by Lee Hayton
I stared at him with a frown, choosing one nonsensical thought over the other. “You realize that most vampires are in slave pits now. It’s not like they can grab hold of a phone and order you flowers for Father’s Day.”
“None of you even tried. How long have you been free, for instance?”
It was my turn to shrug. I looked out the window pretending a sudden interest in the night sky.
“Yeah. That’s my point. Once you’re off and doing your own thing, you never think of those who got you there.”
“Maybe this place doesn’t hold the best memories for everybody.”
A sudden flash of blood pumping from a young man’s throat filled my vision. The pulse of crimson was so vibrant in my imagination that I could smell the heavy copper in the air.
“If you put up with it to have a place to stay then it’s no use objecting when it comes time to visit. Nobody learns manners, not anymore. No wonder the country’s gone to hell.”
I shook my head. The lines of thought were so knotted that I couldn’t pick them apart. Not tonight. Back to the other impossible thing. “When you said that vampire stayed here, what did you mean? A person who used his name?”
“Eh?” Now, it was Percival’s turn to look puzzled. “Nah. The guy who turned from a vampire back to a human stayed here. A long time ago now, maybe even before your time. Nobody used to talk about it. He was a bit of an embarrassment, to be honest.”
“How?” The question came speeding out of me at full volume, closer to a shout.
Percival raised his eyebrows but apparently decided against a second reprimand on the basis of manners. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with being a vampire, is there? Yet this fellow comes along with his whining and moaning and then finally when we thought he was getting used to the idea, he goes to all that trouble to get turned back.”
The countertop seemed made of ice. Its coldness crept up the length of my back and lodged on the top of my head, making it buzz.
“You knew a vampire—in person—who turned back into a human being?”
“Yeah. Well, a lot of us knew him back then. As I say, nobody liked to talk about it.”
“Did anyone ever tell you how he did it?”
Percival sighed. “Don’t you go getting ideas. You’ve been turned so long you’re romanticizing being human. It’s not so great when you get down to it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have turned, to begin with.”
“I was only turned to save my life.”
Percival nodded. “There you go, then. If somebody goes to all that trouble to save your life, how would they feel if you threw it back in their face?”
I jumped down from the bench and walked over to the window, staring out at the moon. The excitement was thumping and jumping around inside my brain, springboarding from idea to idea.
“I wouldn’t think they’d mind. It’s not like it’s a decent pick out of a line-up or something. I didn’t look at all the range of cursed creatures to be and say, ‘I’ll take that one.’ It was just out of desperation.”
Another long sniff from Percival. “Doesn’t matter now anyway. The vampire got his wish and turned back into a human. Never heard that it improved matters with his girlfriend. I guess, in the end, he got what he deserved.”
I turned around, eyebrows raised. “What do you mean?”
“Well—” Percival looked taken aback at my expression “—I just mean he died. Long ago. Serves him right. That’s what being a feeble human does to you. He’d have counted himself lucky to make seventy years old and here you are—double that.”
“He’s dead?”
“Of course, he’s dead. I told you, didn’t I? He went back to being human, and that includes a shortened lifespan.” Percival started to laugh. “You didn’t think he’d still be kicking around these parts, did you? That would be absolutely ridiculous. He’d be a hundred, if he were a day.”
“Where’d he live? Do you know?”
At that, Percival started the long trek from sitting on the countertop to standing back on the floor. When his shaky legs held him as upright as he ever got, he shook his head in answer to my question.
“I never cared for the bugger enough to care where he dossed down after he betrayed us like that. Ask around the village if you’re that keen. I’m sure somewhere down in the council offices they’ll have records of all that stuff.”
I nodded, already halfway to the door.
“Aren’t you even going to stop with me for a meal?” Percival asked. “There’s a nice group of ladies who drop by here from the village every couple of nights. I think someone in town pays them, so they’re always nice and plump. A few drops out of each one will perk you right up.”
At least that made a change from the old ways. I suppose something had to change—you couldn’t continue to pile corpses up on the floor without somebody in charge noticing.
“Maybe another time,” I called back over my shoulder. “I have another place I have to be.”
My feet may have known where to go when I was running full tilt through the forest, but making the trek back to Dory’s house was a quest that soon had me doubting my sanity.
Without any memorable landmarks apart from trees, I just had a general direction to go on. Since my knowledge of that was fairly limited after spending so long cooped up in one place, I mostly stumbled back across the cottage by accident.
Even when I did that, I was careful. No knocking on the door until I could verify it was the right place by peering through the window. The first one I tried, I hit pay dirt. Miss Tiddles stared out with a bored expression, punctuated only by a giant yawn.
“Heya,” I said in greeting as I swept in through the door. “I’ve just been visiting the local village. It’s the same place where I was born.”
“Wonderful,” Asha said, her face deadpan. “Why don’t you tell us all about it while we listen from another room?”
I smiled at her, unperturbed, then turned to look at her friend Dory. My face fell into dismay. While I’d been gone, the woman seemed to have aged about fifty years.
“What?”
“N-nothing,” I stuttered, moving back a pace.
“Dory’s just been telling us about some of her spells,” Asha said, rolling her eyes at me after checking that her old friend wasn’t looking her way. “Apparently, her youthful appearance is one.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved. “So, you turned it off to show the improvement?”
Dory’s head whipped around with such speed that I took a step back, almost stumbling over a chair.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I…” The words didn’t come, so I held up my hands and shrugged again.
“We were just going back over good times,” Asha explained, the tight smile showing how much she was enjoying my discomfort. “On one of our first jobs, Dory came up with this spell that turned us invisible.”
The old hag dressed in Dory’s clothes tilted her head to one side and preened. “That was a good one.”
“The only drawback was that for the spell to work, you had to be holding your breath.”
“Right,” I said, sitting down on the couch and hoping that Dory wouldn’t come any nearer. Just while I’d been back, her eyebrows had turned from salt and pepper to pure white. The hairs on top of her head, meanwhile, were becoming so fine that I could stare straight through them to her liver-spotted scalp.
“That worked okay in short bursts, but it rapidly grew awkward when our targets decided to hold a very long meeting.”
“It wasn’t that long,” Dory protested. “If you’d just had a bit more stamina it would have worked.”
“Even the world record for breath holding wouldn’t have made it all the way through that briefing.”
Dory shook her head. A bad mistake on her part as flakes of skin showered down to land on her dark dress.
“Every spell has to have a drawback,” she said. Her voice was tired—either from her rapidly advancing age or be
cause she’d gone through this a thousand times before. “It has to be that way. Otherwise, the universe would go straight out of balance. You can’t have one person being blessed with all the power without also having a curse.”
“Why don’t you tell Norman how your anti-aging spell works?”
“Are you having a go at me?” Dory asked, turning and frowning at Asha. “I didn’t have to answer your call, you know. I could’ve just pretended I was out.”
Asha snorted with amusement. “You jumped on that phone call so quick it didn’t even have time to ring at my end. Been a while, had it?”
“You’ll find out,” Dory muttered. “When your usefulness starts to run out. Try making a living when your only employer has decided to”—she held up her hands in air quote—“go another way.”
“Apparently, Dory was very drunk indeed when she opened the door to us.” Asha ignored her old friend to pass on the story. “Because the more she drinks, the younger she gets.”
My eyes opened up wide. “I bet that leads to a few morning-after horror stories.”
“Hey. Fuck you, kid. I don’t look all that bad.”
“Not for your actual age,” Asha said with a grin. “But I think we all know that it’s not who they’re expecting.”
“I look damn fine at any age,” Dory grumbled.
“Why don’t you tell them about the time we tried to break into the top-secret lab out in Kentucky to steal the chemical compounds they were trying to use to fashion a personal atomic device?”
“That disguise would have worked fine,” Dory said, her brow darkening. “Nobody told me that the compounds would take so long to get back out.”
“The agent had to go in naked for the disguise to work. Dory forgot to mention that it only lasted for a few minutes.” Asha started to giggle. “I bet that caused a few minutes of consternation down at the lab.”
“Serves them right if they thought a rat turned into a giant naked male.” Dory gripped the edge of the chair and gingerly lowered herself down. “Shouldn’t have been messing about with all that radioactive stuff, to begin with.”
“Yeah, I bet that showed them. How long did it take Agent Lansky to be released? Hm?”
“It’s not up to me to negotiate the release of hostages.” Dory held her hands up. “I always just tried to do my best.”
“Sounds like you’ve been having a great time catching up,” I interjected. From the way those two were glaring at each other, they could go on all night. “Turns out, there was a guy in the village who turned human. He died at the end of his normal lifespan. I guess after that, the legend part took over.”
“Oh, well,” Asha said, reaching over to pat my knee. “That’s too bad.”
“It’s not too bad.” I picked up her hand and deposited it back into her lap. “It proves that it can be done.”
Miss Tiddles walked in, licking her lips like she’d just finished off a feast. “What can be done?”
Asha got there before me. “Norman reckons that a vampire turned human and then died. Sounds like great fun.”
“That’s what I’m after. I want to age and die like a human. I want to be free to walk around during the day. I want that for all the vampires living their lives down in the pits. Wasn’t that why we came here?”
“If you die, what’s the point?”
“Living first?” I stood up and began to pace the room. “Nothing’s changed since we agreed to follow this up. We were looking for a way to change from vampire to human, and now we’ve found one.”
“Oh,” Dory said, raising her eyebrow and looking at Asha. “Was that what you were looking for, Asha?”
She scowled back at her, a look fueled by fury. Something was off between the two of them, but I didn’t have time to figure out what was wrong.
“We need to start combing through the council archives. Can you get us online?” When Asha didn’t respond, I hit her arm. “Can you?”
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “Where’s your computer? I’ll hook into it in a few minutes, depending on the signal.”
“I don’t have a computer.”
Everyone stopped still at that. I stared at Dory as though she was a mirage that would soon fade away.
Miss Tiddles was the first to breach the elephant in the room. “You don’t have a computer? I’m a bloody cat, and I have a computer.”
“Never felt the need for one.”
“Bullshit.” Asha stalked a few steps closer to Dory and peered at her like she was a fascinating bug. “You live out here all alone, no one ever visits. There’s no way you’re stuck out here without a computer.”
Dory mumbled something under her breath.
“What was that?” Asha cupped her hand around her ear and leaned closer. Considering the few extra inches she had on Dory, it didn’t surprise me when her friend tried to bend away.
“I’m not allowed one. It’s part of the release terms.”
I withdrew a step. When I glanced at Miss Tiddles, my eyes wide, she stared back with the same alarm.
Asha barked out, “Your release terms?” She moved away from Dory, looking up at the ceiling and into the corners of the rooms with frantic sweeps of her eyes. “What were the rest of them?”
“I’m not allowed to conjure up money or get married or go outside a three-mile radius of this house.”
“They’ve got you on virtual house arrest?” Asha’s motions sped up, I could feel the nervous energy pulsing out from her in waves.
“It’s really not that bad,” Dory said, trying for a laugh. “I never liked to travel. in any case.”
“Visitors?”
Dory crossed her arms over her chest. She would have taken a step back, but Miss Tiddles crowded in behind her just as Asha did in front.
“I’ve never really clarified all of the points in the contract.” Dory rolled her eyes. “The paperwork just goes on and on. It would take weeks to read it, let alone understand it all.”
“Oh, shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.” Asha put a hand up to her forehead. She looked like a worried version of Rodin’s Thinker.
“Really, there’s no need to swear. We were all getting along so nicely.”
I felt the energy pulsing off Asha again, then realized I could hear it. Not just me. Miss Tiddles stared up at the ceiling. Something was coming at us through the air.
Lights shone down outside the window, flooding the yard with eye-searing white beams. A loudspeaker crackled and issued a series of garbled commands. I couldn’t make out a word, but we all knew what they meant.
“Get out. Under arrest. Hands up.”
“Well, Dory?” Asha gripped the witch about the throat. “Got any brand-new spells?”
Chapter Sixteen
“Don’t look at me,” Dory said, holding her hands up, palms facing them. “It takes time to work that stuff out. It’s not just hocus-pocus, and there you have it.”
The beat of the chopper’s blades above their heads was so loud that talking became an exercise in futility.
“What?” Asha called out, cupping a hand to her ears.
“I can’t just do it like that!” Dory snapped her fingers. “It takes planning.”
Asha was still nonplussed, but my hearing was better than hers.
“Can’t you just do a spell you know already?” I stepped closer until I was shouting directly into her ear. “Do the one that turns us invisible. We can hold out breath long enough to get to the tree line.”
Dory shook her head. “Nope. I don’t remember it.”
“Bullshit, you don’t.” I grabbed her arm and leaned my head in close, revealing the sharp points to my fangs. “You expect me to believe that you wake up next to some young lad in the morning and don’t use a cloak of invisibility to scurry out of his bedroom before he screams?”
When she began to struggle, I forced her up against the wall.
“Listen. You wanted company so badly that you didn’t even bother to tell us coming here would end like this. Well, d
o this spell, and you’ll have company all the time.”
“What do you mean? Are you promising to come back and visit?” She issued a harsh bark that was soon swallowed up by the rotor blades. “I’ve heard that promise before, sonny. I’m not being taken in again.”
“You’d come with us,” Asha said. She’d moved in closer without me noticing. “Do the spell, and we can all leave now.”
For a tense moment, Asha and I stared at Dory while she made up her mind. When she gave a quick nod, I relaxed and took a step back.
“But it won’t work,” she said. “They’ll be able to see the infrared tracking and stuff from the helicopter.”
“Damn it.” I punched my upper thigh hard enough to hurt. It was true. I had another thought. “What about if Miss Tiddles goes out on a test run? They’re hardly likely to shoot at a cat.”
“That your friend?” Dory asked. When I nodded, she continued, “I think she got going while the going was good.”
I scanned the room with a sick feeling building in my stomach. Sure enough, no sign of Miss Tiddles in either of her forms.
“I guess that means they weren’t tracking our bodies too closely,” I said. “Otherwise, we would have heard the shot.”
“Turn us into rats, then,” Asha said. “I don’t mind going naked if it means we get out of here. We can sort clothes out later.”
“I mind.” Dory stared at her, poking out her lower lip. “It’s all right for you. Nobody throws up when they see you naked.”
“It’s not a bloody competition,” Asha said. Exasperation had taken over so much of her voice that her soft voice practically squeaked. “Escape is the number one priority.”
“If I escape, they will shoot. It’s not so easy as you think.”
“They won’t have a chance of hitting you if you’re rat-sized.” I held my hands apart. “From a shaking helicopter relying on flashlight beams—no chance.”
“I tell you,” Dory said. “Do you think I’d still be stuck here alone in this cabin if there was any chance that I could just cast a spell and walk out of here? Think for a minute, why don’t you?”