Charlaine Harris - Many Bloody Returns

Sebastian just shook his head, a trace of his earlier sullenness returning. Even so, he pulled the truck into a parking spot and killed the engine. “We might as well go check it out.”

Despite myself, I felt a deep stab of desolation. The one thing I’d been fighting for—a decent night out for Sebastian’s birthday—now seemed ruined. I could feel a tear hovering at the corner of my eye. I wiped at it with a knuckle. “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound hopeful, but failing even to my ears. “Let’s go check it out.”

I trudged through the courtyard, one of my favorite features of Portobello during the summer. Snow draped the barren Virginia creeper vines that twined around the walls like white-frosted lace. Where they poked through the drifts, black-eyed Susan seed heads wore dots of snow. Dried husks of milkweed and mullein stood sentry over sleeping garden beds. The cobblestone walkway had been recently shoveled, and Sebastian and I made our way quickly to the heavy wooden door. A pull on the brass handle confirmed my worst fears. It was locked. Closed.

“I’m sorry,” I blubbered. Despite my best efforts, a hot tear ran down my chill-burned cheek.

Sebastian wrapped his arms around me, and I smelled that comforting scent of cinnamon again. I breathed in deeply. “It’s okay,” he lied smoothly. “I’m just glad we’re both alive.”

Yeah, and it’s my fault we were out in the first place, I wanted to say, but I was too choked up to make my throat work. I was just about to suggest we turn around and head for my apartment, when the door swung open, nearly knocking us off our feet. A round-faced older man wrapped in a shapeless parka and a stocking hat raised his eyebrows at us hugging on the restaurant doorstep.

“Von Traum party?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, wiping at my tears. “How did you know?”

“You were our only reservation tonight,” he said. “When the blizzard hit, everyone cleared out. The storm only now just let up enough for me to get out and shovel. I was just about to head home.”

I wanted to beg him to stay, but I couldn’t blame the guy for wanting to get home after a storm like this one. “Please don’t let us stop you. I’m so sorry you waited for us. We forgot our cell phone.”

“No, no problem. If you’re happy to pay, I’m happy to stay!”

“Seriously?” I brightened.

He waved a mitten dismissively. “I’ve seen worse storms. Besides, it’s your birthday,” he said to Sebastian. “You should do something nice. I know how it is; my birthday is on Thanksgiving. Do you even know how sick of turkey I am?”

We all laughed.

Then, to Sebastian I asked, “Are you up for it? Really? I’d understand if you just wanted to go home, too.”

Sebastian smiled. “Let’s stay. I’m starving.”

Though my dress had claw marks down the back, we had wine and pasta by candlelight and the place to ourselves. The cook pampered us with special sauces, fresh breadsticks and garlic butter, and tiramisu for two. Sebastian’s kisses tasted of fresh whipped cream and chocolate.

We walked to my apartment in the quiet, peaceful snow, hand in hand. At home, I gave him his birthday present—ironically, a part for his antique car that he’d been searching for—and a lot more.

“Still think you’re cursed?” I asked him, after.

Sebastian thought for a moment. “Let’s see, today we had our car break down, met some kind of storm demon who tried to kill us, and had fantastic pasta. Yes, I’m cursed,” he said. When I was about to protest, he put a finger on my lips. “But I also have you. That makes the whole thing bearable.”

And then he called me incorrigible again, and we laughed and kissed until dawn.

Elaine Viets is the author of two mystery series. Murder with Reservations is her sixth Dead-End Job novel. Her third Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper book, Accessory to Murder, will be out this fall. Elaine has won both the Anthony and Agatha Awards for her short stories. “Vampire Hours” is her first vampire story. She lives in Fort Lauderdale, across the water from a condo whose occupants were the inspiration for this story.

“It’s three o’clock in the morning, Katherine. Go to sleep.”

My husband, the surgeon. Eric barked orders even in the middle of the night.

“I can’t sleep,” I said.

“I have to be at the hospital in three hours. Turn off the light. And go see a doctor, will you? You’re a pain in the ass.”

Eric rolled away from me and pulled the pillow over his face.

I turned off the light. I felt like a disobedient child in my own home, as I listened to my husband of twenty-five years snore into his pillow. Eric could fall asleep anywhere, any time. Especially when he was in bed with me.

If I pushed his face into the pillow, could I smother him?

Probably not. Years of late-night emergency calls had given Eric an instant, unnatural alertness.

I lay alone on my side of the vast bed, stiff as a corpse in a coffin. My white negligee seemed more like a shroud than sexy sleepwear. My marriage to Eric was dead, and I knew it. I wanted him to love me, and hated myself for wanting a man so cold.

He wasn’t like that when we were first married. Then, he’d ripped off so many of my nightgowns, he’d bought me a thousand-dollar gift certificate at Victoria’s Secret. I’d model the latest addition and he’d rip it off again. Back then, he didn’t care if he had early surgery. We’d had wild, all-night sex.

A tear slipped down my cheek, and I cursed it. Tears came too easily these days, ever since menopause. “The change,” my mother had called it. Once, before I knew what those changes were, I’d looked forward to menopause. I wanted the monthly flow of blood to stop. I was tired of the bloat, the cramps, and the pain.

But the change was infinitely worse. Oh, the blood stopped, as promised. But nobody told me what would start: the weight gain, no matter how hard I dieted. How could I get fat on rice cakes and lettuce?

The change brought other changes. My skin started to sag along the jaw. The lines from my nose to my lips deepened into trenches. My neck looked like it belonged on a stewing hen.

And my husband, the old rooster, was chasing young chicks. I knew it, but I didn’t dare confront him. I’d seen what happened to my friends when they’d faced down their rich, powerful husbands. Elizabeth, courageous, I-won’t-stand-for-this Elizabeth, had been destroyed. She’d caught Zack, her husband of thirty years, groping some not-so-sweet young thing in the dim lights of the local bar. Elizabeth had fearlessly confronted Zack on the spot. She’d embarrassed him in front of his backslapping cronies.

Good old Zack hired a pinstriped shark—one of his bar buddies. Now the elegant Elizabeth lived in a cramped hotbox of an apartment, with a cat and a rattling air conditioner. She worked as a checker at the supermarket and barely made the rent. Elizabeth was on her feet all day and had the varicose veins to prove it.

I’d taken her out to a dreary lunch last month. I’d wanted to do something nice. We went to the club, where we’d always lunched in the old days, when she was still a member. Some of our friends didn’t recognize her. Poor Elizabeth, with her home-permed hair and unwaxed eyebrows, looked older than her mother. She was so exhausted, she could hardly keep up a conversation.

That same fate awaited me. I had to stall as long as I could, until I could figure out what to do with my life. If Eric dumped me now, I’d be at the supermarket asking my former friends, “Would you like paper or plastic?”

I’d be one more useless, used-up, middle-aged woman.