The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(55)

“What did Mom do?” Blue asked.

“I think it’s better if you hear it from your mother,” James Harris said.

Patricia saw James Harris and Carter both watching her. James Harris wore a sincere mask but Patricia knew that behind it he was laughing at her. Carter wore his Serious Man face.

“I thought Mr. Harris had done something wrong,” Patricia told Blue, pushing the words through her constricted throat. “But I was confused.”

“It wasn’t much fun having the police stop by my house today,” James Harris said.

“You called the police on him?” Blue asked, astounded.

“I feel awful about all this,” Carter said. “Patty?”

“I’m sorry,” Patricia said, faintly.

“We cleared it all up,” James Harris said. “Mostly it was just embarrassing to have a police car parked in front of my house since I’m new here. You know how these small neighborhoods are.”

“What did you do?” Blue asked James Harris.

“Well, it’s a little adult,” James Harris said. “Your mother should really be the one to tell you.”

Patricia felt trapped by Carter and James Harris, and the unfairness of it all made her feel wild. This was her house, this was her family, she hadn’t done anything wrong. She could ask everyone to leave, right this minute. But she had done something wrong, hadn’t she? Because Destiny Taylor was crying herself to sleep without her mother right this minute.

“I…,” she began, and it died in the dining room air.

“Your mother thought he had done something inappropriate with a child,” Carter said. “But she was absolutely, one hundred percent wrong. I want you to know, son, we would never invite someone into this house who might harm you or your sister in any way. Your mother meant well but she wasn’t thinking clearly.”

James Harris kept staring at Patricia.

“Yes,” she said. “I was mixed up.”

The silence stretched on and Patricia realized what they were waiting for. She looked hard at her plate.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a voice so faint she barely heard it.

James Harris bit noisily into a Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano and chewed. In the silence, she could hear his teeth grinding it to pulp, and then he swallowed and she heard the wad of chewed-up cookie slide down his throat, past that thing.

“Well,” James Harris said, “I have to run but don’t worry—I can’t be too mad at your mom. After all, we’re neighbors. And you’ve been so kind to me since I moved in.”

“I’ll show you out,” Patricia said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

She walked through the dark front hall in front of James Harris and felt him leaning forward to say something. She couldn’t take it. She couldn’t handle one more word. He was so smug.

“Patricia…,” he began, voice low.

She snapped on the hall light. He flinched, squinting and blinking. A teardrop leaked from one eye. It was childish, but it made her feel better.



* * *



—

As they got ready for bed, Carter tried to talk to her.

“Patty,” he said. “Don’t get upset. It was better to get that out in the open.”

“I’m not upset,” she said.

“Whatever you think you saw, he seems like an okay guy.”

“Carter, I saw it,” she said. “He was doing something to that little girl. They took her from her mother today because they found a mark on her inner thigh.”

“I’m not going to get into that again,” he said. “At some point you have to assume the professionals know what they’re doing.”

“I saw him,” she said.

“Even if you did look in his van that no one could find,” Carter said, “eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. It was dark, the light source was a flashlight, it happened fast.”

“I know what I saw,” Patricia said.

“I can show you studies,” Carter said.

But Patricia knew what she had seen and she knew it was unnatural. From the way Ann Savage attacked her, to Miss Mary being attacked by rats, to the man on the roof that night, to James Harris and all his hints about eating and being interrupted, the way the Old Village no longer felt safe—something was wrong. She’d already removed their spare key from its hiding place outside in the fake rock, and she’d started deadbolting the doors whenever she left the house, even just to run errands. Things were changing too fast, and James Harris was at the center of it.

And something he’d said ate at her. She got up and went downstairs.

“Patty,” Carter called behind her. “Don’t storm off.”

“I’m not storming,” she called over her shoulder, but really didn’t care if he heard her or not.

She found her copy of Dracula in the bookcase in the den. They’d read it for book club in October two years ago.

She flipped through the pages until the phrase she was looking for jumped out at her: “He may not enter anywhere at the first,” says Van Helsing in his Dutch-tainted English, “unless there be some of the household who bid him to come; though afterwards he can come as he please.”