“You could have got here sooner.”
Travis shrugged.
“Yeah, I could have.”
He’d sensed the man’s impatience before he’d even climbed the concrete steps, to reach him. Mr. Raffens was a man in a suit, men in suits were known for their impatience.
Mr. Raffens looked him up and down, and from his expression it was clear he didn’t like what he saw. Travis let him, waiting, he’d never been turned down from a job before, based on his appearance and he didn’t expect this to be the first time either.
“Well-“ Mr. Raffens said after a minute. “You did come recommended. You’d better come in.”
He turned, and went through the building’s, imposing double doors. Travis glanced around him, then followed in other man’s wake; he always came recommended. Word of mouth was the way he got nearly all of his jobs, without it he would probably be out of work, but he’d have another job waiting after this one. Right now, he didn’t know what that job would be, but it would come. He was the guy they called, when all the other guys had failed.
“So, how long have you had this problem?” Travis asked, as he followed Mr. Raffens along the corridor. It was wide, with a bland tiled floor and panelled wooden doors spaced at about six foot intervals.
“Over a month now. The disruption has been…..considerable. Which is why I had expected a…a faster response.”
Travis didn’t respond. He was here now, which was really the important thing. If he’d been the type of man to enjoy pressure, he’d have picked another line of work a long time ago. Mind you, finding another one he’d be suited to, wouldn’t be easy.
They walked for another few minutes, then Mr. Raffens stopped outside a door, by a staircase, marked “Maintenance.”
“This is it.”
Travis looked at the door, tilting his head, already trying to get a feel for what is inside.
“You think this is the centre for the disruptions?”
“If that’s what you……people call it.” he glanced at his watch. “Will this take long, Mr...”
“Swords,” Travis supplied. Of course the man knew his surname, these public service types always insisted on both Christian and surnames in their dealings. Either he’d forgotten it, or he was just being plain rude. Neither option bothered him particularly; it took a hell of a lot to bother him these days.
There were a lot of answers he could give to the question. Some cases had taken him under an hour, others much…much longer. He just couldn’t know until he knew what he was dealing with. What he did know, was that he couldn’t do his work at all, with Mr. Raffens breathing down his neck. He worked alone, always had.
“Come back in ten minutes, then I’ll tell you how long this is going to take.”
Mr. Raffens frowned.
“Very well. Just don’t make a mess in there.”
He turned away, and started up the staircase, soon disappearing from view. Travis stepped forward, and placed his hand on the metal doorknob. He hesitated for just a second, then he turned the knob and pushed the door inwards, revealing a small room, which contained very little. Just a rack with mops and brooms attached to it, a large shelf unit containing various cleaners and buckets. There was an ancient looking vacuum cleaner nestled in the far left corner, and a corkboard tool rack attached to the back wall.
Nothing out of the ordinary, to his eyes or to any of his other senses. He walked inside, closing the door behind him, and look around him again, taking in every detail. As he was doing so, he heard a rattling, banging sound. It was so close to him that he would have jumped, expect that he had only heard it.
It could have only come from one place.
He looked up, and saw the large metal grille inserted into the ceiling. It was large enough for a man to have climbed through, which was no doubt what they did, if they suspected a blockage in the ventilation system.
The centre of the disruptions……yeah, right.
That asshole in the suit expected him to climb up into the ventilation system. He would have, if he’d needed to, but the whole damn room was flat. Not a single vibration. Whatever was up there was making one hell of a racket, but it sure as fuck wasn’t anything supernatural. They probably had rats, or else big ass cockroaches.
What a waste. Another damn flat-out.
He turned back to the door, opened it and stepped out into the corridor, closing the door behind him. He glanced at his watch…three minutes tops. Great, he could get out of here before that jerk came back.
He started walking back down the corridor, towards the entrance.
“Good, you’re finished already.”
Shit…the guy had been watching for him. Travis was tempted to just keep walking, but he made himself stop and turn back to face him. He couldn’t afford for this suit to start spreading shit about him. His reputation was all he had. He was among the best in the world, yet his fees were minimal. Sometimes he didn’t charge at all, it all depended on the case.
With this one, he wouldn’t be charging a dime, for no other reason than he hadn’t done anything. It was only fair, and in any case, karma would come back and bite Mr. Raffens on the ass…it always did.
“Yeah, I’m done. You don’t have a problem, at least no one that I can solve for you”
Mr. Raffens glowered at him.
“Clearly this whole exercise was a waste of time.”
‘You weren’t the one who had to drive twenty miles to get here,’ Travis thought.
“Clearly.”
“You have nothing else to say? How on earth are my students supposed to work with this damn racket?”
Travis sighed. He actually had a lot else to say to Mr. Raffens, but thinking of the students tempered his response. They shouldn’t have to suffer the noise, along with this asshole of a principal.
“Call the exterminators. You probably have rats in the ventilation system.”
“Rats! You think we haven’t checked for that already?”
“Tell them to check again” Travis replied, unfazed by the man’s anger. “And this time make sure they do a proper job.”
He turned away, and started walking again. He didn’t expect Mr. Raffens to follow him, the man had way too much pride. He went out through the entrance doors, and down the concrete steps, pausing for a moment on the driveway that led up to the school.
He took a deep breath of the fresh air, grateful to be back outside again.
Despite not getting any money out of it, despite the jerk in the suit, and despite another flat-out, it was still the best day at school he’d ever had.
Travis was standing at the sink, washing the dishes when hands clasped his hips, and a kiss was pressed to his throat.
Travis let the scrubbing brush drop into the murky water.
“No fair” he complained, even as he tilted his head to the side, to invite more of the tender attentions. “You know I can’t sense the undead.”
Anastasias chuckled.
“Why the fuck do you think I do it?” he brushed Travis’s long, brown hair out of the way, and dropped more kisses along the line of his neck vein.
Travis sighed.
“Don’t be getting any ideas, Tas.”
“As if,” Anastasias said, his voice was light, but he stepped back from Travis and moved over to the window of the trailer, that overlooked the lake. “You know I always feed before I come home.”
Travis turned away from the sink to look at him, but all he got was a view of Anastasia’s back, the leather of the jacket he always wore reflecting the trailer’s lights.
“I didn’t mean-“ he began.
“How did the school go?” Anastasias interrupted him.
“Rats,” Travis answered, grateful that Tas had changed the subject.
“Rats.” Anastasias turned around, and Travis saw the surprise in his green eyes. “Are you being some kind of smartass?”
Travis laughed.
“Charming. Nope…it was another flat-out. That makes…what, three in a row now.”
Anastasias shrugged off his leather jacket, and lay it over the back of one of the dining chairs. “I don’t know why they keep calling me.”
Anastasias shook his head.
“You’re starting to bitch, Sivart. You know why people call you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that, Tas. I ain’t a vampire.”
“No, but you are a companion to one.” Anastasias closed the distance between them, and cupped Travis’s shoulders in his hands.
Travis laid his head against his chest.
“Why is it that people call me, again?”
Anastasias kissed the top of his head.
“Because they want the magic. Reality can become a burden.”
“I wouldn’t know. Reality and me haven’t stuck around each other much.”
“You don’t think living in a trailer is real? Seems pretty white trash to me.”
Travis snorted.
“Not if you’re sharing it with a vampire.”
Anastasias laughed. Travis leaned in close to him. He felt safe with Tas, safer than he’d felt with any other man…and there had been quite a few. He didn’t know why he’d said that earlier. It was just sometimes…he wondered.
Fin.