Молли Харпер - Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs

There were the shark eyes again, which were even scarier when they were flashing at me from the dark. “Considering the hour, we’re assuming he was inside. Of course, we wouldn’t find him if he was inside. The fire would reduce him to dust. The question is why you were stupid enough to knock yourself out before you were able to leave the scene of the crime.”

The terror was giving way to anger, which I assumed was a good sign. I demanded, “Why would I set Dick on fire?”

“Why would you set Walter on fire?” she asked.

“I didn’t set Walter on fire!” I shouted.

“Give me an explanation, Jane. Give me something to take back to the other council members, to the vampires who will demand justice. Give me some plausible reason for two men you are rumored to be involved with—whether that involvement is real or imagined, it won’t matter to the community—having both been set on fire.

Explain why you were found outside Dick’s burning trailer after you were recently seen having a lovers’quarrel with him at a party.”

“That wasn’t a lovers’ quarrel! That was a friendly conversation!”

“You were seen hitting him repeatedly.”

“It was a friendly conversation that involved me hitting him repeatedly.”

Ophelia did not look convinced.

I sighed. “What’s going to happen to me? Is a vampire detective going to come in here and question me with a phone book and a rubber hose?”

I could see the amusement reach her eyes, but she refused to smile. “A tribunal has been called to discuss your case. Depending on the outcome of that discussion, you may have a trial tomorrow.”

“A trial,” I repeated before realization dawned. “The trial? Wait, don’t I get a lawyer or a phone call or something?”

“No,” she said, uncuffing me. I sat up slowly. She was across the room and out of my reach in a glimmer of movement. Where was the trust? “You’re accused of immolating two of your own kind. The Bill of Rights no longer applies to you.”

She turned toward the door, then whirled back on me. She stood by the cot, peering down at me with those glowing black eyes.

“I regret this. You seem to be an interesting vampire.”

“Then don’t do this!” I yelled. “Stop making an example of me for other young vampires. I’m a terrible example. More weird stuff happens to me in a week than is foisted upon the average person in an entire lifetime.”

“I regret this,” she repeated. “But I also regret the loss of Dick Cheney. Once upon a time, we were…close acquaintances.”

“Am I the only person in the Hollow who hasn’t slept with Dick Cheney?”

“Possibly,” she admitted.

“Sorry,” I said. Shrugging my shoulders was a painful gesture that let me know there were bits of glass embedded somewhere near my shoulder blade. Gabriel was right, it itched.

Gabriel.

“My sire, Gabriel Nightengale, does he know I’m here?” I asked as she opened my cell door.

She nodded. “You’re not allowed visitors,” she said, shutting the very solid door behind her.

And for the first time since being shot and left for dead, I was truly frightened.

Whenever those horrible “women in prison” movies were played on Lifetime, I thought, what’s the big deal about prison? I could handle solitary. Even if I couldn’t read, I could daydream. I could write. I would take naps.

Well, like many of my predeath preconceived notions, that one was destroyed.

There was no window, so I couldn’t tell whether it was night or day. There was no clock, so I never knew what time it was. I couldn’t sleep, because the healing burns on my arms itched like crazy. And my daydreams were interrupted by pesky questions such as, “Where is Gabriel?” “Why does this keep happening to me?” “Am I going to die for real this time?”

I spent half my time trying to figure out where the hell I was. When I pressed my ear against the wall, I could hear traffic. I heard voices at least twenty feet above my head, but I couldn’t make out any actual words. And there was a rat somewhere in the plumbing.

The only good thing I could say about the clink was that the blood (served in a paper cup shoved through a slot in my door) was fresh and tasty. It was also of an indeterminate origin, but I decided not to ask questions.

I was halfway to drawing “LOVE” and “HATE” on my knuckles, when Ophelia returned. She was wearing black silk pants and a top that may, at one point, have been a handkerchief. I stood up, grateful for any sort of interaction, even if it could mean I was facing a spookily titled punishment.

“Are you comfortable?” she asked, not sounding as if she actually cared.

“Bored, mostly. How long have I been in here?” I asked. “Two days, three days?”

“Nine hours,” she said, looking as if she were suppressing a giggle.

“Well, that’s embarrassing,” I muttered, scratching at my arms.

We sat there and stared at each other. It was like a staring contest with a really hot statue.

Finally, she said, “The tribunal has voted against a trial.”

I sat up, feeling something like hope rising. “Really? That’s good news.”

“They voted against it because Missy has challenged you to trial by battle, which is her right as Dick’s consort.”

“You guys are just making this up as you go along!” I cried. “Dick and Missy weren’t even in a real relationship. Hell, if everyone he slept with could challenge me to a duel, I’d be fighting half the county. You could challenge—” She crossed her arms and glared at me. Probably not good to give her ideas.

“Never mind,” I said. “Is it going to be pistols at dawn? Swords at sundown? How does this trial-by-battle thing work?”

“The last battle was fought with sharpened snow shovels,” she told me.

“Now I know you’re screwing with me.” I snorted. Her expression didn’t change.

“Oh, come on!”

“Missy will choose the weapon,” Ophelia informed me.

“She’s going to accessorize me to death?”

“Or she can choose hand-to-hand combat.” Ophelia nodded.

“I stand by my statement,” I deadpanned.

My arms finally healed up about an hour after Ophelia left me. She said she would come back an hour before my appointment with Missy the grieving ex to let me feed and update me on the duel arrangements. She even promised to serve as my second. How did I get to a point in my life where I needed a second?

Semierotic fisticuffs with Gabriel aside, I didn’t have any faith in my fighting skills. Walter had nearly splintered my skull with his bare hands, and from what I heard, he’d spent most of his time watching Battlestar Galactica in his mother’s basement.

After pacing, humming, yoga, and playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the entire cast of Good Times, exhaustion finally got to me, and I managed to fall asleep. I dreamed that I was walking along that long, dark country road and felt the pain of Bud McElray’s bullet all over again. Only instead of finding me and turning me, Gabriel drove by in a big black Cadillac. He laughed and pelted me with cigars and drove away.

Anyone care to interpret that?

I jolted awake, yelling, “Freud!” Dick was sitting in the corner of my cell, smirking at me. “I can’t leave you alone for two seconds, can I?”

“Dick?” I said, wiping an alarming amount of sleep drool from my cheek. “Wait, are you a ghost?”

He sat on the cot and grasped my knee, so I could feel he was substantial. “Nope, still as undead as ever.”

I removed his hand and put it back on his own knee. He gave me a blithe grin, which, Lord help me, made me hug him. He was clearly caught off guard by this and, after hesitating, gave me a completely innocent squeeze.