The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,142

never wore perfume. She stopped in front of the mantel and turned to face him.

“I’m tired of my world being so small,” she said. “Laundry, cooking, cleaning, silly women talking about trashy books. It’s not enough for me anymore.”

He sat in the armchair across from her, legs spread, hands on its arms, watching her.

“I want you to make me the way you are,” she said. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I want you to do to me what you did to my daughter.”

He looked at her, his eyes crawling across her body, seeing all of her, and she felt exposed, and frightened, and just a little bit aroused. And then James Harris stood up and walked over to her and laughed in her face.

The force of his laughter slapped her, and sent her stumbling a half step back. The room echoed with his laughter, and it bounced crazily off the walls, trapped, doubling and redoubling, battering at her ears. He laughed so hard he flopped back down in his chair, looked at her with a crazy grin on his face, and burst out laughing, again.

She didn’t know what to do. She felt small and humiliated. Finally, his laughter rolled to a stop, leaving him short of breath.

“You must think,” he said, gasping for air, “that I’m the stupidest person you’ve ever met. You come here, all dolled up like a hooker, and give me this breathless story about how you want me to make you one of the bad people? How did you get to be so arrogant? Patricia the genius, and the rest of us are just a bunch of fools?”

“That’s not true,” she said. “I want to be here. I want to be with you.”

This brought another wave of ugly laughter.

“You’re embarrassing yourself and you’re insulting me,” James Harris said. “Did you think I’d believe any of this?”

“It’s not an act!” she shouted.

He grinned.

“I wondered when you’d get to righteous indignation.” He smiled. “Look at you: Patricia Campbell, wife of Dr. Carter Campbell, mother of Korey and Blue, debasing herself because she thinks she’s smarter than someone who’s lived four times as long as her. See, Patricia, I never underestimated you. If you told Slick you planned to come into my house, I knew you came into my house. And if you got into my house, I knew you’d gotten into my attic and found everything there was to find. Was her license supposed to be bait? Leave it in my car and go to the police and tell them you found it and they’d pull me over and find it and get a search warrant? In what sad housewife’s dream does something like that work? Those books you girls read have really rotted your brains.”

She couldn’t make her legs stop shaking. She sat down on the raised brick hearth. The velvet dress rode up and bunched around her stomach and hips. She felt ridiculous.

“Then again, I moved here because you people are all so stupid,” he said. “You’ll take anyone at face value as long as he’s white and has money. With computers coming and all these new IDs I needed to put down roots and you made it so easy. All I had to do was make you think I needed help and here comes that famous Southern hospitality. Y’all don’t like talking about money, do you? That’s low class. But I waved some around and you all were so eager to grab it you never asked where it came from. Now your children like me more than they like you. Your husband is a weakling and a fool. And here you are, dressed up like a clown, with no cards left to play. I’ve been doing this for so long I’m always prepared for the moment when someone tries to run me out of town, but you’ve truly surprised me. I didn’t expect the attempt to be so sad.”

A rhythmic, wet huffing sound filled the room as Patricia bent double and tried to breathe. She attempted to start a sentence a few times, but kept running out of breath. Finally she said, “Make it stop.”

From far away, she heard a chorus