Christopher Moore - Bite Me

And I’m like, “Oh bitch, please. They all saw my eye makeup, they saw how I’m dressed, they saw my dark and mysteriously colored hair, and they think I’m just trying to freak them out by pretending to pour blood in my coffee. So they are all furiously not freaking out so as to not give me the satisfaction because then they wouldn’t be sophisticated City peeps. This is not my first funeral, Red State.”

“Oh, I like her,” goes the Madame. “She’s got spunk.”

And Flood is like, “Okey dokey.”

And I’m like, “If you keep saying ‘okey dokey’ I will be forced to replace you as my Dark Lord.”

And Madame is all, “It does sound a little corn-fed, love.”

And Tommy is all, “Never mind how I talk. You remember, right, Madame? You remember me?”

And the Madame is all “Oh, yes, yes, I do now. You were the one who had achieved Olympic levels in masturbation, weren’t you?”

And Flood was all, “Uh, no, that part was someone else, uh-”

So, like, the master needed a hand, if you know what I mean, so I was like, “Oh chill, it’s a stress thing, everyone does it. I’m flicking the bean under the table right now just to dial the tension back a little. Yes. Yes. Yes! Oh-zombie-jeebus-fuck-me-Simba-lion-king-hakuna-matata! Yes!” So I spaz-gasmed a little and kind of slid down in my seat breathing hard. Then I like look up at the Madame with one eye and I’m like, “They’re freaking out now, aren’t they?”

And she just kind of nodded with big eyes and whatnot. So, you know, embarrassment for my Dark Lord totally diverted. But this one crusty day dweller is all looking up from his Wall Street Journal at me with a disgusted face, so I’m all, “Rawr.”

And Flood looks at me.

And I’m like, “Shut up, it’s a thing. He shouldn’t even be allowed out at night, using my dark without permission.” So I rawred Wall Street again for eavesdropping.

So we sort of drank our coffee for a while and Madame looked at her cards and then, like, looked up seemed disappointed that we were still there, but Flood was on it.

He’s all, “The woman you told me I would meet, I met her. We live together.”

And the Madame holds up her hand, which means, “shut the fuck up” in fortune-teller language. And she looks at her cards some more. Then she looks at her tip jar.

Then Flood looks at me and like does the tip jar nod. So I pull a hundred out of my messenger bag and drop it in the jar.

And Flood’s like, “Abby!”

And I’m like, “Hello, woman you love? You want to bargain hunt?”

And he’s all, “’Kay.”

So Madame Natasha puts down a few more cards, and goes, “A redhead.”

And we’re all, “Yeah.”

And she’s all, “She’s hurt, but she’s not alone.”

And we’re all, “Uh-huh.”

And she lays out about six more cards, and she goes, “That can’t be right.”

And Flood is like, “If you’re getting the dead thing again, that’s okay, we’ve worked through that.”

And Madame is like, “No, it’s not that.” And she shuffles the cards, not cool, like a dealer, but gentle, and every which way on the table, like she’s really trying to confuse the cards.

Then she lays them out again. And her eyes are getting bigger as she goes-each card, bigger eyes-until she lays down the last in her pattern and she’s all, “Oh my.”

And we’re all, “What? What?”

And she’s, “This has never happened, in thirty years of consulting the cards.”

And we’re, “What? What?”

And she’s, “Look.”

There were fourteen cards on the table. All kinds of pictures and numbers. And I’m like, ready to go, “’Splain, please.” But then I see what she’s big eyes about. They are all the same suit. So I’m, “They’re all swords.”

And she’s like, “Yes. I’m not sure how to even interpret this.”

And I’m all, “She’s hurt, she’s not alone, and all the cards came up swords?”

And she’s, “Yes, dear, that’s what I just said, but I don’t know what it means.”

And I’m, “I do. Can you do them again?” And I slap another hundred in her jar.

And she’s, “’Kay.”

Then she lays them all out again, and this time there’s a lot of swords, but also other cards. And I’m, “Well?”

And she’s all, “In this configuration, the swords signify north, but also, the air, a sailing ship perhaps. It doesn’t make sense.”

And we’re like, “What? What?”

And she’s like, “A sunken ship?”

And I’m like, “It makes total sense.”

And Flood is like, “It does?”

And I’m like, “Stay right there, Madame. We may be back.”

And Flood is like, “What? What?”

And I’m all, “I forgot to tell you about the little guy with the sword.”

And he’s like, “You really adjust to this magical stuff fast, Abby.”

And I’m like, “Are you trying to say I’m perky? Because I’m not. I’m complex.”

I am. Shut up, I am.

He’s looking at me right now, like we should be going. Even though I am typing at awesome speed. Okay, that’s it, dude, you’re harshing the depth out of my literature. I’m coming. What a whiner. Gotta go. We’re going to run out of dark. Byez.

Makeda put on the glasses and watched the bricks at the corner of the building light up. They’d find the cats by behavior, because even vampire cats are cats, and they marked their territory. Elijah had told them where it had started and where it was likely to move. The special sunglasses, combined with their vampire vision, allowed them to see the phosphorus expelled in the cats’ urine as glowing. They could even see a half-life, of sorts. Something marked days ago would glow much dimmer than something marked only a few hours ago.

“That way,” said Makeda.

Rolf cocked his head toward the boarded-up loft apartment on the second floor. “That’s the loft where Elijah said he turned the first cat. There are people up there. Sounds like two.”

“That’s also where he was fried by a jacket covered with sun lights,” said Makeda. “I say we clean up the cats first, they’re less tricky.”

Rolf nodded to Makeda, who bolted down the alley without another word. They followed the trail, a mark here and there, many blocks until they reached the Mission, where the trail started to sunburst out.

“I don’t know which way to go,” said Bella. “We need to get a vantage point.”

Rolf looked around and spotted the tallest building in the area. “How about that one, the one that looks like a robot pterodactyl is perched on it? He pointed to the black glass Federal Building.

Makeda said, “It’s an abomination.”

“Said the abomination,” snarked Rolf. “I’ll go. I have to go up solid, I need the glasses.” He shrugged off his overcoat and dropped his weapons on top of it.

“Well go to mist if you lose your grip,” said Makeda. “I’ll catch your glasses. If you fall off of that thing solid we’ll have to scrape you into a bag to get you back to the ship.”

He grinned, showing his fangs, then started a steady climb up the sheer corner of the building.

Bella pulled a pack of cigarettes from her jacket, shook one out, lit it, then blew a long stream of smoke up after Rolf. “What if Elijah lied about turning more humans? He’s lied before.”

When they’d retrieved the old vampire from the City initially he’d brought along a blond vampire woman, claiming she was the only one. She hadn’t survived the first month at sea. Weak vessels, they called her type.

“He didn’t admit turning the cat, either, until we found the news stories on the Internet.”