Glamoured: A Modern Fairy Tale

9. Garlic Perfume

Eleanor set her alarm for an hour earlier than normal so she'd have time to go and visit Jo. She stopped at Dunks on the way and picked her friend up tea and a sausage-egg-and-cheese. After bounding up the steps, Eleanor rang the buzzer and was let in immediately. The door was open, and Brandon stood in the doorway with his own dozen donuts.

"Great minds think alike," Eleanor said, holding up her own bag.

"Yay! Second breakfast!" Jo clapped and leaped off the futon, where she'd apparently slept last night as well. She took the tea, and Eleanor plopped down on the chair.

"Did you, ugh, show Brandon?" Eleanor asked, glancing up at him. Jo stiffened, and she shook her head.

"No one likes a secret keeper." Brandon waggled his finger at him, but when he caught the look on Eleanor's face, his smile faltered. He crossed his arms and stared at them, and Eleanor sighed, throwing her hands up in the air.

"Show him. I'll sound crazy—okay, crazier—if you don't."

Jo's eyebrows shot up, and she asked, "You found—"

"Not much, but yeah, the attack was totally real," she said.

"Wow, Sherlock Holmes would be proud of those powers of deduction," Brandon said.

Jo rolled her eyes and put down her coffee. She undid the bandage on her shoulder, and the bruising had gone from the dark purple and blues to a sickly, jaundiced yellow. The wounds were scabbing and not as bright and puckered as they'd been when Eleanor first saw them, but it was still clearly recognizable as a bite.

"That's...what the fuck...what kind of person does that?" Brandon asked, his jaw falling open. He inched closer, squinting down at the scars.

"Not a person," Eleanor said. "A creature."

"Like a dog? I thought the police said the attacker was holding Jo down. Last time I checked, dogs don't have thumbs."

Eleanor sighed, exchanging a knowing look with Jo. It was time to take the plunge.

"It was a vampire," she said in one breath. To Brandon's credit, he didn't laugh; he shook his head slowly, doing the sane thing and denying the supernatural.

"I saw it," Eleanor continued. "It jumped on the roof. I went back to El Caliente and tried that stunt, and I couldn't even touch the roof, let alone haul myself up it. Jesus, Brandon, none of us could've pulled that move off, and we climb on the regular."

"You sure it wasn't the Yao Ming of creepy guys?" he asked.

"No," Jo choked out the word. Brandon swallowed and clamped his jaw shut.

Eleanor cleared her throat and turned to Jo. "There were marks on the roof," she said. "Both sides—I think it followed the railroad tracks to the bar."

"Hold it, Nancy Drew—you went looking for the thing that did that?" Brandon said, pointing at Jo's exposed bite.

"The police sure as shit aren't going to find it." Eleanor crossed her arms. "Besides, it was a bright and sunny day."

"And did you? Find it, I mean," Jo asked softly.

Eleanor shrugged. "Maybe. There's a house, and it's not far from the bar. The thing could've gotten from house to bar without being seen or crossing any major roads. If I were a murderous bloodsucker, that's how I'd travel."

Brandon's jaw slipped open again, and he stared between the two women. "Oh no, you're not going back there," he said. "Call the cops."

"And what? Tell them to just investigate this house I happen to think the attacker lives at?" Eleanor asked, cocking an eyebrow. Brandon pursed his lips and gave a hapless shrug.