Death's Excellent Vacation - By Charlaine Harris & Toni L. P. Kelner Page 0,47

peered down at the face he had indicated. It was grainy and nondescript. “Mr. Palgrave . . . Thaddeus . . . I don’t understand any of this. You’re telling me that you’re some sort of supernatural creature? Is that what you’re trying to say?” I thought about Kate and her Mexican bare skulls and strigoi. “You’re a vampire of some kind?”

He shook his head, even pursing his lips as if disappointed by my pedestrian line of thinking. “Not a vampire, not a werewolf, not a zombie. We’re not at all like those people, though we have no objection to them. In fact, they can be quite useful. But we don’t drink blood or howl at the moon. Nothing so colorful. We simply observe. We are researchers, like yourself. When all this is gone, there must be some record.”

Even now, I still clung to the notion—or perhaps the hope—that this was all an elaborate joke. “You—you’re a researcher,” I said. My voice had gone flat. “A researcher who’s lived for hundreds of years. And of all the places in the world where you might go—of all the fascinating, important places where you might go—you’ve chosen to spend thirteen years in an office at LifeSpan Books?”

He appeared delighted by the question. “Isn’t it wonderful?” he cried. “As I mentioned, our relationship with time is not quite linear in the way you might be thinking. But these past thirteen years have been a wonderful break.”

“A break?”

“Don’t you see? I’m on vacation! All of this is just another Renaissance fair to me!” He sighed fondly. “But it’s time to be getting back.”

“Getting back. To your research job.”

“Actually, Jeff, I’m no longer in research.”

“No?”

“No. I’m in recruiting. And we’re all terribly impressed with you. With your application. And so soon after Miss Rossmire! Do you know Miss Rossmire, by the way? I’m sure you’ll like her.”

I lurched to my feet. “You—you’re impressed with me? But all those red checks. All those missing citations. All that—”

“Just a formality during the apprentice period. Nothing to worry about now. I’m really quite charming when you get to know me, as you’ll discover in the fullness of time.” He extended his hand. “What do you say?”

I simply stared at him.

“Do you need some time to think about it? Of course you’re perfectly welcome to stay here and carry on as before. I will be moving on, and there will be no further obstacles to your advancement. Should you elect to remain, however, I should perhaps mention that matters will not proceed as you might wish.” He leaned up against the window, resting his head against his forearm. “If you and I part company tonight, you will continue here for another twelve years. It’s all a bit conventional, I’m afraid. After four years you move into a small town house in Shirlington, telling yourself that you need space for an office in which to write your novel. Two years later you fall behind on the mortgage, and your new girlfriend—Cheryl, from copyediting—seizes upon the opening to move in with you, in the interests of sharing expenses. What had been a casual, halfhearted romance on your part now becomes fraught with the expectation of marriage. You resist for two more years, finally bowing to the inevitable two days before Cheryl’s thirtieth birthday. Within three years you begin an affair with a woman you meet at Gilpin Books, which becomes public just as your wife discovers a lump in her left breast. Her bravery and fortitude as she battles with cancer is thrown into brilliant relief by your disgrace; she is a martyr in the eyes of everyone you have ever known. Though you tend to your dying wife with saintly devotion, it is too late for redemption. At her funeral fourteen months later you sob inconsolably and no one makes a move to comfort you, not even Kate and Brian. In time you turn to drink, and after many warnings and probation periods, you finally lose your job at LifeSpan. For a while you cobble together a living of freelance writing and editing, but the loneliness weighs heavily. One rainy night, driving home from a strip club in the District, you slam your car into the base of the Appomattox statue at the corner of Washington and Duke. You are not hurt—indeed, in your drunken state you find the accident to be the very last word in hilarity. You climb out of your car, spread your arms to the heavens,