Wolf at the Door

chapter Forty-three



“It’s ringing!” Edward clutched the phone and kept half an eye on Rachael, who was just too cute for words in her little blue dress. With matching shoes, even. Rachael could look good in a dress made from Filet-O-Fish boxes. “It’s ringing. I’m gonna—hello?”

“Hello?”

“Uh, yeah, could I speak to the queen of the vampires? Please,” he added. They probably see being polite as classy, not weak. Right? Hmm. Better hope so.

“You’ve got her.”

“Oh. Oh! You’re her? I mean, it’s you?”

“It’s me.”

“Well, listen good, sweetheart!” He ignored Rachael’s groan. “I don’t know what cataclysmic world-killing nefarious plan you have for taking over the world now that I know you’re not secretly my girlfriend, but I’m here to tell you it’s not gonna happen. I’m gonna make you regret the first dark thought you ever thought! Had, I mean!”

“Is this the host from the Hastings Green Mill?” a pleasant contralto asked.

“Uh, no.”

“Satan, then?”

“Really? You think I could be Satan? My voice must be much deeper and scarier than I thought.” It was wrong to find this terrific fun, right? He never dreamed his voice could be confused with the Lord of Lies.

“Satan is . . . uh . . . yes, the person who is Satan can be very dark and scary, and yes, you do sound a little bit like . . . like the person who is Satan.”

This is getting weirder even faster than I thought it would. “Does Satan honestly have your number?” he asked breathlessly. This was the most interesting conversation he’d had in months. “Satan? The Dark Prince himself, he calls you?”

For what? Nefarious doings with the queen of the shambling eternally thirsty undead? Playdates? To talk about which movie based on a Marvel superhero or a Disney World ride they would go see together? What? Oh, he had to find out! Actually, if the things he’d heard about the queen were true, she’d probably tell him.

“Seriously, I think that’s amazing. I know it’s not cool to own that, but I’ll admit it: that is seriously cool.”

“What is?”

“Satan having your number. He’s got it, right? Don’t let this all be for nothing. Don’t let me get my hopes up like that.”

The woman laughed. “The landline, sure. Everybody’s got the landline.”

“So it’s true! This is so typical. The bad guys always act like they’ve never read a bestseller or seen a movie.”

“Bad guys? Now listen here, mister, I’m not the bad guy!” The pleasant contralto had a slight midwestern twang. Now was now-oo, here was hee-er, bad was bee-ed. Hilarious! “And I don’t appreciate random phone calls from fellas who tell me I am the bad guy.”

“Don’t get huffy. If you don’t want random calls, don’t list your number in a nationally mailed newsletter. Besides, you are the queen of the vampires.”

“Okay, yeah, I’ve got that going against me, but if you overlook that one little thing, you’d see I’m a good guy. Oh . . . who is this, anyway?”

“Listen, despicable vampire queen—”

“Oh, now that’s just rude.”

“Sorry,” he said, immediately chastened. Meanwhile, Rachael had buried her head in her hands and was moaning and rocking back and forth like someone trying to find her happy place. He gave her a big smile and flashed her a thumbs-up, but, weirdly, she wasn’t comforted. “It’s just, I always had a feeling I’d meet you someday, or somebody like you, so I kind of wrote the script for that meeting in my head.”

“And I’m not following your script?” she said, sounding like she was cheering up.

“No, not at all,” he soothed.

“Really?”

“Oh, we’re totally beyond my script. Years beyond.”

“Well, okay then.” Hmm, the queen of the vampires could turn a frown upside down in no time. “No harm done. What’s your name again?”

“I’m Edward B—” Rachael was making slashing-acrossthe-throat motions. Now she was miming hanging up the phone. Now she was miming strangling him. “Hey, it’s none of your business what my name is, Miss Nosy Parker Vampire Queen! But I am gonna be stopping by your lair with my hot new werewolf girlfriend, who wants to return some shoes, and we wanted to show we’re civilized by calling first. So we’re calling first. Bask in how civilized we are. Go on. Bask!”

“Some shoes . . . is your hot new werewolf girlfriend a medium-tall brunette? With big brown pansy eyes? And kind of a permanent tight-ass expression until she smiles?”

Wow. “Yeah, but it’s more a serious expression than a tight-ass one. Like a sexy librarian.”

“I pray she was careful with them.”

“You pray? With what?” A rosary? Shyeah. A Bible? Ha!

“The shoes! And I’m praying for them, not with them. I’ve never even met you, but I can already tell you’re incredibly weird. Are they okay? She didn’t scuff them or step in dog shit or anything, did she?”

“How should I know?” He covered the phone. “The vampire queen wants to know if the shoes are okay.”

Rachael, who’d given up with the slashing motions and just stood there listening with an appalled look on her face, nodded. “Sure. They’re fine. I’ve barely worn them. Just to here from her house. And now to her house from here.”

“Hear that? The blue thingies are safe and sound.”

“They’re not thingies. Little boys have thingies. You probably have a thingy.”

“Uh . . .” Out of nowhere, the queen’s voice had gotten deep and scary.

“Those are Beverly Feldman Bonvivant flats in navy blue.”

Little girl from The Exorcist deep and scary. “Okay.”

“With a satin underlay!”

James Earl Jones deep and scary. “Okay.”

“And a cushioned footbed!”

“O-kay!” He ignored Rachael’s renewed gestures of impending death. “My point was, they’re fine. In fact, we’re bringing them right over, so just chillax.”

“Oh, Edward.” Like magic—it was, probably!—the queen’s voice was back to the pleasant contralto of earlier. “Nobody says chillax anymore.”

“Hey, when I need to update my trends and pop culture refs, I’m not gonna check with a vampire. For all I know, you think zoot suits are trendy and you like to relax by doing the Charleston.”

“Voh-doh-dee-oh-doh, baby.” She laughed. “We’re cranking up the blender at four. See ya.”

He clicked off the call and looked at Rachael. “She’s either super-evil or super-cool.”

“Can’t she be both?” Rachael rolled her eyes. “You realize after that surreal chat, I have to take you. I’m sure she’ll have all kinds of questions. Dammit!”

“Aw, c’mon. It’ll be fun.”

Rachael had slipped on the blue Beverly Feldman Bonvivant flats and now gave him a look. “Fun? This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons, Edward. You could get hurt. You could get dead.”

“What about you?”

“They most likely wouldn’t dare. They know my cousin sent me out here to keep an eye on things. And they know who my cousin is.”

“Yeah, well, they also know who my friend Boo is, so I’m just as well protected—or poorly protected—as you are.”

“Careful, Edward. That was almost clever.”

“Hey, I’m almost clever lots of times. And now with my hot werewolf gal pal looking out for me? Evil doesn’t stand a chance. Besides, if they kill us in horrible grisly protracted ways, Boo will avenge us.” He snapped his fingers. “She could be here any hour. If she got a flight out this morning, she could be here any minute. That’s the other reason I had to come with. I want to give Boo all the intel I can.”

“And you want to give me all the stomach ulcers you can. Come on.” She sighed and jerked her head toward the door. “Do you want to walk to our horrible grisly protracted deaths, or drive?”

“Walk. Let’s try to keep our deaths as green as we can. Even in death, I try to watch out for planet Earth.”

He could tell she didn’t want to laugh but couldn’t help it. In fact, Rachael laughed so hard she almost fell down on the porch. Which got him started. What with one thing and another, their giggles didn’t dry up until they were climbing the steps to the vampire’s lair.

If we end up mutilated and murdered, at least we could say we had fun on the way over. It was weird that stuff like that was important to him, right?