Page 23 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
I gave him a pat. ‘Never mind, Jason. I think I’ve got whatI needed,and certainly more than I intended, and I’m going home.’
‘Can I come?’ he asked pathetically.
‘No. It’s too late, I have a tattered reputation to uphold, and if you were cherishing any hopes, forget them, because I don’t intend being unfaithful to Max.’
Not yet, anyway.
‘ButIwouldn’t take you for granted like he does, and, anyway, why stay faithful to a married man when you could play thefield a bit with an unmarried one – sort of? Besides,’ he added, ‘Tom’s home for the weekend and I don’t want to go back. Strange music will blast the air until three in the morning, and the lounge will be littered with bodies.’
‘I think that sounds pretty much like the next chapter of my book,’ I mused, seeing my way forward at last. ‘A sort ofWreck of the Hesperuseffect.’
Their naked bodiesslithered and writhed together like snakes in a pit?No, perhaps that’s a cliché.
Jason was still thinking along different lines … or maybe not. ‘You could come back to my place and distract me,’ he suggested.
‘No thanks,’ I said shortly, brushing grass and earth off my cloak and not feeling even remotely tempted. Tom made rather gross sexual suggestions to me whenever Jason was out of the room,and he was not only young enough to be my son, but had spots the size of puffball mushrooms.
‘Well, I’d rather come back with you,’ he conceded, removing a worm from my hood and tossing it aside. Then he swept me into a warm embrace which, since I was still wrapped in the cloak, was rather unpleasantly strait-jacketing. ‘Cassy, you know I’m mad about you. If Max hadn’t taken you away from mewhen we were students—’
‘Jason, Max didn’t take me away from you, you were goingout with Tanya by the time he came on the scene. And you know we’d already agreed to be just friends.’
‘Well, that was then, and this is now. Couldn’t you just think seriously about me?’
‘I have – I do,’ I said truthfully. ‘And you know I’m very fond of you, Jason, but that isn’t enough, is it?’
‘I don’t know.Couldn’t you try it and see?’ he suggested, and kissed me.
Not until I find out where Tanya’s got to, I thought, but relaxed into the kiss anyway, and very pleasant it was, too, once he’d negotiated his way around the vampire teeth.
But it wasn’tmorethan just pleasant, and since Jason was starting to get a bit carried away I wrenched my head back and tried to free myself, before things reallygot out of hand.
‘Jason, stop,’ I said. ‘No, Jason! I’m sorry, but this just isn’t right, and—’
‘You don’t mean it,’ he said thickly, trying to kiss me again. ‘Forget Max.’
I was starting to get a bit cross, for although I didn’t really think Jason was dangerous (down, Shep!), he was big, focused and had drunk enough to make him stubbornly single-minded. As his mouth closed on mine with passionatedetermination, I was forced to employ the fangs for the second time that night.
I’d be a full-time vampire before I knew it at that rate.
Jason yelled and let me go so suddenly I staggered back, observing with some interest the way the dark blood welled from his lower lip, and the sudden expression of fury turning his craggy face into a gargoyle’s mask.
Scrub what I said about him not beingdangerous. Knowing his rages of old I realized it was quite time I removed myself, and so took to my heels through the graveyard and out through the gates into the lane, with Jason in hot pursuit.
Perhaps it was because I was too busy looking over my shoulder to see how close he was that I wasn’t aware of the dark sports car hurtling round the bend until it screeched to a halt barely inches fromme, warmly quivering.
The driver, a large, dark and unequivocally masculine shape, was making movements as if to get out and probably yell at me, if not worse, though it certainly wasn’t my fault he’d taken a wrong turn down a dead end.
…the vampire cruised the dark lanes seeking his next victim,the sleek,fast car making him feel even more powerful than before…
Vampires in cars? I hadn’tconsidered the possibilities motor transport would open up to the Undead before …
But the driver ofthisone opened his door, and feeling that I was about to turn into whatever the female equivalent of a misogynist is (and contrary to male belief it isn’t necessarily a feminist) I bared my fangs in a snarl that he could take either as a propitiating smile or a threat, and began to sidle roundthe further side of the car towards home.
Do you know, I’d quite forgotten I still had the ghastly greenish complexion and dark crimson lipstick on until the door slammed shut again, the central locking went down with a loud ‘clunk!’, and the car shot backwards, executed a rapid three-point turn, and roared away.
I took it as a compliment, and it’s not the first time this sort of thing has happenedeither. I am quite tall, dark-haired, and naturally pallid of complexion, with deep-set eyes and a rather lugubrious cast of countenance, and in full escapee-from-the-crypt make-up and dress in a darkened room have been known to scare more nervous telegram recipients into a dead faint.
How people do love to be petrified, don’t they? Or maybe they thought I was going to do an Ozzy Osbourne withthe Bat? (Ex-bat. Alas, poor Clive! I knew him well …)
Once the car had gone, I became aware of blasphemous sounds from the graveyard indicative of Jason’s having measured his length over a gravestone, so seizing the opportunity I quickly made myself scarce.
Back home it was midnight at the oasis. Mrs Bridges had gone to bed, and even Birdie was silent in her little nest.
The message lightlured me to the phone, but it was just Jane with Max’s number. Nothing from Max personally, then or later, though Jason rang the doorbell repeatedly while I wrote through the witching hours with a red-hot pen.
