I took a step forward, and he took a step back. “Let it be,” he said. “You got over it; I will too.”
I wasn’t sure I’d gotten over it. But I’d gotten past it. I understood that when he’d done those things, Jimmy hadn’t been Jimmy. Unfortunately, when I’d seduced him I’d been more me than I was now.
We washed up as best we could with the water and the towels. Basically cleaning our faces, necks, hands and arms, leaving the rest for later.
Jimmy tossed me some clothes. I put them on without looking at them, but Jimmy’s made me smile. He wore one of his T-shirts.
Jimmy’s “cover” for his globe-trotting demon killing was portrait photographer to the stars. Someday—if we weren’t all dead—he’d be able to collect his greatest hits into a few coffee-table books. He was a genius with a camera. Almost as good as he was with a silver knife.
His pictures had graced magazine covers, book covers, posters, CD cases, once even Times Square. Up-and-coming rock bands, country western wannabes, fresh-faced tween queens and steroid-puffed future action stars knew that if Sanducci took their photograph, they had arrived.
Jimmy liked T-shirts. He wore them with jeans, dress pants, sports coats, tuxedos and sometimes nothing at all. The true sign of becoming the “it” guy or girl or the band of the century was when Sanducci was photographed in your shirt.
Dozens arrived at his postbox every month. He donated them all to charity. He only wore the shirts of those he’d actually photographed. But that never stopped anyone from sending the garments.
Tonight his shirt read: NY Yankees. I hated the Yankees. The reason I smiled? Jimmy knew it. Needling me about the Yankees was another of Jimmy’s favorite things.
I was a Brewers fan. Milwaukee was my hometown. Had been since Ruthie brought me there at twelve. It was the only place I’d ever been happy, and right now I missed home like a piece of my heart.
“When did you do a shoot with the Yankees?” I asked.
Jimmy cast me a surprised glance, then glanced down with a puzzled frown. The expression made my heart hurt worse. He hadn’t known what shirt he’d put on. He hadn’t been needling me at all.
“When they won the division.” Jimmy shrugged. “Last year?”
“Or the year before or two before that. It ain’t hard to win if you buy every damn prospect.”
“I’m not gonna argue baseball with you tonight.” He sounded so tired.
I turned away, watched the remaining mounds of varcolac ash shiver and shift, then drift off into the night. “I shouldn’t have killed them all. I should have kept one alive to question about the key.”
“You think you’ve got any restraint when you’re like that?”
I didn’t, no, but—
“Some do.” I turned back. “Your . . . father for instance.”
Jimmy’s mouth thinned. He was understandably touchy on the subject of dear old dad—a strega (definition: medieval vampire witch). He’d done things to Jimmy that rivaled what had been done to him on the streets, and that was saying quite a bit.
I was so glad I’d put a stake through the miserable bastard’s black heart.
“The strega had centuries to work on his control,” Jimmy said. “And he never confined his nature like we have. When you do that and then you let it out, bad things happen.”
I returned to watching the varcolac ash swirl, the moon shimmering through each particle as if the heavens were spilling silver-tinged snow. Pretty if you didn’t know what those flakes had once been.
“Or good,” I said. “Depending on your point of view.”
Jimmy remained silent. I knew his point of view. Going vamp was never good. On the one hand, I agreed. On the other, fighting extreme evil called for extreme measures. I’d pledged myself to saving the world. I wasn’t going to go about it half-assed.
“By restricting our vampire nature, we only make it stronger, more volatile, if possible more violent,” he continued. “The monster can’t wait to get out and kill.”
I wanted to disagree, except I knew he was right. Sometimes when I was sleeping and I awoke into that twilight time between states, I heard my demon screaming. A few times when I was alone and wide awake, I heard a murmur in my head enticing me to do terrible things. When the collar came off, I did them.
“We need to find a way to release your demon more than once a month,” I said.
“Not.” He slammed the trunk and headed for the driver’s seat.
I stood there for a few seconds, then scrambled around to my side and jumped in just as he hit the gas.
“You know that we do.” Jimmy didn’t answer. “Ruthie said.”
“ ‘Ruthie said,’ ” he mocked. “I don’t give a flying fuck.”
“Don’t let her hear you say that.”