She flipped on the bathroom light and caught sight of herself. In addition to her twisted ankle and sore back, more evidence of her nearmiss with death stared back at her. A bruise and cut on her cheek and assorted scrapes she didn’t remember sustaining.
Olivia shook her head again and started removing her clothes. Instead of tossing them in the laundry basket, however, they went straight into the trash can. Despite some rips and stains, they were salvageable. But she didn’t want any unnecessary reminders of how close she’d come to dying.
When she turned her back toward the mirror, she nearly gasped. The entire middle of her back was a massive bruise, the darkest part marking where she’d hit the rim of the fire hydrant’s cap.
“That gives new meaning to That’ll leave a mark,” she said to her reflection. Considering a vampire’s strength, she was lucky she hadn’t broken her back.
Shoving all the could-have-beens from her mind, she turned on the shower and stepped under the flow of water. Her thoughts drifted to Jeremy and the familiar pang squeezed her heart. He’d been gone two years and she still missed him every day. The sorrow wasn’t constant anymore, but she couldn’t go out among the city’s homeless without thinking of him. She’d wonder what he would have said to a homeless man who needed medical attention but had no money, what he’d think of her efforts to carry on his legacy, and how he would have reacted to the news that vampires were real and not anything like Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld movies.
That last thought made her smile. She remembered dumping an entire bowl of popcorn over his head when he’d gone on and on about how Kate did nice things for skintight leather. He’d laughed, she’d pretended to pout, and his tickling of her ribs led to a very nice lovemaking session on her couch as one of the movies played in the background.
Though the memory made her miss him even more, she was glad she could now look back and mainly remember the good times. In the months after his death, all she could think about were those horrible days of watching him die while she sat next to him. She’d hated herself for being one of the minority who were immune to the superdisease scientists had warned about for years.
A new kind of guilt swamped her as she rotated under the spray. Despite everything that had happened the night before, she couldn’t deny the big vampire was attractive. At least he would be if he had a pulse. She’d loved Jeremy with all her heart and had intended to spend the rest of her life with him. It just seemed wrong to even be noticing another man so soon. Two years might seem like a long time to some, but it felt as if it had passed in the blink of an eye. Even telling herself the big guy wasn’t really a man didn’t help. Actually, it made her feel worse, as if her attraction to him was an even bigger betrayal of Jeremy’s memory.
She stuck her face under the full force of the water, trying to wash away all the thoughts doing the dance of confusion in her head. Wanting to get downstairs before Mindy showed up for the day, she turned off the water and went about getting ready the way she did every morning. After yesterday she needed a boatload of normal today.
But as she started pulling bacon and eggs from the refrigerator a few minutes later, she realized every movement was going to be a reminder of her close calls. She popped a couple of ibuprofen and told herself that if she could just get through the day, she’d treat herself to a long hot soak in the tub with a good book and some relaxing music playing. And then an incredibly long night of sleep. She wasn’t getting anywhere near outside once the sun started to set.
Her heart went out to all the homeless she wouldn’t be able to help today. Hopefully the “I find stuff” vampire really would come through on locating her car before it got stripped down for parts. And if it didn’t turn up soon, she’d have to figure out another way to resume the food deliveries. She could probably pick up another car on the cheap, but it wasn’t as if she had much extra cash sitting around.
Mindy Kemp burst through the back door of the diner shortly after sunrise, her dark corkscrew curls highlighted with magenta streaks bouncing. She raced straight for Olivia and pulled her into a powerful hug. “I’m so glad to see you with my own eyes.”
Olivia appreciated the gesture, but it made her cringe against the pain. She edged out of Mindy’s embrace.
Mindy stepped back and examined Olivia’s face. “You look like crap.”
Olivia swatted her with a potholder. “You try getting attacked by vampires and then not sleeping all night and see if you end up looking like Miss New York.”
Mindy’s expression turned dark. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, considering. Though I feel as if I went a few rounds with a grizzly bear.”
“I wish you could have killed the filthy bastards.”
Olivia looked away and didn’t remind her friend that one of those “filthy bastards” had actually seen her safely home. It still didn’t make sense, and more than once as she’d lain awake she’d wondered if she’d imagined the entire thing. But each time she moved this morning, her battered body told her it hadn’t been a nightmare. At least not the kind you had while sleeping.
They’d already gone through all the details the night before, so Mindy didn’t make her repeat them. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” Olivia didn’t want any looks of pity or to have to answer a million questions.
Mindy nodded. “Any word on your car?”
“Not yet.”
“What are you going to do about delivering the meals?” Mindy asked, knowing that would be uppermost in Olivia’s mind.
“I don’t know.” Mindy, like many New Yorkers, didn’t have a car. And the subways had stopped running two years before, when it became widely known what really lurked down there in those tunnels. Now people walked, biked or drove everywhere, timing their commutes to minimize any chance of being stuck outside after dark. That meant shorter workdays and smaller paychecks, especially in the winter months. Life was leaner now, but everyone made do the best they could.
Cabs still ran during the day, but the fares were so high that she couldn’t afford to have a cabby drive her all over the city and to wait for her as she delivered meals.
“I’ll figure out something,” she said as she started cracking eggs into a mixing bowl. “But for now, we’re going to have hungry customers in a few minutes.”
Like clockwork, old Rusty Tangier walked through the front door and hung his cap and coat on the hooks on the wall. Rusty was a creature of habit, a retired high school biology teacher who went for a walk every morning as soon as the vamps retreated. The walk always ended up at the diner, where he had two scrambled egg whites, whole-wheat toast and a cup of whatever fruit was on the menu for the day.
“Morning, girlies,” he said with a wave of his newspaper.
“Morning, Rusty,” Olivia and Mindy called back.
They fell into the morning routine as more customers began to arrive. Olivia took a deep breath, thankful for the facade of normalcy even though deep down she wondered if her life would ever be the same again.
When the weekly food delivery showed up, Mindy hurried to handle it. That left Olivia to take out the prepared meals to Rusty and Jane Farmer, another regular, who always sat by the window and wrote on her laptop as she ate her breakfast.
“Lordy, girl, what happened to you?” Rusty asked when she approached his table.
Too late Olivia remembered the outward signs of her vamp encounter. She slid his plate in front of him as she tried to come up with a plausible story.
“Stupidity, that’s what happened,” she said as she noticed Jane and a couple of other customers looking her way. “I slipped on the stairs last night and took a nasty tumble.”