The Nebulizer Potion and the Electric Compass (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 3)

  The Nebulizer Potion

  and the

  Electric Compass

  written by

  Kara Skye Smith

  Published September 18, 2014

  ©Kara Skye Smith

  Fae-tality Publishing

  Fae-tality.blogspot.com

  9930 N. Oregonian Avenue, Portland, OR, 97203

  This is Book iii in the series:

  The Vampire DeAngeliuson

  The Quill Pen Killer, Book i

  The Legend of Stygian Downs, Book ii

  Find links to all books in the series at:

  KaraSkyeSmith.blogspot.com and at

  Fae-tality.blogspot.com

  Dead-icated to Alice P Mouser.

  All my love.

  Prologue

  This, my dearest readers, where upon you have arrived, is the third - and final - book in the trilogy: The Vampire DeAngeliuson. In this book, immortal vampire Jessica is 'managing' life married to her very mortal partner, Drew, whom she met in the last book - if you've read it, and if you haven't I'm trying, here, to catch you up - at her collegiate alma mater Thaddeus Preference's Alternative School of Superior Inferiorism. The prestigious alma mater is known for an ancient, vampire legend rumored to involve a bridge near the campus. Vampires know the old haunt as a dropping off point to the Underworld - a direct route to the Castle through the dusty In Between - from the very old and ominous Stygian Downs Bridge.

  In the book before this, Jessica had gone to the Underworld Castle, first to be adventurous, coming into her own as collegiates do; and second, to hunt down the 'perfect match' to the ring Drew had given her as an engagement (promise-to-be-married) ring. As this book begins, it is not yet known how mortal Drew acquired such a ring – a perfect match among the jewelry scores of the Underworld Castle's ancient vampire creed, since he's neither an Underworld being nor an immortal Above World traveler – and let us not also forget those lowly, yet charmed, lurkers who manage to get here, from beneath. He isn’t one of those, either.

  Familiar with Jessica, you'll know that as a child, she was intrigued with mystery novels and put the skills she'd once read about to good use solving an art caper and a family mystery. She uses the very same kinds of skills, in this book, as the drama she tries so arduously to leave behind (vampires, witches, lurkers, trolls, immortal social structure, and the Underworld) comes calling at her door in the form of a rather distasteful Underworlder named Crucious Port.

  It brings me more than one ancient tear to embark on this last book together. I hope I've bestowed upon you sufficient information of who, what, and why - not just know-how, and when.

  Blessed children, I bide the everlasting Jessica to you. May you always know a vampire when you see one in the night.

  Domina, the damsel in distress.

  Chapter One

  Squab and Squabble

  essica, now grown up, yet still the youngest Vampire DeAngeliuson, adjusts the apron she is wearing, retying it a little tighter in the back while her newly wedded (not to mention mortal) husband Drew sets three plates around the small table of their very first apartment together. She looks a bit more stressed than Jessica usually looks.

  “I hope I've bought enough to drink. And the vegetables- I'd better check them, so they won't get soggy.”

  “It’s so nice - your Father coming to dinner at our house! I'm sure whatever you have will be fine, dear.”

  “My Father can be so particular, you know? And we haven't seen him since the wedding,” Jessica worries.

  “It'll be fine,” Drew repeats.

  “I'm just nervous,” Jessica blurts out right as the doorbell rings, no time to explain, “There he is,” she says, and asks, “Do I look okay?”

  “Very gothic,” Drew says with a smile, “You go check the vegetables and set out the family goblets while I get the door, hmm?”

  Jessica smoothes her apron and then turns, “Right,” she says and goes into the kitchen. She opens a boiling pot.

  “O, gross! The vegetables are soggy and due at the morgue, just fit for Poe's dinner. And the squab?” Jessica checks the oven by turning on the light. She smears the condensation from the oven door with her oven-mitted hand.

  “I can't see... it's too foggy…“ She opens the oven door and smoke billows out into the apartment‘s small kitchen setting off the fire alarm above its open doorway.

  From the other room Drew yells, “Honey, you alright?”

  “It's ruined! Charred as Joan was!” Jessica yells back. Just one of the easily miscommunicated expressions in a mortal-to-immortal marriage, Drew yells, “What did you say?!” then bursts through the kitchen door exclaiming, “I smell fire!”

  “It's out,” Jessica informs him with the vegetable sprayer in one hand, oven mitt on the other, “Just look, though, my dinner is ruined!” Smoke rolls off the dish of tiny bird shaped carcasses and the vegetables on the plate look like stewed prunes.

  “I'm sure it will be fine!” Drew exclaims in a mustered up, chipper tone of voice.

  Jessica almost loses her temper, “Will you please stop saying that?! Everything isn’t fine.” Jessica’s Father, who hasn’t even been greeted yet, looks over the arranged tray of destroyed and murdered birds, “We’ll order in,” he says.

  “O, sweet cinders, hello Father,” Jessica sort-of smiles.

  “Hello,” he says taking his cell phone out of his jacket pocket.

  “Foo and Young’s?” Jessica names her fave and nearest take-out restaurant while - almost in tears - she looks down at the blackened lumps she‘s made for dinner.

  “Foo and Young’s,” her Father says, dialing.

  That night, sitting up in bed, Jessica releases several loud sighs.

  “I think your Father had a good time, Jess,” Drew consoles her.

  Jessica gives him an annoyed look and sighs again, drawing a nail buffer across her sharp nails.

  Drew asks her, “What, did I say something wrong?”

  “Didn't you see his face? Didn't you notice how many times he checked his watch? He did not have a good time. It was a complete disaster.”

  “Well, he shouldn't have that attitude,” Drew says, “I mean, you did your best.”

  Jessica slaps her hands down into the bed sheets, rapidly snapping her buffer, “That wasn't my best; that was my worst!! Don't you even know the difference? Ah!“ She rolls her eyes, so annoyed that her entire head moves around.

  “Judas, Jess,” Drew exclaims, “I didn't mean anything by it. I’m just trying-”

  “Well, don't try,” Jessica interrupts, “Maybe you're trying too hard. Can't things just be the way they are? No trying?”

  Drew, who is now starting to get annoyed, too, at her insistence in squabbling over what seems like nothing replies, flatly, “Fine. Whatever.”

  “I'm going out for a walk,” Jessica decides and announces all at the same time.

  “You're not,” Drew protests, “it’s late.”

  “No,” Jessica says, “I am.”

  Drew puts up a firmer resistance, since it is late and he does worry about her, “You're not going out alone this late at night,” he says, “I'll go with you.”

  “O, bats, Drew! Is it because I'm a vampire? You think I‘m just going to carouse my own city block? I can't even go out for a walk alone, or I might hunt the neighboring babysitter on her way home? Is that what you think of me? Worrywarts and frog bumps, I may as well stay here, if you're going with me,” she complains.

  “That was a low blow,” Drew defends, “if that's how
you feel, fine!”

  Jessica says ‘Fine!’ at the same time in a similar tone of voice.

  Drew glares at her, “Go then!“ he says and waves his arms at her, “just go!”

  Jessica puts on her shoes, slipping her feet in rather than untying the laces, then stamps her feet in as far as they‘ll go.

  “You think everything is fine. I'll be back later,” she says.

  “I won't wait up. No, this late, who knows who's out there, right? Not you? No, maybe it is I who should call the around the neighborhood to let people know a vampire - my wife - is going out. Pardon me for being worried that it might be too late for you to go out alone; and, thank you for reminding me that you are that creepy thing in the night! I guess fine was a complete exaggeration, now wasn't it? I married the thing that goes bump in the night.”

  “Uh-uh-AAh! Are you insinuating I'm some back alley low life? A proletarian hob-goblin? Some uncouth and uncultured nixie?” Jessica asks, her voice rapid with an accusatory tone. Drew begins to get animated as a full snit and first, real squabble erupts between the two.

  “Oh no! You're no bargain-basement dark force, you're a prestigious underworld icon. Isn't that what this is really about? This doesn't have anything to do with your dark arts, but rather your frustration tonight is about whether we had enough to show your Father and if what we have is good enough. Now you're headed out in bat wings when I couldn't even afford to take you to dinner - isn't that the truth? So what kind of life do you think that buys us? It doesn't, buy much and I‘m new in my job. Good, vampire style does not pay when we have to live on a dime. But, you'll go out there gracing the night because your type is better than they expected down at the boogeyman ball and I'm just a humble human. Maybe you don't like what I have to give you unless it's expensive enough to impress your Father! And when I've earned all this... where will you be? Above me somewhere scouring planet orb for daft and departing souls to be hunted? Secretly working up a phlebotomist for a 'hit on the side'? So, you are a sophisticated night form, and I can keep my library job, I suppose?!”

  Jessica stands still, mid shoe adjustment, with her jaw agape, mid-hang. The look on her face is, well, stunned. And hurt.

  Drew stares at her - one, long, silent moment - and then he asks, “Well, aren't you going to say anything?”

  “What can I say?” Jessica answers quietly, “I'll be outside, gracing the night with my djinn, or whatever it is you said.” She hobbles out the door, one shoe being drug along by her foot until she is outside and the door is shut behind her. She sits down on the cement steps of the building to put on her shoe, correctly.

  She hears the newspaper hit the back of their front door as Drew's faint yell emanates out into the night air, “Succubus!!”

  Jessica yells back, “Puck!” She stands up and leaves quickly, stomping her foot into her shoe, stepping onto the dimly lit, familiar street of her own brownstone‘s block.

  She mutters to herself, “I've almost never even turned to bat - shows how much he knows,“ referring to Drew, although she walks alone. Just then, a shadowy figure in a black cape appears to turn the corner. The dark cape billows on a gentle wind just one block up ahead of Jessica, causing her to startle for a moment. She sucks in a deep breath and keeps walking, determined not to show fear. The figure gets closer. It is her sweet neighbor, Mrs. Rita.

  “Hello, darling,” Mrs. Rita says, the sound of her voice calms Jessica instantly.

  “Of course, it's only you; hello Mrs. Rita. A little late for you to be out walking, isn't it?” she asks her neighbor.

  Mrs. Rita smiles, “I've got secrets too, ya know,” she says.

  “Well, Mrs. Rita! I feel braver already.” Jessica almost giggles that her ‘fear’ was brought on by the appearance of this sweet lady – and the knowledge of her own being’s kind.

  “Not too brave, now,” She warns Jessica as she ascends the staircase to the building.

  “Good night darling,” the caped form says. Jessica walks jauntily, now unafraid, thinking about Drew’s comments.

  “He's right, I probably am the most chilling life force of the block. I forget that sometimes,” she thinks, “because I’m not, I’m different than my kind,” and then she thinks about Drew and how sad she is that they have had their first, real argument about the differences they cannot change within themselves.

  Chapter Two

  The Midnight People and

  Curmudgeon Cafe

  Jessica walks beneath a street lamp and looks at her shoes to avoid stepping in a big puddle.

  A cat runs out from the nearby dumpster causing her another jolt of fear, “Huh! You scared me, kitty!“ She looks toward the light of a nearby lounge, its neon sign reflects watery lettering upon the surface of the puddle: Curmudgeon Cafe. Open Late.

  Three Curmudgeon patrons spill out of the nearby doorway, almost in a tackle of each other, jeering slurs and unenlightened remarks as they go.

  “I outta bounce a nickel off your head for that thought to tell the barista you owe him one!” a burly one says to a tall, spindly, dirt lurker type.

  “A taste of that nickel of yours and out the back door with you, mister!” he sputters intelligibly - but just barely.

  The third grabs the back of both of their heads and says between clenched teeth, “I outta smash you both with that bottle you’re drinking from!!…” He nearly knocks Jessica clean over as she tries to side-step the unruly threesome.

  “Excuse me!” Jessica hisses - for her - attempting to sound as though she is no soul to try, here, on her block, in the doorway of the night café as she is face-to-face with the ruffians, so close to the door of refuge (the café), but she just comes out sounding overly polite.

  “Excuse your what?!” the toughest of the three gruids smarts back.

  The spindly one interrupts with an honest question, “You going in there?” Jessica doesn’t know what to say.

  She begins, “Well, I wasn't going to, at first-” She is interrupted by the mannerless trog who steps back and opens the door for her, in jest of her polite nature.

  “O, please do!“ He sneers at her and laughs, “it’s just your kind of place, missy.”

  “Yeah, go in! Have a ball,” another adds, tipping an imaginary hat to her.

  “Well, I guess, um, good night, then,” Jessica says and steps inside the doorway of the warm, dimly lit cafe. It's like a scene out of the Underworld’s In Between with the undeads, night nixies, and lurkers and trolls, rather than the typical Above World’s café crowd.

  “He must've thought I didn't fit in, here,“ Jessica thinks remembering what Ickabod and her Father might say about the place - and the upper, social status of vampires to the rest of the Underworld’s dwellers of the upper world.

  She adds, “I don't actually, but I do, and I can hold my own in here,” although she instinctively pulls her coat a little closer to her chest.

  “I am a vampire, afterall,” she says accidentally out loud to boost her confidence and ease the anxiety she feels while looking around at some truly questionable, Underworld types.

  “You talkin' to me?” the Barista asks.

  “Not exactly,” Jessica answers. The barista lets out a little snort.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asks while squirting water into a glass from a little gun attached to a hose.

  “A table, maybe,” Jessica says looking back toward the shadowy corners where tables line the dimly lit, colorful walls.

  “Does it look like we've got tables in here, available?” he asks another question with a half snort, this time.

  “I guess not,” Jessica responds. The Barista pats an open space on the bar with an empty stool in front of it.

  “Sit right here,” he says, “what can I get 'ya?”

  “A menu, please,“ Jessica says and then corrects her presumption by asking, “You do serve food, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess. If you could call it that,” he replies.

  “O, and a hot cu
p of coffee,” Jessica adds decisively.

  The Barista pours and a faint wailing sound is heard. Jessica looks up, but only sees the back of the barista. He turns, with teeth gleaming, and sets the cup down in front of her.

  “There ya go!” he says triumphantly.

  A puff of smoke, like steam, but not exactly, poufs up from the cup, then twists around and slinks back down into the cup with a little whining sound, “Urrr…”

  “Poltergeist,” the Barista excuses, “Sorry. I suppose you want…”

  “I want a new cup, yes I do, thanks!” she snaps, “and don't try to pull that on me, again. I might look wet behind the ears, but I'm not.”

  “No?“ He asks as his long, reptile like tongue whips out and pulls his left ear a little forward for her to see, “I'm downright slimy back there.”

  Jessica laughs. “An underworld cafe, in my very own neighborhood?!” she exclaims.

  “Don't knock it,” the Barista tells her. “It'll keep your neighbors under wraps. Although, vampire? I'm guessing... that's every other bar ya go to, but it's good to know there’s at least one spot you can unbend, up here (referring to the world above the Underworld), loosen up, talk about it, you know?

  Jessica smiles without showing her ‘fangs’, “Do you have anything in a package?” she asks thinking more about her hunger, at this moment, than the little speech he’s just given her. He turns to look back at a vertical line of small bags clipped to the wall above the cash register. He pulls his tail in under his apron as he turns around.

  “Chips, cookies, a fruit roll-up... I think that one's ancient. Probably the first fruit roll-up ever made.”

  Jessica smirks, “I'll take the cookies, then.”