Chapter Nine
At long last, Lucy, Jessica, and Dara were ready to go out for the night.
To go out vampire hunting.
Lucy felt another frisson of giddiness over the absurdity of it, but she kept the sentiment to herself.
“Are we ready to go?” she asked instead.
Dara stood up and dusted her hands together. “I think so. The Red Palm is pretty casual, right? So we should be okay in these clothes.” She looked around at her companions. All three of them were dressed similarly, in jeans, casual tops, and flats. “But I think we ought to accessorize,” she said. She retreated into her bedroom for a minute, re-emerging with a trio of roomy designer handbags lined up on her arm. She kept one for herself and handed the others to Jessica and Lucy. They loaded each purse with knives, flashlights, stakes, and duct tape, and then stowed the drop cloth, lighter fluid, and a couple of candle lighters in the back of the SUV, and headed out. The Red Palm was only ten miles away, and minutes later, just as the sun was sinking below the horizon, they pulled into the parking lot.
Dara parked the 4Runner, and the women trooped inside to search for a table. It was early, so the crowd was thin, and they were able to secure a booth in a back corner. They ordered drinks and settled in.
“This is perfect,” Jessica declared, looking around. “We can see the whole room from here. We’ll be able to watch everyone that comes in.”
They did watch, and plenty of people did come in, but none of them looked particularly vampiric or otherwise suspicious to Lucy. After a while, she started to get antsy...and then bored.
She picked up the drink menu, flipping through the laminated pages without paying much attention to them, and tried not to worry, but it was impossible. All she could think about was Aaron, sleeping like the dead—the undead—back at her apartment. Or possibly waking up and feeling frightened when he realized he was all alone. I should’ve left him a note, she chided herself, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. At least she’d left his cell phone sitting right next to him on the nightstand. She could send him a text. And say what? she wondered. That he shouldn’t worry because she and a couple of her girlfriends had carved up some stakes and gone out to slay the vampire who’d bitten him? It would likely just freak him out even worse. He might not be in love with Lucy, but she knew he cared about her as a person. If he thought she was in danger because of him, he’d feel guilty. He might even come out looking for her, even though he was likely in no shape to leave the apartment. He didn’t have his car with him, but there was always Uber.
Lucy closed the drink menu and slid it into the center of the table. She reached for her phone, thinking there must be some less alarming message she could send to Aaron, something that would let him know where she was, that she was okay, and that she would be back home with him as soon as possible, without lying to him about what she was up to. She was wracking her brain for how to word it, when suddenly Dara sat up straighter and whispered, “Hey. Over there, you guys. That woman who just came in and went to the bar.”
Lucy and Jessica peered through the crowd at the lady in question. She was petite, decked out in a silver sequined top, black mini skirt, and high heels.
“Yeah.” Jessica’s eyes were narrowing. “She’s young and pretty. And blonde. Which means she fits both Jason’s and Aaron’s descriptions of the vampire. Check out how she zeroed in on that cute guy who was sitting all by himself, too. And now look…he’s leaving with her! Oh no, we have to stop them before she bites his neck!”
“Shhh!” Lucy warned her. Then, dropping her phone back into her purse, she said, “Come on, let’s follow them.”
Jessica was more than ready to do so. She practically shoved Dara out of the booth, almost dumping her onto the floor as she wriggled out of her seat and scurried toward the entrance, her borrowed handbag clutched under her arm.
Her friends trailed her outside. There weren’t that many people hanging around on the street at this hour, but Lucy and Dara walked at a normal pace and did their best to look casual anyway. Up ahead, Jessica hurried down the sidewalk. She stopped and turned around, bouncing up and down on her toes and waving maniacally when she realized they were so far behind her.
“They went into that alley over there,” she hissed when they caught up. “Just like what happened with Aaron!”
“Calm down, Jess,” Lucy pleaded. “We need to be careful about this. And we want to be sneaky, right?”
The three of them fished flashlights and stakes out of their bags and slunk into what turned out to be a blind alleyway, staying close to the wall of the Red Palm. The sun had been down for almost an hour already, and it was dark back here. Only one faulty security bulb glowed dully above the bar’s back door, blinking erratically as it threatened to wink out for good. Still, with the moonlight it was bright enough for Lucy to see the man and woman they’d followed standing in the corner, just beyond a Dumpster and a pile of pungent garbage bags. The man had his back against the wall. The woman was leaning into him. Jessica turned and looked at Lucy with huge eyes, and Lucy knew what she had to be thinking. The woman was about to bite him.
Sure enough, the next second, the woman rested her hand on the guy’s cheek and forced aside his head. She
