Only At Night Chapter 3

I woke up eight hours later, knocking at the door telling me the delivery was here. Sleeping off blood loss didn’t make you well-rested. You started out wrapped in cotton, half-blind, half-deaf—sleep and time pulled a few layers away. But what got in hurt. The light was too bright and noises were too loud. I laid down some of my measly salary on paying the deliveryman his tip. I’m sure he thought I was some kind of day drunk. 

Going back inside, I ate, drank, put what was left of the orange juice into the refrigerator. I had a chicken pot pie in the freezer. I set it in the oven while I showered and finally changed out of my old clothes. Moving was not fun. I peeled off the bandages in the shower. My wounds had scabbed over and the varicose veins had shrunk, but were ginger to the touch. My thoughts were dull, sluggish, plodding from one task to the next. It felt like I was doing my thinking inside my meat locker. In a sudden confusion of inactivity where I didn’t feel tired enough to go back to bed but couldn’t think of anything to do, I checked the clock. Almost eleven. I should be at work soon.

If this didn’t count as a sick day, I don’t know what would.

Dressed, bathed, I looked at myself in the mirror. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I was haggard, with dark circles under my eyes color-coordinated to match the stubble over my jaw. My eyes were bloodshot, the skin drawn gauntly to my cheekbones. I looked like an anemia patient, which I guess technically I was. At least it wouldn’t take much convincing that I was really sick.

The timer in the kitchen rang. I took the chicken pot pie out of the oven and set it on the stovetop to cool. Then, drinking some more orange juice, I opened up my laptop on the bar and Skyped my boss.

I got her secretary, Abigail Sweat. Abigail was a throwback. She didn’t belong in a world of memes and Snuggies. She needed to be in some noir movie, the whip-smart, hypercompetent Girl Friday to some gumshoe who could throw back her razor-sharp banter as fast as she could. 

She was mestizo Hispanic, not that you’d ever notice. Her dusky skin was indistinguishable from a fashionable tan and her manner was about as far from the stereotypical fiery Latina as you could get. Instead she was deadpan, caustic, with a cutting gaze under cats-eye glasses. I think she had a soft spot for me, though. I never got the full brunt of her sarcasm. Maybe because I did my job, stayed out of her hair, and kept her internet working. Maybe if I brought her coffee, she’d fall in love.

“Ivan,” she said, a slight smile—more of an insouciant smirk—creasing her glowering expression. “You look like shit.” She sounded gleeful at the possibilities. Maybe she was a sadist. I’m pretty sure if I had a gaping head wound or anything, she would call an ambulance. Probably only make minimal jokes.

“You’ve got a bit of schmutz on your glasses,” I retorted, and managed a grin as her eyes swiveled around, trying to detect something before realizing she’d been had. 

Her eyebrows—thick, black, the biggest giveaway of her Mexican heritage—slanted nastily. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Did I cut off an old gypsy woman in traffic?”

“I can’t come in today. Sick.”

“Do you have a doctor’s note?” Abigail asked with the pleasant sweetness that came off as wholly sarcastic. Most people don’t get just how sardonic she’s being with them. 

“I’m too sick to go to the doctor’s,” I said. Abigail’s eyebrows jostled at the straight-up Yogi Berra.

“It’s not me, dude. Corporate says sick days need a doctor’s note to be official.” Now she actually sounded a little apologetic. Enjoying the suffering of others was a reflex action for Abigail. She thought most people had it coming. I wondered if I fell into that category of stupidity. “Too bad.” That was about as pitying as she ever got.

I sighed. “Put me on with Morgan. She’ll cut me some slack.” I grinned ruefully. “She likes me.”

“That’s what we’re calling it,” Abigail said breathily. 

She'd noticed the interest Thana Morgan had taken in me. She had to. Those glasses did more than bring out the condensation in her eyes.

Normally, it'd be welcome. Thana was not a bad looking woman. She had been turned on the day of her twentieth birthday, wanting her body to be preserved at its self-proclaimed physical peak, and it was hard to argue the point with her. Full-breasted, long-legged, and statuesque, her continuing maturation and ever-more-shrewd thinking while her flesh was paused at being a hard-bodied college freshman gave her an off, witchy air, like the proverbial old soul, a woman who was literally wise beyond her years. If Abigail was a gal Friday, Thana was all femme fatale. Dark hair, pale skin, sculpted features that could flow from classical beauty to sensual voluptuousness with the quirk of an eyebrow or the twitch of a lip. Cultured, refined, she'd be the perfect woman if she weren’t a vampire.

Now, Thana was leagues above the pond scum that had attacked me. She had a high-paying job, a steady supply of blood, and had apparently been turned relatively recently—a yuppie of the vampire world. The elder vampire who owned the company had put her in charge of this branch, and she ran it like her own private fiefdom. A benevolent but unquestioned dictator.

I would be flattered at the attention, but if I was at a loss for what to say around girls, imagine a girl a few decades my senior who looked like she could model for Victoria’s Secret just by taking her outerwear off. So I politely demurred. Better to eat dinner alone than say the wrong thing over bread rolls and end up disemboweled.

“Here you go,” Abigail said, before disappearing to a blank Call Waiting screen. “One undead middle manager coming up…”

The view switched to the feed from Thana Morgan’s laptop. It was set on her desk and she’d framed the camera to look at her like she was being painted for a portrait. Her dark eyes set in her pale face gave her an ethereal look. Her cream-colored silk blouse was unbuttoned to between her cleavage, giving only a hint at the clasp of her skimpy bra while exposing much of her full breasts. C-cups that she knew just how to flaunt, subtly inclining herself toward the camera so that I could see down her blouse without making it too obvious. I had to admit, the ‘innocence’ of the gesture made it surprisingly hot, even though I knew that in her smugness, she was doing it deliberately.

“Ivan.” Her eyes flickered with genuine worry, before she either dismissed her concern or hid it under a queenly mask. “Long night?”

“Yeah,” I said, mostly just thinking of the clumsiness of the phrase when you worked nights. ‘Long day’ would be more accurate, but it didn’t have the same ring. English…

Once again I’d missed the full scope of her innuendo. Her smile widened as she pictured dancing and drinking; drinking all sorts of things… “Shame you didn’t bring me along. I’m sure we’d still be at it.”

Maybe I blushed, but I doubt I had the blood pressure for it. “Listen, Ms. Morgan—“

“Thana,” she corrected. “And I don’t know why you don’t like calling me that. It sounds so nice in your accent…”

“Thana,” I demurred. “I can’t come in today. Sick.”

“No,” Thana simpered, pouting a little as she looked me over again. “Don’t tell me my poor widdle Ivan isn’t feeling well…”

“I, uh, I think I caught a bug. I wouldn’t want to infect the whole office.”

“No,” Thana agreed. “Humans are so fragile. It’ll be a shame to do without your company, but if you aren’t your usual charming self, what’s the point?” She flashed a smile, wickedly curved lips with just a hint of fangs. “Maybe I should come by later. Bring you some hot soup. That’s what humans like, right? Soup?”

“I’ll be fine. I just need rest.” I decided to cave a little. “But thanks for the offer. I appreciate it.”

“Of course you do,” Thana said blithely. “And when you’re feeling better, then we can play doctor.”

She ended the call. Leaning forward to hit the button.

I groaned and shut the laptop. One of these days I was going to have to take her up on her flirting. Just to see if she could live up to all her seductiveness.

I ate, read, tried to relax, but my body wasn’t up for any of it. I crawled back into bed and tried to sleep, but I’m not sure that I did. That haze between sleeping and waking where it feels like you’re just lying in bed, but eventually you lifted your head and it’s 4:30 in the AM. I got up, feeling not so much better as more okay. Either I’d gotten some rest or my body had grown tired of lying in bed. Either way, I went through the motions of being a functioning human being. Ate, showered, stretched, relieved myself. Even poured some more holy water on my wounds, just to be safe. It didn’t make me scream like last time. Not that a big tough guy like me screamed. I changed my sheets too, finally. Eventually I opened up my laptop.

Spam, mostly, but I’d also gotten a few get-well-soons from Carina Lilly. 

For the past two years, ever since we’d started slaving away under Thana Morgan together, I’d escorted Carina on the brisk three-block walk from our workplace to the parking garage Corporate leased from the city. In all that time, nothing more had happened than some friendly conversation, but I was hardly willing to take chances after the experience I’d had with the newbie vamps. Carina had way less blood to spare than I did. 

I’d convalesced as much as I could justify. Now it was time to get serious. I pounded an energy drink from the fridge, using it to wash down a handful of pep pills. They’d gotten me through all my finals in college and I wasn’t yet thirty—surely I could still get away with the odd pick-me-up.

It definitely woke me up, and without the numbness of being totally drained, I could feel just how sore I was. There was nothing to be done for it. Grabbing a paperback and shoving it in my backpocket, I went to work.