Momma told me once that the tales people carry about me make her cry herself to sleep.
— Excuse me, I said. I sleep right across the hall and what I hear coming from your room don’t sound a thing like crying. What it sounds like is you and Bobby Denbo bumping uglies. Or else it’s Craig Settlemyre. I can’t keep those two straight.
— I’m a grown woman! I’ve got the right to a life!
— Some life, I said.
My faculty advisor at County Day, Judy Jenrette, has expressed sincere concern that my promiscuity is an outgrowth of low self-esteem. I tried to nip this concern in the bud by assuring her that my self-esteem was just dandy, but judging by the way she pressed her lips together, her chin wobbling, I suspected that she thought to see her younger self in me and was repressing an Awful Secret that tormented her to this day. Before I could prevent it, she unburdened herself of a dismal story about teen pregnancy and its consequences that I must have watched half a dozen times on Lifetime Television for Women, only this came without the hot guys.
— I appreciate you letting me hear that, I said. I honestly do.
Judy snuffled, dabbed her eye with a tissue, and forced a shaky smile.
— That story don’t apply to me, though, I said. We’re different breeds of cat. You were in love. Me, I fuck because I’m bored. And living here, if I’m awake I’m bored.
— Language, Louie!
— I’m taking birth control and no one gets near me without a condom. If I got pregnant, you better believe Momma would drag me to the clinic and sign those abortion papers. Having me around is bad enough for her love life. A baby would just about finish her off.
Judy said that pregnancy wasn’t her only worry, that sexing it up so young would cause me to have emotional issues. She handed me a pamphlet on Teen Celibacy with a photo on the front of cheerleader types who appeared to be overjoyed by not getting any. I read enough of the pamphlet to get the basics — if you saved yourself for marriage Jesus would love you, Coke would taste better, etc. — and then Googled the company that produced it. They turned out to be the subsidiary of a corporation that made its mark selling baked goods. This led me to speculate that doing without caused you to eat more cupcakes and that a generation of diabetic Teen Celibates were victims of a duplicitous marketing campaign. Who knew there was profit to be had from negative pimping?
Where Sandrine lives is off a blue highway a couple of miles south of DuBarry, a tore-down, two-room fishing shack tucked into a hollow on the riverbank, camouflaged by ferns and fallen beards of Spanish moss, hidden by chokecherry bushes and a toppled oak out front. You’d never spot it unless you were looking for it, and you wouldn’t go near it unless you’d lost your mind. What’s left of the place is roofless, crazy with spiderwebs and rotting boards so crumbly you can rip off pieces with your hands. If you go inside, you’ll find that every inch of the walls and part of the floor is covered with glued-on shards of mirror, and if you trespass on a night during a period between three days either side of the full moon, chances are you won’t be coming out again. Sandrine can’t compel you like once she could, but she’s got enough left to slow you down. You’ll see her stepping to you and you’ll stumble back in fright, even though you’re not sure she’s real, and then you see the hungry glamour in her eyes, and that holds you for a second.
A second’s all it takes.
She won’t talk much about the past — she prefers to hear about my life, a life I’d gladly leave behind. Some nights, though, I get her going and she tells me things like she was born in 1887 in Salt Harvest, Louisiana, a little Acadian town, and was turned when she was twenty-three by a fang who left her to figure out on her own what she’d become. She’s been living in the shack since 1971, sustaining herself on whatever animals happen along. Frogs, mainly. She hardly ever supplies much detail, but we were sitting on the toppled oak one night, right at the boundary beyond which she cannot pass, watching the water hyacinths that carpet the majority of the river undulate with the current, their stiff, glossy green leaves slopping against the bank, and I asked how she’d come to be stranded there. She had just fed and was more substantial than usual, yet I could see low stars through her flesh and, when she shifted position, the neon lights of a roadhouse on the opposite bank. Sweet rot merged with the dank river smell, creating an odor that reminded me of the rained-on mattress in Freddy Swift’s backyard.
— Djadadjii, Sandrine said. I’ve heard them called other names, but that’s what Roy called them. He’s this fang I traveled with in ’71. and for a while before that.
— What’s jajagee?
— Not jajagee. Djadadjii.
Mosquitoes plagued us, but Sandrine didn’t seem bothered. She looked off south toward the roadhouse.
— They look like humans, but they’re not — they mimic humans. Roy heard that this old Jewish magician bred them in the seventeenth century to hunt fangs. They’re stronger than fangs and they can do one piece of magic. That’s what binds me here. Why I’m like this. The Djadadj that ate Roy, he couldn’t eat anymore, so he salted me away for later.
— And left you here forty years?
— Maybe he got hit by a bus. Or maybe he forgot. They’re not very smart. But sooner or later, he’ll remember where he stored me, or else another one will sniff me out.
She nailed me with a stare I felt at the back of my skull. That’s the best can happen unless you help me, she said.
— Do we have to talk about this every time I come out? I’m thinking about it, okay?
She kept staring for several seconds and then sighed in dismay.
— It’s not the easiest thing to wrap your head around, I said. Becoming a serial killer.
— I do the killing.
— Yeah, but I have to lure them here. That’s even more disgusting.
— Listen, Louie. I.
— Elle!
— I’m sorry. Elle.
A distant plop came from the center of the river, where there was open water.
— I only need five, she said.
— I know what you need. It’s not like you never tell me.
— One a night for five nights. Then I’ll be strong enough to break free. There must be five people you hate in town. Five like that first one.
— You have to give me more time.
We sat quietly, caught in our bad mood like two flies in a puddle of grease. I thought to say I had to go, but I didn’t want to go. Sandrine wrestled with a hyacinth stem and snapped off a lavender bloom and offered it to me. When I accepted it, her fingers brushed mine and I felt a blush of heat, like I’d rubbed my fingertips fast over a rough surface.
— Does Djadadjii magic work on regular people? I asked.
— No. They don’t care about you, anyway. They’re only interested in fangs.
— Suppose you get clear of this. What’ll you do?
— Maybe South Carolina. There’s a group of fangs there who’re well protected. They’re not fond of outsiders, but I’m tired of being on my own. It might be worth the risk.
— What if you weren’t on your own?
— If you were with me, you mean?
I shrugged. Yeah.
— I’d probably stay here.
That alarmed me. In DuBarry?
— No, no. Florida. Most of the fangs in this hemisphere are in Latin America and.
— How come?
— It’s easier to get away with killing there. Of course it’s a trade-off. Since most fangs are there, most of the Djadadjii are, too. The one that caught me, he’s only the fourth I’ve seen up here. and the first three were over a century ago.
A bug crawled from beneath a petal of the bloom Sandrine had plucked, and I laid it on the oak trunk.