Greg, Give 'em the Deets

Book stuffed shelves – dusty and cobwebbed – lined every wall of the little library organized in what seemed to be no discernable pattern. Least none that I could identify. For Whom the Bell Tolls was on its side in front of Oh the Places You'll Go way at the top, and Jane Eyre was snug between a Barack Obama biography and a 1746 farmer's almanac on a low shelf. And when it seemed the mahogany couldn't hold any more, piles formed. 'Salem's Lot sat atop a four-foot-tall stack of what appeared to be every 1990s issue of Vogue.

A hideously chartreuse sofa sat smack in the middle of the scratched and faded wood floors. Original by the way they squeaked. Same goes for the drafty, shuttered windows. Odds and ends, bits and bobbles of other trinkets could be spotted throughout the room. A deer skull propped on the mantel piece. Pink salt lamp glowing softly on the floor. Phillies cap hanging off the corner of one shelf. A truly terrifying collection of miniature snow globes all depicting improbably snowy tropical beach scenes were scattered throughout the place.

Dmitri swished his cape. A century of faded and mismatching ticket stubs fluttered out of various nooks and crannies in the breeze.

"Hark, Gregorio! Gift me news—"

"Haven't found her yet."

"Arrrgh! Blast you!"

Dmitri flung himself over the back of the sofa, vanishing out of my view. Guess some would call that swooning. Just felt like another temper tantrum to me.

I sighed and spun the yellowed globe on the windowsill. Tiny twisters of dust swirled over northern Asia.

"Doesn't mean I haven't got any leads, old pal."

Dmitri's talons scraped the tufted upholstery as his head popped up over the carved crest rail. "Speak it!"

"My Liege, Lord of Darkness and Terror," without a knock the snake Julian entered the library, nearly tripping over the pile of books Dmitri knocked down as he dragged me into the room. Man saved the fall by turning it into a bow. "Your chalice."

"To Gregorio. Only the finest for my guests." Returning to his back on the sofa, Dmitri waved him off. "Where is his drink he brought, eh?"

"In the sunroom," said Julian, "with Sloane."

I gulped. Oh nelly. Bad enough leaving that woman to her own devices in this drag of a house but leaving her alone with Sloane was like leaving a cat alone with a canary. "Let me just grab—"

"Nay! Sloane knows better than to spoil another vampire's meal. First ye shall give me the deets," said Dmitri.

"Uh, the—"

"Details," drawled Julian. "He wants the details. Of your case. Here, you hold this."

He thrust the wine chalice into my hand, awkwardly shaking out his sleeve over the goblet, and holding my gaze so long I thought I may have accidentally enthralled him. I blinked and Julian just stared back, a sort of desperate, pleading look on his sniveling face. After only a second, he sighed, and dragged his feet to the fallen stack of Sears catalogues he stumbled over, gathering them up in a clumsy mess.

I held onto the heavy glass. Room was so full of junk I couldn't put it down if I wanted to. Gold and gleaming and I'll be damned. The thorny stem and crystal chalice matched the goblet Isla'd found in Lily's apartment. Bet a nickel they came from the same set.

What was different was the folded-up check at the bottom of this one.

Julian watched me fondle the glass. Fangs. Here I was thinking the worm wouldn't deliver on his bribe. One I didn't recall explicitly accepting.

An uncomfortable lump lodged in my throat. Tickling and pressing on my larynx. And pride. I'm a professional. I didn't throw cases. Or accept bribes. Or leave damsels in distress—ing amounts of debt. How, how old boy did you not see her struggling? The tip jar thieving. Stealing Lily's jewelry. She paid you in your own cash. Her apartment was a mess because somebody had tossed it. Some detective you are.

"Well?" wailed Dmitri. "Where is my Rosemond!"

Sigh. And Lily. Dmitri was a cretin to her, wasn't he? Starving himself certainly wasn't helping his attitude. Would it really be so bad to throw the case? Convince the old bat he's better off without and her just give up to spare the girl and for Isla—I bit my lip. For Isla to what? Continue to defraud tourists and Tourists? Get evicted in the middle of winter? Fend off werewolf debt collectors?

Obviously, dame was being pressured by the wolves to find the barista. A pawn. Trapped by her money troubles. If she had money to escape that trap... but that wasn't my problem.

I cleared my throat.

"Lily wasn't at home. You still fasting, D—" Julian glowered at me, "—my liege?"

Dmitri blew a white whisp of hair from his leathered face. "Saving myself for the feast of my own true love, whom I will turn into a shade of living night by my undying side. I can't possibly show to the event full."

"Maybe you should have just a little snack? Hold you over? Clear the brain fog?"

Julian craned his neck around a tower of Goosebumps paperbacks with several repeating titles.

"Rosemond insisted I save room for her peach—"

"Yeah," I choked, not wanting to hear another peep of that. "'bout Lily—how well you know this broad?"

Now squeezing Dune into a shelf beside what appeared to be a tattered Tigerfibel manual, Julian huffed.

"Ah, my dearest!" Dmitri sighed, pressing his hand over his heart as if floating on a cloud. Course he was actually levitating several feet above the floor at this point, that ridiculous cape snagging on his sofa's claw foot. "Hair sweet and red as a blooming rose. Skin soft as its dewy petals. Her voice – oh! What a sound! Like a lark mourning in the night! There," he extended a gnarled finger over his head, pointing to a weathered looking array of needlepoints. I cringed. The once boldly colored threads depicted various insects in disgusting and impressive detail. One of a drab green and gray moth was unfinished, missing a wing. "Her artistry. So gentle with her woman's hobby. Oh, and the way she danced naked, bathed in the cold glow of the solstice moonlight, bespelling the crops of her village on the eve of harvest...

"Ah! And Gregorio! When she was clothed, she wore the most scandalously low collared gowns."

The old vamp held a hand at the middle of his neck and winked.

"That sounds all fine and dandy, but I asked about Lily."

Dmitri released a breathy sigh, staring all misty eyed into a faraway corner of the room "Her soul sang to me, and I recognized her in the instant. Macarena was the song, I believe, to which she danced. I would know the sway of her body to the music and the moonlight in any lifetime. And also her tits. Fantastic tits."

A memory of Isla's chest heaving beneath her robe as we kissed crawled up my veins. The rich taste of wine flooded my tongue. "I don't need to know that—"

"She longs for the adventure her past death robbed from her, you see," the vamp's voice became heavy and thick. A twang of longing ringing through him. He scratched at the tiny surfboards engulfed in a blizzard behind the glass of a snow globe. Soothing as nails on a chalkboard. "The seaside is her favorite place. The boards of walking and puffed sugar and the sweet flavors of Sir Softee's creamed ice."

Come off it, Dmitri, you know what ice cream is, you twit.

"Pity, she'd say, that I could not enjoy these sunshiny glories by her side. But she would take me, she forswore it. She and I only, we'd escape the city. Twas our secret. Once we became united in unholy bloodletting we would abscond in the night to wreak havoc and atrocities upon the unsuspecting mortals of down the shore. Ah, why don't you laugh with me Gregorio? My lovely always laughs with delight at this summer holiday plan we share."

"You're forgetting something about her."

"That thing with her nipples—"

"I mean that she was dancer at your club." I said, pinching my nose and trying not to imagine Isla noting that Dmitri wasn't wildly off base with the nipples thing. "I know about that. Know her specialty was making old goats—ah, respectable vamps like yourself, believe she was somebody they used to know. Ever think the vanishing routine was just act two of her performance?"

"What say you, Gregorio?"

"What I'm saying is she played you like a chump. All this soul singing and beach fantasies are a scam. She took your cash and your gifts," I waved the goblet, "and ran."

Dmitri swooped in before I could escape, clasping a bony arm around my shoulders and suffocating me in his fetid breaths. "She was a maid. A simple village girl, in her first life, my dear Rosemond. Simple but brave, to stride willingly and defiantly in my castle, into my service. It was her will, so strong and bold that I most admire of her. What drew me to her as nectar seduces the bee.

"She has not found that same bravery yet in this life," he continued. "This century has made her soul small and soft. Stolen from her the same defiance in which I have endlessly loved, that I have promised my sweet flower I shall return to her with one kiss."

A black, tar-ish tear oozed from Dmitri's eye. He flicked it away with a sharpened nail. With that, the old vamp's whole body sagged. Thought he was about to crumple inward to dust, to be straight. A sadness had gotten a snag on his ego and squeezed as hard as the loon seemed to squeeze my bones every fanging time.

But, got to admit, it was hard not to feel sorry for the old bat right then. Lily'd really sunk into him. Deeper than fangs.

Julian feigned sympathy and offered his master a crusty hanky he pulled from the pages of a Sylvia Plath poetry collection.

"She quit the club when I confessed that my hollowed husk recognized the radiance in her own soul. Could not bear the notion that she may hath deceived me with her play acting," the older vampire chortled. "But alas, how she wept with joy when I tracked her to the Brewing Beans and swore my oath to return her to her former splendor. She did not ask me for trinkets or gold or bittycoins—"

Julian cleared his throat. "Bitcoin, my Liege."

We ignored him.

"M'lady only pleaded that I give her time to, as she hath said, unpack and process before defining this relationship—which I have because I am a gentleman, obviously! Yet, ye hack, you come into my house tell me that she was false?"

Even as Dmitri said it, a twisting stab in my gut knew it didn't all add up. Look at the facts. Yeah, she might have been a scammer, probably two timing many rich vamps for extra cash, but she was still missing. She vanished from him. From two jobs. From her apartment. Her bloody apartment, with a broken partner to this chalice, seems to have gotten that way on the same night Julian made an appearance at her door. The blood. All that blood in the tub and then Taylor's blood as she smashed onto the patio of a bar Dmitri's current wife's looking to buy out from under the wolves for what, no reason at all?

"Is this what say you, Gregorio? That my love, what, just peaced out so suddenly she would not even say goodbye to the man who swore to protect and cherish her bay."

"Bay?"

"Before anything else," said Julian. "Is what My Liege, Lord of Darkness and Terror, means. You're, uh, still not quite using it right, Master."

Dmitri hissed and squeezed. The bones in my shoulders crunched and I gritted my teeth just before the loon popped my head off like a champagne cork. But in an instant his grip loosened. Dmitri released me and turned on his valet, snarling softly.

Julian lowered Coraline to cover his groin.

"Then," the vamp scrunched his frail looking nose, "how does one say it?"

"It's, uh, a noun. So, you would call Rosemond your bae. Like she is your before anything else."

"That makes no grammatical sense!" Dmitri scratched his chin. A bit of skin flaked off onto my jacket. Holding back a gag, I brushed it aside. "Fine then. Rosemond is my bae."

"But were you hers?"

Dmitri faltered. "Come again?"

"According to another gal at your club, a now dead gal, Lily had a boyfriend," I tucked the wine glass under my arm, licked a finger, and flipped through my notebook to Taylor's confessions. "Said her and Lily used to joke that your truest love needed cash for some 'grand beach vacation.' Seems like you weren't the only one she sweettalked about that trip."

In large, scribbled letters beneath Taylor's statement I noted: Lily scared. Fighting w/ boyfriend? 'change of heart.'

I snapped the book shut in one hand. Isla was scared too. Of the wolves. Her pulse practically did the Charleston in her throat at the very mention of the Pack. Julian's check better clear by sundown tomorrow or I might just rip a hole in his palm to shove more than a wad of paper through.

"Like I said, I've been to Lily's apartment. Sure looked like she left in a hurry," I faked a shrug in order to slip out from Dmitri's attempt to smother me again. "Two of these beauties didn't make it into her luggage. Looked like she'd been using them though. Both of them. Her and guest shared a bottle of wine..." sometime before one of these glasses would up shattered in the bin and her bathtub got bloodied.

I dangled the thorny chalice in front of the vamp. Julian jerked forward. His pulse spiked. Color leached from his cheeks. The terror in him that I might reveal our scheme painfully obvious to any vampire with ears. But with sleight of hand (better than his earlier demonstration of it) I'd already tucked the bribe away into my pocket.

Dmitri's jaw trembled. "But we—I have never been to her home, she has not—"

"Not ever invited you?" I clicked my tongue. "That's rough. Wonder who she was with then, don't you, Julian?"

Julian refused to look me in the eye and instead dabbed the ooze directly from Dmitri's cheeks with his hanky. He was there that night. Before or after the bloody towels, you snake... no, drop it. Let it go, old boy. Take the money. Spare the girl. Pay Isla's debts with a shady bribe. Watch her blush. Feel the heat rise on her skin. Hear her heartbeat in fast, happy pops. Let her mint and orange and coffee and smokey scent overpower me while I stroked her hair curled at her throat, her legs spread on silk sheets as she begged me to sink deeper than fangs into her—

"No, Gregorio, she had no other in her heart." Dmitri sniffled, "I—I would know it."

Sweet hell. I shook my head. When did I let myself get so distracted?

"There, there, my Liege. It's not your fault," over his master's bowed head, Julian rolled his eyes, but his tone remained offensively patronizing. "I tried to protect you from her, but still, she used you. Remember I told you she had me drive her out to Gray's Ferry once?"

"She does not live in that human slum!"

"Master, I didn't want to tell you, to upset you so, but, uh, I think that may have been her boyfriend, her real boyfriend's house."

"But our souls. They sang!"

I shrugged, still shaking the image of Isla's bedroom out from under my eyelids. "We don't have souls anymore, pal."

"Which is a blessing!" Julian chimed.

My ears stung. Pain hot and venomous. Like a swarm of bees buzzing, pricking, needling their way through my lobes into my skull. Dmitri felt it too. We both hissed – an instinct, not proud of it – from the sting. Damn religious mumbo jumbo. I levitated out the reach of Julian's righteous breath, pressing myself against the window. Dmitri skittered under the sofa like a spider, swiping his claws at his valet's feet.

"Sorry! I'm so sorry, my Liege!" Julian hopped to avoid having his Achilles eviscerated. "I only mean that your gift, your, your power, the eternal life. It's a miracle to rival those of heaven!"

The burning in my ear canal intensified, muffling Julian's voice, and again we vamps in the room hissed, spit flinging from distended fangs. Stupid reflexes.

Beneath the sofa Dmitri rumbled. A puddle of drool was forming, flowing out from under the furniture in a little river. Red eyes glowed like angry, hot embers.

A gleeful glint appeared in Julian's brown eyes. He grinned, loosening his wide tie, (pants twitching). "We both know she's undeserving of the gift of eternal life! You should bestow that upon someone more deserving. Someone who would appreciate it. Someone like—"

"Hey, fuckwads," Sloane said from the doorway.

Her presence chilled the library. Julian froze mid unbuttoning his shirt. From under the sofa, Dmitri poked out his head, eyes returning to their natural shade, drooling fangs retracting. I slid down the wall, plopping back onto my feet, frankly embarrassed at being caught in such a scene.

Several feet behind Sloane, stood Isla, shivering. Her cheeks were clearly flushed. A new tear had appeared in her stockings. I resisted an unwelcome urge to run over and smooth her now wild and tangled hair.

"Get out here," said Sloane. The collection of bones cradled between her arms rattled. ... Bones? "We're having a séance."