How to Party with a Killer Vampire (4 page)

“It’s more a spirituality,” Trace responded. He tried to step on his sore leg and winced. “You get what you put into it.”

“You need to bandage that,” I said.

He shrugged. Tough guy.

“Do you have competitions?” I asked, growing curious about this sport I’d never heard of until tonight. I wondered if there might be a party theme in it.

“No. It’s not competitive. It’s more social. It’s fun to get together for a jam, and try new places. Most traceurs jam at the mall or a park. But the cemetery is especially challenging. There are lots of obstacles to overcome, with the headstones being so narrow and uneven and sometimes far apart.”

I was getting distracted from the task at hand—not uncommon with my attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. I checked my watch, noticing that none of the three young people had watches. “Well, it’s getting late, I’m freezing, and I have a party to set up tomorrow.”

“Party time!” Spidey said brightly. “Dunk told us about it. That’s why we’re here, dude. Scoping it out.”

“Duncan told you about it?” I asked, surprised. Was he friends with these guys?

“Yeah,” Spidey said. “We got to be extras in the film, so we figured we’d come to the party.”

“It’s a
private
party.” Raj emphasized the word “private.” “By invitation only. We are having security guards here tonight, so please move along and do your parking somewhere else or you may be arrested. We don’t want anything disturbed before the party.”

The three looked at one another conspiratorially. What was behind that look?

“Well, try not to disturb anything,” Brad said to them.

They nodded, but those odd grins on their faces made me question their sincerity. These kids seemed harmless enough, but anyone who runs around in a graveyard after midnight can’t really be too normal.

Oh. That would include me, wouldn’t it....

 

After I checked on the party area one last time, I waved good-bye to Raj and followed Brad to his Crime Scene Cleaners SUV. His car was bigger than my little red MINI Cooper, and therefore held more party stuff. And he’d volunteered to help out, unless a call for a crime scene cleanup came along. You never knew when a dead body would pop up and require Brad’s specialized services.

On the drive back to the City, I did most of the talking, planning the final party details and working out the logistics. I knew Brad had tuned me out when I finally asked him a question about the sport of parkour that required a response.

“Huh?”
he said, glancing at me before taking the off-ramp to Treasure Island.

“Nothing,” I said haughtily.

Brad patted my leg. “Sorry. My mind was wandering.”

“No kidding. Where to?”

“Your bedroom,” he said, grinning at me.

“Ha! You know I never sleep with anyone before a party. Too much on my mind.”

His smile dissolved. “Anyone?”

I smiled mysteriously.

“All right, so what did you say?”

“I just wondered how you knew so much about that sport—parker . . . I mean, par-
kour
. I’d never heard of it.”

“I get around,” he said just as mysteriously.

“Did you ever . . . clean up . . . after a parkour mishap?”

“Naw. Those guys are pretty hardy. They get a lot of skinned knees and a few broken bones, but doing parkour doesn’t usually kill you.”

“Did you ever try it?”

“Once.”

I raised an eyebrow as we pulled up to my condo carport. “Really? Where? What happened?”

“It was a long time ago. I was at this girl’s house one night—in her bedroom, actually—and her father came in. So I climbed out her window, leaped onto a tree branch, swung to another branch by the backyard fence, stepped on the top of the fence, tightrope walked along the top until I saw a doghouse on the other side, jumped down and landed on it, and finally hopped to the ground.”

“No scrapes or bruises?”

“A bunch. But I didn’t feel them at the time.”

“Adrenaline?”

“Alcohol.”

“I see. And you call escaping from a girlfriend’s bedroom ‘parkour’?” I added finger-quotes to the last word.

“Sure. Running away from something and overcoming obstacles along the way. It’s pretty much the same thing. In fact, I may have invented the sport.” He gave me a smug glance.

I opened the passenger door of the SUV. “Did it
mentally
help you achieve your goal?”

“Sure. I learned a lesson.”

“Really? And what was that?”

“Don’t disturb a sleeping dog by jumping onto its house. And don’t wander around a strange backyard in the dark where there might be a swimming pool.”

I laughed out loud. “You didn’t!”

“I did. Fell right in. The family called the cops, and I had a nice, wet ride home in a police unit.”

“Serves you right,” I said, and leaned over to kiss him good night.

“I’d do it all again if it were you up in that bedroom.” He put his hand on my cheek and kissed me again. Longer. Deeper.

I’d had a witty retort, but had completely forgotten it by the time that last kiss ended.

 

Under Brad’s watchful eye, I let myself into my condo, locked the door, then listened as he drove off for his own home on neighboring Yerba Buena Island. My three cats, Cairo, Fatman, and Thursby, tried to quell my loneliness after he left, but having the warm furry coats brush against my ankles wasn’t the same as snuggling with Brad. I might as well have let him stay over. I wouldn’t be getting much sleep thanks to preparty jitters—and that kiss.

I told the cats about my day as I fed them, then changed into my cat-covered PJs and got ready for bed. Anxious about the event the next day, I made some hot, soothing cranberry tea and lay back on the couch to watch the news. There was not much happening at one in the morning. No earthquakes. No terrorist attacks. No celebrity meltdowns or returns to rehab.

The city was as quiet as a cemetery.

I fell asleep on the couch and slept like the dead.

I woke up the next morning, my cranberry tea cold, my cats on my legs, chest, and hair, and the TV still on. Stretching out the kinks after sleeping crookedly, I glanced at the time on the wall clock—a little after seven a.m. At least I hadn’t overslept. After all, I had a party to prepare for and only twelve hours to complete everything—on five hours’ sleep.

I picked up the remote to turn off the morning news, when a photograph of a young man appeared on the screen. I turned up the volume and listened to the reporter’s voice as I stared at the face.

I’d seen that face only hours ago and recognized it immediately.

It was the hairless, tattooed, barefooted guy in the cemetery last night who called himself “Spidey.”

My gut wrenched. Was he dead?

I sat up too quickly, wrenching my neck in the process, and rubbed the muscles with one hand while turning up the volume with the TV remote with the other. I caught the female news announcer in midsentence.

I didn’t hear anything that followed. The voice in my head was screaming, “But he wasn’t alone! His friends were there! How could this happen?”

And why had Trace lied about not being in the cemetery with him?

I reached for my cell phone to call Lucas, but the phone rang the moment I had it in hand. I looked down at the caller ID: Brad.

“Brad! Did you hear—”

“Presley, I have some bad—”

We spoke over each other, then stopped. I waited for half a second to see if he would continue. When he didn’t, I said, “That poor kid. I just heard it on the news. . . .”

“Yeah. Wonder what happened . . .”

More silence. Finally I said, “I need to call Lucas Cruz. See if he’s heard anything. And ask him what he wants to do about the party tonight.”

“You think he’ll cancel?” Brad asked.

“I doubt it. He’s pretty self-centered. But I’d like to give him the option. After all, someone died at the party site last night, and it seems to me he might want to consider postponing the event—or selecting another venue.”

“Let me know your plans. I got called to do the cleanup, so I’ll be out at the cemetery.”

Oh my God. It hadn’t occurred to me that Brad would be asked to clean up after Spidey’s death. But of course they needed a crime scene cleaner, since cemeteries prefer to have the bodies under the ground, not on top. I guessed that the city of Colma would be footing the bill on this one.

I wished him luck, told him to call if he found anything else, and hung up. Next, I phoned Lucas Cruz. When he didn’t answer, I left a message asking him to call me. At this hour in the morning, without a jolt of caffeine, I couldn’t think whom else to call, so I jumped in the shower and tried to wash away the images I kept conjuring up of Spidey’s death.

I dried off, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt that said “Boo” on the front in celebration of upcoming Halloween, and made myself a steaming hot latte with extra caf. I would need the jolt to help me focus during the sure-to-be-chaotic day ahead.

After giving my cats a thorough back-scratching and a healthy bowl of gourmet cat food, I hopped into my MINI Cooper, planning to head for my office a few blocks away on Treasure Island. On impulse, I took a quick turn and pulled up to CeeGee Studios, Lucas Cruz’s film studio nearby. The production company was housed in a giant hangar that once stored Pan Am Clipper ships of the thirties and forties that both flew and sailed. I’d never actually seen one—only photos—but my grandmother was one of the first female stewards on board. I knew this because my mother liked to remind me of that every time she came to TI. An amateur historian, Mom knew a lot about San Francisco’s rich history, and she loved to share that knowledge with whoever would listen—which was usually me.

As for Granny, Mom said she flew on one of the first and largest “flying boats,” called the China Clipper, back in the late thirties. “The Clipper was one of the first true intercontinental airlines, with the luxury and style of the
Titanic
crossed with the Concorde,” Mom said, using her docent voice. “Your granny used to talk about the multicourse meals, which were considered extravagant back then, as well as the beautiful china and silverware.” Granny loved that the spacious lounge areas made the ship feel more like a hotel than a plane or boat. Having ten crew members for seventy-five passengers added to the luxury—if you could afford it. The cost of travel to the Orient at the time: nearly fifteen hundred dollars.

But according to Mother, Granny’s favorite story was about the time she met Humphrey Bogart while he was filming
China Clipper
. She carried around Bogie’s autographed picture until she died. Mom said she loved her job, but she was fired only two years later when she married. That was a no-no for stewardesses back in the day.

I knocked on the steel door of CeeGee Studios and waited for someone to open up. Security was tight at CeeGee, to discourage curious tourists from interrupting filming, and while there were no signs announcing CeeGee’s occupancy, there were plenty of NO ADMITTANCE placards. I rapped again, to no response, then punched Cruz’s private cell number on my phone once more, hoping to talk to him before I headed into work.

He answered on the fourth ring.

“Yeah?” he said bluntly.

“Lucas? It’s Presley. Did you hear—”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, cutting me off. “I heard, and I’m sorry about the guy, but he was stupid to be in a cemetery in the middle of the night. As they say in showbusiness, the show must go on, so if you’re thinking of canceling . . .”

I was taken aback by his callousness, but then, that was Lucas Cruz. Nothing got in the way of his “art.”

“No,” I said, “not if you don’t want to cancel. I was just checking—”

“Then I’ll see you later.” Click. End of call.

I felt stupid talking to him on the other side of the door when I knew he was inside—his classic Corvette was parked in the slot marked NEVER, EVER PARK HERE—but at least I had my answer. Apparently, the slogan was true; the show would go on.