Vampire Sun

“No, at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.”

“Fancy.”

I chuckled, and we stared at the monitor some more.

After a moment, Sharp asked, “Any theories yet, based on what you’ve seen?”

I shrugged. I might be a creature of the night, and have access to some pretty amazing talents, but I didn’t know all or see all. I said, “No one suspicious came in after her. No one suspicious came out. No one carrying, say, a large plastic bag came out.”

“And no one came out the back, either,” he added.

Indeed, the back door had remained closed the entire time. “Any chance we missed it?”

“No way,” said Sharp. “I was looking.”

I was, too, of course.

“Not to mention,” added Sharp, “that Renaldo went over this like a hundred times. No one came out that back door.”

“Windows?”

“None. It’s a corner space in a shopping center. One front door, one back door. Even the bathrooms are windowless. You ask me, a bathroom should have a fucking window.”

Now that we had sat together for a few hours, Detective Sharp let go of his tough-guy act, and some of his personality was coming through.

We were silent some more. Admittedly, nothing was coming to me. No hits, no feelings, no theories, no real impressions. No, that’s not right. I was getting one impression. And it was a big one. And the more I thought about it, the more I was sure it was right.

I think my excitement might have been obvious. The detective snapped his gaze over to me. “What is it?”

“No theories yet, Detective, but I am sure of one thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“She’s still alive.”

He looked at me long and hard. “Yeah, I’m thinking that, too.”

Chapter Fifteen

I was boxing at Jacky’s gym.

Except this time, I was working out with another trainer—and a trainer who didn’t seem to look too happy about working out with me.

Tough noogies.

Jacky himself working closely with my son, up in the ring. My son had wanted to come tonight. I wasn’t sure how wise it was to teach a boy how to fight when he was already stronger than most kids. But I understood what was going on here: Anthony hadn’t left my side for the past few months, ever since his father had died. Tammy could take me or leave me. Anthony was a different story. He shadowed me just about everywhere I went.

Tammy handled her father’s loss differently. She buried herself in books and schoolwork. She finished novels bigger and fatter than anything I’d ever read, even back in grad school. Books about divergents and tributes, featuring characters called Tris and Katness, or was it Kat and Trissness? I didn’t know; either way, both had way cooler names than me.

Despite her independence, sometimes, late at night, I would hear Tammy crying softly in her room. I would then put away my files, turn off my laptop, and slip into her room unannounced. I would crawl into bed and pull her to me and listen to her cry against my shoulder until she would finally go to sleep. More than once, I fell asleep next to her, only to awaken late in the day.

The thing about a mommy who works the night shift and goes to bed at the crack of dawn—or slips into a minor coma, to be more accurate—is that a son or daughter can’t, well, crawl into bed with her when they need her.

Anyway, the new trainer was holding up punching mitts, or focus mitts, before me. He held them up as I hit them harder and harder. With each punch, I watched him wince until he finally stepped back and said his hands needed a break.

I didn’t doubt it. As he slipped off the mitts, I caught a fragment of his thoughts: he was wondering what drug I was on. Speed, he figured. Maybe bath salts.

With my trainer undoubtedly wishing he never showed up for work today, I sat down and watched my son work with Jacky up in the ring. Jacky was personally working out with my son, showing him proper footwork and striking techniques. Presently, he was holding my son’s right arm straight, adjusting his elbow and shoulder height and wrists. I could hear Jacky’s thick accent from here, barking orders. I could also see a wicked gleam in the old trainer’s eye. With my son, he was liking what he was seeing.

Tammy turned to books, while Anthony turned to me.

As the weeks passed, he grew more and more attached to me. Often, he would slip into my office, nonchalantly, quietly, almost secretly. One moment I would be working, the next, I would look up and he would be there. It was a credit to his own supernatural prowess that he could sneak up on me, perhaps one of the few people who could.

Mostly, he would play on his Gameboy or pretend to read a book. I knew he was pretending because he never actually turned the pages. Sometimes, he would come in and talk, usually about nothing important. He would ramble. Other times, he would come in and sit quietly, staring down at his hands. I asked him if there was anything I could do for him, or help him with, or if he wanted to do something together, and the answer was invariably “no.”

That is, until this evening, when I found him sitting in my office, holding a book he didn’t bother trying to read. The title was Beautiful Creatures, which might have been a movie, too, although we hadn’t seen it. I was pretty sure that was his sister’s book.

As I shut down my computer, I asked if he wanted to go to boxing with me and, wonder of wonders, he had perked up immediately. I smiled, relieved that I had finally, finally found something that interested him.

Now, I almost regretted it.

Almost.

Then again, maybe my son did need to know how to fight. Maybe being who he is—the strongest kid in his school—would prompt older boys to test him, to prove their own worth, to show that a younger kid wasn’t tougher than them.

I hoped my son wouldn’t use his growing strength for ill. I hoped I wasn’t creating a supervillain here, although that thought nearly made me giggle.

My son had a good heart, and he was a boy hurting and lost, and looking for someone to connect with. For a while, I had been that someone. Boy, had I been. From following me out to the laundry room, to sitting with me in the office.

Now, as I watched my son, something curious was happening: he wasn’t looking at me. No, Jacky had his full attention. And, more amazingly, he had Jacky’s full attention, too.

I saw something even stranger, something I wasn’t prepared for: as they moved together in this boxing dance of theirs, as Anthony delivered slow-motion punches and as Jacky corrected his technique, I saw their two auras do something I had rarely, if ever, seen.