Ophelia smiled. “He’s good at energy manipulation. He must like you.”

  “Or feel sorry for me,” Art said philosophically. “He said he did it to prove to me that I was sexy, which makes no sense, because he was the one who made it happen, but you know what? I really feel sexy now. He says Dar kept looking at me, and that the other woman was only sexy on the outside, and she was screwing even that up by being such a bitch.” Uneasiness crossed her face. “He said she won’t be in town long, but how can he possibly know that? He sort of scared me for a bit, but then he was sweet again, and he made me give him my number.”

  Damn. What was Constantine planning?

  “Anyway, I’ve decided to at least try for Dar, but I wish I hadn’t done the nude modeling. What if Dar finds out?”

  “If he minds about the modeling,” Ophelia said, “he’s not worth a minute of your time.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. I don’t know why you even considered paying the blackmailer. What about the drawings the students made of you? You have no control over what happens to those, any more that you have over the photos. You’re already out there. Just forget the whole thing.”

  Art looked dubious, but then Gretchen appeared from foraging in the school grounds and nuzzled her. “That’s Gideon’s dog!”

  “He loaned her to me,” said Ophelia flatly.

  “Gideon loaned you Gretchen? She’s his absolute favorite dog. He says she’s the only woman he can talk to.” Art grinned. “I thought he’d given up on sleeping with you. He told me you said no.”

  “It’s never that simple,” Ophelia said.

  In the print and photo shop, Ophelia resisted punching the slime wearing a Constantine T-shirt and focused on being an innocent, friendly dupe. Such a small shop couldn’t have more than three or four employees, and this guy was here in the morning to open the night drop. He probably lived in the apartment overhead; he’d appeared via the stairs in the back room when she’d come into the store.

  She handed in the film she had picked up from Art and paid for some prints she had ordered a few days before. “That’ll be seven sixty-three,” the slime said, playing with his tongue ring. A strand of dirty blond hair caught at the edge of his mouth. “Nice flower pictures. Did you take them?”

  “Yeah, I’m a landscaper, and those are some of the gardens I did,” Ophelia said politely. You never knew what might drum up business, although she wouldn’t touch this creep with a fifty-foot hose. She handed him a ten-dollar bill and his fingers touched hers. Eew.

  “I bet you photograph real well, ma’am,” he said slowly, with a widening leer. “You’re quite a flower all on your own.”

  “Fuck off, asshole.” So much for friendly and innocent. This did not bode well for success at self-control.

  “Don’t even think about her, if you value your life.” Donnie Donaldson ambled up to the counter. “Ophelia wields a mean shotgun.”

  Crap. Why had he shown up now? “Hey, Donnie.”

  Donaldson grinned. “Saw you pull it on that cop last night.”

  “Donnie, you’re such an old woman, peeking out the window at your neighbors.”

  “Nothing else to do. Think he’ll stay away? He’s got plenty of guts, I have to say that for him. He didn’t budge when you shot at him.”

  Ophelia shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “He said he wouldn’t come back. He knows I’m not interested.”

  “Why’d he give you the dog, then?”

  Shit. Ophelia rolled her eyes. “I’m thinking of buying her from him,” she improvised. “She’s a great dog. Well, I gotta go.” And get out of here before my plan is totally screwed.

  “That hot little cunt shot at a cop?” The slime’s lascivious voice pursued her out the door. “Man, I could use a shot at her!”

  That afternoon in the middle-school art room, Joanna Wyler tiptoed to the table where Zelda was snipping pictures from magazines. She whispered, “Shawanda’s not here, so can I sit with you?”

  “You can sit with me even when Shawanda is here.” Zelda scooted her stool over. “There’s room for three.”

  “Thanks,” Joanna muttered, “but Shawanda scares me to death.” She set her own magazines down.

  “You’ll have to stop being a wimp if you want to hang with me,” Zelda said. “If that really is what you want to do.” The scissors flew through and around a garden, and roses littered the table. She fixed a challenging gaze on her would-be friend. “What’s the deal?”

  Joanna flipped jerkily through the top magazine in her pile. “I need advice.”

  “From me?” Zelda grinned evilly. “First thing, no more preppy button-down shirts.” Joanna reddened, looking so miserable that Zelda took pity. “Just joking. What you wear is your business. Or your mother’s, in this case. But what kind of advice can you possibly want from me?” She handed a pair of scissors to Joanna. “We’d better look busy. Cut some stuff out.”

  Joanna started snipping at random. In a low voice, she said, “I need advice about sex.”

  Zelda struggled to ignore a surge of fury; she might not care whether she turned out to be a vamp, but she absolutely refused to inherit her mother’s temper. She hadn’t tamped it down quickly enough, judging by the alarm in Joanna’s eyes. “Wait till tomorrow,” she said evenly. “Shawanda knows more than me. She’s older. She’s done it.”

  “I’m sorry.” Joanna cut jaggedly around the fork in a silverware ad, her hands trembling. “Your Mom has a club, so I thought…God, I’m such a loser. I can’t say anything right.”

  Zelda put out a hand to pat Joanna’s. “Calm down. I’m not pissed off at you, and even if I was, what does it matter? I’d still be your friend.” She tore out a page of daisies.

  “Thanks.” Joanna’s whisper was barely audible. “I didn’t mean you were sleeping around. I didn’t mean your mom’s a whore or anything awful like that. But you’re different, and my friends are so useless. Some of them have had sex, but they’re all such…such…”

  “Sheep?” Zelda suggested. Daisies carpeted the roses.

  Joanna let out a hysterical giggle and clamped her hand over her mouth. “Uh-huh, and you can’t trust grownups, and—”

  “Depends on the grownup,” Zelda said. “Who do you want to do it with? Him?” She waved the scissors in the direction of a hunky eighth grader named Rick, whose collage of a multicolored goddess had begun to take shape. “It’s obvious sex is on his mind.”

  “No!” Joanna hissed. Hurriedly, she cut out a carving knife.

  “Maybe those are your boobs he’s putting on his collage,” Zelda murmured. Rick raised his head, first looking blankly in their direction and then unexpectedly fixing on Zelda. She grinned at him and turned back to littering the table with flowers. “They’re definitely not mine.”

  “You’re so lucky. I hate the way guys look at me,” Joanna said. She snipped around a cross studded with diamonds.

  “Ignore them,” Zelda said. “And to answer your unspoken question, don’t have sex.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, but you don’t care what other people think. I need a good reason why not. And don’t tell me it’s illegal until I’m sixteen or I might get pregnant or an STD. I already know all that.” Joanna found a photo of a pair of garden shears and cut them out.

  “How about because you don’t want to?”

  Joanna blinked.

  “Having a guy look at your boobs is part of sex,” Zelda said. “If you don’t want that, you don’t want sex. And then, of course, there’s love. It’s better if you’re in love.”

  “That’s what Ophelia said. That’s what her policeman said, too.”

  “They were right. The only way to not care what other people think is to just not care.”

  “But—”

  “Think about it,” Zelda said. “You don’t have to be a wimp if you don’t want to.”

  A minute later, Joanna looked up from the vodka bottle she had cut from an ad. “They may not be your boobs,” she told Zelda, “but Rick is definitely looking at you.”

  Zelda raised her eyes coolly to Rick’s. His mouth hung slightly open, and his eyes widened when Zelda’s gaze fenced with his.

  Zelda shrugged and turned back to her friend.

  At the nursery that afternoon, Ophelia stood by while a sturdy guy named Bob loaded Japanese maples onto her truck. She could have done it fine herself, but Bob was dying to help, to gaze at Ophelia and brush by her any chance he could. The last-ditch option of jumping Gideon was looking better by the second. Hot sex would take the edge off her allure.

  Stop planning on sex. That’s only a last resort.

  Stop hoping for a last resort.

  Late in the day, when all Andrea Dukas’s plants, including the stressed azaleas, had homes in the ground, Ophelia parked in a small gravel lot off the river road and wandered with Gretchen down a path to the river. “I’m not exactly planning to sleep with him, but I’m incredibly nervous,” she told the dog. “What if he doesn’t like the fangs?”

  Gretchen grinned, showing a delightful set of teeth.

  “Sure, but you’re supposed to have magnificent canines. I don’t want a man who has sex with me because he can’t help himself and then freaks out afterwards.” Gretchen hared off down the trail, and a minute later an angry quail rose from the underbrush. The dog lolloped expectantly back, but Ophelia’s mind was elsewhere. “I know it’s old-fashioned and impractical for a vamp, but deep in my unrealistic heart, I want someone who loves me—me and my fangs.”

  Gretchen nudged Ophelia and took off again. Ophelia reached the edge of the woods to see two wild turkeys flap noisily away. The dog returned and butted the shotgun tucked under Ophelia’s arm.

  “A hunter, are you? I’m not hunting today, Gretchen. The only prey I need is a man.”

  They stood by the river, their respective curls ruffled by a fitful breeze. It’s my nature, thought Ophelia. I’m a frigging man hunter. Nothing more.

  A solitary fisherman appeared upriver on the opposite bank and raised a cordial hand; men were so much more pleasant at a distance. Ophelia waved away a cloud of gnats and picked her way disconsolately downriver. At a flicker of movement beside a log, she and Gretchen both stopped dead.

  Slowly, very slowly, Ophelia laid down the gun, pulled a slingshot out of her pocket, loaded it with a convenient pebble, took aim, and let fly. Bingo! The nutria toppled into the river, and Gretchen bounded past, almost knocking Ophelia into the water. She returned with the rodent, neck neatly broken. “Supper,” Ophelia said. “Gretchen, you’re the best.”

  They hiked up an overgrown trail toward the road, pushing vines this way and that, dipping under a fallen ironwood, climbing over a rotting pine. They came out of the woods a short way down the road from her truck. Gretchen yipped excitedly and trotted toward the parking area, bounced partway back to Ophelia, and took off again. Ophelia gave up on justifying herself, saw the flashing blue light from a police car, heard voices, and arrived in the parking lot to find Gretchen licking a uniformed policeman.

  “Down, Gretchen!” the cop protested. “Where’s Gideon? He can’t be here yet. He was twenty minutes away five minutes ago.” The man’s eyes fell on Ophelia and stayed there.

  Ophelia glanced from the cop to his car, which partly blocked the entrance to the lot, to a stunned, sick-looking couple propped up by a silver Toyota, and finally to her truck. To two bare feet hanging off the back of it. “What the hell is going on? Who is that in my truck?”

  The policeman stopped gaping and remembered his job. “That’s your pickup, ma’am? The green truck?”

  “Of course it’s mine,” she snapped. “Is there any other truck here, green or otherwise?” Ophelia marched over to her vehicle, the policeman hurrying alongside, protesting feebly.

  Dumped among the maple saplings lay a body. A horrendous pulpy mass had once been the man’s face. Blood—there was blood everywhere: on his straggly dark blond hair, on his belly beneath a ripped Constantine shirt, dried and crusted on his jeans. His thigh lay across a helpless, broken maple twig, and his butt had demolished another tree entirely. Her mouth twisted in the effort to keep back her fangs. She pressed a hand to her face and stumbled to the edge of the woods, where she laid her shotgun and the nutria to one side and tried like hell to be sick.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  From the reception area of Bayou Gavotte’s cheerful little police station came a shrill, unwelcome voice. “Who do you think you’re looking at?” Marissa said, and then, “This place is a dump,” and finally, “I want you to arrest Constantine Dufray.” In the back, with a view through a partially open door, Gideon propped his feet up and waited for the inevitable.

  “Woo-hoo!” Jeanie clapped her hands. “That’s thirty-three whole weeks!”

  The chief, unfortunately clad in his oldest overalls today, set the plywood he was staining on a newspaper-covered bench by the wall. He laid his paintbrush beside it, took out his wallet, and handed the dispatcher a five. “Damn it, Jeanie, I can’t afford this bet anymore.”

  “Hey!” the blonde said. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “Sure did, ma’am. That’s thirty-three straight weeks of complaints about Constantine Dufray. Ever since his wife was poisoned, the psychic researchers have had a field day.” He pulled a battered notebook from his hip pocket and sat on the bench. “He been sending you nightmares? That’s the most common complaint, followed by sex dreams, suicidal depression—”

  Jeanie snorted. “It can’t be sex dreams. Women never complain about those. It’s their stodgy old husbands who do.”

  “You don’t look suicidal, ma’am,” the chief said. “You look pissed off.” He clicked his ballpoint. “What kind of nightmares? Wild mustangs trampling you?”

  “That’s a sex dream,” Jeanie said. “One of the best.”

  “Tied to a super-size dream catcher?”

  “Sex dream.” By now, Jeanie would be buffing her long copper nails. “Lame. How about eagle-feather tickle torture?”

  “Now, now, Jeanie,” the chief said. “This is serious to our visitor, if not to you.”

  Marissa spat, “He’s not sending me nightmares. He killed my husband!”

  Jeanie laughed with delight, and the chief threw up his hands. “That’s what, twelve?”

  “Thirteen,” Jeanie said, “and you know it.” Grumbling, the chief gave her a twenty. He flipped several pages farther and made a notation. “Are you reporting a murder, ma’am?”

  “Goddamn right I am!”

  “Not my department,” the chief said happily. “Gideon!”

  Gideon took his sweet time, emerging to find Marissa pacing the floor in an animal-print bodysuit and a snarl. “This is a missing-persons case,” he said. “Nothing to do with me.”

  “She said it was a homicide,” the chief replied blandly.

  “It’s not a homicide without a corpse,” Gideon said.

  “Find the frigging corpse, then, and it will be!” Marissa splayed her hands on shiny, leopard-skinned hips. “This is your detective? I want someone else, not Vibrator Man.”

  Jeanie choked on a giggle. She glanced from Gideon to Marissa and back. “Ooh, what’s our resident sex god come up with now? A new interrogation aid?”

  “What kind of man gives his girlfriend a vibrator?” Marissa made a face. “An inadequate one.”

  “You have a new girlfriend, Gideon?” Jeanie bounced up. “Who? Is it her?”

  “No girlfriend,” Gideon said. “It was a gag gift.” He leaned across and clicked on Jeanie’s keyboard. “Mrs. Parkerson, I checked into your husband’s disappearance this morning. We handled it close to two years ago.”

  Jeanie scanned the computer screen. “John Parkerson, exotic dancer from Atlanta. According to the report of a local pharmacist, Mr. Parkerson filled a prescription for painkillers, mentioning in idle conversation that he’d found a job in Houston. The pharmacist went outside for a smoke immediately afterward and recalls seeing Mr. Parkerson get into his car and take the ramp for Interstate 10. All other inquiries drew a blank. Parkerson’s vehicle never surfaced under his name or any other, and Parkerson has not been seen in Bayou Gavotte since that time.”

  The chief said, “Have you tried Houston, ma’am?”

  “Of course I’ve tried Houston,” Marissa snapped. “I’ve tried everywhere. After he left here, Johnny dropped out of sight, and I bet it’s because he never left at all. He was way too hung up on his stupid Ophelia Beliveau for that. But he’s not at Blood and Velvet. I spent a fortune to have it checked out every day for two whole weeks.”

  “They don’t have exotic dancers at Blood and Velvet.” The chief spread stain on another piece of plywood with slow, smooth strokes. “It’s an elegant sort of place. Try the Chamber or the Oubliette. If your husband’s still working in Bayou Gavotte, that’s where he’ll be.”

  “Get your ass whipped at the Chamber while you’re there,” Jeanie advised. “A never-to-be-forgotten experience.”

  “That’s enough, Jeanie,” the chief said. “Gotta have some standards of decorum.”

  “Sorry, Chief,” Jeanie returned unrepentantly.

  “You’re the police chief?” Marissa sneered down her nose at his paint-spattered overalls.

  He dropped his brush into a bottle of spirits. “That’s me.”

  “Then you look for Johnny, damn it! And when you don’t find him, I want you to arrest Constantine Dufray. He’s in cahoots with those bitches at Blood and Velvet. They got pissed off at Johnny, and Constantine killed him. I’m sure of it!”

  Jeanie grinned. “Ooh, death by Dufray. Very sexy. Have you seen him in person, hon? Definitely to die for.” The phone rang and Jeanie elbowed Gideon away to answer it.

  “Yes, I’ve seen him,” Marissa said. “He’s creepy. He laughed like he was the devil himself when I said he killed Johnny.”

  “He always laughs like that.” The chief thumped the lid onto the can of stain. “Likes to mess with people. Can’t say I like him much, but he generates a lot of publicity for Bayou Gavotte. Nowadays we get as many tourists as New Orleans.” His brows drew together. “You publicly accused Dufray of killing your husband?”