Ron leaned over the bar. "So have you heard?"
"Heard what?"
"About the Red Devil? He's back!"
The image of my scarf-wearing hero flickered in my mind. "Who told you that?"
"George."
I glanced over at the culprit, who wasn't supposed to say anything about the Red Devil's potential reappearance.
"It's so exciting," Ron continued. "Finally after a century I can start to feel a little bit safe again."
"Has it really been a hundred years since he's been around?" I asked.
He nodded and poured me another shot. "Everyone thought he was dead."
I thought about that. It was a long time to disappear. "So why do you think he disappeared? And why did he choose now to return?"
He leaned closer. "I have a theory."
"Do tell."
He ran a cloth along the top of the bar. "I think that after centuries of being an incredible champion to vampirekind, he became disillusioned with the fight. I think he felt that no matter what he did, it didn't change anything. Hunters would always exist and vampires would continue to be slain, so he quit and has tried to live a quiet, secretive life ever since, feeling that anything he did might only add to the problem instead of being part of the solution. And now, after all these years of self-reflection, he is willing to step back into the ring and do what he can even if it is an ultimately futile battle."
I frowned. "Do you really believe that?"
He shrugged. "Who cares? He's back! He's going to protect us vampires from hunters.
And how cool is it that he's chosen Toronto out of all the cities on the entire planet to make his reappearance? Maybe the Red Devil is Canadian!"
"Yeah, that's pretty cool." My frown deepened. If he'd been gone for a hundred years why did he choose to reappear now? Why here of all places? And why did he save me in particular? Not that I was complaining, but still, it didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.
"You two should join forces," Ron suggested. "The Slayer of Slayers and the Red Devil.
You could be an amazing team!"
"From what I've heard, the Red Devil works alone."
He nodded solemnly. "He is a loner. Doesn't want outside help. But he might make an exception for you."
"I wouldn't bet on it. Besides, I don't have a shiny cape and mask at the moment."
I surveyed the club. Thierry was talking with Butch and George. Every now and then
George's focus would shift over to me. Obviously they were talking about me. Big surprise. Amy was now with Barry, and they also glanced over at me every now and then.
Yeah. Disaster of the week right here. Present and accounted for.
God, I hated just waiting for something to happen. It made me feel so helpless over this whole situation. What if it got worse? What if I hadn't found out all of the curse's side-
effects yet?
I hoped that, since I had reacted that badly to a cheesy rhinestone cross, no one had any holy water on them tonight. I glanced nervously through the rest of the club.
Holy water bad.
I wracked my brain for other vampire myths and came up with another one.
The ability to turn into a bat.
I arched an eyebrow. That might be interesting.
Then I downed another shot of B-Positive, closed my eyes, and concentrated. After a moment I opened my eyes and looked down at my hands, but they were still hands, not small leathery wings.
Cross one myth off the list. No shape-shifting abilities.
Then I froze in place as I remembered the most prevalent myth of all about vampires that I used to believe, aside from the whole drinking blood thing.
Vampires were evil.
But I wasn't evil. I didn't feel evil. I breathed out a long sigh. Along with the bat thing, being evil was obviously a myth that I'd sidestepped.
Thank God.
Then again, Stacy thought I was evil, didn't she? That's the whole reason she'd cursed me in the first place. For revenge.
I walked through the bar and headed toward Thierry's office. I closed the door behind me so the noise and music from the club were muffled.
Sitting behind Thierry's desk, I looked at the four yearbooks he'd placed there.
I remembered high school as being four years of dull, with the occasional school dance, then more dull followed by one year at university before I decided that school and I were breaking up for good. Sure, there was the whole cheerleader thing, but it was no big deal.
Obviously I wasn't even that good at it. After leaving university and bombing at the acting thing, I had tried out to be a cheerleader for the Toronto Raptors, but those girls were professional pom-pom shakers. I was small-town. In every way. Hadn't even made the callbacks.
I flipped open my senior yearbook and smiled at the inscriptions from my old friends, most of whom, except for Claire, hadn't bothered to show up for the reunion at all. A good number of the pictures of teachers had mustaches and devil horns drawn on with blue pen.
That may have been my doing. I will admit nothing.
There was a picture of the homecoming committee. I wasn't on it. The drama club. I was there in the back row making rabbit ears behind a friend. A glimpse of my leg in an action shot at a basketball game when I fell off the top of the cheerleader pyramid. I still had a small scar from accidentally kneeing another girl in her brace-filled mouth.
There was the picture of the squad itself. Six of us with three alternates all smiling and looking happily at the camera. I shook my head. Now that I thought about it, I'd had a lot of fan with those girls. Being on the squad automatically made us more popular than we might have been without it. And the guys on the teams, both football and basketball, were more likely to go out with us than anyone else. I had a fairly steady boyfriend from the basketball team during my senior year. He was the one who'd popped the question just before senior prom. I believe my exact response had been, "Get married? Are you kidding me?"
Unfortunately, he hadn't been kidding.
And that had been the end of our relationship, which was probably for the best since I hadn't been in love with him in the slightest. That's when I went with Stacy's alleged true love, Jonathan, to the prom.