Beautiful Strangers
Human beings are gregarious. For their own survival, they come together to form families, tribes, villages, and eventually societies and civilizations.
Vampires are an offshoot of humanity, and they still possess that same basic need for companionship. They feel loneliness as humans do, even though temperamentally they are ill-suited to forming relationships. Self-centered to an extreme, vampires are typically neurotic, prone to violent mood swings, and utterly unable to compromise.
Put two vampires together, any two vampires, and their first order of business is to tear each other to ribbons. Of course, over the millennia, vampires have evolved behaviours intended to allow them to co-exist with minimal bloodshed. These behaviours range from simple submissive gestures all the way to elaborate and legalistic ceremonies. Occasionally they actually work.
Mia had been sharing her living quarters with another vampire for months, and the strain of it was beginning to tell on her.
The Professor of Esoteric Medicine, her former teacher, was living in her home, recuperating after a vicious attack by an ungrateful student. His injuries had been severe and disfiguring. His appearance was so shocking that he could not walk the streets among humans without arousing fear and disgust. His verbal abilities had been affected as well. Aside from one single word, he had not spoken, and Mia was not sure how much he comprehended when she talked to him.
Despite being entirely dependent upon her for food and shelter, the Professor continued to act as if he were still the master and Mia the apprentice. Out of misguided loyalty and pity, she had not reprimanded him properly. The Professor, emboldened by her leniency, had broken the most basic rule of hospitality. He had killed a guest in her home.
Mia had placed the Professor's victim outside a New York night club where she was sure to be discovered. She had cried for Thirteen, but the time for tears and grief was over. Mia felt a righteous anger towards the vampire who had abused her hospitality and betrayed her trust.
Mia parked her van at a garage a few blocks from her brownstone. The sky was already turning pink. She walked home at a furious pace. Blinded by rage, it took her a moment to register that the front door was slightly ajar. She had certain that she had left the place fully secured. The alarm system had been activated and the door locked.
Cautiously, Mia stepped through the doorway. She called out to the Professor. There was no answer. She shut and locked the door behind her and then searched the brownstone thoroughly. The Professor was gone.
Mia realized that she had underestimated her old teacher. He must have secretly watched her enter the code to the security system. He had memorized it and used it to make his escape. The Professor had more of his wits left than he had let on.
Still fuming, Mia went to her bedroom. She opened the drawer to her nightstand and took out Wilson's cellphone. House's number was programmed into it. She could warn him that the Professor was alive and in New York. The prospect of entering into an alliance with the Professor's worst enemy was definitely appealing.
Impulsively, she called House's number. She heard the phone ring once...twice.
"Hello," House said. "Is that you, Thirteen?"
Silence.
"If you have something to say, then say it."
"The Professor's alive."
"What? Who is this? Is this Mia?"
Mia hung up. Wilson's phone rang. It was House was calling back. She turned off the phone and put it back in the drawer.
She went downstairs. She changed her security code so that the Professor would not be able to come in. He was out of her life. Whatever happened to him after this was no longer her responsibility.
Mia was too exhausted to make any more decisions. She needed sleep. She went to bed, leaving the Professor and House to fend for themselves.
The church was filled to overflowing. Some of the mourners were friends and family, but others, perhaps most, had never met the deceased. They were people who had seen her picture on television or in the newspapers and who came out of curiosity or because her story had touched them.
The service was decorous and respectful. The only speaker had been the minister of the church. He talked about Remy's accomplishments and catalogued her virtues. Her father did not speak, perhaps fearing that he would lose his composure. The policeman sat in the front of the church, gazing at his daughter's photograph, which was placed on an easel beside the altar. Remy's brother, who was in the latter stages of Huntington's disease, sat next to him, with a uniformed care attendant sitting on his other side. Sgt. Hadley had lost one child and would soon be losing another. The pain he had to be feeling was difficult to imagine.
Lucas turned away from Sgt. Hadley and looked instead at Remy's photograph. It was a family snapshot, but it looked as if it came from the pages of Vogue. Thirteen was poised, confident, and in total control of the image she projected. She smiled, but the smile never touched her eyes.
Lucas knew all about her. He could have made a comprehensive list of her boyfriends and girlfriends, going back to her first kiss in elementary school. He knew her credit rating. He had read her school reports and transcripts from kindergarten to medical school. He had studied the account of her arrest. He knew all the facts - everything that could be learned from outside - but nothing about what she felt or thought.
Not that it mattered. Chances were, who she was had nothing to do with her death. She had just met the wrong person at the wrong time.
The service was over, and the mourners, feeling vaguely dissatisfied, filed out. Lucas spotted a few familiar faces in the crowd. There was Foreman, a fine neurosurgeon now demoted to prison doctor. He had come to pay his respects to his former girlfriend and colleague. Cameron and Chase were there too, and so was Taub. The cosmetic surgeon was standing next to a red-head half a foot taller than him and at least a decade younger. Lucas had heard rumours that since Taub had left PPTH, his personal life had become very messy and complicated. Of all of House's fellows, only Kutner was absent. He was still on sabbatical in India. His friends were beginning to doubt that he would ever come back.
The sun beat down on him as he stood on the steps of the church, but Lucas shivered. Since House had disappeared, everything had changed. Who could have guessed that one bad-tempered, egotistical genius was the glue that kept PPTH together?
He turned to face Lisa Cuddy, the hospital's chief administrator and Dean of Medicine.
"There's a reception for friends and family," he said, 'but I'm not sure that we'd be welcome."
"You go," Cuddy said. "There's some hospital business that I should see to while I'm in New York. I'll meet you later."
She walked away briskly, stiletto heels tapping. Lucas watched her go.
His workaholic girlfriend had taken the day off to attend the funeral of a disgraced ex-employee she had barely known. That wasn't like her. Her behaviour puzzled him, but much of what Lisa Cuddy did was a mystery to him these days.
She was hiding something from him. He had tried to ignore the evidence: locked doors, phone calls abruptly terminated when he entered the room, even an unexplained outing in the very early hours of the morning. Lucas hadn't asked her questions because he'd be able to tell if she were lying, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to know the truth.
As soon as she was around the corner, Cuddy took out her cellphone and dialled House's number. The phone rang a dozen times before House finally picked it up.
He'd been asleep, and House groused that eleven thirty was far too early to disturb someone who seldom went to bed before eight in the morning. Lisa paid no attention to his complaints. She needed to see talk to him in person, and she couldn't wait until nightfall.
It took several minutes of persuasion and argument to get House to give her his address. Lisa hailed a cab to take her there. House's apartment building was a hotel that had been converted into cheap rental units. The building was run-down, and it would have taken a far more observant eye than Cuddy's to see its fine architectural lines and the traces of its former grandeur.
Instead of waiting for House to buzz her in, she slipped in the door behind an elderly woman carrying groceries. She followed her into the elevator and went up to House's floor. The halls were dimly lit and windowless, blocked off from any natural light. Cuddy knocked on the door.
Wilson answered the door. He was wearing a t-shirt, pajama bottoms, and thick wool socks. His hair was mussed; there were dark circles under his eyes,; and he needed a shave. He looked about as fearsome as a week-old kitten. Wilson blinked at her sleepily for a second before stepping out into the hall and shutting the door behind him.
"Where's House?" she asked.
"Getting dressed," he replied. "I need to speak to you for a moment before you see him."
"I'm not sure that we have anything to talk about."
"Coming here wasn't a good idea. You've texted House, called him on the phone and sent him e-mails. Now you've come to New York to see him. You`re encouraging his obsession. If you don`t want to join us, stay away. It's unkind to play with his emotions, and it's dangerous."
"I'm not 'playing with' House," Cuddy said, "I came here to talk about Thirteen, not to steal away your protector or break his sensitive vampire heart."
"Keep your voice down," Wilson said.
"You've given me your advice. If we`re done, I came to speak to House."
Wilson opened the door.
"I'm not your enemy, Lisa. I'm on your side."
"You and I are never going to be on the same side," Cuddy said, as she brushed past him. She was trembling.
House's studio apartment was dimly lit and shabby. Piles of paperback books were stacked against the wall, making the cramped space seem even smaller. There was a tiny unused kitchenette to one side and an even tinier closet on the other. She could pick out a few treasures hidden in the gloom: a flat screen television, a fine guitar. House was standing in the only other doorway, which seemed to lead to the bathroom. He'd been towel drying his hair, and he dropped the towel down casually on top of a pile of books. He took a step towards Cuddy.
Cuddy stepped back. There was a moment of supreme social awkwardness when House realized that Cuddy was afraid of him.
"I'd offer you refreshments, but all we have is tap water," House said, unsuccessfully trying to hide his dismay. He sat down on the sofa, gesturing for Cuddy to sit beside him. She didn't move.
"You didn't give us much warning that you were coming," Wilson said. "The place is a bit of a mess. Last night, I decided to rearrange my books. I had them ordered by author but I think chronological by country of origin might be more useful."
Wilson cleared a pile of books from an armchair. He sat down next to House on the sofa. Cuddy perched on the armchair uneasily. She glanced at the cover of one of the books. It pictured a caped figure towering over a waiflike young woman in a diaphanous nightgown. She looked away, feeling queasy.
"I told you over the phone that I had nothing to do with what happened to Thirteen," House said. "What do you have to discuss with me that couldn't wait until a decent hour?"
"If you didn't kill her, who did? Was it Wilson?"
"It wasn't Wilson. He was with me the night she was killed," House said. "Probably Mia. Possibly the Professor."
"Who's the Professor? Another vampire?"
House nodded.
"Why would they kill Thirteen?"
"To send a message to me," House said.
"What message?"
"Be afraid. Be very afraid," House guessed, shrugging his shoulders. "Thirteen was left outside the Beat Box. Mia knows I used to play there."
"If the press connects Thirteen's death with our disappearance, things could get very awkward," Wilson said. "Someone from the Beat Box could recognize House from a picture in the newspaper or on TV."
"Could recognize both of us," House corrected," Arthur "Mike" Mycroft, smokin' hot jazz pianist, and his eccentric manager Emil Lime."
"Eccentric!" Wilson protested.
"Eccentric is code for flamboyantly gay."
"Stop that," Cuddy said. "Thirteen is dead, and you're joking around. She used to be one of your fellows. You told me that she had the potential to be a brilliant doctor. If she hadn't become involved with you, she'd still be alive."
"That's hardly fair," Wilson said. "We didn't try to recruit her. Thirteen came to us, not the other way around. She tried to blackmail me."
"That was her big mistake," House said. "It turns out that Wilson really, really hates being blackmailed."
"Can't you even pretend to be sorry?"
"I could pretend," House said, "but you'd know I was faking. She tried to kill Wilson."
"Vampires aren't very good at forgiveness," Wilson said. "They are...we are...much better at vengeance and holding grudges."
"You made me part of this," she said, turning towards Wilson. "You barged into my house, dripping blood all over my floor, and you made me accessory to murder...two murders. I should go to the police."
"But you won't," House said.
"No, I won't." Cuddy said, getting to her feet. She looked weary and defeated. "Think about leaving the city. Think about going somewhere very far away. Las Vegas, Tierra del Fuego, wherever you like. Think about it seriously."
"I will," House said.
Cuddy left without saying goodbye.
Lucas and Cuddy were on the road back to Princeton. Lucas was driving Cuddy's SUV. Cuddy had slipped off her heels and was leaning back in her seat, eyes closed. She opened the window a few inches, letting the breeze play with her dark, curly hair.
"How did the reception go?"
"Awkward," Lucas said. "Sgt. Hadley shot me a death glare that would faze a raging elephant.
Foreman was there."
"I saw him at the funeral."
"He's working at a prison. He says the cons are crammed in like battery hens and his job is to keep them doped up on mood stabilizers and anti-psychotics so they don't kill each other. That and stitch up the stab wounds when the drugs don't work."
"He sounds cynical."
"He's bored out of his mind," Lucas said. "He's a neurosurgeon. All that skill, all those years of education wasted."
"This isn't an idle conversation, is it?"
"Firing him and refusing to write him a recommendation ruined his career. Maybe you were a bit harsh..."
"His actions cost the hospital millions of dollars in research funding. It wasn't entirely my decision. The board..."
"The board does exactly what you tell it to. You've got those old men wrapped around your little finger and you know it. Foreman's spent his time in purgatory. Don't you think it's time to forgive him?"
"He's not coming back to PPTH. I won't backtrack on that," Cuddy said, "but I'll talk to Ed at Saint Sebastian. I'll see what I can do."
"Great," Lucas said.
"Don't tell anyone," Cuddy said. "I wouldn't want it to get out. The best part of my day is when random strangers tell me I'm a bitch."
"No kidding. Do they really do that?"
"About as often as people tell you to mind your own business."
Lucas smiled. He took his eyes of the road to glance at his girlfriend.
"At this rate, we should get back to Princeton at three thirty or four and Rachel's babysitter is booked until six. That gives us at least a couple of hours to ourselves."
Cuddy opened her eyes and stretched.
"Stop tempting me. I really should spend some time on my budget presentation."
"You know those figures backwards and forwards. Any more prep will just get you keyed up. What you need to do is relax. Back at my apartment I've got bubble bath and champagne and chocolate..."
"Do you really?"
"No. I've got beer and potato chips. And dish soap if you're really into bubbles."
"It sounds wonderful."
