Free The Falstaff Vampire Files by Lynne Murray

change, tunes change. The old fox needs a new den.

Chapter 24
    Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes
    August 6th
     
    I woke up late and rushed to get ready for my first client, followed by a day so full of interruptions and unexpected demands that I had no time to think about the two marks on my neck covered by a blouse with a high collar. It was already dark when I stood on Vi’s back steps and knocked on her kitchen door holding a box of pastries from a bakery down the street.
    When she answered the door Vi was in such a state of rare excitement that she could barely stand still.
    “Oh, thanks, wonderful! Put it on the counter and come through to the front room—you have to see this.” She led the way through the hall.
    “My lady, your presence honors us.” Sir John’s smiling presence made the air shimmer with anticipation that I totally mistrusted. He half rose and sketched a bow, then settled back into the big wing chair next to the tall bookcases that framed the fireplace. The huge greatcoat I’d seen him wear was draped over the back of the sofa.
    “How did you get in here?”
    He smiled, inclined his head toward Vi.
    “Kit, this is so exciting.” She waved a spiral notebook at me.
    “Oh, God.” I felt the blood stirring inside me as if I were blushing all over, yet there was also a chill down my spine. Vi’s front room, where I had stood a hundred times, seemed strange and alien. Even my own psychology reference books in the bookcase opposite Vi’s vampire books looked alien, as if I were seeing them through someone else’s eyes.
    Vi sat down on the sofa and leaned toward the wing chair. “Sir John has been telling me about his life as a vampire. He met the real Henry the Fourth and the Fifth, and Christopher Marlowe. Shakespeare’s Falstaff is based on him. This is so exciting.”
    I sat next to her on the sofa. “Violet, are you crazy?”
    She smiled even more broadly. “I think the jury is out on that one.”
    “This is so unwise. You don’t know this man.”
    “I know.” Vi waved her notebook. “That’s why I’m interviewing him.”
    I turned to Sir John. “How did you find this place?”
    Ignoring my hostile tone, Sir John leaned back in his chair.
    “My sojourn in the ranks of the undead, young madam, has sharpened my senses immensely.” He stretched with a show of massive arms and belly. “Once I had your perfume in here—” he tapped his reddened nose—”’twas a simple matter to track you to this place. As soon as I arose this eve, I came here looking for you and found our lovely hostess on the steps. She invited me in. She even found a place for my luggage in a spare room. In return I promised I would a tale to her unfold of the tragical life and undeath of poor Jack Falstaff. A man deprived. A man who loves roast fowl and sack, condemned to a life without either.”
    He heaved a sigh that I could have sworn stirred the curtains. “Food, I miss mightily. But sack! No sack, no reason to live.”
    “Uh, excuse us a minute. Violet, come here.” I pulled her out into the hallway. “What’s this sack he keeps talking about?”
    “It’s sherry. I looked it up. “
    “The man is mentally ill.”
    “I can hear every word, most clearly, ladies,” Sir John called from the front room.
    I stuck my head back in the door. “All right, Sir John. You must know that you can’t abuse Vi’s hospitality much longer. Amuse yourself with some books or something and we’ll be back in just a minute.” This time we went all the way to the kitchen, testing the theory that maybe he wouldn’t hear us back here. “Vi, everyone knows that Falstaff is a literary character. He wasn’t even alive.”
    “Vampires are mythical too. So what?”
    “Two myths don’t make a reality. A literary creation can’t become real enough to sit in your living room, and vampires don’t exist. Can’t you see you’re being conned? He’s either deluded, or an actor playing a part, or both.”
    Every