Stake Me Out to the Ball Game Read online

  Stake Me Out to the Ball Game

  A Washington Vampires Series Short Story

  Mindy Klasky

  Res Ipsa Press

  Contents

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  Stake Me Out to the Ball Game

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  Also by Mindy Klasky

  About the Author

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  Stake Me Out to the Ball Game

  Hell hath no fury like a vampire with a toothache.

  Especially when said vampire had been on hold with Empire Dental for the past forty-five minutes, trying to schedule an emergency appointment. It had taken me fifteen minutes just to work my way through the idiotic phone tree, even after I listened carefully because my options had changed. I would have ground my teeth at the easy-listening rendition of “Bat Out of Hell” but the mere thought of putting pressure on my right fang sent arrows of pain into my temples.

  It was my own damn fault, too. I never should have crunched down on those Corn Nuts. I’d known my supernatural body wouldn’t be happy processing the corn, not without an extra dose of blood-fuel from one of my Sources. But I’ve always been a sucker for those salty nuggets. Yes. Pun fully intended.

  So, I’d stopped by a 7-11—best store ever invented from a vampire point of view. I’d recruited some of my best Sources from students dropping in for a midnight Slurpee. I just refused to touch the benighted humans who thought “food” was cooked on those heated metal rollers behind the cash register. That was as good a character test as any.

  In any case, I’d swung by my local convenience store to check out the, um, merchandise, and I’d been lured by the siren song of the Corn Nuts. Next thing you know, one slipped from between my molars, and I’d somehow splintered my right fang.

  Now I was waiting through round eighty-seven of Meatloaf’s serenade, desperate to learn when a dentist could handle my case. The Eastern Empire was supposed to make things easy for all us paranormal types. We put up with imperial bureaucracy day in and day out. In exchange we got peace, justice, and a decent health care plan—including dental. In theory.

  I was beginning to think I’d have to give up. Sunrise was approaching. I had to be safely in bed soon if I didn’t want to add third-degree burns to my toothache dilemma.

  “Thank you for waiting,” a bored voice finally said, cutting into the sappy violins. “Empire Dental is here to make you smile. And who do I have the pleasure of speaking with this evening?”

  The account rep should have had all that information from the account number I’d typed into the phone tree at the beginning of my ordeal. But if I irritated her now, she’d probably hang up on me, forcing me to work through the entire process again. The thought of more “Bat Out of Hell” nearly made me sob, so I answered her questions in short order.

  My name was Ava Buchanan.

  My Empire Dental account number was X931682.

  My employer was Magic Mansion.

  I was a vampire.

  I’d give my good left fang for an appointment with a dentist tonight, um, within the next half hour, um, right this very minute please.

  “Let’s see,” Bored Girl droned. “The next open appointment I’m finding is…next Tuesday. At noon.”

  I did grind my teeth at that. And I paid the penalty as a renewed throbbing spiked my upper jaw. “I can’t make that,” I said. “I’m a vampire.”

  “Oh, right.” I wasn’t entirely certain Bored Girl understood that I couldn’t be out in the light of day. My suspicion was confirmed when she said, “I’m finding an appointment next Friday, at 10:30 in the morning.”

  “I need something sooner,” I wailed. “And at night.”

  “Oh,” Bored Girl said. “Most of our patients prefer daytime appointments. Nayads and dryads especially. They’re really partial to mornings.”

  Lacking interest in my fellow imperials’ scheduling habits, I managed to say, “Do you have anything at night?”

  “Hmmm… Nothing tonight. How about 8:30 on Thursday?”

  Night after tomorrow. That beat waiting a week. But I still asked, “PM?” I didn’t trust Bored Girl to remember my situation for longer than ten seconds.

  “PM,” she agreed.

  “I’ll take it,” I said.

  Hanging up the phone, I realized I needed something to distract me from the ache in my mouth. I remembered being a kid, long before I’d ever heard of the Eastern Empire, decades before I’d turned into a vampire. I’d been laid up with chicken pox, and Big Mama had built me a nest of blankets on the couch in the den. My grandmother and I had watched hour after hour of baseball, Big Mama’s calloused hands braiding my hair into the neat rows I never sat still for when I was well.

  She’d taught me the basics of the game as we watched her beloved Oakland play. I fell in love with the uniforms first, the bright green and yellow that looked like Oz after the tornado. But when Reggie Jackson hit his mammoth home run in the All-Star game, I was hooked for life. Chicken pox or no, Big Mama and I danced around the den like fools. It didn’t hurt that Reggie was a dead ringer for my daddy, whose picture was centered on the mantel over the fireplace.

  Santa brought me a baseball cap that Christmas, and I’d never looked back. I was Oakland’s greatest living fan. And if I looked as if I’d been born twenty-five years after Reggie hit that home run… Well, life as a vampire was confusing that way.

  Big Mama was long gone, alas. But my love for baseball survived. So, looking for distraction from the raging toothache that filled my skull, it was perfectly natural for me to see who Washington was playing Wednesday night. It wasn’t Oakland—that would be too storybook perfect. But Philadelphia was in town for a three-game stand.

  Bartenders like me didn’t earn a hell of a lot, the occasional super-generous tip excepted. But desperate times called for desperate measures. I could wedge a single baseball game into my budget. Maybe. Just possibly.

  I bought a ticket in the last row of the stadium’s highest section.

  Unable to arrive until after sunset, I’d miss the first couple of innings. But I’d catch the rest of the game. And with luck, they’d go extra innings.

  Oddly enough (not!), an entire day without treatment didn’t make my broken fang feel any better. In fact, I felt a whole lot worse. But Big Mama, bless her soul, would have tanned my behind if I wasted a perfectly good baseball ticket to sit around my apartment moping. It was bad enough I’d missed the start of the game, confined to my windowless room until after sunset.

  At least I’d dressed for the ballpark before I’d gone to sleep. Jeans first, along with a bright yellow turtleneck. Then my prize possession: an official Reggie Jackson jersey, bright green with lemon-colored piping. The number 9 was plastered across my back, and the ornate A for the team name covered
the right side of my chest.

  Now, ready to head out to the ballpark, I completed the outfit with a matching emerald cap and a green-and-yellow-striped muffler. I glanced in the mirror for just long enough to confirm that I looked fine. (What’s that? Vampires don’t show up in mirrors? If you believe that, you’re reading the wrong type of vampire story.)

  I expected a bit of side-eye when I arrived at the stadium, and I wasn’t disappointed. Washington’s colors were red and blue—heavy on the red. Philadelphia sported red and white. My green and yellow outfit stood out like a lump of coal in a snowbank.

  I was used to that, though. We imperials learned early on how it felt to walk through a sea of mundanes. I ignored the stares and passed through the park’s metal detector.

  This early in the season, most of the refreshment stands were closed. That was fine with me. The thought of biting down on peanuts or Cracker Jack was enough to make my head start throbbing all over again.

  At my chosen section, the usher barely glanced at my ticket. “I guess you’re with him,” he said, nodding toward the top row.

  Or course, I wasn’t with anyone. Never had been. Certainly wasn’t going to be at a baseball game, surrounded by thousands of mundanes. The local baseball fans would run screaming into the night if they realized a vampire actually walked among them. Even if that vampire couldn’t actually bite down on a juicy jugular to save her own life—not with my right fang out of commission.

  But when I looked up in the stands, I immediately understood the usher’s mistake.

  Oakland’s legendary pitcher Dennis Eckersley sat in the seat next to mine.

  Okay. It wasn’t actually Dennis Eckersley.

  This guy was thirty years younger than Eck. His hair—what I could see of it beneath his baseball cap—was cut a lot shorter than the famous pitcher’s shaggy mane. He didn’t sport a mustache either. And his face was a couple of shades darker than mine, an ebony so dark it hinted at indigo.

  But, like me, this guy was dressed head-to-toe in Oakland gear. His jersey was white, Eck’s 43 standing out in yellow-limned emerald. His turtleneck was the brilliant green of the baseball diamond behind me. His scarf was yellow, chased with ornate green A’s.

  He raised a plastic cup of beer, saluting me as if he’d been expecting me all along. Suddenly, my tooth didn’t hurt quite as much.

  After all, Big Mama had always said the same thing when I whined about something I couldn’t change: Think about something else. Well, I couldn’t get in to see the dentist until the next night, but I suddenly had a very intriguing something else to think about.

  My fellow Oakland fan stood when I got to my seat.

  It’d been a long time since I met a guy polite enough to stand when a lady entered the…stadium row. “Ms. Jackson,” he said, nodding toward my jersey and smiling like he’d just won the jackpot. His teeth were even and clean, a bright white that made my broken fang throb. I would have caught my breath if I’d, you know, breathed.

  Instead, I planted my right hand on my hip and tried for a sassy grin. “Mr. Eckersley, I presume.”

  He laughed and said, “My name is Dennis, believe it or not. Dennis Maugham.”

  “Ava Buchanan.” I shook the hand he offered.

  If my tooth hadn’t been aching, I probably would have thought twice about giving him my real name. Or maybe not. Something about this guy short-circuited my common sense. Maybe it was the sheer unlikelihood of find another Oakland fan at a game between two totally different teams. Or the fact that he smelled like leather and pine. Or that he looked like Denzel’s younger brother, actually better looking than the movie star.

  “What are the chances?” he asked, gesturing to our glaring yellow-and-green gear. Our jerseys were bright under the stadium lights. Surrounded by the red and blue of Washington fans, we looked like specimens of some rare bird.

  I laughed and took my seat as a Philadelphia batter stepped up to the plate. Before the first pitch could be delivered, I reached into my bag for my pencil and scorebook. Glancing at the Jumbotron, I compared the team rosters to the listing I’d completed the night before, right after I’d purchased my ticket.

  Dennis nodded to his own scorebook. “DC had a late scratch. Thomas is playing center.”

  “Thanks.” I rubbed out the wrong name, then added the guy who was actually in the game. The batter struck out on three pitches, and Dennis made a quick notation. Then he handed me his book so I could see how the game had gone so far.

  Big Mama had taught me the familiar code at the same time my school teachers taught me fractions and diagramming sentences. I could see at a glance that the game had been relatively tame—no one on either team had a hit. I jotted down the numeric codes to show which fielders had recorded which outs.

  I handed Dennis’s book back. “Not a lot of people still score games,” I said.

  “They don’t know what they’re missing.” There was that smile again. I wasn’t sure why the guy bothered with a scarf on this cool April night. He had enough wattage to warm all of DC and then some.

  Trying to ignore a sudden twinge from my fang, I said, “That’s what Big Mama always said.”

  “Big Mama?”

  “My grandmother. She’s the one who taught me to score. Back in Oakland, where I grew up.” I gestured to my jersey.

  “Was she the Reggie Jackson fan?”

  “Nope,” I said, proudly. Pride goeth before a fall. “That would be me. Reggie had my heart the second he hit his All-Star home run.”

  “That had to be thirty years before you were born.” Dennis flashed another one of those amazing smiles.

  I gritted my teeth as I realized my mistake, which had the immediate effect of pressing a drill against the base of my skull. I hoped my smile was frozen in place as I waited for the stars to clear.

  I must have been better at faking normalcy than I thought, though, because Dennis didn’t look like he was about to call the paramedics. In fact, he was waiting patiently for my reply.

  The problem was, I’d been ten years old when I watched the famous All-Star game. And I’d only aged fifteen years since. Vampire math was funny that way. I’d looked twenty-five for more than three decades—ever since the night I’d followed a vampire into a dark alley I should have known to avoid.

  I finally managed the joshing tone I needed to divert the man beside me. “Nice pickup line.”

  My response wasn’t completely logical, but it had the desired effect. Dennis held up both hands in the universal symbol for innocence. We were both spared any follow-up because the stadium crowd suddenly roared. I looked up in time to see Thomas, the replacement center fielder, staring at a baseball caught like a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the web of his glove. Automatically, I glanced at the Jumbotron to watch the replay of his amazing catch.

  Like any good baseball fan, Dennis watched too. And then we both settled deeper into our seats to watch the bottom of the inning, my age and early fandom mercifully forgotten.

  It wasn’t my fault that “settling” meant brushing my arm against Dennis’s.

  I was a vampire. I didn’t have breath to come fast when I was excited. My heart only beat hard when I was feeding from a Source. I never, ever blushed. But my belly—or something distinctly lower—still remembered how to swoop like a mundane woman’s.

  I ordered myself not to glance at Dennis as the fourth inning came to a close without a score for either side.

  Five at-bats later, I was beginning to regret that Dennis was such a consummate baseball fan. He was actually watching the game and scoring the plays, not flirting with the fellow Oakland fan fate had put beside him.

  Or maybe—a girl could hope—he was just being polite and giving me some personal space.

  I realized I had to take things into my own talons, so to speak. Clenching my fist around my pencil to force my nagging toothache into abeyance, I asked the most Washingtonian of all questions: “So, Dennis. Where do you work?”

  Yep. I hea
rd those words twenty times a night at the bar between imperials picking up other supernatural creatures and mundanes visiting the Magic Mansion to enjoy the stage shows. In this government town, jobs took the place of astrological signs, of nice girls in places like this, of all the old-fashioned pick-up lines that had been memorialized in thousands of bad movies.

  I winced as I asked the trite question. But Dennis smiled and said, “That’s one thing I hate about Washington—everyone’s obsession with work. Tell you what. You tell me where you think I work. And then I’ll tell you the same.”

  I laughed, more than a little relieved that Dennis wanted off the everyday get-to-know-you bandwagon. “You go first,” I urged.

  He leaned back in his seat, getting a better view of me. That was one advantage of sitting in the top row—we had plenty of empty seats around us.

  I wasn’t expecting the way my entire body froze as he took me in, head to toe. Suddenly, my muffler felt like it was wrapped too tightly around my neck. I wondered why I’d bothered with the yellow turtleneck; I didn’t need it for warmth, not as a vampire, and now it felt like it bound my arms to my chest. I was grateful I didn’t actually need to breathe, because I wasn’t certain I could manage to fill my lungs. My tooth throbbed as I fought the urge to hide.

  Dennis nodded, as if he’d read something meaningful between the lines of all my Oakland gear. “Mm-hmm,” he finally intoned, and I could imagine him checking off notes on a clipboard. “I’ve got it.”

  “Do tell.”

  “You clearly appreciate a bit of history, wearing a jersey from one of the greats. And your scorecard looks neat enough to be printed in a textbook. You missed the first three innings of the game, so your schedule isn’t your own to control. I’d say… You’re an architect. You just came from a meeting with an important client who wants you to build them a new home, combining the styles of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, with a hint of Frank Gehry to keep things interesting.”