Chapter 40 The Do（om） It Yourself Trope #2
Wayne smiled wolfishly. “Don’t mind if I do.” He turned to the cop and nodded. “You can wait in the car, officer. Thank you for your assistance.” He then took out a little notepad and started walking through the house.
I shut my eyes and centered my intention, my identity.
I was Tiffany Amber Blair, a respectable woman born in Valentine, a woman who rightfully inherited this home and had the best intentions to fix it up.
I did not have an illegal canid on the premises—we were all properly housebroken vampires at this point.
Tiffany Amber Blair should have no trouble with a little house inspection.
Just like before the panic attack at Tyrone’s, my vision started fogging at the edges.
I began to feel lightheaded. The porch had been repaired and Bob had rewired the house.
We should be fine, but I didn’t feel fine.
If I could just hang on for thirty minutes, be pleasant for this home inspection, and not kill Wayne, I would be fine. We would be fine.
I wanted to, though. I wanted to kill this man with every fiber of my being. He was too much. I was just trying to exist without hurting anyone, and he wouldn’t let me.
After he’d walked through the whole house, he said, “I have a few questions.” With purpose, he strode over to the fireplace and gestured to the walls that we had replaced. “What is happening here? I need to verify that the structure is intact after the chimney fire.”
“We removed all the plaster and none of the structure was damaged, so we replastered,” I said. “You can see that this is new.”
“I can’t clear this building without seeing the structure.”
“But we fixed everything.” It looked perfect.
“I recorded the entire process,” Heaven said. “You can actually see every step.” On her phone she pulled up a reel of the two of us peeling the plaster off the walls with Rihanna singing “Work, work, work, work, work, work” in the background.
With a smug little laugh he said, “That’s very cute, ladies, but I don’t believe this will satisfy the official requirements of the city code.” He pounded on the wall. “I need to be able to see the structure for myself and verify its integrity.”
“You can!” she said. “We removed the wall, checked for damage, and repaired it—all while being recorded.”
Wayne watched the video of the two of us dancing and goofing off, looking unimpressed. I wanted to slap the judgmental look off his face. But I bit my lip.
“Girls,” he said like he was schooling us, depriving the word girl of all its power, “this is not professional. This is not the way you pass an inspection.”
Heaven looked like she wanted to do more than slap him. She looked ready to make use of that coffin right now.
“And what kind of screws did you use on the deck?”
Tyrone had given us a box of screws earlier. It was still sitting around. “These.”
“The code specifies that you need to use galvanized deck screws.”
“Okay, so what do we do?” I asked. “If we have to, we can add more screws and peel back the wallboard.”
“You still technically have a few days, but there is the matter of the illegal canid. Something in this house bit me.”
“Like I said, Tyrone shot a coyote on the property. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes.”
Tyrone put the poor animal in our deep freezer. It made me sick to think of the coyote frozen stiff and lifeless in there. It had died to protect our lie. I had let it happen.
Maybe Vlad was right to tell everyone what we were. No one else would have to die. I was already dead. I should have turned to dust hundreds of years ago.
Heaven walked Wayne to the deep freezer on the back porch.
I fought my impulse to put Wayne in it. Keep it together, Tiffenie. Pass this one inspection and never worry about Wayne for the rest of his life, which will be relatively short.
The back porch was a little room off the kitchen, unheated with a lot of windows and all-season carpet.
In the summer it might be nice (if we got rid of the carpet), a place you might put a small table where you could drink coffee, or at least drink out of a coffee mug, and read a book.
But this time of year, it was nothing but a cold room filled with boots and coats, the windows covered in frost that crept all the way up the panes in a crystalline stained-glass effect.
The off-white Frigidaire deep freezer was against the wall.
“It’s in there,” I said. My stomach twisted at the thought. I didn’t want to touch it.
Wayne nodded and lifted the lid. We only used the freezer for blood and the coyote. The blood was underneath the coyote and stored in a cardboard box. He shouldn’t notice it.
Tyrone had wrapped the animal in a blanket before putting it in the freezer.
Wayne tried to peel the cloth away, but it had frozen to the fur.
This was so undignified, so unnecessary.
I didn’t know how he would determine if this animal bit him.
I, of all people, knew that looking dangerous meant nothing.
Sure, the coyote had teeth and a bad reputation, but that didn’t mean it was the bad guy.
Wayne narrowed his eyes. “So there was a coyote in your living room?”
I stared at him with dead eyes. What did he want me to say? If he didn’t want to play along with the coyote story, then this was it.
Heaven said, “Um, why not? We just got here. The house had been vacant. A lot of things were living in here.”
He grunted. “I don’t think this is what bit me.”
How could he tell?
“Why would you say that?” I growled. I bared my fangs and Heaven touched my arm, holding me back.
Wayne went saucer-eyed, and he took a step back, stumbling into the wall. “It was—”
“Say it, Wayne,” I said. “It was…”
“Just let me go. I promise I won’t give you any more trouble.”
Finally, I had the upper hand. A little respect. Why had he made me resort to this?
“That’s not true, Wayne. You will definitely give me trouble.” This man had pushed me far enough. I’d come to Vermont to rehab a country inn, to start a bed-and-breakfast, to date a handsome farmer, to live a quiet Hallmark fantasy.
“Wayne, you should have left me alone. Who was I hurting?”
“No one, ma’am,” Wayne said, his voice beginning to tremble.
“Don’t call me ma’am. That makes me feel old. Never call a woman ma’am.”
Heaven tapped my arm. “Tiff,” she said in a cautionary tone.
“The thing that bit you was a vampire, Wayne. Is that what you want to hear?”
He was shaking.
This was how vampires solved problems. Vlad had been right all along.
Feed on people. Have a late-night snack with some sex.
If you were really thirsty, there were plenty of Wayne Jarvises.
If someone died, bury the evidence. Don’t tell the neighbors your business.
Those were the rules. I should have been following them.
Before Heaven could stop me, I bared my fangs and sank them into Wayne’s neck. My whole life had brought me to this moment: feeding off a local bureaucrat, a pencil-pushing rule-monger who couldn’t stop picking on two girls, as he’d called us.
But we weren’t girls. He knew that now.
He went limp in my arms as I gulped.
Wayne represented everything that had been plaguing me. Credit card late fees, the fine print that you never read, inflation, bumps in rent, taxes. Wayne Jarvis was the fax machine in Office Space. He was officially my breaking point.
“Tiffenie, stop! You can’t kill that man. Everyone knows where he is. There’s a cop out front!”
Wayne and everyone like him. All of the rules and regulations. They had forced me into a box I didn’t fit into along with all my darkest thoughts. It was time to break the fuck out. I was done.
“Tiffenie!” Heaven screamed. “You can’t drain the city inspector!”
I looked at her but I couldn’t see her through the anger and thirst.
But she was strong and pried me off, yelling “Drop it!” like I was a dog that wouldn’t let go of a stick.
“Fuck,” she said, shaking her head at me. There was blood running down my chin and onto my No Fear shirt. “What are we going to do now?”
I slumped against the wall, spent and disappointed.
“None of it matters, Heaven. We can’t have nice things. We’re vampires.” There are castle vampires and there are rogue vampires. We were rogue.
She’d clearly had it with me. “Nope. Get your ass over here and help me figure this out.” Wayne was moaning and clutching his neck.
“Don’t kill me,” he pleaded. “Who’s gonna feed my cat?”
“We can take your cat,” I said. I would never let a cat suffer.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway. I heard Vlad call, “Where is everyone?”
A second later, he stepped onto the back porch. “Tiffenie!” he said, taking in the scene with a look of shock. “What are you doing?”
“Being a vampire, like you wanted me to be,” I said, with a bloodstained smile.
“Fuck. This is no good.” Vlad paced the room and ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up as he appeared to weigh his options. “We can’t just murder the people we don’t like if we want to fit in here. You know that.”
“I don’t care. I don’t belong here,” I said defiantly. “And Wayne is a horrible human being. You were right about everything, Vlad.”
Ignoring the city inspector sprawled on the floor, Vlad shut his eyes. I could see the compliment wash over him like a calm ocean wave. “That was nice at least. Say it again, Tiffenie.”
“You were right, Vlad. I admit it.” I narrowed my gaze. “You’re not getting turned on, are you? We are not Bonnie and Clyde.”
He smiled.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment for three hundred years, for you to accept who we are. But this”—he gestured to Wayne—“this isn’t you.”
Wayne was still groggy and blissed out from the pleasure of the bite.
Heaven wiped his neck with a damp towel and pressed a clean one to the wound. “Okay, so we’re not killing him,” she said. “Love that, but what are we going to do with him?”
Vlad squared his shoulders and helped Wayne to his feet. “I’ve got this.”
“Thank you,” I said, unsure of how to feel. I didn’t want Vlad to clean up another of my messes, but I needed him. Heaven needed him.
As if he were giving Wayne a tour of the house, Vlad took him by the elbow and started walking him around. “You’ll notice the cabinets are original.”
Wayne blinked at the old cabinets as he bled down his button-down shirt. I hadn’t taken so much blood as to cause him permanent harm, but he definitely seemed lightheaded.
Vlad walked him all the way out front to the police car.
The cop was sitting in the driver’s seat with the engine idling and the windshield wipers keeping the falling snow at bay.
He was looking at his phone, completely oblivious.
He’d probably been playing Candy Crush or whatever while I’d been trying to murder Mr. Jarvis.
To live in that man’s simple shoes for one day…
The cop looked up from his phone, his expression shifting from vacant to “uh-oh.” At the sight of Wayne, his hand went to his gun. Cheetos crumbs showered from his chest to his lap. “What the—what’s going on here?”
Vlad smiled. “Good evening, officer. We’re just walking Wayne out to the car.” He was in full glamour mode, all of his intensity focused on the cop and Wayne. “Nothing bit Wayne,” he said. “He must have cut himself shaving earlier. He needs to be more careful.”
If this kept happening, we were going to have to come up with some new excuses.
“Duuuude,” the cop said.
Wayne dabbed at the wound with the towel.
“You should never shave with a dull razor,” Vlad said.
“What about the house?” I asked, confirming what I already knew.
“This structure is officially condemned by the City of Valentine,” Wayne said, holding the towel to his neck. “You need to vacate the premises immediately. Destruction of the property will occur as soon as possible.”
As the car pulled away, Vlad said, “We can appeal it.”
Heaven elbowed him. “Tell him to uncondemn the house.”
Alas, you can only convince a human of one lie at a time. Those were the rules.