The day crawled by slowly. I caught up on sleep, pondered the Kimberly Donavon situation, and spent hours reading genealogy forums. I even had a pleasant little daydream about Olivia Martin, though I doubted I’d ever see her again. I’d just gotten back from grabbing coffee from a local shop when a thought struck me. “Hey. You never told me how you know Sting.”
Maggie didn’t respond immediately. When she did, her tone was more coy than usual. I changed my mind.
“Oh, come on, we made a deal.”
It’s embarrassing!
“I told you a secret about Ada. You tell me a secret about yourself. You back out now and you’re no better than her.”
That was a low blow.
I spread my hands. “I’m waiting.”
What if I tell you something else?
“If that something else is as good as how you know Sting.”
I dated Vlad Dracula.
I almost spit my coffee all over my dashboard. Fortunately, I caught myself, managed to swallow and put the cup down before staring at myself in the rearview mirror. “You did not date Dracula.”
Well. What amounted to dating in those days. More like a torrid love affair, I guess you’d call it. It was a few decades before I got trapped in the ring. A few decades after he became a vampire. Funny enough, I was the cougar in that relationship.
I gagged comically.
Oh, pretend like you wouldn’t shack up with someone as famous as that?
“Famous for impaling his enemies on spikes!”
Vladdie was a very conflicted man. And he saved Wallachia from Ottoman incursion.
I laughed out loud at “Vladdie.” The idea of the most famous of the Vampire Lords falling for the wiles of a desert spirit – who would have been a couple hundred years old at the time – was pretty dang funny. “So what was Vladdie like as a little vampire kid?”
Oh, you know. Humans that gain immortality always go through phases – manic, then stupidly reckless, then mopey, then downright depressed. Then they either figure out how to kill themselves or get a hobby. I met Vladdie in Spain right at the end of his reckless phase. I went back to the Carpathian Mountains with him and watched him enter his mopey phase. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
“Oh?”
Don’t get me wrong. He was dynamite in the sack. He just started crying a lot near the end. I don’t have the temperament for that.
“And I don’t think I needed to know that Dracula is a good lay.”
Knowing is half the battle.
“I’m not sure you’re using that in the right context, G.I. Jane.”
I chuckled to myself and adjusted in my seat to get comfortable, reaching down to slide the bench backward a little bit. What I touched instead of the adjustment lever was silky soft. For a split second I thought that I’d grabbed a T-shirt, but when I closed my fingers and gave it a tug, a muffled “Ow!” came from beneath my seat. I felt my heart lurch into my throat and I suddenly felt wildly vulnerable, like someone out for a swim that feels something touch their leg in the murky depths. “Maggie there’s something under my seat.”
I don’t sense anything, I …
I heard something slide around underneath me, the sound raising all of the hair on the back of my neck. Without warning, a little figure popped out from between my legs, hopped onto one knee, and deposited itself on the passenger seat. It happened faster than I could react, and I found myself eye-to-eye with the sphinx from Boris’s house.
“Please don’t tug my tail,” he said, sounding distinctly put out.
“I, uh … please don’t hide under my seat?”
“Deal.” He began aggressively grooming his shoulder.
I pushed myself against the door, thinking about sphinxes eating unwary travelers. “What are you doing in my truck?” I asked him.
“I needed transportation after I escaped from Boris.”
“You mean after I let you out?”
The sphinx stopped grooming long enough to shoot me a withering look, as if I had insulted him with the very idea that he might need help.
I continued, “You have wings.”
“And flying cats attract attention in North America.”
“Okay, that’s fair. Have you been here the whole time?”
“I have.”
Can he still hear me? Maggie whispered.
“Yes, I can hear you.” The sphinx stopped grooming himself and looked at me with what came across as deep disapproval. “I suppose you’ll do. The two of you seem interesting, and I gather that you work a lot, which is ideal.”
“I’ll do for what?” I asked.
“For my new home. I need a place to bed down. If you live in an apartment, I’ll need a litterbox – changed daily, of course – but if you’re in the country you can just leave a window cracked for me to get in and out.”
“Wait, what?”
He continued over me. “I’ll need four cans of tuna daily. Albacore in water, not that garbage they put on sale every other weekend.”
I held up a finger. “Whoa, whoa. You are not coming to live with me. I don’t even know who the hell you are.”
He drew himself up, his tail wrapping around his feet and his wings fluttering slightly. “I am the last Prince of the Nile, the Herald of Sekhmet! You will address me with the respect I am due, as well as offerings of albacore tuna.”
Sekhmet has been dead since before I was born, Maggie said skeptically.
That seemed to deflate the sphinx a little. “Yes, well. Being the Herald Prince of a dead god isn’t as illustrious as it sounds. Why do you think I’m in Ohio rather than Egypt?”
Weirdly, that made me feel a little sad. Almost by instinct, I reached out and scratched the sphinx behind the ears. He stiffened momentarily, then leaned against my hand. “That is an acceptable offering.”
I could feel myself melting on the inside. I like animals, but I hadn’t had a pet for over a decade. I just couldn’t justify it with how much time I spent on the road. “What’s your name?”
“I don’t believe I have one. Boris spent a lot of time calling me his four-legged investment.”
“That’s not a name. How about King Tut?”
“My ancestors knew Tutankhamun, and I think that’s wildly disrespectful,” he sniffed. “Don’t stop scratching!”
We could call him Oedipus, Maggie suggested.
“Oedipus is a Greek legend. He also had sex with his mother, which doesn’t reflect well on me. You, nice genie lady, need to remember that I can hear you.”
Sorry. Maggie sounded a little sheepish.
“How about Eddie? It’s like Oedipus, but … not.”
The sphinx purred loudly, leaning harder into my scratching. “That’s acceptable,” he muttered, suddenly collapsing on the bench next to me and cuddling up against my leg. “Now take me to my new temple.”
“You mean my home?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t go home yet,” I told him. “Still have lots of work to do.”
“Then keep scratching.”
I hate to interrupt all those scratchings, but I have something, Alek.
Eddie’s sudden appearance almost made me forget we were on a stakeout. I turned my attention back to the task at hand. “What am I looking for?”