The Urban Fantasy Anthology (Peter S. Beagle) (Kitty Norville 1.50)

“Isn’t it.”

When I’ve filled the manikins with ten quivers’ worth of arrows and my heart-shot rate is a sad 10 percent, we quit for the day. It’s getting close to sunset, one of those gorgeous smoggy ones. The other shooters have hit the road in their Escalades, H3s, and Land Sharks, and the kid is acting distracted.

“Date?”

“What?”

“You know. Two people. Dinner and a movie. Clubbing. Whatever.”

“You could say that. But it’s a threesome. Can’t stand the guy—he’s a Red-State crewcut ex-Delta-Forcer—but the girl, she’s so hot she’ll melt your belt buckle.”

He can tell I’m not following.

“A job. It’ll take the three of us about three hours. You know, holy number.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Two Hollywood producers. Both vampires. They’ve got two very sexy, very cool low-budget vampire flicks—ones where the vampires win because, hey, if you’re cool and sexy you should win, right?—in post-production, two more in production and three in development. These flicks will seduce too many teens to the Dark Side, He says, so He wants us to take out their makers. They’ll be having late poolside dinner at Blue-on-Blue tonight. We’ll be interrupting it.”

“I see,” I say. I’m staring at him and he beats me to it.

“You want to know what we eat if we can’t drink blood.”

“Yes, I do.”

“We eat what you eat. We don’t need blood since we came over.”

“Which means you don’t—how to put it?—you don’t perpetuate the species.”

“Right.”

“Which can’t make the elders very happy.”

“No, it can’t.”

By the end of the sixth day my heart-shot rate is 80 percent and the kid’s nodding, doing a dance move or two in his tight black jeans, and saying “You’re the man, Anthony. You’re the man.” I shouldn’t admit it, but what he thinks does matter.

When I get there, courtesy of Alitalia (the angel won’t pay for Lufthansa), the city of Siena, in lovely Tuscany, country of my forefathers, is a mess. It’s just after the horserace, the one where a dozen riders—each of them repping a neighborhood known for an animal (snail, dolphin, goose—you get the picture)—beat each other silly with little riding crops to impress their local Madonna. There’s trash everywhere. I’ve got the crossbow in its case, and a kid on a Vespa tries to grab it as he sails by, but I’m ready. I know kids—I was one once—and I nail him with a kick to his knee. The Vespa skids and he flies into a fountain not far away. The fountain is a big sea shell—a scallop—which I know from reading my Fodor’s must be this neighborhood’s emblem for the race. He gets up, crying, gives me the va-funcu with his arm and fist, and screams something in native Sienese—which isn’t at all the Italian I grew up with but which I’m sure means, “I’m going to tell my dad and brothers, you asshole!”

The apartment is not in the Neighborhood of the Scallop, but in the Neighborhood of the Salmon, and the girl who answers the door is stunning. Tall. The kind of blonde who tans better than a commercial. Eyes like shattered glass, long legs, cute little dimple in her chin. I don’t see how he can keep his teeth off her.

This is Euro-goth? I don’t think so.

“So you’re the one,” she says. Her English is perfect, just enough accent to make it sexy.

“Yeah. Anthony Pagano.” I stick out my hand. She doesn’t take it.

“Giovanna,” she says. “Giovanna Musetti. And that’s what you’re going to do it with?” She gestures with her head at my case. She can’t take her eyes off it.

“Yeah.”

“Please don’t do it,” she says suddenly.

I don’t know what to say.

“You’re supposed to want him dead.”

She looks at me like I’m crazy.