Dante's Awakening Read online

  “Well, Amelia tells me that there has been some tension on the set. It’s apparently being caused by the presence of a peeper. And the suicide of a crew member.”

  I blinked, frowned. This I had not heard. “Say again?” I begged.

  Voshki actually smiled. “There has been someone going around peeping at the actresses, and some of the female crew have been bothered also. Then a wardrobe assistant committed suicide three days ago,” she explained. She flicked her long, slim fingers at the air a couple times. “You know how actors are. They are…” more finger flicking as Voshki sought an appropriate word.

  “Squirrelly,” Ellis supplied helpfully. It was as good as any word I could have come up with to describe the nature of most actors.

  Voshki liked it too. She nodded. “Squirrelly, yes.”

  “Okay. So I assume the local cops have been notified?” I wanted to know.

  “Oh yes. The local sheriff investigated the peeper business and came up with precisely zip.”

  Voshki did not seem to find this surprising. Mind you, neither did I. Very often, movies and TV shows will shoot in small towns. Small towns are picturesque, so they show up well on film. They are also very often eager to take the generous amounts of money offered to them for allowing a production to take over their town, not to mention reap the ongoing rewards from tourism if the movie or show is a hit. Extras are easily found, and don’t need to be paid either since the locals will perform walk-through parts for the hell of getting their faces on screen. The kind of small towns we are talking about are also lucky if they have a retired city cop for a sheriff and maybe a couple of the brighter local lights acting as his deputies.

  I still was unsure, however, what had got Voshki in such a tizzy. With show business comes behind-the-scenes drama. She must have read the confusion in my face.

  “You know I have invested heavily in the show,” she stated, and I nodded. I was getting real good at the nodding thing. “Well, I also convinced several other people to do likewise…” the scowl made another appearance… “and I really would not like for them to get wind of this. They invested because they trust my judgment.”

  Now I was starting to get the fuller picture. Investors in movies and TV shows are almost as squirrelly as the actors—only for a damn sight better reason. A single investor may have several millions dollars sunk into a high-concept, ratings-dependent TV show like The Right Guy. Naturally they wish to see good returns on money as serious as this. What they do not want to see is a show go down the toilet because someone committed suicide and the superstitious nut-bags that are most Hollywood people have started believing in some kind of curse on the damn show.

  “You want me to go up there and smooth any ruffled feathers,” I guessed.

  Voshki nodded. Then she added, “Amelia is of the opinion that the peeper might be a vampire,” and a dark cloud sailed across my horizon. Vampires, for the most part, do not do things that draw attention to themselves. Sure, there are vampire criminals, but you might be surprised at how few and far between they are. Vampire justice is swift and unpleasant.

  “Do you think there is some connection between the suicide and the peeper?” I inquired.

  Voshki poked her tongue into her cheek and rolled it around a few times whilst she scowled into middle distance. The tongue-rolling distracted my fervid little imagination. Finally she admitted to not knowing for sure whether there was any connection. “But I want to be sure, one way or the other,” she added. The scowl melted away into a dazzling smile. “And that’s where you come in, Dante.”

  My brains were starting to leak out of my ears, I was pretty damn sure of that. I frowned at her, however. I’m not that easy a sell. “Wouldn’t you be better to send a private detective up to poke around? I’m just an agent,” I reminded the vampire in case she had forgotten this. It wouldn’t be the first time, or the second, third, or fourth either, I had performed some kind trouble-shooting for the vampires that went strictly beyond my purview as an agent. They always pay me generously for my services, but still, I don’t like them to think I’m an easy sell.

  “A private detective would draw attention,” Voshki argued. This made sense, I supposed. Rumors and TV or movie shoots are kind of like dogs and fleas. Where you find one, you’re gonna find the other eventually. An agent on site would seem much more natural.

  Then Voshki turned the wattage right up on her smile. My brain fried itself trying to imagine all the wicked, delicious, naughty things I would be willing to do for that smile. I wondered suddenly if I were drooling. God, that would be embarrassing. I was just rethinking my adversity to being Voshki’s pet human when I heard her say, “I have the utmost faith in you, Dante,” and I knew that I would be heading upstate to play amateur detective before the day’s end. So I really am an easy sell where Voshki is concerned. You try resisting her. I dare you.

  “You can take Ellis and Samson with you,” Voshki added helpfully.

  Great. Samson I might be able to use, but what exactly was I supposed to do with Ellis Kovacs? Then Voshki looked at Ellis and inquired if she had booked the hotel rooms. I know my mouth fell open. I could feel the rush of air over my back teeth. I had closed it again before Voshki’s gaze swung back around to me.

  “You were that sure I’d agree to go up there?” I asked in a strangled voice that I would not have recognized as coming from me had I not felt my lips and tongue moving.

  Voshki just nodded. “Indeed. Why? Is there some problem, Dante?”

  Yes, I thought, I’m not your bitch to order around. I said, “No. There’s no problem at all.”

  Coward.

  * * *

  It’s fortunate for me that I have an exceptionally good staff that can cover me at the slightest notice when I have to run these errands for Voshki. In particular there is my personal assistant, a highly capable young woman named Roz Black. Roz is a devout Mormon, she is married to a very nice and equally devout Mormon man, they have two young children who are very lovely as children go, and without her I doubt my office would run half as smoothly as it does, even when I am there. Roz also happens to be quite beautiful, in that freshly scrubbed, utterly wholesome, apples-and-oatmeal complexioned way you expect of corn-fed Midwesterners, and indeed Mormons. I have always been a little dazzled by Roz and her extreme capableness. I think I have always been a little in love with her too. Hell, she’s such a dreamboat, who wouldn’t be? And besides, there are always cell phones and video conferencing for those clients who simply refuse to have anyone but me soothe their egos—of which I have a few.

  Let me tell you something about the people I represent. Mostly they are actors, and actors are all fucking insane. They manage to be insecure and egotistical all at once, and they specialize in meltdowns. Actors are self-centered, self-absorbed creatures who think the world really does exist solely for the purpose of hanging onto their every word and gesture, and that said world should be eternally grateful for this privilege. Anything which perturbs in any way this delusion of self-grandeur, no matter how small or how trivial it may seem to the rest of us, can be enough to send them spiraling into a meltdown of Chernobyl-like proportions. Ditto directors and writers. Writers perhaps are the lesser evil. At least writers tend only to go off on sex-and-alcohol benders in Vegas when things go bad for them. I have only ever represented one writer who needed to go into rehab, and he only did that because the judge gave him a choice—rehab or jail. Actually, I hate most actors and nearly all of the directors and producers I have met, but I rather like writers.

  Oh, by the way, I do not represent singers, rappers, or anyone else involved with the music industry. The music industry is whole other kettle of crazy.

  The Right Guy was a lucrative show to have a client appearing on. I’d made a nice buck out of getting my client the gig anyway. The male and female leads both were hot tips for Emmys next go-around, meaning my ex-girlfriend would be an Emmy winner soon. How about that?

  I don’t make it a habit to date
people in the business. The occasional writer, if she’s not a raving alcoholic, even a director once. Producers I avoid like the plague. My mother was a producer, remember, so I’ve seen too much of that particular brand of nuts, and besides, it just feels creepy. Caitlin Harris was the first actress I ever dated. And so far she has been the last. The experience was really that not good. She was deep inside of the glass closet and I rapidly grew weary with pretending to E! News and Entertainment Tonight that we were “in negotiations for representation” when in fact we were fucking like bunnies. After three months of “negotiations,” I called it quits. She had the requisite mini meltdown, went off to a spa someplace to recover, and I vowed never to date another actress even if everyone else vanished from the face of the earth tomorrow.

  Seeing her again was going to be fun.

  I should mention here that vampires dislike flying. They will fly if they absolutely have to, but generally they prefer to remain on terra firma, or to travel by boat if that can be arranged. This means I had to endure being driven all the way to the unlikely named Holly Bush Junction, the small-town slice of upstate California where The Right Guy was shooting location scenes, and I had to do so with Ellis and Samson, in a house-sized SUV supplied by Voshki. Samson was not so bad, being a rather taciturn fellow, but Ellis was a nightmare. She talked non-stop and she played music by a variety of ’80’s “hair bands” the whole way. By the time we reached our destination I was ready to stab Jon Bon Jovi in the eyeball with a steak knife for having ever recorded Bad Medicine.

  As if the journey had not been bad enough, there was the hotel. Not so much a hotel as a converted one-time brothel-cum-saloon, complete with cheesy red lights and lurid purple velvet swag curtains in all the windows that made me think about the Edgar Allan Poe poem The Raven. Indeed, I would hardly have been surprised if a big black bird had been perched someplace nearby croaking “Nevermore!” The front parlor displayed yet more purple velvet, red carpeting, chintz furniture, imitation gas lamps and much dark wood paneling, all looking like a madam and her girls might come sashaying in at any moment. There were paintings of naked people adorning the walls in various poses I assumed were meant to be provocative, but which just looked as though they had been borrowed from a medical dictionary. There was even a honky-tonk piano. I wanted to run screaming from the place. Preferably before Al Swearingen and Sheriff Bullock showed up for a quick shoot-out.

  Ellis had booked two rooms. One for Samson to have all to himself, and one for her and me to share. I wasn’t the least bit comfortable with that idea. However, upon inquiring, I learned that, with the circus that is a TV shoot in town, there were no more rooms at this inn, nor any other in town. I would either have to hike five miles out of town to find a vacant room at the nearest fleabag motel, or grit my teeth and share with the hyperactive hair-band-loving Ellis.

  “Cheer up, Dante…” she elbowed me in the side as we lugged our bags upstairs, nearly cracking a couple of my ribs… “If you can’t sleep, you don’t need to worry about waking your roomie up!”

  I gave her a sickly smile. “Great. We can roast marshmallows and have a pillow fight.”

  The room itself was much as I had been expecting—18th century New Orleans brothel meets Ramada Inn, with one glaring exception: a double bed.

  “I was expecting twin beds,” I stated.

  The proprietor gave me a look of befuddlement. He scratched his bald head, eyes darting between me and Ellis in a way that made me suspicious.

  “Well, I thought you were, like, together?” he said. I must have looked incredibly blank because he frowned and added: “Like, a couple, you know?”

  I wanted to shove a stake through Ellis’s heart right there and then. Who knows—if I’d had one handy, I might have. I could feel the burn of outrage rushing up from the pit of my stomach, erupting into my neck and banging around inside of my skull. Words refused to form themselves in my mouth, however, and that gave Ellis an opportunity to step right in and compound both my outrage and my desire to kill her.

  “Oh, we are…” she trilled. She looped her arm through mine, fingers squeezing my elbow without letting the hotel proprietor see it. I hid my wince of pain behind a reflex smile. “It’s just that we haven’t been…getting along so well, you know? I thought this would be a romantic surprise for my sweetie!”

  “Oh, it’s a surprise alright,” I grated. “I couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d woken up this morning with my head sewn to the carpet.”

  Ellis squeezed a little tighter. I felt faint. “You’re a card, Dante!” she cooed.

  The proprietor gave us both a grin now that told us exactly how proud he was that he and his cheesy hotel could be a part of this romantic matchmaking. If I’d had a spare stake I’d have shoved one through his fucking heart too.

  “Well, you ladies get yourselves all settled in,” he told us, and I swear he winked at us. Or maybe I was just having a stress hallucination. Either way I wanted to scream, die, kill somebody and run away. In no particular order. The proprietor added that the bar was always open if we wished a refreshment, and that room service snacks were available from seven to eleven p.m. He could also recommend some restaurants for eating out at.

  “Thank you,” Ellis cooed at him, and she did wink, “but I think we have all the eating we need right here!”

  I jerked my arm free and ran into the room. The proprietor went away chuckling and Ellis followed me in, closed the door behind her.

  “What the fuck are you playing at?” I demanded.

  She gave me an innocent look. “I was just having fun with him.”

  “You called me your sweetie. If you ever do that again, I swear I’ll sharpen a railway tie and drive it through your fucking heart.”

  Ellis smirked. “Do you know that you’re adorable when you’re angry?” she asked.

  I threw my hands up in defeat and stomped into the bathroom, slammed the door shut behind me hard enough to set the cheesy pictures on the walls downstairs to rattling.

  It was going to be a long fucking night.

  CHAPTER THREE

  We headed off to visit the location set, there to talk to Amelia Kevorkian. Voshki had called her sister to let her know we’d be arriving and Amelia had arranged to have the makeup trailer to herself for an hour. Amelia is only alike her sister insofar as they both have dark eyes. Amelia is attractive in her own right, but she has none of Voshki’s traffic-stopping beauty. In a way it makes her, for want of a better word, more human. Less intimidating anyway. Amelia had an assistant fetch us coffees and we sat around in makeup chairs to hear firsthand what had been happening.

  There was a peeper alright. Several of the actresses, including my ex-girlfriend, had seen a face peering in the windows of their trailers when they were getting undressed, as had at least a dozen female crew members. Always the peeper was gone before anyone got to the scene, usually responding to the hysterical screams of an actress absolutely convinced she was about to be knifed to death by a crazed stalker fan. The local sheriff had conducted, in Amelia’s words, “an impressively thorough investigation.” I thought maybe we should pay this sheriff a visit soonest. I didn’t know how she would take to having a Hollywood agent asking her questions. Not very well, I suspected. Still, it would be wise to visit, introduce ourselves and at least try to get into her good graces. Failing that, I could always have Ellis glamour her. I can resist that too, by the way, but most other humans cannot.

  “You don’t think it’s anyone working on the show?” I asked, and Amelia shook her head. Of course that would have been just too damned easy. Besides, Amelia had already said she though the peeper was a vampire, and, as far as I knew, Amelia was the only vampire currently working on The Right Guy.

  “A local vampire then?” Ellis asked. Again Amelia nodded. Grimly. I understood why. The vampire was seriously risking exposure, especially if the local sheriff were not vampire-friendly. And exposing one vampire could too easily lead to exposing the whole comm
unity.

  “Do you think the sheriff is in the know?” I asked Amelia. She considered this, then gave her head a slow shake. Strictly speaking, Voshki, as the community leader, should be aware of all humans who are in the loop. But like so many things, that makes a better theory than it does a reality. “But it’s possible?” I persisted.

  “I guess,” Amelia agreed reluctantly.

  “We’ll find out,” Ellis said.

  Amelia then told us about the wardrobe assistant that had topped herself. The woman’s name had been Cherie Dunlop, she was twenty-eight, and as far as anyone had known, she had not appeared to be suicidal. Of course, most of those who commit suicide for real give no indication of their intent beforehand. It’s what makes suicide such a puzzling and horrifying thing to those the deceased leave behind. I asked what had been Ms. Dunlop’s chosen method and Amelia told me she slashed her wrists. Unusual for a woman, but not completely unheard of. The body was being held at the local morgue. I knew we would probably have to visit, get a look, and I was not looking forward to that.

  Eventually we ran out of details to discuss and Amelia inquired after her sister. Ellis told her that Voshki was fine, and then Amelia thanked me for coming up here to do this favor, and I said it was no problem. Liar that I am. Ellis beamed at me.

  “Dante is a tad upset because I booked us a room with a double bed,” she crowed.

  Amelia gave me a puzzled look. “I thought you wanted to sleep with Ellis? That’s what Voshki says anyway,” she remarked.

  I added Voshki to the ever-growing list of those I was going to kill. And I told Amelia that no, I did not wish to sleep with Ellis, Voshki was wrong about that. I am such a fucking liar, really I am. As afraid and conflicted as I often am about Voshki’s interest in me, I have secretly been crushing on Ellis Kovacs for a long time. Or maybe not so secretly, judging by the dubious looks Amelia and Ellis both gave me. As we were leaving I paused and inquired after the sheriff’s name, and whether she seemed to Amelia to be a Hollywood fan or not?