Damon (24 page)

I didn’t want to do any of those things. I wanted to talk to Chester and find out if Damon and I really were alien vampires, or if we were just crazy. And I wasn’t about to steal their house key. I wasn’t sure about quitting.

Bella was working up front when I came in. She looked at me twice before she realized who I was. Had I been so insignificant she hadn’t even missed me? Or had I changed so much I didn’t look like myself anymore?

“Well, there you are,” she said, barely smiling. “We got your message but it would have been nice to talk to you in person. You look worn-out. Driving always does that.”

I stored my purse under the counter and looked around. It seemed like I’d been gone for months, everything looked strange, and smelled funny. “We had some problems with Mama,” I told her. “How’s everything here?”

“Oh, we’re just fine. Is that what happened?” she said, frowning at my bandages. “My heavens, you’re covered. I thought maybe we’d moved past all this with her new medicines.”

I’d been planning to tell them the story about falling into a ravine, but this was better. This they would believe. “She got her hands on an ice pick. We like to never stopped her.”

She came to give me a careful hug of sympathy. “Not much of a vacation, huh?”

“We had a pretty good time, actually.” I had to tell her, the sooner the better. I was just about to show her my ring when Chester stepped out of his office.

“Well, there she is!” he boomed, grinning at me. “We thought you’d decided to go live with the city folk.” He came to give me a warm hug. “We’re just glad to have our girl back.” When I gasped in pain from the hug, he stepped back to look at me. “What happened, you fall out of the car on the way home, kiddo?”

“Her mama,” Bella whispered.

“Oh.” He nodded seriously. “Is she all right? And what about you?”

“She’s fine.” I could feel the courage building in me. I stuck out my hand. “Look.”

They both examined my ring. “Oh, isn’t that nice,” Bella said. Chester looked at me and frowned.

I tried to smile, but couldn’t. My mouth went dry. “I got married.”

“What’s that?” Bella asked.

Chester brought his hand down on the counter with a slapping sound that made me jump. “What do you mean you got married?” he demanded. “Who to?”

“She’s just joking,” Bella said and gave me a feather-light slap on the arm.

“I’m really not. Damon and I got married.”

Bella gasped. “You mean the… that… Elliot’s grandson? Oh, lord. But you barely know him, honey.” She sounded like she might start crying. Instead, she stared at me with wide, horrified eyes.

Chester continued to glare at me, frowning silently.

“We just knew,” I answered meekly. I was afraid one of them might slap me. I wasn’t sure why since no one aside from Mama had ever slapped me. “We got excited.”

“Why don’t you come in my office,” Chester said and turned away.

I followed him, taking each step as if it led to the electric chair. Bella gave me an encouraging pat on the back.

“My god… mistake,” I heard her say as I turned into the office.

“Sit down there,” Chester said, taking his squeaking chair behind the desk. “And tell me what it is you think you’re doing.”

I sat, and tried to find my composure. And tried to remind myself that I hadn’t done anything wrong. Damon and I were meant to be together. We were deeply in love. “What d’ya mean?”

“Take that bandage off your neck there,” he said, pointing.

“Why?”

“I want to see what’s under there.”

“Why?”

He sat back and crossed his arms, watching me and rocking in his chair. “You know we think of you like our own. You were always special.”

I looked down at my pretty ring. “I know.”

“And we mighta like to known.”

“We just did it, we didn’t tell anybody. I knew you’d be mad.”

His chair squeaked loudly and I could sense him leaning over his desk. “I’m not mad, kiddo, I’m concerned. Answer me this, did he tell you he was a vampire?”

My head shot up. “What?”

“Go close that door.”

I hurried to close the door then sat down, sliding my chair up close to the desk. And waited….

“We woke up Sunday before last to find somebody had broken into our house,” he said, “and left a scary little message on our living room wall. Want to hear what it said?”

I nodded, not really following his direction.

“It said,
The Vampire Is Here,
written in red paint. And I’ve got a pretty good idea who did it. I talked to Mike Spencer and he told me who bought red paint last.”

Mike Spencer at the lumberyard? “You think Damon did it?” I asked with surprise. I was surprised because I’d been waiting for Chester to tell me he was a vampire, too.

“I had to send Troy out to repaint the whole dang living room.”

“Damon didn’t do it.”

“Elverna Jarvis said she saw him leaving out her back door one day. She couldn’t find anything missing so she didn’t make a fuss. She’d seen him over at your place and thought maybe he’d gone in the wrong house.”

I sat back and crossed my arms and legs. “Why were you talking to Mrs. Jarvis about it?”
Hmm? Because you’re both vampires?

“Because she’s an old friend,” he answered, frowning at my sudden slyness. “She came in here and we were talking.”

“Well, it couldn’t have been Damon, we were in Knoxville Sunday. And anyway, he wouldn’t do something like that.”

He wouldn’t have, I was certain. He might have broken into their house, I could easily believe that, but he didn’t want Chester to suspect we knew about his true identity.

Maybe it hadn’t really happened, and Chester was testing me. I wanted to ask him directly, but I’d promised Damon.

“Let me see what’s under that bandage,” Chester said again.

I suddenly felt very belligerent and knew I should get out of the office. But I felt belligerent, so I stayed.

“Which one? You’ll have to be more specific.”

“You pick. Just humor me.”

“Fine.” I chose the largest bandage on my neck, where Damon had opened the wound several times. The skin around it was black with bruises. I gave him a good long look then flattened the bandage and sat back.

When I checked his reaction, Chester sat with his head down, his hands clasped tightly on the desk. When he finally looked up his eyes were closed and his face was flushed. He slowly lifted his eyelids and looked at me.

I knew he was about to tell me the truth.

But then, dammit, he reached for the phone. “I’m calling James Eddie. He can go have a talk with that boy. I won’t sit still for this.”

I lunged across the desk, grabbed the phone before he could stop me, and carried it back to my chair. In the process, his inbox and stapler and several other items were swept off the desk by the cord with a disturbing clatter.

The door opened and Bella stood there, anxious to see what had made the ruckus. Then she saw me sitting there clutching Chester’s phone against my chest.

“Are you okay, Maggie?”

“No,” I said.

“Why don’t you go on home?” She sighed. “You’re in no shape to be here today. You look just awful.”

My head whipped around on its own. “Why? I’m perfectly fine.”

“No, you’re not,” she decided, coming in to take the phone from me. She handed it to Chester then lifted me by the arm. “C’mon, I’ll carry you home. You need a nice long rest. Three or four day’s worth, by the look of you.”

I went with her, glad to be away from Chester who was staring at me like I’d finally gone crazy as Mama. He stared like he feared and pitied me.

“What about my car?”

“You can get it later,” she told me. “We’ll get you all fixed up, sweetie.”

She ushered me from the store like a child with a booboo who needed to be taken home to mama.

***

“You’ve got more problems than anybody I’ve ever known,” Bella told me when we were on the road. “I just wonder why that is for some people.”

I was still wired from my incident with Chester and had to cross my arms and legs to keep from bouncing in my seat.

“It’s because people keep secrets and tell lies and just keep passing on their diseases like they don’t even care.”

She reached over and patted my knee. “I’m sorry, sugar, I shouldn’t have said that. You’ve just been under so much stress lately. I don’t know how you handle it all.”

I didn’t want to talk about it. It was all I could do to handle the stress I was feeling right then.

When she stopped at my house, she reached over and caught my arm to keep me from getting out.

“Just do me one favor, Maggie,” she said. “If you plan to stay with this fella, find out all you can about him. Don’t let love blind you into overlooking any truths. You may think you know him, or that it doesn’t matter, but let me tell you something, after fifty-three years Chester still surprises me.”

I wondered how surprised she would be when she learned her husband was a vampire. Or did she already know, and that was where this warning came from?

I promised her I would keep my eyes open and went inside, glad to finally be away from people who didn’t approve of my life choices.

But I’d forgotten about Aunt Cynthia. She accosted me the instant I stepped through the front door.

“I want you to go in there and see what he’s doing,” she demanded, pulling me along by the arm.

I tossed my purse at the couch. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s got his door locked and won’t let me in there. I can’t find the key. Where’d you put it?”

“Maybe he doesn’t
want
you in there,” I told her, wondering why she wanted in my husband’s room while I was at work.

“He’s doing something.” She stopped at the door at the end of the hall and rapped sharply. “Maggie’s here,” she called. “Open the door.”

I didn’t say anything, because I wanted to see what had been happening during my absence. From the other side of the door Damon roared like a lion and hit the door so hard it cracked down the middle.

We both jumped back a foot or two. Cynthia turned wild eyes to me. “See? Tell him you’re here. He’s tearing up my house! Oh god, look!”

I looked down and saw an oozing pool of red seep out from under the door.

I elbowed her aside, alarmed now, and beat on the door. “Damon! Let me in!”

He roared again and didn’t unlock the door. I lifted my fist to knock again, then stepped back. I could sense he didn’t want me there. He was afraid he would hurt me. The roar was a warning to stay away.

I knelt down and dabbed my finger in the red puddle.

“Oh,
don’t
,” Cynthia complained.

I threw her a look. Did she think I was going to lick it off my finger? Probably.

Instead, I rubbed the substance between my thumb and forefinger, and sniffed. “It’s just paint,” I told her.

“He’s ruining my beautiful hardwood floor!” she wailed.

The floors meant nothing. I had to see if I could get a glimpse into the room. I ran down the hall and out the back door to look in the windows.

He had all the curtains tightly closed, except for the one overlooking the front porch. I checked the door and it was locked, so I cupped my hands and leaned in to squint through the window.

I could see him moving in there, pacing with agitation, but I couldn’t see his features, or tell what he was holding in his hand. It might have been a knife or a gun, but I didn’t think so. He wouldn’t stop flailing his arms long enough to tell. He was buck naked and looked like he’d been rolling in the red paint.

His demons were eating him alive and there was nothing I could do.

Cynthia came out on the porch to join me. “What’s he doing?” she whispered.

“Just pacing.”

“What’s he torn up?”

I checked around the room. The dresser was away from the wall, the mattress was askew, and the nightstand was upside down near the closet. Various items cluttered the floor, including the broken remains of the porcelain clock Gram had given me for my fourteenth birthday. I really loved that clock.

“Nothing,” I told her through clenched teeth. “He’s just pacing.”

She let out a sigh of relief beside me, but I kept watching.

“I heard some terrible crashing sounds earlier,” she said.

“He knocked over the nightstand, that’s all.”

She leaned against the wall beside the window and lit a cigarette. “God, this is just like it was when I left. I thought everything would be fine now.” Her voice was full of self-pity. “I thought I could finally get somewhere and live a happy, normal life. Oh, but nooo….” Her voice turned hard. “You better beware, honey, you’re right behind me.”

Damon threw whatever he was holding at the mirror over the dresser. The crashing sound was awful.

“He threw my hand mirror, that’s all,” I quickly told Cynthia.

“No, it was not!” she barked at me. She pointed at me as she marched back inside. “You brought him into this house. He is just like your mother. Just like her!”

She went inside and let the screen door slam behind her.

He wasn’t the same as Mama. He was keeping himself locked in his room, where he couldn’t hurt anyone. He wasn’t like Mama at all. She had always come looking for us.

Damon was still in control.

I sat down in a rocker, where I could hear and take a periodic look and check on him. But I should have been keeping an eye on Cynthia.

The sheriff’s car rolled to a stop in front of the house five minutes later and James Eddie maneuvered himself out of the car. I reluctantly got up to meet him.

“Well, I thought we might make it a full year, lil bit,” he said, looking more serious than his words. “But you just can’t go without seeing my pretty face, I guess.”

James Eddie was anything but pretty with his silly mustache, pockmarked skin, bushy eyebrows and tobacco-stained teeth, but I only chuckled a little to play along.

“Everything’s okay,” I told him. “We just panicked.”

“Her medication ain’t doing the trick anymore?”

Oh, so he thought it was Mama? Fine. “We forgot to give her her pills. We’ve been out of town.”

He rested his hands on his gun belt, nodding, because of course he knew that. He was Sheriff Backwater. He knew everything.