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young, the rootless, the night dwellers who have yet to find a home in the
night. The young were-cats of our area practically live in these places,
Corinne Carol-Anne. They are known to talk to me, to defer to me. You've seen
it. You recognized it in Adrian, and even in Renny, Mitch, and the others. If
I'm seen looking for these people, they will remember me. They will blame me.
And if someone is responsible for this, they will connect me.
"And yet you're here." I said shortly. Just because he was in my car instead
of his own didn't make him any less visible.
"Yes." He said mildly. "Green wouldn't risk you with anyone else. Besides,
while I'm waiting in your car, my glamour will hold once I get out, speak,
touch hands, it will get harder to maintain. I could do it, but this way is
safer.
"Glamour." I echoed, although Adrian had told me what it meant.
He turned to me, smiled, as he started my car. "Look at me, Corinne
Carol-Anne what do you see?
"A six foot Aztec elf who got his teeth capped." I responded quickly.
I heard his low chuckle. "No look at me not who you know I am, but at what I
look like.
I tried again, and remembered thinking how grounded he looked as we left my
parents place, and I saw it.
I saw nothing. His eyes, instead of being the color of old and new copper,
were plain brown. His face was handsome, but in a fading, aging way, not the
breath stopping beautiful way I had seen since he'd first entered my store.
And his ears weren't pointed anymore. Glamour, I realized, to make him less
than glamorous.
"Shit." I breathed. "You're doing that on purpose.
He smiled at me, for a moment letting the glamour drop. "Yes, of course I
am...I've worn it all day. I'm surprised you didn't see it come on...but then,
you all but forgot my original appearance from the first time Adrian spoke to
you." As it hit me that he was right, the glamour reasserted itself, and I saw
him looking normal and human beside me. He'd been just that beautiful, I
realized, the entire time Adrian was chatting me up in the back of the
Chevron. But I hadn't seen it. I'd seen Adrian.
"Can Adrian do this?" I asked, curious.
Arturo shook his head negative, negotiating a tight turn in with my stiff
little steering wheel so smoothly I wondered if he could glamorize my car the
same way he did to himself. "He can hypnotize vampires are famous for it. He
can make them forget he's fed on a victim, make them want to be fed on. He can
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put to sleep, or minimize pain, or make somebody think they want him when
ordinarily they wouldn't find him attractive." He paused, just long enough to
make me wonder. "But he's done none of these things to you.
I smiled a little, a self satisfied, confident smile that I wouldn't have had
a week ago. "I know that." I said smugly. "I told him to go piss up a rope for
two months. If he was going to fuck with my mind, he would have done it two
months ago." But in my mind, that's not what I was thinking. I was thinking of
Adrian, his face slack and raw and passionate, and his eyes closed tightly as
he bared his body and self to me, taking my body to places it had never been.
I was thinking of two tears of blood, rolling down his cheek at my surrender.
These things could be faked; I wasn't nave enough to think that they
couldn't. But they hadn't been. I was woman enough, now, to know that fot
certain.
Arturo looked at me, grinned, and the glamour dropped away for a moment that
left me breathless at his beauty. "That's not what you were thinking." He
said, his voice both feral and amused.
"I'm not going to ask how you know that." I responded tartly, flushing to the
roots of my hair. He said nothing, turned the wheel and pulled into the next
stop & rob. When I thought back on this conversation later, I would realize
that he never answered the question about why Green didn't own any gas
stations in Folsom when he apparently owned at least four in any of the
neighboring towns. The scene at the gas station wiped it from my mind.
There were onlookers there are always onlookers. This time they didn't have
anything to look at. There was yellow tape in a giant half circle around the
front half of the AM/PM. The reason it wasn't around the whole thing is that
the front door and overhang stopped the blood. In June, in our part of the
foothills, the stench was overwhelming. And still the people gathered, to
stare, white faced, and wonder. I didn't need to stare I'd seen the whole show
first hand.
I had gotten out of the car in order to get a closer look, and I had just spun
on my heel to go report to Arturo, when I felt a hand on my shoulder and an
unfortunately familiar voice saying "Isn't this a sweet coincidence...Cory,
isn't it?
Oh sweet Jesus. "Officer Johnson?" I asked pleasantly, feeling my palms sweat.
"What don't you have someone else's life to ruin?
"Don't be dramatic, sweetheart." He said snidely, "Besides I'm not talking
about a goddamned English exam, I'm talking about murder.
"I almost flunked out of school because you kept me for three hours about a
drug overdose I knew nothing about...now who's being dramatic, Johnson.
"Yeah." He said, and for the first time a trace of human anger crept into his
voice. It made me like him just a little bit more, dammit. "Well this isn't a
goddamned drug overdose, and that wasn't either.
I looked at him, surprised and more than a little bit shocked. He looked away,
the color over his cheekbones going from olive to dull red. He hadn't meant to
say that.
"Well," I said after a moment, "What was it?
He was still rattled, because he shouldn't have said what he said next, and it
was a good thing, because my face must have been a study but he never looked
up. "Exsanguination." He said shortly. "Complete blood loss.
"Jesus." I breathed, truly horrified, but not for the reasons he thought. He
looked up. "X-files shit." And he nodded, distractedly.
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