Read Online Gypsy Blood by Steve Vernon - Free Book Online

hypnotic about the way he looked, rattling on down the hill like a runaway paraplegic, like it would keep rolling forever.
    “Catch him,” Maya shouted.
    “Why bother,” Carnival said. “He’s headed for the bay. A car might hit him. Better yet, a truck.”
    She was okay with that. It hadn’t been her idea to move him in the first place. Carnival couldn’t blame her.
    What could the police do to a vampire? Impound her coffin? APB her tomb?
    He stared at her, trying to remember when he’d decided he was okay with murder.
    “I’m not, you know,” he said.
    “Not what?”
    “Not one of your kind. I never will be.”
    She shrugged. “We’ll see,” she said.
    He didn’t like the sound of that but she had a point. Two of them, growing out of her mouth, long and white and sharp. He figured there wasn’t much he could do about it just now.
    The guy on the chair rolled up and over one more rise and then down below the horizon. There was nothing left but the distant rolling rattle. Then even that was gone. He probably hit the water. Even if he didn’t there wasn’t that much to tie him to a Gypsy palm reader. It wasn’t like Carnival had left him holding one of his personal business cards.
    Death will out, boy. No matter how hard you try to hide it, death will out. Go and ask Macbeth.
    “Do you have a name?” Maya asked. “Or just a sign on your window?”
    He nearly laughed. He was in love, not stupid.
    “I know better than to give the undead my true name. You can call me Carnival, or Val if you don’t like the feel of something that long in your mouth.”
    He winked. She ignored his entendre. The distant rattle rolled on.
    “Do you want to stay over?” he asked.
    She gave Carnival a grin that barely covered her canines.
    “Never on the first date.”
    Ha. You should have known she’d feed you another line, boy.
    Maya stepped into the street light. In a moment she’d be gone. Vanished like smoke on the wind.
    “Where else can you go?” Carnival persisted. That earned him another grin. He liked that. He could grow used to that grin.
    Ha! A man can get used to boiling in oil, too, but would you want to try?
    “A girl can go anywhere she wants to. It’s a great big old night. There’s room enough for everyone.”
    Nice. A vampire who believes in free will.
    “Come on,” Carnival coaxed. “I’d like you to stay over. I promise to dust.”
    He gave her his most winning smile. It’s a hard smile to resist. He practiced it daily, along with his shrug. She tilted her head like she was thinking about it. He prayed she was.
    Be careful what you wish for, boy.
    He wasn’t proud. He’d take a date any chance that he got. Even a vampire.
    “All right,” She said. “Let’s go.”
    He smiled all the harder. A yes to a first date and he’d only had to kill one guy for it. Who says gypsies don’t have any luck?
    And yet, he wondered what Olaf thought about how things ended up.

Chapter 9
     
    Slam Dunk Sunk Funk
     
    D eath is a little like luck. It always runs out and there seems to be never quite enough of it to go around. No matter how dead a body gets, there’s always a little life, hovering close to the bone and deep in the blood.
    Olaf Richardson lay in the water, in the darkness, cradled by the numbing hand of death. He could see himself, looking at himself from somewhere far off behind an unseen curtain.
    A curtain he’d just passed through.
    He felt his body strapped to that ridiculous office chair, bumping along like a cheap roller coaster until the wheels slammed hard against the rim of the wharf and he tipped up and over and into the waiting ocean.
    Splash.
    Two points.
    Sinking downward, still bound to the office chair.
    He felt strangely prophetic. He’d told his wife that this was how he expected to go. How he wanted to die, sitting in an office chair, engrossed in a heap of statistics and spreadsheets, calculating the drift and accumulation of a client’s meager fortunes. Dead in an