Last Vampire Standing (5 page)

Made me want to sing “from sea to shining sea.”

On the downside, the Covenant had formed. The anti-vamp version of the KKK left their sheets at home but cornered vamps using crosses and silver, crossbows and stakes. Some vampires were killed outright. Others defended themselves, only to be branded as dangerous and legally executed.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen my Covenant stalker, Victor Gorman, in, gosh, close to a month. He must be on vacation because, in spite of a restraining order against him, he consistently tailed my tour groups. He’d never pulled a weapon on me, so I dealt with the harassment by adopting a policy to polite him to death.

I closed the VPA site and spent the next few hours catching up on my Psychology of Color homework. Yep, I had passed my GED test, held my high school equivalency now, and was officially enrolled in the art institute online. Could I find work as an interior designer someday? Why not? Designers consulted with clients in the late afternoons and evenings. I was up by then. I tiptoed back to my bedroom and kissed Saber awake at six thirty. Since we did ever so much more than kiss, it was an hour later before we were out of the shower and dressed.

While Saber poured himself orange juice—Florida orange juice, of course—I filled a bowl with his favorite cereal, Frosted MiniWheats. He settled at my turquoise and chrome retro table, splashed soy milk in the bowl, and dug in. I plucked a dry wheat square, heavy on the frosting, from the box.

“What’s on your agenda today?” I asked, feeling very Sunday-morning domestic.

He grinned. “I’m serving a search warrant on Ike’s club in Daytona Beach.”

“You’re searching Hot Blooded on a Sunday? In the daytime?”

“Element of surprise strategy, my dear. We blow by Ike and deal with the human day manager.”

“Well, spill already. What’s Ike done this time?”

“Let’s just say summer tourists have reported memory losses and missing jewelry.”

“He’s enthralling and robbing people?”

“Or drugging them.”

“But no bite marks?”

“None that the complainants are admitting to. An emerald ring and a classic Swatch watch turned up at a pawnshop, and the owner recognized one of Ike’s human employees as the person who brought the items in.”

“Does he have a record?”

“It’s a she. Donita Ward. No record, but supposedly she’s Ike’s new squeeze.”

“Whoa. Isn’t Laurel still Ike’s second-in-command?”

“Yes, and before you ask, Donita is a slender, short-haired brunette, but that’s all I can tell from the grainy videos.”

“Bet Laurel’s seething mad about the girlfriend.”

“You know it, and Laurel’s even scarier than Ike is.”

He leaned back to glance out the kitchen window that faced the back of Maggie’s house. “If you want to catch Maggie, she just came outside.”

“That’s okay.” I studied my nails. “I’ll go see her later.”

His brows shot up. “Since when do you procrastinate? Go. You have an hour before you crash, and you’ll sleep better if you’ve talked to Maggie.”

He leaned over his cereal bowl to kiss me. “Believe me, you’ll need your rest for what I have in mind later.”

“How much later? I work a ghost tour tonight, and then Jo-Jo will be here.”

“Does the term ‘afternoon delight’ ring a bell?”

A bell, no. A gong, yes.

I dashed outside but stopped short. The yard was spotless. Trash was bagged and set at the corner of the house, and the tables and chairs we’d rented were folded and leaning against the front fence. No litter on the ground, and the teak furniture was tastefully arranged on Maggie’s cobbled patio. Cobbled just like my patio, except hers is three times bigger and covered by an arbor. And, yes, we’d gotten a bulk deal on the cobblestones.

Maggie stood in the yard, hands on her hips, her engagement ring flashing in the sun.

“Did you clean up last night?”

“Not me. Jo-Jo must’ve done it.”

“Helpful and quiet, too. Not bad. Come on, Cesca,” she added with her usual briskness. “We need to talk about the five-year sponsorship rule.”

We sat under the wooden arbor in the still morning heat, me in a teak chair with a striped cushion, Maggie on the matching love seat.

“How come you never told me about the five-year thing, Maggie?”

“Bottom line? Because I didn’t want to lose you as soon as I found you. I figured I’d let things fall into place in their own time.”

“Did Neil know about the rule?”

Maggie smiled. “He does now.”

“And? How does he feel about it? Would he care if we kept living near each other past the five-year mark?”

“Hard to say at this point. He is
not
happy this Jo-Jo guy showed up.”

“I’m not wild about it either, but apparently he can live wherever he wants to.”

Maggie tipped her head. “And you don’t want that to be here. Why not?”

I leaned back and watched the play of sunlight through the wood slats of the arbor.

“I don’t know how to be around other vampires. I hated the ones I had to live with in the old days, and the thought of being buds with Jo-Jo isn’t giving me a warm glow.”

“Plus you’re used to being the only vampire in town. The only fish in the pond gets all the attention.”

“I don’t want the attention. Not from the newspaper and not from Jo-Jo. He sees me as the head fish. He looks up to me.”

“And he’s depending on you to help him?”

“Yes, and it scares me. I don’t want to be his comedy coach, his princess pal, or anything else.”

“It is a lot of responsibility,” Maggie allowed as she shifted positions. “Looking out for someone else, guiding someone else, encouraging someone else.”

I met her dancing Irish green eyes. “I get it. You took me in, and now it’s payback.”

“They do say payback is a bitch.”

“And no good deed goes unpunished.” I sighed. “The thing is, I don’t know how to help Jo-Jo. I don’t have the means to protect him, even if I were batty enough to let him move in with me. I sure can’t wave a wand and make him funny.”

“You
can
be his friend.”

“Neil will go ballistic if Jo-Jo hangs around here.”

“I’ll take care of Neil.” She paused. “Look, Cesca, we’re going through a lot of changes with the move and my engagement.”

“And now Jo-Jo shows up.”

“Helping him is a personal decision, and staying in your cottage will be, too. If you live there forever, I’ll love it. If you ever want to move, I’ll support you.”

I took her hand for a quick squeeze. “Thanks. You have any advice for handling this whole Jo-Jo the would-be comic thing?”

“Try not to stomp on his dream.”

I snorted. “He’s doing that all by himself.”

“He does come out of left field, but give him time.”

“Do you think being an interior designer is too big a dream for me?”

“No. Neither was being a ghost tour guide, and I have a feeling Jo-Jo is every bit as determined to succeed as you are. Who knows? He could do amateur night at the comedy club and be a huge hit.”

I shuddered. “From what I’ve seen, even amateur night is a long way off.”

Saber came back to my cottage at four. His raid on Hot Blooded hadn’t been productive, and duty still called that night, but we indulged in a delightful afternoon tryst that stretched into hours. My mellow mood held even when Saber left again to stake out Ike’s club. He promised he’d be back, though he didn’t mention when.

If Saber’s absence was convenient, it wasn’t an obvious dodge to being there for Jo-Jo’s practice run. Neil was another kettle of mullet. He
said
he was cleaning his house in Davis Shores, just across the Bridge of Lions. Sure, he was preparing to put his home on the market, but Neil cleaning when he could be with Maggie?
Riiight.

Maggie and I might’ve invented somewhere else to be, if we’d planned ahead. But Jo-Jo showed up right after I’d changed from my Minorcan ghost tour guide costume into shorts and put my thick, unruly hair in its customary ponytail. Jo-Jo was rather endearingly excited to try out his new material on us, and he’d cleaned up pretty well. His hair was loose but washed, and he wore blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and black flip-flops. Guess he’d hit Wal-Mart sometime last night. Maggie left the floodlights off, so we took seats under the glow of rope lighting strung on the arbor. Settled on the comfy teak chairs for the private floor show, we hoped for the best.

Jo-Jo gave us comedy carnage. I was certain his jokes alone had put the first nails in vaudeville’s coffin. He started with, “How many vampires does it take to change a lightbulb? None. We don’t change no stinking light-bulbs.”

Maggie stayed silent, I worked not to grimace, and somewhere a kitten meowed like it was in pain. I could relate. Next Jo-Jo tried, “Take my ghoul friend, please.”

Maggie cleared her throat. I winced. The feline meowed again—louder, longer, closer—and I felt the brush of magick in its cry. What the heck?

I glanced around, while Jo-Jo tried a belligerent, “Hey, you. Yeah, you, white bread. Are you undead or are you always that pale?”

He paused and shook his head. “No good, right?”

“Frankly, no,” Maggie admitted.

Jo-Jo waved her off. “No problem. I got a million of them. A priest, a rabbi, and a gnome go into a vampire bar—”

“Rrryyyow!”

No stranded kitty made
that
sound. It was a brain-jarring panther cry, and it came from Maggie’s roof. I looked up to see Cat, the magical shape-shifter who had helped capture the French Bride killer. She sprang from her crouch at the junction of the roof and arbor, sailed gracefully through the air, and landed with a thud a slim paw’s swipe from Jo-Jo.

“Rrrryyyow,”
Cat screamed again.

Jo-Jo screamed, too, some variation on
“Aaaiiieeee,”
as he half-jumped, half-flew to the top of the arbor. It was the funniest Jo-Jo had been all night, but I didn’t have time to enjoy a laugh, because Hugh Lister banged through his back porch screen door and barged straight through the jasmine hedge, shouting.

“Goddamn it, can’t you people be quiet one—Jesus H. Christ in Dockers, what the hell is
that
thing?”

FOUR

005

“What thing is that, Mr. Lister?” Maggie asked calmly.

We’d both shot to our feet the second we heard the screen door slam, hoping to shield Cat from view. Had it worked? Had she downsized yet?

I glanced over my shoulder as Hugh snarled, “That thing.”

“Rrryyow.”
Cat emerged from between my legs, still making a racket, but she’d shape-shifted to look like a hefty house cat with a silver-colored chain around her neck. A chain that was scads too large. Was that a charm hanging from the chain?

“You mean the cat?” I asked. “Is she yours?”

“Hell and damnation, no, that animal isn’t mine. I hate cats, and I could’ve sworn that one was bigger a minute ago.”

Maggie blinked oh-so-innocently. “Bigger than what?”

“Bigger than it is now. It looks stupid in that necklace.”

Cat parked on her haunches, stared at Hugh, and let out an eerie wail that made him take a step back.

“They make awful noises when they’re in heat, don’t they?” Maggie said.

Cat snorted, and Jo-Jo moaned theatrically from the slatted arbor roof.

Hugh whirled and stared at Jo-Jo neatly caught in the outer halo of rope lighting. “Why is a man crouched on your arbor, Ms. O’Halloran?”

“Allergies,” I said quickly. “Really bad allergies to—”

“Cat hair,” Maggie supplied.

“Cat claws,” Jo-Jo corrected.

Hugh shook his head at Jo-Jo, then eyed Maggie and me. “You’re running a nut farm over here, and I won’t stand for it. I’ll rally the whole neighborhood if I have to, but you people will not be rowdy at all hours of the day and night.” He stomped back through the jasmine hedge and shouted, “Selma, I need a goddamn drink.”

“Bless his holy name, the bourbon’s in the bar.”

Bless whose holy name?
I heard in my head.

The breath of relief I’d started to take lodged in my throat. Maggie hadn’t spoken, and neither had Jo-Jo. Uh-oh. I looked down to where Cat rubbed against my bare leg.

“Please tell me you didn’t say that.”

But I did,
Cat replied.

My pulse thu-thudded in my ears. This couldn’t be happening. I’d taken one too many smacks in the head from my surfboard, that’s all. The vampire “curse” on my psychic senses might be wearing off, but there was only one person I’d heard this well telepathically. That was in my past. Plus, well, Cat wasn’t even a person.

Was she?

No, I am not part human, and I am not called Cat. I am called Pandora.

I blinked. Ai-yi-yi, she
was
talking to me, and in a superior, snippy tone, just like a typical cat. I sputtered something like
“Ohmygarrrgghh,”
and staggered to a patio chair. Maggie rushed to me. “Cesca, what’s wrong?”

I couldn’t find my voice, so I pointed at Pandora as she glided to sit a few feet away, out of Hugh Lister’s line of sight. Then, like time-lapse nature photography on high speed, she grew back to panther size and licked a platter-sized paw. The chain around her neck disappeared into her thick ruff of golden fur.