I turned to Jesse. “Then why did you come?”
He looked at each of us. Not with the vampire hypnotism. Just a nervous glance, which dropped to his feet.
“I’m here because it’s my last chance,” Jesse said. “My last chance to hang out with people my own age and look like I belong. Twenty years, they tell me. Twenty years after being turned is when it hits that you won’t get older and you stop fitting in. I . . . I wanted to feel like I fit in, one more time.”
He didn’t seem so much sad as resigned. This was his life now. His unlife. He was saying goodbye to the old.
This was getting too maudlin even for me. I sighed and glared at him. “Jesse, you never fit in. I mean, did any of us? We certainly don’t now.”
“Kitty, this is exactly like one of your shows but in real life!” Sadie said.
“I don’t listen to your show,” Trevor said. “Sorry.”
“Neither do I.” Jesse winced.
“Well, maybe you should, you might learn something! Thank you, Sadie, for listening to my show, I don’t think I said that yet but thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Christ, Kitty, couldn’t you have at least changed your name if you were going to become a werewolf?” Trevor said, exasperated.
“Seriously,” Jesse agreed, and they glanced at each other. “I mean, if we’d voted for who was least likely to become a werewolf it would have been you. What happened?”
“I don’t like to talk about it. I was attacked, it was bad, let’s leave it there. It changed every single thing about my life, I wasn’t going to let it take my name, too.”
That killed the conversation.
“I wanted the power,” Jesse said finally. “I know that’s a cliché. But I didn’t have the money or the social connections or anything else to get anywhere. But this?” He shrugged. “You don’t like the game, you break the rules.”
“You just traded out for a different set of rules,” I said.
“But I get to live forever.”
“Unless some ex-military bounty hunter yahoo sets his sights on you!” I glared at Trevor. His turn now. “Would you really have done it? Come back here and killed your old friend for a few bucks?”
“A few? Try a quarter mil.”
Even I whistled low at that. Jesse had the gall to look pleased. “Wow, I didn’t know I was that dangerous.”
“You just really know how to piss people off,” Trevor countered.
“I can’t believe you people,” Sadie muttered.
Ben rejoined us, slipping his phone back in his pocket. He pointed at Trevor. “This guy works for the Master of Boston.” Then he pointed at Jesse. “And I’m guessing you were part of a recent attempt to overthrow that Master.”
“You called Cormac,” I said, smiling. Cormac, Ben’s cousin, and a supernatural bounty hunter himself. He had contacts. He knew the gossip.
“Cormac Bennett?” Trevor said. “How do you know Cormac Bennett?”
“He’s family. Oh, I also put a call in to Rick. Master of Denver. He wants to know if he needs to come over and help sort things out.”
Jesse stared. “You can just call the Master of Denver and have him come over?”
I made a play of casually studying my fingernails. “We’re pretty tight.”
“I won’t go back to Boston,” Jesse stated. “I’ll keep out of sight. Just drop the contract.”
“A quarter million dollars, Jesse,” Trevor pleaded, as if Jesse was just supposed to sacrifice himself.
Sadie’s eyes were bugging out of her head. “It would make me really happy if my friends didn’t kill each other!”
Trevor looked at her. “You’re not, like, a secret witch or magician or something supernatural that we should know about?”
“No, I’m a lawyer.”
“I thought you were going to go live in Antarctica and rescue penguins,” Trevor said.
“Yeah, well, sometimes dreams die hard. Turns out I like takeout and hot running water too much.”
“So, nobody’s killing anybody,” Ben said. “That’s from Rick.”
“Fine. Contract’s off,” Trevor said.
“You won’t get in trouble for dropping the contract?” Jesse asked.
“Nice of you to care, but no. I may even be able to throw the client off. Convince them you were never part of the conspiracy and were too stupid to realize what was happening.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“And stay out of Boston.”
“You’ll never see me again,” Jesse said.
I sank to the concrete and sighed. “And that’s what reunions are for, realizing you have so little in common anymore with your high school friends that you’ll probably never see each other again.”
That was when the police cars pulled up, three of them, red and blue lights flashing. No sirens, at least. So probably no one was dying.
“Did you call the police, too?” Trevor pointed accusingly at Ben.
“Hell no,” he said, looking on with interest.
A trio of cops got out and entered the lobby.
“What did we miss?” I said.
Sadie touched my arm. “I’ll go find out.” She ran off, back to the ballroom.
After not too much longer, the cops returned, dragging two men in handcuffs with them. The men were clearly drunk, belligerent, shouting curses at each other, seemingly oblivious to the fact they were in the process of being arrested. One of them had a bleeding cut over his eye, the other a split lip. A pair of women, likely wives, trailed after them, crying, also yelling curses—at their husbands.
“If you’ll excuse me for just a minute,” Ben said, drawing business cards out of his pocket. He made a beeline for the women.
“Oh man, he isn’t just a lawyer, he’s an ambulance-chasing lawyer! I didn’t know that about him!” I exclaimed. I might have wiped a proud little tear from my eye.
“He take good care of you?” Jesse nodded after Ben.
This sounded more like the Jesse I remembered. He’d been kind and fun and . . . directionless, back then. He’d just wanted to get away. I’d gotten mad at him for not being satisfied with being here, with me. I wondered if he’d ever be satisfied with anything.
“Yes,” I said. “He takes good care of me.” “Good.” He smiled.
Sadie ran up then, eyes wide and full of glee. “Drunken brawl! Chris Hancock and Pete Kirkland, hitting on each others’ wives. This is why you don’t marry someone else’s high school sweetheart, amiright? Talk about your Tubthumping.”
“Well, I have to admit, I’m glad I came after all,” Trevor said. “Just to see what it’s like.”
“And now we never have to do it again,” Jesse said.
Ben returned to join us after distributing business cards, and we all ended up sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the wall, watching the proceedings. A crowd, the entire reunion it looked like, had spilled onto the sidewalk to gawk. We had a pretty good view.
So, that was the class reunion, one for the books, disintegrating into chaos and it wasn’t even any of our faults.