Forty-three
“It’s ringing!”
Edward clutched the phone and kept half an eye on Rachael, who was
just too cute for words in her little blue dress. With matching
shoes, even. Rachael could look good in a dress made from
Filet-O-Fish boxes. “It’s ringing. I’m gonna—hello?”
“Hello?”
“Uh, yeah, could I
speak to the queen of the vampires? Please,” he added. They probably see being polite as classy, not weak. Right?
Hmm. Better hope so.
“You’ve got
her.”
“Oh. Oh! You’re her?
I mean, it’s you?”
“It’s
me.”
“Well, listen good,
sweetheart!” He ignored Rachael’s groan. “I don’t know what
cataclysmic world-killing nefarious plan you have for taking over
the world now that I know you’re not secretly my girlfriend, but
I’m here to tell you it’s not gonna happen. I’m gonna make you
regret the first dark thought you ever thought! Had, I
mean!”
“Is this the host
from the Hastings Green Mill?” a pleasant contralto
asked.
“Uh,
no.”
“Satan,
then?”
“Really? You think I
could be Satan? My voice must be much
deeper and scarier than I thought.” It was wrong to find this
terrific fun, right? He never dreamed his voice could be confused
with the Lord of Lies.
“Satan is . . . uh .
. . yes, the person who is Satan can be very dark and scary, and
yes, you do sound a little bit like . . . like the person who is
Satan.”
This is getting weirder even faster than I thought it
would. “Does Satan honestly have your number?” he asked
breathlessly. This was the most interesting conversation he’d had
in months. “Satan? The Dark Prince himself, he calls you?”
For what? Nefarious
doings with the queen of the shambling eternally thirsty undead?
Playdates? To talk about which movie based on a Marvel superhero or
a Disney World ride they would go see together? What? Oh, he had to
find out! Actually, if the things he’d heard about the queen were
true, she’d probably tell him.
“Seriously, I think
that’s amazing. I know it’s not cool to own that, but I’ll admit
it: that is seriously cool.”
“What
is?”
“Satan having your
number. He’s got it, right? Don’t let this all be for nothing.
Don’t let me get my hopes up like that.”
The woman laughed.
“The landline, sure. Everybody’s got the landline.”
“So it’s true! This
is so typical. The bad guys always act like they’ve never read a
bestseller or seen a movie.”
“Bad guys? Now listen
here, mister, I’m not the bad guy!” The
pleasant contralto had a slight midwestern twang. Now was now-oo,
here was hee-er, bad was
bee-ed. Hilarious! “And I don’t
appreciate random phone calls from fellas who tell me I
am the bad guy.”
“Don’t get huffy. If
you don’t want random calls, don’t list your number in a nationally
mailed newsletter. Besides, you are the
queen of the vampires.”
“Okay, yeah, I’ve got
that going against me, but if you overlook that one little thing,
you’d see I’m a good guy. Oh . . . who is this,
anyway?”
“Listen, despicable
vampire queen—”
“Oh, now that’s just
rude.”
“Sorry,” he said,
immediately chastened. Meanwhile, Rachael had buried her head in
her hands and was moaning and rocking back and forth like someone
trying to find her happy place. He gave her a big smile and flashed
her a thumbs-up, but, weirdly, she wasn’t comforted. “It’s just, I
always had a feeling I’d meet you someday, or somebody like you, so
I kind of wrote the script for that meeting in my
head.”
“And I’m not
following your script?” she said, sounding like she was cheering
up.
“No, not at all,” he
soothed.
“Really?”
“Oh, we’re totally
beyond my script. Years beyond.”
“Well, okay then.”
Hmm, the queen of the vampires could turn a frown upside down in no
time. “No harm done. What’s your name again?”
“I’m Edward B—”
Rachael was making slashing-acrossthe-throat motions. Now she was
miming hanging up the phone. Now she was miming strangling him.
“Hey, it’s none of your business what my name is, Miss Nosy Parker
Vampire Queen! But I am gonna be
stopping by your lair with my hot new werewolf girlfriend, who
wants to return some shoes, and we wanted to show we’re civilized
by calling first. So we’re calling first. Bask in how civilized we
are. Go on. Bask!”
“Some shoes . . . is your hot new werewolf
girlfriend a medium-tall brunette? With big brown pansy eyes? And
kind of a permanent tight-ass expression until she
smiles?”
Wow. “Yeah, but it’s
more a serious expression than a tight-ass one. Like a sexy
librarian.”
“I pray she was
careful with them.”
“You pray? With what?” A rosary? Shyeah. A Bible?
Ha!
“The shoes! And I’m
praying for them, not with them. I’ve never even met you, but I can
already tell you’re incredibly weird. Are they okay? She didn’t
scuff them or step in dog shit or anything, did she?”
“How should I know?”
He covered the phone. “The vampire queen wants to know if the shoes
are okay.”
Rachael, who’d given
up with the slashing motions and just stood there listening with an
appalled look on her face, nodded. “Sure. They’re fine. I’ve barely
worn them. Just to here from her house. And now to her house from
here.”
“Hear that? The blue
thingies are safe and sound.”
“They’re not
thingies. Little boys have thingies. You probably have a
thingy.”
“Uh . . .” Out of
nowhere, the queen’s voice had gotten deep and scary.
“Those are Beverly
Feldman Bonvivant flats in navy blue.”
Little girl from
The Exorcist deep and scary.
“Okay.”
“With a satin
underlay!”
James Earl Jones deep
and scary. “Okay.”
“And a cushioned
footbed!”
“O-kay!” He ignored Rachael’s renewed gestures of
impending death. “My point was, they’re fine. In fact, we’re
bringing them right over, so just chillax.”
“Oh, Edward.” Like
magic—it was, probably!—the queen’s voice was back to the pleasant
contralto of earlier. “Nobody says chillax anymore.”
“Hey, when I need to
update my trends and pop culture refs, I’m not gonna check with a
vampire. For all I know, you think zoot suits are trendy and you
like to relax by doing the Charleston.”
“Voh-doh-dee-oh-doh,
baby.” She laughed. “We’re cranking up the blender at four. See
ya.”
He clicked off the
call and looked at Rachael. “She’s either super-evil or
super-cool.”
“Can’t she be both?”
Rachael rolled her eyes. “You realize after that surreal chat, I
have to take you. I’m sure she’ll have all kinds of questions.
Dammit!”
“Aw, c’mon. It’ll be
fun.”
Rachael had slipped
on the blue Beverly Feldman Bonvivant flats and now gave him a
look. “Fun? This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons, Edward. You could get
hurt. You could get dead.”
“What about
you?”
“They most likely
wouldn’t dare. They know my cousin sent me out here to keep an eye
on things. And they know who my cousin is.”
“Yeah, well, they
also know who my friend Boo is, so I’m just as well protected—or
poorly protected—as you are.”
“Careful, Edward.
That was almost clever.”
“Hey, I’m almost
clever lots of times. And now with my hot werewolf gal pal looking
out for me? Evil doesn’t stand a chance. Besides, if they kill us
in horrible grisly protracted ways, Boo will avenge us.” He snapped
his fingers. “She could be here any hour. If she got a flight out
this morning, she could be here any minute. That’s the other reason
I had to come with. I want to give Boo all the intel I
can.”
“And you want to give
me all the stomach ulcers you can. Come on.” She sighed and jerked
her head toward the door. “Do you want to walk to our horrible
grisly protracted deaths, or drive?”
“Walk. Let’s try to
keep our deaths as green as we can. Even in death, I try to watch
out for planet Earth.”
He could tell she
didn’t want to laugh but couldn’t help it. In fact, Rachael laughed
so hard she almost fell down on the porch. Which got him started.
What with one thing and another, their giggles didn’t dry up until
they were climbing the steps to the vampire’s lair.
If we end up mutilated and murdered, at least we could say
we had fun on the way over. It was weird that stuff like
that was important to him, right?