Companions of the Night (7 page)

Ian came down without having to be carried or threatened, which was unusual, and he planted a big wet kiss on Kerry's cheek, which was downright odd. But he had the sense not to say anything about last night. He made Footy give Kerry a kiss, too, despite the fact that Kerry growled at him.

"Such a pleasant family," Dad said with a smile that was much too bright for so early in the morning.

Kerry grunted again.

Eventually Dad took Ian over to Mrs. Armendariz's. Kerry watched from behind the drape in Ian's room. Dad certainly didn't seem to take any longer than usual to drop Ian off. May be Mrs. Armendariz hadn't heard or seen anything last night to complain about.

Then Dad got into the car and pulled out of the driveway, drove around the circle and down the street. No hesitation that Kerry could see.
Maybe I'm going to get away with this after all,
she thought.

Yeah, right,
she told herself.
More likely it's all just going to cave in later.

***

A
LL DAY AT
school she half expected to hear her name announced over the PA system:
Kerry Nowicki, please come to the principal's office; the FBI is here to arrest you.

In fact, it almost would have been a relief. Especially during her second period literature test on the book she had never finished. "What was the narrator's name?" she hastily asked her friend Nelle as they settled into their seats seconds before the bell. "Did she ever get a name by the end of the last chapter?"

But nobody came to fetch her during school, and when she took the bus that dropped her off at the supermarket, the police weren't waiting for her there either.

"My father call?" she asked Elaine at customer service.

Elaine glanced through the phone messages. "Nope. Were you expecting him to?"

"Not really." Kerry headed back to the lockers before Elaine could start asking questions. In the locker room, someone had left the front section of the evening paper on the bench. That was usually world news, but if something important happened locally, it'd be on the front page. Kerry thought abduction and attempted murder on Main Street should qualify as important; and even if that was too common these days, surely the fact that the criminals saw themselves as vampire hunters must be unusual enough for a mention.

Nothing.

Maybe the police hadn't released all the details yet because they were still investigating. Chilling as a cold hand on the back of her spine, another thought came to her: Maybe the laundry owner and Sidowski and Roth and Marcia had gone into hiding; maybe the police hadn't been able to catch them at all.
What if they come after me?
she thought. Surely, if there hadn't been arrests, Ethan would have told the police about her so they could protect her. Wouldn't he?

She spent the next five hours unable to remember regular customers' names. She made mistakes giving change, rang up cabbage as lettuce, even overloaded cranky old Mr. Nate's shopping bag so that he complained at the office.

Finally, when her shift was over, the head cashier patted her on the shoulder and said, "Get a good night's rest for tomorrow, would you?" and she sat down by the door to wait for her father to pick her up, thinking this was the worst day she had ever lived through, even worse than last night.

After a few minutes she shouldered the backpack containing her school clothes and books and went outside, just in case her father was waiting in the parking lot, but there was no sign of him. By 8:20 she was thinking that she could have walked home, and she went back to the customer service desk to have Elaine call her house. There was no answer.

"Must have just noticed the time and he's on his way," Elaine assured her.

But those who were leaving at 8:30 cashed out, got their things from their lockers, and left, and still no sign of her father.

Kerry went back to customer service, but Elaine had gone for the night and Craig didn't allow personal phone calls. So Kerry called Mrs. Armendariz from the pay phone that was located, for some reason Kerry had never been able to figure out, near the crash and clatter of the beverage-container return center All Mrs. Armendariz had to offer was that Kerry's father had taken a half-day's vacation from work to take Ian to the pediatrician for his four-year checkup, and he had picked up Ian shortly after noon. She hadn't noticed anything since then, and the car wasn't in the driveway.

"Thanks," Kerry said.

Something had happened, she was sure of it. Ever since Mom had left, Dad, who had never been on time in his life before, had made a strict point of being punctual. He was never more than five minutes late to pick her up, and here it was almost forty-five minutes past the time he knew she was expecting him.

It has to be the car,
she thought.
Oh, please let it be car trouble, not anything to do with—

Turning from the phone, Kerry walked smack into Ethan Bryne.

He put out a hand to steady her, and only a second later seemed to recognize who she was. "Kerry," he said. And, a moment after that, "What's the matter?"

"My father was supposed to pick me up at eight o'clock." She felt awful, because she was truly concerned about her father and Ian, and yet here she was aware that her supermarket uniform of white shirt and black pants looked like a stupid tuxedo-for-girls, and her eyes were red-rimmed because she was worried.
Don't cry,
she told herself.
You don't need to cry just to prove you're more worried about him than about how you look.

"Kerry," Ethan repeated gently.

A woman and her daughter entering the store were forced to walk around them. The little girl craned around to stare, not making any pretense of not listening.

"I'm afraid something's happened," Kerry said. "Did you call the police?"

Ethan shifted the shopping bag he was carrying to his left hand. "Yes," he said. "This ... likely has nothing to do with that."

One of the newer stockboys whom Kerry barely knew was gathering shopping carts. He looked over at the mention of police and asked, "You okay, Kerry?"

"Would you like a ride home?" Ethan asked before she could answer.

Kerry was aware of the stockboy watching and realized this probably looked like a pickup. She nodded vigorously to Ethan, then told the stockboy—Bill? Will?—"If my father does show up, could you tell him Ethan's given me a ride home?" Not that the name would mean anything to her father, but it
did
show that she wasn't going off with a stranger.

"Sure." The stockboy crashed two lines of carts together.

Ethan had hold of her arm and was guiding her out into the parking lot before it occurred to Kerry that Ethan didn't have a car. "Oh. I just remembered. We're not riding your bicycle, are we?"

Ethan laughed. "No, that's pretty well totaled. I decided to go all out and borrow my uncle's car."

After the fancy house, Kerry was amazed to see that the car was only a Skylark—the same as her father's, although blue instead of white, and considerably newer.
Ah, well,
Kerry thought, remembering that there had been three doors to the garage. Probably Ethan had left the Porsche and the Rolls at home.

Ethan opened the passenger door for her, then tossed her backpack and his bag of groceries in the back.
Classic Coke and potato chips,
she noted. She wondered what yesterday's vampire hunters would make of that.

"Your leg's a lot better," she said as he got into the car beside her.

He turned on the engine and pulled out of the parking space before answering, "It wasn't as bad as it looked."

Which was hard to believe.

But his color was definitely better. And he was using his right hand as though it didn't hurt. He finally had a jacket, a brown leather one. She couldn't make out any bandaging under his sleeve, but all in all she decided he was lucky he hadn't been forced to stay in the hospital overnight.

"What did the police have to say?" she asked him when it became apparent he wasn't going to volunteer information.

Ethan shrugged. "They seemed to buy my story."

"The others didn't contradict you?"

"No."

"The police arrested them? All of them?"

Ethan glanced at her. "Yes." As they passed through pools of brightness beneath some streetlights, his eyes seemed to flicker from light blue to black. "Why? What is it you're really asking?"

"It's just—I was afraid that all of this had something to do with my father not showing up."

"No," he said. He glanced at her again. "No. The police got them all: Daniel and Marcia Jordan, George Roth, Phil Sidowski."

It was strange to hear their full names. Not as reassuring as she would have thought, and strange.

He told her, "They won't be bothering you again."

"Are they going to jail?" Kerry asked.

He looked at her blankly.

"Or to a mental hospital?"

"That's for judges and lawyers to decide."

"But you'll have to testify?"

"Eventually. I suppose." He seemed to be getting annoyed with her questions. "I gave a full deposition to the police last night." Maybe that was it. He had volunteered to face them by himself, but maybe he resented it. Or maybe he was just exhausted. She was, and she had gone to bed about the time he was just beginning with the police.

"As for your father...," Ethan said. "Your car is ... old." He was too polite to call it a junk heap. But she had never been so aware of all its clunks and thuds and vibrations until riding in this newer and better-maintained version of the same model "I'm sure he's sitting by the edge of the road, waiting for the triple A, even as we speak." He gave her a reassuring smile.

"I suppose," Kerry said. "The same thing happened with my mom once."

She said that because the previous night he had known Kerry's mother didn't live with them, and it seemed an opportunity to start a conversation, but he didn't ask for any details.

He was certainly less friendly and open than last night, more distant and self-assured. It was hard to put her finger on what it was that had originally made her think he was a freshman.
Had a jailing out with Regina, did we?
she wondered.

It was just about 9:00 when they reached Fawn Meadow Circle Most of the houses were brightly lit, and some even had Christmas decorations up, too, although this seemed premature to Kerry since it was only the first week of December and there was no snow Amid all the lights, the Nowicki house looked not only totally dark but almost intimidating.

Ethan pulled up in front and gave her another reassuring smile.

"Thank you," Kerry said, reaching around the seat for her backpack.

"Anytime," Ethan assured her, but nothing was the same as last night.

Kerry got her key out of the pocket of the backpack and started up the walk, Ethan's headlights lighting her way.

Kerry put her hand on the doorknob, but before she even got the key in, the door swung open. Odd for her father not to lock up, but maybe he was at one of the neighbors' and had left thinking he'd only be away a few minutes; maybe he hadn't counted on being away after dark.

But that didn't fit in with the car being gone.

Kerry groped for the light switch.

The living room was a wreck.

Not
wreck
as in it-hadn't-been-cleaned-in-a-week.
Wreck
as in pictures askew, furniture tossed around, cushions slit.

Kerry whirled around just in time to see Ethan pulling away from the curb. "Wait!" she cried.

Ethan kept going.

Kerry dropped her backpack and raced across the lawn. "Ethan!" But it was winter; he had his windows rolled up. "Ethan!" She ran out into the street, waving her arms frantically. He was up to the corner stop sign, five houses away, and there was no way he could hear her and no way she could catch up. His brake lights were on, but in a second he'd go around the corner and she'd be on her own. What should she do? Go to the Armendarizes', she supposed. Or the Hagginses'; they were friendlier.

But Ethan's brake lights were still on. He must have seen her in his rearview mirror, for in a moment he began to back up. She ran down the street, reluctant to be near her house, afraid of whatever had happened in it.

Ethan rolled down his window.

"Somebody's broken in," Kerry said, panting. "We've been burglarized."

"Get in," Ethan told her.

He turned the car around and pulled up in front of the house. The light from the open door spilled brightly on the front stoop. No sign of movement "Wait here," he told her. He left the car door open and didn't turn off the engine.

Kerry watched apprehensively as Ethan walked up the driveway. "Don't—," she whispered as he hesitated in the doorway, but then he stepped in and she lost sight of him.
Wait in the car,
where she couldn't see him? Alone? Right.

When she got to the house, Ethan hadn't moved beyond the living room. She had tried to be quiet, just in case the intruders were still in there, but when she saw what he was looking at—the red writing on the wall—she gasped.

Though he had his back to her, he must have heard her coming, because he wasn't startled. "It's just paint," he said. "It's just red paint."

"Are you sure?"

"Smell it."

The awful pain that had started in her chest loosened a bit. At least it wasn't blood.

V
AMPIRE
, the writing said,
WE HAVE YOUR FAMILY
.

V
AMPIRE?"
K
ERRY SAID
. "Somebody thinks I'm a
vampire?
"

There was additional writing below V
AMPIRE, WE HAVE YOUR FAMILY
. There were some letters and numbers that Kerry didn't understand at first and didn't take the time to try to work out: L
EV
17:10.

"You said they got them." She turned on Ethan, who seemed unable to tear his gaze from the wall. "You said the police got all of them."

Quietly, sounding surprised more than concerned, Ethan said, "There must have been more than the four."