I sighed and rooted around a bottom drawer and found something Anthony had made back in arts and crafts when he was in first grade. I use the words “arts and crafts” liberally. Whatever it was—a hand or a butt cheek—I set it in front of her. She shrugged and proceeded to tap off some invisible ashes.
Our last encounter was a memorable one. Sugar had tried to stop me as I approached my then-husband’s office. Tried being the operative word. I might have hit her hard enough to break her nose. And I might have enjoyed it way too much.
“I said sorry about that,” said Sugar. She had picked up on my thoughts and assumed, like most people did, that I had spoken. I had not. And, yes, earlier on the phone, she had apologized again about sleeping with Danny.
“So you said.”
“I mean, you aren’t still mad about that, are you? That was, like, years ago.”
“Two and a half years ago. And, yes, I’m still mad.”
“Well, I’m sorry. If it wasn’t me, it would have been any of the other girls. Your husband was, like, into all of us.”
“Good to know.”
“Besides, I haven’t seen him in, like, over a year. Have you?”
“On and off,” I said, referring to his ghost who appeared occasionally in my home. I usually found him in the kid’s rooms, standing over them as they slept. Sugar didn’t need to know that Danny had been murdered by a vampire who had been out to get me, too. Or that Danny had aligned with the wrong team...and had gotten himself killed. Which is why I blocked those thoughts.
She said, “Okay, well, tell him I miss him.”
And I saw it there, on her face, and heard it in her voice. She truly had feelings for him. Sadly, I didn’t miss him so much. Rarely, in fact. Perhaps only once or twice, tops. Not like the kids, who still mourn for their daddy. At least someone had loved Danny before he died, because it sure as hell wasn’t me.
“I’ll tell him,” I said, and my voice might have softened a bit, dammit. Yeah, I have a bleeding heart for sure. “Now, why do you think your ex-boyfriend is a serial killer?”
She picked up the unlit cigarette and held it loosely between her fingers. “Because he told me.”
Chapter Three
“And why would he do that?” I asked.
Yes, she looked ridiculous with the unlit cigarette hanging from her lips. Admittedly, I admired her commitment to her habit, unhealthy as it was. I decided not to let her know that, I, too, smoked from time to time, but never in the house. Usually in the car or on long stakeouts. Even if cancerous cells did develop in my lungs, the vampire in me eradicated them instantly.
There were benefits to being what I was. And these days, now that I could go into the sun and eat and drink and be merry, the benefits far outweighed the risks.
“He talks in his sleep,” said Nancy.
“And this was recently?”
“Yes.”
The word slut might have slipped through my mind, although I wasn’t one to judge. I’d had two relationships since my divorce from Danny, and three, if you counted my mental relationship with Fang, which I kinda did.
“You don’t like me very much, do you?” asked Nancy. Oops, the “slut” part might have slipped out. Might have.
“No,” I said. “Not really.”
“You’re probably wondering why I came to you and not, say, another detective.”
“The thought occurred to me.”
Yes, I could probe her mind for the answers I wanted. The thing was, I didn’t want to probe her mind. I didn’t want to dip down into her thoughts and see what made this woman tick. I also didn’t want to stumble across any memories of her and Danny. At present, such memories were probably brewing on the surface...all of their lies and deception and sneaking around and not-very-good-sneaking around.
“Danny talked, too,” she said, looking away.
“Not in his sleep,” I said.
“No, never in his sleep. I guess we both know that.” She laughed at that and kicked her leg a little; we were just two girls sharing memories of the same man in bed. A man she had taken from me, although he went willingly enough. Actually, I imagined him running from me. Turned out his instincts were partly true. Had Danny and I continued to sleep together, he would have been bonded to me as a sort of sex slave, as had been the case with Russell. I shuddered at the thought.
“Danny would tell me things,” she said, sucking ridiculously at the end of the unlit cigarette and blowing out her pretend smoke. I wondered if she was even aware that the fag wasn’t lit. Yes, I’m channeling my inner Brit.
“What things?” I asked. My eyes might have narrowed suspiciously.
She took the cigarette out of her mouth and looked at it, wrinkling her nose. Then looked me directly in the eye. “He said you’re a vampire.”
“Did he now?”
She nodded vigorously. “And he was scared of you. Like, irrationally scared of you.”
“Because I was a vampire?”
“That’s what he said.”
“And did you believe him?”
“I really, really want to light this cigarette,” she said.
Suddenly, I wanted one, too. I stood and said, “Follow me.”
Chapter Four
We were in my back yard, smoking.
We sat side by side on the broken cement stairs that led from the kitchen down into my back yard. Despite being broken, the stairs sported a coat of gray paint. That had been Danny’s answer to all of our home improvement needs: paint the crap out of it.
One of us was smoking because she had an addiction. The other was smoking because she still had a need to feel normal. There was a chance I was the latter. Of course, the entity inside me wanted nothing to do with normal.
The entity inside me could go to hell.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” said Nancy, aka Sugar.
I inhaled, peering through the smoke rising before me, obscuring the neon Pep Boys’ sign that itself rose above my backyard fence. Yes, I shared a backyard fence with the Pep Boys’ parking lot. Handy for when I needed an emergency fuel filter. Danny did get one thing right: he got us a big back yard, which had proved to be kinda fun, back when we were a real family.
We’re still a family, I thought, just minus the Danny part.
Of course, Danny still came around, just minus the body part. In fact, he came around more in death than he did when alive. Funny how being dead made him a more attentive father. Better late than never.
“Did you say something?” asked Nancy.