Hawk pulled me away from Matana.\u00a0 He knew, and I knew, that the hearing of the parasite inhabiting her was all psychic and that the vaunted hearing of sexy love muffin vampires still had to go through human body constraints.\u00a0 On the other hand, I think the body language said a lot more than his hissed, “What are you doing?”<\/p>\n
“The right thing, for the moment.”<\/p>\n
“The right thing is to stake the,” and he used a word that didn’t actually rhyme with “vampire,” but more with the troubles at hand, “and have done with it.”<\/p>\n
“Look, last night I would have gone down Colfax and gotten her a tattoo on the forehead that read, `There’s no such thing as a good vampire,'” I said, “and I wouldn’t have had a problem with it.\u00a0 I’ve thought about it.\u00a0 Spike and Angel had maturity issues, and Blade’s quest for mortality was as lethal as his counterparts’ quests for immortality.”<\/p>\n
“What?” Hawk backed off a moment, looking confused at my point.<\/p>\n
“They’re, um, fictional vampires.\u00a0 Let’s not even get into the squishy sex fest types.\u00a0 None of them are good.\u00a0 But I am, or at least I’m trying to be, and I’m not going to make a permanent decision based on a temporary mistake.”<\/p>\n
“She’ll kill, you know.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah.\u00a0 And then I’ll have you on speed dial, and you can do whatever you like.\u00a0 But in the meantime, unless Ed wants to push the button, I think she was innocent of all but malice.”<\/p>\n
“Huh.”<\/p>\n
“And maybe malice, too.\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 She seems fairly nice for a bloodsucking soul-destroyer.”\u00a0 I made sure she could hear the last part.\u00a0 She rolled her eyes obligingly.<\/p>\n
Hawk muttered but helped me unstake her.\u00a0\u00a0 It was eerie to see a few drops of blood slowly roll back into her veins, like some kind of movie effect, as the skin drew itself together like tiny mouths closing from where the stakes had been.\u00a0 It had been a very good apple crisp so I hadn’t wanted to lose it.\u00a0 I looked away and got my bearings.<\/p>\n
She dusted herself off.\u00a0 She had been wearing a very nice red dress, and now it was a nice red dress with a perfect stain on it, and some damage about the bosom.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I want a shower,” she said, “and a cup of coffee.”<\/p>\n
“I want answers,” I said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I want a bite of that apple crisp.”<\/p>\n
“I want a replica airplane and a Guinness,” Hawk joined in, with such a blank\u00a0expression I had to actually focus to see that his mouth was crinkled as if he were joking.<\/p>\n
“I guess if we’re making wish lists, I want a couple hours of sleep, a good meal, and to finish reading the latest X-men, but we’re here, instead.\u00a0 Coffee and apple crisps seem to be on the menu.”\u00a0 I followed them inside.<\/p>\n
Ed’s mother had one of those television kitchens with the island in the middle that you could cook on, or install a stripper pole, or whatever amused you.\u00a0 It had that much room.\u00a0 And a skylight.\u00a0 It was very clean, and there was a row of cookbooks all shapes and sizes on a shelf against the wall across from the oven.\u00a0 They all looked very worn, and loved.\u00a0 Kind of how my Guy Gavriel Kay collection is, really.\u00a0 I really should get a second copy of The Summer Tree<\/span>.<\/p>\n Ed’ s mom had set out some plates of apple crisp and was busy making some whipped cream from real heavy whipping cream.\u00a0 I was used to the bottled kind, so I had to ask what she was doing.\u00a0 Ed offered Matana some coffee.<\/p>\n “So, I’m like, out of ideas,” Ed said.\u00a0 He was drinking his own cup, and pointed to the stack of coffee mugs in case Hawk or I were interested.\u00a0 His mug read, “#1 of 1,” in a cursive-like font with a blue ribbon stenciled on it.<\/p>\n Hawk’s hand hovered over the mugs, but mostly I think he was evaluating which cute saying was going to least burden his macho image.\u00a0 I had read most of them before when I had Thanksgiving with Ed and his mom.<\/p>\n “I think we’ll have turkey pot pies for lunch.\u00a0 Will you gentlemen be joining us?” his mom said, as if that was what Ed was talking about.\u00a0 She pulled out a rolling pin and some small ceramic pie plate things.\u00a0 “And, of course, the creature of the night.”<\/p>\n “These are good apple crisps,” the creature of the night said.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Man, I want nap time so bad I can taste it,” I said, yawning in the middle of it.\u00a0 “Ed, no one expects you to have all the answers.\u00a0\u00a0 We’re just the worst torturers in the world.”<\/p>\n “We didn’t make anyone listen to our rap duet.”<\/p>\n “True.\u00a0 That would bring us up a few notches, but it’s not like Vogon poetry.”<\/p>\n “Fruity cereal does not rhyme with sex appeal.”<\/p>\n “I’ll tell you anything,” Matana said, “as long as you don’t ever repeat those words again.”<\/p>\n “See?\u00a0 We’re not that bad.”\u00a0 I sat down.\u00a0 “So.\u00a0 Where were you on the night of July 12th, 2004?”<\/p>\n She blinked.\u00a0 “I was…”<\/p>\n I cut her off.\u00a0 “Nevermind.\u00a0 It was a test.\u00a0 A\u00a0 joke, really.” I paused.\u00a0 “Do you really remember?”<\/p>\n She grinned.\u00a0 “Now you’ll never know.”\u00a0 She stretched out her legs.\u00a0 “You magical dilettantes are all alike.\u00a0 Soaking up every piece of information you can in order to trade it for more somewhere down the line.”<\/p>\n “Huh.\u00a0 I like to put it in the same place I put all those books I read on survival skills.”<\/p>\n “You read books on survival skills?” this from Hawk.<\/p>\n “I know that for the best value I should kill and eat a bear rather than a rabbit.\u00a0 I should be so lucky as to get stranded somewhere there’s bananas, hot springs, and coconuts, if those Discovery survival shows are of any use.\u00a0 Oh, and avoid the tripod leaves.”<\/p>\n Hawk just smiled, blinked, and nodded his head slowly.\u00a0 “Sure.”<\/p>\n Matana grinned.\u00a0 “I think you broke him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" She seems fairly nice for a bloodsucking soul-destroyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-seven"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}