Carmen and I sat on opposite sides of a coffee table in the upstairs office of the mortuary, she in a swiveling desk chair, I in one corner of a leather sofa. She had made drinks: a cosmopolitan for herself, and a manhattan for me.
Carmen sipped from her cocktail. She smiled in an effort to push the worry from her face. “Leslie told me you’re still not feeling well.”
“You didn’t have to ask her. I could’ve told you.”
Carmen wore a black nylon jogging suit-sans bra-with the top unzipped to the bottom of her sternum. She put her glass down. “You look like hell. You need to shave and comb your hair. When are you going to snap out of this?”
It was a question I had asked myself and kept ignoring.
I touched my temple. The scar was almost gone, as were the wounds left by the fish nibbling on my skin. I put pressure on my left foot and felt the lingering throb where the bullets had chewed my leg. But it was remembering how the sun had cooked my skin that brought back the terror.
As vampires, our primordial fear was to be caught in the open and fried by the sun. We undead bloodsuckers have many powers, but God has damned us with one great weakness: our vulnerability to direct sunlight, the source of life on this planet.
The spider bite had fooled me. Its transient protection had made me complacent and that was what had nearly killed me. I could recover from bullet wounds but there was no undoing the memory of getting roasted by sunlight.
Carmen pushed the manhattan across the table toward me. The amber drink looked perfect, the best proof that we were civilized. Condensation frosted the outside of the beveled old-fashioned glass. Two maraschino cherries sat under the ice cubes.
I made no move for the glass. Maybe it was a good thing I wasn’t drinking. If I had a thirst, then I might fill the void inside of me with hootch and wind up homeless, like Earl back in Kansas City. Vampires are immune to many human afflictions but, unfortunately, alcoholism wasn’t one of them, and many vampires found themselves on skid row.
I remembered what a sip of that manhattan tasted like. Almost as refreshing as blood fanged from a neck. But I deserved neither.
Carmen reached over the table and took my left hand. “Look.” She held my hand, palm-side up. “See your aura? It’s milky and dim.”
I shook my hand loose and withdrew my arm. I didn’t need her to tell me my problems.
Carmen lifted a valise that stood on the floor beside her chair. She opened the valise and laid it on the coffee table. She withdrew a glass jelly jar and placed it between us. Inside the jar crouched a chartreuse-pine spider.
“Here,” she said in a stern tone. “Time to finish your convalescence.”
My skin itched where the previous spider had bitten me. My abdomen tightened at the thought of another dose of the venom.
I shook my head. “No. I’m not going through that again.” The benefits of the last bite had worn off abruptly and worsened the effects of Goodman’s attack, so it was pointless to try once more. “If I go outside, I’ll cover myself with makeup.”
“What do you mean, ‘if’?” Carmen asked. “Are you going to solve Odin’s case or not? Are you going to let Goodman win? What about the Araneum?”
I wanted to reply “who cares,” but that would only antagonize Carmen. Better that I listen to her bark and say nothing.
Carmen stood and circled the coffee table. Her eyes stayed on me like searchlights. “Answer me. Your wounds have healed, haven’t they? What the hell is wrong with you?” She clasped my shoulders.
Everything. I shrugged her off.
Carmen’s aura blazed like I’d thrown gasoline on her. “Listen to me, we can’t waste time. We have to go after Goodman.”
“He can wait.”
“What do you mean? Wait for what?” Carmen leaned over the armrest of the sofa and grabbed my collar. “You want to sulk? Go ahead. I’ll get Goodman on my own.”
I had underestimated Goodman and barely survived. “Don’t be so sure of yourself.”
Carmen shook me. “Felix, look at me.”
I looked up and fixed my gaze into the vampire sheen of her eyes. What did she want?
Carmen’s right hand moved in a blur. The slap was as hard and crisp as a gunshot. The blow left a lingering burn on my cheek. “See that? If you can’t protect yourself from a bitch slap, how are you going to deal with Goodman? He’ll destroy you.”
Her words raked into me like sharp tines. The humiliating truth salted the wound.
“I’m tired of seeing you like this. Time for tough love.” Her aura flared bright with incandescent fury. She balled my collar in both her fists and ripped my shirt open.
What was she up to? I reacted to fend her off but she moved at full vampire speed, much faster than I could.
Carmen lunged over the sofa armrest and toppled onto me. Her weight kept me off balance and she pushed me flat against the sofa. She seized my wrists. The hard plastic zipper of her sweat top scraped against my chest as she dragged herself across me. Her open mouth, the fangs long and fierce as daggers, approached my neck.