Free The Falstaff Vampire Files by Lynne Murray Page B

really emanates from the superiority of an ego which neither his physical nor his moral defects can rob of its joviality and security.’”
    “Physical and morally defective. But jovial! This is damning with faint praise indeed.” His voice was a low growl.
    “For Freud that was pretty close to a valentine.”
    “I’d call him out for a duel,” Sir John muttered. “If I knew where he lived.”
    “He’s been dead a long time, Sir John. Unless he’s become a vampire somewhere.”
    “Not he. Not the type.”
    “You’re probably right. I’m sure Freud would have preferred death to considering that there might be a reality in what he thought of as superstition.” As I said it, I wondered if it was Freud or myself I was describing.
    Vi waved as she went out the door on her grocery errand.
    Sir John stood and bowed goodbye. He turned to me. “So, wench, shall we to supper?”
    I stepped back and put my hand up to guard my throat instinctively. “I thought vampires couldn’t eat solid food.”
    “Nor can we. Come, Mistress Kit, there’s a way round many a locked door. Who calls me glutton? Let us go to the banquet hall or tavern, you eat and the smallest sip of your substance will last me the night.”
    “I take it I get to pay the bill as well?”
    He laughed, “So you do. So you do, indeed.” He dug into the pocket of those awful striped track suit pants and pulled out a much-worn velvet bag, opened it up and dug out a handful of odd looking coins, mostly dark with age and strangely lumpy looking. One of them, I noted, had been cut in half. He selected three and motioned for me to put out my hand. He pressed two dark coins into my palm with a solemn expression.
    They seemed very old and crudely minted. “I’ve never seen a coin like this.”
    “That is a groat. Worth much more now.”
    I pointed to the face stamped in metal. “The man on there looks like you.”
    He bent to look and I smelled his strange, scent. “Ah, that is Great Harry, the eighth by that name.”
    “Henry the Eighth of England?”
    He nodded. “The same.”
    I examined the other. “This one says, Dum Spiro Spero.”
    “Meaning—‘While I breathe, I hope.’” He snaked the other arm around my waist to pull me close. “The third coin could be had, my lady, if you could be had.”
    His hands were cold, and I felt a rush of fear. Then as if my skin reached out for his touch, a drowsy, sensual warmth stole over me. This must have been what happened in the car. I tried to pull away, but he held me fast.
    “Let me go.”
    For a moment we stood almost nose to nose, then I saw the coin he held up just out of reach. I laughed. “That third coin is an Eisenhower dollar, you cheapskate. Let’s go to dinner.”
    He released me so quickly that I nearly stumbled.
    “So it’s not a rumor that vampires—?” The question was half out before I realized how unwise the question was.
    “What rumor would that be?” He smiled as if he knew what I had been about to ask.
    “Never mind.” Had I really been so unwise as to think of questioning him about whether vampires had sex? I put the two coins he gave me in my pocket. They could have been fake, or rare and valuable enough to repay me for the money I was surely about to spend on him in high-priced, twenty-first century San Francisco.
    I looked him in the eye. “I won’t let you drink my blood.”
    “No need of that, fair one. Take me to where people eat and drink, and I will do the rest.”
    I sighed. “Do you have anything else to wear?”
    He glanced down at his outfit. “Not this?”
    “Not for a nice restaurant.”
    “Mistress Reba brought in a seamstress to clothe me in style. Then she took back the splendid garments in a fit of rage, and exiled me from the house. No need for fine clothes in the garden shed.” He raised his eyes mournfully to the ceiling.
    “I’m not going to ask what you did to provoke her.”
    “You wound me. I only trifled when invited.” His pantomime