Sunshine (27 page)

Never mind. Let's leave it that vampires infesting your private spaces are daunting, and one of the ways to stiffen—er—boost morale is to wear carefully-selected-for-the-occasion morale-boosting clothing.

I went to bed wearing my oldest, most faded flannel shirt, the bra that had looked all right in the catalog but was obviously an escapee from a downmarket nursing home when it arrived, white cotton panties that had had pansies on them about seven hundred washings ago and were now a kind of mottled gray, and the jeans I usually wore for housecleaning or raking Yolande's garden because they were too shabby for work even if I never came out of the bakery. Food inspector arrest-on-sight jeans. Oh, and fuzzy green plaid socks. It was a cool night for summer. Relatively. I lay down on top of the bedspread.

And slept through till the alarm at three-forty-five. He hadn't come.

T
HAT WAS NOT
one of my better days at work. I snarled at everyone who spoke to me, and snarled worse when no one snarled back. Mel, who would have, wasn't there. Mom, fortunately, didn't have time to get into a furious argument with me, so we shot a few salvos over each other's bows, and retired to our separate harbors.

We did try to stay out of each other's way but it wasn't like Mom to avoid a good blazing row with her daughter when one was
offered
. What had she been guessing while I'd been doing my guessing? There was quite a lot in the literature of bad crosses about petty, last-straw exasperations that tipped the balance. I'd been checking globenet archives when I could have been reading
Sordid Enchantments
.

“I'm not a goddam invalid!” I howled at Charlie. “I don't need to be treated with gloves and—and bedpans! Will you please tell me I'm being a miserable bitch and you'd like to upend a garbage bin over my head!”

There was a pause. “Well, the idea had crossed my mind,” said Charlie.

I stood there, buttery fists clenched, breathing hard. “Thank you,” I said.

“Anything you want to talk about?” Charlie said in his best offhand manner.

I thought about it. Charlie ambled over and closed the bakery door. Doors don't get closed much at the coffeehouse, so when one is, you'd better not open it for anything less than a coachload of tourists who didn't book ahead, have forty-five minutes for lunch before they meet their guide at the Other Museum, which is a fifteen-minute coach ride away (it's only seven minutes on foot, but try to convince a coach-load of tourists of that), they all want burgers and fries and won't look at the menu, we're not heavily into burgers so our grill is kind of small, and we don't do fries at all, except on special, when they're not what burger eaters would call fries anyway.

This really happened once, and by the time Mom got through with that tour company the president was on his knees, offering her conciliatory free luxury cruises for two in the Caribbean, or at least all future meal bookings of his tour groups when they came to New Arcadia, made
well
in advance. She accepted the latter, and the Earth Trek Touring Company (the president's name is Benjamin Sisko, but I bet that wasn't the one he was born with, and you should
see
the logo on their coaches) was now one of our best customers. We could almost retire on what they brought us in August. And we taught his regular tour leaders how to find the Other Museum on foot. This made the coach drivers love us too.

This is not what the city council had in mind when they were drooling over the prospect of seeing New Arcadia on the new post-Wars map, but the Other Museum is why coachloads of the kind of tourists who sign up with a company called Earth Trek now come to New Arcadia. The public exhibits are still lowest common denominator, but there are more of them than there used to be, and the Ghoul Attack simulation is supposed to be especially good: yuck-
o
, I say. We do also have a few more prune-faced academics on teeny stipends renting rooms in Old Town, but it's nowhere as bad as I'd feared. The proles win again. Ha.

Charlie ambled back from closing the door and sat on the stool in the corner. It wasn't so hot a day that we were going to die of being in the bakery with the ovens on and the door closed for at least ten minutes.

“Because of the other night,” I said, “the SOF guys want me to be a kind of—unofficial SOF guy.”

Charlie said carefully, “I didn't think a table knife was … usual.”

I sighed. “What did you think, when you followed me out there that night? Just that I'd lost my mind?”

Charlie considered this before he answered. “I thought something had snapped, yes. I didn't think it was your mind.… But I didn't have much time to think. By the time I got there it was all over. And I guess I realized then that I'd, we'd, had the wrong end of the … table knife all along.”

“Since I disappeared for a couple of days.”

“Yeah. It had to be the Others, one way or another. Sorry. It just … the way you were … you didn't want to talk to any cops, but you
really
didn't want to talk to SOF.”

I hadn't thought it was that noticeable.

“You were okay with the rest of us at Charlie's, us humans, not just
us
, strangers too. Nervy—like something really bad had happened, which we already knew—but okay. Anyone, you know, pretty human.”

Except TV reporters. If they were human.

“It wasn't Weres, because you were here on full-moon nights like usual, after. And they don't usually go around biting people except
at
the full moon.”

And however fidgety and whimsical I'd felt, I wouldn't have driven out to the lake alone on a full-moon night. There
are
some Weres out there. Just like there are a few Weres in Old Town. More than few. It doesn't hurt to be nice to them; they'll remember that you were, the other twenty-nine days of the month. Unlike suckers, who tend to prefer the urban scene, the Weres you really want to avoid mostly hang out in the wilderness.

“And—sorry—since you didn't have any visible pieces missing it couldn't be zombies or ghouls.”

I was the Other expert at Charlie's. Most of the staff didn't want to know, like most of the human population didn't want to know, and our SOFs were just customers who wore too much khaki. Mel said stories about the Others made his tattoos restless.

“Sadie and I thought it must be some kind of demon. Sadie … well, Sadie talked to a couple of those specialist shrinks you wouldn't talk to, and they said this stuff can be as traumatic as it gets, and to leave you alone about it if you didn't want to talk.”

I wished that was the only reason for the charms and the uncharacteristic reserve. Maybe it was. Or maybe I could
make
it be all. I was my mother's daughter, after all. Maybe I had hidden depths of Attila the Hun-ness. I said cautiously, “Did she tell them about my dad?”

Charlie shook his head. “I'd nearly forgotten about your dad myself, till the other night. It had never seriously occurred to me that what happened to you had anything to do with vampires. Uh—people don't get away from vampires. Any more than people get rid of vampires with table knives.”

Even Charlie knew that much. “Yeah. That's what the SOFs say too.”

Charlie was silent a minute. I was thinking, if Charlie had forgotten about my dad then he must not be a part of the Bad Cross Watch. My mother had never told him about Great-Great-Aunt Margaret, who had a limp because her left foot was short, horny, and cloven. Or whoever Great-Aunt Margaret had been and whatever demon mark they'd had. I mean Mom was keeping her fears to herself. I told you she was brave: she'd let her parents cut her off to marry my dad, she'd taken on the Blaises singlehanded when she left him. Any sensible woman who was not Attila the Hun in a previous existence would have been more than justified in leaving me behind for my dad's family to cope with. And they would have: if I had gone bad they might have denied I was theirs, but they'd have
coped
. And if I
had
gone bad, they'd've
wanted
to be there, performing damage control, for their sake if not mine. So she'd been doubly brave, or foolhardy. And there may not have been very many Blaises left before the Wars but they were
formidable
.

Some demons are
very
tough. Tougher than any human. Although the tough ones also tend to be the stupid ones.

Charlie said: “What do you want to do?”

“Go on making cinnamon rolls,” I said instantly.

Charlie smiled faintly. “That's what I want to hear, of course—”

“Is
it?” I said. “Do you want someone so—so obviously—not just some kind of freak magic handler but someone who—someone who—I mean with
vampires
—do you want someone like this—like me—making your cinnamon rolls?”

“Yes,” said Charlie. “Yes. You make the best cinnamon rolls, probably in the history of the world. Never mind all the rest of it. We pay taxes for SOF to take care of the Others. We need
you
here. If you want to be here. I don't care who your dad is. Or what else you can do with a table knife.”

I looked at him. He'd have every right to fire my ass—humans don't like weird magic handlers on the cooking staff of their restaurants. But I was a member of this family, this clan, a member of the bizarre community that was Charlie's. A key member even. I
owed
it to these people not to go mad. With or without an axe.

And to stay alive.

Charlie's Coffeehouse: Old Town's peculiar little beacon in the encroaching darkness.

An interesting perspective on current events.

“That's all right then,” I said.

“Good.” Charlie opened the door again and ambled out.

I
WENT TO
bed wearing jeans and a flannel shirt again that night. I woke at midnight and stumbled into the bathroom for a pee, tripping over the sill on the way. I went back to bed and fell asleep again immediately. The alarm went off at three-forty-five.

He hadn't come.

T
HE SENSE OF
outrage of the day before—the absurd sense of having been stood up like a teenager on her way to the prom—was gone, as if it were a candle flame that had been blown out. I was worried.

The fact that the wound on my breast, for the past four days, since he'd told me it was poisoned, was burning like the 'fo had set a match to my skin, was almost by the way. It was as if now that I had the diagnosis I didn't care what the diagnosis was: knowing was enough. For a few days. It was seeping so badly I not only had to keep it bandaged, I had to change the gauze pad at least once a day. I didn't care. I did it and didn't think about it. The heavy, permanent sense of tiredness made this easier than it might have been if I'd been sharp and alert. The only problem was finding places to put the adhesive tape that weren't already sore from having adhesive tape there too often already. I could have bought the surgical tape that doesn't take your skin off with it, but that would have been admitting there was a problem. I wasn't admitting anything. So the area around the slash looked peeled.

The thing that really wasn't all right was that he'd said he'd be back, and he wasn't.

Things are getting
bad
if I was worried about a vampire. Well: they were bad, and I was worried. I didn't see him as the stand-you-up kind. If you could apply human guidelines to a vampire, which you couldn't.

But if he'd said he'd be back, he'd be back. I was sure. And he wasn't.

I had the rest of the day off after I finished the morning baking. Paulie, still hoarse but no longer sneezing, came in and started on Lemon Lechery and marbled brown sugar cake, and I went home to comb every globenet account I could find on vampire activity. Because of my peculiar hobby I paid for a line into the cosworld better than most home users bothered with, so I didn't have to go to the library every time I wanted the hottest new reportage on the Others. If there was anything to find I should be able to find it. When some big vampire feud came to a head there was usually more than enough mayhem to alert even the dimmest of the news media. And maybe this was only a tiny, local feud, but our media aren't among the dimmest. I couldn't believe that, this time, knowing what he knew, he wouldn't sell himself dearly, if Bo had caught him again.

If, that is, he hadn't come back because he'd been prevented. If I hadn't been stood up like a teenager going to the prom with a known loser. One might almost say a deadbeat. Ha ha.

I couldn't find anything. After I looked through all the local stuff I started on the national, and then the international. The nearest report of anything like what I thought I might be looking for was happening in Macedonia. I didn't think it would happen in Macedonia.

I wanted to start looking up glyphs, to see if I could translate mine, but I couldn't make myself be interested enough. I cleaned the apartment instead. I rearranged the piles of books to be read immediately.
Altar of Darkness
went on the bottom, although I dusted it first. I mopped floors. I scrubbed sinks. I baking-soda'd the tea stains out of the teapot and my favorite mugs. I vacuumed. I folded laundry. I even cleaned a few windows. I hate cleaning windows. I was too tired to work this hard but I couldn't sit still. And it was overcast outdoors: not a day that insisted I go out and lie in it.

By evening I was exhausted and slightly queasy.

I had an egg-and-Romaine sandwich on two slabs of my pumpernickel bread at six, and went to bed at seven. I gave up. I wore the nightgown I'd been wearing four nights ago, and got between the sheets. I had a little trouble going to sleep, but it was as if my thoughts were spinning so fast—or maybe it was effect of the poison winning at last—eventually I got dizzy and fell over into unconsciousness.

W
HEN
I
WOKE
up three hours later he was there. Darkness, sitting in my bedroom chair. Darkness, I noticed, barefoot. I couldn't remember if he'd been barefoot the other night or not.