Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (6 page)

It wouldn’t have been her first, not by a
long shot, but she hadn’t gone more than five miles over the speed
limit since getting married and having a baby. She’d had one as a
teenager and five after Zoey’s disappearance, as well as a DUI
that, had the timing been just slightly different, would have
resulted in her license being taken away. She wouldn’t say that was
the moment she realized she had a drinking problem, but it had been
enough to sow a few seeds of doubt in her mind. The officer now,
however, looked at the actual speed Peg was going along with her
excuse that she was late to pick up her son and only gave her a
warning. It helped, Peg thought, that the officer was a woman and
seemed about the right age to be a mother herself.

Of course Peg couldn’t tell her that the real
reason she’d been speeding was that she was too distracted that her
long-vanished sister had suddenly appeared in her home. She didn’t
even want to get to Brendan and then back to the house any quicker.
In fact, what she wanted to do was pull over into one of the
parking lots, select the parking space farthest from any other cars
or people, and just sit for several minutes. She’d learned early on
in motherhood that her life didn’t usually work like that anymore,
that the needs of her son and her job and occasionally her husband
had to trump everything else. Sometimes being kept busy was good.
It kept her mind from going to blacker places. But other times it
was time alone itself that kept the dark parts of her mind at bay.
She needed to examine herself, understand things that were
happening, just let her mind poke and prod the issues for a while.
And now she had an issue bigger than she could possibly comprehend
yet she had no moment to deal with it.

Indeed, despite her better judgment, Peg
didn’t immediately take off after the officer was finished with
her. She needed to take a breath, both figuratively and literally
since she still had to worry about doing something about the smell
and cleaning everything Zoey had touched once she got home.

She had to figure out what all was going to
happen next. As the cop went back to her car Peg had the sudden
urge to get out, run over to her, and tell her everything that had
happened, Zoey’s paranoia be damned. That would have been the smart
thing to do. After all, as much as she understood that Zoey’s
disappearance had fucked up Peg in a deep fundamental way, she
wasn’t the only one that it had affected. The police had put in an
enormous amount of manpower, and they would want to know that the
victim of a possible serial killer had escaped. And if the
ramblings Zoey had been spewing really meant anything, then this
person was still out there and might not only be looking for Zoey
but other victims as well. Not telling the police might actually
put others in harm’s way.

And Peg was only just now realizing that she
would have to tell her mother and father. Oh dear God, would that
ever be a scene.

Yet the officer drove off without Peg saying
anything. For one thing she’d promised Zoey, and she was most
certainly not going to betray Zoey’s trust again. For another,
everything about this felt completely wrong. Now that she was alone
and focused on the problems at hand, she understood that her sister
had pulled her into something deep.

The strength. The aversion to sunlight.
The teeth
.

Something had happened to Zoey that went far
beyond a simple kidnapping or even a serial killer. She still
didn’t want to admit to the place that her brain wanted to take
her, but neither would she completely deny the facts. Something had
changed her sister.

Peg started to put the car into drive, then
put it into park again. There were so many different emotions at
play here and she was only starting to sort them out, but one
suddenly came to her that hadn’t before—fear. Oh, she’d felt plenty
of moments of fear over the last couple hours, but this was
different. This wasn’t fear for herself. If she kept Zoey around,
kept her hidden, kept all of this a secret, then she wasn’t only
going to put herself in danger. Her family would be involved, too,
even if she didn’t say anything to Tony. The important question
then might be where this danger would come from. It could come from
someone looking for Zoey. Or it could come from Zoey herself.

Peg wanted to say that was a ridiculous thing
to think. This was her sister. She remembered Zoey. She was
sometimes self-absorbed and prone to flights of fancy, but she was
kind. Gentle. She saw beauty in strange things. Peg remembered a
time in high school during lunch where she had witnessed Zoey,
sitting at a different table with her own friends, clear a place
for a girl named Carrie who had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome that was
always getting picked on. Another girl, one from one of the more
popular cliques, had walked by with her lunch tray and
intentionally smacked the girl in the head with it, then just kept
going to her own table as though she hadn’t done anything. Zoey had
been very upset by this and, after a couple minutes of soothing the
girl’s tears, got up from her table and went over to the popular
girl’s table. Peg had been ready to get up from her own table and
rush to her sister’s side if this came to a catfight, but it
didn’t. Zoey had just bent down to whisper something in the popular
girl’s ear. The popular girl had gone several very interesting
shades ranging from red-cheeked to totally pale. At the end of
lunch, when everybody was going back to class, Peg waited for Zoey
to finish giving Carrie a hug and sending her on her way before Peg
walked up to Zoey.

“Dude, what the hell did you say to her?” Peg
asked.

Zoey just shrugged. “Nothing. Just gave her a
bit of information I learned a couple weeks ago.”

“Well? What was it? I’ve never seen her look
like that.”

“You know her boyfriend? The one she’s been
steady with for all of high school?”

“Yeah?”

“I gave her the size and shape of a birthmark
he has.”

“So?”

But Zoey hadn’t said anything more and had
refused to give any more information. It didn’t occur to Peg until
much later to wonder where exactly this birthmark was.

The high school political fallout from this
particular moment followed Zoey for a long time, but Zoey had never
appeared to regret it. And even more, she always after that day
treated Carrie with as much if not more respect than she did for
her other classmates.

So there shouldn’t have been a reason that
Peg of all people should be afraid of Zoey. Yet the idea of
bringing Brendan home while Zoey was still in the house frightened
her. There were just too many questions that weren’t answered yet,
and as much as Peg wanted to be happy that Zoey was alive and back,
she didn’t want her son or her husband anywhere near something or
someone that might be dangerous.

Peg wasn’t sure that she had a choice right
now, though. If she really wanted to keep the rest of her family
away from this then she should have told the cop. But she’d decided
not to, so now she had to deal with any consequences. She just
hoped…

Her phone rang and startled her out of her
thoughts. She scrambled to get it out of her purse before it
stopped ringing, not even bothering to check who was on the other
end. It would probably be the sitter wondering where she was.

“Holly, I’m sorry, things have been hectic
today. I swear I’m on my…”

“Peg?”

That wasn’t Holly the sitter. Peg blinked
several times before her mind focused enough to remember the voice.
“Oh, V. Hi.”

“Hi yourself,” V said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Why do you ask?”

“Because you sound frantic. You kind of sound
like you do when… well, you know.”

Peg took a deep breath and calmed herself.
She hadn’t been aware that she was talking higher and faster than
usual, but if anyone would have been able to pick that out it was
V. In fact, that was exactly why she had become friends with V. She
could tell when Peg was on the brink of some meltdown. It made her
the perfect AA sponsor.

“I’ll be fine,” Peg said.

“Bullshit,” V said. “
Now
you sound
like you do when you’re trying to cover up something.”

“V, I’m fine,” Peg said again, this time
making a better effort to sound normal. “I’m just late getting to
the babysitter’s. What’s up?”

V made a noise that indicated she was still
skeptical, but she let it go. “Norm and I just wanted to make sure
we were all still on for tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Don’t you remember? You and Tony were going
to come over for dinner?”

“Oh. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, as far as I know
Tony still wants to go. I’ll need to double check with the sitter
again, though. I don’t remember if I asked her or not.”

“Okay, seriously Peg. What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“You don’t sound right.”

Peg wanted to try denying it again, but
before she could a single sob came up from her throat. That sob
became more, escalating to a full on crying jag. Peg didn’t even
know why she was crying. They could have been happy tears, but they
sure didn’t feel happy. They were more like the tears of the
desperately overwhelmed.

Eventually she got enough control over
herself that she could hear V again over her sobs. “Where are you?”
V asked. “I’m coming to get you. Whatever it is I can help.”

“No,” Peg said. “No, everything will be…” She
stopped. Zoey had asked her not to say anything to the cops, but V
was the furthest thing. She could confide in V even when she
couldn’t with Tony. If she couldn’t talk about this with her then
she couldn’t tell anyone at all. “Something… something has happened
and I don’t know what to do.”

“What is it? Is there something I can
do?”

“No. There’s not…” Except maybe there was
something V could do, even if it was just a little thing. There was
simply too much for Peg to juggle right now. She could be her
normal good mother self, or she could be the supportive big sister.
She wasn’t sure she could do both. “Wait, could you watch Brendan
for a couple hours?”

“Of course, but can’t you tell me what…”

“I will, but not yet. Please. I’ll go get
Brendan and bring him over to your place. And then I’ll need you to
come over before Tony gets home. I’ll tell you everything then, but
you have to tell Tony that I was the one watching him. Tony can’t
know yet.”

Wait, what? Just what the hell are you
playing at, you fucking idiot?
she thought to herself. She
couldn’t really be considering not telling Tony. There was no way
she would be able to keep Zoey in the house without him knowing.
But it was telling that she hadn’t even thought about how he would
react to all this until now. She would want to believe that he
would be happy for her. Given how Zoey’s ghost had haunted her she
knew that he would be supportive and helpful. But only up to a
point. And she was sure that point would be reached the instant
Zoey showed those wicked sharp teeth, or even when she said they
couldn’t call the police. He would look at the danger to his family
and not have any of it, because that was the kind of person he was.
He’d never broken the law in any way more major than a parking
ticket, he’d never done drugs—not even marijuana—and he had never
had any reason to distrust authority. He may have been supportive
of Peg in getting past the kind of life she’d once led, but he
would never have been able to live that life himself. He was, to
use a word that was outdated long before she was born but seemed
the only appropriate term now, too square.

No, she knew exactly what Tony would do when
he found out. He would honor Peg’s wishes for a while. Then he
would start to get nervous. The call to the police wouldn’t be far
behind.

“Tony can’t know yet,” she said again
quietly, this time emphasizing the word yet. She would tell him
eventually. She would. Really.

“Okay Peg. Just… whatever this is going on,
promise me you won’t do anything you regret later.”

Given the situation she knew she couldn’t
promise that at all, but she knew what V meant. She was referring
more to that liquor store just a half mile away from here. “Yeah, I
think I can promise that.”

“Think? Peg, if you…”

“I promise, okay?” She put the car into drive
and continued on to the sitter’s. “I’ll be over soon. Tony is
supposed to get done at six, so come over a little after five and
I’ll show you what’s going on, okay?”

V seemed satisfied with that, and they both
hung up. Peg couldn’t help but be a little grateful that she was
running so late though. Now that she’d started thinking about that
liquor store she was having trouble stopping.

As much as she knew
she needed to get home immediately after dropping Brendan off at
V’s, she still made one more stop at the grocery store. In all the
chaos she still hadn’t had lunch, and she was willing to bet very
good money that Zoey would be even worse. She grabbed two
sandwiches in the deli then, even though she still believed her
thoughts on the matter were going pretty far into crazy territory,
she stopped in the meat department as well. There she stared at the
raw hamburger for several minutes before buying some. She had
hamburger in the freezer at home, but she wanted to try something
and for that she needed some that wasn’t frozen.

The smell still lingered in the house as she
walked in the door, but she thought now she might be able to cover
up the worst of it now with copious amounts of air freshener. She
put her groceries on the table.

“Zoey?” she called. “Zoey, I brought food.
Zoey?”

She listened, but she didn’t hear anything.
She went into the living room and found it empty, then went
upstairs, calling for her all the while and experiencing a growing
pain in her stomach at the thought that Zoey might be gone again.
She couldn’t have that. Life might not have been fair, but that
would simply be life kicking her down and grinding her face in the
mud.