“Naturally.”
“’Cause you’re dead and all.”
“But you’ve changed your mind?” She had yet to look up at me.
“Yes. I’m pretty sure it’s that kid crawling around your ceiling.”
She stopped writing, but she didn’t want to bite. I could see it in her expression. She looked at me at last. Eyed me a long moment. Probably wondered if she should give in. If she should feed my delusions by looking up. After a lengthy struggle in which I lost focus and contemplated the origins of marshmallows—seriously, what mad genius came up with that delicacy?—she slowly raised her lashes and looked toward the ceiling.
Thankfully, only I could hear her earsplitting screams. She dropped her pen and pad, fell to the ground, and crab-crawled backwards. In heels and a pencil skirt, no less. I was impressed.
In her defense, the kid crawling on her ceiling looked a little like that monochrome girl who crawled out of a television set in a horror movie I once watched about an hour before a DOA popped into my bedroom, wanting me to tell his wife where the insurance papers were, only the kid was a he. A he who looked about ten years old, with long black hair and a shiny black cape. An odd fashion choice for a boy of any age. And from any era.
The good doctor cowered in a corner, the look of horror on her face both sad and strangely amusing.
“Dr. Mayfield,” I said, easing toward her with my palms patting the air. “It’s okay. He’s perfectly harmless.”
Of course, the second I said it, the little shit landed on my shoulders and sank his teeth into my neck.
2
Insanity takes its toll. Please have exact change.
—MEME
I screamed. I had a small vampire on my back, and I screamed. I tried to fling him off, but he’d latched onto me like a leech. Only with teeth. I twisted and turned, knocking over chairs and a side table, as he sank his teeth farther into my neck.
Just as I got a handful of the little shit’s hair, I heard laughter from somewhere in the distance. Somewhere far, far away. Like three feet. So not that far.
I stopped, turned, and gaped at a thirteen-year-old gangbanger who’d died in the ’90s. Angel. He was one of my investigators. Not to mention the bane of my existence. And he was on the floor, laughing so hard he had to hold his stomach.
“What the fuck, Angel?” I asked, turning toward him.
I was now wearing the kid like a backpack, but at least he’d stopped biting me. The glass half-full and all.
The kid jumped down and doubled over laughing, too.
While I graced them with my best look of horror and disgust and betrayal, Angel stood, and the two urchins, who were clearly in cahoots, fist-bumped.
I rubbed my neck where the kid had bitten me. “That was wrong on so many levels.”
Angel snorted, and they doubled over again. I finally got a good look at the kid. He was closer to Angel’s age than I’d originally thought, though a lot shorter. But he really was made up to look like a vampire. His long black hair was real, and his face had been painted white with thick black liner and fake blood dripping from his mouth and down his temple.
When I folded my arms under the girls, a.k.a. Danger and Will Robinson—names I’d given my double Ds because of their propensity for inviting trouble—the kid explained. Or he tried to. His words came out muffled. Partly because of the laughter but mostly because of the fake teeth.
“Ha-oh-ween.” He held up a finger, then spit out the teeth, the kind that glowed in the dark, and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “I can’t talk with those things in. Halloween. Hit and run.”
A soft Native American accent accompanied his speech. Syllables that flowed without effort from most Americans were stopped short in the smooth, rhythmic staccato distinct to native people, only he was from a newer generation. His accent had been diluted by all the Anglo-Saxons running about, mucking shit up. Still, there was just enough of one that, if I had to guess, I’d say he was from the Zuni reservation northeast of Albuquerque.
And his costume was pretty awesome. Or it was before it dawned on me that the blood dripping down his temple and off his chin wasn’t part of the gig.
“The blood’s real,” I said, astonished and sad.
“Oh yeah.” He waved a dismissive hand. “No big.”
My chest tightened, and I fought my natural instinct to pull him into my arms. It fought back, but I held strong this time. Mostly because being accused of groping a child was a real thing.
“This is Logan,” Angel said, sobering.
Logan held out his hand. I struggled to find a smile as we shook.
“Angel told me all about you. Why you’re so bright and all.” He nodded in approval. “Pretty badass, if you ask me.”
“Then I’m askin’,” I said with a grin.