why I should leave all of it alone and go on with my life before everything got all weird, like you were planting ideas in my head again.”
He snickered. “Nah, I wasn’t doing anything.”
I could tell by the way he said it he was lying. “Look, if this is one of those things you can be honest with me about, then maybe you should.”
“Okay, fine. Maybe a little.”
I wanted to reach through the phone and smack him, but I figured even if I could do so, I would just hurt my hand. “Someday, when I’m older, will you tell me how you do that?” I figured since everyone else was talking about me waiting until I was older for everything, I may as well qualify my statement, too.
“Sure. Look, I’m doing everything I can to try to get things back to normal for you, Cass. Including trying to convince Cadence that this isn’t the job for her. I know how important it is for you to have her back at home, or at least at school. So, just know when I said the other day I thought she wouldn’t be here for too long, I meant it. I’m just not sure what’s going to happen.”
I wondered if that was part of the reason Cadence sounded so off, although I would think the fact that Jack was so sick, and she was having to leave would be enough. “Does she like her job?” I asked, hoping Elliott wasn’t doing anything on my account if Cadence liked what she was doing.
“It’s too early to say,” he replied.
“Is she good at it?”
“Uh… I don’t know.” His voice betrayed him, though. He didn’t seem to think my sister was a good match for their business. Maybe that was a good thing. If my sister was bad at being a vampire, maybe she could pretend to be human. If that’s what her job was…. “I have to go, Cass. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything too important.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I wasn’t sure if you even knew I’d put my number in your phone. You can call me if you need to. I’d rather you called me if you have a question than go digging around. Stop doing that.”
“But you don’t answer any of my questions,” I reminded him.
“I answer the ones I can.”
“Not the really important ones.” I don’t know why I was being so bold right now. It might’ve been because I was on the phone rather than face-to-face with the man who was large enough to crush my skull between his palms if he wanted to.
Elliott cleared his throat. “I answer the ones I can,” he repeated. “I’ll answer more when I can answer more.”
“When I’m older?”
“Yep.”
I was frustrated now. “Well, that doesn’t do me a lot of good now, does it?”
“Just don’t be trying to find things out, Cass. There isn’t any info out there, like I told you before, and you’ll end up more confused and possibly get yourself into trouble.”
The last part definitely sounded like a warning. “Okay,” I said quietly. “Why are you going to Paris?” I wondered if he’d tell me the same thing my sister did.
“Work.”
“What kind of work?”
“The very important kind.”
“Is my sister in any danger?”
“Probably not.”
I didn’t like that answer. “Do you know what’s wrong with Jack?”
“Jack who?”
“Jack and Jill. Who do you think?” I was becoming a tad irritated.
He laughed. “No. I heard he’s sick. Probably Man Flu. It can be pretty severe, I hear. Luckily, I never catch it.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at the seriousness of his tone, even if it didn’t match the words he was saying. When I realized we were laughing at Jack, who could be very sick, I straightened up. “If you find out what’s wrong with him, will you tell me?”
“Sure,” he said, but I didn’t believe him. “Okay, I really have to go now.”
I didn’t want him to hang up. I felt like he was a lifeline to the truth, and the second the phone clicked off, I’d be scrambling through the unknown again, drowning in a black abyss. “Elliott,” I said, trying to keep the urgency out of my voice. “Will you please just answer one simple question for me? I promise not to make it any more complicated than it has to be, and it won’t even be something you should get in trouble for telling me.”
He was quiet for longer than I expected. Finally, he said, “I will tell you what I can, if I can. What is it?”
My mind was so full of questions, I wasn’t sure which to ask. I knew there were certain things he wouldn’t be able to tell me, and I didn’t want to waste my one question on something he couldn’t reveal. After careful consideration, I took a deep breath and asked, “How old are you?”
“Cassidy, if I tell you that, it’s just going to open a whole ‘nother can of worms and lots more questions.”
“That’s okay,” I said, feeling like his non-answer was actually good information to have. “I won’t ask you anything else today, and I’ll wait for you to call me again before I ask you anything more. Come on, Elliott. Aaron can’t get mad at you for telling me how old you are, can he? I mean… it’s a simple question. Like, you can ask me, and I’ll tell you I’m fifteen.”
“Yes, he can get mad at me,” Elliott replied. “He can get very mad at me.”
“He’s not going to fire you, is he? Aren’t you pretty important to your organization?”
Silence filled my ear. I tried not to breathe too loudly into the phone. “I have to go, Cass.”
“Please?”
“Cass….”
“PLEASE?” Apparently, I was not above begging.
There was a growl I hoped I never encountered in a dark alley. “Fine. I’m… seventy-five. And I have to go.”
The phone clicked dead in my hand and I let it slip out of my fingers onto the sofa. My mouth hung open for a really long while, and I was oblivious to my friends calling my name.
“Cass-i-dy?” Lucy said, pulling on my shoulder.
I turned to face them, still in a fog. “He’s seventy-five…” I mumbled.
“What’s that now?” Emma asked. She didn’t seem quite as alarmed as Lucy.
I swallowed hard and pressed on my temples with both hands. “He finally answered me. He said he’s seventy-five.”
“Years old?” Lucy clarified. “He’s seventy-five years old?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Great googly moogly,” Emma whispered. “How in the how?”
“I don’t know.”
We sat in silence for a very long time, and I almost wished I hadn’t asked. There was no way in the world the man that I had spoken to in person twice now who looked like he was in his mid-twenties, early thirties at best, could possibly be seventy-five freaking years old. No way. But why would he lie about that? Just to freak me out?
Lucy snapped out of it first. “Okay. Tell us what else he said so I can add it to my notes and the Wiki.”
I wanted to, but my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. I grabbed my bottle of water off of the floor and downed a whole bunch of it b
efore I started filling them in on the other side of the conversation. Talking about Jack was hard. I was concerned for him. Lucy took a lot of notes and then started putting them into her computer. I thought I should be writing this information down, too, but I didn’t want to, not right now. It had occurred to me that the only reason I had been writing everything down was to share with them and to make sure that if Elliott did anything to my brain, I could remember, but then, I knew now he wasn’t going to do that anymore. If I had never written the notes in the first place, to keep track of things and share them with my girls, I would likely be in a brainwashing-induced stupor without a care in the world. Presently, I wasn’t sure what was worse—knowing or not having a clue.
Lucy was just about done with her notes when my phone buzzed that I had a text. It was from Elliott. “You okay, lil girl?”
I was sure he knew how much he’d freaked me out. But I couldn’t tell him that. “Yep. Just fine, gramps.” I hoped he would know I was messing with him.
“Ha ha. You’re too cute. Don’t ever call me that again.”
I wanted to ask if what he told me was real, or if he was just messing with me, and something told me that if I pressed the issue and let him know how weirded out I was, he would deny it and say he was just joking around, which wouldn’t be too hard to believe considering how much he liked to do just that. But I wasn’t going to go there. I knew what I knew, and he’d have to be okay with it. And so would Aaron. Which reminded me of something else Elliott had said. “At least you’re not as old as your boss.”
“True,” he replied. “Or dirt.”
Not having any idea how old Aaron was, and not wanting to ask, I decided to let him off the hook. I’d had enough revelations for one day. “Have a safe flight to Paris.”
“Thanks. I promise we’ll chat when I get back. Just keep this convo to yourself, okay?”
I assumed he meant not to tell my parents or Cadence we were talking since it wasn’t likely I’d be seeing or speaking to Aaron any time soon. “Will do.” It was a promise I intended to keep, except for the other two ladies in the room. It was too late for that.