Chapter Twenty-two

In the end, I couldn’t leave without Oscar.

I rationalized it, telling myself I’d need my instruments for tonight’s gig. In reality, the thought of my baby, alone in the house with a crazy vampire, scared me shitless. Besides, Ruthven was playing Toastie-Os the last I saw him. He’d have to hang out in the basement a while to heal, right? Maybe an hour or two?

I had forgotten it took Julian less than three minutes to recover.

It was more like five minutes before I was ready to go. Finally, Oscar in one hand, clarinet over my shoulder, I ran through the living room to the front door.

A black cloud rose in front of me. I screeched to a stop.

The mist resolved to Ruthven, fire-free this time. “You aren’t going anywhere, blood-bitch.”

“That’s what you think!” I swung Oscar’s case hard. I was scared, I was desperate, and I was willing to bet all my chips that one hundred-seventy pounds of vampire couldn’t withstand a full-bodied smack from a Strat case.

Lord Ruthie decided he didn’t want to play Las Vegas odds. Fast—almost too fast to see—he moved behind me. Grabbed me by the neck. I turtled. Snatched at his fingers to peel them from my throat. Jerked my hands back in shock. My fingers felt like I’d shoved them down the garbage disposal.

His were crowned by inch-long claws. My blood dripped over them.

I nearly went all trembly-shocky again. Nearly did the great digestion ejection. After all, I was still pretty new to this whole vampires-are-real thing.

Then Lord Ruthass said, “You are now mine, Dietlinde Schmeling. You will become my helpless blood slave. You will do as I say. Everything I say. I look forward to your submission.”

“You what?”

My whole life people have been trying to make me conform. Do this, Dietlinde. Do that. Why can’t you be more like that nice Anna Versnobt? Sometimes the whole of Meiers Corners seemed bent on jamming my round peg in their square hole.

I tried to fit in, for my parents. Failed often and miserably, but at least I tried. I tried for my friends. I even tried, sometimes, for Vice-principal Schleck.

But for Ruthven? Who’d this jerk think he was?

My stomach settled, my mind cleared. All I had to do was get out the door. I was small and human, slow compared to superhuman.

But I wasn’t helpless.

Ruthven stood directly behind me. With the difference in our heights, I was in effect under him, like a set of Russian stack-dolls. Without warning I launched myself upwards.

I caught Ruthven good, the top of my skull crashing into his jaw. Even with his supernatural reflexes, he couldn’t avoid getting a nasty crack. Oh, sure, it hurt me, too. Stars of pain exploded in my head. But Ruthven got the worse end of the deal. Skull trumps jaw, every time. Even vampire-hard jaw.

The surprise blow gave me only a few seconds. But with my training, that was long enough. I back-kicked Ruthven in the stomach. Feeling his gut implode and hearing a satisfying wet retch, I yanked up Oscar and tore out the door.

 

Julian was pacing the foyer of Bo’s apartment building when I got there. The door was propped open despite the chill of the day—and despite the bright sunshine. Little wisps of smoke came off Julian’s face and hands. I thought it was vampire reaction to the light, but he might have been just that pissed.

He saw me and was instantly there, sweeping me off my feet into a great hug. Little flames began to dance on his skin. He ignored them. “What the fuck took you so long?”

“I ran into a ‘spot of trouble’.” I was grinning like an idiot. “Let’s get you inside before I have to find those asbestos gloves.”

“You’re enjoying this!” He held me at arm’s length and gaped at me. His eyes were red, his face plated as if he was fighting. At the same time his skin was flaming and he was gasping, as if it was hard for him to breathe.

“I’m not enjoying it.” I pulled him toward the door. “It’s just nice to know you can lose your cool once in a while.” Especially when I actually was keeping mine.

“I lose my cool, as you put it, far too often around you.” We dragged each other into the foyer. I dumped my instruments while Julian doubled over, panting.

Elena came running into the foyer. “Nixie! Are you all right?”

“Dine and fandy. Everything set for tonight? Beauty pageant and all?”

“How can you worry about the festival? I heard that awful Ruthven attacked you!”

“The festival is my anti-Ruthass spray. How else am I going to make sure Ruthie never shows up again? This town ain’t big enough for the both of us.” All right, maybe some of the cheerfulness was dumped adrenalin and delayed reaction. But it felt so damned good to be safe. So good to be with my friends and loved ones.

I meant Oscar. Loved ones, as in Oscar. And…my clarinet.

“Elena,” Bo’s voice came from the kitchen. “Where’s Julian? I just got a call—” He emerged from the kitchen and saw us all in the foyer. “What’s going on?”

So I had to explain it again, including the part where Ruthven came on to me a second time, which Julian hadn’t heard. When I finished, he grabbed me. “Damn it, Nixie. Until this thing is over, I’m not letting you out of my sight!”

That abruptly sobered me. “This thing” would be over Sunday night. And with it, my thing, with Julian. He would leave, fly back to Boston, I would never see Not-So-Stodgy Suitguy again.

“That’s one of the reasons I came up,” Bo said. “I just took a call from the Watch. The Lestats are planning to disrupt the fundraiser tonight.”

Elena said, “Why am I not surprised?”

“The Watch?” I asked. “Your neighborhood watch?”

Elena put a hand on my arm. “Nixie…I’m sorry, but I fibbed about that, too. The Watch is a network of vampires who protect humans. They’re sometimes called Lords of the Night. They have eyes and ears everywhere. Bo’s one of them. So’s Julian.”

While I tried to absorb this, I heard Julian speaking to Bo. “We’ll have to put guards at every function.”

“Yes, of course,” Bo said. “I’ll contact all my people immediately.”

“Do you have enough?” Julian asked.

“Wait.” I frowned at Julian. “Guards? What do you mean, guards?”

It was Bo who replied. “One of us will have to be at every event. I’m already on the beauty pageant. Thorvald can guard the families at the church.”

“One of—us?” I was shocked. “You mean vampires? You’re placing vampires at the festival?”

Julian said, “Don’t worry, Nixie. No one will know. We’ll pass as humans.”

Bo said, “As would the Lestats, until it was too late.”

“It’s the only way to identify the gang,” Elena reassured me. “Vampires can recognize other vampires even when humans can’t. I guess it’s a smell thing. So we’ll have Thor at the church, and who else?”

Bo was ticking up fingers. “Steve can enter the Sheepshead Tournament at Nieman’s.”

“That still leaves the beer tent, the VIP reception, and the Pie Delight,” Julian said. “And the bands.”

“Wait.” I was struggling to keep up. “Steve? As in Elena’s brother-in-law? I don’t mean to be insensitive but…isn’t he dead?” I’d attended the funeral last year.

“Living-impaired,” Elena said. “The Sheepshead Tournament is perfect for him. He plays a mean leaster.”

“But…Steve’s a vampire? I thought he died during a mugger’s attack.”

“He and Gretchen were attacked, but by vampires. Bo got there in time to rescue Gretchen. They killed Steve.”

My head was spinning. “But…he’s not dead? He’s a vampire now? How long have you known? Does everyone know but me?”

Elena put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Remember, I didn’t know until a few months ago. And no one outside of Bo’s household has a clue.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that Steve’s still alive!” I thought our talk at the Caffeine Café had bared everything, or at least most everything. It had hardly scratched the surface. I saw why people go zip plus four, if coworkers were half as aggro as friends. “I’m gonna grill you like a Polish sausage after this festival is over. Fine. If no one knows Steve is semi-alive, how can he show up at the tournament? Won’t people talk?”

“Nah. Remember, Steve had a closed coffin. We’ll say he wasn’t really dead. That when he revived, he’d lost his memory and wandered off. He only recovered his memory recently.”

“Stark will back us up,” Bo said. “He’ll say he found Steve’s coffin empty, but was too embarrassed to say anything, and simply closed the casket.”

I put a hand over my eyes but it didn’t stop the kaleidoscope in my brain. “Stark…you mean Solomon Stark, of Stark and Moss Funeral Homes? Why would he do that?”

“He’s one of us. Hey.” Bo ticked up another finger. “That’s who can take the VIP opening.”

My jaw hit the floor so hard it bounced and I bit my tongue. “Wait, wait! Steve and Stark are both vampires? Is all of Meiers Corners vampy?”

Elena laughed. “No, of course not. Only Steve and Thor in Bo’s household, and Stark. And the occasional rogue passing through. Oh, and Drusilla.”

“Yeah, Dru.” Bo ticked up a fourth finger. “She can take the beer tent.”

That cut through the merry-go-round in my head. “No,” I said. “No way. Good idea—having guests for Thanksgiving. Bad idea—having Tom Turkey as a guest for Thanksgiving. Good idea—putting a vampire guard at the beer tent with a bunch of drunks. Bad idea—putting Double-D Drusilla in with a bunch of drunks.”

“I see your point,” Bo said. Elena slapped his arm. Bo gave her a quick kiss. “All right, Dru can do the cake contest. We’ll have to bring people in to police the beer tent and bands. And to watch over the pedestrians.”

“Not people,” I said to no one in particular. “Vampires.”

“I’ll call down to Iowa,” Julian said. “The Ancient One should be able to loan us a few trained helpers.”

Bo shook his head. “That’s the other thing I came up for. He’s already sending us half a dozen. They’ll arrive at sunset. That’s the other piece of news.

“There’s going to be a hit on the Blood Center this weekend.”

 

 

 

“This is suicide,” I said, watching Julian. “That’s a high-tech piece of equipment. Much more powerful than you’re used to. You’ll never learn to use it in time.”

“Don’t worry so much,” he replied. “It’s no more complicated than Elena’s SMAW. It’ll just take some adjustment.”

“It’s not a damned bicycle, Emerson. And you hold it this way!”

I grabbed the borrowed Gibson (a Les Paul Classic) from between his folded legs and thrust it at his chest. “Sideways! Not up and down. Oh, it’s hopeless.”

“I was just recalling the finger positions.” Julian put the guitar back between his legs like some punk cello, and touched his fingertips to the wire strings. “There’s more tension in the strings than I remember.”

“You don’t do finger positions. You do chords.” I twisted his hand on the fingerboard, bent his second and third fingers down. “That’s E minor.” It was the easiest chord I could think of.

“I know that, Nixie. I played gamba, remember? Tuned a step lower, but the fingerings are the same.”

“Oh, don’t get so superior on me! That’s like saying you can drive a car because in the eighteen hundreds you knew how to saddle a horse!”

“It’s not that different—”

“It is too!” I paced the small bedroom where we were practicing. “We are so screwed.”

“Have you ever saddled a horse?”

“No, but—”

“Then don’t jump to conclusions.” Still with the guitar between his knees, Julian strummed a quick Em-G-D-Bm progression.

“Fine. So you know some basics. But as lead guitar you can’t just do chords. You have to do riffs and melody and—”

“No problem. I also played a bit of psaltery.” Julian laid the guitar across his lap and plucked “Greensleeves”—melody and harmony and a rather impressive interlude.

“Okay, maybe it’s not hopeless,” I said, wavering. “Do you know anything post-Renaissance?”

“A little.” He turned the guitar flat to his abdomen and picked in quick sequence a Bach theme, a Mozart motif, a Tchaikovsky melody, and something that sounded remarkably like Stravinsky’s Firebird. My jaw dropped. In thirty seconds he’d done a four-century hit parade, then to now.

“Showoff. Okay, you’re good. But can you hardcore?”

He pointed to the CD player. “You were going to play me an example.”

Guns and Polkas had made a couple CDs by now. I started with the one where Durango had been drunk.

“Seems a little sloppy.” Julian frowned as he fingered along with the recording.

“Uh, yeah.” Julian had a good ear, too, if he could tell that. “Let me play you another.” I put on the CD where Durango had actually practiced. Julian’s fingers flew over the fingerboard, not making a sound, but it looked like he knew what he was doing.

After the track ended, Julian nodded. “I’ve got it. Play the next one.”

“Don’t you want to hear it again? Or try it with the amp…?”

“It’s two o’clock, Nixie. I have a half-hour’s worth of music to learn and we still have to build me a costume. That’s not including the time you’ll need to get ready. And both of us have to make sure our people are in place at the festival venues.”

“Uh, yeah.” No rehearsal, and a single run-through of the tunes. I could only hope Julian Emerson was half as good as he thought he was.

As he fingered along, Julian said casually, “So are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Why you’ve been so irritable?”

“I’m not irritable.” I might have snapped it.

“No, of course not. Or even a little blue.” Julian fingered a complicated set of chords that had taken Durango two months to learn.

He was so dangerously perceptive. Even when I wasn’t thinking about my life ending Monday, he got it. He saw it. I crossed my arms over my chest, an ineffective shield for my far-too-visible emotions. “I’m not irritable. Or sad. Just…harassed. Because of the festival.”

“It was worse when I came back from Boston.”

“Yeah, well, you try going two whole days without sex. See how irritable you get.”

“I did. And I was. But not like you.” He flew a solo across the fretboard.

“The festival—”

“—isn’t the reason. Or not the main reason. I know you by now, Nixie.” He stopped playing and hit me with his most penetrating stare. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Maybe I can help.”

Fuck. I caved. “It’s…the insurance. I need it, because of the Lestats. But the only way to pay for it was to…I have to…Julian, I’m selling myself!”

Years of Vice-principal Schleck hadn’t done it. Seeing blood hadn’t done it. Hordes of revenant monsters hadn’t even done it. But this did.

I threw myself into Julian’s arms and started bawling.

He patted my back and made soothing noises. The Les Paul lay between us, strings cutting into my breasts. I didn’t care. The pain seemed right, somehow. Clean.

As I wound down, Julian offered me a box of tissues. I pulled one and sopped tears. “It’s just that…I’ll be like everyone else now. Nine-to-five Jane Doe.”

“A martyr to pantyhose and heels.” Julian smiled and wiped under my nose.

“And I’m not even doing it so I can buy a new guitar or something cool. I’m doing it because of the festival. Because I’m responsible. Following the Rules. Damn it, Julian. I’m becoming my mother!”

“Nixie. What would happen if I played viola da gamba with Guns and Polkas instead of this guitar?”

It took me a second to switch topics. “Julian, you can’t! It would sound…weird. Like music frosted with Muzak.”

“And if I played guitar, but tuned a quarter tone sharp?”

“What? What kind of musician are you? Do you scrape your nails down a chalkboard and call it music?”

“So are you saying that in music, you follow the rules?”

My lips kept flapping but no sound came out. I think because my face had hit the floor. “Well…I guess I do.” Me. Free Nixie. I followed rules. “But not always!” I grabbed onto the thought like a lifesaver. “I also improvise.”

“You improvise solos.” Julian started fingering along with the CD again. “But if everyone improvised at the same time, what would happen?”

“It would be disaster…” I frowned. “That wasn’t a change of topics, was it.”

“No.” Julian smiled. “Freedom in music is all about knowing when to be free. Follow the rules when playing together, and improvise the solos. Life can be the same way.”

“It can?”

“Do you remember me telling you I had an epiphany at your parents’ home?”

“Yeah. I looked it up on dictionary.com. Epiphany. Means a flash of insight.”

“Well, my flash of insight had to do with the time I fell in with William the Bloody and his out-of-control crowd. When I burned down a building in the name of artistic freedom.”

“Sure. Guilt made you the tight-assed guy you are today.” I dropped a look at his ass, grade super-tight, and licked my chops.

Julian grinned, then sobered. “I thought freedom was the problem. But I was wrong. The problem was being creative at the wrong time.”

I started to get it. “Like driving on the freeway. It’d be hell if everyone decided for themselves which way to go.”

“Exactly. As long as I’m careful and controlled in public, what’s to stop me from being a little creative in private?”

Thinking of just how creative Julian got in private, I shivered. “So how does this all apply to me?”

“One thought springs to mind.”

I tried to see what he meant. Failed utterly. “Um…make that thought pole-vault?”

He laughed. “The same thing applies to you, but in reverse. You need coverage for liability and damages. That’s following the rules. But how you get the coverage can be creative.”

I sucked in a breath as it clicked. “Like having Woofers ’R Us insure their own equipment?”

“Yes. And Nieman’s Bar has insurance. Probably all the commercial venues do.”

“And the city will cover things that happen on the street and sidewalk. But…what about the beer tent?”

“Are the exhibitors paying an entrance fee?”

“Yes, but I can’t ask for more at this late date.”

“No, but the spaces they rent can be considered their storefront. And thereby under their insurance.”

“And the general area?”

“Buy an umbrella liability policy. At one-tenth the space that’s only $2,000.”

“Two thousand through CIC Mutual. It’s even less if I go with one of the other companies. CIC was fifty percent off because of the employee discount—what?”

Julian’s eyes had flashed instantly to red and his strumming had changed to picking. Claw picking. “CIC? You were going to work for CIC?”

“Well, only because of the employee deal. Why?”

“CIC Mutual. One of the Coterie Insurance Companies.”

“Fuck.”

“I agree.”

I pulled out my cell phone. And before I even canceled the insurance policy, I called CIC to quit.