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Vampires are notoriously difficult to move once they are at rest for the day. So do not try to move them. Not even a little bit.
—The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires
It took me an hour, a slightly sprained shoulder, and the defiance of several laws of physics, but I finally unwedged myself from under my undead guest.
I stumbled to my feet, sprawling across the floor as the blood flowed back into my tingling arms and legs. During my time on the floor, I learned a few things about Cal. One, he was as heavy as a sack of wet concrete. Two, even when he was all disheveled, he still smelled pretty good. Third, his hands had a bad habit of resting on the nearest breast, even when he was unconscious.
Dead or undead, men were all pretty much the same.
Finally free of my undead burden, I took greedy, gulping breaths. A dull ache in my side had me wincing with every movement. I wondered if he’d given my ribs compression fractures. I slowly sat up, propping myself by the sink so I could get a much-needed drink of water. I wiped the sweat from my face with a wet washcloth and carefully removed the fouled, sticky-stiff T-shirt. Fortunately, it was Gigi’s T-shirt, a rather obnoxious “Coed Naked Volleyball” specimen that had nearly gotten Gigi suspended from school. Straight into the trash it went.
After calling Gigi’s cell phone to make sure she got to Sammi Jo’s house safely, I got a fresh shirt from the laundry room.
On my way back to my unconscious client, I passed my parents’ ground-floor master bedroom. When we’d moved into the house, neither one of us could bear to open the door and face the room where my parents had slept. We couldn’t face Mom’s slouchy weekend gardening clothes or Dad’s perennial bottle of Aqua Velva.
But a few months before, I’d managed to channel some “Paul trauma” energy into some postmidnight-insomnia cleaning. I’d tossed everything except photos and jewelry into boxes and sent them to the basement or to Goodwill. The room stood empty, except for the stripped bed and a nightstand. I stepped inside, blinking against the dust motes swirling on the currents of sunshine. The air was a bit stale and musty, but it would do until I could get Cal downstairs safely. I foiled the windows and made up the bed with fresh sheets. I somehow managed to get Cal rolled onto an old twin sheet from my childhood, and I dragged him down the hallway.
“Where’s Mr. Wolfe when you need him?” I muttered, lifting him carefully onto the bed. “He hauled the bodies, cleaned up the mess, orchestrated embarrassing backyard prison shower scenarios … and I’m talking to myself … about Pulp Fiction, which is not a good sign.”
I barely managed to haul Cal onto the bed, but he settled back down and was sleeping fitfully. I filled a bowl with warm water and snagged an old washcloth on my way back to my parents’ room. In repose on the old bed, the sheet thrown haphazardly across his waist, Cal reminded me of some tragic marble statue, pale and frozen and oddly beautiful. I placed the bowl near his head and wondered what the rules were for sponge-bathing the undead.
I juggled the cloth between my hands nervously, unsure of where to apply it first. Although I’d known him for a short—though eventful—period of time, I definitely liked Cal better in this inanimate, unsnarky state. The man was just unsettling; there was no other way to put it. I couldn’t seem to get my conversational bearings around him. And clearly, he had a negative impact on my decision-making skills, because I’d agreed to cohabitate with someone who was cranky, condescending, and prone to bouts of staggering insensitivity. If I’d wanted that, I’d get a cat.
Shuddering at the very thought, I bathed Cal’s face, carefully wiping the skin around his mouth, the little divot between his lip and his nose. The bloody mess had trickled down his neck and his chest clear to his waistline, so I moved the cloth down his body in smooth, sure strokes. My fingertips tingled slightly from the friction of the warm, wet cloth over cold, hard muscle. The sensation spread up my arm, through my chest, and low and hot into my belly. Biting my lip, I adjusted my hand to put the cloth between my skin and his.
“Hold it together, woman,” I muttered. “Or you’re going to have to register on a special-offender list.”>“Do you feel strong enough to take a shower?” I asked. “There are still some, uh, red spots on your face. And your back. Plus, you kind of have a bedraggled-zombie thing going.”
Cal frowned, surveying his wrinkled clothes and rubbing a hand over his equally furrowed face.
“If you think you’ll have trouble standing that long, we could get you one of those shower chairs,” I offered.
“You mean the kind that senior citizens fall off of, never to get back up?”
“Um, yes.”
“I’m willing to risk standing,” he said blandly.
We had a full bath on the ground floor, which was good, because despite the bottled blood, Cal seemed too pale and shaky to take another flight of stairs. After covering the windows with foil, I made sure he had fresh towels and waited outside the bathroom door while the water warmed up. I heard the shower curtain sling across the rod.
A few moments passed, and I heard him call, “I don’t suppose you have soap that doesn’t smell like fruit or flowers or some combination thereof?”
“Sorry, this is a girlie household. You’re lucky there’s not a Disney princess on the label,” I said, glad that there was a door between us to keep him from seeing my snickering. There was a faint grumbling noise while the shower started up.
Gigi appeared at the end of the hall, her team bag slung over her shoulder. She was chewing her lip, eyeing the bathroom door like there was an army of evil winged monkeys ready to burst through it.
Gigi had Wizard of Oz issues.
“All packed?” I asked.
“Yeah. Sammi Jo said I could stay at her place for a few days. But I’m not sure about this, Iris. I mean, as cute as he is—in a haggard Lord of the Rings sort of way—you barely know this guy.”
“Do you mean Gollum or Éomer?” I asked. “Because that’s a pretty wide spectrum of haggard.”
“Don’t try to distract me,” she accused, pointing her finger at me. “And he defies all hot Tolkien stereotypes. He’s all rough-hewn intensity with a pretty mouth—”
“You came up with that description awfully quick,” I noted. “And what sort of teenager says ‘rough-hewn’?”
