The Last VonTassel

Win the Bet While Losing it

I woke to the sound of a thick lid slamming against the edge of what it covered. That sound was known vastly to me as the distinct voice of the coffee maker saying it was ready to be started up.

It was a ventriloquist dummy, though, so someone had to have shut it or leave it raised. Strangely, no one was there when I stepped heavily into the kitchen, but there was a note on the coffee maker in her mother's scrawl.

Good morning,

I prepared coffee, just press the button. Take good care of my daughter or I'll behead you with a blunt cleaver.

Have a nice day,

Collette

There was even a little smiley face quickly drawn next to the 'Have a nice day' bit.

Safe to say, I couldn't wait to meet her father. Quickly tossing away the little yellow piece with writing, I shuddered and hit the button on my business partner's day starter.

There were still minuscule pieces of sand stuck in the corners of my eyes that I forced out as I made my way to her room.

The pajamas that she was still clad in were a lot easier to deal with than that white thing she'd worn the first and only other time I'd spent the night.

While I berated myself for not knocking before I entered, I strolled over to her contentedly snoozing figure.

If I hadn't known better, I'd think she was dead or in a comatose, but she was just out cold. It had to have been at least 3 in the morning before she had finally stopped and gone to bed.

"Wakey, wakey, Evie. Blood's a brewing." I sing-song, grinning widely at the sound of her querulous growl and reluctance to open her eyes. She screwed them shut instead and grunted pointedly as she rolled over and covered her ears with a pillow.

"It's too early."

"It is half passed noon." I versed and she let the pillow flop back and I turned away from the literature she was actually interested in to see her glowering at me from her spot on the bed and I found it mildly humoring.

"I was dreaming." It was a statement with an enigmatic meaning I couldn't decrypt, but it intrigued me because it sounded like she wanted to tell me about it.

"Of what?" I inquired softly, taking a seat on the edge of her bed.

"My story. Tesla...told me her last name; it's actually Meradeen."

"Tesla?"

"The main character in Hemlock and Aconite, the next book in Nerium. Tesla Meradeen, late 20's, a toxicologist-well a student studying it... with an unlikely positive personality, and an extensive collection of poisons, venoms, and toxins."

"What did she look like?"

"As beautiful as any other." She chuckled distantly."Long brunette, gray eyes, lightly tanned skin from her partly Cherokee origins, and she's tall and kind of angular and bony feeling even though she doesn't have a body where the bones can be clearly seen."

"So, you met her? What about the male?"

"I started on him first because I had you to use as a sort of foundation...you're a great character model and you helped me figure part of his past out." I was taken aback at her sincerity and at the compliment that came out of her mouth that genuinely resounded of realness.

Evelyn's compliments were never meant as compliments, no, she could make them overflow with vilification.

My compromise was to not say anything and patiently wait for her to get up and make her coffee.