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I started to say something, but the horror turned to a glare so bright, I swear I could see little flames in her pupils. “If you say you’re fine,” she told me tremulously, “I’ll kill you!”
My mouth closed abruptly, and I meekly let her lead me off to the porch.
Ray, for some reason, had gone all out. The little table we used for snacks now had a bright white drape that someone had doubled over to hide Stinky’s latest artwork. In the middle was a vase with a bunch of the neighbor’s purple hydrangeas stuffed in the top. A chair had been pulled up along one side, near the ratty old swing. It was even rattier old wicker, but a pillow had been stuffed into the seat and a chenille throw had been folded over the top.
It was surprisingly comfy, but I wouldn’t have cared if I’d been sitting on the floor, not with the things Ray was piling on the table and on the broad porch railing when he ran out of room. “I can’t eat all this,” I said, unsure that I could eat at all.
“You haven’t tried,” he pointed out. “Besides, I picked soft stuff.”
And he had. The night’s extravagance included leftover chicken and rice, mushy peas, squashy white dinner rolls, beer and some kind of mixed-berry pie. I stared at it in a kind of wonder.
“We’ll call your father,” Claire told me, as I started slathering butter on a roll. “We’ll see what he has to say about—”
“Claire. There’s nothing to prosecute for, okay?” I said, with difficulty.
“Nothing—look at you!”
I glanced helplessly at Ray, because I wasn’t up to explaining the intricacies of vampire life right at the moment. He sighed. “It’s like this,” he told her. “Zheng-zi, well, he kind of paid Dory a compliment tonight.”
“What?”
“Look. He had his guys with him. He coulda turned ’em loose on us, and it woulda been over. Dory’s good and I’m…well, Dory’s good, but no way was she taking on that many senior masters with a couple little guns and no food. It wasn’t happening, okay?”
“Well, obviously it did happen. She’s alive!”
“She’s alive because he told ’em not to interfere. She’s alive because he showed her the respect of dueling her like he would have another master, with rules and shit.”
“He still tried to kill her!”
“Masters try to kill each other all the time,” Ray pointed out. “They’re dueling each other every night up at the consul’s place. It’s one of the big bummers about being locked away; I haven’t gotten to see any of the matches.”
“Could you even get tickets?” I asked, my mouth full of buttery goodness.
“Hey, I know people,” Ray said.
“Like who?”
“Like sharks who want an arm and a leg,” he admitted. “I was gonna ask you if your father’s box had any extra seats.”
I shook my head. “Full up.”
“Damn. I mean, I’d buy ’em and all—”
“Can we talk about the fact that Dory almost died?” Claire asked, livid.
“But she didn’t, did she?” Ray pointed out. “She won. And Zheng probably wouldn’t have killed her anyway. He said—”
“Probably?” Claire’s green eyes flashed.
I thought Ray should be careful. Claire was kind of looking like she wanted an excuse. But he just cocked his head sideways. “Hey, is that the baby crying?”
“No!” she told him. Right before a distinct wail was heard echoing through the night. “Damn it!” she said. And then she bit her lip. And then she bustled off.
“You have the devil’s own luck,” I told him.
“You may as well not bother,” he told me back. “Nobody can understand you, and your tongue keeps flopping out and it’s kind of off-putting.”
I responded with a gesture, because my tongue was busy with chicken at the moment. I found that if I chewed, very carefully, on the opposite side of my mouth, it was only painful instead of excruciating. Although it would have been totally worth it, anyway. If there was a heaven, it was made of this stuff.
