Greg arched an eyebrow and turned to Lissianna to whisper, "I thought I was dinner last Friday night?"
Exasperated that he even cared at a time like this she whispered, "I had Chinese last Friday. You were an unexpected appetizer, and Bob was just anemic."
"Dwayne," Greg corrected, not bothering to keep his voice down anymore.
She shrugged. "He looks like a Bob to me."
"Yeah?" he asked. "Funny, I would have said he looked more like a Dick."
Despite the situation, Lissianna grinned at the play on words. Dwayne found the insult a little less entertaining.
"Hey!" he snapped. "I'm holding a gun here."
"It's all right, Dwayne." Father Joseph patted his shoulder, then explained to Greg. "Dwayne and I met last Friday night outside a bar downtown. One of our clients had told me there was a new boy on the streets and that he was eating out of the Dumpsters behind the bar. I went there looking for the lad to see if we couldn't help him, but as I approached the Dumpsters, Lissianna came walking from behind them. I was startled to see her, of course and hailed her. We spoke, and she claimed she was there with her cousins to celebrate her birthday. When I explained why I was there, she offered to help, but I sent her inside because it was cold out. Then I checked around the Dumpsters for the boy and instead found Dwayne."
Greg turned to her, one eyebrow arched as if to say, "You picked him up in a bar?"
"Yes, I know." She sighed, then added defensively, "It was Mirabeau's idea."
Her gaze slid back to Dwayne and Father Joseph then, and Lissianna mentally chastised herself for her stupidity. It wasn't for picking up strangers in bars, though she sup-posed that sounded seedy and cheap, but she'd obviously messed things up badly that night. Lissianna had forgotten all about Dwayne being behind the Dumpster when she'd hurried back into the bar to avoid any sticky questions from Father Joseph. She supposed that explained how the anemic man had managed to recover and leave the parking lot by the time she and the others left the bar moments later. Lissianna had wondered about that at the time, but hadn't put together Father Joseph's presence and the man's apparent recovery.
Lissianna shook her head, thinking it was rather amazing she'd survived to reach two hundred if she'd made many mistakes like that over the years. Perhaps she should stick to intravenous feeding in future, at least until Greg cured her of her phobia.
"Dwayne was in a bad way," Father Joseph announced, drawing her attention again. "He was weak from lack of blood and disoriented. I put him in the van, thinking he was drunk and needed help. I was going to take him to the shelter for some coffee, but once in the van the interior light revealed the marks on his neck, and I brought him back to the rectory instead."
The priest glared at Lissianna. "I'd seen marks like that before... on the necks of some of those poor souls at the shelter. When I asked them about it, they always gave me the most ridiculous answers; they'd accidentally stabbed themselves with a barbecue fork, or they fell on a pencil... twice."
Greg turned an incredulous look her way, and she rolled her eyes.
"You try and think up something to explain it then, if you're so smart," she hissed in a low voice, not wanting the two men to hear her.
"Dwayne's explanation," Father Joseph continued dryly, "was that he'd pulled the plug of his charger for his penis enlarger out of the wall by the cord and it had snapped up and caught him in the neck."
Greg's mouth dropped open, and Lissianna winced.
"Well, the man had a cucumber down his pants and a fake tan," she said with irritation, forgetting to keep her voice down this time.
"I did not!" Dwayne cried, blushing bright red, then ruined the denial by adding, "Besides, how do you know about the cucumber? Did we do something behind the bins after all?"
"No," Lissianna snapped, more for Greg's sake than Dwayne's. She then leaned toward Greg to whisper, "I knew the same way I knew he was anemic."
"By biting him?" Greg asked with disbelief. "Just where did you bite him?"
"By reading his mind," she hissed under her breath.
"Oh, right," Greg said, apparently recalling that while she hadn't been able to read his mind, everyone else had. And her not being able to do so had been something of an anomaly.
"I began to put things together while Dwayne was eating the cookies and drinking the juice I brought him," Father Joseph told Lissianna. "The bite marks on the people in the shelter, his bite marks, and your presence at the shelter as well as in the parking lot that night. I added it all together."
Lissianna sighed wearily, wondering why she'd never noticed that Father Joseph was so blasted long-winded, then realized it was probably because she usually didn't see much of him. She'd seen the man more in the last week than in the whole time she'd worked at the shelter... and all--she now realized--because he was trying to catch her out as a vampire.
"I added it all together," the priest repeated. "And the only thing that made sense was that you were..." He paused, then said, "... a vampire."
Lissianna just managed not to roll her eyes at his dramatics.
"I knew then that you had been sent to me by God. That I was the only one who could keep my flock safe from the soulless demon you are." He stared at her, his expression solemn. "But... I didn't know you well. You work the night shift, and I rarely even saw you, but you look so... nice," he said the word with a sort of horror, obviously distressed that she didn't fit the image he had of an evil blood-sucking vampire. "And then the very idea of vampires actually existing was incredible. Impossible. But what other explanation was there? It all fit. Still, I had to be sure first. I had to know for sure that's what you are, before I did anything drastic."
"So you brought the garlic mash to the shelter to feed to me, and blessed the watercoolers so they would be filled with holy water, and littered my office with crosses," Lissianna realized.