Free Consultation with a Vampire - 01 by Patrick E. McLean Page A

took Agnes a moment to process.
    “No, my boy. You mustn’t think it. My dear, sweet boy, it is not for me that you consider this thing. It is for you. A fine selfish influence. You desire that I remain for your own convenience and comfort,” she said somewhat cruelly, knowing that Edwin could not shape his lips to form the word “love.” She stopped and turned to face him in the street. Looking up at him in deadly earnest, she demanded, “Listen to me, Edwin Albert Windsor. When I am gone, you must let me go. To cling to the dead after they have departed is a kind of sin, perhaps the worst sin. I have had my time. I have taken my bludgeonings, and I am unbowed. Cling not to me, and in so doing become a monster.”  
    Edwin could say nothing.  
    “Now, I shall give you some practice in letting go. Call me a hansom cab, or failing that, a yellow taxi.”
    Edwin did as she asked. When she had gone, he walked long and far into the night, weighing many questions of value, time, and eternity. Surrounded by the city, swallowed by darkness.  

    What is the craziest, least logical, most emotional thing to do? Well, that’s just what Topper did. He awoke in the middle of the night, and that old feeling was back. He just knew he was going to do something stupid. As he struggled out of his custom-tailored silk pajamas and into some clothes, he muttered to himself, “This is what I get for going to bed early.”
    His explanation was not as crazy as you might think. When you are plagued by dreams, the last thing you need is more sleep. On this basis, he should have gone out and drunk his face off. But, for the first time in a great many years, instead of embracing his madness, he feared losing control.
    It was her. It was only her. Her smell. The thick curtain of her dark hair as it fell across his face. The barest touch of her lips on his neck. Those weren’t the thing; they were merely the doors, the access points to the most profound peace he had ever known. Access to a — it shamed Topper to use the word — love eternal, unchanging. A peace and acceptance he had never known in his life.  
    That’s the thing about chasing money and broads and booze and blow; chase them hard enough and long enough, and the worst thing in the world happens. You catch them. For your efforts, you are rewarded with a few moments of hyperbolic enjoyment, but then they are gone. All that remains is the hangover.  
    Pleasure, like life itself, is fleeting. All that Topper had ever known was changing the pace of the pursuit. But now he realized that there might just be some kind of eternal peace.  
    At the front of his building, he said to the third-shift doorman, “Get me a cab, Stevie. I’m off to confess my love.”

    So it was that Topper found himself huddled against the side of a cab, trying to hide from a cold wind off the river.   For a moment all he could do was stare at the ancient stone building where a few short days before, he had been a prisoner. Even after what he had been through, the outside of the building seemed scarier than the inside had.  
    “Who dropped a goddamn castle in the middle of the city?” Topper asked the wind.  
    He knocked on the window of the cab. When the driver rolled it down, Topper thrust a handful of bills at him and said, “Wait 15 minutes. If I’m not back by then, I’m not coming back.”
    “Is that good or bad?” the cabbie asked in a thick Armenian accent. Topper hardly heard him; he was already walking away.  
    Topper looked both ways before crossing the street. Yeah, safety, he thought. Don’t have a nice clean death in the street. How about you hustle over there and a catch a really messy one in that building of cold stone?  
    The stairs to the building hadn’t been designed for Topper’s legs. He took the first few as a normal-sized person would, one at a time. But before he reached the front door, set nearly a full story off the sidewalk, he was forced to slow. Having to press