Suck It Up by Brian Meehl Read Free Book Online Page A

gone.
    Penny hustled back into her office. Morning hadn’t moved. “Do you have friends in the city?”
    Morning spoke for the first time. “Not really.”
    â€œOh, c’mon. How can you not have friends?” She opened a safe behind her desk.
    â€œFriends don’t stick when you keep bouncing from trial family to trial family.”
    She turned back and studied him. “You seem like a nice kid. Why didn’t someone adopt you?”
    â€œBefore I was a vampire, I was really quiet. Too quiet.”
    â€œAnd now you’re what? A back-slapping party-animal vampire?”
    â€œNo, I’m just a little less quiet.”
    â€œGood.” She shut the cash-filled briefcase, shoved it into the safe and spun the lock. “Then putting you up in a hotel won’t be a problem.”
    â€œA hotel?” he asked, faking an anxious expression. Morning actually liked the idea of staying in a hotel. Anything was better than the stuffy dorm room he’d been trapped in for almost a year. But persuading Penny to let him stay at her house was the first task Birnam had given him. The reason was simple. The sooner Penny got to know and trust him, the sooner he could CD in front of her and convince her she was dealing with the real thing, not some faux vampire.
    Penny crossed her arms. “Yes, a hotel. Where else am I going to put you?”
    â€œYour house.”
    She looked aghast. “You can’t stay with me!”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œFor one, you’re a vampire.”
    Morning grinned, exposing his perfectly straight, fangless teeth. “Do you really believe that?”
    â€œOf course not.”
    â€œThen why can’t I stay with you?”
    She waved her hands in exasperation. “Because I don’t have sleepovers with my clients. Even when they punch my guilt buttons about being orphans.”
    Sensing her weakening resolve, Morning dipped into the backstory Birnam had provided on Penny. “Mr. Birnam told me that when you were my age you believed in vampires. You even pretended to be one for a while. My people have always liked goths and vampire-wannabes. We call them ‘the faithful.’”
    Her face tightened with suspicion. “How does Birnam know that?”
    â€œWhen he hires a PR person, he does his homework. He said you have an extra bedroom.”
    Her jaw dropped. “How does he know
that
?”
    â€œWell, since he’s a vampire too, he probably—”
    â€œHe’s no vampire, he’s a Peeping Tom!”
    Morning gazed up at her. She was flushed with anger. Birnam had warned him about the various stages Lifers might go through before they accepted him for what he was. Angry denial was one of the first. Then he remembered Birnam’s last words of advice. “The playbook is only a suggested path out of the
selva obscura
of secrecy. If a tree falls across your path, go around it.”
    Morning stood up. “You know, it’s only for a night.” He shouldered his backpack. “If the St. Giles Group Home is still open, they’ll put me up. I think I still have a friend there.” He picked up the silver case of Blood Lite. “See you tomorrow.”
    He crossed the reception area. Penny appeared at her office door, shaking her head with a scowl. “Okay, you win. But for one night only, then we find a hotel.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œReally.” She stepped back into her office, then reemerged with her purse.
    â€œAren’t you forgetting the playbook?” he asked.
    She ducked back in and grabbed the folder.
    As she locked the glass doors to the office, she chuckled to herself. “Now that I think of it, I did put up Two-Headed Harry one night. He left his fake head in my apartment and I had to FedEx it to him before his next bout.” She dropped the keys in her purse and lifted a cautioning finger. “Try not to leave your fangs, okay?”
    â€œI