Page 70 of Silent Stalker
“He may have helped with the formation of such things.”
“We have a day celebrating fathers. You should probably shower gifts on your maker, because he managed to handle your raising rather well.”
“And how shall you shower your father with gifts?”
“I solemnly swear I won’t stab him with any stakes.”
Emerick blinked. “That is quite the concession, really. A good gift, indeed.”
“I might send him a card, and I might even thank him for his contribution to my general survival. It wasn’t his fault I died, after all. I understand that. It wasn’t his fault I died either time. Oh, I know. I’ll get him a mug. I’ll put ‘not the worst father in the world’ on it. Do you think that’ll do the trick?”
“I see you are prepared to jab at him over some portions of your life,” Emerick muttered.
“I mean, it’s true. I like being alive, and I am finding my current circumstances as a frustrated wife of a wicked vampire to my general taste. Understanding why helps a lot, honestly. I’m going to need therapy. You might have to throw yourself on the bed and strip for me, though. You know, as part of my therapy.”
“We are going to be mutually frustrated by the end of the week,” he warned.
“You mean we weren’t already mutually frustrated?”
“I view it as spicing our evenings with liberal amounts of anticipation.”
“At what stage does it turn from spicing with anticipation to self-inflicted torture?” I inquired, raising a brow.
“I believe we entered the self-inflicted torture stage approximately a week ago,” he admitted.
“Why are we doing this to ourselves again?”
“We aren’t wise enough to lock our bedroom door or evict nosy menaces from our space, resulting in a dire lack of mutual evening entertainment.”
“We really need to stop that. Can we restart this wager in, say, two weeks or so, after we’re on equal footing regarding general mood? I feel we may have dived into this wager rather foolishly.”
Emerick chuckled. “It’s not a loss if we both decide to change the terms?”
“Is there any way either one of us is going to lose in this arrangement?”
“Banish such a dark and terrible thought, I demand it.”
I lasted all of twenty seconds before the need to laugh got the best of me. “Consider it to be a challenge, Emerick.”
“Challenge accepted. Now, we must work, and then we must visit with your mother. Tomorrow night, I believe I will work to make certain everyone is so busy elsewhere they cannot bother us for the entire evening. Perhaps I will stab a note into the entry door warning of certain death if we’re disturbed.”
“Do you think that’ll actually work?”
“No, but I will dream it might, at least for long enough to lure you to our bed and convince you to fling off your clothes and invite me to do as I please.”
“Only if I get a turn at being the one invited to do as I please,” I countered.
“I do believe an arrangement can be made.”
Sometimes,it amazed me how diverse New York could be. Driving ten minutes sent us from the nice neighborhood surrounding the Lowrance Estate into the sort of place I expected murders to happen numerous times a night. After a moment of thought, I realized I’d killed at least one or two miscreants in the neighborhood.
They’d tasted particularly foul. I wrinkled my nose, lifted my chin, and made a displeased sound.
“What’s wrong?”
“The miscreants from this neighborhood tasted terrible.”
Emerick laughed, and he beat the steering wheel of his beloved Civic with a hand. “And here I was worried you might be remembering something about when you returned to the ground to heal.”
