BVQA: Whoo, worry about the wait, peeps! I was going through some computer crap, then Lovesick just totally slipped my mind. . . anyway, school's starting back up soon, and I have no idea what impact that'll have on updates. It actually might make them faster, but again, no idea.
Donovan: Thanks! Next part is coming out. . . NOW!
Allanna Morgan: I love Ragamuffin and ice cream too. The world's best two things. . .
Panakeias: Hahah, thanks for saying it wasn't all that short, 'cuz I always feel super bad when a chapter isn't as long as I want it to be. Also, thanks for being specific in your review, because that always just blow me outta da water. About your prediction. . . no comment.
Isis Lied: Thanks a zillion for reviewing every chapter of this fic! Again, I can say NOTHING about the predictions. . . not without incurring the wrath of the Plot Spoiler demon, who is a fearsome beast indeed to behold.
Chapter 7
We're All Mad Here
Ragamuffin woke up with a splitting headache and an absolutely atrocious taste in his mouth. When he worked his tongue over his teeth to try and get rid of the flavor it felt like he was moving it through sludge. Gummy, foul-tasting sludge that made his entire mouth feel like it'd been coated in fat. What a way to greet the new night, huh?
He groaned and sat up, running one hand through his bed-head and propping himself up on the other one. He was sore all over from falling asleep on the couch, and as he moved he dislodged an empty ice-cream carton that tumbled down and landed on. . .
. . .five. . . other empty cartons. Okay, that definitely explained the taste on the back of his tongue. Note to self, toothbrushes are there for a reason.
The news had come back on, and the tinny voices and too-peppy music were only adding to his migraine. He made a face, scrunching up his nose in discomfort, and fumbled through the pile of discarded lids and plastic covers for the remote. After a moment of searching he found it, recoiled slightly at the suspicious sticky substance that had found its way onto the backing, then grudgingly picked it up and swiftly clicked the television off.
Blessed silence flooded the room. Ragamuffin let out a sigh of utter relief and flopped back down, rolling onto his side and curling up slightly, content simply to drift back into oblivion.
There was a loud thud from a neighboring room. The part of his brain that wasn't a puddle of melted goop helpfully supplied that it came from the direction of the study.
Ignore it. . . Ragamuffin told himself, scrunching his eyes shut even tighter, as if he could deny reality through sheer force of will.
Another thud. This time that same part of his brain told him that, yes, that was the sound of a bookcase falling over, and he should probably go and deal with that as soon as was realistically possible.
Ragamuffin decided that "as soon as realistically possible" was going to be several hours from now and tried, unsuccessfully, to wipe all thoughts of anything important from his mind. Now that he was actually trying to rest he was more acutely aware of the dull ache in his stomach, his body's way of reminding him that he was still in the danger zone thank you very much, and are you going to do anything about this because–
"Raggy! Hey, Raggy! The bookcase won't get off my feet!"
Ragamuffin was across the room and into the hallway before he'd even decided he was going to stand up. Two doors down and one corridor across he flung open the study door to what was, for once, exactly the sight he'd expected.
"Hey!" Lenore called cheerfully from her vantage point on the floor. Her blonde hair was spread out in a pale halo against the dark hardwood floor, and her mourning dress was bunched up and twisted in an unusual manner, held in place by the huge oak bookcase that had her pinned from the waist down. Her hands were also trapped at an awkward angle, probably the reason she hadn't gotten loose yet. Thick, hardcover volumes dotted the surrounding area like sprinkles on a disaster cupcake.
Ragamuffin felt his entire body relax from abject panic mode to his normal Lenore-inspired level of terror.
"Hi. You need a hand?" he asked, and was startled by how calm his voice was. The truth was that crap like this happened on an alarmingly regular basis, and so long as Lenore only seemed minorly inconvenienced by the fallen bookcase, well. . .
. . .it just wasn't worth the freak-out that could well be used some other time.
Lenore squirmed, trying to wriggle out from under the huge piece of furniture, but gave up after only a moment. She was stuck good.
"Yeah, I think someone's gonna haveta help the bookcase stand back up," she said at length, looking up at Ragamuffin in the most pathetically hopeful way she'd managed to learn.
Ragamuffin was about to jump to her rescue. . . then thought better of it. He folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe, regarding the blonde with a raised eyebrow.
"Right. I'll be happy to help you out. Just as soon as you tell me where you hid my suit."
"What?" Lenore whined, starting to thrash around again in a bid to get free. "No fair, Raggy! Lemmie uuup!"
"Absolutely. Where's my suit?"
Lenore went still and gave him the biggest, saddest blue-eyed pout he'd seen in his entire existence. It would probably have made a lesser teen melt into the floor right then.
"The suit, Lenore."
What followed was a chapter in and of itself of unprintably colorful language, and Ragamuffin was quite proud to be able to say she'd learned less than a tenth of it from him. Not that he knew where she'd learned the rest of it, but it was not from him, and that was all he needed or wanted to know.
Finally, her tantrum petered out, and Ragamuffin, who'd remained unimpressed and unaffected the entire time, was treated a baleful glare and, finally, an answer.
". . .it's in the top kitchen cabinet behind the cookie jar."
"Right then," Ragamuffin said brusquely, standing up straight again. He then abruptly turned around and headed back down the hallway.
"Hey!" came Lenore's aggrieved shout from behind him, following him down the corridor.
Ragamuffin waved his right hand airily, even though he knew she couldn't see it. "I'll let you up just as soon as I get my suit!" Because Lenore didn't snap that easily under pressure, Ragamuffin knew.
"What?! You don't trust me?!"
"Not in the slightest!" Ragamuffin tossed over his shoulder, and was rewarded by a faint giggle from the study.
He was learning.
As it turned out, his suit was not behind the cookie jar. Nor was it in the guest room with the bloodstain on the door (the one shaped like a fan, not the one shaped like a squashed Venus flytrap) or in the medicine cabinet in the third bathroom with the evil, sentient mold stains. When Lenore finally decided that being free balanced out the burden of being truthful, Ragamuffin finally located his suit stuffed under Lenore's pillow, along with several candy bars and a dead rat.
He was never going to understand that girl.
After a quick pit stop to lift the bookcase off of her, during which time he made sure to keep an especially tight grip on the bundle of clothes, he headed towards the bathroom (the one with no running water but more towels, for some unfathomable reason) to get changed.
After ditching the too-tight yet waaay too loose "modern clothes," he slipped back into his suit and was soothed by the reassuring familiarity of non-shredded fabric.
He left the combat boots on. If anyone asked, he'd say that the steel toes did a hell of a lot more damage when he landed a kick– which was actually true– but the real reason was just. . . well, they were more comfortable than the shoes that were supposed to go with the outfit. They were combat boots, so there was no way they were built with comfort particularly in mind, but compared to how people had made shoes four centuries ago he felt like he was walking on marshmallows.
God, he felt old. . .
The doorbell rang as he left the bathroom, fastening the buttons on his cuffs as he did so. He'd left the modern atrocity behind. . . he'd burn it at his earliest opportunity.
He was tempted to just ignore the doorbell, since Taxidermy would let himself in and he didn't particularly want to talk to anyone else. To be honest, he didn't even really want to talk to Taxidermy at this point either, for a reason he couldn't quite put into words but definitely carried the guilt of a little kid who knew he was going to get busted for eating out of the cookie jar.
He couldn't deny how hungry he was, though– there had been ever-present ache in the pit of his stomach since he'd woken up that morning, and he knew it was probably just going to get worse. Spending so long as a doll had robbed him of the memory of just how bad the hunger could get, but he still felt flashes of it in his worst nightmares. Compared to that, this was nothing.
But it still felt like hell on earth.
The doorbell rang again, followed by a flurry of knocking. Ragamuffin groaned. This was bad news, he just knew it. . . maybe the cops were back again, he thought darkly.
"I'll get it, Lenore!" he called up the stairs as he passed– not that he was worried about her coming down, she was still moping about the bookcase incident, as it had come to be known in his mind. That'd last at least another hour before she came back downstairs acting like it had never happened, but woe to the unfortunate person (or vampire) that bothered her before then.
He picked up the heartbeats at thirty paces, which was worryingly further than he'd been able to hear the last time someone living had come calling. Each pulse sent a stab of hunger through him, and he knew that the longer he went without blood the worse it would get.
Then he opened the door and all thoughts of food abruptly vanished.
Good-cop and bad-cop were standing on his doorstep once again. This time, however, bad-cop was smiling and good-cop was scowling.
"Um. . . hi," he said eventually, since the cops had never given him their names. He felt a lot more relaxed this time around, since it was waaay after three o-clock now and they couldn't be trying to nail him for truancy again. Also, they were idiots.
"Hey, kid, mind letting us in to talk to your parents?" Bad-cop– or the cop that had previously been bad-cop but was now apparently inhabiting the role of good-cop– asked with a wide grin.
Ragamuffin's mind flashed to a hundred incriminating bits of incriminating evidence out of a thousand, like the bloodstains and dead cats and severed human body parts in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator. Yeah, he was pretty sure that there was no way he was letting the cops set foot in Lenore's mansion. They'd have a field day.
"Well, I–" he began, but the cop-formerly-known-as-good-cop interrupted him with a sneer.
"Or, let me guess, you don't want us to do that. . . because there are no adults in the house."
Well, yes, that had been a secondary concern, right after the bloody answers to any number of cold cases but taking precedence over the fact that Lenore hadn't made her bed today.
"In fact, I don't think you've had to worry about your parents for a very long time, have you?" Four-hundred years and counting, sir.
As soon as the smug thought entered his head he froze, a new one occurring to him. They didn't. . . there was no way they could know about him, right? About him not being. . . human? It would definitely explain the drastic mood changes in the two cops. Before they'd obviously been acting, but maybe this was real.
His head dipped forwards reflexively, hiding his red eyes further behind his long bangs.
"Look, I don't think that it's true, I mean, he's a nice kid and–" the cop who. . . until recently was bad protested, but good. . . bad. . . fat cop cut him off.
"Are you joking? You remember how nervous he was last time we were here? We should have seen it then, I can't believe we didn't. I mean, who gets that scared over a truancy charge? Someone who's worried about something a lot worse."
During the entirety of the speech Ragamuffin had been mentally searching for a route of escape that didn't leave Lenore alone with the cops. Unfortunately, he hadn't hit upon one yet and his window of opportunity was rapidly running out.
Skinny cop gave him a pitying look, which glanced off Ragamuffin's frozen exterior like a playground ball off a brick building. "Look, kid, we're gonna put you in the back of the cruiser for the ride to the station– but I promise, once we're there we'll get this whole mess sorted out, okay kid?"
And that was when Ragamuffin figured it out. The only way he was getting out of this was if they thought he was just a normal human teen, something he'd probably have to work at to convince them.
So Ragamuffin played the part of the scared little kid– which was easier than he'd have liked it to be, to be honest– and allowed himself be led to the back of the police car. When the door clicked shut behind him, he took a few seconds to remember about seat belts– he hadn't been in a car very often, even taking into account that over half the car rides had taken place when he was too small to even necessitate his own seat.
Skinny got into the driver's seat, fatty was passenger-side. Ragamuffin looked away from them at Lenore's mansion, and wondered if it was the last time he'd ever see it.
He kept watching long after it had disappeared between the rapidly blurring trees.
Police stations, as it turned out, were not a good place for a vampire to be staying. Every few minutes a new criminal was dragged in, and because this was Nevermore the majority of those criminals had blood somewhere on their person, either their own from their arrest or someone else's from their crime. Ragamuffin had been sat down on a bench near the back of the room, but every time the door opened and a new scent drifted in his head snapped up immediately.
He was going to go insane. His hunger pains were getting rapidly worse, and there were so many people bustling around in the tiny station that all he could think about was how much blood there was pumping around in here. His fangs were starting to throb again, and he pressed his cheek up against the palm of his hand as if that was going to help ease the pressing urge to sink his teeth into something warm-blooded, and soon.
A policewoman dragged a drunken teenage girl with a busted lip right by him, and Ragamuffin decided to quietly have a mental breakdown.
This had to have been the worst idea he'd ever had.
"Alright, kid, come here."
Ragamuffin glanced up. He was sufficiently frazzled to actually need a moment to think before he recognized skinny cop.
"Sorry, what?" he asked, shaking his head slightly to clear it. The haze of bloodlust was starting to cloud his thoughts, and right now he needed to be as level-headed as possible.
Skinny cop let out the slightest of sighs, but offered a warm smile that more than made up for it. "I said, come with me. My partner and I are going to explain your options to you."
Ragamuffin trailed behind skinny cop as he wove through the station, red eyes flicking around the room tracking even the slightest movement. If he didn't feed soon he'd seriously loose it, everything was going too fast and too slow all at once.
Skinny cop indicated a table with two steel chairs on one side and one on the other, a phone set carefully in between. Fat cop was already seated on the other side, giving Ragamuffin a look that could probably kill normal humans. Ragamuffin slid into the chair, keeping his eyes averted. It was less out of fear and more due to the fact that this close, he could probably see their pulses. He wasn't going to put himself through that. Not if he could help it.
The metal was cold against his back, so he slouched forwards rather than touch it. He took deep breaths– through his mouth, not his nose, because he could already smell far too much– and tried to stay focused.
Skinny cop cleared his throat. "You know why you're here, right?"
Ragamuffin started to respond, but fat cop interrupted him. He was doing that a lot today. "Of course he knows, how could he not? It's not just a thing you can forget about."
Breathe in. Breathe out. Remember tickle fights with Lenore at one AM and just keep breathing.
"Hey. The kid's been through enough, alright?" Skinny said, smacking his partner lightly on the arm, then turning back to Ragamuffin. All the vampire could see was their shoulders down, he didn't trust himself to look higher than that for longer than a quick peek at their expressions. Skinny seemed sympathetic, fatty just seemed like someone had swiped his last doughnut.
Huh. He'd made a joke.
They can take my life, but they can't take my sarcasm.
"Look, kid. . . you know who you gotta call, right?" Skinny asked, tilting his head slightly downward to try to get Ragamuffin to meet his gaze.
Ragamuffin shook his head no. Not a lie. He had no idea who they wanted him to call, or why they wanted him to call anyone, or–
"Just call your parents. I'm sure they really miss you."
Ragamuffin's gaze snapped up. His eyes met skinny cop's, smoldering crimson clashing with a deep, calm brown. Ragamuffin registered surprise in those eyes– right, red eyes, stupid stupid– but words were tumbling out of his mouth now, too fast for him to stop them.
"You think I'm. . . a runaway?"
He could have laughed. He could have just burst into giggles right then, that was how relieved he felt. Instead he just stared at the two cops incredulously, and repeated himself. "You think I'm a runaway?"
When skinny and fatty exchanged confused looks he did laugh, a chuckle that bubbled up out of his throat and lit up his face, he was sure.
"Oh. . . oh, jeez, no. No, my. . . my dad's just out of the house a lot. He works pretty odd hours."
That was a polite way of saying that Taxidermy– who Ragamuffin was pretty sure wouldn't mind playing the part of his father if it got him out of the police station– was a strange mix of nocturnal, diurnal, and space alien. From Canada.
Fat cop's glare became skeptical, surprise melting off him again, but Ragamuffin wasn't intimidated this time around. "Look, I'll call him right now."
And with that, Ragamuffin scooped up the phone and dialed. He had never been so grateful that Taxidermy had forced him and Lenore– okay, just him– to memorize his phone number.
Taxidermy picked up on the third ring, accent both twisted and made more prominent by the phone. Ragamuffin didn't care about that, all he heard was the familiar voice in a situation that was completely bonkers. "Look, if this is about the new ordinance I just want to say that–"
Right, caller ID would say police. "Hi, dad," Ragamuffin interrupted, and the cheer in his voice was about as far from false as it was possible for him to get. If he did this right, he'd be out of this pit of temptation very soon indeed.
There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. Then. . .
"Ragamuffin? What on earth– oh. Oh, there's someone else in the room, isn't there? You need me to pretend I'm your father for–"
Ragamuffin interrupted him again. This needed to sound like a normal conversation to the cops, or they might get suspicious. "Yeah, I'm calling from the police station. I've. . . kind of been arrested."
A pause.
"No, not for. . . not for that, no."
Another pause, slightly shorter.
"No, not that either. Or. . . no, no, I didn't get arrested for. . . oh, for God's sake dad, would you just. . . no I did not get arrested for that!"
The cops were exchanging glances now. Crap, what had he just said about not wanting them to get suspicious?
"Look, dad, they think I'm a runaway. Okay?"
A longer pause this time. The cops could faintly hear laughter leaking out of the phone.
"Yes, yes I do get it. Yes, I get that it's ironic. Yeah, I know I. . . okay, seriously dad, it's not that funny. It's not. . . okay, I think they want to talk to you. Dad? Dad. It's really not that funny, okay? Just. . . dad!"
After a few more seconds, Ragamuffin held the phone out to fatty. "Here you go!" he said, with just a touch of smugness.
Fatty picked up the phone, looking highly suspicious. Ragamuffin smirked. He hadn't yet met a human that Taxidermy couldn't talk rings around, and he didn't think today was the day.
He could still hear Taxidermy's voice on the other end of the line, even several feet away– thank you, vampire hearing skills. Ragamuffin leaned his chin on the palm of his hand, settling in for the ride. This could get interesting.
"Hello," Taxidermy said politely.
Fat cop didn't waste any time on pleasantries. "So this is your kid, huh? Mind explaining why he was home alone?"
Taxidermy's voice became much less inviting, but Ragamuffin knew there were only two people in the world who'd be able to tell– him and Lenore. "He was home alone because he's a responsible thirteen-year-old who I trust to stay out of trouble while I conduct my business elsewhere. I should like you to know that I was in the middle of an important meeting when I had to take this call, so this had better be good."
"Right. . ." fat cop drawled, although his smirk had dropped a couple notches into the folds of his cheeks. "So you've been leaving him home alone while you work, is that it? Where's his mother?"
"She died. Horribly. It was a tragedy that caused more grief than anything in your pitiful existence could possibly compare to."
Ragamuffin had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Taxidermy sounded so serious it was hard not to burst into giggles.
Fat cop, on the other hand, had lost his smirk entirely. He seemed to be struggling between being offended or being sympathetic. Sympathy won, but just barely. "I'm. . . sorry."
"You should be."
Bad cop hesitated, then plowed on. "Eh, sir, I'm. . . I'd like to know why your son's eyes are. . . well, red."
Crud. He'd noticed that, then.
"Ocular albinism."
The lie came so quickly from Taxidermy's mouth that even Ragamuffin had trouble doubting his sincerity. Man, he was good.
Taxidermy continued speaking, rubbing salt into the wound with every word. "It's a horrible condition which keeps him out of the light at all times and opens him up to ridicule, like you yourself are on the borderline of. His vision will never be perfect and all he has to look forward to is having it rapidly deteriorate as he grows older. Anything else you want to ask about? Like the fact that his best friend just died, or that his cat got run over by a semi?"
Ah, yes, kitty number five-sixty-seven, may she rest in somewhat flattened pieces.
"Um. . . well, no, I. . ." Fat cop stuttered, and Taxidermy harrumphed. Actually harrumphed, like people did on TV.
"Well then, seeing as you've already interrupted my meeting, I'll be by to pick him up in a few minutes. Good day."
And with that, Taxidermy hung up.
I have the coolest dad ever, Ragamuffin thought, and it was hard to keep his grin on the inside.
"Am I clear?" he asked with mock-innocence instead, sitting up straight again. Fat cop set down the phone with the air of someone who'd underwent a lobotomy. That was a pretty typical reaction for someone who'd been on the wrong end of a conversation with Taxidermy.
"I. . . yes. Your. . . father will be here to pick you up in a moment. Apparently."
"Yay!" Ragamuffin said happily, if a tad patronizingly. But he meant it.
When Lenore skipped into the station a few minutes later and waved enthusiastically at him, Ragamuffin's first thought was, Oh great, she got herself arrested too. Then, when she continued unhindered towards him, humming wordlessly under her breath, he realized that this was the solution Taxidermy had come up with to avoid broadcasting to the station that he wasn't human. Lenore was going to be the messenger, the middleman.
"Hey, Raggy!" she called, yanking him out of the chair and into a bone-crushing hug. Apparently she'd forgiven him for earlier, which he would have appreciated more if he didn't distinctly hear an "aw" coming from skinny cop. His cheeks burned, but he knew there would be no blush on them. Not at this point.
"Your dad's here!" she said finally, pulling away from him and looking up with the prettiest blue eyes he'd seen all day, even if they were mismatched.
"Great!" Ragamuffin said with, strangely, totally genuine enthusiasm as Lenore started to drag him out by his wrist. As the strange familiarity of the situation sunk in again he turned and waved over his shoulder, smiling closed-mouthed at skinny cop and fat cop.
"See you guys!" he called smugly, then turned back to Lenore.
"Is she his sister?" came a voice behind him, one he'd never heard before.
"Nah," said skinny cop, faint amusement in his voice. "It's his girlfriend."
It was late now. The sun, while not having exactly been up when Ragamuffin had been in the station, had now totally given up even bouncing its rays off of the moon, filling the station with shadows and darkness.
One shadow was moving through the room on a direct collision course with skinny and fat cop, the only ones left in the building. They were sitting together in front of a lit office, the only light in the whole room, and their silhouettes were picked out clearly against the one point of contrast. They were joking, laughing about the idiocy of night detail. . . then fat cop glanced behind him.
His smile disappeared. He nudged skinny cop, bumping shoulder against shoulder, and they both turned around in their seats.
"Ugh," fat cop said with a groan. "It's one of you guys."
The man in the black suit sighed slightly, as if he was no happier to see them than they were to see him. "Hello, Kurt. Boris."
Fat cop growled quietly and turned away again. "Look, we don't like your department, and we don't like you. If you ask me, you and your little group should be stuck reporting to us, instead of letting you run around free like cats chasing their own tails."
"Then it's a rather good thing nobody asked you," the man said, and held out a slim folder containing a single sheet of paper. When neither cop reached to take it, he continued. "This is the newest suspect sketch. I know we're not the same department, but of you could just look at it, maybe warn your men–"
"Whatever," skinny sighed, then grabbed the folder from the man's hand, passing it to fat cop with an air of indifference. "We'll look into it, probably do a better job then you and your freaks, right? Now scram, you did what you came here for."
There was a moment of silence, and when skinny cop looked up again, the man was gone.
"God, they give me the creeps," he said, turning to fat cop, then paused. Fat cop had the file open, and the figure on the page seemed painfully familiar to him.
"Is that. . ?" he asked, and a slow smile spread over fat cop's face.
"I think so," he replied with a smirk. "In fact, I'm sure of it."
