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“I won’t tell you anything if you’ll just stop talking.” I spun him around, bent him over and dumped half a gallon of water onto his smoking ass.
Which just made it smoke more, and start to sizzle. “Ow! Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! What the hell are you doing?”
“Trying to put the fire out,” I said, starting to get worried, because that should have worked. But then, what did I know? I’d set plenty of vamps ablaze through the years, but this was the first time I’d tried to extinguish one. And it didn’t appear to be going well.
“A little help here,” I said, sticking my head back into the kitchen.
“Try this,” Claire said, grabbing something out of a cabinet. “I keep it around for kitchen burns and it’s usually really—”
She stopped because she’d gotten close enough to catch sight of Ray, on the floor with his butt in the air, like the world’s worst stripper. The khakis were still in place, thank God, but the seat had burnt out in two little moons, like assless chaps. The image was heightened by the fact that he was grinding and humping and wiggling in a way that would have gotten him a g-string full of exactly nothing because nobody was going to pay to see that.
“I told you to cut it out,” I said, jerking him up.
“And I told you to do something, and I ain’t seen—” He paused when I shoved the small jar of ointment into his hand. “What’s this?”
“The cure for what ails you.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Spread it on.” And he turned his back and bent over again.
I looked hopefully at Claire, who had trained as a nurse. But it looked like the Florence Nightingale gene stopped just short, because she was in full-on retreat. Great.
I regarded the gyrating moons, which were currently as smooth as a baby’s bottom since most of the hair had singed off. Just when you think the day can’t get any worse, I thought grimly. And then I slapped on a palm-ful of pale green goo.
“OW! What the hell?”
“Hold still,” I told him, smacking on another blob. The stuff was slippery and it kept oozing off the burnt part.
“How can I hold still when you’re beating on me? Hey, hey, somebody, she’s beating me!”
“Any moment now,” I grumbled, and grabbed him when he tried to run.
But he was smoking and panicked and now also slippery, and it was like trying to catch a greased pig. “Let me go, you crazy bitch!”
“I’m trying to help you, you stupid— Oof!” I took a heel in the stomach and an elbow to the chin before I managed to wrestle him to the floor and sit on his legs. Which gave me a chance to finish gooping him up while he yelled and cursed and bucked like a rodeo bull.
And then suddenly stopped, and craned his head over his shoulder to look at the damaged area. It was shiny and pink and pimply, the parts that weren’t faintly green. But at least it was no longer smoking. “Hey. Hey, that feels pretty good.”
“So glad you approve.”
“Yeah, it’s okay.” He thought about it for a moment. “But I think I still feel a little bit of a burn. Ma
ybe you ought to massage it in some more. You know, really get in there and—” He cut off, noticing the bare feet that had stopped in front of him. The ones attached to the strong calves and muscular thighs and terry-clothed torso of the guy glaring down at him. “Or, you know. Not.”
I slapped the last of the salve on, just to hear him squeal, and then climbed off. “Your things are where you left them,” I told Louis-Cesare, who nodded and edged past, giving me a hell of a view as he made his way up the stairs.
“No way he really looks like that,” Ray said enviously. “It’s probably just a glamourie. I bet he’s really got zits and a potbelly and saggy buns.”
I bit my lip. I could personally guarantee that absolutely no part of Louis-Cesare sagged. “You know he can hear you, right?”
“Like I care. I mean, what’s he gonna do to me? What’s anybody gonna do? I’m already a dead man.”
“Yeah. You’re a vampire.”
“Not that kind of dead. Not the good kind—”
“There’s a good kind?”
“Not lately. My life is hell,” he said melodramatically. And then he paused, obviously waiting for me to ask why.
