“Don’t be so modest,” Peter said. “You know, Quinn, I think your father’s all wrong about you. I think you’ll make a great leader one day. You’re not afraid to make the hard decisions, go after the difficult kill.” His gaze slid over to me. “No matter how good she is in the sack.”
Amy poked Peter in the arm with the rest of her bread stick. “I honestly don’t know what you’re babbling about, pooky, but did you just insult my friend? I don’t think I like that very much.”
“Amy…” I rose from the table. Quinn was staring out the window again. Either feeling major guilt or major denial. He could sort that out on his own. I was through. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
“Okay.” Amy stood up and grabbed her bag.
I’d slipped the butter knife into my small beaded purse just in case I needed a weapon later. I know, my choice of weapons did lean toward the nonlethal culinary variety, but it was better than nothing. I made a mental note to invest in another can of pepper spray. I swung the ladies’ room door open and we went inside. I did a quick stall check to make sure we were all alone.
“I don’t really need to pee,” Amy said. “I just wanted to apologize for Peter. I don’t think he’s going to be the one, after all. I don’t know why he’s acting so weird.”
“I know why.” I felt tense and watched Amy inspect her makeup in the mirror while I stood with my shoulder against the door to prevent anyone from entering.
“You do?”
“Yeah. I need to tell you something, Amy. Something I should have told you already.”
“What?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m a vampire.”
Amy stared at me for a moment. “Huh?”
“A vampire. A creature of the night.”
She continued to stare at me blankly.
I sighed heavily. “Dracula, Lestat, Angel, you know? Blood drinking, no other food, live forever and still look good… slightly pasty, pointy-toothed… vampire.”
After a moment of silence she nodded and smiled patiently at me. “I told you to lay off the Anne Rice books for a while. And buying every season of Buffy on DVD? It was only a matter of time before you’d start thinking this way.”
“No”—I shook my head—“this has nothing to do with any of that. Besides, those DVDs were on sale. But forget all that. I really am a vampire.”
She smiled and nodded at me. “Whatever you say, Sarah.”
Amy tended to be frustrating at the best of times, but this was just annoying.
“Okay, I’ll prove it to you.” I bared my teeth. “Look. I have fangs.”
She leaned closer to inspect them. “Cute. But Halloween was over a month ago. We shouldn’t leave the boys at the table much longer. They’ll end up eating all the bread.”
I thought I was going to have to bite her to prove it. No, wait, there was a better way right in front of me. I grabbed her upper arms and moved her around to look in the mirror. When she stared at her reflection, that’s all she saw. Just her. Not me. She looked at herself, then turned to me. Then she looked at the mirror again. Then turned to me again. This went on for a while. Finally her eyes bugged out in shock.
“See?” I said, feeling slightly triumphant that I’d finally gotten through to her. “What did I tell you?”
Amy opened her mouth and started to scream.
I clamped my hand over Amy’s mouth before she’d let out more than a second of the bloodcurdling sound. The door swung open and a gray-haired older woman entered the bathroom holding the hand of a little girl, about six years old, probably her granddaughter. She took one look at me, clutching Amy tightly from behind, and her eyes widened. A look of disapproval came across her features and she shook her head gravely at us.
“Honestly,” she said. “I’ll never understand you lesbians.”
She covered her granddaughter’s eyes and turned to leave.
Amy strained to move and face me, my hand still firmly across her mouth. She said something, but it was too muffled for me to hear.
“What?” I asked and removed my hand.
“You’re a vampire.” Her eyes were wider than the bread plates at our table.
I nodded. “Good to see you’re finally catching on. Now please don’t scream again. I’m not going to hurt you or anybody else.”
She looked at me for a long moment, then ran into the closest toilet stall and locked it behind her.
“Amy—”
“Go away! Leave me alone!” Her voice trembled.
I crossed my arms and paced around the small bathroom nervously. “There’s no reason to be scared. Seriously. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Why did this happen? I don’t understand! Does this have anything to do with why you got fired? Did you try to bite Ms. Saunders?”
I thought about that for a moment. “No.”
Finger sucking and neck biting were two entirely different things. Finger sucking being the less disgusting of the two. Marginally.
“Then what happened to you?”
“Come out of there and I’ll tell you.”
“No! Tell me first and then I’ll come out.”
I let out a long sigh. “It’s all your fault, you know. You should be feeling bad instead of freaking out.”
“My fault?” I saw her look through the narrow space at the side of the stall door.
“Yeah. This whole thing is because you set me up on a date with Gordon Richards. He was a vampire and he bit me.”
“You’re kidding! He seemed so normal.”
I let the fact sink in for her without saying anything else.
“That asshole,” Amy said, louder now, a bit of the fear and shock leaving her voice. “I’m going to kill him the next time I see him.”
“Yeah. You do that.” I decided not to tell her that the deed was already done, and by her date, too. It might put her right over the edge.
There was a long pause, and then…