We will see you tomorrow evening. (Also, please do not reply to this email. Mrs. Fitzwilliam does not know how to check her email. All of her emails therefore bounce directly to me and, frankly, I have enough work to do already without also keeping up with her pettier correspondence.)
With kind regards,
N. Merriweather
“I can’t believe she’s still got Nanmo doing her bidding like this,” Reginald tsked, shaking his head. “The man is four hundred and seventy-five years old, for crying out loud. It’s embarrassing.”
“Yeah,” I said, not knowing how else to respond to that. I was so far out of my element I couldn’t even see my element anymore.
“Well, I guess the important thing is they bought it,” Reginald said. “I’m at once surprised, because this really is silly, and not at all surprised. I’ll fly you there tomorrow at eight.”
“No,” I said very quickly, holding up my hands. “I’ll just take an Uber.”
Reginald stared at me from his vantage point on Frederick’s black leather sofa. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not safe for you to go to this by yourself.”
I paled at the thought of showing up to this rendezvous without vampire backup. “Oh, I know that. It would be suicide to show up at that house alone.”
“It would,” Reginald agreed.
“I just meant if I fly there with you, I’ll be too distracted by my first-ever flight without an airplane to be able to keep my head on straight for what I might have to do once we get there.”
Reginald leaned against the sofa cushions as he considered that. “Fine,” he said. “It’s true that flying for the first time can be a lot. So sure. Take an Uber. But don’t get out of the car until you see me hovering in the sky just on the other side of the basketball hoop.”
I frowned at him. “Basketball hoop?”
“You’ll know it when you see it,” he said, before muttering something about suburban hellscape under his breath that I didn’t quite catch. He stood up and made his way to the front door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” I said, trying to convey a confidence I absolutely did not feel.
Reginald paused, then turned to face me, his expression unreadable.
“Please be careful,” he said, his voice softer than I’d ever heard it.
My eyes felt suddenly damp. “I will.”
“Good,” he said. And then, in the mocking tone I was much more used to hearing from him, he added, “Because if something happens to you tomorrow night Frederick will kill me a second time.”
* * *
2314 S. Hedgeworth Way was located at the end of a small cul-de-sac, a beige-and-white two-story house that was nearly identical to all the other beige-and-white two-story houses on the street. It had an American flag flying from a flagpole and—yes, there it was—a basketball hoop mounted on a slightly darker beige-and-white shed off to the side.
Only the two-foot-tall stone gargoyles mounted on either side of the garage—and the six-foot-tall vampire suspended in midair about ten feet above the basketball hoop—distinguished this house in any way from its neighbors.
My eyes flicked to the airborne vampire.
Reginald had arrived before me.
That was good.
It was also my cue to get out of the car and approach the house.
“Thanks,” I said to my Uber driver. My hands shook so badly I struggled to get the car door open. The night had gotten colder in the forty-five minutes since I’d left Frederick’s apartment. Or perhaps it was always a few degrees colder this far west of the lake. I pulled my winter coat around myself a little more tightly as I approached the house to warm myself—and to try and settle my roiling nerves.
Reginald and I had agreed I would handle the talking at first. The video we made plainly showed that one of their own had been a part of this plot. If the vampires inside this house knew that said vampire had come with me tonight, it could complicate things in a way that could jeopardize both Frederick’s safety as well as Reginald’s. The idea was that he would stay safely out of sight and up in the air unless and until things went sideways—and I needed vampiric intervention.
I glanced up at him again as I approached the house. He nodded reassuringly. My stomach was in knots. A voice in the back of my head yelled at me to run, run, get away from here more loudly with every step I took.
But Frederick needed me.
So I kept moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other until, at last, I was at the front door.
Just as I was about to knock, my heart thundering in my chest, I heard someone clear their throat very deliberately, and very loudly, from about five feet away.
“Excuse me,” the throat clearer said. “But do you know these people?” The speaker looked about fifty years old, his mouth turned down at the corners in a disapproving frown. He wore a winter coat and dark fleece pajama pants, and a red wool hat with mittens that matched.
Of all the scenarios Reginald and I had run through over the past twenty-four hours, none had included what to do in case of nosy neighbor interference. But it looked like we’d run through one scenario too few.
“I . . . I don’t know them,” I stammered. “Or, rather—I know who they are. But I don’t know them know them, if you know what I mean.”
“Hm.” The man’s disapproving frown turned into an outright scowl. “You’re here to buy drugs, I assume.”
My eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”
The man pointed to the windows on the front of the house. For the first time I realized they were all covered up with dark sheets of plastic. “They’ve blacked out all the windows, they never come out during the day, and all manner of weirdos go in and out of this house all night long.” He counted out each of his neighbors’ perceived crimes against society on long, outstretched fingers. “I don’t know where you come from, but around here that points to just one thing.”
I paused, waiting for him to tell me what that one thing was. When all he did was look at me with a self-satisfied smirk, I guessed, “Does it mean . . . drugs?”
“It means drugs,” he confirmed.
“I don’t know anything about that,” I said very quickly, grappling for a plausible reason for my being there that would make this guy go away. “I just . . . I’m just here because . . .” I licked my lips—and said the first thing that popped into my head. “Because of their internet bill.”
I didn’t have to look up to know that Reginald was rolling his eyes at me so hard they were in danger of falling out of his head.