“Uh,” I said, slamming the door to Adam’s VW shut. “I’ll see you guys.”
I hurried up the driveway with Spike, determined not to be forgotten just because he’d been zipped into a book bag, growling and spitting the whole way. As I was coming up the front steps to the porch, I heard the rumble of voices coming from the living room.
And when I stepped through the front door, and I saw who those voices belonged to…well, Spike came pretty close to becoming a kitty pancake, I squeezed that bag so tight to my chest.
Because sitting there chatting amiably with my mother and holding a cup of tea was none other than Thaddeus “Red” Beaumont.
Chapter
Twelve
“Oh, Susie,” my mom said, turning around as I came into the house. “Hello, honey. Look who stopped by to see you. Mr. Beaumont and his son.”
It was only then that I noticed Tad was there, too. He was standing by the wall that had all of our family photos on it—which weren’t many since we’d only been a family for a few weeks. Mostly they were just school photos of me and my stepbrothers, and pictures from Andy and my mom’s wedding.
Tad grinned at me, then pointed at a photo of me at the age of ten—in which I was missing both my front teeth—and said, “Nice smile.”
I managed to give him a reasonable facsimile of that smile, minus the missing teeth. “Hi,” I said.
“Tad and Mr. Beaumont were on their way home,” my mom said, “and they thought they’d stop by and see if you’d have dinner with them tonight. I told them I didn’t think you had any other plans. You don’t, do you, Suze?”
My mom, I could tell, was practically frothing at the mouth at the idea of me having dinner with this guy and his kid. My mom would have frothed at the mouth at the idea of me having dinner with Darth Vader and his kid, that’s how hot she was to get me a boyfriend. All my mom has ever wanted is for me to be a normal teenage girl.
But if she thought Red Beaumont was prime in-law material, boy, was she barking up the wrong tree.
And speaking of barking, I had suddenly become an object of considerable interest to Max, who had started sniffing around my book bag and whining.
“Um,” I said. “Would you mind if I just ran upstairs and, um, dumped my stuff off?”
“Not at all,” Mr. Beaumont said. “Not at all. Take your time. I was just telling your mother about your article. The one you’re doing for the school paper.”
“Yes, Susie,” my mom said, turning around in her seat with this huge smile. “You never told me you were working for the school paper. How exciting!”
I looked at Mr. Beaumont. He smiled blandly back at me.
And suddenly, I had a very bad feeling.
Oh, not that Mr. Beaumont was going to get up, come over, and bite me on the neck. Not that.
But all of a sudden, I got this very bad feeling that he was going to tell my mother the real reason I’d gone to visit him the night before. Not the newspaper article thing, but the thing about my dream.
Which my mom would instantly suspect was you-know-what. If she heard I’d been going around feeding wealthy real estate tycoons lines about psychic dreams, I’d be grounded from now until graduation.
And the worst part of it was, considering how much trouble I used to be in all the time back in New York, I wasn’t at all eager to let my mom in on the fact that I was actually up to even more stuff on this side of the country. I mean, she really had no clue. She thought all of it—the fact that I’d constantly missed my curfew, my run-ins with the police, my suspensions, the bad grades—were behind us, over, kaput, the end. We were on a new coast, making a new start.
And my mom was just so happy about it.
So I said, “Oh, yeah, the article I’m doing,” and gave Mr. Beaumont a meaningful look. At least, I hoped it would be meaningful. And I hoped what it meant to him was: Don’t spill the beans, buster, or you’ll pay for it big time.
Though I’m not certain how scared a guy like Red Beaumont would actually be of a sixteen-year-old girl.
He wasn’t. He sent a look right back at me. A look that said, if I wasn’t mistaken: I won’t spill the beans, sister, if you play along like a good little girl.
I nodded to let him know I’d gotten the message, whirled around, and hurried up the stairs.
Well, I figured as I went, Max loping at my heels, still trying to get a gander into my bag, at least Tad was with him. Mr. Beaumont certainly wasn’t going to be able to bite me on the neck with his own kid in the room. Tad, I was pretty sure, wasn’t a vampire. And he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d just stand by and let his dad kill his date.
And with any luck, that guy Marcus would be there. Marcus certainly wouldn’t allow his employer to sink his fangs into me.
I wasn’t too surprised when, as we reached the door to my bedroom, Max suddenly turned tail and, with a yelp, ran in the opposite direction. He wasn’t too thrilled by Jesse’s presence.
Neither, I figured, was Spike going to be. But Spike didn’t have any other choice.
I went into my room and took the litter box out of my giant Safeway bag and shoved it under the sink in my bathroom, then filled it with litter. From the center of my room where I’d left my book bag came some pretty unearthly howling. That paw kept shooting out of the hole Spike had chewed, feeling around for something to claw.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” I grumbled as I poured some water into a bowl then opened a can of food and left it on a plate on the floor along with the water.
Then, making sure I unzipped it away from me, I opened the bag.
Spike came tearing out like…well, more like the Tasmanian Devil than any cat I’d ever seen. He was completely out of control. He tore around the room three times before he spotted the food, skidded suddenly to a halt, and began to suck it down.
“What,” I heard Jesse say, “is that?”
I looked up. I hadn’t seen Jesse since our fight the night before. He was leaning against one of my bedposts—my mom had gone whole hog when she’d decorated my room, going for the frilly dressing table, canopy bed, the works—looking down at the cat like it was some kind of alien life form.
“It’s a cat,” I said. “I didn’t have any choice. It’s just until I find a home for it.”
Jesse eyed Spike dubiously. “Are you sure it’s a cat? It doesn’t look like any cat I’ve ever seen. It looks more like…what do they call them? Those small horses. Oh yes, a pony.”
“I’m sure it’s a cat,” I said. “Listen, Jesse, I’m kind of in a jam here.”
He nodded at Spike. “I can see that.”
“Not about the cat,” I said, quickly. “It’s about Tad.”
Jesse’s expression, which had been a fairly pleasant, teasing one, suddenly darkened. If I hadn’t been sure he didn’t give a hang about me aside from as a friend, I’d have sworn he was jealous.
“He’s downstairs,” I said quickly, before Jesse could start yelling at me again for being too easy on a first date. “With his father. They want me to come over for dinner. And I’m not going to be able to get out of it.”
Jesse muttered some stuff in Spanish. Judging from the look on his face, whatever he said hadn’t exactly been an expression of regret that he, too, had not been invited.
“The thing is,” I went on, “I’ve found out some things about Mr. Beaumont, things that kind of make me…well, nervous. So could you, um, do me a favor?”
Jesse straightened. He seemed pretty surprised. I don’t really ask him to do me favors all that often.
“Of course, querida,” he said, and my heart gave a little flip-flop inside my chest at the caressing tone he always gave that word. I didn’t even know what it meant.
Why am I so pathetic?
“Look,” I said, my voice squeakier than ever, unfortunately, “if I’m not back by midnight, can you just let Father Dominic know that he should probably call the police?”
As I’d been speaking, I’d taken
out a new bag, a Kate Spade knockoff, and I was slipping the stuff I normally use for ghost-busting into it. You know, my flashlight, pliers, gloves, the roll of dimes I keep in my fist ever since my mom found and confiscated my brass knuckles, pepper spray, bowie knife, and, oh yeah, a pencil. It was the best I could come up with in lieu of a wooden stake. I don’t believe in vampires, but I do believe in being prepared.
“You want me to speak to the priest?”
Jesse sounded shocked. I guess I couldn’t blame him. While I’d never exactly forbidden him from speaking to Father Dom, I’d never actually encouraged him, either. I certainly hadn’t told him why I was so reluctant for the two of them to meet—Father D. was sure to have an embolism over the living arrangements—but I hadn’t exactly given him the all clear to go strolling into Father Dominic’s office.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
Jesse looked confused. “But Susannah,” he said. “If he’s this dangerous, this man, why are you—”
Someone tapped on my bedroom door. “Susie?” my mom called. “You decent?”
I grabbed my bag. “Yeah, Mom,” I said. I threw Jesse one last, pleading look, and then I hurried from the room, careful not to let out Spike, who’d finished his meal and was doing some pretty serious nosing around for more food.
In the hallway, my mother looked at me curiously. “Is everything all right, Susie?” she asked me. “You were up here for so long….”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Listen, Mom—”
“Susie, I didn’t know things were so serious with this boy.” My mom took my arm and started steering me back down the stairs. “He’s so handsome! And so sweet! It’s just so adorable, his wanting you to have dinner with him and his father.”
I wondered how sweet she’d have thought it if she’d known about Mrs. Fiske. My mom had been a television news journalist for over twenty years. She’d won a couple of national awards for some of her investigations, and when she’d first started looking for a job on the West Coast, she’d pretty much had her pick of news stations.
And a sixteen-year-old albino with a laptop and a modem knew a heck of a lot more about Red Beaumont than she did.
It just goes to show that people only know what they want to.
“Yeah,” I said. “About Mr. Beaumont, Mom. I don’t think I really—”
“And what’s all this about you writing a story for the school paper? Suze, I didn’t know you were interested in journalism.”
My mom looked almost as happy as she had the day she and Andy had finally tied the knot. And considering that that was about as happy as I’d ever seen her—since my dad had died, anyway—that was pretty happy.
“Susie, I’m just so proud of you,” she gushed. “You really are finding yourself out here. You know how I used to worry, back in New York. You always seemed to be getting into trouble. But it looks as if things are really turning around…for the both of us.”
This was when I should have said, “Listen, Mom. About Red Beaumont? Okay, definitely up to no good, possibly a vampire. Enough said. Now could you tell him I’ve got a migraine and that I can’t go to dinner?”
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I just kept remembering that look Mr. Beaumont had given me. He was going to tell my mother. He was going to tell my mother the truth. About how I’d busted into his place under false pretenses, about that dream I’d said I’d had.
About how I can talk to the dead.
No. No, that was not going to happen. I had finally gotten to a point in my life where my mom was beginning to be proud of me, to trust me, even. It was kind of like New York had been this really bad nightmare from which she and I had finally woken up. Here in California I was popular. I was normal. I was cool. I was the kind of daughter my mom had always wanted instead of the social reject who’d constantly been dragged home by the police for trespassing and creating a public nuisance. I was no longer forced to lie to a therapist twice a week. I wasn’t serving permanent detention. I didn’t have to listen to my mother cry into her pillow at night, or notice her surreptitiously starting a Valium regimen whenever parent-teacher conferences rolled around.
Hey, with the exception of the poison oak, even my skin had cleared up. I was a completely different kid.
I took a deep breath.
“Sure, Mom,” I said. “Sure, things are really turning around for us.”
Chapter
Thirteen
He didn’t eat.
He’d invited me to dinner, but he didn’t eat.
Tad did. Tad ate a lot.
Well, boys always do. I mean, look at mealtime in the Ackerman household. It was like something out of a Jack London novel. Only instead of White Fang and the rest of the sled dogs, you have Sleepy, Dopey, and even Doc, chowing down like it might be their last meal.
At least Tad had good manners. He’d held my chair for me as I’d sat down. He actually employed a napkin, instead of simply wiping his hands on his pants, one of Dopey’s favorite tricks. And he made sure I was served first, so there was plenty to go around.
Especially since his father wasn’t eating.
But he did sit with us. He sat at the head of the table with a glass of red wine—at least, it looked like wine—and beamed at me as each course was presented. You read that right: courses. I’d never had a meal with courses before. I mean, Andy was a good cook and all, but he usually served everything all at once—you know, entree, salad, rolls, the whole thing at the same time.
At Red Beaumont’s house, the courses all came individually, served by waiters with this big flourish; two waiters, so that each of our plates—Tad’s and mine, I mean—were put down at the same time, and nobody’s food got cold while he or she was waiting for everyone else to be served.
The first course was a consommé, which turned out to have bits of lobster floating in it. That was pretty good. Then came some kind of fancy sea scallops in this tangy green sauce. Then came lamb with garlic mashed potatoes, then salad, a mess of weeds with balsamic vinegar all over them, followed by a tray on which there were all these different kinds of stinky cheeses.
And Mr. Beaumont didn’t touch a thing. He said he was on a special diet and had already had his dinner.
And even though I don’t believe in vampires, I just kept sitting there wondering what his special diet consisted of, and if Mrs. Fiske and those missing environmentalists had provided any part of it.
I know. I know. But I couldn’t help it. It was creeping me out the way he just sat there drinking his wine and smiling as Tad chatted about basketball. From what I could gather—I was having trouble concentrating, what with wondering why Father D. hadn’t given me a bottle of holy water when he’d first realized there might be a chance we were dealing with a vampire—Tad was Robert Louis Stevenson’s star player.
As I sat there listening to Tad go on about all the three-pointers he’d scored, I realized with a sinking heart that not only was he possibly the descendant of a vampire, but also that, except for kissing, he and I really had no mutual interests. I mean, I don’t have a whole lot of time for hobbies, what with homework and the mediating stuff, but I was pretty sure if I’d had an interest, it wouldn’t be chasing a ball up and down a wooden court.
But maybe kissing was enough. Maybe kissing was the only thing that mattered, anyway. Maybe kissing could overcome the whole vampire/ basketball thing.
Because as we got up from the table to go to the living room, where dessert, I was told, would be served, Tad picked up my hand—which was, by the way, still a bit poison oaky, but he evidently didn’t care; there was still a healthy amount of it on the back of his neck, after all—and gave it a squeeze.
And all of a sudden I was convinced that I had probably way overreacted back home when I’d asked Jesse to have Father Dominic call the cops if I wasn’t home by midnight. I mean, yeah, there were people who might think Red Beaumont was a vampire, and he certainly may have made his fortune in a creepy way.
But that didn’t nec
essarily make him a bad guy. And we didn’t have any actual proof he really had killed all those people. And what about that dead woman who kept showing up in my bedroom? She was convinced Red hadn’t killed her. She’d gone to great lengths to assure me that he was innocent of her death, at least. Maybe Mr. Beaumont wasn’t that bad.
“I thought you were mad at me,” Tad whispered as we followed Yoshi, who was carrying a tray of coffee—herbal tea for me—into the living room ahead of us.
“Why should I be mad at you?” I asked, curiously.
“Well, last night,” Tad whispered, “when I was kissing you—”
All at once I remembered how I’d seen Jesse sitting there, and how I’d screamed bloody murder over it. Blushing, I said, unable to look Tad in the eye, “Oh, that. That was just…I thought…I saw a spider.”
“A spider?” Tad pulled me down onto this black leather couch next to him. In front of the couch there was a big coffee table that looked like it was made out of Plexiglas. “In my car?”
“I’ve got a thing about spiders,” I said.
“Oh.” Tad looked at me with his sleepy brown eyes. “I thought maybe you thought I was—well, a little forward. Kissing you like that, I mean.”
“Oh, no,” I said with a laugh that I hoped sounded all sophisticated, as if guys were going around sticking their tongues in my mouth all the time.
“Good,” Tad said, and he put his arm around my neck and started pulling me toward him—
But then his dad walked in, and went, “Now, where were we? Oh, yes. Susannah, you were going to tell us all about how your class is trying to raise money to restore the statue of Father Serra that was so unfortunately vandalized last week….”
Tad and I pulled quickly apart.
“Uh, sure,” I said. And I started telling the long, boring tale, which actually involved a bake sale, of all things. As I was telling it, Tad reached over to the massive glass coffee table in front of him and picked up a cup of coffee. He put cream and sugar into it, and then took a sip.