After a couple of hours, everyone agreed it was time to leave. While Gil excused himself to use the restroom, Caleb paid the tab for everyone as Katrina and Paige left the bar to wait outside for them. On his way to the exit, Caleb saw the merits of a restroom break before joining the women. As he passed through the initial men’s room door, he overheard Gil speaking somewhat loudly. Gil’s somewhat angst-ridden tone of voice caused him to pause just inside.
“...so this scene is lame and getting lamer by the minute, dude,” Gil complained. “Everybody’s nice enough, I guess. But Paige has turned out to be a real drag for a vampire.”
Caleb’s eyes widened as he listened to the conversation, and a momentary feeling of shame ran through him as he reflected on his eavesdropping. But then, the conversation suddenly seemed important enough to override his social sensibilities.
“What? Hell yeah, Skeet, a frickin’ real vampire! Fangs, super-fast speed, the works. Oh man, I think I can snap a pic with my cell, and I’ll show you her teeth. Dude, they’re real. I ain’t freakin’ lyin’!” Gil blurted excitedly. “It’s like I’m some kind of ’blood on tap’ for her, but she always has a way of erasing the teeth marks so they don’t show.”
Caleb realized that his own rule number one had been broken, and though he never recalled Paige’s mentioning the rules for her own companions, he was nevertheless confident that was a universal one. One was never to reveal the true nature of a vampire’s existence to anyone, no matter the emotions or motivations driving such an inclination. Katrina stressed that rule above all others as the most important to maintain the safety of a vampire. Anonymity was their best friend in a twenty-first century world where humanity probably wasn’t ready to deal with the realities of vampires among them. And yet, somehow he wasn’t entirely surprised that Gil seemed oblivious to that fact.
“You want to see a picture?” Gil asked. “I guess I could try to snap a pic, if she’ll let me. But Dude, you’ll just bitch about how it looks like makeup and photo editing.”
Gil paused. “Really? Yeah, I remember Doug. He works over at that rag magazine, right?”
Another pause. “A thousand bucks for one picture? Ah, hell, are you trippin’ me?!”
Caleb’s anger flared as he realized where Gil’s conversation was heading.
“Hell, yeah,” Gil said. “That would pay some serious rent for me, dude. And with me between bands, I need all the spare Benjamins I can lay my hands on. Besides, she doesn’t even read the Inquirer. She’ll never know. And hey, would they pay for additional shots?”
Caleb started to burst into the room and yank the guy’s cell phone from his hand, but paused as Gil said something that stopped him in his tracks.
“What’s she like? Ah, hell, she’s a great lay,” Gil replied emphatically. “But it ain’t like I’m hookin’ up prime time with her, either. She can be bossy and kind of bitchy at times. Paige is more of a nighttime gig only, if you’re followin’ me. And there’s this guy I think she has a torch for or something. I dunno, it’s shit!”
Caleb had tried to reassure Gil that Paige was only a friend. Then again, am I the one getting the wrong picture? He pushed that thought from his mind and instead refocused on the situation at hand. He stormed into the room, fuming over the gall of Gil’s indiscretion, and saw the young man looking back at him with wide-eyed surprise. Caleb walked directly up to Gil, reared his arm, and punched him squarely in the face with a balled-up fist. However, he winced as his knuckles were impacted slightly by the leading edge of Gil’s teeth.
“Shit!” Gil exclaimed after recovering from the blow. “What the hell?!”
“Don’t even think about doing that, asshole!” Caleb demanded.
Gil glared back at Caleb abashedly and stammered, “Hey man, chill! I was just joking, you know?”
Caleb considered punching him again, but then shook his head, spun around, and walked purposefully back out of the restroom. He stalked back though the bar and exited out onto the street, still shaking his head with aggravation. His mind raced with a host of emotions: fear that humans would find out about Paige and Katrina, anger that Gil was such a creep, and concern that the balance of another human’s life was essentially in his hands based upon “the rules” he was supposed to