Doug allowed a beat to pass before speaking. "Let’s just say I took care of it," he said. It was something else that happened on TV a lot, these kinds of enigmatic statements. They were probably a kind of story shorthand, thought Doug. It was all that needed to be said, because the viewer already knew the details, or wasn’t meant to yet. It wasn’t going to work in real life, he reasoned. Nobody just let you say a thing like that without explaining yourself. But here, now, was Cassiopeia’s curt nod, and then silence. Don’t you want to know what I did? thought Doug. Don’t you want to know how I did it? He had a sense that he was moments from being dismissed. That the signora would stand, and Doug would have to stand, and then Asa would come from wherever Asa came from to guide Doug through such uncharted territory as the stair hall and the foyer.
He didn’t want to leave. He was kin to women like this. Why had he ever thought vampires smelled bad to one another? Here he was in a vampire’s chambers, and he couldn’t smell a thing. The world outside smelled like a farm.
"Have you found out anything about the mystery vampire?" asked Doug quickly. "The one that made…all us guys."
Cassiopeia shifted in her seat. "We are investigating. It’s no fox hunt. It can be a long and delicate process, finding a fellow cousin."
"Oh, right," said Doug. "Obviously. I didn’t expect you would have found her yet, it’s just Stephin thought I ought to try to learn more—"
"I don’t suppose you have any further details about your benefactor you may have neglected to mention…?"
"No. Like I said before, it was dark. I didn’t get that good a look at her."
Cassiopeia pursed her lips. "It would seem no one did. Douglas, may I be frank? When one considers young Victor and Evan and Danny, the inescapable conclusion one reaches is that our mysterious stranger has a…type. One positively leaps to this conclusion. Do you take my meaning?"
"I’m not sure. You’re being awfully subtle."
"Yes. Very good. Most of our kind develop ‘types,’ Douglas. The older we get, the more distasteful we find the notion of supping on anything but our ideal. Like…a restaurant ‘regular’ who always orders ‘the usual’. Yes?"
Doug didn’t like where this was heading. He needed a change of subject.
"Perhaps we search out subjects that remind us of first loves. Or past enemies, punishing some former rival again and again," Cassiopeia continued, though she made it clear by her tone that she found this latter habit offensive. "Others simply have a physical preference. I have known a hundred kinsmen, and we are all the same in this regard. All but our Mr. David, who has always claimed a more egalitarian lack of preference. But our Mr. David is given to invention."
"You mean he’s a liar?"
"A dreadful liar." Cassiopeia smiled sweetly. "Quite unapologetic about it. To hear him tell it, he has been in the night tide reborn so many different ways. Bitten by a despondent New York banker in October 1929. Or in Reconstruction South. During five distinct wars…at the culmination of the Boston Tea Party…whilst a cast member in the original touring production of Faust."
Doug frowned at his hands. "He told me he’d been made in the Civil War." He remembered Stephin’s narrative and felt like a chump. Tom North? Oh, and let me guess — he was shot by Dick South?
"It is a favorite of his. Mayhap it’s even true! Something has to be. But to return to my earlier point, Douglas: it would be passing strange that our cousin should have ennobled the three boys and also you. And so soon after Victor!" She laughed airily. "Is this woman trying to assemble a baseball team?"
"We could play night games," Doug said, because he was nervous. I could be batboy.
"Is there anything you’d like to tell me about your benefactor, Douglas? Is there anything you’d like to tell me about Victor?"
"I don’t know what you’re talking about. Part of the reason…part of the reason I’m here is because Victor and I have been talking about the vampire who made us." Doug saw Cassiopeia flinch at the word "vampire," but he pressed on, seeing an opening. "I told Victor that I was going to try to find out more about her, and he wanted me to tell him everything I learned. He wants to find her." This wasn’t the least bit true. Doug and Victor had been talking more and more at school, even nodding to each other in the halls, but in fact the hot mystery vampire never came up. "He keeps bugging me about it. Like…he knows I’m smarter, so he figures I’ll have better luck figuring out who she is. It’s like I’m doing his homework for him." He forced himself to take a sip of his tea. Wait for it, thought Doug. Don’t be too obvious.
"Hm. I suppose we all want to discover her."
"I guess. I mean, I’m curious, but it’s all he talks about."
"And has he indicated why he’s so keen to make contact?"
It was just what Doug hoped she’d ask, and he nearly pounced out of his skin. "You know…I didn’t think so, but…a while ago, like weeks ago, he mentioned this movie he’d seen where a vampire — an ennobled person, I mean — turned normal after killing his…ennobler."
Cassiopeia put her teacup very firmly down on the table. Not on its saucer. Not on a coaster, even.
"I’m sure it’s nothing," Doug added. "I wouldn’t want to get him in trouble or anything. It probably doesn’t even work, right? Killing your maker? I told him you’d probably have to kill the head of the family or something — and, besides, don’t do it. I said."
Cassiopeia stood. So that was it. "I must beg your forgiveness, Douglas. There is a matter that needs attending." Doug stood as she passed him, and he turned to see Asa suddenly at his shoulder like Droopy Dawg, like you’d only just wrapped him up in chains and nailed him inside a crate and shipped him to Albuquerque but, surprise! there was Asa.
"Does it work, though?" Doug asked Cassiopeia. "If it does, I won’t tell Victor ’cause, hell, who wants to encourage him, right? But if it doesn’t, I can get the whole stupid idea out of his—"
"Of course it does not work. I bid you good night and good hunting." With that Signora Polidori swept out of the room.
Doug looked at Asa. Asa looked back, not so much at Doug as at the empty Doug-shaped space he’d soon be leaving in their drawing room.
"If young master would—"
"Yeah, yeah."
They walked the familiar path back to the front door, Doug all the while staring out of the corner of his eye at Asa’s face, smelling his strange smell. He remembered, suddenly, the back lot of a café near Jay’s house. It was one of those unwanted places, free from adult supervision, where you were permitted the pleasure of doing nothing. He and Jay and Stuart had spent a lot of time there in middle school. Asa smelled like the Dumpster in that back lot, the surprisingly sweet smell of pastries slowly melting into flies’ nests and poison. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing you told a person, but it made Doug feel kindly toward him.
"You know, um…Absinthe told me about your and Cassiopeia’s…relationship," Doug said, and Asa paused at the door. "I think it’s really…Well. I wouldn’t do that to a person, personally."
Asa’s long, bell face was absolutely still and silent.
"I just wanted you to know that I understand…It must be really hard, your…situation. And I just wanted to…say that." Asa opened the great door and stood to one side. Fine, thought Doug. He stepped out onto the front stairs and into the night air.