Consultation with a Vampire - 01 Read Free Page A

thump, and Topper lay unconscious on the dirty pavement of the alley. The man looked down and said, "You did not listen. You are in grave danger." He looked to the girl and said, “This is all your fault.”
    She stuck out her tongue and then pouted. If Topper had still been conscious, his loins would have burst on the spot.
    The man tucked Topper underneath his arm and walked into the night.
    Topper came to and asked, “Are you going to carry me through the air?”
    “Heavens no. We will take the limousine,” he said, pointing at the car that waited for them at the mouth of the alley.  

    The next morning, at precisely 8:30, Agnes answered the phone. What is remarkable about this is that the phone had been ringing since she had walked in the door at 7:30. With great and customary restraint, she had ignored it for an hour. After all, business hours are business hours. Standards must be maintained.  
    “Good morning. Windsor and Associates. How may I be of service?”
    Topper’s voice shrieked from the earpiece. “Agnes! Jesus Christ, Agnes! Why haven’t you answered the phone? I’ve been calling since 7:30. Hell, I’ve been calling all through the night. Don’t you check voice mail? Shouldn’t you have a hot line or something?”
    Blasphemy, what a wonderful way to start the day, Agnes thought.  
    “Good morning, Topper. Aside from the obvious and unavoidable, what is the matter with you this morning?”
    “I’ve been kidnapped!”
    “Really,” Agnes said with a total lack of concern. “I would’ve thought you lacked the requisite air of child-like innocence that the term calls for. And yet ‘dwarf-napped’ doesn’t work either. It somehow loses all urgency and merely suggests a low-to-the-ground, saccharine-cute kind of sleepiness.”
    “Agnes, I have been kidnapped by Vampires! ”
    “Well, of course you have,” she said in the tone a favorite aunt would use when encouraging her nephew’s pirate fantasy. “Hold the line for Windsor.” With a gleam in her eye, she placed the phone on hold and bustled into Edwin’s office.  
    When Edwin looked up from behind the vast expanse of his desk, Agnes said, “It appears that your lawyer,” she said, uttering the word “lawyer” with obvious and practiced distaste, “has run afoul of a pack, a coven, a herd, a flock – whatever the plural may be – of vampires.”
    Edwin raised an eyebrow.  
    “Even now, he insists that he is in their foul, sinister, and quite possibly imaginary grip.”
    “Vampires?” Edwin asked, trying to understand.
    “Line one,” Agnes said with great mirth. As Edwin reached for the phone, she asked, “Shall I set up interviews with other law firms?”  
    Edwin’s hand paused on the handset. Again, his eyebrow climbed his forehead.  
    “Edwin, I beg of you. Leave the debauched dwarf to his just (and evidently drug-addled) deserts. Surely, you deserve legal counsel that will match your own professionalism.”
    “He has talent, Agnes,” Edwin countered logically.  
    “But at what cost, Edwin? At what cost?”
    Edwin picked up the phone, ending their exchange. “Windsor here.” Edwin held the handset away from his ear as Topper shrieked, “E, you'll never believe it. I have been kidnapped by Vampires!”
    “You are correct. I do not believe it.” Edwin used measured tones that in another person would sound like boredom.  
    "Okay, okay. I know how crazy it sounds, but Vampires! Edwin, I swear. They're real."
    From the phone in the lobby, Agnes said, "Have you confused pale skin and an overabundance of eyeliner with mythological creatures?”
    “No, I SWEAR! C’mon, E. You gotta talk to these people; otherwise, they are going to kill me.”
    Agnes fired another salvo: “You have only yourself to blame. Don’t come crying to me now that you must sleep in a coffin of your own making.”  
    “Honest, Edwin, it wasn’t my fault,” Topper said.
    As Edwin listened to the banter between Topper and Agnes, he