La Vida Vampire

Laurel smirked but wiped her expression clean when Ike stepped to her side, mirroring Saber’s stance beside me. He took her hand and tucked it in the crook of his arm.

“I am afraid,” he said silkily, “that the cameras record digitally. They erase themselves after twenty-four hours.”

“Bummer,” I said.

“Any further questions, Princess?”

“Just one. Why did you show up tonight?”

“To take this famous ghost tour.”

I blinked. “Are you serious?”

He waved a languid hand. “It seems a quaint way to spend an evening, and I paid for the privilege in buying every ticket.”

“You bought thirty tickets?” Saber asked, sounding as astonished as I felt.

“Fine. Let’s do this.”

I spun to grab the lantern from the substation cabinet. When I straightened, I turned smack into Ike with Laurel still on his arm. He didn’t budge an inch, just stood staring at me.

“What?” I snapped, only partly in irritation. The other part was nerves because, well, the guy was scary.

“Are you setting up your own little kingdom in St. Augustine, Princess Vampire? If so, be warned I will not tolerate competition.”

“One vampire does not a kingdom make, Ike. I’m just doing my job and living a normal afterlife.”

“One hears you do not need to work.”

“One might also hear I’d be bored stiff if I didn’t—no pun intended.” I leaned forward, not into his face, but nearer. “Now, are we doing this or not?”

“Tut-tut,” he said. “Your tour manners leave much to be desired. Perhaps I will turn in a complaint. I have ways of applying pressure to have you fired.”

The tut-tut almost had me grinning, but when he attacked my manners—my excellent manners—that was it. My free hand planted on my hip, I glared.

“I’m not in a power struggle with you, Ike. If you want to do the tour, fine. If you want anything else, you can go whistle Dixie, because you’re not getting it from me.”

Laurel and the tall twins hissed like snakes, but I didn ’t back off. “I’m free and way over twenty-one, and I’ll do as I please. Got it?”

“We’ll see,” he said evenly, but he stepped back. “Please proceed.”

I rolled my eyes at the whole lot of them and began the ghost tour, doing my best to ignore the jealous rage emanating from Laurel.

The spirits were out in force, but from the first stop, they scrambled to hide from the vampires. It might ’ve been funny if I hadn’t felt so bad for them.

While Saber watched my back, Ike’s vampires did nothing but complain. They avoided the cemeteries and churches as sacred ground, and the fort and old Spanish hospital were snubbed as hallowed ground. The vampires bitched about walking instead of flying, and they flat-out heckled one of our most disturbing ghosts, Fay. The crabby ghost had gone berserk rattling windows. I’d need to mend fences with her before I took another tour by her house. I would’ve loved for the biting ghost at the oldest drugstore to take a hunk out of someone—preferably Ike or Laurel—but it wasn’t to be. When the building was moved back in 1887, it had been plopped down on part of the Tolomato Cemetery. If I really thought the vampires would fry on holy ground, I’d have cheerfully mustered all my vampire strength and speed to give ’em a shove and watch ’em burn.

Tacky, but true, and it would’ve saved me from having to see any of them again. I suppose you can guess that the abbreviated tour didn’t take long. In forty-five minutes we were back at the waterwheel, where music poured into the night from the Mill Top Tavern. I wrapped up my spiel with Saber at my side again.

“That was not as amusing as I had been led to believe, ” Ike said, eyeing his blood bunnies, Claire and Cici, as if contemplating punishment. “But the night is young. Perhaps you will both have a drink with us?”

“No, thank you,” I said as I put my lantern away.

“Excuse me?” Laurel snarled, elbowing Saber aside to crowd behind me.

I was really getting sick of people invading my space, but I faced her and forced myself to smile pleasantly. “I said no thank you.”

“Lord Ike allowed you to live this night,” Laurel said, the beads on her cornrows quivering with her intensity. “You will not refuse him.”

I stood my ground. “I believe I just did. No offense, of course,” I said, glancing at Ike, “but I have other plans.”

“What could possibly be more important than pleasing Lord Ike?” Laurel demanded. Almost anything, I nearly said but figured that might get my head slapped off my shoulders. Laurel was itching for a fight to avenge herself.

“I’m waiting for an answer,” she snapped. “Why do you refuse Lord Ike’s gracious invitation?”

Wild horses wouldn’t make me tell her Saber and I were meeting Eugene, so I shrugged and told her something shocking enough to shut her up.

“I’m going shopping at Wal-Mart.”

“Wal-Mart?” she echoed faintly and actually fell back a step while the tall twins exchanged a glance of pure horror.