blinked dazedly and began to sniff. “I love this movie.”
Melting on the floor cross-legged, Poe began in earnest to chomp down on her rust-flavored food without taking her eyes off the screen. There was 261
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nothing like a Hal Ashby movie to take away the blues.
Shortly thereafter, she heard tapping from one of the two windows in the store. She barely managed to swallow her last mouthful mumbling, “I knew this was too good to be true.”
She pulled out one of the 9mm guns issued to her.
It was a 15-round Astra A-90 with a silencer attachment. “Can’t a person eat in peace around here?”
she grumbled.
The tapping continued while Poe browbeat herself about the many ways she had screwed up, like stupidly walking away from the group into the pitch-black darkness and for getting tailed.
“Just do it,” Poe told herself. “It already knows you’re in here.”
She opened the domed Spanish window and aimed her gun at one of the most grotesque faces she’d ever beheld. One of its giant eyes pointed east while the other pale blue honed in on her face.
“The fuck. What the hell do you want, butler?”
Milfred’s mouth was moving but she couldn’t quite hear.
“Well? Which Council person is lurking in the shadows?”
“It is only I, m’lady, bearing news.”
“Uh huh.” Poe waved her gun. “I’m in the middle of dinner and don’t have time for a chat.”
“Would you be kind enough to give me a hand?”
She didn’t know how it happened exactly, but Poe found herself helping the butler clamber through the window.
He was surprisingly heavy for a near-skeleton and his hands were deathly cold, making Poe question if the butler was indeed alive. As soon as Milfred hit the tile on all fours, Poe slammed the window shut. She sprayed the inside ledge with holy water slung from 262
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her new belt. She turned to the hunchback, nudging him to spread his legs so she could feel for weapons.
“So what do you have to tell me?” she asked tensely, expecting to be ambushed anytime, “Before I shoot your kneecaps off.” Poe hated to admit it, but she had discovered immense pleasure in blasting people’s kneecaps off. Especially Sainvire’s.
With a leg shorter than the other, Milfred launched himself to his feet and managed to look like an underpaid house servant once more.
“She wanted me to prepare the way, m’lady,” he started, snapping in place his tuxedo tails that were probably in vogue in the 1970s, like the outfit Steve Martin wore in The Absent- Minded Waiter.
“Prepare the way? What are you, some kind of John the Baptist?” She had seen the movie with Max von Sydow as Jesus twice. “Never mind. Who is it?
The unhinged front door plummeted to the floor in answer. A very shimmery Gwendolyn entered, wearing a see-through nighty that displayed her slightly drooping girls, au naturel, and a pair of Reebok running shoes. She looked about the place and sighed.
“Milfie, darlink, my shoes?”
Like a bound servant more than content with his lot in life, the butler reached into his tuxedo pockets and acquired Gwendolyn’s silver shoes with four-inch metal chopsticks for heels. With much pomp and ceremony, Milfred removed the bespattered sneakers from the vampire’s slim manicured feet and carefully replaced them with streetwalker shoes. Only then did Gwendolyn give Poe her full attention.
The vampire pulled out a slim Breakfast at Tiffany’s cigarette attached to an elongated pipe from the delicate elastic of her black thong underwear. She looked incredible and sexy and she knew it. Not many people could pull off the minimalist ho look.
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“No offense, but I’d hate to be the one to do your laundry,” Poe declared, her stomach tightening in one horrendous knot.
“Offense taken, human trash,” Gwendolyn hissed.
“But I’m not here to rearrange your face, girl. I’m here for Kaleb.”
“As you can see, Kaleb isn’t here, so scram. I’ve got a thing with Harold and Maude and you’re ruining our night.”
“Hmph. An old voman like zhat vit a teenager is an offense,” the vampire commented colorfully, obviously aware of the age-defying classic.
Poe rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well that’s rich seeing that you’re a thousand years old or something, and your former boytoy, Sainvire, is not even a hundred.
Isn’t that an equivalent of a mummy hitting on diaper rash?”
Gwendolyn, the Barbie of the undead, morphed into Cujo. Her blue eyes narrowed into slits and her incisors dripped into something long and sharp. The girl who’d never learned tact did not see it coming.