"So it's Flood and the redhead. And they hide their bodies."
"I think it could be worse than that."
"Like worse in a way that we'll never be able to open the bookstore and may in fact end up doing time for taking the vampire's art collection?"
"Like worse in that the hooker and the missing Animals aren't dead at all."
"How is that worse?" Then Cavuto realized how that was worse.
They climbed into the car and stared at the windshield for a while without saying anything.
Finally, after a full minute, Cavuto said, "We're fucked."
"Yep," Rivera said.
"The whole city is fucked."
"Yep."
Chapter Twenty-six
Being the Chronicles of Abby Normal:
Star-Crossed Lover and Tragic Fatale
OMG! We are doomed by our forbidden love! We are like from different feuding families, from the wrong side of the tracks, he is like year of the Rabbit and I am a Leo, so we are even star-crossed, and it's a well-known fact that rabbits and lions have a strained relationship. OMFG! He's so hot! He rocks my stripy socks. If we had moors, I would so be off brooding upon one, my delicate jaw muscles clenched as I stared off into the mist, feeling my profound missing-ness for him. (I can't believe that San Francisco doesn't have a moor. Everywhere you go we have automated, coin-operated robotic bathrooms, or Frisbee golf courses, or some new stainless-steel epileptic razor-blade public-art thingy, you'd think the least they could do would be to install a decent moor—because there are a lot more people who like brooding than like Frisbee golf. I'm pretty sure moors can be used for other purposes, too, like hauntings and hiding bodies and family picnics and whatnot.) Thus I am forced to do my brooding at Tulley's Coffee on Market Street.
It took most of the day for us to move the Countess and the vampyre Flood to Jared's room. First we had to wrap them up in duct tape and garbage bags to protect them from the sun, then get them down the hill from the Bay Bridge in the garden cart, which was totally physically hard, and not like taking X and dancing or playing DDR all night, more like work. Then, when we were loading them into the minivan, these two cops come by.
And they're all, "So, what are you doing with your piercings and your magenta-on-black hair, and what can we do to further repress your creativity? Bluster-blah-blah."
And Jared was all, "Nothing." All wussy and guilty-sounding. He had the front end of the Countess at the time and he totally just dropped her headfirst on the floorboard of the van.
So I was like, "Fucktard! The Countess is going to rip your nads off when she awakens!" (And she might, too, although when we unwrapped her she seemed unbruised.)
And the cop was all, "Hold it right there, kid." With his hand on his gun like I was going to go all Columbine on his ass or something. So I knew it was time for some strategy.
So I stepped over to the cop, and I started whispering like I didn't want Jared to hear. And I'm all, "Officer, I'm really embarrassed to even be seen like this. I'm a Kappa Kappa Delta pledge and we're doing this hazing thing. I wouldn't be caught dead dressed like this, but it's like the most popular and powerful sorority on campus."
And the cop is all, "What about the guy? He's not in your sorority."
And I was all, "Shhhhhhh. God, you want to hurt her feelings? They made her shave her head like that and she's having a hard enough time with that and being totally flat-chested. Frankly, I don't think she's going to make it. Everyone knows that KKDs are pretty. Hello." I batted my eyelashes and sort of pushed my basically invisible boobs together with my arms, as I have often seen done in music videos.
And the cop was all, "Can I see your student ID?"
And I was like, FUCK, because I didn't know which college would be most likely to have a sorority, so I went with my Berkeley student ID, because Berkeley is a well-known bastion of hippie behavior and higher learning in which a sorority girl would probably have to blow like a hundred football players just to keep her GPA up. And cops like football.
So he was all, "Okay, but make sure there's plenty of airholes so your friends can breathe."
And I was all, "Sure thing. See ya later, cop."
So when we got the masters to Jared's house, his step-mom was all, "So, I see you have your little friend with you."
And Jared had to play chilly, so he was like, yeah, we have a school project. And stepmonster was so proto-orgasmic that Jared was with a girl that she didn't even say much when we dragged the bodies through the den. Jared was all, "They're for social studies. We're doing replicas of Egyptian mummies."
Despite the complete embarrassment for me as a fellow woman, I'm grateful that when fathers pick their trophy wives, they don't check resumes or SAT scores, because you couldn't get away with that shit with a woman of normal intelligence. But Jared's stepmonster was all, "Oh, how nice for you. Would you like some juice?" Fortunately she wasn't around in sixth grade when Jared and I actually did our mummy project. We got in trouble for charging three hundred dollars' worth of Ace bandages on my mom's Visa, and my sister Ronnie has never fully recovered the feeling in her feet (and has an anxiety attack whenever she's in an enclosed space). But there was no gangrene or amputations like the doctors threatened, and we got a B, so I don't see what all the noise and counseling was about.
Anyway, after we unwrapped the Countess, I knew I had to go back and feed Chet, like I promised the disgusting huge cat guy, and since we had now shared a moment of intimacy, I felt obligated. So we shoved the vampyre Flood under Jared's bed, because Jared wanted to sit on the bed and play Xbox and it's a single bed. So, anyway, I caught the bus on Twenty-fourth Street, and got back to the SOMA with just enough time to feed Chet before the old naked vampyre awakened from his undead slumber. And I took Jared's dagger with me in my biohazard messenger bag, because I thought I would dispatch Elijah by decapitation as, like, an extra-credit thing for the Countess.
Shut up. It wasn't like I went down in the basement in my nightgown to check on a blown fuse when the radio clearly had stated that there was a psycho killer on the loose and he was probably in the basement. I'm not stupid. I put on Jared's motocross boots and his leather jacket and spiked dog collar, and tied my hair back, so I was totally Thunderdome-ready. How hard could it be to feed the cat and cut the head off a sleeping old guy, anyway? It's not like they wake up. I mean, we bonked Flood's head on the steps going to Jared's room like eight times and he didn't even groan.
So I would have been all good and totally in line to be Princess of Darkness or at least Assistant Manager of Darkness, except when I was going up the steps I heard the dryer open. And I was all, Uh-oh. Since when is sundown like at five-o'clock? What am I, nine years old that I should have sunset at five o'clock? Sunset shouldn't be until like eight or nine o'clock, right? Right?
So, I'm like, WHOA. And I froze. And I stood there for like a half an hour, not moving at all, because I didn't buckle like the top buckles of Jared's motocross boots, to show my casual badassness, so it was like I was wearing fucking sleigh bells. (I know, I'm a tard.) So I couldn't move.
Then, after about a year, I hear this car pull up outside and the doors open, and I'm thinking—Hello, Diversion, my old friend. And I ran out the security door and right into this tall blond ho. And she's dressed all couture and shit, like it's fashion week at church or something, except she's with three of the guys from the Hummer limo, and she's pale as albino monkey cum. And I don't mean in a good way either. I mean in a sort of "Hey, Myrtle Joe Cornfed, y'all let go your stepdaddy's penis and get over here and turn the channel to NASCAR" kind of way. I mean, she had no mascara on at all!
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