*
“SO, ALLISON, WAS IT? You came from a vampire city. Did you see many of the soulless devils wandering about?”
I repressed a sigh. That was the question of the night, it seemed. I’d already been asked something similar by Teresa, the old woman with the bad leg; Matthew, a freckly ten-year-old; and Ruth, who inquired with a perfectly straight face if I had been a vampire’s whore. Of course, then Caleb had to ask what a whore was, and Ruth gave him a very vague and watered-down explanation, all the while smiling at me over his head. If Zeke and Jeb hadn’t been nearby, out of earshot of course, I might’ve punched the smug bitch in the nose.
This time, the question came from Dorothy, a middle-aged blond woman with vacant green eyes and a smile to match. She would often wander a little behind the rest of the group, staring down the road or toward the horizon, always smiling. Sometimes she waved to things in the distance—things that were never there. Other times she would randomly break into song, belting out “Amazing Grace” or “On a Hill Far Away” at the top of her lungs until someone told her, very nicely, to shush.
I suspected she was a few bricks short of a full load. But there were also times where she seemed perfectly coherent and normal. Times like now, unfortunately, when she was sane enough to ask questions I really didn’t want to answer.
“No,” I muttered, keeping my gaze on the road ahead. Don’t make eye contact with the crazy woman; don’t look at her and maybe she’ll go away. “I didn’t see many vampires ‘wandering about.’ I didn’t see many vampires, period.”
“How do you know?” Dorothy asked, and I gave her a suspicious look, forgetting not to make eye contact. She smiled emptily. “Vampire devils are masters of disguise,” she went on, to my extreme discomfort. “People think they’re slavering monsters with red eyes and fangs, but that’s what they want you to think. Really, they can look like anyone else.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s what makes them so dangerous. They can look perfectly human. They can look just like Teresa. Or me. Or you.”
I felt a flutter of panic and squashed it down. “I don’t know, then,” I told her with a shrug. “I saw lots of people in the city. Maybe they were all vampires—I couldn’t tell.”
“Oh, there are other ways to tell if a person is really a devil,” Dorothy continued, nodding seriously. “Devils hate the sun. They burst into flame in the light. Devils can’t resist the sight of blood, and they don’t breathe like we do. But most important…” She leaned in, and I felt my fangs pressing through my gums, wanting to bite, to silence her. “Most important,” she whispered, “devils are surrounded by this red glow, this aura of evil that only a few can see. You have to know what to look for, and it’s difficult to see at a distance, but that is how you can tell a devil from a real person. Just like the white glow around the angels that walk down the road sometimes.” She broke off, smiling dreamily at the horizon, where the pavement met the sky. “Oh, there’s one now! Can you see him? He’s walking away from us, so it might be hard to tell.”
There was no one on the road. There was nothing ahead of us at all, except a large brown bird, perched on a fence post. I gave her a wary look and edged away, as she waved both arms in the air, making the bird fly off with a startled whoo-whooing sound.
“Is that Gabriel? Or Uriel?” She signaled frantically, then pouted. “Oh, he disappeared! They’re so shy. It might’ve been Gabriel, though.”
“Dorothy.” Zeke was suddenly there, smiling as I shot him a desperate look over the crazy woman’s shoulder. “Allison doesn’t know us very well yet. She might be nervous around your angels—not everyone can see them as well as you.”
“Oh, right! Sorry, love.” Dorothy squeezed his shoulder, beaming crazily, but he only grinned back. “I forget sometimes. You’re an angel yourself, you know that? Ezekiel. The angel of death.”
Now Zeke looked faintly embarrassed, giving me an apologetic glance as Dorothy patted his arm and turned to me. “He thinks he can fool me,” she whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear, “but I know he’s an angel in disguise. You can tell. When you’ve seen as many angels as I have, you can always tell.”
She tried patting my arm but missed as I slid smoothly away. Unconcerned and humming softly to herself, she wandered to the side of the road and peered into the distance, probably looking for her bashful angels. Zeke sighed and shook his head.