Free Vampire Miami by Philip Tucker Page B

hand.
    “Are you my friend?”
    “What?” The other woman frowned at her, as if
the question didn’t make sense. “Your friend?”
    “Yeah,” said Selah. “Are we friends?”
    “Damn girl, I nearly died tonight saving your
skinny black ass. You bet I’m your friend.” Maria Elena blew out a
plume of nearly invisible smoke and smiled. Still jittery, still
nervous. She hadn’t, Selah thought, saved her. The vampire had.
Nothing Maria Elena could’ve done would’ve changed things. But she
had come. Had come for her, and not abandoned her. So she squeezed
her hand, and felt Maria Elena squeeze back.
    “Seriously, tell me, how the hell did you get
the Dragon’s attention?”
    Selah felt a fey, strange amusement well up
within her. She controlled her face, tried to not smile. It was all
so surreal. Looked out at the ocean and said calmly, “Oh, it was no
big deal. We just danced for a while.”
    Maria Elena let out an outraged squawk and
stood. Stared at Selah, hands on hips. “You what? You danced with
him? For a while?”
    Selah looked up, smiled. Felt brave, foolish,
happy. She was alive, she was free, and she suddenly loved the look
on the older girl’s face. “Yeah. Only until I got bored,
though.”
    Maria Elena took her clutch purse and smacked
Selah across the shoulder, and Selah nearly fell off the wall,
laughing so hard that Maria Elena hit her again and then a third
time, driving Selah off the wall and onto the sand.
    “You,” said Maria Elena, pointing her cigarette
at her, cherry tip bright in the night, “are grade-A crazy.”
    “I didn’t know who he was,” said Selah, standing
up and sitting back down.
    “So like, what—is he a good dancer?”
    Selah grinned, and then realized she was being
teased. “Not bad.” Her smile smoothed away. That small room with a
drain in the center. Those black eyes. The rancid fear. She
swallowed, looked down at her hands, then back up. “Thanks, by the
way. For coming in to get me.”
    “Pssht, whatever. So OK. Start from the
beginning. Tell me everything. Hector told me to take the night
off. We’ve got time before we have to meet Angelo and get a ride
back home.”
    So Selah did. Maria Elena was a great listener.
She began with her father’s disappearance, and then threw caution
to the wind and told her about his investigation to Blood Dust, how
she’d decided to come to Miami to continue his work, to refuse to
give up on him and accept his disappearance. How she’d begun
dancing with Michael, about his backflip, the drinks, the music.
The hands on her hips. How good it’d felt. Maria Elena called her
crazy again at that point, but it was true—that moment had been
amazing. Then how she’d realized what was going on. The fear, the
bathroom, the panic.
    Maria Elena insisted that she’d been at the door
the whole night, but finally admitted to taking a fifteen-minute
break to score some food. Selah continued on about the lounge, her
Omni, her decision to record.
    When she finished, Maria Elena discarded her
second cigarette and began to run her hands through her heavy mane
of black hair. Lips pursed, she looked out at the ocean and shook
her head. “I don’t know if you are the luckiest or unluckiest
person I have ever met. Is it possible to be both?”
    “I don’t know,” said Selah. “Apparently.” They
subsided into silence. Both stared at the ocean, and then, knowing
that Maria Elena would make fun of her, she asked, “So, what do you
know about Blood Dust? Can you tell me anything?”
    “Not too much. It’s new, yeah? And probably the
one thing that’s illegal in Miami. I’ve heard that it’s big on the
West Coast, and it makes people act crazy. If you get caught with
it, you’re done. If you see people using or dealing, you got to
report them.”
    “Damn,” said Selah. “I asked Michael if he knew
where I could get some.”
    “You what?” Maria Elena just stared at her.
“Girl, he must really have liked you. If he’d