April is the _____est Month April is the _____est Month
I nod and look at her eyes.They’re not exactly all white, the irises are there, just bleached out.
And she does blink. “I said there shouldn’t be any blood.Whether there will or not depends on how well you listen.”
She freezes, looks at me with intense focus.
“All right,” I say. “I got this. Usual rates?”
“Can you get those contacts out of your eyes? I’m having a hard time taking you seriously.”
Dave nods, as if to say “get on with it.” He saw me dust a vampire once in here, after hours.
He’s surprisingly sanguine about the whole deal. People are way more comfortable integrating
the paranormal into their consciousness once they’ve seen it. It’s what keeps me in business. She brings her hands up from the floor in a gesture of doubt. “Not like this. Maybe if you let
me up…”
I draw a knife, a sharp little pointy stabber. “Nah, I’ll just suffer through it.” She smirks at me. Adorable.
“Is this gonna get messy?” asks Dave, with his arms folded in front of him, leaning on the wall.
“Am I actually gonna have to call a cleaning service?” “Now,” I say, bringing the blade down to her calf, “scream.”
“What?” says Amanda.
“I mean, you might as well, given that you lost the day. Need the cover story for your people.
Smells like old socks in here, anyway.” “What?” says Dave.
“Blood is really expensive to get out,” he says, with the weariness of a man who knows. I press the knife. “Scream or you lose a hamstring.”
“Shouldn’t be any blood,” I say, stepping over her and around to her shoeless foot. She lets one out, and it is exactly what you don’t want to hear when your nervous system is
recovering from vodka abuse. I would say that I immediately regretted this decision, but it did
exactly what I wanted. I couple of nincompoops run out from the supply closet. They’re
holding wizard staffs and bags of powder.
“Is she not human?”
I grab her by the ankle. “Oh, she’s human,” I say, and I yank her the leg up and put the point of
the blade against the sole of her foot.
She jerks up to her elbows. “Wait wait wait!”
“Hey… man!” says the first one of them, who has a beard on one side of his face, but is clean
shaven on the other. He has a shirt with one sleeve removed. He loses his train of thought after
that, but I don’t say anything. I am watching the other guy, who has a shrug on, and a pair of
sunglasses with one shade removed. He looks super mad.
“Oh hi!” I say. “Amanda, right?”
“What are their names, Amanda?”
“You said there wouldn’t be any blood!”
“Grant and Cody.”
“Oh, wow, you were listening. Now hold still, or I might slip.There’s no big arteries in your
foot that’ll bleed you out quick, but I can sure make walking difficult.” “Hi, Grant and Cody.You know who I am?”
“You said there wouldn’t be any blood!” “Who are you?” says Amanda.