“You gonna eat supper with us, Miss Heidi?”
“No, thank you, Hunter. I’m here to go back in the woods and look for something we’re missing. I won’t disturb you any longer. My boss asked me to introduce myself to you, and then go about my work.” Heidi stood, smiling down at the little boy.
Suddenly, I saw a pitfall right in front of me. I was an idiot. But how could I help the boy if I didn’t educate him? Don’t let her know you can hear things, Hunter, I told the child. He looked up at me, his eyes amazingly like my cousin Hadley’s. He looked a little scared.
Heidi was glancing from Hunter to me, obviously feeling that something was going on that she couldn’t discern.
“Heidi, I hope you find something back there,” I said briskly. “Let me know before you leave, please.” Not only did I want to know if she found anything, but I wanted to know when she was off the property.
“This should take no more than two hours,” she said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, ‘Welcome to Louisiana,’ ” I told her. “I hope you didn’t mind too much, moving here from Las Vegas.”
“Can I go back to color?” Hunter asked.
“Sure, honey,” I said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“I gotta go potty,” Hunter called, and I heard the bathroom door close.
Heidi said, “My son was his age when I was turned.”
Her statement was so abrupt, her voice so flat, that it took me a moment to absorb what she’d told me.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, and I meant it.
She shrugged. “It was twenty years ago. He’s grown now. He’s a drug addict in Reno.” Her voice still sounded flat and emotionless, as if she were talking about the son of a stranger.
Very cautiously, I said, “Do you go see him?”
“Yes,” she said. “I go to see him. At least I did before my former—employer—sent me here.”
I didn’t know what to say, but she was still standing there, so I ventured another question. “Do you let him see you?”
“Yes, sometimes. I called an ambulance one time when I saw he’d overdosed. Another night, I saved him from a vamp-blood addict who was going to kill him.”
A herd of thoughts thundered through my head, and they were all unpleasant. Did he know the vampire watching him was his mother? What if he OD’d in the daytime, when she was dead to the world? How would she feel if she wasn’t there the night his luck finally ran out? She couldn’t always be on hand. Could it be he’d become an addict because his mother kept popping up when she should be dead?
“In the old days,” I said, because I had to say something, “vampires’ makers left the area with the new vamps as soon as they were turned, to keep them away from their kin, who’d recognize them.” Eric and Bill and Pam had all told me that.
“I left Las Vegas for over a decade, but I returned,” Heidi said. “My maker needed me there. Being part of the world isn’t as great for all of us as it is for our leaders. I think Victor sent me to work for Eric in Louisiana to get me away from my son. I wasn’t any use to them, they said, as long as Charlie’s troubles were distracting me. But then again, my skill in tracking was only discovered when I was finding the man who sold bad drugs to Charlie.”
She smiled a little, and I knew what kind of end that man had met. Heidi was spooky in the extreme.
“Now, I’ll be going to the back of your property to see what I can find. I’ll let you know when I’m through.” Once she’d walked out the front door, she vanished into the woods so swiftly that by the time I went to the back of the house to look out, she’d melted into the trees.
I’ve had a lot of strange conversations, and I’ve had some heart-wrenching conversations—but my talk with Heidi had been both. Fortunately, I had a couple of minutes to recover while I served our plates and monitored Hunter’s hand washing.
I was glad to discover that the boy expected to say a prayer before he ate, and we bowed our heads together. He enjoyed his Hamburger Helper and green beans and strawberries. While we ate, Hunter told me all about his father, by way of table conversation. I was sure Remy would be horrified if he could hear the tell-all approach Hunter took. It was all I could do not to laugh. I guess the discussion would have seemed strange to anyone else, because half of it was mind-to-mind and half of it was spoken.
Without any reminder from me, Hunter took his plate from the table to the sink. I held my breath until he slid it onto the counter carefully. “Do you have a dog?” he asked, looking around as if one might materialize. “We always give our scraps to the dog.” I remembered the little black dog I’d seen running around the backyard of Remy’s little house in Red Ditch.
No, I don’t, I told him.
You’ve got a friend that turns into a dog? he said, his eyes big with astonishment.
“Yes, I do,” I said. “He’s a good friend.” I hadn’t counted on Hunter picking that up. This was very tricky.
“My dad says I’m smart,” Hunter said, looking rather doubtful.
“Sure you are,” I told him. “I know it’s hard being different, because I’m different, too. But I grew up to be okay.”
You sound kind of worried, though, Hunter said.
I agreed with Remy. Hunter was a smart little boy.
I am. It was hard for me, growing up, because no one understood why I was different. People won’t believe you. I sat down in a chair by the table and pulled Hunter onto my lap. I was worried this was too much touching for him, but he seemed glad to sit there. People don’t want to know that someone can hear what they’re thinking. They don’t have any privacy when people like us are around.
Hunter didn’t exactly get “privacy,” so we talked about the concept for a while. Maybe that was over the head of most five-year-olds—but Hunter wasn’t the average kid.
So is the thing out in the woods giving you privacy? Hunter asked me.
What? I knew I’d reacted with too much anxiety and dismay when Hunter looked upset, too. Don’t worry about it, honey, I said. No, he’s no problem.
Hunter looked reassured enough for me to feel that it was time to change the subject. His attention was wandering, so I let him scramble down. He began playing with the Duplos he’d brought in his backpack, transporting them from the bedroom to the kitchen with his dump truck. I thought of getting him some Legos for a belated birthday present, but I’d check with Remy first, get his okay. I listened in to Hunter while I was doing the dishes.
I found out that he was as interested in his anatomy as most five-year-olds are, and that he thought it was funny that he got to stand up when he peed and I had to sit down, and that he hadn’t liked Kristen because she didn’t really like him. She pretended to, he told me, exactly as if he’d known when I was listening in to him.
I’d been standing at the sink with my back to Hunter, but it didn’t make any difference in our conversation, which was another strange feeling.
Can you tell when I’m listening to your head? I asked, surprised.
Yeah, it tickles, Hunter told me.
Was that because he was so young? Would it have “tickled” in my head, too, if I’d met another telepath when I was that age? Or was Hunter unique among telepaths?
“Was that lady who came to the door dead?” Hunter said. He’d jumped up and run around the table to stand by my side while I dried the skillet.
“Yes,” I said. “She’s a vampire.”
“Will she bite?”
“She won’t bite you or me,” I said. “I guess sometimes she bites people if they tell her that’s okay.” Boy, I was worried about this conversation. It was like talking about religion with a child without knowing the parents’ preferences. “I think you said you’d never met a vampire before?”