Hersh had settled onto a low tan sofa across the cottage parlor. “Be that as it may, Fletcher, can you reverse the effect of the potion?”

Boggs frowned at him. “A defrocked veterinarian could do that.” He returned his attention to me. “Tell me what your daughter told you about this stuff she fed you. By the way, is she going to get back on Posy Pickwick?”

“Negotiations are under way,” I told him. “About the potion. Beth told me Shandu took it from a book of magic by a fellow named Count Monstrodamus, who flourished in the eighteenth century.”

“Actually he flourished through several centuries,” said the occult investigator. “The Count wasn’t immortal, but he hung on for almost three hundred years. Sounds like Vince was borrowing from a copy of The Vile and Unholy Spells, Potions and Incantations of the Infamous, Black-Souled Magus, the Notorious Count Monstrodamus, Late of Vienna. Any idea which edition?”

“The first. The one that’s supposed to be bound in human skin.”

Boggs shook his head. “Bullshit. It’s only goat skin,” he said. “But the first edition version of the werewolf potion is slightly different from the one in later editions.”

Hersh asked, “You have a copy?”

“Too expensive.” He crossed to the PC that rested on a tile-topped, iron-legged table against the wall. “I’ve modified my computer so it can access just about every forbidden sorcery book known to man.”

“Who put that stuff on the Net?” I asked him.

“Various adepts.” He seated himself at the computer. “I’ll take a look at the Count’s formula, then look up a surefire antidote. Did I mention my fee?”

“Not as yet.”

“Since you’re a buddy of Bernie’s, I’ll give you the discount. It’ll run you, soon as you’re satisfied with the cure, six hundred ninety-five bucks.”

“I can afford that,” I assured him.

I put on a fresh plaid shirt, buttoned several buttons and stepped into the john to observe my image.

I was my normal everyday self, as I had been since late last night when I’d swallowed the six ounces of Fletcher Boggs’s antidote to the werewolf potion my madcap daughter had slipped into my morning smoothie. Considering what I was paying, I expected he’d serve me out of something more upscale than an old peanut butter jar.

The important thing, though, was that the stuff cured my lycanthropy in a matter of minutes. Outside of severe nausea, heart palpitations, double vision, and cramps for about a half hour, there were no side effects to speak of. Since last night I hadn’t turned into a wolf-man again. And I noticed this morning that I didn’t even need to shave. Hopefully I was cured.

I’d been in the kitchen less than a minute, when I heard a rattling crash out on the front half acre. That was followed by a large splash.

Setting the half gallon of vanilla soy milk that I’d just fetched out of the refrigerator down next to the blender, I ran outside.

Beth, wearing a bright yellow singlet, crimson cycling pants, and a silver cycling helmet, was stepping gingerly out of the fishpond. This was a few feet from where the birdbath once had stood.

A black ten-speed bike was partially submerged among the lily pads and agitated goldfish.

“Have you run out of cars, child?” I inquired, bending and hefting the bicycle out of the greenish water.

“I made a vow not to drive a car of any kind for six months.”

“In church?”

“In the Will Destry offices,” my daughter explained. “Part of the deal everybody worked up to put me back on Posy Pickwick: Rock & Roll Detective.”

“So you’re gainfully employed again.” I laid the dripping bike out on the lawn.

“I’m going to hire a chauffeur tomorrow, but today I used one of my bicycles to ride over to visit you.”

“As I told you last night, I am no longer a werewolf. If all goes well, I never shall be again.”

Beth said, “I’ve got some great news for you.”

“Such as?”

“Mom has thrown Bryson out and fired him as her literary agent.”

“Oh, so? What prompted that?”

My pretty red-haired daughter sat down on the stone bench beside the fishpond. “Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the police caught the Wolf-Man of Westwood last night.”

“I thought that might happen.”

“Bright and early this morning they looked into the cell they popped him in last night,” she continued. “There was Bryson Kranbuhl. He told the cops who he was, but he didn’t have any ID on him. They let him call Mom and she came down to Westwood to identify that jerk and bail him out.”

“Sounds like an act of deep affection to me.”

She shook her head. “Once she knew he was the Wolf-Man, she realized why Westwood was where he was always spotted,” she said. “Mom had suspected that Bryson had a tootsie in Westwood and had been spending some afternoons and evenings with her. She also thought his impulse to swipe women’s underwear was tacky. So he’s out.”

“What about I Married an Asshole?”

“She’s shelved that for now while she rethinks the project,” my daughter informed me. “So, Dad, this is a perfect time for you to get back together. Don’t you think so?”

Crossing, I sat beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Probably not.”

She looked sad. “Couldn’t you at least drop by and have dinner with us some night?”

After a moment I answered, “That might be possible.”

Beth smiled and clapped her hands together. “Neat. Then my efforts haven’t been in vain.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” I said.

Kvetchula’s Daughter by Darrell Schweitzer

The day my mother became a vampire, she ruined my life. I didn’t know it at the time, and I’m sure she didn’t have time to think about it-I have to admit that being dead and coming back to life more-or-less can be distracting-but that’s God’s honest truth and if I were of a slightly different persuasion I’d add “cross my heart and hope to die.”

Give me a break!

It wasn’t as if I were not beside myself with worry, what with Momma and Poppa off on their trip to Romania, he being, though he is my father and I love him, such a nebbish he never stood up to her about anything, so when he booked the two of them on that Dracula Fan Club tour or whatever it was with non-refundable tickets, you could have heard Momma’s jaw drop in Brooklyn, as she observed at the time, and we don’t live anywhere near Brooklyn.

My poppa, he was bats about bats, and about Dracula and Children of the Night and all that stuff. He had a vampire-movie collection like you wouldn’t believe. I think it was the one thing Momma couldn’t take away from him. After I went off to college and they were alone, he got even battier, and so they went on this tour that was supposed to last two weeks, and after they didn’t come back and I didn’t hear a thing from them for six months, you think I shouldn’t worry?

It was one thing, that two weeks, during my spring break, me back in the old house, watching Poppa’s movies when there was nothing else to do-he really does have a dubbed copy of Mein Yiddishe Drakula-and taking care of the cats. The cats, Elvira and Vlad. Poppa named them before Momma could. Just as well because she probably would have called them Pusscha and Poopsie.

Me, I am nothing like my mother, which is just as well, but I have to worry.

My putzy, sometime boyfriend Max, he says maybe they were carried off by the fairies, and I said no, in the Balkans you get carried off by the Gypsies. Ireland, fairies; Romania, Gypsies. Got it?

So Max, not worrying-I should have shot him-says, “Maybe Dracula turned her into a vampire…” and I have to laugh, despite my worries, because Momma is so short. What would she do, stand on a stepladder so she can reach people’s necks to bite them?