The Quill Pen Killer (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 1) Read online

  "Tomorrow," Jessica's father tells her. From the bench, Jessica lets out a squeakish sound, and then starts coughing.

  The artist girl tells him in more of a question than a threat, "Better hurry?" But Jessica's father knows what she means, and can see that this ghost is practiced in the art of witchly hexing.

  In his vampire voice that arises from his anger and the hearing his daughter threatened, he cries, "Keep off her!" and the command swirls around the gazebo bouncing off the statue, and right through the ghost, like sonar.

  "Sorry," is all the artist's ghost can say and Jessica, from the bench, is heard letting out a sigh of relief.

  "We'll be going when we go," Jessica's father tells her. She scowls again; and Jessica squeaks, sucking short breaths in. She clutches her chest.

  "I said off!" again the words come out with a frightening sound sent out as though through a force field. The artist's ghost, clearly now a demented girl, after a saintly life, her wickedness knowing no stopping points makes an innocent gesture with her face while Jessica coughs and then sighs of relief, nearly each time Jessica's father moves his piercing gaze from the naughty ghost girl who is too old to act up this way.

  Jessica's father stomps out of the gazebo, telling it, loudly, "We're going!" and when he has had, he's had it.

  He lets fly his manner of enchantment and says, "I can see why he bit you now. All these years spent on your side, thinking wow, low blow, just to learn I'd have bitten you too!"

  The girl ghost, looking full girl in an old-fashioned dress now, save for the strange way she swirls about the gazebo's open doorway, asks, "Who?!" With a definite tone to her voice of 'I know who', but I just want to hear if you know who, too.

  Jessica's father taunts her, "You know."

  "Who told you?" the artist's ghost girl demands.

  "I did," comes a voice from behind her. She swirls about, a strange turn on her heels, to see Old

  Nostramadeus standing there, in the same corner of the gazebo in which she had previously pouted.

  "Ahh!" the girl cries and she suddenly grows very transparent. She flies left to right, as if in a frenzy.

  "I... I didn't expect you...." she says, her voice wavering.

  She disappears. She reappears in the attic and begins to cry, loudly. She stops right down in the middle of the attic floor and cries. Downstairs, Mansta's wife, her face patched up with cold wash clothes tied and bandaged around her head, also begins to cry.

  At first just a trickle, and then a sniffle she says, "Well, my goodness," as more and more tears begin to fall.

  "Well," she cries and, "Ooh!" then she stops ironing, holds her pitiful head, both hands against the terry cloth and sobs.

  Out in the garden Old Nostramadeus redeems his reputation by explaining to Jessica's father, "That's not the adulation I'm accustomed to, from her, you know. Much more affection for me in the old days. You know, practically threw herself at me back then. Such a fondness and devotion - practically an embarrassment..."

  He smoothes his hair with his hand. "How do I look?" he asks.

  Jessica's father laughs, "For that one? Who cares? The question is, how long is she going to keep this up? Terriffied at the sight of Jessica. Practically choking her she was.

  We'd like to stay but I don't know..."

  Old Nostramadeus wonders aloud, "And why would you? What is it you like about this place anyway? Just dying to sink your fangs into that wife, aren't you?"

  "Me?!" Jessica's father is the one who gasps now, "No! Sweet Darkness! Am I that..."

  "Transparent?" Old Nostramadeus %nishes his words for him.

  "No! - Vulturous!" Jessica's father corrects him,

  "Nothing left on that one but the bones!"

  Jessica's voice interrupts their cantankerous conversation, "I'm feeling better now. I'm okay."

  Jessica's father turns around and sees her, "Jessica, yes. Good to hear. Let's get you a glass of water and a nap, then, huh?"

  "A glass of water would be nice," she says. They walk toward the house. Jessica's father looks back and sees Old Nostramadeus waging a long, bony, pale finger at him. Jessica's father waves him back ward and continues walking with his daughter, offering her as much help as he can.

  As the two enter the house, kind of uninvited, the wailing of Mansta's wife and the artist girl's ghost can be heard.

  Mansta approaches the pair, "Can I take your coats?" he offers, nervously, above the wailing, "and how about some lunch?"

  Jessica tries to peer up the staircase to see where the devil the awful noise is coming from, "Everything all right?" she asks, unassuming.

  Mansta shrugs his shoulders, "Not exactly."

  "Anything we can do to help?" Jessica's father says when there is a loud thump from the attic.

  "No," Mansta tells him, "have a seat in the dining room. Maydee-Dee can serve you your meal. He hurries out of the foyer.

  The Quill Pen Killer

  Chapter Eleven: Closure

  As lunch begins, and in Spain it is customary to eat lunch at 5 or 6 pm, because dinner will not be served until about 11 o'clock, nearly midnight, where often a parent who goes out at night, does not get home until the wee hours of the morning. So if you ever have need to complain, dear readers, about the late hours that your parents return home, or worse yet, the lateness of the hours that they feed you your dinner - just be glad that you don't live in Spain. Now where was I? O, yes, lunch! with Jessica, Jessica's Father, Mansta, Mansta's Wife - Fornadad, who is quiet but not crying, the server - Maydee-Dee - and the artist girl's ghost, causing little spills and inconveniences and more than just a slight paleness to come across Jessica's face by going for Jessica's throat each time she has in the slightest caught the attention of Mansta. And, each time the artist girl's ghost goes for Jessica's throat, Jessica's Father makes some sort of movement to stop it, looking as if Jessica's Father is very agitated and even disturbed during the meal.

  Mansta's Wife begins to perk up, feeling less burdened by her strange behavior, in light of his own strange behavior at the luncheon. She interrupts his animated gestures (part threat, part social faux pas depending on who it is interpreting the interruption) with comments like, "It's so nice to have you both here," and "Your stay, here, is so short, you must come again."...

  Ultimately, Mansta's interest and attention toward Jessica, (asking about her college plans) throws the artist girl's ghost into a fit of jealous rage. She lunges causing Jessica's father to look as though he might be circling planes by the time he gets the ghost off of Jessica. He does so, but not quite in time. Jessica is left feeling headachy, short of breath, and more than just a little pale. She complains to the group that she's not feeling well and asks if she can leave the table.

  Just after Mansta asks Jessica, "You'll be going to college soon, won't you? Perhaps you'd consider beginning, here, in Spain and stay with us?" Jessica's throat has been lunged at by somewhere between 'stay' and 'us'; so that, she begins to cough and wheeze while trying to move her head, a slow nod in agreement, to show she would like to consider that option. Jessica's father lunges too, sort of, with his hands, anyway, as if he would clearly be off his stool and 'dealing' with this apparition the way a vampire would, had he not been perched at a table full of mortals to whom he is a guest and are most likely not 'open' to learning the fact that he is a vampire. His intimidating behavior can only go so far at this point. The advantage being with the artist girl's ghost whose form cannot be yanked off and whose throat cannot be reached without reaching through it. Nonetheless, she finally lets go. Jessica coughs and holds a hand to her chest.

  "I'm terribly sorry. I'll have to excuse myself," Jessica rubs her hand against the back of her neck. "Do you mind if I lay down awhile. I think it was the trip."

  She clears her throat, again, "Just somehow taken the breath right out of me," she explains. Jessica's Father pours a glass of fresh water from a pitcher on the table.

  "Here, drink this," he says and motions her
to go.

  "Take it with you. Go ahead."

  "Ofcourse, dear," Mansta's Wife says, just loving the adorable awkwardness of 'these people', her face finally calming down to a mild series of red bumps and pale patches.

  "I'll show you to the guest bedroom." They begin walking down the hallway.

  "I completely understand. Haven't felt myself in ages, honestly... sometimes I wonder if it's the dampness of this old house." The artist girl's ghost creeps along the edges of the hallway behind the pair.

  "Here you go, the bedroom," she says sweetly.

  "O, this is lovely," Jessica remarks kindly. Fornadad smiles and looks at the room, appreciating its pale colors and stream of evening light.

  "O, I do like this room, myself," she says.

  "Just right for you, I think it is. Anything I can bring you?"

  "No, thanks," says Jessica, "I have my water."

  Fornadad tells her, "Alrighty then, hope you feel better." Jessica sets her water on the night stand as

  Mansta's wife leaves the room. She looks out of the window and can see the gazebo and a bit of the statue in the distance. Looking at it, and the sunset, as the light is cast upon the lawn, illuminating the gazebo, Jessica becomes quite mesmerized. She sees a girl, much like herself, but 10 years older and in the clothing of at least a century earlier, standing between her window and the gazebo she is looking at.

  "Humh. Where'd did she come from?" Jessica wonders when all at once the girl looks up, into Jessica's window. Jessica takes a sip of water and looks back out. The girl is gone. Jessica puts down her water, takes off her shoes, and rubs the back of her neck again. She lays down on top of the bed and closes her eyes.

  It is not long before Jessica falls asleep, and, just as any cat-napper knows, a napper often wakes having had a memorable dream. And Jessica does, just this. She has a dream she 'kind of' remembers as she wakes. In the dream, the girl in the old clothing is being lured by a vampire, somewhat like her father, into a 'drawing' room, with a red, velvet chaise lounge and luxurious furnishings from a time, or era, long past. The young woman, nearly a girl, keeps looking back over her shoulder, toward something... something not within her reach, but not far away. He is having a difficult time luring her from the pull of whatever it is she looks for, and she seems to have a deep love for.

  Just as she starts to smile, because of this thing she looks for and the attention of the man she is with, he leans down, (Jessica thinks to kiss her) but he bites her on the neck instead! She screams, a long, haunting, broken kind of scream. The sound of it seems to encircle Jessica herself, and Jessica begins to feel that she is falling. The scream continues - Jessica falls further down. Then, Jessica wakes. She sits up, quickly, in bed. Realizing it was just a dream, she rubs her eyes.

  Jessica fumbles for her cell phone.

  "What time is it?" she wonders. She straightens her clothing and puts on her shoes.

  "Father?..." she calls out. She stands up and then, almost reluctantly, goes to the window and looks out, to where she saw the girl. Nothing. Jessica sighs in relief and goes out looking for her father. Jessica nearly bumps into Mansta's wife in the garden. She is humming and cutting an armload of roses. Jessica approaches her.

  Jessica calls out to her, "Have you seen my Father?" Fornadad looks up. The same strange spell that caught the monk and Jessica seems to have now caught Mansta's wife, too.

  She shakes her from head side to side, meaning 'No,' without saying a word. She looks back down and continues cutting flowers, humming. The roses seem extra large and more blooming than Jessica noticed before.

  She comments, "Wow! This is a lovely rose garden. Didn't notice this before," she says. Mansta's wife nods her head, up and down, in agreement at the loveliness of the rose garden without looking up at Jessica.

  "Okay," Jessica says, "well," she looks up and sees the same girl in old-fashioned clothing standing at the corner of the house, behind Mansta's wife, looking straight at Jessica. Jessica is startled.

  She asks Fornadad, or kind of lets her know, "You have another visitor, here... then." Mansta's wife shakes her head 'no'. She stops cutting the flowers, in order to look up at Jessica as she seems to insist on diverting her attention.

  "Yes," Jessica tells her, "there!" She points to where the girl was at the corner of the building. "She was there, well, she's gone now. I've seen her twice. She looks rather... like in costume, almost. Have you seen her, at all, yet? She is here. Outside. All evening." Fornadad shakes her head 'no', from side to side. She looks back down at the flowers and begins humming again, a disturbing sort of song, one that Jessica only slightly remembers.

  "Well, she is here," Jessica says.

  "You'll have to find her." Then she adds, almost frustrated lifting her arms and waving them in the air as if trying to capture Fornadad's attention, "You don't even know you have a visitor. Someone is here. She's old, but she's young looking." Mansta's wife does not look up.

  "O, I don't feel well again," Jessica complains. Mansta's wife stand with two arms full of roses. She begins to walk alongside of Jessica, without saying much at all. Jessica looks at her. She looks up and down.

  "O, this reminds me of the chapel, like walking with the monk that day," Jessica stops. "Look, I've got to locate to my father," she says. She leaves Fornadad and walks around to the front of the house where Jessica sees her father waiting for her. He opens his mouth to say hello, but before he can, Jessica falls, weakly toward him, and he catches her in his arms before she falls. Jessica groans. Mansta's wife approaches and then continues on into the house with the roses.

  At dinner in the dining room, bowls of roses litter the table. A candelabra is lit in the center of it, and in Jessica's opinion, the dinner conversation is just awful. Her father talks as if he's about to ask Mansta's wife her blood type, right here, at the table, rather than focus on the pork roast in front of him. In nearly every sentence he expresses himself with a word or a quip about the letting of blood - leech, fawn, suck, 'that team drew first blood', 'blood is thicker than water', 'blood and guts'... 'can't give a stone to give blood', 'blood, sweat, and tears'... 'well, that's the blood of the kill for 'ya' (he actually pushes that into the conversation, somewhere where it doesn't fit.

  Jessica sneers, "What does that even mean?").... "It just makes blood boil, doesn't it?" is his reply. And, hate to say, it finally does.

  "Ahh!" she thinks and just wants to scream, what with having seen that statue all day, and heard the eery humming, too! Jessica grows weaker, paler, more deeply mesmerized... and suddenly, in an instant, call it rebellion or a complete lack of restraint, out of the blue, Jessica lunges at the nearest-to-her-dinner-plate neck of a mortal, fangs out, and fingernails flared, as Mansta's wife giggles through Jessica's father's near enchantment adding 'blood and glory' and fitting it in to something about the English queen. She'd have gotten her victim too, been a terrible embarrassment to her father, acting out completely against his rules of self-control; b-u-t, the artist's ghost who'd been holding back her haunting for the evening was also at the verge of breaking, and at the same exact moment she loses it and grabs onto Jessica's throat so quickly and with so much force that Jessica passes clear out.

  Old Nostramadeus appears out of nowhere, as if he'd been watching from the rafters, and whisks the ghost girl and her jealous vengeance away from Jessica. Away from the table of surprised onlookers, and away from Jessica's father who is, by the way, giving the impression that could blow up and lose his temper at that ghost girl, once and for all.

  Jessica is picked up by Mansta and her father while being fussed over, quite a bit, by Maydee-Dee who leads them all into the drawing room, tossing pillows on the chaise lounge, and providing cool rags to hold against dear Jessica's forehead. Fornadad, nearly under a spell of enchantment by the word play of Jessica's father (although, if anyone asked, he didn't mean to at all. 'Who knew she'd be so susceptible' - his planned excuse as he played, much like Ickabod out in the open, upon her r
eceptiveness, if anyone asked - but no one did) just sat at the table saying, "O my goodness," and looking around, caught somewhere between wondering where everyone went and knowing full well where they'd gone.

  The doctor is called. As Jessica sleeps, she dreams of the girl in old-fashioned clothing, an unknown to Jessica vampire nearby and the furnishings of the drawing room going in and out of focus. Jessica tosses and turns.

  She wakes, and with her vampire's voice, she asks, "Who is there?!" Quickly, seeing that Jessica may have fallen under the dark spell of the statue of the Saint of Nostramadeus, again, he orders a cab to the house and bundles Jessica up for the night air. Carrying her to the edge of the curb, so that she does not escape - he is in no hurry to end up with the problems they just 'got rid of' – he opens the door and demands that Jessica get in. He sends for her things to be brought down to the car. Inside the cab, the spell breaking already, Jessica begins to feel much more like herself. She asks her father if she can just see the statue one more time before she goes. She convinces him that she will let it go, that way, and will be less likely to think about 'any of this statue nonsense', as he calls it, later; so, although with trepidation, he allows her one last 'goodbye'.

  "Only five minutes," he says, "or I'll come looking," he warns.

  "Okay," she promises and leaves the cab. But when she arrives at the open doorway of the gazebo, where the statue in the moonlight stands, she sees, instead, a man – the vampire from her dream - taking in his hand the hand of the visitor in the old-fashioned clothes that she'd seen from her window and out in the garden. Jessica wishes she could ask who she is, talk with her, but the man who holds her hand (who has begun his whispers of enchantment, if truth be known, Old Nostramadeus, himself, that old dog!) is just about to kiss the visitor's hand, but he stops. They both turn and look at Jessica.