and Diantha had recalled an errand in town, and after we’d shared hamburgers and French fries and beans and watermelon, they took off.
We all helped clear away the kitchen. After dinner, Barry sat in a living room armchair with his feet propped up, focusing on his e-reader. Bob and Amelia cuddled on the couch watching a rebroadcast of The Terminator. Cheerful. After consuming three cooked hamburgers and a quart of French fries, Quinn loped outside to conduct a fruitless search of the woods. After an hour, discouraged and filthy, he returned to the house to tell me that he had smelled two vampires (presumably Bill and Karin) and a faint trace of fairy in the place we’d been when we were followed. But there was nothing else to find. He was leaving for a motel by the interstate.
I felt hostess guilt over not having a bed to offer him. I did tell him I’d be glad to pay for his hotel room, and he gave me a look that would’ve made paint peel.
The two part-demons returned after dark, while I was reading, and they didn’t look happy. They said good night very politely and clattered up the stairs to their room. With everyone in for the night, I decided my day could officially come to a close. It had been a pretty damn long one.
It’s always possible for human beings to spoil their own peace of mind, and I did a good job of it that night. Despite the friends who had shown up with no expectation of reward, the friends who’d come a long way to help me, I worried about the friend who hadn’t tried. I just couldn’t figure Sam out any more than I could figure out why Eric had posted my bail when I was no longer his wife, or even his girlfriend.
I was sure he’d had some reason for doing me that large good turn.
Does it sound like I was labeling Eric as ungenerous, uncaring? In some respects, and to some people, he was never those things. But he was a practical vampire, and he was a vampire about to become the consort of a true queen. Since dismissing me as his wife apparently was one of Freyda’s conditions for marrying Eric (and frankly, I could sure understand that), I couldn’t imagine her accepting Eric’s decision to put up an awfully large amount of money to secure my freedom. Maybe that had been part of some negotiation? “If you’ll let me bail out my former wife, I’ll take a decreased allowance for a year,” or something like that. (For all I knew, they negotiated how many times they would have sex.) And I had the most depressing mental image of the beautiful Freyda and my Eric . . . my former Eric.
Somewhere in the midst of wandering through a mental maze, I fell asleep.
I slept twenty minutes too late the next day and woke up to the awareness that my house was full of guests. I threw myself out of bed, aware of other brains firing into thought all over the house. I was showered and out in the kitchen quicker than greased lightning, and I fixed pancakes and bacon, put the coffeepot on, and got out the juice glasses. I listened to Amelia being sick in the hall bathroom and sent a groggy Diantha into mine to speed up the shower process.
As the pancakes came off the griddle, I slid them right onto plates so my guests could eat them while they were hot. I put out all the fruit I had, for the healthy minded.
Mr. Cataliades loved pancakes, and Diantha was not far behind him in pancake consumption. I had to make up some more batter in a hurry. Then there were dishes to wash (Bob helped) and my bed to make. So I had plenty to do, but throughout the busyness of my hands and thoughts, I was unhappily aware that I hadn’t heard from Sam.
I e-mailed him.
I chose that format so I could say exactly what I wanted to say without having to restate it several times. I worked on my composition for a while.
Sam, I don’t know why you don’t want to talk to me, but I wanted you to know that I’m ready to come to work any day you need me. Please let me know how you’re feeling.
I read this message over several times and decided it put the ball in Sam’s court pretty firmly. It was perfect