Bite Page 9

  “Yes. The new queen is somewhat…relaxed in her rules.”

  “Well, there’s nothing for it,” Sophie said, nibbling on her lower lip. “I must speak with her. It can’t wait another night.”

  “Of course. You’re in luck, too,” she added, nodding in Liam’s direction. “She’s fond of sheep. She has a couple of them herself.”

  “Uh…”

  “Excuse me,” Liam said. “I was having a little trouble with that one. What’s a mouton?”

  Startled, Sophie realized she and Marjorie had been speaking in French the entire time. “Liam, I apologize. When Marjorie greeted us in French I just slipped into it—”

  “That’s okay. I was gettin’ most of it. All those For Dummies books and tapes are really good,” he added.

  Sophie blinked. “You studied French on your own?” Of course he did, she realized. The high school didn’t offer it. Only Spanish.

  “Well…yeah. Because you…I mean, nobody in town knows anything about you, except that you’re French. And I thought, you know, if I knew your language, we could maybe…” He shrugged. “I dunno.”

  Overcome, Sophie was for a moment unable to speak. She merely gaped at him like a fish while Marjorie shifted her weight impatiently. Finally, she turned to the older woman and managed, “We’ll take that map, thank you.”

  “I’ve got it right here for you.”

  Wordlessly, Sophie took the piece of paper. As Marjorie always looked as though she was waiting for whoever came to see her, she also always had exactly what that person needed. The older vampires were all used to it.

  “Thank you for coming by,” the librarian was saying. “And thank you for bringing your sheep. He smells divine.”

  “I ain’t a sheep,” Liam said flatly. His midwestern drawl, usually pleasant and unassuming, had hardened. “I’m a man. Her man.”

  Marjorie smirked, but Sophie was suddenly ashamed. Equally suddenly, she didn’t care for the smile on Marjorie’s face. “Of course, Liam. I—I—” She had no clue what to say. Should she apologize? But Marjorie had been the one who had given offense. Although she herself had referred to Liam as a sheep, in her mind. Should she—

  “Really, that’s charming,” Marjorie said. Her smirk had widened until she looked like a gray-haired jack-o’-lantern. “If you get tired of this one, Sophie darling, I do hope—”

  “You want to step outside and talk about it some more?” he interrupted.

  “Liam!” Sophie nearly shrieked.

  “What? I’m a feminist. ’Sides, she’s probably got six hundred years on me.”

  “Eight hundred,” Marjorie said dryly.

  “Anyways, I’m an equal opportunity ass-kicker. Nobody talks to me that way. I might be a nobody from some small town, but I’m not…you know. A nobody.”

  Sophie fought the urge to bury her face in her hands. Meanwhile, Marjorie’s brow wrinkled as she digested that, and then she smiled, quite naturally. “I don’t want to step outside with you. And I apologize if I offended you. I’m just used to things being…a certain way.”

  “Yes, well, just a simple misunderstanding, we must be going now,” Sophie said, almost babbled, seizing Liam’s arm so hard he winced. “Thank you for the information.”

  “You’re so welcome.” She shook Liam’s hand. “So nice to meet you. Please stop by anytime. The library is not restricted to the undead.” She said this with such total sincerity, Sophie almost believed her.

  “Yeah, well. Guess I got a little hot under the collar.”

  “Yes, you did.” Marjorie’s eyes were veiled, and a smoky gray. “It was quite…interesting. As I said. Stop by anytime.”

  “Say, anybody ever tell you, you’re kind of cute? I—ow!”

  “Good-bye,” Sophie called, and practically dragged him out by the hair.

  8

  SOPHIE was still crabbing away at him while they were going up the sidewalk. The gist of it was “Never pick fights with vampires,” like any fool didn’t know that. But there was a big difference between keeping your head down and letting someone pull it off and hand it to you. Maybe French people didn’t get that.

  “…so unbelievably arrogant, so completely dangerous…”

  He let her sweet, accented bitching fade out as he stared around at the place. Summit Avenue in St. Paul was pretty famous for big digs, but this! Every mansion on the street was nicer than the last, and the one they were standing in front of was the nicest of all. It was humongous, like something out of an old movie, a massive white structure with black shutters. It didn’t feel evil, though Sophie told him the queen of the vampires lived there.

  “I guess we should go knock,” Sophie said timidly, which startled the hell out of him. He didn’t think she was afraid of anything. Come to think of it, she’d been very deferential to the librarian, too. Maybe she just wasn’t used to being around her own kind. Maybe she’d moved to Embarrass for more than a fresh start. “Yes. Let’s do that. We’ll knock.”

  “Okeydokey,” he agreed.

  As they stepped up to the gigantic, wraparound porch, the front door suddenly opened and a good-looking young man in his mid-twenties came out. He was wearing green scrubs and had a hospital ID around his neck with a terrible picture on it. His hair was dark and cut very short, and his green eyes were clear and friendly.

  “Hi there,” he said, jingling his car keys. “Come to visit? Go on in. I’d stay and, you know, do the polite intros, but I’m late and you’re not here to see me anyway. Right? Right. So, ’bye.”

  He hurried down the steps, throwing a distracted wave over his shoulder, then disappeared around the corner toward the detached garage. They watched him go, bemused, then Sophie turned and looked back up at the house.

  “We can just…go in?”

  “Guess so,” Liam replied and opened the front door. After seeing the outside of the house, he was a little more prepared for the beauty and opulence of the foyer. He could hear voices coming from a large room on their right, and turned in that direction. Sophie clutched his arm, pulling him back. “Sophie, what is with you?”

  She was chewing on her lower lip so hard, he expected to see it start bleeding. If she could bleed. “It’s just…I met Nostro. And he was horrible. Horrible. And if she beat him…. But we have to bring this to her,” she added, seeming to straighten with remembered pride. “It’s our—my—responsibility.”

  “Right,” he said. “Calm down, ease up. You look great, don’t worry about it.” And she did. Her glossy brown hair was piled up on top of her head, being held in place by the miracle of a single hair clip. She was wearing a dark red suit, light-colored stockings, and black shoes. She was pale, but then, she was always pale. He thought she looked like a million bucks. In fact, as he’d watched her pull up her stockings in their hotel room (he didn’t know gals even wore stockings and garter belts anymore), he’d been unable to resist jumping her bones again, and they’d had a wonderful time rolling around on the floor.

  She hadn’t bitten him that time, politely explaining afterward that she was still satisfied from the night before. He knew she was lying; he could tell by the way her gaze kept shifting from his eyes to the bruise forming on his neck. But he didn’t push it, figuring she had other things on her mind.

  “You look nice, too,” she told him, which was a laugh, because he was wearing jeans (clean, at least) and an old blue flannel shirt (also clean). Well, he didn’t think the big shot queen would much care what he was wearing.

  He gripped Sophie’s hand, surprised as always by its pleasant coolness, and practically pulled her into the next room.

  “…and they’re doing really well, pretty well, I mean, they’ll still kill and eat anybody who gets too close, anybody human I mean, but I’m keeping a pretty close watch and, um, I guess that’s all.”

  The girl speaking was smaller than Sophie, which was pretty damn small. She had red hair and the skinniest, palest arms and legs Liam had ever seen. She was wearing a pleated black
skirt and a white blouse, and little white socks and loafers, looking for all the world like a schoolgirl. In fact, she probably was a schoolgirl. Didn’t look a day over fifteen.

  “Very good, Alice,” a deep voice said. Liam looked, then looked again. He’d thought it was a shadowy corner, but there was a man sitting in a tall wingbacked chair, a big man, tall and scary-looking and Liam wanted to turn around, cool as a cuke, and walk right of there and back to the truck and then drive all the way back to Embarrass, checking the rearview the entire time. “Once again, I must ask if you wish to be relieved of your duties. You’ve been at this for several months and—”

  “Majesty, I love this job, and I wish to keep on doing it. Before I wanted to because, you know, with the new, uh, regime, I wasn’t really sure of my place. So I figured, you know. But now…I—I kind of like them,” she finished, staring down at her shoes.

  “Them?” the man asked, distaste clear in his tone.

  “Happy, Skippy, Trippy, Sandy, Benny, Clara, Jane, and George.” She smiled weakly. “George’s my favorite.”

  “You’ve named them?”

  Liam wondered who them was. He bumped into something, and he suddenly realized he’d backed all the way up into the door, totally unconsciously. He told himself to get a grip. They were just vampires, for Christ’s sake.

  He forced himself to look around the room while the vampires talked about them, tearing his gaze away from the scary guy sitting in the corner. There were three other people in the room; the first one he noticed was a petite, great-looking blonde standing behind and slightly to the left of the guy’s chair. Even from across the room, he could see how dark and pretty her big eyes were, fixed now on the girl. And she was so small, she easily fit behind the corner chair. The guy seemed totally unaware of her, but he’d cock his head when she’d bend down to whisper to him, and besides, Liam had the feeling no one snuck up on this guy.

  There was also a dark-green couch (he supposed some fancy magazine would call it “moss green” or whatever) in the middle of the room, and two women were sitting on it, playing checkers. The one closest to him was a good-looking black gal (shit, he’d never seen this many gorgeous people outside of a Hollywood movie). She was way too thin, with her hair so tightly pulled back he could practically see her skull throbbing, but her skin was a gorgeous dark brown and she had a look about her he really liked, as if she didn’t take a lot of shit.

  The other one…he glanced at her, and then his gaze came back, as it had with the man.

  She was as cute as a bug’s butt, as Sophie would have said (when she got excited, Liam noticed she mixed up her metaphors). Her hair was blond, but much shorter than the other woman’s, and the light tossed reddish glints into it. She was sitting cross-legged, in tan shorts and a navy blue sweater buttoned to her chin. She wore shoes the color of her sweater, shoes that had a little heel and emphasized the long, pretty shape of her foot. She was watching the other woman’s hands and swung her foot while she waited her turn, occasionally peeking at her shoes and smiling.

  She looked up at him (and, presumably, Sophie), and he saw her eyes were a cross between green and blue, the color of the ocean in a postcard. Her chin was pointed, giving her a sharp, foxlike appearance, and her cheekbones were high, emphasizing the prettiness of her eyes and the smoothness of her brow. He had an odd urge to stroke her forehead, which mercifully passed. It helped to glance back at Sophie now and again.

  “Hey,” she said casually, turning the full force of her sea-colored gaze on him, and he nearly fell down. Staring at her was like staring at the door to heaven. It promised delights beyond compare…but didja really want to leave everything you ever knew behind?

  “So, anyway, Your Majesties,” the schoolgirl was saying, “the Fiends are just fine, healthy as can be…I guess…and they—”

  The spectacular blonde on the couch stood so fast, he didn’t actually see it. One second she was leaning over, about to get kinged, the next she was standing and pointing (uh-oh) at Sophie, and the redhead was cowering away from her.

  “What…” she began, “is on…your shoes?”

  Sophie looked down at her feet, then back up. “Ah…Your Majesty, my name is Dr. Sophie Tourneau, and this is—may I present my…uh…my friend, Mr. Liam—”

  “Seriously. It looks like you plowed through—God, is that shit? Is that shit on your shoes?”

  “Elizabeth,” the man in the corner sighed.

  “Oh, boy,” the black gal said. “Here we go.”

  “They were, uh, a gift, uh…” Sophie sounded completely rattled and Liam almost smiled. Shoes, they were talking about shoes, of all the dumbest things! “And I—I’m a vet, an animal doctor, and sometimes I wear them on the job…and…and…”

  “So you’re telling me it is shit?” Liam thought the blonde was going to pass out. “Jesus Christ in an Easter parade!” Everyone (except him) visibly flinched. “How could you…do that? I mean, that’s why God made Payless Shoes. You want to tromp around in the shit? I—I—” She put a hand to her brow, and Liam noticed she had pretty hands with long fingers. The nails were done in that what-do-you-call it, with the white tips. French manicure. “You just can’t—can’t come in here—dressed like that—your poor feet—”

  “Unless it’s really important.” The woman standing behind the fella piped up. It was the first time she’d spoken loud enough for him to hear. “As I’m sure it is.”

  “Aren’t you French? You sound French. Aren’t French people supposed to have style?”

  “Uh-huh,” the black gal said. “Also, African-Americans have rhythm, and white girls can’t dance. Especially you, white girl.”

  “You stay out of this.” The blonde—surely this wasn’t the queen?—suddenly collapsed onto the couch, nearly kicking over the checkers game. “Well, I can’t be expected to listen to this! The whole thing is stupid anyway, I was totally against it—”

  “We know,” everybody but Liam and Sophie said.

  “…and thought it was, just, so massively lame, but I put up with it without bitching—much—and all these dead people trooping through my house—”

  “Excuse me,” the black lady said, not looking up from the board. “Through my house.”

  “I told you to quit holding that over my head! Where the hell was I?”

  “Dead people trooping through your house,” Liam said helpfully.

  “Right. Right! Thank you. And they’re in and out of here like I’m fucking King Solomon—what, they can’t solve their own problems?—and now I gotta see shoes abused and I can’t take it!” She threw her arm over her face and lapsed into silence. Finally.

  Sophie’s mouth was opening and closing like a walleye, but she wasn’t saying anything. And all the vampires—he guessed they were all vampires—were staring at them. Except for the guy. He was staring at the blonde and smiling, a little. So finally Liam coughed and said, “Well, there’s a bad vampire and he’s killing girls up north.” Now the guy was looking at him, along with everybody else. Even the blonde was peeking at him from under her arm. “We just, y’know, thought you oughta know.”

  The queen sat up. “Oh, fuck.”

  “Yup,” Liam agreed.

  9

  “YOU’RE kidding me. Right? You’re kidding. I mean, that’s nasty. That’s just…yerrggh.”

  “Yup,” Liam agreed. He took another drink of his smoothie. They had trooped into an enormous kitchen, the guy had fired up two blenders and brought a ton of fruit and orange juice out of the fridge, and now they were sitting around like old friends, slurping down strawberry smoothies. Except for him. His was strawberry-banana. “That’s what we thought. Sohpie figured it out.”

  “When?” the guy asked. He had introduced himself as Eric Sinclair, but everybody except Jessica (the black gal) called him Majesty or My King or Shitheap (the spunky blonde, it appeared, didn’t like him). Speaking of the blonde, her name was Betsy and, yup, she was the queen. The other blonde’s name was Tina and
she was very deferential to Shitheap and Betsy. Alice, the schoolgirl, had politely excused herself and left.

  “I beg your pardon?” Sophie asked, her glass rattling as she set it down. She was a little more relaxed than when they’d arrived, but not much. Liam couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t every day you met a king and queen. Luckily, they weren’t his king and queen, so he could be his regular old self. “Your Majesty, did you ask me when?”

  “Last night,” Liam began, helping her out a little, “we were watching the news and Sophie saw this story and put it all together.

  “She’s really smart,” he added. “Smartest person in Embarrass.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Shitheap said, smiling at Sophie, which seemed to calm her down a little.

  “Up by Babbitt Lake?” Jessica asked.

  Liam chewed a small piece of banana that had escaped the blender’s whirring blades. “Yeah, you know it?”

  “My dad used to take me fishing there when I was little.”

  “Well, we, me and Sophie, live there. She’s our vet.”

  “And you saw this man on the news…” Sinclair prompted.

  “…and decided to come up and wreck my night,” the queen finished. When they all stared at her, she had the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry. That sounded less jerky in my head.”

  “We didn’t see him,” Sophie said. “We saw the father of one of the girls on the news. So Liam drove me down—”

  “You didn’t feel the need to keep this in the, uh, community?” Tina asked.

  “She tried,” Liam said simply.

  There was a short silence, broken by the queen’s muffled giggle, then Sophie continued. “We drove down and spoke to the girl’s mother. I don’t think there’s much doubt, or I certainly would not be bothering you with this.”

  “Ugh! He dates these girls, makes them love him, then dumps them to watch them go all suicidal with despair?”

  “Yup.”

  “What a shit!” Betsy was on her feet. “Let’s go up to Embarrass and kick his ass!”