VooDoo Follies (17 page)

"Seraphine," Tina looked from me to the empty
space she was seeing me talk to and back again, "that's really
weird. I mean, I know you're talking to them, but it's
still..."

"You should tell her that it wouldn't hurt to
get some brighter colors in here. No wonder a vampire wants to eat
her."

"Trevor!" I was beginning to get a headache,
between all the back and forth bickering amongst people who
couldn't communicate with each other.

"What did he say?" Tina had the good sense to
feel insulted even when she didn't hear what he had to say. "I
can't believe you ever liked him, he's such a..."

"ENOUGH!" I yelled. All of you, just be
quiet." Before I could say any more the bedroom door burst open and
in sauntered Vampire Dave.

"Ahh, my sweet, I see you brought a snack for
me." A sneer was thrown my way, that I ignored as I backed further
into the room and away from him. "You know, love, that your blood
is the only stuff I crave though." I saw my opening, so I took
it.

"Speaking of that, what are you going to do
after you drain her tonight? Then you won't have any more of her
blood. Have you thought of that?"

"Indeed, I have, and I am willing to wager
that once my lovely has expired I will no longer have such a
craving." He was probably right, but I didn't want him to know
that.

"And what if you're wrong? What if you
continue to crave only her blood once you have drunk her dry? What
then?"

"I suppose you are going somewhere with this
line of questioning, let's hear it before I decide I want your
blood too."

I pulled the thermos full of hexed blood off
the top of Tina's dresser and held it out for him to take. "It's a
spell reversal. It will stop you from craving Tina's blood so you
can go about your regularly scheduled diet."

"My Little Pony?" The vampire questioned with
a laugh when he noticed the design on the thermos.

I shrugged. If I were watching this scenario
take place, I would have been laughing right along with the
vampire. It was ridiculous to serve a vampire blood out of a My
Little Pony thermos, but this is what we had to work with. "You
don't have to love the container, just drink whats in
it."

"And what if drinking this means I will want
to eat you when I am done, instead of your friend?" Stephen and
Trevor both jumped forward, ready to protect me, if they
could.

Vampire Dave turned at the sound and jumped
back, putting him in closer proximity to me. Not that he noticed,
his eyes were all for Stephen and Trevor. "What sort of
abomination..." Dave turned and looked at me then, keeping his body
angled so he could still see the boys from his peripheral vision.
"You are in league with the Unknown!" It was an accusation, not a
statement.

"They are just here to ensure nothing bad
happens to me," I played on his fears and watched as he stood still
as a statue, debating on what to do next.

"Fine. I will drink your potion, and for your
sake, hope that it works." He looked around the room from Tina, who
stood in the far corner, to me, and then the two boys who stood on
his other side. "Your protectors will not always be around." He
picked up the thermos and drank from it, at first delighting in the
taste that the lust spell had invoked, but as he drank more, I
watched as his delight turned to disgust and he stopped drinking
and set the thermos down. He reached out with lightening like
reflexes and drew a clawed finger across my arm, drawing blood. He
put the nail, full of my blood, in his mouth and gagged almost
immediately. "What have you done to me?" Fear snaked across his
expression, the already pale visage that was staring at me with
wide eyes lost the last bit of color it had gained from the blood
he drank. "You've poisoned me."

"No, I did not."

"You did." Vampire Dave looked from me to Tina
and then to the two dead boys in the room. "You will figure out how
to undo this too, or I will see to it that you are the kind of dead
that doesn't come back."

"I don't understand."

"I do," it was the first time Tina had spoken
since Vampire Dave showed up. "He's lost his taste for my blood,
and everyone else's too."

"You knew this would happen?" I was aghast at
the thought that Tina had known and put us all in danger
anyway.

"I wasn't sure, but when you mixed my blood
with the other stuff, I thought it may have that
effect."

"Why? Why didn't you say anything?" I was
beyond furious. "Why would you let me do this if you knew it could
end up this way?"

"Why not? He would have drank me dry. If you
fixed him, do you think he would have walked out of here and never
done that to another person? He deserves this. He would have killed
me, and then he would have killed you just for witnessing what he
did."

"Holy crap! Every time I think I've made a
friend here, every time I think I can trust someone... I just...
someone take the God-damn knife out of my back already." I grabbed
up my bag and started for the bedroom door, about to walk away from
all the craziness that my life in Rosedale had led to. That is, I
was about to walk out the door before a very strong grip on my arm
stopped me short.

"You will go nowhere until you get this fixed
and you had better do it right this time, because it will be your
last attempt should you fail." I did not even question the violence
I saw in those eyes. Nor did I question the fact that it shouldn't
have been turned on me. This was my punishment for caring enough to
try to help someone out of an impossible situation. This was my
punishment for dabbling in magic that I had no business messing
with. I flopped down to the floor, staring at my bag of supplies
and wishing I was anywhere else in the world right now. "I do not
have time to watch you sit and mope. You need to get
busy."

My anger got the best of me as I stood again
and started yelling right in the vampire's face, "Listen here,
Vampire Dave, I don't really care what you have time for. I don't
have any ideas at the moment, and until one comes to me - I can't
exactly act on it, now can I? You saw how my last idea panned out.
Would you like me to jump on something and do it in an half-assed
way again, or would you like to shut the hell up and let me
actually think?" I would probably ask myself later what the hell
possessed me to yell at a vampire that could kill me in less time
than it took my heart to beat, but in that moment, I was just ready
to be done with my life as I knew it. So, I didn’t care what the
consequences were.

"You have de-fanged me. I don't care how you
do it, all I care is that you cure me before the night is out." He
pushed me aside and went to sit in the fuzzy black chair I had
slept in last night.

I sat again, not thinking, staring off into
space. I can't say that I wasn't thinking, it was more like there
were too many thoughts coming so fast that I couldn't keep pace
with everything. I only knew that I wanted to be done with all of
it. I wanted to go back to leading a quiet life without all the
drama. That's when I heard the beeping. Trevor jumped up and Tina's
laptop, that we had left sitting on her bed earlier now had a
pop-up asking if she wanted to turn on the filter keys. Trevor had
sat on a key too long. He realized it at the same time I did and
turned around to try to type. It didn't work, his hands kept going
through the keys.

"Maybe, if you type with your magic ass, it
will work!" Stephen wasn't amused with how everything had gone down
tonight either. He walked over to the laptop and carefully lay his
finger on top of one of the keys. Again, the loud beep and the
warning about filtering keys.

"Tina, pull up a word program, quick." She did
as she was told and started communicating with the boys on her own
that way while I thought of what to do about the vampire
situation.

An hour later and I felt a kick to the arm
that had been holding my head up. "I do believe you bypassed
thinking and went straight to a nap. Get busy fixing me, or we
shall greet the sun together for a final time."

"So, you guys are going to switch bodies?"
Tina stopped and thought a second, "wait, you know what I meant.
Seraphine's going to do a spell so Stephen will end up in Trevor's
body and Trevor will remain a ghost-unknown-thing
forever?"

The word "YES" appeared on the computer
screen. I stopped paying any attention to their conversation after
that. My thoughts went back to the vampire beside me.

"Seraphine," Trevor sat down next to me on the
floor. I noticed Vampire Dave pull his legs back a little further.
"I've been thinking."

"Well, good for you, Trevor! It's about time."
Vampire Dave actually laughed, as did Stephen.

"Ha ha," Trevor mocked as he continued on,
"your blood hex only backfired because you couldn't get enough of
her blood to use, so you had to mix it with donor blood
right?"

"I think so, yeah."

"So, what if you use the rest of the donor
blood, mixed with some of yours and Tina's and then instead of
doing a lust or anti-lust spell, you do a need spell. Allow him to
feel the need to feed his hunger, but not the blood lust that
nearly killed Tina." Trevor got quieter, "it might have a nice side
effect of him not wanting to kill his victims anymore. He will only
take what he needs to survive and then be turned off again by blood
until he needs more." I thought about it. Trevor had actually come
up with a sound plan. I just wasn't sure if it would work, but it
was better than any of my non-existent ideas.

"Ok, let's try it." I put the mixture of blood
together, despite the fact that Tina seemed less than thrilled at
having to give up anymore of her own. I performed the ritual to
allow Vampire Dave to feel the need for blood and to drink enough
to sustain him. Throughout the process I kept praying to any gods
that would listen that it worked, because I really just wanted to
go home and crawl in bed. I was supposed to be leaving for New
Orleans in two weeks. I didn't want to end up dead before I got to
hug my Auntie Perrine again.

I handed the blood mixture to Vampire Dave and
practically had to force him to drink it. Once he did, he claimed
he felt better and that he would test it out for a couple days and
see how things went. He promised to be back for a visit should he
be unable to drink blood from anyone. I packed up my things and
left Tina's house without another word. She offered me a ride home
and I refused. Both Trevor and Stephen walked with me, neither of
them spoke, which was probably a good thing.

***

All The Fun is Gone

Two weeks went by in the blink of an eye. The
dread that had sunk into my chest about Vampire Dave returning had
finally begun to subside a bit. I was getting ready to head to New
Orleans to see my Auntie Perrine for the first time in a year. I
would be able to see and hug my old friends, to feel at home in the
hot and humid south of my youth. I was about to be back in the land
of the deep south, where Jazz and Blues music filters out of the
various establishments, and drinking sweet tea on your front porch
is a favored past time. While I wasn't in any hurry to jump back
into magic and voodoo, I was excited that Stephen would finally be
given the body and the normal life he longed for. And Trevor could
continue on without fear of being pulled back into his
body.

I was dropping the last of my shorts into my
suitcase when my mom walked in the room.

"I'm still not sure about letting you drive
down there by yourself."

"Momma, I won't be by myself, you know
that."

"Two ghosts don't exactly count as not being
by yourself, Seraphine."

"Which is exactly why I can't fly. I mean,
think how it will look if I accidentally answer them on the plane
ride there. Do you think I really need fighter jets escorting my
plane to an airport so I can be strip searched and tossed in a
loony bin because they think I'm crazy?" I hugged my mom to help
reassure her, "besides, I love to drive. I have my cell phone, I
will call and update you along the way, and if anything does
happen, the boys can pop right back to let you know so you can get
me help."

"I'm not changing my mind. I already said you
could go. I just worry, Seraphine! You're my only baby."

"I know momma, I'll be careful, I
promise!"

My mom gave me a little extra squeeze and got
ready to walk out of the room. "Roger and I are going to go grab a
pizza for dinner tonight and stop by to pick up some drinks and
thinks for you to take tomorrow. Any special requests?"

"Anything will be fine. Thanks."

"Okay, let me go try to pry him away from the
computer, he's having a blast chatting with the boys, now that they
can talk to him he doesn't feel so left out."

I looked at the clock, it was 8:30 pm already.
I promised I would be in bed by 10 since I wanted to leave so early
in the morning, but if my mom took too long getting the pizza, that
would never happen. I heard them leave and turned around to close
up my suitcase only to find Vampire Dave standing in front of my
window. I guess I screamed at some point because both Trevor and
Stephen were by my side instantly.