My client, Leslie, lived in nice condo above some of the shops in downtown Park Ridge, off Northwest Highway. She had been about sixty and dying of lung cancer when a vampire grandson turned her. This had been three years ago. Before being turned her body was hunched over from arthritis. She looked closer to eighty than her rightful age and she was wasting away from her cancer treatments. Now she looked younger, healthier. Her skin was washed out from the turn, but her liver spots and yellowed teeth had changed, reflecting a perfect specimen. She kept five cats as her source of food and relished the second chance her grandson gave her.
My visits to her were like visiting Grandma. If Grandma drank blood.
I was buzzed into the building and I took the elevator up. A middle-aged man rode up with me, but he pressed himself into the corner as far from me as possible. I sometimes got this reaction when nosey people looked at my paperwork and caught the BSB seal. They automatically assumed I was an Other and wanted their distance. Leslie occupied her condo for a long time, living in it years before Others even came into the open. I wondered how her neighbors, like this cowering middle-aged man, felt about that.
The elevator stopped at Leslie’s floor. As I exited I took a deep breath and sighed. I thought about scaring the guy, but decided against it. He was not worth the effort.
I headed down the hall and knocked on Leslie’s door. “Good evening, Samantha!” Leslie was a willowy woman with a big, brown wig on. She’d lost all her hair to chemo by the time she was turned and it never grew back. The upside was now she could have any hairdo and color that struck her fancy.
“Hi, Leslie. How are you tonight?”
She ushered me in and offered me some homemade cookies. I didn't know if it was because she could no longer taste the dough or because she just wasn't a good baker, but her cookies were terrible. They tasted like salty, sawdust. I ate them every time because she baked them especially for my visits.
“I tried a chocolate crunch recipe this time. How do you like them?” She sat me down in a recliner in front of her TV. She waited with eyes wide in excitement, for my response. Her condo was nice. Lots of overstuffed furniture, pictures of grandkids, quilts everywhere. It smelled nice. Much like cookies should smell and yet the taste. Ugh.
I liked Leslie. She went out of her way to make me comfortable in her home even though I was only there to monitor her blood taking activities. So, I always gave the same answer about her cookies. “You have a gift, Leslie, an absolute gift.”
Leslie clapped her hands with enthusiasm. I sometimes got the feeling she knew I lied about the cookies, but the lie made her happy. So, we kept up our charade.
“How is everything, Samantha?” Leslie asked as she rounded up her cats while I pulled out some papers from her file.
“I'm good.” Despite the whole crazy vampire after my other client, everything was peachy keen.
“Any young men strike your fancy? You know my Larry is looking for Miss Right.”
Leslie, you sweet old lady. Too bad Larry is the one who bit you. “Oh. Um, I’m good where I’m at.”
“You just let me know if you ever want his number.”
“Well, you know the BSB frowns on us dating clients or relatives of clients.” A rule I was actually thankful for when Leslie pushed Larry at me.
Leslie nodded. She moved about her condo, grabbing cats off furniture and herding them toward me. “Here are my lovelies.” All five of the cats looked at me angrily. One of them hissed and hooked a claw into the toe of my riding boot. Leslie bent down and pulled it away.
I didn’t relish the task ahead of me. Leslie held her cats down as I inspected them, one by one. I had to check to make sure Leslie wasn't trying to turn them or that she was taking too much blood. Turning a cat is how we get chupacabras. A lot of people think it's cruel to feed off animals, but after witnessing it firsthand I couldn’t agree with the accusations. I had watched Leslie feed. She pre-filled vials of blood, using a syringe to extract it. Then she emptied the vials into tumblers. It was like when I brought Sasha in for blood work at the vet. It annoyed the cats, but there were no lasting effects. And Leslie kept five to keep from overfeeding on one. As an animal lover I couldn’t say this was ideal, but I figured this option was better than wildly ripping throats open, animal or human, and guzzling blood down.
My visit with Leslie lasted fifteen minutes. I could lie and say it ran until my meeting with Jarell and I could get some coffee. Or I could go back to the office and tackle busy work, maybe do my reports to avoid being flogged.
As I exited the building I thought I caught a glimpse of an athletic blond eyeing me from the parking lot of a sushi restaurant that shared the building with Leslie’s condo. I stopped and looked. People milled around, but none watched me. I could have sworn it was Jessica.