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of a sudden.
I had an itchy feeling between my shoulder blades, and maybe all our patrons had, too. It was that
feeling that something was prowling that shouldn't be: that Halloween feeling, I call it, when you kind of
picture something bad is easing around the corner of your house, to peer into your windows.
By the time I grabbed my purse, unlocked my car, and drove back to my house, I was almost twitching
from uneasiness. Everything was going to hell in a handbasket, seemed to me. Jason was missing, the
witch was here instead of Shreveport, and now she was within a half mile of Eric.
As I turned from the parish road onto my long, meandering driveway and braked for the deer crossing it
from the woods on the south side to the woods on the north moving away from Bill's house, I
noticed I had worked myself into a state. Pulling around to the back door, I leaped from the car and
bounded up the back steps.
I was caught in midbound by a pair of arms like steel bands. Lifted and whirled, I was wrapped around
Eric's waist before I knew it.
"Eric," I said, "you shouldn't be out "
My words were cut off by his mouth over mine.
For a minute, going along with this program seemed like a viable alternative. I'd just forget all the
badness and screw his brains out on my back porch, cold as it was. But sanity seeped back in past my
overloaded emotional state, and I pulled a little away. He was wearing the jeans and Louisiana Tech
Bulldogs sweatshirt Jason had bought for him at WalMart. Eric's big hands supported my bottom, and
my legs circled him as if they were used to it.
"Listen, Eric," I said, when his mouth moved down to my neck.
"Ssshh," he whispered.
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"No, you have to let me speak. We have to hide."
That got his attention. "From whom?" he said into my ear, and I shivered. The shiver was unrelated to
the temperature.
"The bad witch, the one that's after you," I scrambled to explain. "She came into the bar with her brother
and they put up that poster."
"So?" His voice was careless.
"They asked what other vampires lived locally, and of course we had to say Bill did. So they asked for
directions to Bill's house, and I guess they're over there looking for you."
"And?"
"That's right across the cemetery from here! What if they come over here?"
"You advise me to hide? To get back in that black hole below your house?" He sounded uncertain, but it
was clear to me his pride was piqued.
"Oh, yes. Just for a little while! You're my responsibility; I have to keep you safe." But I had a sinking
feeling I'd expressed my fears in the wrong way. This tentative stranger, however uninterested he seemed
in vampire concerns, however little he seemed to remember of his power and possessions, still had the
vein of pride and curiosity Eric had always shown at the oddest moments. I'd tapped right into it. I
wondered if maybe I could talk him into at least getting into my house, rather than standing out on the
porch, exposed.
But it was too late. You just never could tell Eric anything.
8
"COME ON,LOVER, let's have a look," Eric said, giving me a quick kiss. He jumped off the back
porch with me still attached to him like a large barnacle and he landed silently, which seemed
amazing. I was the noisy one, with my breathing and little sounds of surprise. With a dexterity that argued
long practice, Eric slung me around so that I was riding his back. I hadn't done this since I was a child
and my father had carried me piggyback, so I was considerably startled.
Oh, I was doing one great job of hiding Eric. Here we were, bounding through the cemetery, going
toward the Wicked Witch of the West, instead of hiding in a dark hole where she couldn't find us. This
wasso smart.
At the same time, I had to admit that I was kind of having fun, despite the difficulties of keeping a grip on
Eric in this gently rolling country. The graveyard was somewhat downhill from my house. Bill's house, the
Compton house, was quite a bit more uphill from Sweet Home Cemetery. The journey downhill, mild as
the slope was, was exhilarating, though I glimpsed two or three parked cars on the narrow blacktop that
wound through the graves. That startled me. Teenagers sometimes chose the cemetery for privacy, but
not in groups. But before I could think it through, we had passed them, swiftly and silently. Eric managed
the uphill portion more slowly, but with no evidence of exhaustion.
We were next to a tree when Eric stopped. It was a huge oak, and when I touched it I became more or
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less oriented. There was an oak this size maybe twenty yards to the north of Bill's house.
Eric loosened my hands so I'd slide down his back, and then he put me between him and the tree trunk.
I didn't know if he was trying to trap me or protect me. I gripped both his wrists in a fairly futile attempt
to keep him beside me. I froze when I heard a voice drifting over from Bill's house.
"This car hasn't moved in a while," a woman said. Hallow. She was in Bill's carport, which was on this
side of the house. She was close. I could feel Eric's body stiffen. Did the sound of her voice evoke an
echo in his memory?
"The house is locked up tight," called Mark Stonebrook, from farther away.
"Well, we can take care of that." From the sound of her voice, she was on the move to the front door.
She sounded amused.
They were going to break into Bill's house! Surely I should prevent that? I must have made some sudden
move, because Eric's body flattened mine against the trunk of the tree. My coat was worked up around
my waist, and the bark bit into my butt through the thin material of my black pants.
I could hear Hallow. She was chanting, her voice low and somehow ominous. She was actually casting a
spell. That should have been exciting and I should have been curious: a real magic spell, cast by a real
witch. But I felt scared, anxious to get away. The darkness seemed to thicken.
"I smell someone," Mark Stonebrook said.
Fee, fie, foe, fum.
"What? Here and now?" Hallow stopped her chant, sounding a little breathless.
I began to tremble.
"Yeah." His voice came out deeper, almost a growl.
"Change," she ordered, just like that. I heard a sound I knew I'd heard before, though I couldn't trace
the memory. It was a sort of gloppy sound. Sticky. Like stirring a stiff spoon through some thick liquid
that had hard things in it, maybe peanuts or toffee bits. Or bone chips.
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