'He and his buddies are probably looking for a high school couple walking to school now, so they can yell, 'Fuck her! I did!' '
Sue laughed. 'I remember that one.'
The two of them got in the car, and Sue started the engine, put the car into gear, and made a U-turn in the middle of the street.
Janine pulled down the sun visor to examine her face in the small makeup mirror. 'Have you talked to Shelly lately?'
Sue shook her head. 'Not since last week. She never seems to be home when I call. Why?'
'She's never home when I call either, but I saw her yesterday at Circle I'm worried about her. She's... I don't know. I think she's losing it.'
'Losing it?'
'I went over to talk to her, and she started giving me all this church talk, all this stuff about blood and death and Jesus and I don't know what all. It was creepy.'
'Shelly?' Sue said, surprised.
Janine nodded. 'Shelly. And, I don't know how to put this delicately, but she smelled. Bad. Like she hadn't bathed for a long time, you know? It's hard to describe, but you'd understand if you were there.
It was weird. Scary. The way she looked and the way she was talking, I kept thinking--I know this is cold, but I kept imagining her morn, dead, in the kitchen or something, stabbed.
Shelly hates her morn, you know.'
'I don't think she hates her.'
'I think she does, and the way she was acting yesterday .. .' Janine shivered. 'I don't even want to think about it.'
'A lot of strange things have been going on lately.' 'You can say that again.'
Sue drove for a moment in silence. 'What would you say,' she said finally, 'if I told you there was a vampire in Rio Verde?'
'I'd say I've heard that one before.'
Sue did not take her eyes off the road, but she reached into the open purse next to her. Her fingers found what she was looking for---one of the small jade stones that her grandmother had given her--and she offered it to Janine, opening her palm. 'Here. This is for you.'
What is it? This is a stone!
'What is it?
Jade. It will protect you from vampires. '
'I thought crosses did that.'
'Not according to my culture.'
Janine said nothing, looked at the jade. 'You're serious about this, aren't you?'
Sue nodded, feeling a little embarrassed but not as much as she'd expected. 'These people who were killed, the man at the Rocking DID, they were killed by a vampire, or what we call a cup hu #rngsi.'
Janine licked her lips. 'One of the maids said she saw a vampire,' she admitted.
'What did she say he looked like?'
'A she.'
'The vampire was a woman?'
'Yeah. La Verona.'
The flesh prickled on Sue's arms. La Verona, the wailing woman of the canals, was an Arizona legend that had been used by more than one mother to ensure that her child did not venture too close to open waterways. In the version Sue had heard, La Verona had been tall and wraith-thin, with white skin and long black hair. In Sue's mind, La Verona had always had vaguely Asian features, and it was that image that chilled her now, made her feel so frightened.
'Where did she see the vampire. Sue asked.
'By the river.'
She pulled onto the dirt road that led to the Rocking DID. 'Keep that jade with you, okay? No matter what hap pens. And tell other people, anyone you can. Get one for your mother.' '
'A jade rock?
'Anything made out of jade. White jade's the best, the most powerful.'
Janine looked at her suspiciously. 'How come you're such an expert in all of this?'
'It's a long story. Remind me to tell you sometime. After it's all over.'
'After what's all over?'
'After the cup hugirngsi is dead.'
Rich was pasting up the paper in the back room, his tape player cranked up, playing an old Yes cassette. Jim Fredricks was with him, cutting halftones to size and running them through the waxer before slapping them down on the sports page.
Rich glanced at Sue as she entered the room. 'Hey,' he said, 'what's up?'
'I was going to ask you.' She nodded to Fredricks. 'Hi.'
The sports reporter nodded back.
'So,' she said, 'any new developments?
Rich critically eyed the column of type he'd just pressed down on the page dummy. He pulled up the wax paper and repositioned it. 'Woman claims Elvis stole her daughter.'
Sue sucked in her breath. 'The cup hugirngsi.' 'What?' Fredricks said, turning around to look at her. 'Vampire,' Rich explained.
The sportswriter looked from Sue to the editor and back again, trying to determine if they were pulling his leg. Apparently deciding that they were serious, he quickly turned his back and returned to his sports photos.
Sue stared at Rich. 'why are you here, then? Why aren't you helping your brother?'
'Help him do what.' The editor shook his head. 'I can't spend all my time rUnning around. I have a paper to put out.'
'But--' ' 'No huts. I can't do anything by following my brother around. What I can do is make sure that the paper comes out on time, like it always does. We can reach more people that way than any other.'
She nodded. 'Are you going to run my feature?' 'Did you write it?'
'Sort of.'
Sort of?
'It's not typed yet, but I've written it.' She reached into her notebook and withdrew several folded pages, unfolding them and handing them to him. 'Here.'
Rich scanned the first page, the second, the third. He looked up at her. 'There's no attribution here.'
'I didn't have time to talk to anyone.'
'This isn't an article. It's a report. And it's only about Chinese vampires.'
'That's what we have here, a cup hug/rngs/.' 'We don't know that. 'I know it.'
He looked at her, met her eyes, then turned away, nodding. 'All right.
Type it up. Bring me your disk when you're through. I need it within the hour.'
'I will.' She took the pages from him and hurried off to her desk, where she grabbed her floppy disk from the middle drawer. She pulled her chair up to his VDT, turned on the machine, and after loading her disk began to type.
She was nearly finished with the article when she heard voices from behind the dividers in the front of the office. Male voices. Two of them. She heard Carole tell them that Rich was in the back, pasting up, and then the men-Rich's brother Robert and what had to be the tallest man she'd ever seen--were rounding the corner into the newsroom.
Robert nodded at her. His eyes looked tired, and it appeared as though he hadn't shaved; there was brown and black stubble on his chin. 'Hi there,' he said. 'Hi.'
Rich emerged from paste up an X-acto knife in his hand. 'I thought I heard your voice,' he said to his brother. He smiled at the big man.
'Hey, Pee Wee.'
Pee Wee nodded absently to the editor, but he was staring at Sue, studying her. There was nothing sexual in
