The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks Read Free Book Online

neither, it seemed, did anyone else. Even Father Ramon had subsided; he sat gloomily rubbing the back of his neck as Bridget peered at him, seeking reassurance. Horace had folded his arms defiantly. Sanford was ruminating. Gladys was massaging her temples, eyes closed.
    Dave was still inspecting the silver bullet.
    ‘There’s a stamp on this,’ he suddenly observed. ‘Some kind of trademark.’ He raised his head. ‘We might be able to trace the manufacturers.’
    ‘And then what?’ I spat. ‘Tell them their product’s a health hazard?’ I shouldn’t have been so snippy, but I was on the verge of hysteria. Dave must have realised this, because he didn’t seem offended. Or if he was, he didn’t show it.
    He rarely does, even though I snap at him a lot. Even though I snap at
everybody
a lot. I don’t mean to, and I’m not as bad as I once was, but it’s hard to keep your temper when the vampires around you are finding every possible excuse not to get off their butts and
do
something.
    Not that Dave’s a shirker. In fact he was being extremely proactive just then.
    ‘If it’s a mail-order business, it might have a customer list,’ he remarked. ‘Sometimes you can buy customer lists off a dodgy company. I’ve done it myself.’
    ‘Yeah?’ I figured that, since Dave ran his own mail-order business, he probably knew what he was talking about. ‘You mean we can find out who bought this bullet?’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘We
have
to find out who bought it,’ Sanford declared. ‘If we don’t, we’ll be living like fugitives. We’ll never know if this wretched maniac has tracked us down or not.’
    ‘Or we could move, and change our names,’ I said. Though I myselfhad never been forced to switch identities, most of the others had. And though I understood that the procedures for doing so were both complex and dangerous, I wasn’t prepared for the groans of dismay that greeted my proposition.
    ‘Oh,
Christ
no,’ said Horace, and Sanford grimaced. Gladys wailed, ‘I don’t want to go through that again! Do we
have
to go through that again?’
    ‘Not if we find this guy,’ said Dave. ‘If we find this guy, we can stop him.’
    ‘How can we stop him if he’s got a gun?’ asked George, with unexpected perspicacity. (In general, George doesn’t say much; he can barely
follow
conversations, let alone contribute to them.)
    It was Horace who answered.
    ‘Personally,’ he snarled, ‘I’d stop him by sticking his head in a toilet until he drowned.’
    ‘Oh no!’ Father Ramon was appalled. ‘There’ll be no killing, Horace. Nothing like that. Two wrongs don’t make a right.’
    Sanford quickly reminded us that we had faced such hostility before. Why, he himself had persuaded Horace’s parents not to chop off their son’s head. ‘Communication is the key,’ he insisted. ‘We have to show this person that we’re not a threat – that the media hasn’t been fair to us.’
    ‘You think someone like that will even
listen
?’ I scoffed. ‘What if he shoots first and asks questions later?’
    ‘Nina, there won’t be any meaningful dialogue if either participant is armed.’ Sandford spoke with a kind of weary patience, like someone addressing a very small and stupid child. ‘That’s why we have to discover this person’s whereabouts, and make sure he’s not in a defensive mind-set when we approach him. In fact it might be best if Father Ramon talks to him first.’
    All eyes swivelled towards the priest, who shrugged and sighed.
    ‘I suppose so,’ he mumbled. At which point I cut in again.
    ‘This is all very well, but you haven’t even considered the most important question,’ I said, scanning the room for input. ‘Did Casimir blow his cover, or did someone hunt him down? Has he mentioned any names? Or what he’s been doing?’
    ‘Not to me,’ said the priest. George shook his head. By screwing up her face, Gladys conveyed quite clearly that she had never been tempted to seek out