Blessed

  I grimaced at the gooey guts on my palm, the tiny broken cricket leg lying off to one side. Poor cricket. Suddenly, I didn’t know why I’d gotten so upset.

  I’d heard it again, though. The voice. Brad’s voice?

  As quickly as my temper had flared, now I felt utterly deflated. “Yeah, okay.”

  While the skittish Possum scooted out to refill my bowl in the main kitchen, I took his advice and washed up in the break-room sink.

  “Better?” I asked once I looked and felt human again.

  Clyde, who’d returned to perch on the edge of the couch, cautiously handed me my gelatin. “Better. You could probably play off the look as makeup, fake teeth, and colored contacts, like Bradley used to do. Nobody would think twice about Sanguini’s owner in a vampire getup.” He was on the verge of babbling. “But why go there if you don’t have to? I mean, unless it’s a marketing thing.”

  I had another spoonful of Jell-O, determined to clamp down on my mood swings.

  “You mentioned Meghan,” Clyde said. “How’s she doing?”

  “She misses Kieren, of course. But it’s more than that. Meghan knows. I think she doesn’t know what she knows, but she knows she knows something.”

  The Possum clicked off the TV. “What?”

  “The cub knows that I’m not the girl I used to be.”

  At sunset, Sanguini’s rose again. The waitstaff arrived, chatty, upbeat, and, as usual, looking decadent. Jamal had the shape of a bat shaved into his hair. Mercedes and Simone had braided black-glitter-sprayed faux orchids into theirs.

  Even better, Sergio had called in Fat Lorenzo’s veteran server (and Jamal’s cousin) Jamie, so we were no longer understaffed.

  The first guests through the front door looked fresh off the Rocky Horror stage. Other themed parties of two or more included dark faeries, shuffling zombies, and one that I seated myself: a collection of self-proclaimed literary types — an Edgar Allan Poe, a Mary Shelley, a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and a pair of ladies calling themselves the Brontë sisters.

  “No Bram Stoker?” I asked the community college English teachers.

  “Too obvious,” Poe explained, gesturing as a tall, bearded, red-haired Stoker walked by, formally dressed for the late 1800s.

  Our staff had maintained the vampire theme. But I liked that the guests felt free to interpret the world of Sanguini’s.

  “Excuse me, miss,” called a woman at the next table. “Who’s the urban cowboy?”

  Tonight Zachary had gone with a shiny navy-blue cowboy shirt over black jeans and black boots that reminded me of Kieren’s. “He’s our new waiter.”

  “Is he going to ride a mechanical bull?” asked her friend.

  We didn’t have a mechanical bull. “Not tonight.”

  The first woman replied, “He can ride me anytime.”

  I pasted on my most professional smile and excused myself.

  Coming up on midnight, I found Chef Frederick Sanguini in the break room, standing in front of the new full-length mirror, fussing with his bleached hair. He’d added a red gerbera daisy to his lapel. “For irony,” he’d claimed.

  From behind him, I appreciated the sharpness of Freddy’s reflection. It was challenging, trying to make sure no one spotted my own fuzzy image, but we’d had to make some accommodations for the staff, given our emphasis on costuming.

  Moving away from the mirror, Freddy raised his white wine. “Hello, my dear.”

  “You don’t drink red?” I asked, reassured by the thought. Bradley had almost always had a glass of what I now knew was blood wine perched between his long fingers.

  Freddy made a face. “I’m happy to do it for the toast, but the tannins give me a headache.” He took a sip, set down his glass, and removed his wire-frame glasses. “I probably shouldn’t be saying that to a teenager, bad role-modeling and all.”

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “When it comes to drinking, I’m a lost cause.”

  “That’s not what I hear.” Returning to the mirror, he put in his right contact lens, blinking rapidly. “Nora said you’d given up alcohol, voluntarily sworn off human blood.”

  I raised a finger to silence him and then checked behind the doors to the kitchen and hallway to make sure no one was listening. “What do you know about it?”

  With both red contacts in place, Freddy adjusted his black silk jacket. “I know it’s a good sign.” He glanced at the wall clock — two minutes till — and relaxed his stance. “You’ve already heard that Nora, Zachary, and I have all lived and worked, to varying degrees, within eternal high society.”

  I’d known that the other two had been employed by a vampire. I figured out that there must’ve been a hell of a lot more bloodsuckers in the world (or at least in this neighborhood) than the general public realized. But I’d had no idea that there was enough of an undead society to distinguish between high and low.

  “We’ve been open about that,” Freddy added, spinning to check himself out in the glass one last time. He frowned. “Do you think the red silk shirt is too much? I don’t look like the Joker, do I?”

  “The red brings out your eyes,” I said. Bradley could never have pulled off that outfit — too shiny for his height or something.

  Freddy seemed to consider my opinion, nodded, and then moved to lean against the back of the sofa, careful not to wrinkle his clothes. “We’re not sure how much you’re ready to hear, but we won’t lie to you. We want you to trust us, and we understand that, after everything you’ve suffered, that’s going to be hard. Just know that you can come to us if you have any questions or fears about what you’ve become or what happens next.”

  I’d been braced for a sermon, not whatever that had been. Again, I was tempted to confide what Bradley had done to the baby-squirrel eaters. But reassuring words or not, this was still the first real conversation that Freddy and I had ever had.

  I moved to skim the newspaper spread open on the coffee table. Ads for three-bedroom rental houses had been circled. I remembered Nora, looking for the same, and what Miz Morales had said about leasing my home.

  “You’re all planning to live together?” I asked Freddy. I’d been trying to figure out the Chicagoans’ relationships. Not that age was everything, but Zachary looked like he was in his early twenties, Freddy about twice Zachary’s age, and Nora could’ve been my grandmother.

  “For a while,” the pretend chef replied. “We’ve been through a lot together. Nora and I feel that especially Zachary needs our support, a sense of belonging in this world.”

  I took a seat at the nearby six-top and began folding crimson napkins into the shape of bats. “He mentioned something about an ex-girlfriend.”

  Freddy examined his manicured fingernails. He’d had extensions applied but kept accidentally breaking them off. “Not ex, not exactly. I’ll have to let him field that one.”

  Just then, Sergio peeked in from the hallway. “Showtime!”

  “We’ll finish this later,” Freddy said with a jaunty salute on his way out.

  Reaching for another red napkin, I remembered Zachary explaining that the three of them were in the business of saving souls. Now I was less sure about what he’d meant, but I knew mine was in jeopardy — not to mention Mitch’s — and then there would come the next wave: Aimee, Sergio, Yani, Mercedes, the mayor, and hundreds more.

  I wondered, though, whether the new hires could use some saving, too.

  Mostly to placate Clyde, I’d suggested to Sergio that Simone should follow Zachary tonight. But she begged off, saying she’d already lost so much in tips from when we’d had to close. Then Sergio had pointed out that most of the servers probably felt the same way, and that he’d rather not put anyone on the spot. So it had been up to me again.

  This time I’d given the new hire more space so he could get into the flow without having to make small talk with me. But I had noticed that, as friendly and upbeat as he acted with his own tables, Zachary kept scowling as he made his way around Sanguini’s for order
drop-offs and pickups at the kitchen and bar.

  At half past midnight, I stopped him, coming out of the men’s restroom. “What’s with you? Half the time I glance your way, it’s like you’re sucking a lemon.”

  “How can you do it?” he countered. “Glamorize the demonic, after what happened to you? Joke around about people becoming predators or prey?”

  Apparently, Zachary was the self-righteous zealot of the group. I’d braced myself for something like this, but it still stung.

  Maybe he had a point. But the vampire theme hadn’t been my idea in the first place, and now I had enough to worry about without being lectured.

  “You said you wanted to help,” I began, “and I could use some help right now. But if you’ve changed your mind, fine. Adiós. The door’s that way.”

  As I brushed past him, Zachary called, “Quincie! I — I didn’t think it would get to me like . . . We’ll talk later, okay? I’ll explain what I can.”

  After close, I had the key in the ignition of The Banana when I happened to glance up and notice the masculine figure standing on Sanguini’s roof. My mind went first to Bradley, as it too often did. Then the moonlight broke through the cloud cover and I realized it was Zachary, standing against the heavens. What was he doing up there?

  I jumped out of the convertible, and after scanning the parking lot and alley for witnesses, set my hands, fingers spread, against the one-story brick building. Hadn’t Kieren’s notes on vampiric powers mentioned something about climbing ability? And Jonathan Harker had reported Dracula wall-crawling in a lizardlike fashion.

  A second of concentration was enough to unleash my clawlike nails, and reaching upward with my left, I could somehow easily support my body.

  Fascinated, I rose in a blur, swinging onto the roof.

  “Intoxicating.” That voice again.

  “Having fun?” Zachary asked, his arms crossed.

  Behind me, the neighborhood was dark, shadowed by large trees. Looking ahead, the neon and headlights created a commercial kaleidoscope. “Are you?”

  “I . . .” He yawned. “You should be careful about that, tapping into the demonic magic. Letting it loose.”

  “I didn’t let anything loose. I just climbed up a wall.” I glanced down at my hands, one smooth and one scarred. The nails looked normal again. “I thought you were going to explain yourself,” I prompted. “What got into you tonight? What are you doing up here?” I frowned. “And what’s that you’re holding?”

  He strode across the roof and handed me a wallet-size picture.

  I moved forward where the light was better. “This is her, your girlfriend?”

  “Miranda Shen McAllister,” he replied. “Her junior-year photo.”

  She had freckle-free skin, blue eyes, and nearly black hair. Chinese and Scottish heritage, not that you could always tell by names, but her looks matched. “She’s pretty.” Such a lame, superficial thing to say. I handed back the picture.

  “My girl.” Zachary’s fingertip traced her heart-shaped face. “This was taken before she became a neophyte.”

  Oh, God, no wonder he was so pissed about Sanguini’s vampire theme. Not to mention obsessed with saving neophytes. I remembered how Freddy had mentioned Zachary needing extra TLC. I should’ve guessed.

  “Miranda had been shy,” he said. “An only child. Bullied at school. Nothing like you — so sure of yourself.”

  He thought I was sure of myself? I must’ve been doing a better job of faking it than I’d thought. Or at least of covering up my insecurities by keeping busy.

  “Her parents had just broken up,” Zachary continued. “She had a gerbil named Mr. Nesbit and a best friend that she loved like a sister. Miranda’s mother made her crazy sometimes. Most of the time. She’d dreamed of becoming an actress. Then . . . then doesn’t matter, except for the few weeks we had together. Her soul was flown upstairs. And now we’re apart.”

  Upstairs as in heaven? So she was dead dead, not undead, not anymore.

  “I know we just met,” I said, touched, “but if it helps to talk . . .”

  He slipped the photo into his shirt pocket. “Does it help you, talking about Kieren? It can’t be easy dealing with your new existence, what happened with your uncle and Brad, and Kieren’s leaving, too.”

  “How did you —?”

  “The staff here loves you, Quincie. They’re worried. When you’re not around —”

  “They talk.” Nora had told him I was undead, and that, plus Sanguini’s gossip mill, had hinted at the rest of the story. I didn’t blame the Chicagoans for asking around about me, especially Nora, given what had happened to Vaggio in the kitchen.

  Zachary kept his gaze steady, waiting for an answer.

  “No,” I admitted. “It’s not easy.” And then, I wasn’t sure why, I started telling Zachary all about the two of us. About Kieren and me. Not the werewolf-vampire thing, but other, more important stuff. How Kieren had always talked to me like I was just as smart as he was. How he was so serious but, after my parents’ death, also the first person to make me laugh again. How nothing ever felt totally real or complete until I told Kieren about it, and that trying to go on without him had been a walking nightmare.

  How sometimes I couldn’t tell what was real anymore.

  Later, when I returned to Kieren’s bedroom, most of his books had reappeared on the shelves. Thank you, Meara! She was still at the wedding in Round Top, but she must’ve called Roberto from the road, and he’d taken it from there.

  I hadn’t inventoried the library, so I couldn’t tell what might still be missing. But I did spot the pristine copy of Dracula. The Moraleses had dismissed it as fiction, too.

  On Sunday afternoon, Nora, Freddy, and Zachary met me at my house for a tour.

  She presented me with a porcine-blood Popsicle. “Here you go!”

  I couldn’t help being amused. With Nora on the job and Sanguini’s open six days a week, my liquid diet had become far less challenging.

  On the way upstairs, Freddy paused to admire a painting by an artist from Léon who’d been a friend of my parents’. “Your father was an archaeologist?”

  “An academic,” I replied. “Not so much with the whip and fedora. He traveled a lot. If you don’t like the baskets and rugs and stuff, I could pack them up.”

  “Oh, no!” Nora exclaimed. “Don’t even think it.”

  Seeing the house through their eyes, I felt a pang of loneliness. I missed my parents. I even missed Uncle D. “When my mama was alive, there were plants everywhere. But they’ve died off over the years.”

  The Moraleses had made a couple of runs for more of my clothes and a few family treasures — my parents’ wedding album, Grandma Morris’s Bible, my engraved silver baby spoon from Vaggio — but this was the first time I’d been home since the police had come for Uncle D’s body and the cleaning service had done its job. The lilies from Brad, I’d noticed, had been removed.

  “You’re welcome to look around.”

  Freddy and Nora strolled into the master bedroom, chatting about closet space.

  Zachary, who’d been oddly quiet, chose my room instead. He looked extraordinarily male in contrast to my canopy bed with its calico-print bedspread, the eggshell-ivory-painted nightstand and dresser, and my moth-chewed Oriental rug.

  I sank into the rattan chair in the corner as he studied the space.

  “Mrs. Morales mentioned something to Nora about a finished attic,” Zachary said.

  “You don’t want my room?” I teased. “You could take down the canopy if it’s too girly for you. Really, I don’t mind if —”

  “It’s not that.” He briefly studied a picture of Mama on my nightstand. “Your room is your room. You may need it back before our lease runs out.”

  “The Moraleses expect me to live with them at least until graduation, and —”

  “Quincie . . . as time goes on, it may not be safe for them to have you there.”

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought ab
out that. I still carried the holy water with me everywhere. I remembered too well biting my own thigh.

  Zachary rested his hand on one of the bedposts. “They don’t know, do they?”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “And they have a daughter?”

  “Meghan,” I said. “Kieren’s baby sister. She’s four. She knows about me. Or, I mean, she suspects, but she’s so young. Right after I transformed, she saw me . . .” I gestured to my face. “You know. I was pretty out of it.”

  “But you didn’t drain her,” Zachary said, brightening a bit.

  I looked down at my blood Popsicle. “I ran away to the lakefront instead.”

  I was sure he’d heard about killings on the hike-and-bike trail bordering the lake. Mitch’s work, I suspected. I didn’t want to have that conversation, though, or point a finger at my old friend. Not yet, anyway. Besides, there hadn’t been a new murder reported in nearly two weeks. I took comfort in the fact that it was a start.

  At least until Zachary said, “You know, even angels are fallible.”

  There was something about the way he said it. . . .

  But then I remembered: Jesus freak.

  Later, I sprawled across Kieren’s denim comforter and opened Dracula.

  The focus shifts from Jonathan, still trying to escape the castle, to his fiancée, Mina, and her vivacious friend, Lucy, who’s received three marriage proposals in one day.

  One of the suitors is her choice and ultimate fiancé, the Honorable Arthur Holmwood. The other two are Dr. John “Jack” Seward, who works at an insane asylum, and a Texan named Quincey P. Morris.

  My name. Or at least my name if I’d been a boy, though somehow I suspected that his P didn’t stand for Patrizia.

  My parents had always told me that I’d been named for a generations-ago great uncle and described him as “a Texas war hero.” It had never occurred to me that they’d been talking about the War between Good and Evil.

  I’d always been so focused on the restaurant, Fat Lorenzo’s and then Sanguini’s. The Crimi family legacy. But this was my family history on Daddy’s side.