Wicked Game (18 page)

As I close the folder, its corner knocks over the box of paper clips, spilling them across the floor. I bend over to pick them up, but Regina knocks me out of the way.

“I’ll get it!” She scrambles for the paper clips, counting them under her breath as she collects them in her palm. I look at Franklin, who spares the vampire an impassive glance.

When she’s finished, Regina stands and cups the paper clips back into their box, which she sets on my desk with shaky hands. “Fifty-three.”

I look at the box, then at her.

Her eyes pinch into a glare. “One crack about
Sesame Street
and I’ll snap your neck like a twig.”

My phone rings, saving me. “WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Can I help you?”

A short pause, then a smooth male voice. “I attended your party Friday night.”

“Wonderful.”
Give us money.
“Did you enjoy yourself?”

“No, I’m afraid I did not enjoy myself. In fact, I think it is the beginning of the end for our vampire friends.”

I give a nervous laugh. “Seriously. What did you think?”

“It was an abomination.”

An icy fist closes over my spleen, despite my sense that it’s a prank. “But a rockin’ fun abomination, right?”

I look at the others. Franklin is still on his call. Regina is angrily scanning
Rex Morgan, M.D.

“Anonymity brings safety,” the voice says. “Exposure brings danger.”

“What kind of danger?”

Regina looks up at me.

“If you don’t end this campaign,” the voice replies, “sooner or later someone will get hurt. We’ll make sure it’s sooner.”

“Hold, please.” I mute the call just as Franklin finishes his conversation. “Someone’s threatening the station,” I tell them.

“Who?” Franklin asks.

I sigh. “He neglected to state his name. Shall I ask?”

“I’ll handle it.” Franklin picks up the phone and taps the line. “Franklin Morris, manager of sales.”

“Did the guy sound old?” Regina whispers to me.

“No, his voice was young.”

“Spencer’s voice is young, and he’s in his seventies.”

“Oh, you mean vampire old.” I shake my head. “My bet’s on Skywave. Jolene probably put him up to it.”

Regina frowns. We turn to watch Franklin jot notes on a legal pad. He nods and
mmm-hmms
again and again. Finally he gets a chance to speak.

“Well, I’m terribly sorry, sir, but I’m afraid you’ve reached the one person here who absolutely, positively doesn’t give a shit. Ciao!” He hangs up and turns to me. “We’ve got problems.”

David reads Franklin’s notes from the phone conversation, then sets the page on his desk.

“That’s quite a list,” he says.

Franklin crosses his arms and leans against the doorway. “You think they’ll do one of those things to each vampire, or all of them to just one vampire?”

“Bugger off.” Regina paces the worn gray rug in front of David’s desk.

Franklin sighs. “Alas, not during business hours.”

“Who do you think it is?” I ask David, stepping quickly through Regina’s path before she treads on me.

“Gotta be Gideon,” she says. “Sounds like his isolationist bullshit.”

David shakes his head. “Gideon and his people just want to be left alone.”

I raise my hand. “Uh, who’s Gideon?”

“Old fart vampire living out in the boonies.” Regina glares at me. “He thinks your kind shouldn’t interact with us except as food.” She points to the list on David’s desk. “Only a vampire would know all the ways to kill us. Them or the Control, and Elizabeth’s supposed to protect us from those brownshirts.”

“Hey, I was one of them once,” David says. “We wore black shirts.” He looks at me. “I agree with Ciara—it’s probably Skywave. This list includes things that don’t kill vampires. Like silver, and running water. Those are myths.”

“So what do we do?” I ask. “Go to the police?”

“No!” they all say in unison.

“We can’t have the cops sniffing around the station,” David says. “What if they look downstairs and find a fridge full of blood?”

I grimace at the thought. “We’re not dropping the campaign, are we?”

“Hell, no,” Franklin says, together with Regina’s “Fuck that.” They share a frown, clearly unaccustomed to agreeing with each other.

David plants his palms on the desk. “No matter who
it is, we won’t cave. I’ll talk to Elizabeth. She can ask the Control to deploy a security detail to the station.”

“You think they’ll do it?” I ask him.

“Over one phone call? Probably not.” He folds the list in half and tucks it into his top desk drawer. “So everyone be careful.”

June 29

Early polling results knock us on our asses; based on call volume and surveys, our listenership has increased by tenfold less than a week after the party at the Smoking Pig. David takes me and Franklin out for happy hour, and for an hour even Franklin exhibits something close to happiness. As I warned Bernita the Candle Lady, our ad rates have tripled.

I snag some more gigs for the older vamps at a few clubs in Baltimore. The mystique surrounding the reclusive Vampire Shane is beginning to build, just as I’d hoped. I can relate to the public on that one, because I haven’t seen him since the night of the Pig party.

So far, no more threats. Maybe that call was just a practical joke, or Jolene’s lame attempt at intimidation. But I remember the cold feeling of being watched the night of my interview, and I never walk alone after dark.

The phone wakes me too early on Fourth of July morning. Grumbling, I flop over in bed to answer it.

“What are you doing tonight?” Shane says, turning my crankiness into confusion.

I sink back onto the pillow, wanting to tell him about my elaborate plans for the evening with all my cool friends, except I don’t have any. Plans, that is.

“Lori’s still up in Gettysburg for the battle anniversary, so I’m going to bed early. It’s my first day off since I started this job.”

“You can sleep during the day. I do it all the time.”

The thought of him in bed spreads a warmth through the bottom of my belly. “Why are you asking?”

“Let me make everything up to you.”

“Huh? What everything? I started our fight.”

“And I called you a liar. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry you called me a liar, or sorry you think I am one?”

He sighs. “You’re not making this easy, are you?”

I stretch and sit up, knowing I’ll never get back to sleep after this call. “What did you have in mind for tonight?”

“Fireworks. Food.”

I wait for him to add anything else that begins with F. “I can get those in Sherwood.”

“You can’t get in Sherwood what I’m going to show you tonight. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” I let out a little laugh. “That’s a work in progress.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Just after dark, Shane’s knock comes from the bottom of my stairs. Nice that he didn’t barge in this time.

I start to pull open the door to the sidewalk when he catches it, trapping me inside.

He holds out his other hand. “Give me your car keys.”

“Why?”

“I have stuff to load in the trunk. Surprise stuff. It’s good to see you, by the way.” He keeps his firm grip on the door, which I can’t open any farther.

I hand him the keys. “If we need my car, how did you get here?”

“Jim dropped me off on the way to his gig. Stay there.” He backs away, holding up a warning finger.

A few minutes later, we’re driving out of town, making small talk. Every time Shane speaks, my foot presses the accelerator.

A pause in the polite bullshit gives me a chance to set things straight. “I’m sorry I freaked the night of the party, after we—I mean, before we—you know.”

“I can’t blame you, considering you saw me at my worst the last time we hooked up.” He shifts his legs, as if the fact that they don’t quite fit under my dashboard has just now made him uncomfortable. “If you’re afraid of me, why are you here now?”

“To prove I’m not afraid.” I smile at him. “Plus, a college student never turns down free food.”

“I remember.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“Ohio U for music theory.” He points up to the left. “Turn there. And before you ask, no, I didn’t graduate.”

I turn onto a poorly paved country lane. “What would you have done with a bachelor’s in music theory?”

“Enjoyed it.” He looks over at me. “It’s been two decades since I asked someone this question. What’s your major?”

“Business, with a concentration in marketing.”

He nods without comment. Nothing like total educational incompatibility to stall a conversation.

“Where are we going?” I ask him.

He shifts his legs again and sighs. “Hell if I know, Ciara. I hoped we’d figure it out if we spent some time together, like normal people.”

“No, I mean geographically, where are we going? How can we see fireworks this far out of Sherwood?”

“It’s a different display.”

I take my foot off the gas. “These better not be metaphorical fireworks.”

“These are the realest fireworks of all,” he assures me.

The car lurches as the road turns to dirt. We come out of the woods next to a huge wheat field. The stalks sway under the lingering twilight and undulate in the breeze
like sheets on a clothesline. A few fireflies dot the landscape.

“Pull over at the top of the hill,” he says.

I ease the car to the side of the lane and turn off the ignition. “We’re alone.”

“I wasn’t sure we would be. It’s a popular spot for fireworks.” He eyes me with regret. “We just won’t touch each other. That way we won’t do anything that will lead to screaming and piercing.”

“You already promised you wouldn’t bite me.”

“But you don’t really believe it yet. Pop the trunk and stay here.”

As he busies himself with his grand setup, I check the surroundings for complications: cops, angry farmers, a posse of thirsty vampires. Everything appears copacetic, so I start to relax.

Shane knocks on my window, and I nearly hit my head on the ceiling. Guess I’m not that relaxed after all. He beckons me out of the car into the humid summer evening.

A large blanket lies spread on the grass, anchored at each corner with a jar candle. One half is covered with food and drink: barbecued chicken, a bread-and-cheese plate, tomato salad, chocolate-covered strawberries, and a bottle of wine.

He bows, motioning for me to sit.

“Shane ...” I kneel on the blanket next to the brimming containers. “You’re feeding me. No one ever feeds me.”

His foot taps the other side of the blanket. “Sit over here.”

“Why?”

“It’s part of the show.”

I do as he asks, putting my back to the wheat field. He opens the wine—red, of course—and sets it aside to breathe, then heaps a plate high with food and hands it to me.

“You’re not eating?” I ask him.

“It won’t taste good. Besides, I have something more important to do.” He pours two glasses of wine, then takes a long sip of one. “Soon as I get up the nerve.”

I’m intrigued. But also hungry, so I start eating.

He goes back to the open trunk and pulls out something long and dark. As he comes closer I realize it’s a guitar case.

“Surprise.” He lifts the instrument out of the case and sits cross-legged with it in his lap.

I’d guessed he played, since the fingernails of his right hand—the one that holds the strings on the fret board— are trimmed much shorter than those on the left. But instead of telling him that, I send him a smile of genuine excitement.

His gaze goes distant as he tunes the guitar, testing each string with the pick.

“Okay.” He clears his throat. “I’ll start with a song by this Irish guy named Luka Bloom. You’ve probably never heard—”

“Luka Bloom, are you kidding? He opened for the Violent Femmes at my first concert.”

“Wow, cool. My first concert was Night Ranger and .38 Special, but don’t tell the other DJs. They think it was Black Flag.”

“Ooh, Shane McAllister’s darkest secret, revealed at last.”

He puts a finger to his mouth with a playful warning glare. “When you saw Luka, did he play your song?”

“My what?”

“You’d know if you’d heard it.” He takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly. “I apologize ahead of time for fucking it up.”

I set aside my food. When the first slow, tentative chords come, they transform the field into an arena. Instead of absorbing the sound, the landscape echoes and releases it back, as if reserving it just for me.

Shane starts to sing, with a voice I didn’t know he had but feels like his true voice: soft, deep, and slightly tortured. His tongue curls around the R’s to create a faint Irish brogue. He doesn’t look at me; when he’s not watching his fingers on the fret board, his eyes are closed.

I barely notice the words until he reaches the first chorus.

It’s my name.

My gasp is audible even over his voice, which reaches higher and sweeter now. With a name like Ciara, I never hoped to have a song of my own. As always, the sound of my name from Shane’s lips sends a warm sensation up my neck and over my ears.

I listen closely to the lyrics of the second verse and realize I’m nothing like that Ciara. She’s virtuous, unreach-able. An “angel.”

My eyes grow hot around the edges, and my chest feels like it’s in a vise. I cross my arms on my knees and bury my face in them. As the tears well up through my sinuses, I pinch the tender insides of my elbows to distract my mind.

The song builds to what sounds like a final chorus,
pairing my name with the word “angel.” As the last few chords march toward silence, I gulp deep breaths, struggling for control.

Too late. The last note cuts off when Shane sees me. “Was it that bad?”

I try to say, “No,” but it comes out as a strangled “Nyuh.” The effort to speak chokes out the first tears, and it’s all over.

“What’s wrong? Ciara, what happened?” With blurred vision I see Shane reach for me, then change his mind. The No Contact Rule, keeping us safe and sane.

I shake my head, but can’t speak. My breath heaves in a series of humiliating high-pitched sobs.