Dead to the World

cold creeping feeling.
    “Yes,” Catfish said. “It was parked in front of his house, keys inside. Door hanging open.”
    “The truck door or the house door?”
    “What?”
    “Hanging open. Which door?”
    “Oh, the truck.”
    “This is bad, Catfish,” I said. I was tingling all over with alarm.
    “When you seen him last?”
    “Just last night. He was over here visiting with me, and he left about . . . oh, let’s see . . . it must have been nine-thirty or ten.”
    “He have anybody with him?”
    “No.” He hadn’t brought anybody with him, so that was pretty much the truth.
    “You think I oughta call the sheriff?” Catfish asked.
    I ran a hand over my face. I wasn’t ready for that yet, no matter how off the situation seemed. “Let’s give it another hour,” I suggested. “If he hasn’t dragged into work in an hour, you let me know. If he does come in, you make him call me. I guess it’s me ought to tell the sheriff, if it comes to that.”
    I hung up after Catfish had repeated everything he’d said several times, just because he hated to hang up and go back to worrying. No, I can’t read minds over the telephone line, but I could read it in his voice. I’ve known Catfish Hennessy for many years. He was a buddy of my father’s.
    I carried the cordless phone into the bathroom with me while I took a shower to wake up. I didn’t wash my hair, just in case I had to go outside right away. I got dressed, made some coffee, and braided my hair in one long braid. All the time while I performed these tasks, I was thinking, which is something that’s hard for me to do when I’m sitting still.
    I came up with these scenarios.
    One. (This was my favorite.) Somewhere between my house and his house, my brother had met up with a woman and fallen in love so instantly and completely that he had abandoned his habit of years and forgotten all about work. At this moment, they were in a bed somewhere, having great sex.
    Two. The witches, or whatever the hell they were, had somehow found out that Jason knew where Eric was, and they’d abducted him to force the information from him. (I made a mental note to learn more about witches.) How long could Jason keep the secret of Eric’s location? My brother has lots of attitude, but he actually is a brave man—or maybe stubborn is a little more accurate. He wouldn’t talk easily. Maybe a witch could spell him into talking? If the witches had him, he might be dead already, since they’d had him for hours. And if he’d talked, I was in danger and Eric was doomed. They could be coming at any minute, since witches are not bound by darkness. Eric was dead for the day, defenseless. This was definitely the worst-case scenario.
    Three. Jason had returned to Shreveport with Pam and Chow. Maybe they’d decided to pay him some up-front money, or maybe Jason just wanted to visit Fangtasia because it was a popular nightspot. Once there, he could have been seduced by some vamp girl and stayed up all night with her, since Jason was like Eric in that women really, really took a shine to him. If she’d taken a little too much blood, Jason could be sleeping it off. I guess number three was really a variation on number one.
    If Pam and Chow knew where Jason was but hadn’t phoned before they died for the day, I was real mad. My gut instinct was to go get the hatchet and start chopping some stakes.
    Then I remembered what I was trying so hard to forget: how it had felt when the stake pushed into Lorena’s body, the expression on her face when she’d realized her long, long life was over. I shoved that thought away as hard as I could. You didn’t kill someone (even an evil vampire) without it affecting you sooner or later: at least not unless you were a complete sociopath, which I wasn’t.
    Lorena would have killed me without blinking. In fact, she would have positively enjoyed it. But then, she was a vampire, and Bill never tired of telling me that vampires were different; that though they retained their human appearance (more or less), their internal functions and their personalities underwent a radical change. I believed him and took his warnings to heart, for the most part. It was just that they looked so human; it was so very easy to attribute normal human reactions and feelings to them.
    The frustrating thing was, Chow and Pam wouldn’t be up until dark, and I didn’t know who—or what—I’d raise if I called Fangtasia during the day. I didn’t think the two