The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(54)

“I don’t listen to gossip.”

“Well,” he said. “The way I heard it, she took off with some fella.”

“Then that settles that,” she said.

“It hurts me to think that you or your kids might hear that I did something to her,” he said. “The last thing I want is for anyone to be afraid of me.”

“Don’t you worry about that for a second,” Patricia said, and she made herself meet his eyes. “No one in this house is afraid of you.”

They held each other for a second, and it felt like a challenge. She looked away first.

“It’s just the way you’re talking to me,” he said. “You won’t open the door. You seem distant. Usually you invite me in when I drop by. I feel like something’s changed.”

“Not a thing,” she said, and realized what she had to do. “We were about to have dessert. Won’t you join us?”

She kept her breathing under control, kept a pleasant smile on her face.

“That would be nice,” he said. “Thank you.”

She realized she had to let him in now, and she forced her arm to reach out toward the door, and she felt the bones in her shoulder grating as she took the latch in one hand and twisted it clockwise. The screen door groaned on its spring.

“Come in,” she said. “You’re always welcome.”

She stood to the side as he stepped past her, and she saw his chin covered with blood and that thing retracting into his mouth, and it was only a shadow, and she closed the door behind him.

“Thank you,” he said.

He had gotten into her house the same as if he’d held a gun to her head. She had to stay calm. She wasn’t helpless. How many times had she stood at a party or in the supermarket, talking about someone’s child being slow, or their baby being ugly, and that person appeared out of nowhere and she smiled in their face and said, I was just thinking about you and that cute baby of yours, and they never had a clue.

She could do this.

“…would drain the person of all their blood and then give them someone else’s blood that was the wrong type,” Blue was saying as she led James Harris back into the dining room.

“Mm-hmm,” Carter said, ignoring Blue.

“Are you talking about Himmler and the camps?” James Harris asked.

Blue and Carter stopped and looked up. Patricia saw every detail in the room all at once. Everything felt freighted with importance.

“Look who stopped by.” She smiled. “Just in time for dessert.”

She picked up her napkin and sat down, gesturing to her left for James Harris to be seated.

“Thank you for inviting an old bachelor in for dessert,” he said.

“Blue,” Patricia said. “Why don’t you clear the table and bring in the cookies. Would you like coffee, James?”

“It’ll keep me up,” he said. “I have enough trouble sleeping as it is.”

“Which cookies?” Blue asked.

“All of them,” Patricia said, and Blue scampered from the room, practically skipping.

“How’re you enjoying summer?” Carter asked. “Where’d you live before here?”

“Nevada,” James Harris said.

Nevada? Patricia thought.

“That’s a dry heat,” Carter said. “We got up to eighty-five percent humidity today.”

“It’s certainly not what I’m used to,” James said. “It really ruins my appetite.”

Was that what he’d been doing to Destiny Taylor, Patricia wondered? Did he think he was eating blood? She thought about Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento, who killed and partially ate six people in the seventies and literally believed he was an actual vampire. Then she saw that hard, thorny thing retreating into James Harris’s mouth like a cockroach’s leg, and she didn’t know how to explain that. Her pulse sped up as she realized that it lay in his throat, behind a thin layer of skin, so close to her she could reach over and touch it. So close to Blue. She took a breath and forced herself to calm down.

“I have a recipe for gazpacho,” she said. “Have you ever had gazpacho, James?”

“Can’t say I have,” he said.

“It’s a cold soup,” Patricia said. “From Italy.”

“Gross,” Blue said, coming in with four bags of Pepperidge Farm cookies clutched to his chest.

“It’s perfect for warm weather,” Patricia smiled. “I’ll copy the recipe down for you before you go.”

“Look,” Carter said, in his business voice, and Patricia looked at him, trying to convey in the secret language of married couples that they needed to stay absolutely normal because they were in more danger than he knew right this minute.

Carter made eye contact and Patricia flicked her eyes from her husband to James Harris and put everything inside her heart, everything they shared in their marriage, she put it all into her eyes in a way only he could see, and he got it. Play it safe, her eyes said. Play dumb.

Carter broke eye contact and turned to James Harris.

“We need to clear the air,” he said. “You have to realize that Patty feels terrible about what she said to the police.”

Patricia felt like Carter had cracked open her chest and dumped ice cubes inside. Anything she could say froze in her throat.