“Honey, that was Chance. Max is a woman.” Sven shook his head at me.
“A woman is named Max and is a Master Magician?”
Vance grinned at me. “Yes, my little sexist pig. Max, short for Maxine, is a Master Magician, and you went in there and ignored her.”
Hmm. Okay.
Note to self—have Mia give more gender specific directions the next time she sends me to gather information. “Okay, whatever, Max knows who staked you and called them an idiot.”
“How did you get her to tell you that?” Vance looked genuinely curious.
I shrugged that away as unimportant and chose to continue my story instead. “Then some jerk tried to run me into the mountain on State Road. I got away and barely lost any paint in the process, but I think it means I am close to something.”
Vance and Sven stared at me. “How?” Sven rubbed his chin.
“By bumping my car,” I answered, choosing to be obtuse.
“How did you get away?”
“I am an excellent driver.” I looked them in the eye, daring them to argue.
“Okay.” Vance shrugged. “And she calls me mysterious.”
Sven choked on a laugh.
Before we knew it, it was eleven, and we could close shop. The men followed me upstairs, in debate. Sven thought, considering the incident on State Road, we should avoid Max until we figured out the rest of the puzzle. Vance said, and I quote, “Screw that.” He wanted to go now, tonight, and see what he could see. I was with Vance. Something was up, the direct route to answers seemed to go through Jefferson, so that was where we should go.
Upstairs, they finally came to an agreement. Vance would go to the Galley. Sven offered to baby-sit, so I could accompany Vance. I was okay with that, as I had gotten the most information today and stood, as the outsider, the best chance of overhearing something useful. What had me up in arms was the way the men thought I should dress. “Honey, you can’t go barhopping with Mr. Old and Dead in jeans and a hoodie.”
I frowned at him. “Why the hell not?”
“Come here, my child, and let papa help you dress like a woman.”
“Listen here,” I protested as Sven rummaged in Mia’s closet. “There is nothing wrong with the way I dress.”
“I get it. Mild mannered mama by day, but honey, the sun is
down
. You need to shake that gorgeous blond mass free and be a woman va-va-va-voom by night.”
“Sven, get out of Mia’s closet. There is nothing in there I will wear.”
“You aren’t going as you. Pretend it’s a costume ball, and you are going as the bad ass, vampire girlfriend.”
“As if.” Sven popped his head out of the closet to give me a look that dared me to disagree. Somehow I ended up in a leather top, designed mostly to make my breasts squish up and together, giving me boobshelf. He allowed me my jeans, but added a pair of kick-ass black boots with about four inches of heel. I admit it, I liked the boots. They looked dangerous.
I shoved off his hands and went to the bathroom. My hair could not be what he wanted. It would have given me away way too quickly. I had found years ago, though, that if I gooped enough gel and hairspray in it, it had a harder time moving. I did the goop thing and it hung in a crazy mass around my face which then looked pale by comparison. I applied some makeup to hide the pale and, with a sigh, realized Sven would only goop on more if I didn’t beat him to it. So, I glopped on eye stuff, lipstick and all of the girly stuff that I usually forego.
Dangerous, almost like a sex kitten, I hardly felt like myself. Probably, I looked more silly than sexy. Blowing out a breath, since there was nothing I could do to make the top look less suggestive, and I had, if nothing else, matched my hair and make-up to it, I gave up and left the bathroom. Sven whistled a catcall and Vance gave me a look that suggested that he would like to take off the top, if not for the same reasons as my own.
Stage set, off we went to see the wizard. Or magician.
Whatever
.
CHAPTER Six
The car ride was mostly silent. I drove, going Route Eleven this time rather than the hills. I think I was more shaken up than I let on about the guy earlier, not to mention I knew I awakened a sleeping beast by using my ability. Besides, Route Eleven was faster.
Even though I had slipped a jacket on over the leather top, I still felt naked in a car with a hot vampire. I stared intently at the road and turned on my signal to get off on State Route Forty-Six. We were close, and my nerves were shot.
I took the turn rather sharp, and Vance reached out for my hand. “It’s not too late to turn around.”
I looked at him in the darkness. Yeah, it
was
getting too late to turn around for a lot of things, but hell, that wasn’t stopping me any. “I know. I’m okay.”
He looked away, and I refocused on the road. “You have enough gas to get back to ‘Bula? All the gas stations close in Jefferson after midnight.”
“Spend a lot of time in J-town?”
He nodded. “A lot of stuff goes down in Jefferson after dark. You would be amazed at the amount of night life this one little town has.”
I gave a huff. “I grew up around here. If there was so much weird stuff in Jefferson… vampires and any number of other things, then why doesn’t everyone know about it?”
“They know. Inside, in that part of them that is afraid to go to the bathroom without a light, that part that sends ‘honey’ down to investigate the noise downstairs with a flashlight and a baseball bat…they know. There are stories that are written as so-called fiction. They know. They choose not to believe.”
I figured people peed at night with a light because men didn’t want to miss the hole and women didn’t want to fall in the water, but what did I know? “Next, you will be telling me that you know where Hoffa’s body is.”
“Not exactly. Last I heard, he was in Eastern Europe.”
I looked at him. “He is not dead? That’s why they never found the body?”
He laughed. “I don’t know, but man, is it fun to freak you out.”
I snorted in an unladylike fashion and pulled into a gas station. The car still rang with Vance’s laughter, so I stomped my way into the gas station.
“Oh my freaking God, Janie!”
Looking up, I recognized Tom and grinned. “Hi! How have you been? Oh, it has been years, hasn’t it?”
“Get over here and give me a hug. I was just asking Kaye the other day if she had seen you, since Mia stopped in and said you were due back in town.”
Hugging him, I was enveloped in my first real feeling of homecoming since I’d moved back. As much a fixture in Jefferson life as the gazebo, everyone knew Tom, and Tom had the dirt on every last one of them. If you needed to know where something was in Jefferson or how someone was doing, the only person to ask was Tom. When someone said, “I heard it from Tom,” you may as well have written it in stone. Tom knew all, and Tom told few anything. He looked out into the lot. “Are you here with Vance?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Are you sure that’s wise? I mean, not to let any secrets out of the bag, but just between us? He is…not normal. And you are…
you
. I’m just sayin’ I wouldn’t recommend it.”
I quirked a brow at him. “Since I know all there is to know about me, but didn’t know you did, maybe you could tell me what you know about him.”
“Ohhh, no. I
like
breathing.”
“Oh, spill, Tom. What do you know?”
He smirked. “Honey, I know a lot of things. I don’t, however, know why you would be with him if
you
know what I know.”
I shrugged. “I like to live dangerously.”
He laughed at me. “That shirt of Mia’s suggests, yes, you do. Since I have known you for years, I know
that
is a lie.”
I shrugged again and looked at the incongruous picture of a vampire pumping gas. “Maybe I am getting reckless in my old age.”
“Or something.” He took my money, and we chatted for a minute before I rejoined Vance in the car.
“I didn’t know you knew Tom.” Vance clicked back into his seatbelt.
I grinned. “Let’s go with, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me and I am sure vice versa. This can be a learning experience.”
“Let’s call it a science experiment instead, and I will be the one conducting it. I am sorry to say, though, for most of the testing you will have to get naked.”
I laughed, and pulled into the front parking lot of the Galley. “Are you always this bad, or am I special?”
“Lets go with both and wing it from there.”
You wouldn’t think that eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night was a hopping time in a one horse town like Jefferson, but you would be wrong if all you had to measure it by was this bar’s parking lot. I slid into a space as a silver Tiburon slid out. I looked over at the passengers, a skinny boy with dark hair and a girl in goth. I wondered mildly if I was ever that young as I listened to his bass thump.
“Ready?” Vance touched my arm.
“Yeah.” I was as ready as I was going to be. I opened my car door and got out. The wind cut into me, and I remembered Christmas was right around the corner. I hustled to the door Vance held open in the chivalrous manner of a guy over a hundred.
The wall of noise hit me at the same time as the wall of smoke. I paused, letting Vance in front so I could follow him into the bar. The view of Vance from behind was spectacular, and I made a mental note to follow more dead men around. I glanced around him at the bar, a vastly different space than it had been at lunchtime. The earlier dim bar now glittered by the light cast from Christmas lights and neon beer advertisements. The music was familiar, but I couldn’t name the song.
Suddenly, even more self conscious than I had been before entering, what seemed sexy and dangerous, became foolish and gaudy. I was too old for the bar scene, an almost-forty-year old, dressed up like a hooker in what I was sure looked to be my daughter’s top. Not that Vickie would live long if I ever caught her in a shirt like this one, but hypothetically speaking. Simply put, I was too old for this whole thing—the outfit, the scene, everything. I went with my typical insecure response—fake it. I lowered my lids to half mast and added a swing to my hips.
Vance glanced back at me, and I tried out an attempt at a saucy grin, but it probably came out looking somewhat nauseous because he asked, “Are you okay?”
I nodded and made a beeline for the bar. When lacking your own confidence, why not drink some? I wasn’t usually a drinker by nature, but the past few days were putting that to the test. Sliding inbetween people, I ordered a beer. The man next to me offered to buy me a drink. “No thanks.”
“Come on, do a shot with us, freak.” As I turned to glare at the speaker, he pulled me into his arms in a bear hug that swept me off my feet.
“Santino!” I got out, before laughing.
“What in the hell are you doing here?”
“Getting a drink.”
He grinned and slung an arm around his longtime girlfriend, Stacy. “Us, too. Let me buy you one.”
“First, she is doing a shot with me.” Stacy smiled. I grinned back at her and nodded.
Taking our shots, we stood back and clinked our glasses together, “
Slàinte
,” we chorused, an Irish toast translating to mean something like health if I remembered correctly, but fitting as I was half Irish. Santino wore a baseball cap, typical for him. I tugged gently on it, and he grumbled and readjusted it over his ears. “So, cousin, heard you got rid of the asshole, finally.”
I nodded. “‘Bout time. You told me not to marry him in the first place.”
“Not that I would say I told you so, but—”
“But you told me so,” I finished.
“Yeah.” He grinned, and his face crinkled. Still red-headed, he had more freckles than anyone I had ever met. Santino, four years my senior, was my favorite cousin on my mother’s side. He and I went way back. I knew he lived around here, but was still more than pleasantly surprised to see him.
Speaking of which...
“Hey, you’re from around here. What do you know about a woman named Max?”
Stacy nearly choked on her beer. Santino stopped smiling. “I know enough to steer clear of her and her buddy, Chance. She owns this dive, but she usually doesn’t make an appearance until after midnight. Why do you want to know about her?”
“We met earlier.” I failed to add that I came looking for her, which was why we’d met.
“Is this something about Mia?”
I shuffled my feet and tried to change the topic. “Are they having karaoke tonight?”
“Yes. Does it have something to do with Mia?”
“No, she hates karaoke.”
He glared at me and took me by the scruff of the neck. “Be back,” he said to Stacy and led me to the dance floor.
Once there, I began dancing with him. “Tell me.” He dipped low enough to speak into my ear. The song was old, something about bringing sexy back.
“It’s nothing big.”
“Then why won’t you tell me about it? We are family, kid.”
I shrugged. “It’s something to do with Mia, yes, but its not a big deal, and I have it under control.”
“Mia has been hanging out with some weird people since she opened that store in the Harbor.”
I shrugged, and he spun me. “Stay away from her buddy, Vance. I don’t know what is up with him, but he gives me the creeps.”
He spun me out again and when I faced him, I pulled on his ear, to get him down where I could speak into it. “He’s fine.”
He shook his head and gave me a look. It was the same look that, as kids, came right before he told my mother I was climbing a tree I shouldn’t or that I was sneaking out. “Seriously, I came here with him tonight and—”
He put a finger to my lips and pointed over my shoulder. “But are you going home with him tonight? What
is
it with you and the slutty men?”
He spun me out again, and pulled me to face away from him. We continued to dance, but I was suddenly ice cold. Not that I was jealous. That was
so
not it. I was just disappointed in the weak nature of man. Just clinically abhorred.
Yeah, that was it
.