"Can you give me a minute alone?" I asked.
"Sure...you gonna dust for prints or something?"
"Or something," I said.
He nodded and smiled eagerly, anything to please me. No doubt anything to please anyone. He stepped back through his labyrinthine hallway, contorting his body this way and that, and when he was gone, I went to work.
Chapter Six
First, I scanned the hallway.
I noted a window directly opposite the furnace. The window was covered by both blinds and a curtain. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the blind wasn't really made for this window. It was a half inch too narrow...perhaps just narrow enough for someone to see through.
I next ran my fingers along the dusty curtain, and what struck me immediately was how thin the material was. Thin and see-through. Individually, the blinds were too narrow and the curtains too thin. But together, they should have done the job of keeping away prying eyes.
I thought about that as I scanned his hallway...and spotted the oscillating fan at the end. The fan was turned off, but I had another thought.
I went over to it and turned it on. It faced into what appeared to be Charlie's bedroom. Then it started oscillating, turning briefly toward the hallway. The blast of air from the fan wasn't much. But it was enough. A moment later, the hem of the curtain fluttered up.
I watched three or four revolutions of the fan, and each time, the hem of the curtain fluttered higher and higher. I went back to the window and studied it, and as I studied it, an image began to form in my thoughts.
The image coalesced into that of a young man standing just outside the window. I closed my eyes and the image came into sharper focus. A young man who was watching Charlie. Standing just outside the trailer. Late at night.
Who the person was, I hadn't a clue. Why he happened to be standing just outside the trailer, I didn't know that either. My psychic hits are just that. Hits. Not all-knowing information. Glimpses of information. Snapshots of information. It was up to me to dig deeper, to decipher, to probe, and ultimately to figure out what the hell it all meant.
I went back into the living room, walked around the upper half of a recliner - just the upper half, mind you - and found Charlie scratching his fat little pooch. The dog saw me, promptly piddled on the carpet, and dashed off into the kitchen. Or what should have been a kitchen. In Charlie's world, it was just another storage room.
"Rocko!" he shouted, but Charlie didn't really sound angry. He sounded shocked, if anything. He immediately produced a rag from somewhere on his person and went to work on the pee stain in the carpet. "I don't know what's gotten into him."
"Maybe he smells my sister's cat on me," I said, since it seemed safer to say than: It's probably because I'm a blood-sucking fiend, and dogs, for some reason, can sense us.
"Maybe," said Charlie. "But dogs are going to be dogs, ya know? You can't get mad at them for being dogs."
I smiled at his simple philosophy. I asked, "Do you ever leave Rocko alone?"
"Sometimes, but he likes to ride in the car with me."
"So there are times when your house is completely empty?"
"I suppose so, yeah."
As he cleaned, I asked him how often he checked on the safe. He looked up at me from the floor, a little sweat already appearing on his brow as he worked at the dog pee. "Well, I don't really check it."
"What do you do?"
He looked away, suddenly embarrassed. He stopped scrubbing the floor. His balding head gleamed. "I guess I sometimes look at it."
"Look at it?"
He thought some more. "Well, I guess it reminds me of my dad, you know? And my grandfather. We all had the at one time or another. We all talked about it. And sometimes..." But Charlie suddenly got choked up and couldn't continue.
So I finished for him. "And sometimes when you looked at it, or when you touched it, you could feel your father and grandfather nearby."
Charlie wiped his eyes and nodded and looked away.
Chapter Seven
Admittedly, the blood wasn't very Christmassy.
It was late and I was alone in my office with a packet of the good stuff, freshly delivered today from the slaughterhouse in Norco. As I slit open the top of the plastic bag with a fingernail that was a little too thick and a little too sharp, I reflected on what I knew about blood.
Fresh blood energized me, lifted me, made me feel more than human. With fresh blood flowing through my veins, I felt like I could do anything. And for all I knew, maybe I could.
Acquiring fresh blood is another issue altogether.
I'm not a killer, although I have killed. To drink fresh blood implies two things: it has either been taken...or freely given. The freely given part was a concept I was still wrapping my brain around. One of the perks of dating Kingsley these past few months was that he always kept a fresh supply of hemoglobin for me. Where he got it, I may never know, and he wasn't telling. All I knew was that it made me feel like a new woman. Hell, like a new species.
But I will not take blood unwillingly from humans, although I certainly could if I wanted to. I imagined there were others like me out there who took from others when and where they wanted it. I suspected that many of the missing person cases around the world were a result of this, although I could be wrong, since I'm not exactly immersed in the vampire sub-culture. I'm immersed in my kids and school and work, and dealing with an ex-husband who had revamped his efforts to bring me down. How he would do this, I don't know, but if ever there was someone who ran hot and cold, it was Danny.
Bi-polar, as my sister put it.
I studied the semi-clear packet of blood. The packet was no bigger than my hand. I didn't need much blood, and a packet this size would keep me going for three or four days. I didn't need to drink nightly, although I could, if I chose to. As I studied the packet, a thick animal hair rotated slowly within. Shuddering, I fished it out and flicked it in the waste basket.
Blech.
Hating my life, I brought the packet to my mouth, tilted it up, and drank deeply as the thick blood filled my mouth. I ignored the bigger chunks of flesh, and only gagged two times. I kept drinking until the packet was empty, until I'd squeezed out every last drop.
When I did, I shuddered and closed my eyes and willed the blood to stay down. I kept my fist over my mouth and kept shuddering. When I opened my eyes, I saw him standing there, in the far corner of my office, watching me.
The man from the dollar store.
Or, as Fang put it...my guardian angel.
Chapter Eight
I gasped.
I might be a creature of the night, but that doesn't mean I don't get startled. My first instinct was to dash toward the door of my office, which is what I did, blocking the stranger from further access into my house. One moment I was sitting at my desk, downing a packet of cow blood, gagging, and the next, I was standing guard at my office door.