How many, indeed. Certainly not mine.
“What do you do, young lady?” he inquired politely.
Kill vampires. “I, ah, go to school. College, that is.”
Nervousness made me sputter. Here I was, having a casual conversation with a vampire in a club full of ungodly things. Where had my life gone wrong?
“Ah, college. Study hard, it’s the key to success.” With that advice and another quick smile, he turned away to take an incoming order from a ghoul across the counter. This was too weird.
“Hello, there, pretty girl!”
The voice made me turn around, and two young men grinned at me in a friendly way. From their looks and heartbeats, I knew they were human. Wow, what a relief.
“Hi, how ya doing?” I felt like someone in another country who met a stranger from her hometown and was inordinately glad to see people with pulses. They gathered around me, one on either side of my chair.
“What’s your name? This is Martin”—he gestured to the brunette with the boyish smile—“and I’m Ralphie.”
“I’m Cat.” Smiling, I shook hands with both of them. They eyed my glass with interest.
“Whatcha drinkin’?”
“Gin and tonic.”
Ralphie was about my height of five-seven, not tall for a man, and he had a sweet smile. “Another gin for the lady!” he bellowed importantly to Logan, who nodded and brought a fresh glass.
“Thanks for the offer, boys, but I’m kind of…waiting for someone.” As much as I liked having my own kind around me, still there was a job to be done and they would hinder my plans.
They each groaned theatrically.
“Come on, one drink! It’s hard to be the fleshies around here, we have to stick together.”
The entreaty so clearly mirrored my own thoughts that I relented with another smile.
“One drink. That’s all, okay? What are you two doing here, by the way?” They both looked my age and way too innocent.
“Oh, we like it here, it’s exciting.” Martin bobbed his head up and down like a bird, watching as Ralphie again gestured to Logan for another refill.
“Yeah, exciting enough to get you killed,” I warned them.
Martin dropped his wallet when he fumbled for the money for my gin, and I got down to help him pick it up. They looked too gullible by half. Giggling, Ralphie handed me my drink with a flourish.
“You’re here. You can’t say you don’t understand.”
“You don’t want to know why I’m here,” I muttered, more to myself than to them. With a slight salute, I raised my glass. “Thanks for the drink. Now you’d better go.”
“Aren’t you going to finish it?” Ralphie asked with almost childish disappointment.
I opened my mouth to respond, but a familiar voice beat me to it.
“Sod off, wankers.”
Bones loomed threateningly behind them, and they gave him one frightened look before scampering off. He slid into the seat next to me after shoving its occupant aside. The person left, unoffended. Guess it wasn’t that uncommon.
“What are you doing here? What if he comes in?” My voice was a low hiss as I pretended not to look at him for the benefit of anyone watching.
He simply laughed that infuriating chuckle of his and held out a hand.
“We haven’t met. My name is Crispin.”
I ignored the hand extended to me and whispered furiously to him out of the corner of my mouth, “I don’t think that’s funny.”
“Don’t want to shake my hand, do you? That’s not nice manners. Didn’t your mum teach you better?”
“Will you stop?” I’d passed the point of furious and headed straight into enraged. “Quit playing! I have a job to do. The real Crispin’s going to be here and he’ll be put off by your blathering! God, don’t you have any sense?” Sometimes he was too cheeky for his own good.
“But I’m not lying, pet. My name is Crispin. Crispin Phillip Arthur Russell III. That last part was merely a bit of fancy on my mum’s part, since clearly she had no idea who my da was. Still, she thought adding numerals after my name would give me a bit of dignity. Poor sweet woman, ever reluctant to face reality.”
It occurred to me with mounting anxiety that he wasn’t kidding. “You’re Crispin? You? But your name—”
“Told you,” he interrupted. “Most vampires change their name when they change from human. Crispin was my human name, just as I said. Don’t go by it much anymore, because that bloke is dead. When Ian turned me, he laid me in the natives’ burial grounds until I rose. For hundreds of years they’d buried their dead in the same place, and not too deeply, either. When my eyes opened for the first time as a vampire, all I saw about me were bones. I knew it was what I was then, for from bones I rose and Bones I became, all in that night.”
The imagery was haunting, but still I persisted. “Then what kind of game are you up to? You want me to try and kill you, is that it?”