The Reformed Vampire Support Group Read Free Page B

from pillar to post. You have to admire him for it; personally, in Dave’s position, I’d have been tempted to
run over
Casimir, instead of faithfully picking him up every Tuesday night. But Dave’s so tolerant and mature. And sensible. And safety-conscious. Once I was listening to some music in his car, and when I asked him to pump up the volume a bit, he wouldn’t. He said he was worried that my ears might start bleeding, the way my eyes and nose and gums often do. It’s funny: to look at him, you’d think he was a teenager. But a lot of the time he acts just like my mum.
    During all the years I’ve known him, he has never,
ever
exceeded the speed limit.
    ‘You might want to come with me, Sanford,’ Father Ramon remarked, when his own vehicle had stopped moving. He jerked at the handbrake as he turned his key in the ignition. ‘Casimir might need some help.’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ Sanford replied. Then he glanced into the back seat. ‘Someone had better stay with Bridget,’ he added. ‘She wouldn’t even make it up the stairs.’
    ‘I’ll stay,’ Gladys offered, in a feeble voice. ‘Casimir smells, and I feel sick enough already.’
    ‘Then I’ll go too,’ I said. Because the sad fact is that Gladys happens to be a chronic whiner, who rarely talks about anything except her own health problems. She claims that she suffers more severely from symptoms and side-effects than the rest of us do – thoughI’ve noticed that she’s never too sick to curl and colour her hair. (She’s not a natural blonde, that’s for sure.) At any rate, I was in no mood to hear about her rotting toenails.
    ‘I want to see Casimir’s flat, anyway,’ I said, pushing open the back door. ‘I’ve never been in there.’
    ‘It isn’t very exciting,’ the priest observed doubtfully. He seemed to have forgotten that
any
new venue is exciting when you don’t get out much. Like the rest of our group, I have to put up with a very limited existence: I never meet any strangers, I conduct most of my business online, and I’m frequently so ill or exhausted that I spend entire nights slumped in front of the television.
    So I ignored Father Ramon and set off towards Dave’s car.
    By this time it was empty. Dave and George and Horace had already climbed out, and were standing around with their hands in their pockets, waiting for us. Dave was dressed in his usual jeans and denim jacket, so he looked all right. George was wearing the kind of baggy, oversized, swamp-coloured clothes that you see on most sixteen-year-olds these days, so he wasn’t too conspicuous, despite the orange fuzz on his scalp.
    Horace, however, had arrayed himself in a Gothic assortment of crushed velvet, black satin and patent leather that shouldn’t be allowed, in my view. He might as well have had I AM A VAMPIRE embroidered across the front of his watered-silk waistcoat. An outfit like that is going to get him staked one of these days; it’s exactly what Boris Karloff would have worn, if he’d joined the cast of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
.
    ‘You shouldn’t be out in that stuff,’ I muttered, as soon as I was close enough to be heard. ‘Why not go the whole hog, and put on a bloody bat costume?’
    ‘Get in the car, Horace!’ Sanford snarled. He was close on my heels, and took me by surprise. Even Dave looked startled. But Horacemerely lifted one side of his mouth, exposing a yellowish fang.
    ‘Bite me, Sanford,’ was all that he said.
    ‘Is the intercom actually working?’ Father Ramon quietly asked Dave, before any further comment could be made on the subject of Horace’s ridiculous costume. ‘Did you press the other buttons?’
    ‘Only one,’ Dave replied. ‘A woman said hello.’
    With a grunt, the priest pulled a bunch of keys from somewhere beneath his cassock. And Horace snorted.
    ‘I don’t know why you’re so worried about
my
clothes attracting attention,’ he remarked. ‘Father Ramon’s wearing a
dress
, for God’s