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And was followed by a stampede of lumps—and their umbrellas—following him to the dining room and all but knocking me down. I was starting to get déjà vu. They slammed the door in my face, and then screamed at me when I opened it to slip inside.
“All right, anybody on fire?” Ray’s voice rose above the din, while I fumbled around for the light switch. Because the dining room had been built before people worried about things like natural light.
The overhead fixture flickered on to show me a bunch of guys huddled in a corner, one sprawled under the table, sobbing pitifully, and a couple more on their knees, trying to stuff some sweaters under the door. I guess to cut off the weak haze of light filtering through the cracks. And then collapsing back a second later, panting for breath they didn’t need, while Ray divested himself of several tons of outerwear.
“How’s the neighborhood?” a pissy voice demanded, from inside the cloth mountain. “I got a bunch of stuff in the car—”
“Ray—”
“—I think I locked it, but I was in a hurry, and you know this city; can’t trust nobody no more—”
“Ray!”
“—and if somebody rips me off, I swear to God—”
“Ray!”
He peered at me out of the neckhole of a sweater. “What?”
“What are you doing here?”
Pale blue eyes narrowed. “Well, you’d know if you kept your damned phone on. I only left, like, a hundred messages. I been trying to reach you all day! But you never take a call, and Claire’s weird about me, you know?”
“She’s weird about all vamps.”
“Don’t lie. It’s the head, isn’t it?”
“It’s not the head.”
“Don’t give me that. She keeps doing that thing—”
“What thing?”
“That tilt-to-the-side thing, like she’s trying to see where they sewed it back on.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“Check it out sometime. I ain’t imagining shit. She’s giving me cancer.”
“Do you have a point?”
“Just that you oughta keep your phone turned on, ’cause trying to get any info out of your roommate is a pain in my ass. And could be one in yours if you miss out on a great deal ’cause I can’t find you.”
I felt my eyes narrow. Raymond’s idea of a great deal and mine differed slightly. “What kind of deal?”
“The best kind. The we’re-rolling-in-dough kind.”
“Uh-huh. Which would be why you’re here with a carful of your stuff, along with . . . your family?” That last was a guess, but the lumps were vamps under the camouflage, and pretty low-level, or they wouldn’t be snoring. Most of them were already out like a light.
And smoking slightly despite the cover-up.
“Shit,” Ray said, also smelling barbecue. “Help me out. Gotta figure out which one’s burning before he sets the whole group on fire.”
I sighed but went to help sort through the pile of what, yes, turned out to be Ray’s family. Like their master, they were not particularly prepossessing. Also like their master, they were wearing a lot of clothes, even things like eight or nine pairs of underwear and triple pairs of socks, although that wouldn’t help much with the sun.
“The damned hotel,” Ray said, when I commented. “They see you take out your luggage, and they wanna get paid—”
“So why didn’t you just pay them?”
