“Get cleaned up and I’ll show you where the real Disco Unicorns get away to—and there isn’t a hint of pink.”
Sam pulls the limo up to Kiki’s “cottage” which is really a three-story Chinese pagoda overlooking the Damariscotta River. The edges of the rooflines curve up toward the sky and are lined with intricate carvings and brightly colored lattice work. Dragons perch on each of the corners with their open mouths above the down spouts. A tall finial on the top with its budlike tip shines in the sun. Gardens filled with white, smooth stones line the driveway leading up to the wooden front steps. Two large marble statues depicting some sort of lionlike creatures with open mouths and sharp teeth flank the steps and I can see the river in the back with twisted pines dotting the shore. It feels like I stepped out of the limo into coastal China.
“This is where you live?”
“Yep. A retired sea captain who had spent a lot of time in Asia built it in the early 1800s. It was empty for something like seventy years before my parents spotted it when they were kayaking on the river and had it restored. I have to warn you,” she says as Sam opens the limo door for us, “my parents went a little overboard with the decor. It’s all the weird stuff they’ve collected from around the world.”
“No unicorn wallpaper?”
She wrinkles her nose. “That stuff is all at our Hollywood Hills house where they get interviewed a lot. This place is full of tribal masks, architectural pieces recovered from old temples and churches, and a favorite of my mom’s—fertility statues. When my parents aren’t sporting unicorn horns and rapping the alphabet, they’re one hundred percent new-age hippie. The tabloids would have a field day if they saw the obscene amount of giant stone breasts, swollen bellies, and erect penises around the house. It’s all crap, though; I am an only child after all.”
“Do you need help with your things?” Sam asks me.
I look down at my crate and duffel bag. “I’m okay, thanks.”
Kiki picks up my crate. “We’ll be good until sunset.”
“Very good, Ms. Crusher.” Sam nods to me and he makes his way to a small sports car parked next to the Cadillac he’d driven last night.
“Let’s get some lunch and head for the hot tub!”
I sling my duffel bag strap over my shoulder and follow Kiki up the front steps. She unlocks the front door and steps in. Tucking my crate under one arm, she walks with a hand held out and spins a series of twelve ornate cylinders hanging in a row on the wall. She puts the crate down, turns to me with a serene look on her face, and clasps her hands as if in prayer. “Om mani padme hum.”
“Huh?”
“What is your heart’s desire?”
I raise an eyebrow. “What?”
She laughs. “They’re Tibetan prayer wheels; inside each one the mantra ‘Om mani padme hum’ is written over and over again on paper. When you spin the wheel it’s kind of like your prayers are multiplied by a million. It’s supposed to invoke the benevolent attention and blessings of Chenrezig, the Hindu embodiment of compassion.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah, I know—more crap. But these are from an actual Tibetan temple. My parents had them installed a few months ago. But name your heart’s desire, spin the wheel, and with some luck, Chenrezig will grant your wish.”
I look at the wheels. My first thought is the means to retire from slaying, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon, so I decide to wish for something more realistic. I reach my hand out and touch the first one. It almost feels like there’s a faint of hum of electricity inside. “May we prove triumphant against the crazed vampires of South Bristol, protect the children from their unknown predator, and rejuvenate our weary muscles in the hot tub.”
I make my way down the line, spinning each wheel. When I meet up with Kiki at the end she cocks her head toward a doorway. “Kitchen is this way. Are you sure I can’t convince you to have a drink? Maybe some champagne to celebrate the fact we’re still alive?”
“We need to be on our game tonight. No champagne.”
She puts her hands on her hips, looking deadly serious. “All the really cool vampire hunters follow up kills with champagne.”
I can’t help but smile. “I tell you what—if we get more vamps than the Harkers tonight I’ll take you up on that.”
“That’s my girl. It’s time to forget your parents’ way of slaying and embrace the new age.”
“What do new-age slayers have for lunch?”
“Everyone knows the really cool slayers are partial to nachos.”
“I think I’m going to like being a really cool slayer.”
10.
After some killer nachos, Kiki takes me up to the third floor of the pagoda. It’s one big open space with floor-to-ceiling windows all around. A simple woven rug sits in the middle of the polished wood floors, and large, brightly colored pillows are scattered here and there against the walls of the otherwise empty room.
“My parents come up here to meditate and do yoga.” She grimaces. “Once I think they were doing—it.”
I mirror her grimace and then turn slowly, taking in the three-hundred-sixty-degree view. “Wow.”
To the north of the house, an old stone church steeple is peeking through the trees in the distance. To the south is a wide lawn sloping down to the river. A skinny rock, maybe ten feet tall, stands sentry in the middle of the lawn surrounded by another garden lined with white stones. Across the river in direct line with the house, is an outcrop of jumbled boulders covered with stunted pines, their exposed roots looking desperately for purchase in the inhospitable terrain.
Kiki walks toward the windows facing the river. “This is why I like to stay here.” She puts a hand on the window and takes a deep breath. “No matter how crazy things get in California, just looking out these windows grounds me and I can pretend my parents aren’t billionaire kiddie-rock stars.”
I watch the river tumble by, carrying logs and various ducks as it goes. The knots in my stomach unravel as I take in the tranquil view. “This is really nice.”
She sighs. “But we can’t forget we have a big job ahead of us tonight. Let’s hit the hot tub and strategize.”
I watch a duck with a rounded black and white head dive under water. “Okay,” I say when it pops back up. “But I don’t have a suit.”
“We don’t need suits.”
My face flushes and Kiki laughs. “We have a bunch of extra suits we bought for shy guests. You can have your pick.”
“Thanks. I think I need to take the new-age slayer stuff one step at a time.”
I follow her down the spiral staircase wishing we could stay up here long enough to forget I’m a vampire slayer.
“I’ll meet you outside,” Kiki calls out from the other side of the bathroom door.
“Sure.” I go back to staring at myself in the mirror. I’m as pale as a vampire, but sporting this designer two-piece I can almost imagine myself in the pages of Jennifer-Kate’s swimsuit edition. Of course I have nothing on Kiki, who had unabashedly gotten changed in front of me, was tan, and totally rocked a Swarovski crystal-studded bikini she put on.
And then there is the trail of raw claw marks on my chest. Not exactly fashion forward.
Given a choice, it’s no wonder Tyler was smiling at Kiki and not me.
Not that I really care.
I head out and wind my way past the masks flanking the walls that are totally creeping me out. Some have strange shells for eyes that give the appearance the eye sockets have been sewn shut. Others have jagged bone teeth and tufts of what looks like real human hair jutting out from their wooden chins. Grotesque statues with twisted faces and engorged body parts glare at me from dark corners of the rooms.
I simply can’t reconcile the image of Kiki’s parents singing in their pastel unicorn costumes with people who find these disturbing collectibles appealing. But maybe this macabre menagerie is what helps Kiki push The Disco Unicorns out of her mind.
A large, jewel-encrusted pray
er wheel is mounted by the French doors leading out to the patio. I give it a good spin. “May my heart’s desire come true,” I whisper. I turn the wheel a second time for extra luck and wish I could remember the mantra Kiki had said.
I step out onto the cool blue stone patio and shiver. It’s almost five thirty and the sun has dipped just behind the tree line now and my chilled, aching muscles urge me toward the warm hot tub.
Kiki beckons me in. “Hurry up—time’s a wasting.”
“Sorry.”
She splashes water at me as I slide into the tub. “You don’t need to be sorry; you just need to get in.”
I slink down into the water, and the chlorine stings my cuts. Bubbles jump up and tickle my nose, but the warmth of the water brings back some of that relaxed feeling I had before. I look out at the large rock jutting up from the lawn and breathe deep. “If it weren’t for all the masks and things in your house I’d move in here in a heartbeat.”
“They’re not so bad. When I was little I imagined they were here to protect me. I even gave them each a name. Saying hello to ‘George’ or ‘Ashley’ definitely reduced the creep factor. There are a few I avoid, but overall it’s like coming home to friends I never had.”
“But you’re not like me—you had actual kids to play with.”
She rolls her eyes. “The kids on the show abandoned me once Sugar came on board, and the ones at school only wanted to hang with me because of my parents. Once they realized I was nothing special they drifted off too.”
“I always wanted to go to school,” I say longingly.
She scoffs. “School sucks. Granted I didn’t make it a full year, but I had all these big plans to be ‘normal’ and try out for cheerleading and shit like that. Of course starting school at age twelve was a huge mistake. Twelve-year-old girls are the definition of ‘suck’! But with my dance background I thought I was a shoe-in for the cheerleading squad.” She wrinkles her nose. “Apparently they didn’t like chubby kids any more than the producers of the Pink Pony Playhouse.”
“But what about high school? Don’t you think it’d be fun to go to the prom? You know, dress up in a gown, dance with some incredibly hot guy, and then take a limo to a hotel afterward….” I trail off, not ready to share my prom fantasy with Kiki.
“It sounds nice, Daphne, but all of the guys I meet are jerks who want me to pay for everything because they know my parents are rich. And I’ve had my fill of fancy dresses and limo rides—unless they’re used to take me to my next vampire.”
“I don’t get it, Kiki; why do you want to hunt vampires? Especially after what happened today.”
She shrugs. “What else am I going to do? Other than singing and dancing—something no one wants to pay me to do—I have no marketable skills. And what’s wrong with wanting to help people? That’s a hell of a lot better than having a multiplatinum record, right?”
“You could work with orphans in one of a gazillion needy places, or feed the poor, or read to old people.”
“Anybody could do that stuff, but like I said before, the second you killed that vampire behind The Rusty Rudder, I knew I’d finally found my calling.”
“If you say so.”
“Look, I know you’re all disenchanted with the biz, but think about all the lives you’ve saved.”
“If I quit there’s always going to be some lunatic who will take my …” Kiki is glaring at me. “I mean eager new slayer who will take my place.”
“Maybe you’re burned out and you need a vacation. Or …” She sits up, her eyes glittering. “You need to remember how it felt to kill your first vampire. My parents are totally into this thing called ‘talk therapy.’ I’ll walk you through it and see if I can help you get your mojo back.”
“I don’t want my mojo back. I want to go to school, eat lunch in a cafeteria, and go to prom! I want a house and a dog and a goldfish and a room where I can hang posters on the walls.”
“I hear you saying you don’t want your mojo back,” she says serenely.
I give her a pained look. “This is stupid.”
“I hear you saying you think talk therapy is stupid.”
I bury my head in my hands. “This isn’t going to help my rediscover my love for slaying.”
“I hear you saying you once loved slaying.”
I give a start and look up. “No! I mean maybe I did … a little, when I was little. But I was a delusional kid living in a fantasy world.”
“How old were you when you killed your first vampire?”
I look her in the eye. “I killed my first vampire around the same time you were trying out for cheerleading.”
“I hear you—”
“Please stop that.”
She holds her hands up. “Fine. Tell me about your first kill,” she says placidly.
“It’s not a pretty story.”
“That’s okay. Just talk.”
“Fine. After my senile grandfather was taken away—for staking a nonvampire …”
Kiki’s eyes widen.
“My parents had been bringing me along to all the police briefings and, by the time I was ten, house-cleanings, so I could learn the family business. I was twelve when we got called to Oak Hill, Arkansas, population twenty-eight, for a do-it-in-your-sleep kind of job. The cops were supposed to call for a lockdown using the ‘felons on the loose’ story that’s protocol in cases like this to keep people from unwittingly inviting any vampires into their homes.”
“Go on,” she says encouragingly, like a talk-show host pumping her guests to spill their guts.
“After a twenty-hour nonstop drive, we arrived just after dusk and Sheriff Jeffries welcomed us into his cement-block office for a briefing. Unfortunately, while we were on our way, Jeffries and his second-in-command got themselves turned. They closed the door to the office and jumped us.”
Kiki winces and totally blows her pseudo-psychiatrist-judgment-free facade. “Ouch.”
“Yup. Jeffries went right for Dad’s throat. Mom was fending off the other guy so I knew it was up to me to help my dad. I grabbed the knife I’d recently started wearing and with the help of crazy amounts of adrenaline, I managed to separate a good deal of Jeffries’s neck from his body. When he finally fell, my dad was staring at me. Blood was gushing from under his chin. His shirt was soaked. His eyes rolled up and he fell to the floor.
“Jeffries—even with his esophagus severed and his head bent back at an unnatural angle—started to drag his sorry undead ass across the tiles to where my dad was lying. Without thinking, I grabbed a stake from Mom’s bag and plunged it into his chest and I hit a home run my very first time. I used my knife to hack the rest of his neck off and make a clean break.
“I turned back to my dad and my mother was stitching his wound shut. With each loop of thread, the skin was drawn back against his neck and I was feeling good because I knew everything was going to be okay. But when she was done she fell on his chest, crying and begging him not to leave us.
“Seeing my mom like that, well, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach, and for the first time I realized my parents had left out a crucial part of the ‘hunting vampires’ scenario. They’d neglected to tell me it was kill or be killed.”
I look her in the eyes. “Did I mention I was twelve?”
Kiki stares at me with her mouth open.
“So you could say my first kill wasn’t a kick-ass cool adrenaline rush. It was more like I’m a kid and it just dawned on me that at any time my parents could be killed, I would be an orphan, and they don’t seem to care.”
I fold my arms across my chest and sink down until my chin is just above the water. I close my eyes and torture myself by playing the Oak Hill scene over again in my head.
“I’m sorry, Daphne. I didn’t know.”
I purse my lips in an effort to steel myself against the tears gathering in my eyes.
“You need to talk to them,” she says. “You need to find out why they’re doing it; otherwise it’s just goi
ng to keep eating at you.”
I sit up and sniff. The cool air bites at my chest. “What about you? You told my parents off, but can you do it to yours?”
She shakes her head. “Easier said than done. I’ve always been afraid the truth will just make me feel worse.”
“I know what you mean.”
Kiki turns and her eyes widen as she looks out toward the river. “Hey, is that Tyler?” She stands up and points down toward the shore “I think it is, and he’s got some sort of stick.”
I get up and squint. Tyler Harker and his father are walking along the river’s edge. They have their heads down and they’re both holding something sticklike that bobs along with each step they take. “What are they doing?”
“I have no clue.” She waves her hands over her head. “Tyler! Up here!”
He jerks his head up in surprise.
She cups her hands to her mouth like a megaphone. “What are you doing down there?”
I swat her arm. “Kiki, stop! Remember what my mom said.”
“How is your mother going to know you were with Tyler?” She pulls on her bikini straps, making her large breasts move up and down. “And maybe we can use our feminine wiles to get some info that’ll help team Van Helsing.”
I look down at my bathing suit, knowing I don’t have as much to work with as Kiki. I turn back to shore where Tyler is conferring with his father. Mr. Harker nods, points the end of whatever he’s holding in our direction, and then the two of them head our way.
“Oh, shit.” I hop out of the tub and grab a towel and wrap it around me, making sure I’ve got my bite marks covered up.
“You’re hiding your feminine wiles,” she chastises as she tries to pull my towel off.
I slap at her hands. “Stop it!”
“Fine! I guess I’ll have to do the dirty work.”
I hug the towel tighter around me and as they get closer and I see they’re each gripping some of sort of wooden dowel with a stiff wire a little over a foot long attached.
Tyler’s eyes widen as he takes Kiki in. “Dad, this is Kiki—she’s the one who gave me a ride back to the motel.”
Mr. Harker grunts but his focus is on the large stone rock jutting out from the garden. “I knew we were on the right track. The lines don’t lie,” he says to no one in particular. He takes a few steps and the wire in his hand points toward the ground as if tugged by an invisible force. “They’re all converging here. This is the nexus point.”