by Eve Paludan
“I know. I don’t know if she’s going to make it, but I hope so.” Sam paused. “I could have lost you guys.” She looked at Anthony with concern when he coughed and spit on the ground. “Did you inhale that bad smell?”
“No. Tammy warned me to hold my breath and I mostly did. She said it was a meth lab blowing up.”
“It was,” Sam said.
“Are you sure your leg is okay, Mom?” Anthony asked.
“Yeah, it’s sore, but it will self-heal in a few days.”
“Who shot you?” he wanted to know.
“Detective Kevin Holden. It was an accident. He didn’t know I was there to help.”
Tammy said, “Mother! That male detective is a vampire. A real vampire!”
“I know, sweetie.”
“I know you know. And you have to stop him. He was getting ready to suck that female detective’s blood from her bullet wound!”
“I saw.”
“But, Mom. He’s going to do it again, as soon as he gets the chance. Amber Tarkington is sick. In the head, too. She’s not herself. Not even a shadow of the person she once was. Her consciousness is buried under the weight of something that vampire guy did to her.”
“I know that, too. He put a compulsion on her.”
“Like a spell?” Anthony asked.
“Exactly. A vampire spell.”
“Why don’t you kick his ass or something?” Tammy demanded with tears in her eyes as Sam grabbed a tissue from the console and wiped a thin string of vomit from her daughter’s shirt.
Sam didn’t answer her question. “Sit tight, you guys, and be quiet. I have to call the detective’s husband in case no one from the PD has called him yet.”
Covered in blood, Sam stepped outside the minivan and called her client. Speaking in soft, calming tones, she told him his wife had been shot in a drug bust and asked him to meet her at St. Joe’s.
Tyrone said, “I just got off the phone with her lieutenant. I’m headed over to the hospital. Why didn’t her partner Kevin Holden call me?”
“He got shot, too, in the head.”
“Oh, God, he’s dead? This is all over with?” Tyrone sounded so desperate.
“No, Tyrone. He’s not dead.” Well, technically, he’s undead. “His was a minor wound…” For a vampire. “He’ll be fine.”
“Oh.” Tyrone sounded disappointed, and Sam couldn’t blame him there. “I’ll see you there.”
After Sam and Tyrone hung up, she took her kids home, rinsed off, slapped Bactine and a bandage on her leg, got dressed again and headed over toward the hospital.
As she drove, her phone rang with Tammy’s ringtone, which was Debbie Reynolds singing “Tammy.” Sam answered the phone on the hands-free.
“Yes, Tammy?”
“How come you and Anthony didn’t get in trouble for being there at the crime scene?”
“Well,” Sam replied, “the truth is, I put a compulsion on whoever was conscious not to remember that we were ever there.”
“You put one on the vampire detective, too?”
“Yeah, but he’s pretty arrogant and it might wear off on him in a day or two. I hope not, though.”
“Oh, great, so now, besides him shooting you in the leg, you’re also in more danger from that bloodthirsty jerk?”
“Hopefully not,” Sam said.
“Are you going to put a compulsion on Mr. Tarkington after you comfort him about his wife not to remember that you went to the hospital?”
Sam sighed, even though she didn’t need to breathe. “I gotta go, Lady Tam Tam. Are you and Anthony okay at home?”
“Yeah, believe it or not, we actually take care of each other when we aren’t fighting over fast food. But you would know that if you were home more often.” Tammy hung up.
***
Not long after, Tyrone Tarkington and Sam sat together in the waiting room outside an operating room while his wife Amber had a slew of bullet fragments removed from her shoulder and had her chest patched up, too.
Kevin Holden, with dried blood on his forehead and a healing hole right in the center of it, sat in that waiting room, too—the two men couldn’t even look at each other. But it was obvious they were both distraught about Amber getting shot.
The police captain came into the waiting room and spoke to Tyrone in somber tones, asking him if he needed anything.
Tyrone shook his head. “I’m fine. Just worried about Amber. I’ll call you once I know something. Thanks for stopping by.”
“She’s in our prayers.” The captain squeezed Tyrone’s shoulder.
“Mine, too.” Tyrone wrung his hands.
The captain looked at Holden. “You’ve been out of communication. We were worried about you.”
“My phone got burned up in the explosion.”
“Let’s get you some medical attention and a new work phone. You’re very pale and you look shocky.”
Kevin swiped a hand over his bloody forehead. “It’s just a graze. I’ll clean myself up. I just didn’t want to leave my… partner until I know if she’ll be okay.”
The captain looked from Kevin to Tyrone and back at Kevin. Then, he asked Kevin to fill out some paperwork while the shooting was still fresh in his head. In fact, the captain made him leave with him.
As he left, Kevin Holden looked right through Sam like he didn’t even see her. And so had the Fullerton PD captain. That was exactly what she intended when she put a compulsion on them not to notice her.
The surgeon finally came out to speak to Tyrone and didn’t even glance at Sam.
He said to Tyrone, “We’ve got out the bullet fragments that bounced around in there. We repaired as much damage as we could. And she should heal from that, slowly, but she isn’t out of the woods yet. We’re pumping units of blood in her because she’s got a serious underlying health condition. We’re investigating further.”
At that point, Sam made herself scarce and headed for home.
Chapter 8
Sam was home, decompressing from everything that had happened. She conked out on the couch under a crocheted blanket and woke up at sunset, as usual. The kids were home, too, as she could hear their heartbeats and the low hums of their electronic media. She assumed Tammy had gone to school that day. She better have. Sam walked to Tammy’s room and the door was slightly ajar. She pushed it open and said, “Tammy, kitchen.”
“Uh-oh.” Tammy pulled the earbuds from her ears and reluctantly closed her book, Cracking the GRE Psychology Subject Test. She got off her bed and followed her mother.
“Was that a grad school book you were reading?” Sam asked.
“Was it?” Tammy answered a tad too flippantly.
“Have a seat, kiddo,” Sam said as patiently as she could.
Sam and Tammy took their usual chairs at the kitchen table where not just eating but most of their important meetings took place.
“We need to have further conversation about you skipping school, but I wanted to wait until I could get past my anger and just focus on the facts. Lately, there’s been a lot of estrogen flying back and forth between us when we have a disagreement, and a lot of heightened emotion, instead of just information and reasonable discourse. And there has been purposeful deflection and psychological reasoning methods, by you, as a way for you to justify your behavior—behavior that is clearly outside my acceptable boundaries.”
“Yes.” Tammy didn’t try to deny it.
“You aren’t dumb, my daughter. But neither am I. So, I’m going to treat this meeting like a case investigation.”
“That’s good, right?” Tammy said hopefully.
“We’ll see.”
“What do you want to know, Mother?”
“Why did you skip school? Just the facts, please.”
“It was necessary to possibly save someone’s life.”
“Is that your job to save someone’s life?”
“I felt it was the right thing to do.”
“Facts, Tammy. Not feelings. Is that your job?”
/> She folded her arms across her chest. “No, it’s not my job, per se. My job is to be a decent human being.”
“State your job as a seventeen-year-old. Exactly.”
“School is the answer you’re looking for,” she said quietly.
“That’s right. See, I knew you were smart,” Sam said. “Tammy, you have one job and your job is to do well in school. In order to concentrate on that and be the best you can be, I make sure that you don’t have to go flip burgers, mow lawns or clean other families’ dog poop to pay for things like your car, your clothes, your makeup and your hair. You just have to go to school, behave there, study, do homework, take tests and respect the authority of teachers, school administration and your lone remaining parent.”
Tammy’s chin trembled. “I know what you expect of me. I also know I’m spoiled. I know you work hard. And I appreciate you, Mom. Believe me, I do.”
“You have a funny way of showing it.”
“Now you’re descending to emotion, not keeping to the facts,” Tammy said.
“Your objection is sustained.”
“I don’t like this experiment,” Tammy said.
“Why not?” Sam asked.
“Because the truth is that my decisions are based on my emotions of the moment, not on any blueprint that I’m supposed to follow, but that I didn’t write. I admit I’m impulsive and reactionary and you’re—”
“I’m what?” Sam asked.
“Mom, you’re highly analytical and you base your decisions on facts, for the most part. This is a good way to be since you investigate crimes, otherwise, you’d be a basket case if you were emotionally reactionary to those sometimes-gory facts. But in your relationships with other people, you hold facts in higher esteem than you do emotion. So, you can sometimes come off as cold to other people’s feelings and not be receptive to what they need from you.”
“You sound like a psychologist.”
“That’s what I’m going for, but we’ll talk about that soon, I promise.”
Sam nodded.
“None of that is a judgment, Mom. You do you. I’ll do me. But it bothers me that your heart takes a back seat to your head, every time. In a nutshell, that’s why we clash, Mother.”
Sam said, “You’ve been thinking about this. Maybe you even practiced what you were going to say to me, this big speech.”
“Yes, I practiced my speech. Believe it or not, I spend a lot of time thinking about our family dynamics and what I wish I could tell you if only I had the perfect opportunity.”
“That’s not fair. You can talk to me anytime.”
“That’s not true. I have school. You have work and a boyfriend. We’re busy people. And that’s normal stuff.”
“So, where are you going with this, Tammy?”
“Into uncharted territory. The more I read people’s minds, including yours, the more conscious I am of how we interact with each other in this small family unit, as well as in the world at large. In this house and elsewhere, too, we have these assigned roles and we play them and take turns with who holds the power, who holds the talking stick, and who compromises.”
Sam looked astonished. “Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?”
“I’m still your daughter, except I’m growing exponentially in thought, knowledge and emotion. Something’s happening inside of me, Mother. You know how you’re a vampire and your gift, or your curse, as you sometimes think of it, is to hunger for blood?”
Sam nodded. “I try not to even think about it, but it’s nearly impossible.”
“I know that, and I have empathy because I have a hunger, too.”
“For blood?” Sam asked.
“Of course not. I hunger for the thoughts and ideas and emotions and, yes, the intellectual knowledge of others. I feed on people’s brains like you once fed on blood before you had your alchemy ring that makes it possible for you to eat regular food.”
Sam nodded for Tammy to go on.
“I used to fill myself with the casual thoughts of others on the Metrolink, or at the grocery store, or in the movies. But now, I go to colleges and hide in the back rows of lecture halls and listen. And if I get kicked out of a classroom for not being a student there, I just go to the college library where people are typing their papers and I spy on them. I mine the minds of the most popular professors and the most brilliant scholars.”
Sam’s mouth fell open a little, but she didn’t interrupt her daughter.
Tammy continued, “I suck it all in, and I remember everything. And I feel what they feel, and it makes me laugh, or cry or fear or hope or even makes me love them a little, even though I don’t know them. Their problems and how they solve them is intriguing to me. And when I regain my strength from using my energy to feast on their intellectual content, their wants, their dreams, their love, and even their hate, it’s like a drug and I have to have… more. More. Do you understand, Mother, what it might be like to be me?”
“I think I do,” Sam said slowly. “You’re a mind vampire.”
Tammy burst into tears. “You get it. You finally, finally get it!”
“I’m sorry that it took all of this for me to see who you are.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’m crying because I’m happy. Ever since this mind-reading thing started, I’ve wanted, more than anything, for you to understand me at this level, that I need to penetrate people’s minds. As much as burgers and fries, thoughts of others are now my food, too.”
Sam hugged her daughter. “I didn’t know things were that bad for you. Or that hard.”
“You’re always baffled by the reasons I do things and see it as misbehavior and disrespect, rather than me just marching to my own drummer. The one in my head. The mind vampire. I call it that, too.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I’ve never said it aloud before, but that’s what I am. You pegged me right.”
“At least I know why you’ve been acting like you’re out of control.”
“Like you, I have a gift that is also a curse.” Tammy hugged her mother back. “Oh, Mom, you don’t know how much it means to me right now that we are having this talk. I’m doing everything I can to avoid being a complete wrecking ball, but it’s hard when I have this endless hunger to strip people’s minds and make what they know, what I know.”
“You better learn to pace yourself,” Sam said. “You might be hurting yourself, or others, with all of this gorging on people’s thoughts and emotions, knowledge and experiences.”
“It’s hard to rein myself in when the old phrase, ‘Knowledge is power,’ is almost my entire reason for existence. The more I know, the more I want to know, and the more powerful I become.”
Sam’s eyebrows went up. “I want to work with you, Tammy, but you’ve got to work with me, too. We have to get through life in a way where you won’t become a shadow of your former self in a year.”
“For a mind reader, that’s inevitable. And I’m empathic, too, so I feel the emotions of the person whose minds I’m reading. I don’t just scan their brains for nuggets of facts. The way they’re feeling washes over me like someone threw a bucket of their dread or their hopelessness or their terror over my head. Their knowledge and consciousness becomes a part of me. It sinks into my pores and trickles down to my heart until I’m moved to do something to help them.”
“But do you have a way to block out the negative input?”
“Sort of, but I’m not that good at it yet because my nature is so curious.”
“You’re going to crash and burn, Tammy, if you don’t stop eating what’s in people’s brains.”
“That’s the way I’m wired now. There’s no parental intervention for that. You can’t stop who I am because I can’t stop it either.”
“I see your point, and I take it seriously, but in my practical, analytical world, I hate that whiny school counselor calling me all the time about you. And worse, I hate having her be right. And here I am, standing up for you every time, even th
ough you’ve broken their rules. Again.”
“Look, Mom, I’m not sorry that I went to help Emily. I don’t want to apologize to satisfy you because it wouldn’t be sincere. I mean, a girl’s life is at stake, and she could even end up dead or worse, undead. I took action.”
Sam briefly held up her hand. “My turn.”
“That’s fair. I had my say.”
“I understand why you did what you did. But you can’t just go where you want, whenever you want and do whatever you want. You never asked permission or consulted me. You never even thought of me.”
Shame flooded Tammy’s face. “I thought of you at least every minute.”
“You thought of me because you knew that getting caught would have dire consequences.”
“I was hoping to avoid that,” Tammy admitted.
“They’re probably going to throw you out of Honor Society. You’re on probation with that academic association. That was part of the conversation with your counselor.”
Tammy was startled. “Can they do that? I need that membership on my college applications. I earned that!”
“Yes, they can do that. They could yank it right now if they wanted to. I had to make nice with your counselor when I sooo wanted to tell her off, which would have immediately ended your glowing membership in that elite organization.”
“Thanks, Mom. So, am I grounded?” she asked quietly.
“Grounded? No, you’re not grounded because it doesn’t do any good at this point.”
“I do feel kind of bad. How can I make it up to you that I got in trouble in school again?”
“I’m glad you asked. The punishment is going to fit the crime this time. Here’s the deal. If you skip school one more time, I’m not paying for your first semester of college. Because I refuse to pay for college if you are going to skip your college classes, too.”
Tammy’s voice rose in pitch and volume. “I wouldn’t do that! I love learning.”
“You’ve explained that very well. It must be nice to know everything a Ph.D. knows by pirating his mind content.”
“Mom, that is just… you make me sound so sordid and mercenary.”
“Well, mind vampire, all I’ve got at this moment are threats and insults, since you’re so smart and so powerful that you’re not a sorry girl in the least. I don’t know that I can trust you to keep your word, so if truancy happens again, you are on the hook for about seven grand for your first semester of college. Don’t even ask me for mercy because this threat is real. You’ve crossed the point of no return and now, you have real-life adult consequences that are way more serious than you staying in your room and not going to the movies for a week or two. Your intelligence and your emotion are on an adult level, but your ability to make safe and sane decisions is not. And you still have a year of high school to go. You’ve got to have more self-discipline, or your brain might explode when you run out of, what do they call it for computers? RAM? Or is it REM? I always get those mixed up.”