Lori is on day shift at the hospital right now, and Danny, THE project manager for a small tech startup is gone during the day too.
The cats and I coded (mostly me: The feline code kibitzing limited to face rubbing, plus some random keyboard stomping, before important naps are returned to)
I checked my encrypted email often. Both said they were settled in and starting on their parts of the plan. I asked about Snowball. Received back a picture of her on the table sleeping.
Should Arnold be watching me, my part of the plan at this stage is to be visibly not involved with Jessica and moving on with my life. I am in full swing. If you can call it 'full swing' to hardly leave the house. I did cook for Danny and Lori though. Always nice to come home to a hot meal.
On the third day, I received a package. Inside was a device that resembled a small metal detector. There was a note, and a xeroxed instruction manual.
The note was painfully short and read:
A.
Got this from H. Swept the 'wing. No bugs. Check your place. Let me know. Miss you
J
I looked at that far too brief note in Jessica's clear beautiful cursive hand: One hundred twenty-three years ago they had been serious about teaching kids good handwriting.
She missed me. That made me feel very warm.
While it felt juvenile to think it, it underscored once again that the only time Jessica ever used the word 'love' is in that first note. After all the things we have been through since, only that one note after our first night.
I suspect it is easier to say you love someone when you think you are never going to see them again, not have them around your Vampire world for millennia.
I read that the reason the divorce rate now is so high is that people these days live so long. Robert Heinlein talked about things like contract marriage back in the 1960s and '70s. Mexico City recently talked about making that a legal form of marriage. If the rules of marriage are changing because people now live to be eighty rather than thirty or forty, what kinds of relationships do you create when you live to be two thousand or more?
Is possible to get tired of sex?
Nah. Not when your physicality is eternally young. Helen is over five centuries, and it is obvious she will jump Jessica the next chance she gets.
Which may have already happened? Helen got this device to Jessica. I wondered if they were able to see each other. I felt a funny twinge at the idea that Helen might be able to see Jessica when I cannot. I do not like to think of myself as a jealous person. Jealousy comes from poor self-esteem, and my ego is pretty intact... I think? Despite my change is station as a male of the Vampire species, I know who I am. Being Vampire did not change that at all.
Still... there it is. A twinge. My self-confidence is damaged. Finding out I am a third-class citizen in the world of Vampires and given to someone like chattel made some dents in my armor. Holes even. Big gaping bloody holes.
Jessica missed me. I clung to that.
I read the xeroxed instruction sheets. It is pretty simple, and different types of bugs are detected with the unit. There is a downside side to living in a big house, besides how long it takes to clean it. It is going to take forever to scan all of it. The detector needs to be fairly close for some classes of very low powered bugs. There is a 'bug identification' page showing what different eavesdropping devices could look like. Some are amazingly small. Vampire eyes might be handy for this.
I swept the house carefully, using overlapping passes. I went up in the attic, and out in the garage and even in the little house and storage building out back. I climbed on top of the house late the first night and checked all the pipes that poke through the roof. Using my new and improved optics I visually scanned the trees looking for parabolic antennas. I walked all over my property looking for anything that did not belong there. I do not have a hardwired type of phone, so I did not need to trace along the telephone wires or the junction box that still existed from when mom and dad owned the place... but I did anyway.
It took two full days to finish the job with the detector. Nothing, nothing, and oh yeah: nothing.
Nothing electronic: I am sure Arnold has been around my house several times. Disturbed ground. An unknown male scent here and there near the house in the tree line. In some places, the scent is fainter: more 'rancid'. I interpreted that as 'older'. It does not rain a lot in Austin this time of year, so the scents don't get washed away.
The outdoor scent of the unknown male all appears in places that have a concealable line of sight to the house. A tree that can be hidden behind but observes a side window has a scent. Areas with uninteresting views of the house seemed to have just been 'passed through'.
Calibrating against how fast Lori and Danny's scents fade outside, It has been a while since unknown male person left these scents. Well more than a week and perhaps directly after Arnold woke up from being beaned by Jessica at the deer processing shop. Since we were not here, he did not seem to have returned.
I stood at one of the places unknown male had been and looked at the window that led to the kitchen, over the sink. Arnold could carry a parabolic "ear" or maybe one of those lasers that pick up the vibrations from window glass. I am not sure how easy such toys are to get for him, or how well that would work on triple pane glass and all the weatherproofing galore. My parents' energy efficient design probably made my house more sound proof than average.
As Arnold is not physically here spying with a portable technology of some kind, he did not know what happens in my place. I still need to assume he is outside listening unless I verify first he is not. There is no way he can plant a bug now: I would smell that a mile away.