Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

She did not go far. Christian was just up himself the next evening, going through the blood bags in the big kitchen he shared with the rest of the band, adjoining onto all their suites. He was trying to find some O positive.

He was very surprised when Lucille staggered in.

She was still not moving like a human. She was moving a little bit like a giraffe on stilts. She was also wearing a green T-shirt with love is the drug on it in purple letters, and her hair was all sticking up on one side of her head.

“Good evening, Christian,” she said, and sat herself with great, solemn care at the kitchen table.

Then she toppled forward, her face smacking against the wood.

In a slightly muffled voice, she said, “I feel most peculiar.”

“Would you, er, like some bagged blood?” Christian offered, trying to be a good undead host. “It’s A positive.”

Lucille, her face still planted on the kitchen table, gave a full-body shudder. “Drink from a bag? I could never.”

“Right,” Christian said. “Because you shouldn’t pop down to the shops and buy yourself a steak. You should go find a field and take a big bite out of a cow.”

“All I had to do was knock on the door directly beside yours,” Lucille said. “It was very simple. Much simpler than cows. Cows never have hotel rooms. Well, I suppose some cows might. Cows with credit cards.”

“You knocked on Pez’s door,” Christian said. “Didn’t you?”

“Sweet boy,” Lucille told him. “Very amenable. But now I really do feel most peculiar. Have I said that already?”

At that point Bradley wandered in, wearing a headband and a muscle shirt. He looked at Lucille on the table and gave Christian a thumbs-up.

“She’s a vampire,” Christian said.

“I see that,” said Bradley.

“She knocked on Pez’s door last night,” Christian continued, just to make things clear. “And now she feels most peculiar.”

“Oh,” said Bradley. “I realize this is a personal question, and I have no wish to pry into a lovely lady’s intimate affairs, but is Pez, er, alive?”

“Of course,” Lucille told him in an offended voice. “I haven’t lost control and killed a human in years.”

“Awesome,” Bradley said.

“Well, one year,” Lucille conceded.

Christian and Bradley exchanged worried looks over Lucille’s head.

“The O positive’s in the back of the second shelf,” Bradley told Christian. “Give her the A negative, you’re always chugging that stuff trying to ignore the taste. Can you snag me a rhubarb-crumble yogurt?”

“Almost a year,” Lucille murmured. “Ten months.”

Christian passed Bradley the yogurt. Lucille propped herself up on one elbow. The elbow did keep slipping and getting away from her, but after a few tries she managed it.

Bradley regarded her with some concern. It had taken Christian a while to realize that Bradley, who was ridiculous and terrible in so many ways, was also naturally very kind.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” he inquired.

Lucille regarded him blearily and said, “Avocado,” before her elbow got away from her again. “What was in that boy’s blood?” she demanded, sounding feebly outraged.

“Hard to say,” Christian told her. “I saw him eating dishwasher powder once.”

Lucille twisted about in her chair, horribly graceful again for a second, and focused on Bradley.

“Is your blood clean?” she asked.