A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9), Fred Saberhagen [some good books to read TXT] 📗

the gypsy girl with an air of wary respect. One or two of them called her Constantia, while others more casually used the name of Connie; the woman answered indifferently to both names. A few minutes after her master, Graves, had completed his first visit, she dropped in on the Radcliffes uninvited, apparently with nothing more complicated in mind than a simple chat. None of the breathing, rubber-masked guardians were quite so intrusive, but continued their self-effacing ways.

      Later on the first day of the Radcliffes’ confinement, Connie once more entered their quarters approximately at sunset, and remained until the two prisoners, who had had only a couple of hours of sleep out of the last thirty-six, showed unmistakable signs of giving way to exhaustion.

      She gave them a sly, suggestive wink, and said she knew that they were on their honeymoon. No one tried to explain that they had passed that stage several months ago. And on the second day, Connie was in and out at intervals, along with several of the masked attendants.

      Connie, when bidding the couple good night on their first evening in the makeshift prison, had assured them that they would enjoy undisturbed privacy in the house until morning. They could latch their doors, front and back (“… and your bedroom door too!”), and Mr. Graves wouldn’t mind. In fact he preferred it that way. Barring emergencies, no one would intrude on them.

      To Philip it seemed silly to try to lock out the jailers—the hardware available to defend the prisoners’ privacy, unlike that which kept them in, was cheap and flimsy, no doubt original equipment with the mobile home. But, he thought, why not at least make the gesture, show that they wanted to discourage intrusion as much as possible?

      So now, as on their first night here, Radcliffe, with June trailing after him (they were rarely out of each other’s sight now), went around latching all the doors and windows. As he snapped the last catch shut, he told his wife: “At least we’ll hear them if they break in.”

      “Right.” Barring tricks, he couldn’t help thinking, and secret passages. A few days ago, a mobile home with secret passages would have seemed a crazy idea. But a lot had happened in the last few days, and everything else about the situation was crazy, too. Neither of the Radcliffes wanted to remind the other that they still hadn’t figured out how Graves had gotten into their car while it was in motion, even if the convertible top had been down…

      Stumbling through the house, on the verge of falling asleep, Phil and June halfheartedly discussed the possibility of taking turns standing watch through the night. As they were trying to decide who would have the first shift, exhaustion intervened, putting an end to the discussion. This time they at least made it as far as the bedroom where both, fully clothed except for their shoes, slept like the dead until daylight.

* * *

      On awakening, Phil quietly unlatched the bedroom door and looked out into a silent, sunlit house. Then in his stocking feet he tiptoed through all the rooms. There was no sign that anyone had even looked in on them during the night.

      In a few minutes, Constantia appeared. As in their previous daylight encounters, she was wearing her dark glasses, and this time, in deference to the day’s full desert sun, had put on a broad-brimmed hat. Despite the growing heat, she was also wearing a kind of jacket, fringed in cowgirl-western style, with a high collar.

      June was polite with Connie, but spoke to her more frigidly than she did to Graves when he took his turn at dropping in. Phil didn’t have to ask to know that his wife did not like the woman at all.

      This morning, as usual, Connie was ready to talk on a variety of subjects. Frequently she chattered, though what she said did not always make sense to her distracted hearers, especially when she harked back to events they had heard described on the tape as having taken place in a previous century. But today Connie tended to lapse into periods of moody silence.

      These usually began when she was looking at Philip Radcliffe. Connie would occasionally begin staring at him in a vaguely, unconsciously hungry way. The impression she gave, to June at least, was of a woman pondering whether she ought to seduce a man.

      And in this case first impressions were exactly right.

* * *

      After locking the door of the Radcliffes’ domicile behind her, Constantia strode like a moody teenager, scuffing the earth with her fancy, rodeo-lady cowgirl boots, the few yards to the other mobile home, where she opened the unlocked door and walked right in. A small group of guardians, giving their heads a rest from rubber masks, sat tiredly talking in the small living room; their voices fell silent briefly as Connie passed.

       She made her way down a narrow hallway to the door at the far end. There in the smallest of the small bedrooms, a chamber heavily shaded and darkened, but already growing warm because it lacked a window air conditioner, Vlad was lying on his back on a folding camp bed, just about to go into a brief trance and get some much-needed sleep.

      The dark man, stretched out on his plastic bag of earth, roused himself long enough to ask his long-time friend and occasional associate how the two prisoners were doing.

      Connie, shifting to a language so old and rare that no one else in the Western Hemisphere was likely to understand, reported that they seemed all right.

      Then she added: “The young man is quite attractive—at least I find him so.”

      Vlad raised himself on one elbow, the dry earth crackling in the plastic garment bag beneath his body. “May I remind you, my dear, that this is business?”

      “Of course.” Connie’s lower lip protruded, somewhat sulkily. She no longer appeared to be seventeen years old. Not quite fifteen, actually.

      “You also found his ancestor quite attractive,