The other one…he glanced at her, and then his gaze came back, as it had with the man.
She was as cute as a bug’s butt, as Sophie would have said (when she got excited, Liam noticed she mixed up her metaphors). Her hair was blond, but much shorter than the other woman’s, and the light tossed reddish glints into it. She was sitting cross-legged, in tan shorts and a navy blue sweater buttoned to her chin. She wore shoes the color of her sweater, shoes that had a little heel and emphasized the long, pretty shape of her foot. She was watching the other woman’s hands and swung her foot while she waited her turn, occasionally peeking at her shoes and smiling.
She looked up at him (and, presumably, Sophie), and he saw her eyes were a cross between green and blue, the color of the ocean in a postcard. Her chin was pointed, giving her a sharp, foxlike appearance, and her cheekbones were high, emphasizing the prettiness of her eyes and the smoothness of her brow. He had an odd urge to stroke her forehead, which mercifully passed. It helped to glance back at Sophie now and again.
“Hey,” she said casually, turning the full force of her sea-colored gaze on him, and he nearly fell down. Staring at her was like staring at the door to heaven. It promised delights beyond compare…but didja really want to leave everything you ever knew behind?
“So, anyway, Your Majesties,” the schoolgirl was saying, “the Fiends are just fine, healthy as can be…I guess…and they—”
The spectacular blonde on the couch stood so fast, he didn’t actually see it. One second she was leaning over, about to get kinged, the next she was standing and pointing (uh-oh) at Sophie, and the redhead was cowering away from her.
“What…” she began, “is on…your shoes?”
Sophie looked down at her feet, then back up. “Ah…Your Majesty, my name is Dr. Sophie Tourneau, and this is—may I present my…uh…my friend, Mr. Liam—”
“Seriously. It looks like you plowed through—God, is that shit? Is that shit on your shoes?”
“Elizabeth,” the man in the corner sighed.
“Oh, boy,” the black gal said. “Here we go.”
“They were, uh, a gift, uh…” Sophie sounded completely rattled and Liam almost smiled. Shoes, they were talking about shoes, of all the dumbest things! “And I—I’m a vet, an animal doctor, and sometimes I wear them on the job…and…and…”
“So you’re telling me it is shit?” Liam thought the blonde was going to pass out. “Jesus Christ in an Easter parade!” Everyone (except him) visibly flinched. “How could you…do that? I mean, that’s why God made Payless Shoes. You want to tromp around in the shit? I—I—” She put a hand to her brow, and Liam noticed she had pretty hands with long fingers. The nails were done in that what-do-you-call it, with the white tips. French manicure. “You just can’t—can’t come in here—dressed like that—your poor feet—”
“Unless it’s really important.” The woman standing behind the fella piped up. It was the first time she’d spoken loud enough for him to hear. “As I’m sure it is.”
“Aren’t you French? You sound French. Aren’t French people supposed to have style?”
“Uh-huh,” the black gal said. “Also, African-Americans have rhythm, and white girls can’t dance. Especially you, white girl.”
“You stay out of this.” The blonde—surely this wasn’t the queen?—suddenly collapsed onto the couch, nearly kicking over the checkers game. “Well, I can’t be expected to listen to this! The whole thing is stupid anyway, I was totally against it—”
“We know,” everybody but Liam and Sophie said.
“…and thought it was, just, so massively lame, but I put up with it without bitching—much—and all these dead people trooping through my house—”
“Excuse me,” the black lady said, not looking up from the board. “Through my house.”
“I told you to quit holding that over my head! Where the hell was I?”
“Dead people trooping through your house,” Liam said helpfully.
“Right. Right! Thank you. And they’re in and out of here like I’m fucking King Solomon—what, they can’t solve their own problems?—and now I gotta see shoes abused and I can’t take it!” She threw her arm over her face and lapsed into silence. Finally.
Sophie’s mouth was opening and closing like a walleye, but she wasn’t saying anything. And all the vampires—he guessed they were all vampires—were staring at them. Except for the guy. He was staring at the blonde and smiling, a little. So finally Liam coughed and said, “Well, there’s a bad vampire and he’s killing girls up north.” Now the guy was looking at him, along with everybody else. Even the blonde was peeking at him from under her arm. “We just, y’know, thought you oughta know.”
The queen sat up. “Oh, fuck.”
“Yup,” Liam agreed.
9
“YOU’RE kidding me. Right? You’re kidding. I mean, that’s nasty. That’s just…yerrggh.”
“Yup,” Liam agreed. He took another drink of his smoothie. They had trooped into an enormous kitchen, the guy had fired up two blenders and brought a ton of fruit and orange juice out of the fridge, and now they were sitting around like old friends, slurping down strawberry smoothies. Except for him. His was strawberry-banana. “That’s what we thought. Sohpie figured it out.”
“When?” the guy asked. He had introduced himself as Eric Sinclair, but everybody except Jessica (the black gal) called him Majesty or My King or Shitheap (the spunky blonde, it appeared, didn’t like him). Speaking of the blonde, her name was Betsy and, yup, she was the queen. The other blonde’s name was Tina and she was very deferential to Shitheap and Betsy. Alice, the schoolgirl, had politely excused herself and left.
“I beg your pardon?” Sophie asked, her glass rattling as she set it down. She was a little more relaxed than when they’d arrived, but not much. Liam couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t every day you met a king and queen. Luckily, they weren’t his king and queen, so he could be his regular old self. “Your Majesty, did you ask me when?”
“Last night,” Liam began, helping her out a little, “we were watching the news and Sophie saw this story and put it all together.
“She’s really smart,” he added. “Smartest person in Embarrass.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Shitheap said, smiling at Sophie, which seemed to calm her down a little.
“Up by Babbitt Lake?” Jessica asked.
Liam chewed a small piece of banana that had escaped the blender’s whirring blades. “Yeah, you know it?”
“My dad used to take me fishing there when I was little.”
“Well, we, me and Sophie, live there. She’s our vet.”
“And you saw this man on the news…” Sinclair prompted.
“…and decided to come up and wreck my night,” the queen finished. When they all stared at her, she had the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry. That sounded less jerky in my head.”
“We didn’t see him,” Sophie said. “We saw the father of one of the girls on the news. So Liam drove me down—”
“You didn’t feel the need to keep this in the, uh, community?” Tina asked.
“She tried,” Liam said simply.
There was a short silence, broken by the queen’s muffled giggle, then Sophie continued. “We drove down and spoke to the girl’s mother. I don’t think there’s much doubt, or I certainly would not be bothering you with this.”
“Ugh! He dates these girls, makes them love him, then dumps them to watch them go all suicidal with despair?”
“Yup.”
“What a shit!” Betsy was on her feet. “Let’s go up to Embarrass and kick his ass!”
“It’s not in Embarrass,” Sophie began, but Sinclair interrupted her.
“I quite agree. This behavior is not acceptable in the least. Also, it’s messy and people are bound to notice.”
“Here we go,” Jessica said into her smoothie.