Bats in the Belfry by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press

When we got back to the office, Alvina was on a mission. She spent an hour on her laptop designing a flyer, Lost Old Vampire.

Since there were no photos of One Fang, Sheyenne found records from when César Marici had been a living dentist. Since turning into a vampire, his appearance hadn’t changed much, so they were good enough for our purposes. In the old photos he was smiling, wearing scrubs, showing his latex gloves as if preparing for brain surgery instead of root canals. He looked all too eager to dive into a patient’s mouth.

Alvina used the photos on her flyer. Responds to the name César. If found, please call ________. She put down our office number.

“Good work, honey,” Sheyenne said.

The kid was determined. “I’ll post it on the Nextdoor Neighborhood Watch chat groups, and add it on all the Unnatural Quarter social media.”

I wanted to help, too. “Print up a stack of the flyers, and we can put them up on lampposts and vacant lot fences.”

“Printing? On paper?” Alvina looked puzzled. “I suppose we could try that, too.”

I reminded her that many people in the Quarter were still old school.

She considered. “Should we file a missing old vampire report with my other half-daddy? The police should be helping, too.”

As if summoned by a secret spell, McGoo pushed open the door. “I’m here to take you to choir practice, Al.”

“We can go as soon as I post this.” Alvina finished typing, closed the browser window, and slid down from her seat. “I’ll race you.”

Sheyenne glowed. “Enjoy your lessons while you can, honey. Once you start school, you might not have time for extracurricular activities.”

“I’ll keep my grades up! I promise!”

After she and McGoo headed off, I said, “Someday the kid might have a singing voice as beautiful as yours.”

Sheyenne looked wistfully at me. “All that talk about singing makes me want to go back to the Basilisk Nightclub, Beaux. I do miss it.”

That brightened a regular gloomy day. “We haven’t been there since Fletcher and his partner reopened it. Want to go tonight?”

“I’d love to!”

After dark, I brushed the wrinkles and lint from my stitched-up sport jacket and dusted off my fedora. Sheyenne and I walked arm in arm to the nightclub. The sign on the door said, “Now Revamped.”

Looking at the place, she let out a sigh. “So many memories, both good ones and bad.”

I knew I had a doofus grin on my face. “It’s where I met you, Spooky, so that cancels out all the bad memories.”

Fletcher Knowles, the owner of Basilisk, had originally hired Sheyenne as a cocktail waitress, but she filled in as a singer on the all-too-frequent evenings when Ivory behaved like a diva, as she usually did. After being poisoned and coming back as a ghost, Sheyenne hadn’t returned to singing on stage, though I knew she had enjoyed it. We still went to the nightclub together on special occasions, and I’d even been there on the night a tentacle creature crushed Fletcher in an alley out back.

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