Charlaine Harris - An Apple for the Creature

He shrugged unapologetically. “Whatevah,” he said, in his Southie accent.

“I wonder if she thought no one in the neighborhood would see her running naked down the street? Was she hoping to blend in?” Claire said.

That set them both to laughing.

“Did you see her teeth ?” Claire asked. “Maybe she used to be a goth.”

“When—1953?” Jackson shot back.

Claire shook her head. “A woman that size, leaping off a second-story balcony. I’d think she’d break an ankle. And she was so fast .”

“PCP. It’s a beautiful thing,” Jackson replied. “So, you all packed?” he asked, changing the subject only slightly.

Claire’s merriment faded. “This is bogus. Advanced evidence collection techniques on Thanksgiving? For two weeks? It’s got to be code for something else.”

Jackson rolled his eyes heavenward. “The aliens have landed. Finally.”

“What about people with kids?” she pressed. “Or elderly parents? What was the Bureau thinking , scheduling this now?”

“Maybe they’re only taking people who won’t be missed.”

“Oh, thanks ,” she snapped.

Jackson was quiet a moment. Then he slid a glance at her. “Maybe a couple of weeks apart will help. Have you given any more thought to the therapy idea?”

She pulled another wet wipe from the pack—they bought them by the case at Costco—and scrubbed at her ick-encrusted elbow. Then she wadded the towelette and slipped it into their little black trash holder.

“Peter and I don’t need couples counseling. And we don’t need ‘help.’ Things are fine.”

“It really helped Santos and his third wife. Or was it his fourth?” Jackson deadpanned.

“We’re fine ,” Claire said through gritted teeth.

“Claire, I’m your partner,” Jackson said gently, and his voice slid perilously close to the edge where they should not go. She was married to Peter, and even if she hadn’t been, fraternization was not cool. There was no way she wanted to jeopardize her career because Jackson was handsome and funny and observant. And tall with lanky legs and blond hair shot with silver. And had periwinkle blue eyes, periwinkle being her favorite color. They were both superstars on the fugitive task force—which was why they were the “lucky” ones being dumped with Advanced Forensics Techniques over Thanksgiving—and for kids like them who got all A’s in The Job, the straight and narrow was the only way to fly.

“I’m all packed,” Claire said. “I’m ready to go.”

“I’ll miss you,” Peter said, kissing Claire good-bye the next evening. Her assignment was all very cloak-and-dagger: Night before Thanksgiving, car at eight, not to take her to the Boston field office but to an undisclosed location.

“I’ll miss you, too,” Claire said, but she was still focused on his forced tone of voice. His fakey-fake smile. She was an FBI agent. She knew lying when she saw it, heard it. He was actually happy that she was leaving. Not simply relieved, the way people are when things are not great at home and a business trip gives you both a break. He had something planned. He had dark brown curly hair and big coffee-colored eyes, and he worked out. Maybe some hottie grad student at MIT, where he taught physics, was coming over to cook a goddamn Thanksgiving turkey for poor Dr. Anderson, whose careerist wife was abandoning him at such a special time of year.

Peter didn’t even like turkey.

Their kiss left much to be desired, and then the car slid up to the curb like a shark. Jackson was in the back, in a really great black suit, white collar, and tie. Blond hair, tanned, he took the FBI look to a whole new GQ level. Claire had on a killer black jacket, white silk blouse, black wool pencil skirt, black heels—not too high for the job, very flattering.

“You okay?” Jackson said by way of greeting. She didn’t bother answering. One lie today was enough.

“This is all very drama-drama,” she said. “We could drive ourselves. We both have take-homes.” As in, Bureau cars they could drive home when they went off-duty.

“Which makes it even more mysterious and, therefore, cool,” he replied. Then he nodded knowingly as they glided away. “Aliens.”

Not aliens.

“Holy shit, are they kidding?” Jackson murmured, as the next PowerPoint slide popped up on the screen. In the image, the vic, who in life had been very beautiful, was lying on her side in a room with ugly beige wallpaper. She was wearing a pink turtleneck sweater and blue jeans, and clutching a copy of Thoreau’s Walden . Fingertips in blue latex had moved the sweater neck away from the vic’s skin, revealing two deep punctures. Next slide: Luminol had been applied to the punctures, and the long-exposure shot revealed the telltale glow of blood, also showing a few droplets on the floor beside her. Only instead of glowing blue, as it should have, the blood was a brilliant purple. “We surmise that when the vampire attacks, it deposits something into the victim’s bloodstream that causes this reaction to the Luminol,” Dr. Alan DeWitt, their forensics instructor, explained in a flat monotone that boggled Claire’s mind. How could anyone sound that detached when they were discussing an attack by an actual bloodsucking vampire?

Until the car had arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, Claire hadn’t known that the Bureau had a Special Forensics Unit located there. Jackson hadn’t, either. The nondescript brick building was situated near a Walgreens. According to some last-ditch, furtive net searching on her non-Bureau smartphone, the Walgreens was not too far from the correct location of Gallows Hill (as opposed to the recreational area that was still listed as the actual site). Nineteen people had been hung for witchcraft on Gallows Hill in 1692. Her first thought had been that maybe their secretive little group was going to do some kind of forensics on the bodies of the victims. Learn historical forensics techniques or something like that.

She sure hadn’t thought they were going to learn how to detect vampire activity.

After being welcomed to the SFU by Mark Nash, the Special Agent in Charge, they’d been sent to a classroom with individual, college-style desks in two rows of six. Claire wondered at all the rush, as if there was some pressing need to learn vampire evidence collection as fast as possible—as if the information would spoil if left out too long, like Ms. Hannover’s goddamn turkey.

Told not to eat or drink anything, Claire and Jackson made sure to sit in the first row, dead center. First impressions were everything.

Dr. DeWitt didn’t spend a lot of time on preamble. All he had said was that the Bureau had conclusive evidence that vampires walked among the living; that there had been three attacks from Boston to Portland, Maine; and that it seemed to be the work of an individual vampire, classified, therefore, as a serial killer. And that they were there to get trained in evidence collection so they could figure out his pattern, apprehend him, and process any additional vampire-related crime scenes that presented themselves. Such evidence collection being referred to as VSI. Vampire Scene Investigations.

A vampire. A goddamn vampire. That was pretty much the consensus of the entire class.

“You owe me fifty bucks,” Claire said to Jackson.

“I think vampires count as aliens,” Jackson retorted.

The PowerPoint kept going. They saw another vic with telltale puncture marks. Another pretty girl. Third vic, cute girl again. Same type of holes, luminous with Luminol. They watched a computer simulation of how the fangs must be shaped, how they would enter the body. The closest analogy was a rattlesnake. Which, bleh.