Nathan said, "Agreed."
Erin said, "I'll help."
Chapter 27
Erin and Nathan wandered off. Left to my own devices, I sent a short email to my folks introducing Nathan and Erin to them. For lunch, we made our own sandwiches. Neither of them talked while they ate.
As we threw trash away in the kitchen, I said, "Do you guys want to practice this afternoon? I know some slayers like to practice a lot."
Erin said, "You should choose, Sidney."
"Are we voting on this, or do you really want my opinion?" Nathan asked.
I looked at Nathan. "Both."
"I'd like to see how good you are, boss-man, but I'd rather see you in the field. I can pass on practicing for a while. I can hit the weights."
Erin smiled. "I have a feeling I know who is going to win."
"Yes, and it's so amusing when you do your victory dance afterward."
Erin lashed out at him punching him hard on the arm. "I only do that when I do especially well."
Nathan said, "Don't hit me!"
"I didn't hit you hard at all!"
"You did, too. You practically bruised me."
"Speaking of pain," I said. "I noticed your armor is fitted for a boy, Erin. You could order new armor."
"The vampires would be able to single me out."
"You're a slayer," Nathan said. "And you don't think you're going to be singled out already?"
She nodded. "It's a bit uncomfortable."
I said, "Do you want Nathan to measure you?"
"No! I can measure myself."
"There's a tape measure around here somewhere. I'm not sure where. I'd start looking on the first floor by the security control panel."
She went left the kitchen headed towards the control panel.
"I'm going to hit the weights," Nathan said. "Care to join me?"
I nodded.
We worked out for a solid hour. Nathan could almost out lift me, and he pushed himself hard. Then we stretched for another thirty minutes or so. I was finished, and I walked up to the towel rack and grabbed one. I started to dry the sweat off my face when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
I turned to face Nathan, and out of nowhere, his right foot flashed at the side of my head. Since people have kicked me in the head before and I didn't enjoy it, I ducked. He pulled his foot back but didn't set it on the ground and aimed lower trying to kick me again. I blocked his kick with my left hand. I threw the towel in my hand at his face and stepped forward aiming a left jab at his nose.
He caught the towel with his left and threw it to the side. With a circular motion, so fast it was just a blur, he blocked my left jab at my wrist with his right hand deflecting it. I threw my right leg at him with a front kick aimed at his belly. He blocked it with a scissors block using both hands.
As I set my foot down, he spun around backward aiming a wheel kick at my head with exact precision. I blocked it with my right and threw another jab at where I was expecting his nose to be when he recovered from the wheel kick. It worked like a charm, and his head snapped backward from the blow.
He grinned at me. Then he advanced on me throwing his right fist at my face. I knocked it out of the way at the wrist. He followed it up directly with his left catching me off guard and popping me in the nose. He promptly followed that up with a right to my jaw hitting me again!
I pulled back both my hands and threw them in perfect synchronicity at his head and stomach. He pushed my left off target with his right and my right off target with his left. I spun around and threw a wheel kick at his head, and he ducked under it. He leaped at me aiming a sidekick at my face. I grabbed him by the ankle and threw him up into the air hoping to arrange for a painful landing.
He landed on all fours and gathered himself up into a fighting stance. He started to approach me at a sliding angle.
I said, "Hey!"
He smiled at me with this stupid kind of know it all grin that all teenagers seemed to have mastered. "What?"
"You said we weren't going to practice today."
He dropped his guard. "I just wanted to see how good you are."
"And?"
"For as old as you are you're pretty quick."
"How old do you think I am?"
"I don't know: maybe 35."
"I'm 25! Why do all slayers think I'm old?" I shrieked.
"I thought you were older than that."
"I'm not. I'm 25."
Nathan said, "I'm going to hit the shower."
I said, "Ok."
I went to my room and looked up car dealerships on the internet. I decided on a Dodge dealer at random and called them. A machine answered the phone and gave me a menu to choose from. I selected sales. A man answered the phone.
"I need three SUVs: all the same, all black, and all with tinted windows dark as night," I said.
"Come on down to the dealership and take some test drives."
"I just want something fairly nice: big engines (I couldn't care less about gas mileage), tinted windows, automatics, air conditioning, power everything, top of the line."
"Wonderful. How will you be paying for them?"
I said, "Credit card if you take them."
"Happily. It will take a few days."
"I need them delivered to the slayer headquarters on Third Street."
"I know the place. I need your credit card number for a deposit."
I took out my credit card and gave him the number. He said, "Thank you. You'll be happy you chose us."
"I hope so."
I clicked the phone off and pondered which I wanted more: a shower or a nap. I checked the bathroom, and it was unoccupied. I decided on a shower and then a quick nap before dinner.
I woke to a knock on my door. I answered it, and Nathan said, "We should eat."
I said, "What time is it?"
Nathan said, "4:30."
I hit the intercom button. "Erin? Time for dinner."
Erin replied, "Be there in a minute."
The three of us met in the kitchen. I asked, "I think there are three steaks in there. There's chicken breast, and I could make an old favorite: Kung Pao. There's bacon, lettuce, and tomato, so we could make BLTs. We've got spaghetti and ground beef for the sauce. We've got hamburger buns too, so I could make hamburgers."
Erin said, "You eat bacon?"
I said, "Yes."
"Nathan does, too. I can't believe how stupid boys are sometimes."
I knew better than to argue with her.
Nathan licked his lips. "It's quite nice that she doesn't eat bacon. I get hers."
"You can have every pork product that ever lands on my plate," she said.
"Speaking of whatever lands on your plate. Why is there a ten-pound box of gummi bears on the counter?"
"I had to mail order food! They stole my steak!"
"You eat bacon and gummi bears," Erin said. "That's a real healthy diet."
"Would you like an MRE for dinner? I have boxes of them. They're supposed to be quite nutritious."
Erin said, "MRE?"
Nathan shook his head. "I'll pass. I know what an MRE is."
"Deluxe Meal-Ready-to-Eat with heaters, you can't go wrong with those," I said. "They come in three delicious flavors: ravioli, lasagna, and meatloaf."
Erin squinted her eyes. "You're talking about dry rations?"
I said, "Yes."
"I'm not going to eat dry rations when I can cook something myself. Make your BLTs." She started opening cabinet doors. "Do you have any rice and beans? Or macaroni and cheese?"
I said, "Yes and yes."
Nathan said, "What is Kung-Pao?"
I looked him in the eyes and grinned.
"It's Chinese food," Erin said. "Spicy if prepared properly."
Nathan looked at Erin and asked, "Is it any good?"
"Depends on if Sidney here can cook it."
I clapped my hands together just once. "I can cook it."
Nathan said, "Let's go let's go. I'm withering aw
ay."
Chapter 28
I cooked the Kung Pao for them.
Erin would pierce her food with such a quickness you'd think she was trying to spear an angry, poisonous snake. Her fork clinked against her plate over and over between bites.
Nathan grinned with each bite massacring vegetables and chicken alike. He even snared a burned red pepper, and before I could warn him, he popped it in his mouth. "There are peanuts in it!"
"It's a little on the hot side," she said. "I thought there was a limit to how hot cayenne peppers could get."
"The key is burning the peppers in the oil before throwing the chicken in," I said.
Nathan said, "I like it!"
"It's not too hot for you, Erin? And don't tell me you're allergic to cayenne."
"No, I love cayenne," she said. "I just don't think to burn things in the kitchen, so I never cooked the pepper in oil before."
"I do the spaghetti sauce the same way."
Erin said, "With chicken?"
"Yes," I said.
We finished eating, and Nathan did the strangest thing. He reached into his front shirt pocket and pulled out a deck of cards still wrapped in plastic. He set the deck on the table, pushed it slightly towards Erin, and then tapped on it with his fingers.
Erin said, "No."
Nathan tapped the deck again and nudged it closer to her.
"I'm not going to play," she said.
He said, "Maybe Sidney will play."
Before I could even think to say a word, Erin said, "I haven't seen a vending machine, and I'm all out of change. No Skittles and no M&Ms, and that means no cards."
"We've got gummi bears."
Erin scowled and turned her head away from him. "I don't even like gummi bears, and what's the point of betting something that we have ten pounds of."
I said, "What are you guys talking about."
"Nathan wants to play poker or blackjack."
"It's fun," he said. "It's a good way to pass the time. Let's just play with gummi bears."
"No."
"Which is worth more a Skittle or an M&M?" I asked.
Nathan said, "Neither."
"We play by these silly rules that Nathan made up," she said. "If you're matching a bet, it's one to one, but if you're wagering a different candy, it's two to one."
"When I bet three Skittles, she can either counter with three Skittles or six M&Ms. Of course, the game only really works if you're prepared to wager both M&Ms and Skittles. I've found Erin very rarely wagers M&Ms."
Erin said, "I like M&Ms better than Skittles."
A tiny little wicked thought crossed my mind. "Hold on a minute."
I went upstairs to Manuel's closet and withdrew three bundles of twenties each one marked $10,000. I went downstairs to the dining area and found the table cleared. Nathan and Erin sat glaring at each other. I tossed the stacks of twenties onto the table between them.
Nathan snatched one up. "Is it real?"
I said, "I have no reason to believe it isn't."
Nathan put the cash under his nose and breathed in deeply. Then he exhaled and breathed in the precious smell of money again.
Erin reached out to the two bundles of money. She picked up the top bundle gently and tossed it to the side. Then she grabbed the remaining bundle and flipped through it. "I get to keep what I don't lose?"
I said, "Yup."
"I'm in."
"What are we playing?"
Nathan said, "Texas hold'em--deuces wild."
I knew the very basics of the game. I know a pair was a minimal hand. Three cards that were the same were even better. Better still was the full house. From there I knew nothing.
Nathan won almost every hand. The hands when he was doomed he would bow out early. He bet meticulously and slowly taking our money hand by hand. After a while, Erin said, "I'm done."
Nathan said, "You still have over six grand there!"
"I don't care how much I have left. I'm done."
"At least bet down to 5k. That's only $1,320 left."
I said, "How do you know that, Nathan?"
Nathan looked at me with a confused look. "I've been paying attention."
"How much do I have left?"
"You don't know?"
"No."
Nathan said, "You have $4,240 left."
Erin said, "I'm still done."
Nathan sighed.
I said, "Are you some kind of savant?"
Erin said, "A what?"
"Like an idiot savant: somebody who is extremely talented at one thing, often math, but an idiot at most other things."
"I never heard that term before," he said. "Keeping track of two numbers in my head isn't really that hard."
"You were counting the cards, too, as we went."
Nathan smiled. "Perhaps."
I nodded.
Erin said, "I want to go to the store."
"We'll go grocery shopping tomorrow," I said.
"No. I need girl things."
"Oh, did you need to go to a pharmacy instead?"
Nathan said, "Girl things?"
"While I do need those things, I want to go shopping at a mall!" Erin said.
"Mail order!"
"I want to try things on. I haven't gone shopping in over six years, and it's high time I got to go shopping!"
Emily shopped like a general on patrol. She would cruise through the aisles rapidly grabbing things her size. Then it was to the fitting rooms to try everything on. She once bought two complete outfits in under twenty minutes. I feared the worst, though, in that I always knew in my heart that my Emily was the uncommon woman.
Nathan said, "No!"
"We can go shopping, Nathan," I said. "You could buy a laptop with wireless internet and surf the web while you wait. I'll bring my laptop too."
"I can live with that. Can you put this cash on a credit card for me somehow?"
"I'll see what I can do about getting both you and Erin credit cards. Hold on to the cash."
"We have a lot of money in the bank don't we?" Erin asked.
I said, "Seventy-two million give or take a bit."
"They said nobody has ever retired out of Dayton," Nathan said.
"That's what I've heard."
He gathered up his cash and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. He grabbed the cards and took them to the trashcan and threw them away. I said, "Hey! That was a perfectly good deck of cards."
He looked at me like I was stupid.
Erin said, "He does that after every game."
I said, "Those cards are still good, Nathan."
"They may have worn unevenly," he said. "A corner might be folded on one. One might be bent just a bit. If I'm playing for something important like M&Ms and Skittles, I'm not going to play with marked cards."
"He's had this argument with countless priests, and he's been punished by the priests for it, and he's still doing it," Erin said.
I said, "What kinds of punishment?"
Nathan said, "Forty lashes."
Erin rolled her eyes.
I said, "No seriously, what kinds of punishment?"
"This one priest," Nathan said. "He put me in a room with lingerie catalogs and locked the door for four hours."
"You're lying," Erin said. "You had to do extra laps around the track or pushups."
"Depending on the priest. We had some weird tutors sometimes, and you know it."
I said, "Tutors?"
"We quit school after the seventh grade, Sidney," she said. "You didn't think we had tutors?"
"I just never thought about your schooling. There's a locally accredited college that offers a lot of online courses."
"I'm not going to quit slaying until it's time."
"We'll never have to have a real job," Nathan said. "We know about investments, and we'll be smart with our money when we do retire."
Chapter 29
I woke the next morning bright and early. The bathroom was occupied, so I wandered down to the kitchen.
I found Erin cooking eggs and toasting bread. She said, "Do you want cheese in your eggs?"
"Please."
She quartered off a portion of the eggs and set them on a plate then she added cheese to the remaining eggs. She said, "He'll throw a fit if his eggs are overdone or have even a touch of cheese on them."
"He doesn't like cheese in his eggs?"
"Nope."
She handed me a steaming hot plate with eggs and toast on it. I poured myself a glass of milk. I tried the eggs. I buttered the toast. I finished both in a mad rush.
Nathan joined us and took his eggs off the stove. "Bacon?"
"You really expect me to cook something I don't eat?" Erin asked.
"I should get meat with my breakfast."
"You're fully capable of working the stove."
"Sidney!"
"There's thick sliced ham in the fridge," I said. "Just take a slice and sear it in a frying pan."
Nathan sighed. He went to the fridge and pulled out a slice of the ham and put it on his plate with the eggs. "Where are the pans?"
Erin said, "Look for them!"
"Look in the drawer under the oven," I said.
He pulled a frying pan out of the drawer and set it on the burner closest to him. He stared at the controls on the stove for the longest time. Then he reached out and turned one to high, and the burner catty-corner to the one with the pan lit. He pulled his hand back and stared.
He turned another burner on: again the wrong one. He moved the frying pan to the second lit burner and turned the first burner to off. He smiled and stared.
Erin said, "Put the ham in the frying pan."
Nathan looked at her and nodded. He put the ham in the frying pan, and it sizzled.
After a few moments, I started to smell the hickory in the ham, and the sizzling had grown almost loud. Erin said, "Flip it."
Nathan grabbed at it with his fingers and touched the frying pan. He cried out, "Oww!"
Erin said, "Use a spatula."
"A what?"
"In the drawer left of the stove. Flat plastic thing attached to a handle."
Nathan pulled a ladle out of the drawer and held it up. Erin said, "That's a ladle. Spatulae are flat."
Nathan pulled a spatula out of the drawer and leered at the ham. He seemed deep in concentration as he flipped the almost burned ham. He sighed. "I burned it."
Bullets Will Work: A Vampire Slayer Novel Page 17