Living Dead in Dallas

Bethany’s eyebrows as she became focused on my request. She was trying hard now, searching her memory. Bits of the evening began to compact, so she could reach the parts containing the memory of the brown-haired vampire. “He went back to the bathroom with the blond,” she said, and I saw in her mind the image of the blond tattooed vampire, the very young-looking one. If I’d been an artist, I could have drawn him.
    “Young vampire, maybe sixteen. Blond, tattoo,” I murmured to Stan, and he looked surprised. I barely caught that, having so much to concentrate on—this was like trying to juggle—but I did think surprise was the flash of feeling on Stan’s face. That was puzzling.
    “Sure he was a vampire?” I asked Bethany.
    “He drank the blood,” she said flatly. “He had that pale skin. He gave me the creeps. Yes, I’m sure.”
    And he’d gone into the bathroom with Farrell. I was disturbed. The only reason a vampire would enter a bathroom was if there were a human inside he wanted to have sex with, or drink from, or (any vamp’s favorite) do both simultaneously. Submerging myself again in Bethany’s recollections, I watched her serve a few more customers, no one I recognized, though I got as good a look as I could at the other patrons. Most of them seemed like harmless tourist types. One of them, a dark-complexioned man with a bushy mustache, seemed familiar, so I tried to note his companions: a tall, thin man with shoulder-length blond hair and a squatty woman with one of the worst haircuts I’d ever seen.
    I had some questions to ask Stan, but I wanted to finish up with Bethany first. “Did the cowboy-looking vampire come out again, Bethany?”
    “No,” she said after a perceptible pause. “I didn’t see him again.” I checked her carefully for blank spots in her mind; I could never replace what had been erased, but I might know if her memory had been tampered with. I found nothing. And she was trying to remember, I could tell. I could sense her straining to recall another glimpse of Farrell. I realized, from the sense of her straining, that I was losing control of Bethany’s thoughts and memories.
    “What about the young blond one? The one with the tattoos?”
    Bethany pondered that. She was about half out of her trance now. “I didn’t see him neither,” she said. A name slid through her head.
    “What’s that?” I asked, keeping my voice very quiet and calm.
    “Nothing! Nothing!” Bethany’s eyes were wide open now. Her haircut was over: I’d lost her. My control was far from perfect.
    She wanted to protect someone; she wanted him not to go through the same thing she was going through. But she couldn’t stop herself from thinking the name, and I caught it. I couldn’t quite understand why she thought this man would know something else, but she did. I knew no purpose would be served by letting her know I’d picked up on her secret, so I smiled at her and told Stan, without turning to look at him, “She can go. I’ve gotten everything.”
    I absorbed the look of relief on Bethany’s face before I turned to look at Stan. I was sure he realized I had something up my sleeve, and I didn’t want him to say anything. Who can tell what a vampire is thinking whenthe vamp is being guarded? But I had the distinct feeling Stan understood me.
    He didn’t speak out loud, but another vampire came in, a girl who’d been about Bethany’s age when she went over. Stan had made a good choice. The girl leaned over Bethany, took her hand, smiled with fangs fully retracted, and said, “We’ll take you home now, okay?”
    “Oh, great!” Bethany’s relief was written in neon on her forehead. “Oh, great,” she said again, less certainly. “Ah, you really are going to my house? You . . .”
    But the vampire had looked directly into Bethany’s eyes and now she said, “You won’t remember anything about today or this evening except the party.”
    “Party?” Bethany’s voice sounded sluggish. Only mildly curious.
    “You went to a party,” the vampire said as she led Bethany from the room. “You went to a great party, and you met a cute guy there. You’ve been with him.” She was still murmuring to Bethany as they went out. I hoped she was giving her a good memory.
    “What?” Stan asked, when the door shut behind the two.
    “Bethany thought the club bouncer would know more. She watched him go into the men’s room right on the heels of your friend Farrell and the