It was Les. He hadn’t shaved in days and was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day we went to Lucy’s house. His short hair was matted on one side.
“Oh my God, Les, I almost peed in my pants! What are you doing in my car?”
Les rubbed his eyes. “I needed a place to sleep, and also I wanted to talk to you. Where are you headed, by the way?”
“My parents’ house in Noe Valley.”
“Okay. Drop me off at the BART station at Sixteenth and Mission.”
“How did you get in the car?”
Les reached around and produced a short, flat piece of metal. “Slim Jim.”
“Slim Jim,” I repeated, imitating his matter-of-fact voice. “Have you overdosed on Cops? You can’t just go breaking into people’s cars!”
“I knew you wouldn’t mind.”
“You knew I wouldn’t mind? This car is six months old. If you broke the lock I’d have to kill you.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” He grinned and a semblance of his old cockiness returned. He was still cute, even in dire straits.
“You’re right, I wouldn’t.” I faced forward and turned on the engine. “How are you, anyway? Are you all right?”
“Oh, I’m fucking great, Angie, just great. The police are watching my apartment, I’m sleeping in cars, they’re questioning all my friends, what could be better?”
“I’m sorry, Les, but I told you not to run away,” I said, thinking I was sounding a lot like my mother.
“Did you make the videotape like I told you? Did you get anything?”
“I’m not sure. But I took the video to the police, like you wanted.”
Les lurched toward me, banging the back of my seat. “What did they say, are they going to arrest anyone?”
“The inspector wasn’t convinced. He said they’ve been watching these people for a while and they don’t do anything illegal. He took a copy of the video, but I think he was doing it just to humor me.”
I glanced in the mirror and saw Les rubbing his stubbly chin.
“You’ve got to go deeper, Angie. There must be another place, or get them to take you to their home, something…”
“I am deeper, Les. Deeper than you think.”
We reached the corner of Sixteenth Street and Mission. The street was busy with loiterers, Sunday shoppers, and people moving in and out of the BART station, San Francisco’s subway. I pulled into the bus lane.
“Look at me, Angie,” Les said. When I did he stared intently into my face.
“You met the guy too, didn’t you?”
I didn’t answer, but he didn’t wait for a response. “Angie, he could be your way in. Get him to talk to you, get him to tell you what happened with Lucy. I’m sure he’s the one…” Les was trembling with excitement, leaning over me.
“Stop!” I yelled. “You don’t know him. How do I know it’s not you, Les, and I’m helping you cover your ass by finding a fall guy?”
Les exhaled slowly through pursed lips. “He’s got to you, Angie, hasn’t he? You sound just like Lucy. You look like her too, come to think of it. Pale and kind of sick. Wild in the eyes.” He looked at me sadly. Then he reached out and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Angie, there’s a guy, his name is Nicolai Blaloc, he studies vampires. He might be able to help you break the spell. I found him when I was looking for someone to help me get Lucy away from the coven.”
“And did he help you?” And do I want to get away from Eric?
“No. Lucy wouldn’t talk to him.”
“Where is this Nicolai?”
“I don’t know, I only talked to him on the phone. He’s got a website called vampirehunter.com.” He reached for the door handle.
“Les, how can I find you?”
“You can’t. I’ll get in touch when I can. Be careful, Angie. Sounds like maybe you need more help than me.”
In a moment he disappeared into the crowd around the train station.
To get to my parents’ house I took Dolores Street, a broad boulevard with green center islands planted with palm trees. I passed Mission Dolores, the street’s namesake, and for reasons unknown I found myself parking. The old Mission Dolores, a whitewashed adobe building with broad squat columns and a red tile roof, was built in 1790, making it the oldest building in the city. I’d seen pictures of it taken in the 1800s, looking almost as it did now, but surrounded by nothing but mud and farm animals. The grand cathedral that was built next to it overshadowed the small adobe, but when tourists came for a tour it was the old mission they went to first.
The neighborhood I grew up in was only a few blocks away over the next hill, and we used to go to services fairly regularly at St. Philip’s Church. On very special occasions like Christmas Eve or Easter we would come to Mission Dolores Cathedral to hear Mass.
I climbed the wide concrete stairway into the church. It was empty, but the smell of incense from morning services still hung in the air. The statue of Jesus on the cross glowed as if it had just been painted. The blood from his hands, feet, chest and forehead was clearly visible from the back of the room. His heavy-lidded eyes gazed up to the sky, presumably waiting for deliverance from his earthly trials. I sat on the farthest pew and stared at the statue. Images from the story Eric had told me flooded my mind. Eric had been religious at one time, so much so that he was ready to dedicate his life to God. I wondered what he thought of Him now. I was suddenly reminded of something my father used to say, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Since I was there, I decided to pray.
“Dear God,” I said silently, “Please watch over me. I feel I’m in over my head here and I don’t know who else to ask for help. You know a thing or two about evil, and protecting people from it, so maybe you’ll send me a sign.”
I wasn’t sure what to say about Eric, but then I realized that if there really was a God He knew all about Eric and my feelings for him. “Guide me in the right direction with Eric. And please watch over Lucy, and I hope she’s up there with you now.” I crossed myself for good measure.
When I left the church the weather was glorious, or what I would have called glorious before I began detesting the sun. It was a perfect October day, bright and clear and about seventy-five degrees, with a salty breeze blowing in off the bay. I enjoyed the warmth, but the light was oppressive. I found the baseball cap in the back seat and pulled it low over my eyes before I pointed the car up the hill toward my parents’ house. Hopefully I could get in, have dinner, and get out without revealing too much about what had been happening. It would be difficult. Normally my parents pumped me like an oil derrick for information about my life.
My parents live on a quiet street in Noe Valley, in the house my grandparents bought in 1955. My grandfather was a firefighter, like my own father. Grandpa died in a warehouse fire when I was a baby, and from then on we all lived together, my parents, my grandmother, my brother and sister and me, all sharing one bathroom. I’d always been able to shower faster than anyone I knew.
My father was trimming a hedge in the postage stamp-sized front yard. Lean and wiry, Frank McCaffrey looked more like my brother than my father, which was understandable, since he’d had me when he was only eighteen. The only indications that he was middle-aged were the wrinkles around his eyes when he laughed, which was often.
Dad put down the shears when I pulled into the driveway. “Ma’am, you can’t park here, this is private property.” He scowled menacingly.
I held up both hands in surrender. “Get your licks in now,” I said.
Dad came over and enveloped me in a bear hug. He smelled of fresh cut grass and sweat. “Glad you came, honey. We read about Lucy Weston in the newspaper this morning.”
I squeezed my dad back, knowing that this was all he would say on the subject. He’d experienced deaths a few times as a firefighter, and it seemed he handled it with beer and silence.
“Go in and see your mom, she’s been worried about you.”
I opened the door and stepped into our front hall. The house I grew up in was what the real estate agents call a “storybook cottage,” meaning it was really small. The living room was on the left, with stairs on the right leading to three tiny bedrooms and the bath. Down the hall were a dining room and a recently remodeled kitchen with a deck overlooking the back yard. Everything but the kitchen and bathroom was circa 1895.
The sounds of a gamelan orchestra filled the house, sounding to me like a hundred pots being banged rhythmically. My mother’s taste in music was eclectic.
Mom was right in the middle of making spanakopita when I walked in, spreading cheese and spinach onto thin sheets of filo dough, surrounded by an explosion of dishes and pans. She refused to wash a pot or even put anything away while she was cooking for fear of interrupting the creative process. I had learned a lot about cooking from my mother, but I feared the knowledge was getting rusty from disuse.
“Hi Mom, I thought we were having meatloaf…”
My mother held up a hand, requesting silence. She lifted a delicate package of filo dough and spinach and deftly folded the rectangle into a triangle, over and over, like two soldiers folding the flag. When she was done she did one more while I watched in silence. She added the last two to a baking pan already holding a dozen others and popped it into the oven. She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and only then did she come over and give me a hug.
Her ample bosom pressed into my chest. That was one thing I hadn’t inherited from my mom. Nor the silky blond hair she wore clipped back from her face with two barrettes.
“If you want meatloaf, you have to make your reservations early.” She held me at arm’s length. “So, how are you doing, sweetie?”
I just couldn’t say “fine,” like I had with everyone else. Tears started in the corners of my eyes and I pulled away so she wouldn’t see them. “Are Frankie and Thea coming?” I asked.
“Frankie will be home anytime now. He’s at the library studying. Thea’s doing a cocktail party tonight so she won’t be coming.”
Thea was twenty-five and, having inherited my mother’s culinary talents, she had opened her own catering business. Frankie was nineteen, going to San Francisco State University, majoring in creative writing and living at home to save money. Creative writing was a waste of time, according to my father. He had said the same thing about my degree in theater, but still he came to my graduation from Cal Arts and cried. Neither he nor my mother attended college, since they were married and changing my diapers when they should have been rushing frats and sororities.
I sat on a stool at the kitchen bar and watched my mother chop vegetables at the speed of light. There was an open bag of Fig Newtons on the counter and I absentmindedly took one. When I bit into it I almost spit it out, so cloyingly sweet and gritty it was, but I kept chewing, since my mother would surely notice me upchucking one of my formerly favorite comestibles.
“You met a man, didn’t you?” Mom asked, without looking up from her flying knife.
“Why do you ask that?” I choked out.
“I remember you sitting there eating Fig Newtons with the same spacey look on your face the summer you met Joey Malone.”
Ah, Joey Malone. Too young to drive, we had necked for hours behind a bush at Dolores Park, until my lips were so bruised I couldn’t drink from a straw for a week. Strange she should mention that. Of all the experiences I’d had in life, this one felt most like that—dangerous, exciting, tempting beyond any ability to refuse.
“Don’t bother denying it. Just tell me whether I get to hear about it or not,” she said.
I crushed the rest of the cookie into a crumbly ball. “It’s probably not worth talking about, Mom. He may not be around for much longer.”
“Why, is he a criminal? Is he on the lam?”
“On the lam, Mom? No, he’s not a criminal. He’s just, um, a lot older than me.”
That’s an understatement.
“Well, older men can be good. They have more wisdom. And more money, usually.” Mom wiped her forehead with a dishtowel. “It’s hot today. I should have ordered Chinese.”
She came to sit next to me and brushed against me with her bare arm. When her flesh touched mine a light flared in my vision, so bright that I closed my eyes against it. Suddenly I saw a vision of my mother and father in a doctor’s office. My father pacing the floor nervously. My mother sitting like a stone. With her right hand, she was holding her left breast like a sick infant. I opened my eyes and the vision, and the flare, were gone.
“Mom, are you ill?”
She twisted on her stool and slapped one hand into the other. “I told your father I didn’t want to tell you children yet, not until I had something definitive to say! Damn the Irish, they can’t keep their mouths shut!”
“It wasn’t Dad. I just had a feeling.” I pressed my head into my hands, overwhelmed by a welter of emotions—fear about my mother’s illness mixed with shock that I’d just looked into her mind as clearly as looking through a window.
“No, no, it can’t be,” I muttered.
Mom took my hands off my face and held them. Her skin felt dry and paper-thin. “It’s nothing to freak about, honey. I found a lump in my breast a couple of weeks ago and I had it biopsied. We’re still waiting for the results. The doctor says it’s probably benign, we don’t have any history of breast cancer in our family, but he wants to be sure. I wasn’t going to worry you if the tests turned up negative.”
I searched her face. “You shouldn’t keep things like that to yourself. I always want to know, you know that.”
“Well, you’ve been so preoccupied and busy at work the last few weeks.”
She patted my hand almost absentmindedly. I had never been in a position to comfort my mother rather than vice versa, and I knew now should be the time. I was searching for the proper words when we were interrupted by a huge backpack slamming into the chair next to me.
Since he was fourteen my brother Frankie had reminded me of a big, loud horse, with his braying voice and galumphing feet. And usually a strong smell of sweat, since he played on more sports teams than I could count. Whenever he came into the house he headed right for the refrigerator, usually to grab the half-gallon of milk and drain it out of the carton. I could see Frankie had matured because today he took out a glass and filled it with milk before sitting down with us.
“Hey Frankie, take off your hat at the table.” I flicked his baseball cap’s brim with my thumb and middle finger. So much for Angie the adult.
Frankie turned the cap around so the bill was at the back. “Is that better, Miss Manners?”
“All right. I probably don’t want to see your hair, anyway.” Frankie had the same wiry red hair as I, while my lucky sister Thea had inherited my mom’s blond waves. “How’s school going, bro?”
“Good, once I finally managed to get some classes. There were twenty people on the waiting list for ‘The Victorian Novel.’ It’s going to take me five years to graduate just because I can’t sign up for any of the classes I need.”
“I can’t see you taking a class called ‘The Victorian Novel,’ anyway, Frankie. You seem more the Jack Kerouac type to me. Henry Miller, maybe.”
“Don’t stereotype me with your bourgeois mentality, man. Henry James wrote some sick shit.”
My mom shot him a disapproving look.
“Sorry, Ma. I mean he wrote some sick literature.” He threw the backpack over his shoulder. “I gotta study. When’s dinner?”
“The usual time, Frank Junior. Although if you wanted to come down early to help set the table I wouldn’t say no.”
Frankie grunted an unintelligible answer as he stomped up to his room.
“Did you tell him?” I asked.
“There’s nothing to tell yet. And I want you to forget about it too, Angie. That’s an order. Now help me get this dinner on the table.”
My knife chopped celery and jicama on autopilot as I thought about the visions I’d had when Eric and I were touching each other. They had seemed so vivid, as if they were my memories replaying in my head, but I had dismissed them as fevered imaginings. Now I had a different thought about them. Had I tapped into Eric’s mind when I touched him? Had he tapped into mine? Did he know how I felt about him?
After I left my parents’ house that night I found myself driving around aimlessly, worries circling in my head like goldfish in a bowl. Finally I pulled out my cell phone and dialed directory assistance. They gave me the number for Nicolai Blaloc. It was as simple as that.
“Hello?” The soft, cultured voice was wary, as if he was expecting a telemarketer.
“Is this Mr. Blaloc?”
“Who is this?”
If I had to make a guess as to the origin of his accent I would have said Eastern European, maybe Russian, but I was no expert.
“My name is Angie McCaffrey. I was given your name by Les Banks. He said that you were an expert in, uh, people living the vampire lifestyle.”
“What do you want?” This guy was not exactly making things easy for me. If he didn’t want people calling him why have a website called vampirehunter.com?
“I need help, Mr. Blaloc. Certain things have happened to me over the past week. I believe I might have met a vampire.”
“Ha ha, very funny. Go and tell your sorority sisters you called the vampire hunter. I’m sure they’ll be very impressed.” Then he hung up.
I cast around in my mind for something that would make Nicolai believe that what I had to tell him was the farthest thing from a joke. I redialed his number.
“Listen, this person, he has a strange smell,” I blurted out.
“Please, call me Nicolai.” Suddenly the voice was polite. With his accent, the first syllable of his name was pronounced knee.
“I am intrigued, Ms. McCaffrey. When can you come and see me? I live in the Mission District.”
“Actually, that’s where I am right now.”