Wolf at the Door Read online

  Rachael looked at the woman, whose fatigue was evident in every line on her broad, sad face. When had she last slept? Poor lady; she’s carrying weight that by rights is for others to tow. So when she answered, she tried to do so as tactfully as possible.

  “You misunderstand me, Mrs. Cain. I didn’t come for permission. I came as a courtesy to your office . . . your true office, not the chamber.”

  Cain opened her mouth, but when Rachael held up a hand, she said nothing.

  “I have acknowledged this as your territory, and I would never dream of trying for anything that’s yours. But I also have permission from Michael, my cousin and our Pack leader, to proceed however I see fit. He did not tell me to avoid the queen; he did not tell me to engage the queen. He left the specifics entirely up to me. Seeing her, not seeing her, telling you or not telling you . . . all are my prerogative.

  “Perhaps I wasn’t clear. Perhaps it’s my fault that you mistook courtesy for subservience. If that’s so, I apologize and will try to be more clear in the future. Do you understand?”

  Anger. Frustration. Shame. Fear. “I . . . see. Yes. I apologize; I only tried to convey concern for your safety. How could I face Michael if anything happened to you here?”

  “We grew up together,” she replied, smiling a little. She was relieved there wouldn’t be an escalation. She supposed she wasn’t very brave. There were plenty of females who would have loved to get bloody over something so minor. “He would know my grisly demise came through no fault of yours.”

  The older woman snorted. “Excellent point. And, if I may, if you’re wondering about coincidences, have you considered the timing?”

  She had. “The full moon.”

  “Two days away,” Cain agreed. “Perhaps our killer is trying to spook the vampires into going after a Pack member during the full moon.”

  “Lovely. Well, I’d better get going.”

  “How are you . . . I mean, if you don’t mind, what are you going to say?”

  “I have no idea, but I still think it’s worth the risk. It’s almost a win-win: if she’s in on it, she’ll at least know she’s not operating in a vacuum, that people have noticed. If she’s not in on it, she’ll appreciate the warning and we’ll maybe cement a little goodwill. The gain outweighs the risks.” A little. Probably. But it was no time to show uncertainty. “Trust me. It will be fine.”

  Cain arched dark brows. “You hope.”

  “Yeah.” Rachael sighed. “I hope.” Then: “You really don’t validate parking?”

  Nineteen

  The dead man walked out the front door, stood on the walk for a moment, then slowly ambled toward the street.

  Edward, who had been daydreaming about Rachael, specifically Rachael’s awesome boobs and wicked smile, was at first startled, then curious.

  He’d come for another stakeout, but more out of guilt than any sense of urgency or duty. He hadn’t been near the Manse O’ the Undead in two days.

  Oh, but what a two days!

  She’s perfect. She’s a goddess. So smart, and so hot! And Jesus, her mouth. Sharp and sweet and urgent and ah, God, this is no time for another damn boner!

  So he’d walked the neighborhood yet again, this time dressed like a tourist in black cotton shorts, a bright yellow polo shirt, and a black fanny pack, which, he was surprised to see in the mirror, made him look like a giant deranged bee. He tended to choose clothing the way he chose snacks: whatever was closest at hand is what he grabbed. Thus: the return of . . . Bee Man!

  Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s . . . gross. A giant bug.

  He did look like a tourist, at least—he ought to know how to pull that off, given where he lived. Which was good, because if he was challenged, he’d ask for directions to the St. Paul Cathedral, which (per Google) was a few blocks from here.

  Rachael really is astounding in every way, he thought, feeling a sappy smile spread across his face. And a goddamned hurricane in bed. Best of my life. No question; absolute best. And not because of what she did with her hands and mouth. Because of the things she told me. Because she cried and didn’t mind that I tried to help her. Because she admitted to being bitchy and homesick and could laugh at herself. Because she apologized to a waitress she’d never seen before and might never see again.

  And let’s not forget the things she asked me to do to her. The naked things and the—

  And here came the dead man. Not that Edward knew it then; he recognized the man as the same one who’d escorted the pregnant lady out . . . the scrubs helped. House call, maybe? Cigarette break? He wasn’t doing much, just sort of wandering in the yard.

  I’ll get close. I’ll get as good a look at him as I can. Maybe he’s not an evil OB. Maybe he’s a regular OB, hold the evil. Maybe . . . he’s a prisoner. Maybe he needs help. I won’t know if I don’t get close. If he’s a good guy, this might be his one chance at safety. I’m not gonna blow it for him because I don’t want to get spotted.

  Summit Avenue was utterly quiet as twilight deepened. Edward decided getting closer was worth the risk. So he swallowed his nervousness as best he could and, as casually as he could, started walking across the street. When he got close to the fence, he waved.

  Nothing wrong here, just another dumb tourist who didn’t bother with MapQuest . . . Nothing to worry about . . . certainly not someone spying on you or possibly someone you live with . . .

  “Hey! Excuse me . . . I’m sorry to bother you, but I think I’m lost.”

  “I think you are, too.”

  The friendly hey-I’m-a-hapless-tourist smile fell off his face. Edward had gotten close enough to realize he was talking to a dead man.

  Not a prisoner on death row.

  Not a vampire.

  A dead man.

  He was so startled he tripped on the curb and fell, flailing, to the sidewalk. He caught himself by the hands, but not quite fast enough.

  What a stupid way to meet my first-ever zombie, he thought, clutching his skinned knees and trying not to groan with humiliation and pain.

  Twenty

  The zombie was pretty helpful.

  “That looks like it stings,” it told him. It had hurried (sort of) through the gate and helped him up off the sidewalk. Edward braced himself for utter revulsion, but the zombie’s grip was surprisingly free of grossness. It was cool, but firm. Nothing squished. Nothing oozed onto his own hand.

  He was able to get a good look at the zombie and, now that his shock was receding, was almost disappointed. The zombie was cool to the touch, yes, but not gross; it wasn’t teeming with maggots and wasn’t shuffling toward him moaning, “Braaaaaaains.”

  Kind of a letdown, really.

  Welcome to my life, zombie. Things are never as cool as they are in the movies.

  “I’m a doctor,” the zombie was telling him, just when he thought things couldn’t get any weirder. Oh, of course. A doctor zombie made perfect sense. Yep.

  It continued in a voice that sounded helpful, if a little hoarse. From disuse? From slowly rotting vocal cords? “My name’s Marc. D’you want to come in the house? I could get that cleaned up for yo—”

  “No!” God, no. Never. He was no match for vampires and zombies and, if the rumors were true, ghosts. No match. “It’s fine, it’s just a scrape, I—I—” He forced himself to take a breath. “Are you all right? You look . . .” Dead. Defeated. Dead. And also, dead. “. . . pale,” he finished.

  “Oh. Well.” It shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve been sick.”

  I’ll bet you have. For a moment, Edward was afraid he was going to giggle. If he did, he wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop until somebody hit him a few times with a brick. And that would be bad.

  And he still couldn’t get over how a real-life zombie was nothing, nothing at all like the movies. It didn’t stink, and it wasn’t dressed in rotting rags. It had no visible marks or injuries. Maybe he died of a drug overdose? He sure didn’t get smashed by a car or fall off some scaffolding. I
ts eyes were clear, not clouded with death, though the corneas weren’t as bluish as they could have been.

  No, what gave the zombie away—

  Marc, the zombie’s name is Marc.

  —was how it could stand so still. The lack of animation in body and facial expression, the way it stood there like its batteries had run out (which I guess they had) was just unsettling enough to raise his hackles.

  Here came the big question: what was a zombie doing here at all?

  Then he remembered the pregnant woman and felt the chill that came from knowing something awful and realizing there wasn’t much to be done to prevent the awful thing from happening.

  Boo.

  He had to call Boo. Now.

  “Sorry to trouble you. I gotta get going. I’m late,” he said, and then turned on his heel and began to sprint.

  “Be careful,” Marc-the-zombie called after him, which put the final surreal touch on the conversation.

  If anyone had told me hanging around Summit Avenue in Minnesota would be way more exciting than vamp hunting in Boston with Boo, I would have suggested they up their meds.

  Twenty-one

  Rachael stopped by her apartment pro tem on the way to the queen’s mansion. She did so partly because she wanted to make sure Edward hadn’t left any messages for her, and partly because she was becoming quite fond of her den. Apartment. All right: den.

  Well within walking distance of the queen’s hideout, her apartment was part of the basement of a small Victorian, a two-story house with five bedrooms, nearly as many bathrooms, and a turret (a turret!). There was no yard to speak of, but Rachael was used to that from her years in the Boston area. Besides, there was a turret. (A turret!) It looked like they were smuggling princesses up there.

  She parked her rental car in . . . no. She parked the rental car in the alley behind her apartment. No. The apartment. Dammit, this was a temporary living situation, so: The rental car. The apartment.

  Anyway. She parked in the alley behind the apartment, circled around to the front, and bounded up the steps. The porch floor was painted sky blue, and various sherbet-colored chairs from the sixties—clunky lawn chairs, which were bulky and made of too much metal—were scattered along the sizeable porch.

  Well used to the Cape’s orderly color schemes of cream and white and green and cream and white and cream, and sometimes green, and maybe red if the neighborhood was spiraling out of control, the odd pastel colors more than pleased her. She found them delightful.

  Perhaps the Cape could stand with some color changes; perhaps if they tried something more daring and less conventional . . . ack! Traitorous thought!

  She opened the front door, realizing (again) that it hadn’t been locked and remembering (again) that it never was, until her landlord went to bed.

  All right. She would confess. That was something she could get used to, and no lie.

  The entryway was all dark blond wood and hardwood floors waxed to a high gloss. The stairs were much the same—the house smelled more of floor wax and cleaning supplies than anything else. Given how old it was, Rachael was beyond grateful. More than once she’d walked into a Cape Cod cottage that reeked of dead fish and dust.

  If she took the stairs up, she’d find herself in the area of the house the landlord shared with his elderly wife and their grown son. Their grown son lived in the turret, fortunate bastard.

  They were all human, which she had expected. Humans outnumbered Pack by a minimum of fifty to one. She’d been fortunate Mrs. Cain was in the Midwest, and in a position of power to help a Pack member newly come to Minnesota’s capital.

  She took the stairs down and down (there were quite a few). The more she burrowed, the calmer she felt, until she was standing in her small living room.

  Mrs. Cain hadn’t known (as Rachael herself had not) how long she would be staying, so she’d rented a furnished apartment. The small basement area was decorated with several rugs in jewel colors, while the walls were lined with cement blocks of a color she had never before seen: rose. They were, she had to admit, the most glamorous cement bricks she had ever seen. She hadn’t been aware bricks came in rose. There was an old-fashioned rolltop desk that gave off a strong, though not unpleasant, odor of decades of furniture polish.

  The worst that could be said was the faint undertone of live mice. It was a battle she knew not to fight; mice outnumbered Pack by a ratio of seven million to one. In an old house like this, mice were the nature of the beast. The thought made her chortle. Who would know the nature of the beast better than she?

  Every other Pack member on the planet, for starters. You have to admit, Rachael-girly-girl, you’re a beta. You’re the second spear-carrier from the left, the kid in the play who has no lines.

  True enough. And irrelevant now.

  The kitchen, tucked around a corner to the left, was small, with all the disorder and filth found in the average operating room. In other words: immaculate. Possibly sterile. Back home, Rachael never cooked . . . she had a three-ring binder, organized by cuisine, stuffed with menus from every take-out and delivery joint on the Cape. So the small fridge, half-sized stove, and lack of counter and storage space suited her nicely.

  The living room was also festooned with several rugs (mostly reds) as well as a daybed, built-in book shelves (dens for her books!), and a plasma screen television. That made no sense until her landlord, a perfectly nice older gentleman whose name was Call Me Jim, explained that their nephew worked at Best Buy and was always bringing them electric doodads at a severe discount.

  “Those plasmatic TVs, they hurt my eyes,” he confided while giving her a tour. “But you know kids. If it’s new, it’s gotta be the best, and if it’s the best, you gotta have it. Our old one works just fine.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Mr.—”

  “Call Me Jim.”

  The small bedroom was large enough for a queen-sized bed, an end table with a lamp, a closet, and a small chest of drawers. More than adequate. And the bathroom just off her bedroom had a shower, tub, medicine cabinet, enough rolls of toilet paper to build her own fort, and lots and lots of old towels that were faded but clean and smelled like cotton and Tide.

  Best of all were the windows. There were several, and though they were small for house windows, they were large for basement windows. If she stood on her tiptoes in virtually any part of her den, she could see out—a perfect view of the backyard, the side yard, and the side street. And it was much harder for someone to see in.

  She had liked the apartment as soon as she’d seen it, and she knew why. It was her den. It wasn’t so small she felt claustrophobic, nor so large she felt intimidated by the empty space trying to swallow her. (She had no idea, none, how Michael tolerated living in that enormous mansion by the sea.)

  In it, she felt closed in and safe. She supposed it wasn’t very interesting as far as individual characteristics went. Pack members liked small spaces they could call their own. She was Pack, ergo she found the basement apartment both comfortable and charming.

  Dull, dull, dull.

  She went to the rolltop desk and woke her laptop, which kicked right into her e-mail account. Nine new ones. A thanks for doing this from Michael. A come to my next show! group e-mail by comedic Einstein Jim Gaffigan. A here are the new movies out this week from Netflix. And six from Edward, whose e-mail account was (and why was she surprised?) PicardRules666.

  “I’ve assumed by now you were a figment of my imagination. A smokin’ hot spectacular figment. On the off chance I haven’t gone clinically insane, when can I see you? How’s tomorrow? Or tonight? Or an hour from now? Or right this second? Am I coming off as creepy or obsessive? Because I’m neither, I think. Did you know your hair smells like strawberries? Why do I now want a huge bowl of strawberries? It’s summer, why can’t I find strawberries? Call me, call me, oh for the love of God, please call me: 651-249-3377.”

  The others were more or less the same. She could feel the silly smile spread acros
s her face and didn’t especially care. So she hit reply and typed, “Tonight’s good. Come by my new place . . . remember how we agreed our new living situations were sad? Mine’s not so bad. Pop by 369 Summit Avenue, anytime after six P.M. Sincerely, Strawberry Fields. P.S. I have no idea if you’re clinically insane, and don’t much care.”

  Then she memorized the queen’s address and looked up the quickest way to get there. She memorized the directions, made sure her den was secured, and left.

  What if you don’t make it back in time?

  A fine question. Rachael stood on the sherbet porch and pondered.

  Am I worried about being killed in her house, or missing my date with Edward? The fact that I have to take a moment and figure that out is sad, sad, sad.

  So she mentally shrugged and went on her way.

  Twenty-two

  Rachael stood on the porch for 607 Summit Avenue. The threestory mansion was white, with black shutters. Relatively fresh paint job; no more than three years old at the most. A front wraparound porch that put her small sherbet porch to instant shame. A detached garage—again, something she was used to, given where she had been raised.

  I didn’t call for an appointment. I just came. Mrs. Cain knows what I’m doing, but no one else.

  Still: I’m here to warn, not engage. We’ll see if she has the intelligence to see it. And if she jumps me, or sics underlings on me . . . then I’ll know, won’t I?

  She rang the doorbell. And was surprised: instead of an old-fashioned chime, the doorbell blatted the chorus from “Cell Block Tango.”

  What the hell?

  Faintly, from what she assumed was the middle of the home, she heard hurrying footsteps. Then the door was yanked open and she was face-to-face with the skinniest African American she had ever seen. With the largest pregnant belly she had also ever seen.

  The woman greeted her with a sharp, “Byerly’s grocery delivery?”

  Hunger. Irritation. Hunger.