Dead Reckoning

could tell she was proud of getting her terminology correct.
    “Almost finished,” Immanuel muttered, his scissors snicking at a frantic rate in response to the growing tension.
    “Pam, that all came out of my attic,” I said, glad to talk about something so mundane and (I hoped) calming. “Claude and Dermot are helping me clean it out. I’m going to go see an antiques dealer with Sam in the morning—well, we were going to go. I don’t know if Sam’ll be able to make it, now.”
    “There, see!” Pam said to Eric. “She lives with other men. She goes shopping with other men. What kind of husband are you?”
    And Eric launched himself across the table, hands extended toward Pam’s throat.
    The next second the two were rolling on the floor in a serious attempt to damage each other. I didn’t know if Pam could actually initiate the moves to hurt Eric, since she was his child, but she was defending herself vigorously; there’s a fine line there.
    I couldn’t scramble down from the stool fast enough to escape some collateral damage. It seemed inevitable that they would slam into the stool, and of course they did in a second. Over I went to join them on the floor, banging my shoulder against the counter in the process. Immanuel very intelligently leaped backward, and he didn’t drop his scissors, a blessing to all of us. One of the vampires might have grabbed them as a weapon, or the gleaming scissors might have become embedded in some part of me.
    Immanuel’s hand gripped my arm with surprising strength, and he yanked me up and away. We scuttled out of the kitchen and into the living room. We stood, panting, in the middle of the cluttered room, staring down the hall in case the fight followed us.
    I could hear crashing and banging, and a persistent snarly noise I finally identified as growling.
    “Sounds like two pit bulls going at each other,” Immanuel said. He was handling this with amazing calm. I was glad to have some human company.
    “I don’t know what’s wrong with them,” I said. “I’ve never seen them act like this.”
    “Pam’s frustrated,” he said with a familiarity that surprised me. “She wants to make her own child, but there’s some vampire reason she can’t.”
    I couldn’t curb my surprise. “And you know all this—how? I’m sorry, that sounds rude, but I hang around with Pam and Eric a fair bit, and I haven’t seen you before.”
    “Pam’s been dating my sister.” Immanuel didn’t seem offended by my frankness, thank goodness. “My sister Miriam. My mom’s religious,” he explained. “And kind of crazy. The situation is, my sister is sick and getting sicker, and Pam really wants to bring her over before Mir gets any worse. She’ll be skin and bones forever if Pam doesn’t hurry.”
    I hardly knew what to say. “What illness does your sister have?” I said.
    “She has leukemia,” Immanuel said. Though he maintained his casual facade, I could read the pain underneath, and the fear and worry.
    “So that’s how Pam knows you.”
    “Yeah. But she was right. I am the best hairstylist in Shreveport.”
    “I believe you,” I said. “And I’m sorry about your sister. I don’t guess they told you why Pam wasn’t able to bring Miriam over?”
    “Nope, but I don’t think the roadblock is Eric.”
    “Probably not.” There was a shriek and a clatter from the kitchen. “I wonder if I ought to intervene.”
    “If I were you, I’d leave them to it.”
    “I hope they plan on paying to have my kitchen set to rights,” I said, doing my best to sound angry rather than frightened.
    “You know, he could order her to be still and she’d have to do it.” Immanuel sounded almost casual.
    He was absolutely right. As Eric’s child, Pam had to obey a direct order. But for whatever reasons, Eric wasn’t saying the magic word. In the meantime, my kitchen was getting wiped out. When I realized he could make the whole thing stop at any time he chose, I lost my own temper.
    Though Immanuel made an ineffective grab at my arm, I stomped on my bare feet into the hall bathroom, got the handled pitcher Claude used when he cleaned the bathtub, filled it with cold water, and went into the kitchen. (I was walking a little wonky after the fall from the stool, but I managed.) Eric was on top of Pam, punching away at her. His own face was bloody. Pam’s hands were on his shoulders, keeping him from getting any closer. Maybe she feared he would bite.
    I stepped into