The Medium

Chapter Seven-3

“So,” Kim started, when the silence started to take up space. She took a step back and sat on the edge of the coffee table. “How long have you been living at Rocky Heights Self Storage?”

The vampire’s gaze moved from the carpet to Kim’s tennis shoes, and his forehead wrinkled in concentration, but he didn’t answer.

“You’re welcome, by the way. Sorry about almost setting you on fire.”

Nothing.

“Or maybe you’ve got a name? I’m Kim Reed. My lovely assistants over here are Deaf Coyote and Zebedee Davis.”

His frown deepened, becoming an expression of intense distress, and he shook his head.

“No? No what? You don’t have a name?”

Again, nothing.

“You know someone called Sebastian Duran?”

The vampire twitched and looked up, his eyes huge, the prohibition against eye contact forgotten.

“B-b-bastian? Here?”

It came out as barely more than a whisper, part dread and part hope.

Kim shook her head slowly.

“Not here,” she said. “You’re out. I helped you get out.”

She smiled at him, expecting relief or gratitude, but he met her smile with a tremor.

“Can’t,” he insisted in a low voice. “C-can’t. I have to g-g-g-go b-back. Now.”

Kim exchanged a look with Zeb and Coyote, but neither of them had any suggestions. Coyote scratched at the side of his nose, and Zeb rested a hand on the grip of his revolver.

“No,” she said. “You don’t have to. He won’t find you here, I promise. He’ll be dead long before he can figure out where you went.”

He flinched and shook his head frantically.

“N-no. Nonononono, I have to. I have to.”

“Okay. Why?”

“I have to. I have to. I have to.”

“Important witness,” Coyote muttered. His lips thinned. “Duran’s in his head. He won’t have anything to say. Doubt he could even if he wanted to. Which he won’t.”

“Or he could just still be woozy,” Zeb put forward. “It’s gotta take a while to soak up that much juice, right? He’s recoverin’ from a serious case of brain-raisin. Might take a while to get him workin’ again.”

Kim blinked at him in mild surprise. He shrugged one bony shoulder and hooked his thumbs into his belt.

“I’ll work with him,” Kim said. She leaned down to smile at the vampire. “Okay, No-Name of Rocky Heights. How about we wait a couple of days to see if you remember anything? It’s kind of important. Then if you still want to go live in a hole, you can.”

His face crumpled like a paper bag, but he nodded. He didn’t have much choice.

“While he stays where?” Coyote demanded.

“Here,” Kim replied. “I can handle him, and if it turns out I actually can’t, I think he knows you guys would pulp him. But I seriously don’t think that’ll be a problem. Like, at all. Will it, Rocky?”

The vampire had curled into a ball so tight it looked like he was trying to disappear.

“Besides, he’s already made friends with Vickie. Maybe now she’ll stop bugging me to bring boys home.”

Coyote left reluctantly, and Zeb followed him out. They left the full cooler, and Zeb left his pistol over Kim’s objections that her little semiautomatic fit her hands better. She accepted it in the end; she’d always had a sneaking suspicion that Zeb’s guns were more than naturally lucky.

Only after both men were gone did she remember she’d wanted to ask if they happened to have any spare clothes sitting around. Lacking male clothing, she dug through her chest of drawers and came up with an old pair of flannel pajama pants. They had belonged to her uncle and were barely too long on her, which she hoped meant they would be barely too short on her houseguest.

When she came back into the living room, the vampire hadn’t moved. He watched the door fixedly, and Kim couldn’t tell whether it was because he was thinking about making a break for it or was terrified of what might come through it. His eyes snapped back to her when she kicked a set of headphones.

“Thought you might want to clean up some,” she said, holding up the pants. “This is all I’ve got. Sorry. No offense, but you kind of stink.”

He averted his eyes and mumbled an apology, but skittered backward across the couch when she approached. She stopped.

“Look,” she said. “I know you’re scared, and I’m really sorry. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. But I’m not going to make the first move, here. So if you don’t make the first move either, neither of us gets hurt. I think that’s the best plan, don’t you?”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why am I here?”

Kim considered the possibility of a vampire questioning his existence and decided here meant her apartment, rather than the universe in general.

“Because the guy who did this to you has been hurting a lot of other people, too. All of those people down there with you aren’t even the tip of the iceberg. And there are some really powerful people who want to make him stop, but they want proof, first. I was kind of hoping you could tell them what happened.”

He shook his head and wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.

“B-bastian k-k-k-keeps me safe.” It had the sound of a mantra, something he’d repeated to himself until it sounded true.

“Bull,” Kim told him cheerfully. “Come on. You’re going to take advantage of my shower and put on something clean, and I’m going to set you up on the couch. Then I’m going to shower, and you’re going to stay right where I put you until I come out. Then I’m going to scrub the tar out of my couch and probably go to bed, and you’re not going to try anything funny or run away, because Coyote literally found a needle in a haystack once, and he can find you wherever you go. Sound like a plan, Stan?”

He followed her instructions precisely, either because he was scared to do otherwise, or because obedience had become reflex. He came out of the shower whiter than he had been, blond hair dripping, with the brown pajama pants on backward. Kim planted him on the cleaner end of the couch, and he was still there when she emerged five minutes later with a towel on her head. He was watching Vickie channel surf with unnerving intensity.

“He’s creeping me out,” Vickie complained. “He won’t stop staring. I even went invisible, and he just kept staring like he could see me anyway.”

A ripple passed through her translucent form like a shiver.

“He can also hear you, and he’s sitting right there. Did you ask him to stop?”

“Well… no.”

Kim turned to the vampire with an apologetic smile. “You’re creeping out my roommate,” she said.

He blinked and turned around obligingly, then curled up with his head propped on the armrest and his face turned toward the back of the couch. Kim dumped a pile of blankets on top of him, silently signaled for Vickie to keep a weather eye open, and went to bed.