Tantalize

  A lone murder in a southwestern college town wouldn’t normally have merited national coverage. But toss in the restaurant’s theme and the fact that this was the state capital . . . They were calling it “The Texas Vampire Murder.”

  I’d been doing all I could to tune out the coverage since the first time I’d heard the words “medical-legal autopsy.”

  “Guess what,” Ruby said with childlike delight.

  “What?” Uncle D indulged.

  “Some guys have set up a table out front. They’re asking people to sign a petition giving amnesty to killer vampires.”

  “They’re what?” I asked.

  When the Chronicle first reported Sanguini’s would have a vampire theme, we’d gotten a couple of concerned calls from BADL (the Bat Anti-Defamation League). Austin was home to the world’s largest urban bat colony, and BADL had been worried about possible PR fallout. Like we’d ever besmirch the city’s most treasured eco-mascots. The point being, political activism was huge here, but this was ridiculous.

  “They’re outside our front door?” Uncle D wanted to know.

  She nodded like it was the niftiest thing ever.

  Sprinting from the back office, down the hall, I followed my uncle past the restroom doors and kitchen door, through the crimson velvet curtains, across the dining room, and through another matching set of curtains to the foyer to pull back a final set of curtains that hung in front of the painted black door. Overkill, designed to tap into the popular idea that sunlight destroyed vampires. No more than a myth, Kieren had told me once. False comfort. In any case, a small, beveled, oval-shaped window had been cut into the door. Uncle D and I took turns peering through it.

  Six, no seven, young melanin-challenged guys dressed in black long sleeves, long pants, and shades were perched on the sidewalk in foldout lawn chairs beneath black umbrellas, drinking what I hoped was cherry Kool-Aid out of clear plastic cups. A card table had been set up in front of them. It was so stupid. So incredibly disrespectful.

  It would serve them all right if they had heat stroke.

  “If this keeps up,” Uncle D said, “the other merchants will start bitching. They’re already nervous.”

  The neighborhood association had asked for more of a police presence, and in the past few days, I’d spotted more bicycle officers and squad cars than usual.

  “I don’t blame them,” I replied.

  Letting the curtains fall into place, Uncle D used the hostess station phone to call APD. I excused myself to take refuge at Kieren’s.

  Four years ago, the Moraleses leveled their 1920s three-bedroom bungalow to build a white stone and stucco two-story with a soaring foyer and a finished bonus room that Kieren’s parents shared as a home office. The place was roomy, took up most of the lot, your basic McMansion. The neighbors had hissy fits.

  The front yard was rocked except for a wild rose garden that always seemed to be in bloom, and Meghan’s tire swing hung from the winding branch of a live oak.

  When the door opened, giant paws landed on my shoulders, knocking me back a step. I shut my eyes against the enthusiastic tongue. Brazos was Kieren’s dog, a shepherd, silver and white with smoky brown eyes. Sporting his royal blue bandanna.

  “Hey, boy! Down, down.” And when he went back to all fours, I crouched beside him, wrapping my arms around his neck, pressing my face into the warm fur, inhaling his dog smell. Everybody had seemed different since Vaggio died, but not Brazos.

  I smiled up at Kieren’s mama. “Howdy.”

  “Come on in. Kieren’s upstairs, studying. Can I get you some water?” She led me in, and Brazos trailed after us, tail wagging. “We also have Diet Coke, orange juice, Dr Pepper, lemonade, iced tea —”

  “Dr Pepper, please.” I made my way through the foyer, past the stairs, to the great room.

  It was sterile. White walls and moldings and doors and Berber carpeting. Framed bluebonnet and Indian paintbrush photos. Furniture via Pottery Barn and Everything Leather. University of Texas Longhorns pillows on the sofa. Oaxacan wood carvings on the mantle of a never-used fireplace.

  Like most werepeople, Mama Wolf and her cubs were firmly in the closet — or, well, den — and the house was part of the illusion. So much depended on it — their safety, Meghan’s playdates, Kieren’s presumed innocence, Dr. Morales’s job at the U., Miz Morales’s Junior League bridal clientele.

  She excused herself to fetch my drink and feed the dog.

  Perching on the cushy white leather couch, I turned my attention to the coffee table. It was littered with powder blue and navy earrings assembled from ribbons, mesh, and satin rosebuds. I picked one up. “Yowza.”

  “Hideous, aren’t they?” Miz Morales asked, returning with my drink — pink glass tumbler, heart-shaped ice, and moss-colored cotton napkin. “The bride is the daughter of oil-money Houstonians, the groom the son of dot-com investors who got out in time.”

  She loved to dish, and it was fun listening, though little of her Irish accent remained. I wasn’t sure why her family had relocated — or had been relocated here during her childhood — but Kieren had told me once that they were descended from Wolves who’d known St. Patrick himself.

  I’d teased him that it was the ultimate in blarney, but the story reminded me of Daddy, how he always used to talk about my being named for some great, great (I didn’t know how many greats) uncle. A Texas war hero.

  I played with my straw. “You’ll make it work,” I told Miz Morales. “Somehow.”

  She had the magic touch. Nobody could do a better job of talking a nice girl and her mama out of a regrettable ice sculpture.

  “Quincie,” Miz Morales said, taking a step back. “It’s been hard for you, at your age, without Gate and Sophie.”

  Just like that. Bam. No segue. They’d all been friends, though, my parents and Kieren’s, back in their college days. Stood up in each others’ weddings.

  “I know your uncle tries. Still, Roberto and I should’ve done more. Now that you’re a young woman, I realize . . . Well, I hope you’ll accept my apologies.”

  I sipped my Dr Pepper, confused.

  “It’s time a woman explained to you the facts of life.”

  Oh, God. “Miz Morales, with all respect, I don’t think —”

  “Has Kieren talked to you yet about what it means, what will happen . . . ?”

  Ah, got it. “Big Bad Wolf to-do,” I replied, even more tense at the subject clarification. “Sooner or later, he’ll be in or out of the pack of his choice.”

  I was hazy on the details, but supposedly, there were two ways into a Wolf pack: brains or brawn. Kieren was very strong — stronger and faster than any 100 percent human but not as strong or fast as a 100 percent Wolf — so he’d be applying, or whatever prospective members did, on the first count — hence his extensive werestudies.

  I had a nagging feeling he’d be better off with more tooth and claw to back up that noggin power, and what’s more, I wasn’t sold on the idea that a Wolf pack would embrace a hybrid. But Kieren never seemed concerned, and he’d told me more than once to stop worrying about it.

  “At eighteen,” Miz Morales said, circling the couch, “as a human, he’d have to register for the draft. As a Wolf, it’s not much different.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea if he can’t . . . ?”

  Full-blooded werepeople could shift at will, but it became harder to keep from going full puppy when the moon went fat. Miz Morales never took a wedding booked on such dates nor met then with her clients. But Kieren had never fully transformed, and the one time he’d gone halfway had been a disaster for us both.

  It wasn’t something his parents had known to expect. Full werepeople never shifted at all before adolescence, and hybrids were virtually unheard of.

  Or at least not talked about.

  So it wasn’t clear whether Kieren would ever be able to transform completely.

  “I left my pack, Quincie.” She sank to sit on her heels in front of me. “Left i
t because I was young and idealistic and I believed love was all that mattered. As much as I treasure Roberto and the kids, living free of the hierarchy, we’re making due with a loose network of other runaways, outcasts, antisocials. It’s like a Band-Aid when only full body armor will do. Kieren needs a pack. Most lone Wolves don’t survive long.”

  “Kieren may be half Wolf . . .” I set the ice-cold tumbler on the sofa table. “But he’s also half Homo sapiens.” Besides, he wasn’t alone. He had his family. He had me.

  Miz Morales stood, reaching to scratch behind her ear. “Please understand. I’d hoped this could wait until graduation, at least Christmas break. But the way things are going . . .” She stilled. “‘Sooner or later’ could mean any time. And it’s not like he’d be able to come back and visit. You, me, Roberto, Meghan — we can’t be selfish. We have to let him go.”

  Forever? I’d never realized that Kieren’s joining a pack would mean he’d be gone for good. I’d just thought it was . . . I don’t know . . . like the Army Reserve or something. In peacetime. Kieren had never hinted that his being half Wolf could lead to this.

  I opened my mouth to protest as Miz Morales glanced at her watch.

  “Oh, no!” she exclaimed.

  “What?” I asked, fretting what else might be wrong.

  “I’m supposed to be meeting with the Jung-Holland bride at the Driskill Hotel.” She smoothed her tailored skirt. “Ms. Jung wanted to release doves until I explained how last time I did that four out of the twelve flew into a passing semi, so now we’re leaning toward butterflies.” Miz Morales moved closer again, brushed my hair from my eyes. “So much of Sophie in you,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to run. Roberto’s at a faculty dinner at U.T., so you kids are on your own tonight.”

  I found my voice. “Miz Morales,” I began, “Kieren can’t leave. He belongs —”

  “Be strong, Quincie,” she said, “for Kieren’s sake.”

  Upstairs, Kieren was setting Where the Wild Things Are on his nightstand. Meghan lay cradled, sleeping in his arms. “Let me tuck her in,” he whispered, rising to carry his sister off to bed.

  If you turned Kieren into a four-year-old girl, he’d look like Meghan. Hair so brown it was almost black, so thick and curly it could make a shampoo model weep with envy. Brows barely parted, the shadow of a mustache. She was barefoot, her feet curled, softly snoring, wearing footie PJs. Sweet. A scar ran down her dimpled face, though, forehead to chin, splitting her generous right eyebrow, cutting into the lid and a downy cheek. A souvenir from a break-in when Meghan was a babe.

  Burglar, Kieren had said. His mama had handled it.

  Left alone, I made an effort to calm myself and searched for a place to sit. Kieren’s room was a Wolf studies hot zone. On the top of his water bed, a number of yellowed maps and dusty texts had been spread. Various pages marked with color-coded Post-its. Sometimes I thought he was even more of a workaholic than I was.

  Turning, I noticed the plate of desiccated baby-back ribs on the desk.

  Kieren’s computer monitor displayed an online shopping cart, and I wandered over to peruse the selections: mustard seed, buckthorn, candles, carrot seeds, crosses, crucifixes, Stars of David, Prayer Wheels, Prayer Flags, bells, gongs, dried red peppers, holy water and wafers, dehumidifiers . . . A gold card in the name of Roberto Morales lay on the desk beside an Austin Ice Bats coffee mug, filled with mechanical pencils, highlighters, and pens.

  Two empty beer cans had been tossed into the trash. Coors, the Silver Bullet. Kieren’s brew of choice and his warped idea of a joke. The brand reminded me of another time, not long before Meghan was born, when we’d been left home alone.

  “This way,” Kieren had said that day, gesturing for me to follow.

  His folks would be back any moment from running errands, and whatever it was, Kieren had wanted to show it to me before they returned.

  He’d opened a door in the bungalow ceiling, pulled down a ladder to the attic.

  And I’d followed him up, perplexed by the boring landscape of boxes, an artificial Christmas tree, an antique trunk, and a shelf filled with paperback romances. “So?”

  “So, this.” Kieren reached above a support beam stretched across the low, pitched ceiling to grab a key and used it to open a desk drawer.

  My eyes widened, sure he wasn’t allowed to do that.

  Kieren grinned as if he were about to reveal a pirate’s treasure, reached into the drawer, and retrieved a folder labeled “silver merchandising.”

  My first thought had been that Miz Morales had gone into the jewelry business to supplement her bridal planning, but then Kieren handed me a piece of paper.

  “You know how we thought silver bullets might be the only kind that could kill me?” he’d asked. “Look! We were wrong. Any bullet can. Wolves have just been telling people since forever that only silver works to figure out who’s after one of us.”

  According to the document, werewolves sold silver bullets, silver knives, silver spearheads and arrowheads and tracked whoever bought them. The theory was to cut off the enemy at the weapons-supply point. The downside? To maintain the scam, they couldn’t nab the villain on premises. Instead, an undercover Wolf followed the trail and dealt with the buyer off-site.

  I was impressed by the Wolves’ self-defense, but upset that it was necessary to protect people like Kieren and his family. I didn’t have a chance to say anything, though. The Moraleses had just arrived downstairs, and Kieren’s mama called to us.

  He grabbed the document from my hands, slipped it back in the folder, the folder into the drawer, locking and then hurrying to return the key.

  When we’d climbed downstairs, Miz Morales had been waiting. Eight months pregnant in a Texas July. Cranky. “I told you to stay out of there.”

  That night the attic had been locked with a key Kieren never found. The following month, Meghan was born, and then Kieren and I had our accident on the railroad bridge.

  Kieren had a sort of split personality, he’d explained. Man and Wolf. Except his Wolf couldn’t fully come forth, which frustrated and angered it. Like an abused animal, made it nearly impossible to rein in. Where his mama could shift back and forth whenever, Kieren had barely regained control in time to save me from bleeding to death.

  Afterward, his Wolf heritage wasn’t our adventure anymore. It was his burden.

  Meanwhile, the Morales house was leveled, and, during a year of construction, their newly expanded family made due with a crowded rental and a downtown storage locker. Kieren seemed increasingly too absorbed in his studies to make time for me.

  That spring, I kissed someone else, and it tasted like nothing.

  For a time, I thought I’d lost Kieren, but the following winter my parents died and he was right by my side. He’d more or less stayed there ever since.

  “You hungry?” Kieren asked, drawing my attention back to the present as he rejoined me in his room.

  He was always hungry. I lifted Malleus Maleficarum from the water bed, trying to sound normal. “I thought you said this was God-awful sexist.”

  “Sexist, anyway,” he acknowledged.

  Then . . . it was weird. Kieren gestured as if to offer me his desk chair but then dropped his hands like he’d changed his mind. I took a couple of steps closer, pausing, unsure whether he would welcome a hug.

  We didn’t have time to figure it out. I reached for him, and he froze for a moment. But then he relaxed, his gaze softened. My hand hovered in midair. I let it fall. We swayed, nose-to-nose on the white Berber. He wanted to kiss me, didn’t he? God only knew I wanted to kiss him.

  “My mother —”

  “Went to have a little talk about the birds and the butterflies.”

  “Meghan —”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Papa —”

  “At U.T.”

  “Brazos —”

  “I don’t think Brazos would mind.” I could hear the dog in the backyard, barking like crazy. Miz Morales must
’ve let him out before she left.

  I leaned in, but Kieren did this back-step dodge, a sort of nonavoidance avoidance maneuver. Stung, I began, “Unless, you . . .”

  His foot nudged a book on the carpet. Damn sheepish for a Wolf.

  I retreated, tripping over a yellow highlighter, landing in a sprawl on the sloshing water bed, knocking off three or four priceless ancient texts. I felt myself flush, humiliated. “I, I wasn’t trying to —”

  “Quince.” He took my hand, pulling me up to sit, wavering a bit, on the denim comforter. “It’s not you. You’re . . . I just . . . I don’t want to hurt you.”

  A werewolf bite could kill. Big jaws, big teeth, big claws like with Grandma and Little Red. But it couldn’t make me into a wereperson. Wolves were born, not made. Natural. Not spooky, not demonic, no matter what The Right Wing might say. I tried teasing him, ran my thumb across the back of his hand. “I might enjoy being bitten.”

  Kieren didn’t reply. He let go of me and crossed to his window to check on Brazos, who was still making a lot of racket. Stayed quiet too long. Changed the subject with a whisper. “I think vampires killed Vaggio,” he said.

  “Um, Kieren,” I began, choking up. “I was in the kitchen. It looked like —”

  “A werewolf kill.” He ran a hand through his thick hair. “Yeah, I know. I was there, too. But that’s just it. In a Wolf attack, we go for the nose, the buttocks . . . the throat only in the case of smaller prey. And, this may not sound pretty, but we don’t leave much of anything behind. What happened to Vaggio, it was staged to fit a human misconception, a Hollywood misconception about Wolf behavior. Besides, humans aren’t prey. They’re our natural enemies. They’re to be avoided.”

  Said the half Wolf to his human best friend.

  I crossed my arms, exasperated. “What about vampires?”

  “They’re dead people too selfish to lie down. There’s nothing natural about them.”

  I felt adrift on the water bed. “So, you’re saying a vampire shifted —”