"Where did she see the vampire. Sue asked.
"By the river."
She pulled onto the dirt road that led to the Rocking DID. "Keep that jade with you, okay? No matter what hap pens. And tell other people, anyone you can. Get one for your mother." "
"A jade rock?
"Anything made out of jade. White jade's the best, the most powerful."
Janine looked at her suspiciously. "How come you're such an expert in all of this?"
"It's a long story. Remind me to tell you sometime. After it's all over."
"After what's all over?"
"After the cup hugirngsi is dead."
Rich was pasting up the paper in the back room, his tape player cranked up, playing an old Yes cassette. Jim Fredricks was with him, cutting halftones to size and running them through the waxer before slapping them down on the sports page.
Rich glanced at Sue as she entered the room. "Hey," he said, "what's up?"
"I was going to ask you." She nodded to Fredricks. "Hi."
The sports reporter nodded back.
"So," she said, "any new developments?
Rich critically eyed the column of type he'd just pressed down on the page dummy. He pulled up the wax paper and repositioned it. "Woman claims Elvis stole her daughter."
Sue sucked in her breath. "The cup hugirngsi." "What?" Fredricks said, turning around to look at her. "Vampire," Rich explained.
The sportswriter looked from Sue to the editor and back again, trying to determine if they were pulling his leg. Apparently deciding that they were serious, he quickly turned his back and returned to his sports photos.
Sue stared at Rich. "why are you here, then? Why aren't you helping your brother?"
"Help him do what." The editor shook his head. "I can't spend all my time rUnning around. I have a paper to put out."
"But--" ' "No huts. I can't do anything by following my brother around. What I can do is make sure that the paper comes out on time, like it always does. We can reach more people that way than any other."
She nodded. "Are you going to run my feature?" "Did you write it?"
"Sort of."
Sort of?
"It's not typed yet, but I've written it." She reached into her notebook and withdrew several folded pages, unfolding them and handing them to him. "Here."
Rich scanned the first page, the second, the third. He looked up at her. "There's no attribution here."
"I didn't have time to talk to anyone."
"This isn't an article. It's a report. And it's only about Chinese vampires."
"That's what we have here, a cup hug/rngs/." "We don't know that. "I know it."
He looked at her, met her eyes, then turned away, nodding. "All right.
Type it up. Bring me your disk when you're through. I need it within the hour."
"I will." She took the pages from him and hurried off to her desk, where she grabbed her floppy disk from the middle drawer. She pulled her chair up to his VDT, turned on the machine, and after loading her disk began to type.
She was nearly finished with the article when she heard voices from behind the dividers in the front of the office. Male voices. Two of them. She heard Carole tell them that Rich was in the back, pasting up, and then the men-Rich's brother Robert and what had to be the tallest man she'd ever seen--were rounding the corner into the newsroom.
Robert nodded at her. His eyes looked tired, and it appeared as though he hadn't shaved; there was brown and black stubble on his chin. "Hi there," he said. "Hi."
Rich emerged from paste up an X-acto knife in his hand. "I thought I heard your voice," he said to his brother. He smiled at the big man.
"Hey, Pee Wee."
Pee Wee nodded absently to the editor, but he was staring at Sue, studying her. There was nothing sexual in his gaze, nothing sleazy or secretive or even remotely salacious, only an open, honest interest, and although he did not take his eyes off her, she found that she didn't mind the attention. "Aren't you going to introduce us?" he asked Rich.
The editor shook his head. "My manners again. I guess I should have gone to finishing school. Pee Wee, this is Sue Wing, the newest addition to our newspaper family. Sue, this is Pee Wee Nelson. I don't know if you rem em her, but he used to be police chief before Robert."
The big man smiled at her. "Pleased to meet you, little lady.
There was SOmething about Pee Wee that put her at ease, that made her feel comfortable in his presence. She smiled back at him. "Hello."
"He's retired now," Rich explained. "Lives alone in the desert, spending his time living off the land and making mirrors like some leftover overage hippie."
Pee Wee laughed.
"He's very talented, though," Rich said. "And a great feature story. I think we tap him for an interview and photo essay at least once a year."
The big man squinted at Sue. "You know, you look familiar to me. I don't know how, but it seems like I met you before somewhere."
"I don't think so," she said politely.
"Maybe I'm just getting senile."
"Sue's writing an article on Chinese vampires," Rich said. He cleared his throat. "She thinks that's what we have here in Rio Verde."
There was silence. Spoken at a different time, in a different tone of voice, those words would have been cruelly mocking, dismissively condescending, but Rich had said them straight, seriously, with respect, and that was how they were taken by the other two men. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was not embarrassed by the revelation, but proud.
"She's the one who told me about the jade," he explained.
"I was doing some reading yesterday," Robert said, "'and in the Basil Copper book I checked out of the library it talks a little bit about Chinese vampire legends. It didn't say anything about using jade for protection."
Sue turned to him. "So?"
"Well, are you sure you got your story straight on this?" Sue's jaw muscles tightened. "Are you going to believe a paragraph in some book about vampire /egends or my grandmother, who's had firsthand experience with the cup
"Just calm down there, hon.
"My name's not "Hon." My name's Sue."
Rich grinned.
"I didn't me ann
"Believe it or not, there are things that weren't told to Western writers about the cup hugirngsi. Western scholars don't know everything there is to know about my culture. I know a little something about it myself."
"I was just asking," Robert said humbly. "I believe you." He held out his right hand. "i'm wearing a jade ring, see?"
Pee Wee laughed. "I like her," he said to Rich.
The editor grinned. "I'm just glad she's on our side." There was silence among them for a moment. Robert scratched his stub bled chin.
"Have you asked your grand mother where she thinks the vampire might be? I assume Chinese vampires hide during the day like American vampires. He has to have a place somewhere."
"There are no "Chinese vampires' or "American vampires." Those are only different ways of looking at the same creature, the cup hugirngsi."
"Whatever. Do you know where he is?
Sue paused. "I felt it at the school," she said. "The high school."
She looked at Rich. "The night I tried to sign up for your class."
He licked his lips. "At the school?"
She nodded.
"Did you notice anything about it?" Robert asked. "What did it look like?"
"It's old," she said quietly. "That's what stood out the most to me.
It's very, very old."
"Where did you see it?"
"I didn't see it, exactly. I felt it. I sensed its presence. It was like... I don't know. I just knew that it was there. And I knew it was ancient." She met the police chief's gaze. "It was by the lockers, at the end of the main corridor."
"That's a place to start."
Rich stared at the blade of his X-acto knife, turning the knife in his hands. "What if it is as old as you think? What if it is centuries old? How can we right something like that? Our little lives pass by in a blink of its eye. We're nothing to it; we're no threat."