NeverDateAVampire6

“Oh dear,” said Minnie. “Well,” she added, patting Susan on the knee, “He just wasn’t right for you dear.”

“What do you mean, ‘He wasn’t right’?”

“He wasn’t, he just wasn’t. Tell her, Antoine.”

“Child, the first thing he did when he came in the door was assess all the antiques in the hall, adding up in his head what he could get for them on the open market.”

“And then, when he was talking to me, tell her that––you won’t believe this Susan.”

“It’s true, Susan. He was thinking about how much money he could squeeze out of ‘the old cow’. He thought he could probably steal more money from Mina than someone named ‘Mrs. Stuart’ and her cronies in New York.”

Susan put her hand to her forehead. “Oh god. And then you killed him.”

“Well, dear, we didn’t know he was yours.”

“And it had been six weeks since your aunt had taken any nourishment. You know how hard that is on her system.”

“Unbelievable.” Susan sat frozen, her sherry glass tilted at a dangerous angle.

“Oh, don’t be angry with us, dear, it really was all for the best.”

“For the best! We were getting married in six weeks.” Susan took a deep draft from the sherry glass. “And, oh god, I’m supposed to put him on a plane tonight for New York, how am I going to explain his getting lost!”

“Antoine, have you taken care of the young man yet?”

“No, Mina. I was waiting for the moon to set. We don’t want a repeat of Biloxi, do we?”

“Well, put him in the basement for the time being. You’ll just have to go to New York in his place. Take his clothes; honey, does he have a passport?”

“Of course; it’s in the car in his briefcase, with his ticket.”

“Fine, then, don’t worry Susan. Antoine will just make him disappear in New York somewhere.”

On the trip to the airport, Antoine assured Susan that everything would be fine, that no one would blame her for Derek’s disappearance. Susan did not feel especially reassured.

“I just can’t wrap my mind around it. I always thought you two only picked the worst of our society, I thought you two were ‘cleaning the world of its foulness’. I didn’t expect you to do in my boyfriend.”

“But Susan, he was foul. I fear you have inherited your mother’s lack of discrimination with regard to gentlemen friends.” He looked at her carefully, and then, deciding she could stand the worst news, continued. “Derek’s real name was Drak CeauSescu. He was the youngest son of Nicolae CeauSescu. He fulfilled many of his father’s orders to torture and kill dissidents, taking a great deal of pleasure in doing so. And when he fled Romania, he was two steps ahead of a justly angry mob, a mob his vile parents could not avoid. He was able to take away the wealth of the country with him; his parents had stashed millions in Swiss banks.”

Susan said, “I don’t believe it. How could a man like that get into this country?”

“CeauSescu was attempting to westernize Romania, albeit in a brutal way. He had friends here, in the state department and elsewhere.”

Susan discovered that her hands were clenched tightly on the steering wheel, and forcibly relaxed them. “I don’t understand how you could know all this. I know you can hear people’s thoughts, but why would he be thinking about CeauSescu and Romania?”

“We didn’t need to hear him, Mina recognized him right away. She takes a special interest in the Carpathian Mountains.”

Antoine paused, and the car was silent for a moment. “Susan, the man was a vampire. Figuratively speaking, of course. And if we had known you were planning on marrying him, it wouldn’t have stopped us. We certainly couldn’t have allowed that.”

Susan was quiet for a moment, then gave in. “Oh, I guess there’s no help for it now.”

“That’s right, my dear. Imagine if you had married him! That would have been hard to explain.”

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