Night Owls

18

CHAZ HAD TIME to catch a nap and a shower after he dropped Elly and Cavale off in Crow’s Neck. They’d stopped in Edgewood first, to maneuver Val inside. Good thing she had a garage that connected to the house and had given Chaz the automatic door opener. It would’ve been awkward explaining the body-shaped bundle they’d carried inside otherwise. Plus, he’d have had to find a tarp to wrap her in, first.

As it was, they’d left her on the living room floor, covered in blankets. Val was a hundred and fifty-something pounds of dead weight, and Chaz and Cavale had taken one look at the stairs and said forget it. The floor wasn’t as comfortable as her bed, but it was carpeted, and Chaz had tucked a throw pillow beneath her head. He was pretty sure it’d beat spending the day stuffed in his trunk.

Three hours later, tired as hell but at least clean shaven and presentable, he knocked on Sunny and Lia’s door. When it opened, he was greeted not by either of the women he’d left Justin with yesterday, but instead peered down into the eyes of a young Katharine Hepburn. She could have been straight out of Philadelphia Story if it weren’t for the flannel pajamas and the bunny slippers.

“Chaz! Hi!” she said, in Hepburn’s smoky voice. “Come on in. Lia’s trying out Rita Hayworth.”

“Trying . . . out?” He followed the succubus inside, confused.

“Mm-hmm. Did you know Justin likes old movies? He spent most of yesterday watching one of those black-and-white-film channels. We thought we’d put on a show.”

Chaz glanced at the bunny slippers again. Whatever they were up to, it clearly wasn’t the kind of show most men would expect a pair of succubi to put on. When he entered the living room, Lia was in a huge fluffy bathrobe, dancing a barefoot samba across the floor. Tendrils of red hair spilled down her back, and now and then the robe would flare open, revealing a pair of perfect legs that went all the way up to . . . the hem of Lia’s running shorts.

Justin looked like he wanted to dive behind the couch. When he noticed Chaz, he sprang to his feet, relieved. “Hey, uh, you ready to go?” He dodged around Lia, who was trying to snag him for a dance. Sunny stepped into her arms instead, and the two waltzed a few steps before collapsing onto the love seat, giggling.

“You know,” said Chaz, “someone out there on the Internet would kill to see this.” He elbowed Justin. “You’re turning your nose up at the opportunity of a lifetime, dude.” It was amusing as hell watching the kid go from pink to tomato red. “Not like that. I mean, think about it. Right now, there are like a thousand fans who are feeling a sudden, overwhelming disappointment and they don’t even know why. But I do. And Sunny and Lia do. It’s because you were sitting there trying to meld with the furniture when you could’ve been reenacting scenes from The Lion in Winter. Talk about missed opportunities.”

“Oh, oh! Like this!” Sunny sat up and yanked a doily off an end table. As she tied it around her head, those sharp cheekbones softened a bit. A few strands of grey wound through her auburn hair and crow’s-feet appeared around her eyes: Hepburn at sixty. She held an imaginary necklace to her chest and intoned, “I’d hang you from the nipples, but you’d shock the children.”

Justin threw Chaz a pleading look.

“Aww, cut him some slack.” Lia dragged her fingers through her hair. With every stroke, the red faded and her usual blond streaked its way in. “He’s been a complete gentleman since you left. Even when we were being utter shits.”

“We must’ve tried to get a favorite face out of him for two hours. Nothing.”

“Well.” Chaz clapped a hand on Justin’s shoulder. “You might get another chance. Shit’s still getting resolved, and if Cavale can’t get the weirdness out of our boy here this afternoon, we might need him to stay another night.”

There was a gasp from his side. Justin ducked away from him. “Don’t I get a say?”

He grimaced. “Right now? No, you don’t. And I’m sorry for that, but these things don’t fuck around and we don’t know what they’re up to right now.”

“I thought you had a plan. I thought you guys were fixing things. Like, you know. Me.”

“We are.”

“But?”

“But we need more time.”

Lia padded over to them. While Chaz and Justin were arguing, she’d reverted the rest of the way back to her regular face. It was probably why Justin allowed her to straighten his tie. All of her previous flirtation was gone as she smoothed out his collar and brushed a piece of lint—or maybe cat hair from their evil fucking cat that was lurking around somewhere—from his shoulder. “You’re welcome here anytime.”

“Yeah.” Sunny unwrapped the doily from around her head. She ducked behind the lace for a second, and when she emerged, Katharine Hepburn had made her exit. “You did the dishes last night. Dishes suck.”

As hard as Justin tried to look miserable, he couldn’t resist a little grin. “I’m your guest. It’s just polite.”

“Yeah, well, if you can’t figure out what to do with your English degree after you graduate, we’d be happy to hire you on. You can recite Shakespeare while you dust.”

“Well, um. I’ll keep it in mind. Thank you.”

Lia beamed at Justin. When she turned the smile on Chaz, it seemed to say, See? This is how it’s done.

That settled, Justin and Chaz set out for the Clearwaters’ funeral Mass. They were partway down the street when Justin started twisting around in his seat to peer into the back.

“I promise you,” said Chaz, “there aren’t any succubi hiding in the back waiting to jump out and torture you.”

“It’s not that,” he said, his nose crinkling. “What the hell did you have in here? It smells like wet dog.”

Chaz sniffed. All he got was a noseful of his and Justin’s aftershaves and the mineral oil he used to protect the Mustang’s seats. “I don’t smell anything.”

“How can you not? It’s, like, everywhere.” Justin was leaning halfway into the backseat now, his seat belt off so he could get a better angle.

“If I have to slam on the brakes, you’re going right through the windshield. You know how much that’d cost to replace?”

“You really can’t smell it? It’s even worse back here.” He squirmed around to the front again, though, and dutifully buckled up. “It’s really nasty.”

That was when Chaz got a better look at Justin. His nose was high in the air and he turned his head this way and that, trying to catch the scent. It might’ve seemed funny, if he hadn’t been witnessing Val doing the same damned thing for the last five years. “Oh, shit, dude.”

That brought Justin’s nose back to normal-people level. “What?”

“I, uh. I think you might be smelling the Jackals. They were in here last night.”

Justin blinked. “But that . . . Why would I be able to smell them when you can’t?”

Chaz didn’t have to answer that one. Dismay spread across Justin’s features as it came to him.

“Oh.”

“It’ll probably go away when Cavale gets that shit out of you. It’s just some sort of, I don’t know. Psychic side effect.” This was one of the disadvantages to being a minion whose vampire avoided others of her kind. The Boston Renfields were better versed in magical dealings because they were surrounded by it twenty-four-fucking-seven. Nine times out of ten, it just made them even more pretentious. But right now, this one time, it would’ve been nice to be able to put more authority behind his assertion.

Justin peered at him. He seemed to be on the brink of more questions, but he let it go. “Sunny and Lia are nice,” he said, blessedly changing the subject.

Chaz grinned. “Yeah? They didn’t fuck with you too much?”

“Nah. I mean, they teased me a lot at dinner but not in a mean way.”

“Good.”

“Well, except when in the middle of trying to pick my crushes out of my head, Sunny turned into my mom.”

Chaz snorted. “They got you with the Oedipus trick, huh?”

“They did it to you, too?”

“Oh God yeah. They think it’s hilarious.” It had been Lia, not Sunny, but they’d played the same game with him when they’d first met. High school girlfriends, college flings, a couple of hot professors he’d had, then, smack in the middle of the cute customers list, bam. Chaz’ mother. “Don’t worry,” he told Justin, “they really were just fucking with you. You don’t actually want to bone your mom, subconsciously or otherwise. At least, probably not.”

One thing he’d been grateful for, and hadn’t even realized until after the giggling had stopped and they’d moved on to a game of Scrabble: they’d never once turned into Val.

THE CHURCH WAS packed when they arrived. Every pew was filled, students and faculty crammed together like sardines. Chaz and Justin were prepared to stand in the back, but before they could find a spot, the head of the English department found them and ushered Justin (and thus Chaz) to a pew closer to the front. They’d set aside a section for Professor Clearwater’s grad students.

Chaz hated to think it, but it was nice to sit down, after being up all night and catching an inadequate nap. Especially since the day wasn’t likely to get much easier. And tonight . . .

He’d think about that later.

The Mass went smoothly and, to Chaz’ tired brain, quickly. A lot of the crowd thinned out afterward, most of the students opting to go back to campus rather than attending the graveside service. But Justin wanted to go, and Chaz wasn’t going to deny the kid. He looked rough, as if he’d been the one running around all last night.

Justin was quiet as they pulled into the line of cars that comprised the procession, staring out the window and watching his classmates go about their days. At the first stoplight, Chaz was concentrating on making sure an asshole in an SUV didn’t cut off the rest of the line. It took him a minute to realize Justin’s shoulders were shaking. He caught a glimpse of Justin’s reflection, and the tears flowing down his cheeks. “Hey, man, you okay?”

Justin swallowed hard a couple of times before answering. “Yeah, I just. I’m sorry. It just hits me now and then.”

Chaz reached over and gave him an awkward sort of bro-pat. He wished Val were there. She was so much better at this shit. “It’s okay. That’s gonna happen. There’s, uh, well. I don’t think I have any tissues, but there ought to be some napkins in the glove box, if you want them.”

“Thanks.” He popped it open and pulled out a handful of bright yellow fast-food napkins to dab at his eyes and blow his nose with. By the time they reached the cemetery, he was mostly composed again, though he’d shoved a couple of dry ones into the pocket of his dress pants, just in case.

Edgewood Cemetery was a pretty place, with rolling hills and well-kept plots. The trees scattered about blazed with color, but hardly any leaves carpeted the ground. In another section of the cemetery, Chaz could hear the rhythmic whisper of groundskeepers’ rakes as they tried keeping ahead of autumn’s organic litter. But here, near the Clearwaters’ side-by-side graves, all was quiet except for the shuffling of feet and the soft sound of mourners sniffling. The priest, a round-faced, greying man with a full, neatly trimmed beard uttered the benedictions somberly, then invited the Clearwaters’ family and friends to come and take flowers from the many arrangements that had been sent in remembrance.

Chaz hung back, letting the immediate family pay their final respects. He wanted to take a couple of iris buds back to Val; she would have been here, if it weren’t for the whole sun-killing-her thing. He nudged Justin, who was still standing beside him. “You can go on up, if you want. You were close to him.”

But Justin wasn’t paying attention. He wasn’t even facing the caskets.

He’d turned away, sniffing the air again. He was up on his toes, like he was trying to get higher for a better shot at the scent.

“Justin? What’s going on?”

After half a minute or so, at the point where Chaz was about to give him as subtle a shake as he could to get a response, Justin lowered himself back onto his heels and looked up at Chaz, troubled. “I smelled it again. Wet dog.”

Chaz turned in a slow circle, as if he were admiring the view the Clearwaters would have from their eternal resting places. Really, he was looking for anyone that seemed out of place, even a mourner in a too-big hat. But there was nothing to be seen. He put on his best everything’s cool smile and mustered what little certainty he could find. “Probably a real one, kid. People bring their dogs here all the time. Maybe Spot got a bath before walkies.”

“You sure?”

“Think about this,” he said, and bent his head closer to Justin, so no one could hear the crazy coming from his mouth. “Two things I know for sure about Jackals: they can’t step on holy ground, which depending on your religion, this technically is.”

“Okay,” he said, but his eyes darted to the roads that wound their way through the cemetery.

Chaz could guess what he was thinking, since it was on his mind, too: Did the roads count as consecrated, too, or just the plots that had, like the Clearwaters’ five minutes ago, been officially blessed? Was the whole cemetery off-limits, or were the graves some kind of macabre hopscotch board? Doesn’t matter. There’s still Thing Two. “Thing two: it’s daytime. They can’t come out and play right now.”

That seemed to make him relax again. “Yeah. Okay, yeah.” Only a handful of people were still by the graves now, family members talking quietly. “I’m . . . I’m going to go say good-bye.” From the way Justin’s eyes lingered on the caskets, Chaz didn’t think he was talking about the living.

“Go ahead. I’m going to grab some flowers for Val. You want to meet me at the car when you’re ready?”

“Yeah. I won’t be long.”

“Take your time.” Chaz stepped forward and plucked a pair of irises from their basket. Their stems were intertwined, the buds still closed. As he headed back to the Mustang, he found himself peering around, looking for anything that seemed off. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched.

When he slid into the front seat, he made sure he had a line of sight on Justin. The tire iron that Cavale had given him earlier was in the backseat. Chaz retrieved it without taking his eyes off the knot of people at the Clearwaters’ grave, and held it across his knees until Justin returned to the car.

Just in case.