Chicks Kick Butt

VAMPIRES PREFER BLONDES P. N. Elrod

WATERVIEW, MICHIGAN, AUGUST 1937

My weeklong singing engagement at the Classic Club was over, and my hard-earned pay was safe in a grouch bag hanging from my neck. All I had to do was trade my stage gown for a traveling suit, then get to the station to catch the milk train heading home to Chicago.

I was just dropping on a slip when my dressing room door crashed opened.

Being a damned pretty girl with a head of carefully tended platinum blond hair, guys “accidentally” blundering in on me has been a common occurrence since my first night onstage. As the star of this week’s show I had the luxury of a private room, kept locked against such interruptions. This door’s hook-and-eye latch was enough to discourage the casually curious, but not a meaty shoulder banging against it with serious force.

The latch snapped, one piece flying across to ding against the lighted mirror. I yanked the slip down and swung to face the invader, thinking it was a thief after my money. I put one hand in my open purse on the dressing table, fingers slipping around the grip of the .38 Colt Detective Special inside.

Four men crowded the opening, staring. I don’t mind when I’m onstage, but this was my sanctuary. Had they burst in two seconds sooner we’d have been arrested by the vice cops.

“What?” I snapped, ready to fight. Just how drunk were they, how had they gotten past the bouncers, and how much belligerence would be required to get rid of them?

The closest was the biggest and apparently the muscle behind the breaking-in. He was unshaved; his clothing was seedy; his eyes were puffy, bloodshot, and oddly calm. The others were similarly unshaved and red-eyed, but one was in a new suit and looked like a respectable banker, another wore brown pants and a blue coat over just an undershirt, and the third was fully dressed but had no shoes, just filthy wet socks.

Collectively an alarming sight, but my intuition said to stand my ground and act tough.

“What is it?” I demanded, prepared to cut loose with a healthy scream if they made a move. I could shoot, but preferred having the club’s bouncers deal with this … whatever it was.

The banker said in a flat voice, “She’s not the one.”

No-Shoes said, “She’s blond, it’s the right hair.”

“She’s not the one,” the banker repeated. He had something in one hand that might have been a photograph and held it up for the others. Sluggishly, they looked at it, then back at me, while the skin on the back of my neck went tight and cold. Whatever was wrong with them was an unnatural kind of wrong, yet weirdly familiar.

“She’s not the one,” they finally agreed in identical flat voices, then turned and went down the backstage hall to the next door along.

Same operation: Seedy Guy forced the door open, and they looked inside.

The other headliner, a ventriloquist, was surprised as hell and more talkative, angrily asking questions, getting no answers.

“Not a girl,” said the perceptive banker. This time they didn’t check the photo.

I’d tiptoed over to watch, ready to duck, but none of them paid me further notice. I was shaking, fuming, and scared as I tore down the hall yelling for the stage manager and anyone else handy.

A couple bouncers appeared, offering friendly leers, since I was wearing just a slip, but they shot past to earn their keep when shrieks started up in the chorus girls’ dressing room.

The strange invaders had a bad time of it because I didn’t stop raising the roof until they were outnumbered by club employees three to one. Half measures are silly in some situations.

The backstage area was quickly packed with struggling bodies, punches were thrown and caught, clothes ripped. The confined area heard thumpings, glass breaking, men cursing, and girls squealing for what seemed like an hour, but was probably less than a minute. The bouncers knew their business and appeared to be enjoying the exercise. The four men made a good effort to defend themselves, though they moved like players who had overrehearsed and lost their spark.

But if you’re going to have a fight, this was the best kind: brief, brutal, and with the home team victorious.

The men got the bum’s rush. The bouncers and a few other guys who had joined the battle carried things to the back alley, and probably would have rolled into the street, but the club manager stopped them.

“No trouble with the law!” he bellowed, which halted the diehards. It was an advantage to any business not to have police cars roaring up and down the block, scaring off customers. The Classic Club, with illegal gambling in the basement, was particularly considerate of the feelings of its patrons.

The manager stormed into the backstage hall, scowling at the chorus girls who had cautiously emerged from their lair. “All right—who started it?”

With five of them in various stages of dress, undress, outrage, and agitation, he should have known better. They all started talking at once.

He should also have counted. Last I looked there were six girls in the line. While he tried to make sense of simultaneous stories, I eased into the dressing room.

It was like mine, drafty and poorly lighted, but with a lot more stuff confined to roughly the same space. A clothing rack took up the wall behind the door, near to collapse with gaudy taffeta, spangles, and feathers. Onstage the outfits were magical; here they were musty with sweat, sagging, sad—and twitching.

I shoved aside still-warm costumes. Katie Burnell, the sixth girl, crouched behind them, tying a scarf around her head. She gaped up at me in sheer terror for a startled second, then wilted with relief. Her exaggerated makeup had been spoiled by flowing tears. Black trails from her too-thick mascara cut through the supposedly waterproof pancake and greasepaint. She was a mess, a scared-out-of-her-mind mess.

“Those guys are gone, but the boss is hopping mad,” I said. “Stay here a minute.”

She gulped and nodded.

I returned to the hall. The manager—who really wasn’t a bad sort, just upset—had worked out that none of the girls knew any of the guys.

“So they wasn’t nobody’s boyfriends?” he asked, his eyes sharp for the least hint of a lie. Male visitors were not allowed in this part of the club, only stage talent and other employees.

“Oh, please,” said Big Maggie, who wasn’t big, except for her loud, fluting voice. “I can do better than those mugs. Ask me if I can do better.”

He declined the invitation. “You girls never seen ’em before?”

“They weren’t in the audience,” I said from the back. “They were dressed too strange.” On weekends the Classic Club was a high-hat joint. Patrons had to put on the Ritz or find some other place for drinks and a show come Saturday night.

The other girls supported my observation, nodding, agreeing, and comparing notes now that the excitement had died down.

The manager turned toward the bouncers and guys who’d found an excuse to continue loitering at their end of the hall. You’d think they’d be used to seeing half-dressed females, but apparently not. The ventriloquist and even his dummy had come out for a gander.

The manager gave someone hell about the back door being unlocked, but it was like holding back winter: people were always leaving it open after sneaking outside for a smoke.

I kept my lips together about the men looking for a blonde like me. Katie Burnell had dark hair, but it was a recent and poorly done bottle job. No woman goes from traffic-stopping platinum to a mousy shade of brunette without a good reason.

“Break this up and get back to work,” said the manager. “No need to call the law if no one’s hurt.”

“I broke a nail,” Big Maggie informed him, showing her left ring finger, the rest of her digits in a loose fist. She was too much a lady to use her middle finger, which made the gesture all the more amusing to everyone but the boss.

He grumbled about smart alecks as the girls went back to their room. His gaze fell on me as the guys whistled and hooted appreciation. I straightened, having bent over to pick up some trash. The only thing covering my behind was the pale satin slip. They’d focused on that, not on what I’d snagged from the floor and held behind my back.

“You know anything about those mugs, Bobbi?”

“Nope,” I answered truthfully. “They broke in on me, looked like trouble, so I thought I better yell.”

“You thought right.” He turned to make waving motions to my admirers. “Awright, you cake eaters, show’s over. Walk around the building. Make sure those crashers don’t come back. Discourage ’em if they do, but don’t get caught.”

Though the men were worse for wear with blackening eyes and cut lips, they brightened at the possibility of another donnybrook.

“Has this happened before?” I asked as the troops moved off.

He shook his head.

“Maybe at another club?”

That got me a suspicious squint. “What do you know?”

“Nothing, it just seemed a good bet.”

He snorted. “Next time play the horses.”

“What happened at the other place?”

“Same as here. Four bums bust into the dressing rooms, only they left before they could be thrown out. My brother runs the Golden Rose and called about it. I better phone him back. This is an epidemic.”

“What about the other clubs in town?”

“This is Waterview, not Cheboygan. The only entertainment is this place, the other place, a movie house, and a skating rink. Oh, yeah, the barbershop got in a Whiffle Board. If it wasn’t for that colony of swells from Mackinac Island supportin’ our slot machines, we’d be kissing cousins with a Hooverville.”

“Bet it boomed during Prohibition.”

“Nah, the rumrunners from Canada went to the next town over. Faster boats. You sure you don’t know nothing?”

“I wish I didn’t know this much.”

“You an’ me both, sister.” He moved off, scowl intact. I checked on the girls. Their door leaned crazily on one hinge. Big Maggie stood guard while the rest finished changing. Everyone talked a mile a minute, but subsided when they noticed me.

“What’s goin’ on?” Maggie asked, buttoning her dress.

“Boss thinks it was drunks after a free show. They tried the same thing at another club.”

“Huh. Creeps.”

“Men,” said another girl knowingly.

“Men-creeps,” agreed a third.

“Damn,” said a fourth, reacting to a run in the stocking she’d been pulling on.

“Where’s Katie?” I asked, my heart sinking. Enough costumes had been shifted from the rack to show she was no longer there.

“Washroom.”

I crossed to it, knocked, and called before pushing in. The window was wide, the room empty. The alley outside was also empty. Katie had made a clean escape.

Well, I’d intended to offer help.

I looked at the item I’d plucked from the floor. It was the photo the banker type had carried. Though crinkled with abuse, the image was clear, showing a much younger Katie Burnell. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen at the time.

It was a bridal portrait; she was radiant, smiling, and had platinum blond hair.

The cardboard back bore the stamped-on address of a photography studio in Sheldon, Ohio. An elegant copperplate hand had written on the white space under the photo: Mrs. Ethan Duvert on the Day of Her Wedding . The date was under it.

The picture was less than a month old.

Good God, what was she doing to herself? The heavy makeup she always wore made her look years older. She’d also been scared . That could pile on the years.

“Hey, you done in there? I gotta go.” One of the girls slipped by.

I went to my dressing room, donned my traveling suit, and arranged to get my trunk hauled to the train station. It wasn’t a big trunk, not like the one my boyfriend sometimes sleeps in, but I’d checked inside in case Katie had gotten a bright idea. My clothes were there, but no runaway bride. I’d seen too many movies.

Yes … that is correct. My boyfriend sleeps in a trunk. During the day. But only sometimes .

I’ll get back to him shortly.

One of the guys drove me and the trunk to the train station two blocks away. He offered to stay, but the stationmaster and a porter were there, and I had my .38. It made my purse heavy, but I didn’t mind. I was safe enough. Those badly dressed creepy guys weren’t looking for me, after all.

The porter took care of the trunk, the stationmaster took care of my ticket. It was three in the morning in Waterview, Michigan, and I had nothing to do for the next three hours, which was exactly perfect. I parked on one of the long benches and pulled an apple and a movie magazine from my purse. Both gave me something to do while I thought about Katie Burnell and whether there was still some way to find her.

I wanted to know what had her so scared, why those guys were after her, and to help if I could. I could call a cop, but if this was the kind a problem the law could solve, wouldn’t she have already gone to them? Maybe she was at the police station even now.

She was a good dancer, keeping pace with the others, never missing a cue, smiling when required, but quiet. Not that she was snobbish, more like she wanted to be invisible. Some girls were like that, able to perform onstage, but shy the rest of the time.

Katie kept to herself and the hotel room she shared with two of the girls. I’d stayed at the same place and gotten to know everyone. Some headliners don’t mix with the chorus, but not me. They always know the best gossip. Show a little respect and you’ve got friends for life.

Last Friday Katie had turned down going to the matinee showing of a Clark Gable picture with us, even after I said the tickets and popcorn were my treat. The girls and I had a great time, but no one wondered much about Katie. For that I felt a touch of guilt, but how was I to know scary lugs were looking for her?

A tall young man marched purposefully into the station. He was shaved, dressed well, and alert, which was wrong for the hour. Early risers and nighthawks were never so brisk at three in the morning. I decided to ignore him and hope he’d not notice me. Fat chance of that, since I was the only other person there.

He went to the stationmaster’s window, rumbled a question, got a head shake in reply. He repeated things with the porter, and then it was my turn. It would have been silly to continue to ignore him, so I put the magazine aside, but not the apple.

Damned good-looking fellow, I thought as he approached and touched his hat. His features were as lean and sharp as his tailored suit; his beautiful dark eyes were impossible to ignore.

“I’m sorry to bother you, miss, but have you seen this lady?”

He tipped a fresh, uncrinkled copy of Katie’s wedding picture toward me.

I’d taken a big bite of apple and put on my dumbest face, speaking with my mouth full. “Ain’t she that actress?” I asked indistinctly, an apple crumb and juice slipping down my chin. I’d not planned it, but felt proud of the effect, swiping it away with one finger. “That one from the new Clark Gable movie?”

His face tightened with effort to ignore my lack of eating finesse. “No, her name is Katherine Duvert. She’s my sister.”

And I was Minnie Mouse. Katie’s skin was pale as a Swede’s in winter; his was a Mediterranean olive tone. Her eyes were a transparent gray, his were nearly black. Different brows, chins, noses—neither of them had any relatives in common unless it went back to Roman times.

He wore a gold wedding band. I’d noticed it when he held the picture. It glinted, new and shiny, in the dim station lights.

I pegged him as the jilted husband, so why sell himself as her brother?

I hate liars. If Katie wanted to run away from this pretty boy, then she must have a good reason. “No, I ain’t seen her. I’d have remembered another blonde. We stick together, y’know.” I fingered some of the hair not covered by my hat, smiling like a cheap flirt, certain there were apple bits sticking to my gums.

Something flickered behind his eyes. Distaste and disbelief. He’d not bought my act. I couldn’t blame him, having laid it on too thick. If I ever got to Hollywood, I would definitely need an acting coach.

Then something flickered inside me, a twinge of unease that this guy was eerily familiar. I was certain we’d never met. I would have remembered someone so striking. He had not been in the audience back at the Classic Club or he’d have come backstage himself instead of those four guys.

“I was wondering—” he began hesitantly, unsure and apologetic, which was also an act. This was a guy who was supremely confident every day of the week. He must have thought hiding it would make people more willing to help him out.

I don’t like manipulators any more than liars, but smiled encouragingly. “What?”

“Would you mind terribly checking the ladies’ lounge for me? I’d do it but—” He made a small motion with his long fingers to indicate the necessity for female help given the circumstances.

“Yeah, sure, I guess so.”

He stepped back, not crowding me as I stood. By then I’d come up with a reason why he posed as a brother, not husband. People might side with a runaway bride, and not help a deserted groom on the chance that he could be a wife beater, but a worried brother was someone else again.

He stayed put as I went to the door and looked in.

Lounge was a grand overstatement: three stalls, drab paint, drab tile floor, wire-meshed window—one of the half-open stall doors moved ever so slightly. “Sorry, mister, nobody’s home.”

He looked at me a few heartbeats too long for comfort, his face somber. “I see. Thank you.” Then he remembered to smile, and the look in his eyes just then made my tummy flip over in a bad way. He left the station.

I let my breath out fast, feeling shaky. That mug was a hundred times creepier than the four crashers, and I’d figured out why.

He was like my trunk-sleeping boyfriend. Not like him, because Jack is a sweet, wonderful guy and never gives people the creeps unless they truly deserve it.

This one was like my Jack in a way that made my .38 with its ordinary lead bullets useless. I cast around for a reasonable substitute: anything made of wood, preferably with a point. The porter’s broom and dustpan were propped in one corner by a trash can. The broom handle had potential, but why couldn’t he have left a spear or baseball bat lying around?

I dropped my apple in the trash, grabbed the broom, and went into the lounge.

“Katie, it’s Bobbi Smythe from the nightclub. I can help, if you’ll let me.”

A soft sob came from the middle stall. I gave her a moment, then looked in. She stood unsteadily on the toilet seat, doubled over with her head below the divider. She clutched a small suitcase in both hands, which hindered her balance. Now she looked very young indeed.

“He’s gone for the moment.”

“He?” she whispered, shivering head to toe. I’d never seen a face more lost or lacking in hope.

“I assume you’re trying to avoid a handsome young husband?”

She came down so fast I had to catch her, and then I had to keep her from tearing out in sheer panic.

“Slow down, girl, you’ll run right into him. Let me help you.”

Katie shrank from my touch until stopped by one of the sinks. “You can’t, you don’t know what he can do.”

“Tell me later. First we get you out of here.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Actually, I do, a lot more than you’d think. Trust me a minute, would ya?”

While she thought that over I figured out how to improve my new weapon.

Under the window was a cast-iron radiator, bolted to the floor and tall enough to give me leverage. I forced the brush end of the broom into the narrow space between the radiator and wall, jamming it far enough in so that it wouldn’t twist or slip free. The handle lay at a steep angle on top, resting between two of the accordionlike columns.

It took two good tries, yanking down with all my weight, to break it. I had four feet of pine dowel that might pass as a walking stick if no one looked too close. No point on the end, but more useful than a .38.

Next, I planned to get the window open and sneak us out, but plans change.

Something was coming in that way.

The window was shut, but a nebulous gray shape was impossibly pushing right through the glass and wire mesh like smoke through a screen door. For a second I was fascinated by the sight, but then my heart jumped to my throat. Once it got inside—

Young Katie put a fist to her mouth as she stared, able to see it, too. She froze in place, eyes popping as the grayness thickened and took on definition. A man’s tallish shape began to materialize two feet in front of her, his arms spread wide, ready to grab her.

I scampered behind him, too scared to worry about consequences.

The instant he was fully solid, I swung and slammed the broomstick into the side of his head as hard as I could. The temple bones are thin there, more easily broken if hit with enough force.

The shock of impact twanged painfully up both arms. It was like hitting a metal flagpole. Only this pole had some give to it. Not much, but the wood in my hands made all the difference.

It was terrifying how fast he dropped, making a thud as his body hit the tile.

Katie stifled a scream, staring down in horror, not breathing.

He wasn’t breathing, either, but that didn’t bother me. I hadn’t killed him, being far too late for it. Goodness knows when that had originally happened or how.

I went to Katie and made her look at me. “He’s out for the count. Wood does that to his kind. You’re okay.”

She shook her head. “He’ll come back. I’ve seen it.”

“I bet you have, kid. Splash water on your face.”

While she pulled herself together I went through the guy’s pockets. My boyfriend and his partner do private detecting work, and I’d picked up some useful bad habits to add to a few of my own.

An ancient, long-expired driver’s license identified him as Ethan Duvert. No surprise.

I was shocked at the thick wad of money casually folded into one pocket. The bills were twenties with half an inch of crisp C-notes keeping them company. I’d bet it had come to him the easy way; he’d have floated invisibly into a bank vault and taken it, leaving some hapless accountant to try to explain the loss. I put the money in my purse for safekeeping. Honest. I’d find a way to give it back somehow.

Then—a policeman’s badge, a real one.

I nearly had a heart attack. If my boyfriend could be a private eye, then there was no reason why Duvert couldn’t be a cop, and I’d just clobbered him. Oh, God, I’d gotten everything wrong. …

“It’s something he uses,” said Katie, drying her face. “He made our chief of police give it to him to get out of tickets.”

It also gave him instant legitimacy with any cop between here and … “Sheldon, Ohio?” I read from the badge.

“My hometown. Used to be. Before he came.” Her face started to crumble and she hiccuped like a toy machine gun.

I knew the signs and stood, hands on my hips. “Hold it, sister,” I ordered in my harshest tone.

That derailed her. She gulped back a sob.

“Listen up, you can bawl like a baby later, but I need you to be a grown woman for the next three hours. Can you do that?”

She hiccuped again, but nodded. “Three hours?”

“The sun will be up by then.”

Katie looked like I’d smacked her with a wet fish. “How do you know ?”

“You first. Sheldon, Ohio—your family’s there?”

“Everyone is. It’s small, but we have a Carnegie library and there’s a private college on the other side of … oh, that doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me what does. Tell me about him .” I didn’t have to point at the body.

“He came to town last spring. He seemed to be everywhere. Everybody liked him. They’d just look at him and like him. First he was at the mayor’s house, then with the chief of police, then the minister, then my parents. My father’s a judge, and he and all the men who run the town know each other, and Ethan met them all.”

“And they liked him. No one thought that was strange?”

“If they did, he’d hear about it, then he’d meet them and change their minds.”

“I bet he did. How did you meet him?”

“I was at the movies with my friends, and that was when he noticed me. We’d seen him with our parents, and he was so handsome, all us girls had crushes on him, even the ones with boyfriends. He started coming by the house to see me and I was so excited that he’d picked me from so many others. At first Father and Mother thought he was too old for me, but he talked with them … and things changed. My parents started agreeing to ideas they’d never think of in a hundred years.”

“Like what?”

She swatted at her hair. “This.”

“You used to be blond like me.”

“I was already blond, but it was…” Her cheeks went red.

“A more natural color?” I said helpfully.

She nodded, relieved. “ He wanted it like yours. One day my mother took me to the town beauty shop and told them what to do.”

“You didn’t have a say?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know why I didn’t fuss. I wasn’t even surprised when Mother did that. She and I acted like it was the most normal thing in the world for me to get my hair bleached out like Jean Harlow.”

Maybe that was normal in Hollywood with a stage-obsessed mother looking to land her willing daughter a part in the movies, but not for a judge’s respectable wife and daughter in a small town in Ohio. “Anyone tease you at school about it?” Schoolgirls who dyed their hair were “fast” and instant outcasts. I should know.

“I stopped going. My parents didn’t mind, the principal and teachers didn’t mind— I didn’t mind.”

“Down deep you must have.”

“It wasn’t important. There was just Ethan. My whole life was for him … and it was wonderful. Absolutely perfect . I’d never been so happy. Every day I just loved him more and more and more. He had clothes sent to me—grown-up gowns from New York, real silk stockings, real gold jewelry. He—”

“I get it. Then he proposed?”

“It’s a blur now, like a dream. A wedding gown arrived, and I was fitted for a trousseau.”

“He had pictures taken.” I showed her the one I’d recovered.

“I look so happy, but it’s wrong. It has to be, the way I feel now.”

“You married him.”

“ He married me, ” she said sharply.

That anger was sweet to hear. Anger was good for her. She’d earned the right.

“My own father performed the wedding on my sixteenth birthday. But I was always going to marry George Coopley from across the street. We’ve been going steady since ninth grade. First I’d go to that private college and come back and be a teacher, and George was going to work in his dad’s bank, and it was like everyone forgot, even George. He was the one who gave me away to Ethan.”

I looked down at the still form of Ethan Duvert. Words clogged my throat, most not fit for Katie’s ears. I needed release, so I smacked him in the gut with the broomstick. I hoped he felt it.

Katie gasped at the violence. I didn’t apologize.

“He had it coming,” I said, debating whether to hit him a third time.

Her face twitched. It might have been a smile trying to break through her misery.

That was encouraging. “So you were married and living happily ever after in Sheldon, Ohio?”

“In the mayor’s house. It’s the biggest in town and the best. He moved his family to that horrible old drummers’ hotel by the tracks. Ethan said that was funny and everyone laughed.”

“Including the mayor?”

“More than anyone else. Did everybody go crazy?”

“No. They were hypnotized. You, too.”

“But—”

“Think about it. Ethan looks everyone square in the eye and next thing you know he’s running the whole town—except for drunks and the crazy people, and they didn’t matter. Right?”

“Were you there?”

“No. But I know what he is.” I started to say how, then thought better of it. If I told her about my boyfriend she’d lose confidence and assume I was another hypnotized victim. That kind of work gave my Jack a nasty headache, so he avoided using it. Duvert must have thought the pain worth it if the result allowed him to own a whole town and everyone in it. “So do you.”

She stared at Duvert, then at me, and whispered, “He’s a vampire.”

“More than that, he’s a dirty, low-down, manipulative, thieving bastard.”

“Thieving?”

“He stole your town, didn’t he? Not to mention your life.”

“More.” Her eyes glittered as fresh tears formed. She touched her throat. “He … fed from me.”

I couldn’t see the marks. They tended to fade fast and not leave scars. “Did he make you feed from him in turn?” It had to be asked.

She couldn’t speak, nodding instead.

“I bet it felt good, though.” I knew that from my own experience with Jack. It was always intense for us, but even more so when he and I … well .

Katie blushed to her now-dark roots. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“Don’t let it bother you, honey, it’s what he arranged, like it or not. He got your body to do what it’s made for. It’s completely different when you do things with the right guy, one who doesn’t have to hypnotize a girl into loving him.”

Oh, boy, was it ever different.

But that part aside, my having Jack’s blood in me enabled me to see Duvert sieving through a closed window. Whenever Jack pulled his vanishing act I could follow his otherwise invisible movements while others could not. It was spooky, but he was my man, and some guys had worse habits. There was another advantage, too.

“Be glad he did it,” I said. “ That was Ethan’s big mistake.”

“What do you mean?”

“Once his blood was in you it gave you immunity from his hypnosis. He couldn’t control you that way anymore. He must not have known.” Vampires don’t wake up dead knowing all the ropes about the condition. They’re only as good as their teacher—if he or she bothered to say anything. Jack was still learning.

“It was like waking up,” said Katie, “but I was alone. The only one awake in a town of sleepwalkers. No one else … I couldn’t talk to anybody, not even my mother. She’d have told him.”

“Don’t blame them. It’s his fault.”

“I do blame them. Why didn’t they wake up? ”

I reminded myself she was barely sixteen and feeling betrayed by those who were supposed to protect her. “Is that when you ran away?”

“First thing in the morning. I got a bus to Cleveland, then Toledo, then I ran out of money and had to do something. The only job I could get that paid right away and kept me moving was chorus-line work. I had tap classes when I was in school. I lied about my age, and Big Maggie and the others looked after me, but I couldn’t tell them anything or they’d think I’d lost my mind.”

“You’re awful darned lucky, kiddo.”

“Lucky?”

“That you fell in with Big Maggie and not white slavers.”

“What are those?”

“Never you mind. Who are those guys who came to the club? Did you see them?”

“The man in the suit is the mayor. I don’t know the others, but they’ll be from Sheldon. After I left, that picture of me, and a reward offer, appeared in all the newspapers. I changed my hair and wore lots of makeup and hats with veils, and it worked till now. Someone must have recognized me and sent word to Ethan.”

“This might be the first time he’s left Sheldon since his arrival.”

“So?”

“The town will wake up, given time. The hypnosis wears off unless he reinforces it, especially if it goes against what a person would normally do.”

“How do you know this?”

I had to bend the truth. She was in no shape for my life story. “I used to know a vampire. He was not like Ethan. He was a real man, good and decent. He helped me out of a jam and told me things. I wish he was here, because he’d kick this four-flushing dewdropper into the next state.”

Hefting the broom handle, I wondered if Duvert was due for another crack on the noggin. Vampires could recover fast from otherwise fatal injuries and not give a clue until it was too late to do anything. Even weakened and half conscious he could snap us in two a hell of a lot easier than I’d snapped the broom.

“Decision time, Katie. We can get on the train and head south or—”

“He’ll keep looking for me. What if he goes back to Sheldon and hurts my parents? What if he finds another girl and makes her do things she doesn’t want?”

“You’ve been thinking about this, huh?”

“Ever since I ran away. I want to go home. I want to be me again, not his puppet.”

“There’s always a Reno divorce,” I said, making a joke before raising a far more serious alternative. Katie beat me to it.

“Or I could be a widow,” she said in a low, steely voice. Her pale eyes were too hard for a sixteen-year-old’s face. “I thought about that. A lot.”

“Yes…”

“It’s better than killing myself. I thought of that, too, but he’d go turn someone else into a puppet, and I’d be dead.”

“There’s no advantage to it,” I agreed.

My tummy did another queasy flip. We were talking murder. Just thinking about the actual, physical act of killing someone, anyone, made me sick. I’d shot a man dead once, in the heat of a white-hot rage and to save others, but it bothered me. Every day it bothered me—I kept busy so as to not think about it.

But I knew people who weren’t bothered by killing. One of my gangster friends would help out gladly as a favor, but he was miles away down the tracks in Chicago. It would take time to get him here, but if need be I could keep Duvert out for the count.

I’m no movie heroine. I’m just Bobbi Smythe, a blond chicken who’s happy to let someone else do her dirty work. If you can’t bring yourself to go down in the sewer, call a rat.

“Katie, I’m gonna get us help. We’ll have to hole up. With him. It won’t be bad during the day but—”

For the second time that night someone crashed through a door to what I thought was a private place. Katie yelped and scrambled toward the window. I faced the threat.

Threats: badly dressed hometown guys. The banker looked punch-drunk, and I couldn’t tell if it was from his beating or months of forced hypnosis.

The four men stared at Duvert, silent.

Was now a good time to scream? It would bring the porter and stationmaster. But cops would get involved, because Duvert was a dead body, and here I was holding the murder weapon. They’d never believe anything about him being a vampire. They’d toss me in the tank, and I’d be a sitting duck for Duvert if he decided to invisibly float in to teach me a lesson.

I pulled the .38 from the purse still hanging from my arm. I didn’t want to kill them, but a shot in the foot would slow them down. “YOU! Listen to me!”

Their heads moved my way in unison, their eyes utterly empty. I’d half recognized it back in my dressing room. The people Jack hypnotized got that same look. On one person it was disturbing; four at once was intimidating as hell.

“Out of here. Now .”

Oh, my goodness. They were leaving . Shuffling out backward.

“Stop.”

They stopped.

“What are you doing?” Katie squeaked.

“I think I’m directing traffic, honey. Maybe all you need is a firm voice. Pick him up .” I pointed at Duvert’s body.

Each of them grabbed a limb, and then awkwardly they got through the door.

“Take him to the car,” I ordered. I didn’t know if they had a car, but they’d gotten to town somehow. It seemed a good bet.

They carried him across the station while Katie and I hung back. The porter lay on the floor, feebly moving. Oh, hell. I went to the ticket grill. The manager was likewise abused. I urged Katie to grab her little case, and then we slipped out to the street.

Duvert had a paneled truck. A smart choice: he could ride in back during the day, protected from the sun.

His minions had the back open to lift him in. Sure enough there was a trunk, looking uncannily like the one Jack used when he went on out-of-town trips.

I abruptly saw a problem about to happen. Duvert could not have contact with his earth or he’d recover quicker. I shot forward, Katie at my heels.

“Get in the front cab,” I told her, and poked at the mayor of Sheldon with the broomstick. “Stop! Put him inside, but not in the trunk.” I repeated that until it got through, then ordered them to climb in and shut the door. We had to get clear and fast. The two men in the train station would set the law on their four attackers when they woke up. Waterview cops would notice a truck with Ohio plates and check it.

Then I hoisted into the cab, pushed the stick and purse at Katie, and fumbled for the key. The last driver had thoughtfully or—being unable to think—thoughtlessly left it in the ignition.

I found the starter, then coordinated things until the motor rumbled alive. The gears were just bigger than I was used to; we jerked into first and rolled south on Route 23, heading for Cheboygan, about six miles away.

“What’ll we do if someone catches us?” Katie asked.

“They won’t.” I shifted again and floored it. The truck was almost new. Trust Duvert to help himself to the best. We shot down the road at fifty, then fifty-five. I liked Cheboygan; I liked saying the name and did so, repeating it like a chant. This was great, nothing but tall trees on the right, Lake Huron on the left, and clean night air.

“What about Cheboygan?” Katie demanded, her voice high over the roar of the motor.

“Bigger town, easier to hide in.”

It had been a few years since I’d played there. I wouldn’t remember much; all I’d have seen would have been the stage, the hotel, and cheap eateries, but every town had places where a truck could park unnoticed until sunrise. With Duvert safely dead for the day, I’d call my friend in Chicago. Heck, I could probably drive there; this wasn’t so hard.

Icy gray fog flooded the cab.

Duvert materialized between us.

He damned near broke my foot slamming his own on the brake pedal. He shoved me from the steering wheel. It was like being swatted by a giant, he was that strong. I cracked my head against the window and saw sparks.

Katie screamed and screamed, but none of it impressed Duvert. He quickly and efficiently brought us to a halt and cut the motor. She ran out of voice, falling silent except for trying to catch her breath. I couldn’t move. Too stunned.

Duvert’s good-looking face loomed into view. This close all I saw was his nose going in and out of focus. There’s a reason why I close my eyes when I kiss.

He reached around me and opened the door. I tried not to fall out, feebly grabbing at anything, slowing the drop to a woozy slither. I sat hard on damp pavement, rubbery legs every which way, my back to the truck’s muddy running board. Duvert dropped lightly next to me, bent, and looked me straight in the eye.

“Sleep, you dirty little trollop,” he ordered. “You will sleep .”

My lids shut all on their own, but I didn’t go out. My head hurt too badly to be bothered, though Jack’s blood in me had something to do with it.

It was too much for Katie. She’d been so brave, but her only friend was down for the count. She began making that awful toy machine gun hiccuping. In another second she’d cut loose, but all the tears in the world wouldn’t save her from the handsome vampire here on the side of the road by the dark, dark woods.

“Be quiet,” he snarled.

She gasped and shut down, probably staring at him.

“What the devil did you do to your hair?” he demanded. “You’re ugly now, and after I made you so beautiful—”

“Shut up,” she said in the steely tone she used when talking about becoming a widow. “You just … shut up .”

He thought that funny to judge by his brief laugh. “You’re not the first to show a little spirit, sweet Katherine. I’ll bring you around. I like my girls calm and quiet. Keeps them prettier longer.”

“Who cares what you want, you—you four-flushing dewdropper.” She put enough acid into the borrowed slang to make it sound like real cursing.

Atta girl, I thought, trying to think of options. I was in no shape to run and hide in the woods. He’d spot me, night was day to him. But across the road—yup, Lake Huron. Miles and miles of it stretching into a black forever. He couldn’t come after me. Vampires and free-flowing water don’t mix. I could outswim his helpers.

It would leave Katie in a tough spot, but I had to look after myself in order to come back to fight another night.

All I had to do was get clear until dawn. If his hypnotized gang drove them back to Ohio, so be it. I’d find a way to follow. Thinking about killing no longer made me sick. For him, I’d do it with a grin.

He wasn’t done scolding Katie. “What have you been doing all this time? Dancing onstage like a drunken harlot? How many men did you let—”

The flat, businesslike crack of my Detective Special interrupted his ego. She’d found it in my purse. Oh, good girl.

It cracked again. Duvert staggered, looking surprised at two spreading patches of blood in the center of his chest. Point-blank range made it easy for her. She fired a third round, hitting his shoulder. Lead wouldn’t kill him, but it did hurt like hell.

He vanished. An agitated gray maelstrom spun in the air where his body had been.

Seconds, just seconds before, he returned. He’d come back, healed and hungry.

I lurched up, determined not to be his first-aid nurse. Blood hammered the top of my skull. My damned eyelids did not want to stay open. I leaned into the cab. Katie was backed against the passenger side, my gun in her shaking hands.

The broomstick was on the floor, within reach. I yanked it clear and turned toward him. The grayness was beginning to thicken as he eased back to solidity.

I sagged, dizzy and sick, no strength in my arms. I was barely able to hold the damned stick, much less knock him silly with it.

Katie, I need help, I tried to say, but weird mumbling drivel spilled out instead.

He was halfway back, taking his time. You could see through him. He waved tauntingly at Katie, and she wasted the last three bullets. They zinged harmlessly through his ghostlike form. He went back to being a gray cloud.

It drifted toward the truck cab, oozing inside. She moaned disgust as the chill grayness covered her. He’d re-form on top of her, perhaps to feed, and drain her into a blood-exhausted stupor.

I reeled toward them, leading with that broomstick, hoping to buy time until I could recover enough to do him real damage.

He went for another instant materialization. I stabbed in just before he was fully solid—then, oh my God, the shriek he gave knocked me right over.

The wood skewered him in midchest, front and back, like a pinned bug. He screamed and roared and clawed at the makeshift spear, finally falling from the truck. He slammed hard on the pavement, thrashing violently, trying to pull the thing out, but he’d re-formed right around it, and it was firmly stuck.

And wood kept him from vanishing.

Strangely, there was no blood. Just as well, this was bad enough.

But he might force it out … yeah, he was trying to do just that, lifting up and dropping on his back. He howled each time, but it pushed a few inches of wood along, and he was desperately pulling with his hands.

I looked for a rock or more wood to stun him with … nothing. Maybe there’d be a tire iron in the back of the truck.

Katie came sliding out, her face determined. She had her little suitcase in hand.

She swung it low like a croquet mallet, hitting him square in the head. She used so much force that the handle broke, the case popped open, and her things scattered.

But it got quiet again. Duvert lay sprawled and still in the middle of the road. Maybe there was wood in the sides of the case. I wondered why vampires were so vulnerable to it, but no matter, so long as it worked.

Katie came and dropped next to me and had herself a good long blub. I joined her; it had been a hell of a night. When I felt better we’d clear up the mess and drive into Cheboygan, and I’d have her call her mother.

But for now we leaned on each other, not speaking, and sometime later we watched the sun come up over the lake.

Rapid aging shriveled Duvert’s features. Jack had once told me what he knew about the slow process of dying for vampires, not giving much detail. With good reason.

Duvert must have been old . He went from beautiful young man to dried-out mummy, and by full sunlight he was a shrunken husk with blackening skin and bones.

Soon not enough was left of his rib cage to hold the broomstick in place, and it swayed and fell over into the growing pile of dust.

I grinned and hoped, really hoped, that it had hurt .