She had the air of someone who had ordered the drink a hundred times before, but Dante didn’t know if she was getting coffee, ice cream, or some kind of upside-down cake.
“It’s one of our specialties,” the waiter said.
Dante would like to believe the waiter was kidding, but he wasn’t. Then, the waiter shot Dante a smug look that said his choice of black coffee was tasteless, before walking away. Dante glanced at Cassidy, who was biting her bottom lip to keep from laughing.
“I don’t have much time,” Paris said as she turned back to them. “I’m meeting friends for a school project soon.”
“I won’t take up much of your time,” Dante assured her as he shoved aside a stake to remove his pad and pen from an inner pocket. “How long have you and Julie been friends?”
Paris fiddled with the earpiece of her glasses as she looked between him and Cassidy. He couldn’t tell if her bloodshot eyes were because she was hungover or if she’d been crying.
“Since kindergarten.” Paris looked over to where the barista was making her drink. “We met on the first day of school and just… clicked, you know?”
“I do,” Dante said, but he didn’t.
He’d had plenty of friends in his life; he was popular in high school and college, and well-liked on the police force. However, by the time he joined the academy, most of his close friends from high school had drifted away, and he lost touch with the ones he made in college. Most of them didn’t know what to say or how to react after Maya went missing.
He was extremely close with some of them, but he’d never had a friend he justclickedwith. His friendships were more of a, we all go to the same school, live in the same area, or play the same sports scenario.
However, he knew how to bullshit someone he was interviewing. “Friends like that are special and rare.”
Paris bowed her head, but not before he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. “She’s the only friend I’ve ever had like that.”
Cassidy had decided to stay out of the conversation; this was Dante’s terrain, and she was afraid of messing it up by saying something wrong. However, when the young girl sniffled, she couldn’t resist resting her hand on top of Paris’s.
When she lifted her head, she was in control of her emotions again. “Things changed after Julie’s dad died. It was like she didn’t care about anything anymore.”
“Sometimes, when someone loses a loved one, they don’t know how to handle their grief and push away their remaining loved ones. It’s not that they don’t still love those people, but they’re scared of losing them too,” Cassidy said.
“Yeah,” Paris muttered. “I get that, but I’m still mad at her for it. Then she started in with all the vampire crap.”
“Missy told me she got involved with people who believe vampires are real,” Dante said.
“Not only that,” Paris said as she leaned closer. “But some of them made themselveslooklike vampires. They wore red contacts, sharpened their teeth, dressed in black, and put on makeup to make themselves paler. Thankfully, Julie didn’t get that crazy with it, but those people are nuts. I mean, whoreallybelieves invampires?”
“It is a little crazy,” Cassidy agreed and somehow managed to keep a straight face. Why did people think vampires would walk around looking like Dracula? If that were the case, they wouldn’t exactly be incognito, and people would have known about their existence thousands of years ago.
“Right? But when I tried to tell Julie that she got pissed at me. She was convinced they were real, and I was an idiot for not believing in them.”
“Julie was hanging out at bars with these people?” Dante asked.
Paris started to speak again but stopped when the waiter returned with her coffee. Dante was amazed to discover it was a drink.
“Thank you,” Paris said as she took a sip. She waited for the waiter to leave before speaking again. “Yeah. She got a fake ID and thought it was the greatest thing ever that she could get into those weird clubs. She also went to a lot of house parties.
“All I pictured was a crack house every time she talked about them, but she said they were nice. After a while, I started to get the impression these “houses”—” she held up her fingers to make air quotes around the word houses— “were people’s homes and not some abandoned building. And then I started to realize that while their mommy and daddy were out, these big bad vamp wannabes were throwing parties on their parents’ dime.”
Paris’s tone dripped venom with each of her words. “Does that sound like what a bunch of bloodthirsty vamps do with their weekends? No, it does not.”
Cassidy studied the girl with a raised eyebrow. She’d gone from crying over her friend to being so mad her eyes glittered with fury.
“Of course, I couldn’t tell Julie that either; it made me an idiot. I mean, I understand she lost her dad, and she’s looking for something permanent to grab onto, and these freaks gave it to her, but we were friends for eleven years, and not just friends; she was mybestfriend. She knew everything about me, and I knew everything about her. And then she tossed me aside for those lunatics.”
Tears glistened in Paris’s eyes again as she focused on her cup and sniffled. Dante was beginning to understand her reluctance to talk to him; someone she loved had tossed her aside, and this conversation was picking at her scab.
“Did you ever go to any of these parties with her?” Dante asked.
“One,” Paris muttered. “She got mad at me because I made fun of everyone there. At the time, I thought it was still a joke, even to her, but that night I realized she was buying into it. I was a little afraid of her afterward. I mean, it’s kind of impossible not to be afraid of someone who’s living in fantasy land, am I right?”
