The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,139

Francine in his attic?” Maryellen asked. “Don’t lie to me. You’re sure it was her and not a shadow or a mannequin or some Halloween decoration?”

Kitty nodded, miserable.

“When I close my eyes I see her in that suitcase, wrapped in plastic,” she moaned. “I can’t sleep, Maryellen.”

Maryellen studied Kitty’s face, then leaned back.

“How do we do it?” she asked.

“Before we go any further,” Slick said. “We have to see it through…and then never talk about it again…I have to hear it from each of you…After this there’s no…changing your mind.”

“Amen,” Mrs. Greene said.

“Of course,” Patricia agreed.

“Kitty?” Slick asked.

“God help me, yes,” Kitty exhaled in a rush.

“Maryellen?” Slick asked.

Maryellen didn’t say anything.

“He’ll come for Caroline next,” Patricia said. “Then Alexa. Then Monica. He’ll do to them what he’s done to Korey. He’s just hunger, Maryellen. He’ll eat and eat until there’s nothing left.”

“I won’t do anything illegal,” Maryellen said.

“We’re beyond that,” Patricia said. “We’re protecting our families. We will do whatever it takes. You’re a mother, too.”

Everyone watched Maryellen. Her back was stiff and then the fight went out of her and her shoulders slumped.

“All right,” she said.

Patricia, Slick, and Mrs. Greene exchanged a look. Patricia took it as her cue.

“We need a night when everyone’s distracted,” she said. “Next week is the Clemson-Carolina game. The entire population of South Carolina is going to be glued to their television sets from kickoff until the last down. That’s when we do it.”

“Do what?” Kitty asked in a very small voice.

Patricia took a black-and-white Mead composition book from her purse.

“I read everything I could about them,” she said. “About things like vampires. Mrs. Greene and I have been making a list of the facts they agree on. There are as many superstitions about how to stop one as there are how to create one: exposure to sunlight, drive a stake through its heart, decapitation, silver.”

“We can think he’s evil and not an actual vampire,” Maryellen said. “Maybe he’s like that Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento, and he just thinks he’s a vampire.”

“No,” Patricia said. “We can’t fool ourselves anymore. He’s unnatural and we have to kill him the right way or he’s just going to keep on coming back. He’s underestimated us. We can’t underestimate him.”

Her words sounded bizarre in the sterile hospital room with its plastic cups and sippy straws, its television hanging from the ceiling, its Hallmark cards on the windowsill. They looked at each other in their practical flats with their roomy purses by their feet, with their reading glasses, and their notepads, and their ballpoint pens, and realized they had crossed a line.

“We have to drive a stake through his heart?” Kitty asked. “I don’t think I’m up for that.”

“No stakes,” Patricia said.

“Oh, thank God,” Kitty said. “Sorry, Slick.”

“I don’t think that would kill him,” Patricia said. “The books say vampires sleep during the day, but he’s awake in daylight. The sun hurts his eyes and makes him uncomfortable, but he doesn’t have to sleep in a coffin when it’s out. We can’t take the stories literally.”

“So what do we do?” Kitty asked.

“Miss Mary gave me an idea how we kill him,” Patricia said. “But the hard part’s going to be getting to the point where we can do it.”

“I don’t mean to sound difficult,” Maryellen said. “But if he’s everything Patricia says he is—suspicious, sharp senses, fast, strong—how do we even get close enough to do anything?”

Fear made Patricia’s voice strong and clear, “I have to give him what he wants,” she said. “I have to give him me.”

CHAPTER 37

Patricia told Carter that Korey was on drugs. Korey was so sick and confused from James Harris that Carter believed her immediately. It helped that this was one of his biggest nightmares.

“This is from your side,” he said as they threw Korey’s clothes into an overnight bag. “No one on my side of the family has