The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

"You're a real nice girl," he mumbled.

"Yeah, we could go to the prom together in a couple of years."

The front seat was too far back for me and wouldn't move up. I perched on the edge of the broken-down cushion and just managed to reach the pedals. I got the car started but pulling out was the tricky part. I'd never learned to drive. The car itself wasn't in terrific running condition — it wanted either to stall or race. I eased it down the street in half a dozen jerks that pushed me against the steering wheel and sent the kid in back off the seat and on to the floor. He didn't complain.

Priscilla had an apartment in one of the tenements near the railroad yard. The buildings looked abandoned at first glance; at second glance, they still looked abandoned. I steered the car off the road into an unpaved area that served as a parking lot and pulled up in front of the building nearest to the tracks. In the back, my companion pulled himself up on the seat, rubbing his eyes. "Where are we?"

"Wait here," I said, getting out of the car.

He shook his head emphatically. "No, I was here last night. This is Priscilla's. It ain't safe. I should go with you." He stumbled out of the car and leaned against it, trying to look sober. "I'm okay now. I'm just high."

"I'm not going to wait for you." I headed towards the building with him staggering after me. The heroin in his system had stabilized somewhat and he fell only three times. I kept going.

He gave up on the first flight. I left him hanging on the railing muttering to himself while I trotted up to Priscilla's place on the second floor. The door was unlocked, I knew — the lock had been broken ages ago and Priscilla wasn't about to spend good junk money on getting it fixed — but the sagging screen door was latched. I found a torn place in the screen and reached in to unhook it.

"Joe?" I called, stepping into the filthy kitchen. An odour of something long dead hit me square in the face, making me gag. "Joe?" I tiptoed across the room. On the sink was a package of hamburger Priscilla had probably left out to thaw then forgotten about, three weeks before, it seemed like. I wondered how she could stand it and then remembered how she liked to brag that coke had destroyed her nose. The rest of them wouldn't care as long as they could get fixed. My stomach leaped and I heaved on the floor. It was just a bit of bile in spite of the breakfast I'd eaten but I couldn't take any more and headed for the porch.

"Whaddaya want?"

I whirled, holding my hand over my mouth and nose as my gag reflex went into action again. A large black man wearing only a pair of pyjama bottoms was standing in the doorway to the bedroom. We stared at each other curiously.

"Whaddaya want?" he asked me again.

"I'm looking for Joe," I said from behind my hand.

"I'm Joe." He scratched his face and I saw a thin line of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

"Wrong Joe," I said, cursing Priscilla. She knew goddamm well, the con artist. What did she think, that I'd forget about finding Joe and curl up with this guy instead? Yeah, that was Priscilla all over. A Joe for a Joe, fair deal. "The Joe I'm looking for is my brother."

"I'm a brother."

"Yeah. You're bleeding."

He touched his mouth and looked dully at his fingers. "I'm blood."

I nodded. "Well, if you see a white guy named Joe, he's my brother. Tell him China was looking for him."

"China."

"Right. China."

"China's something real fragile. Could break." His expression altered slightly and that same kind of recognition that had passed between me and the cop in the patrol car seemed to pass between us now in Priscilla's stinking kitchen.

I glanced at the rotting hamburger on the counter and suddenly it didn't look like rotting meat any more than the man standing in the doorway of Priscilla's bedroom looked like another junkie, or even a human being. He tilted his head and studied me, his eyes narrowing, and it all seemed to be going in slow motion, that underwater feeling again.

"If you ain't in some kinda big hurry, why don't you hang around," he said. "Here all by myself. Not too interesting, nobody to rap with. Bet you got a lot of stuff you could rap about."

Yeah, he was probably craving to find out if I'd read any good books lately. I opened my mouth to say something and the stink hit me again in the back of the throat.

"Whaddaya say, you stick around here for a while. I don't bite. 'Less I'm invited to."

I wanted to ask him what he'd bitten just recently. He touched his lip as though he'd been reading my mind and shrugged. I took a step back. He didn't seem awfully junked up any more and it occurred to me that it was strange that he wasn't with Priscilla instead of here, all by himself.

Maybe, I thought suddenly, he was waiting for someone. Maybe Joe was supposed to be here after all, maybe he was supposed to come here for some reason and I'd just arrived ahead of him.