#rip wip

At the central lounge a white-haired man in jacket and tie was playing "Baby, It's Cold Outside" from memory on the baby grand.  Mischa stood near the piano, flanked by Chiyoh.  At the sight of Will she hopped forward and waved.

"Thank you for agreeing to come," she said.  "Are you feeling better?"

"Still kicking,” said Will.  He didn't add that his condition would improve upon exiting the store.

"I love a good suburban mall,” Mischa said, beaming.  “They feel so authentically American.  Hannibal hates them--I can never persuade him to come."

"So are you here for shopping, or just...tourism?"

"Both," she said.  "This way."

She steered them to the men's coats as if she'd charted the route in advance by GPS.  When she delved into the racks she seemed to know exactly what she was hunting for.  

The coat was grey, neither light nor dark, softly intermediate.  Will touched the material, a blend of cashmere and wool.  It felt good under his fingers.  He could picture Hannibal's fingers on it, Hannibal being the one to slide his hands over the shoulders, down the sleeves.

The label under the collar read "BOSS."  Will tried to imagine being the kind of person who wanted or needed to wear a coat that declared itself "BOSS" in all caps.  He glanced at the price tag and managed not to curl his lip, if only just.  He shed his old jacket and shrugged the coat on.

Mischa's eyes lit, and she clapped her hands together under her chin.

He tried on a few others, mainly at her insistence--a navy peacoat and a topcoat in a darker grey--but in the end they returned to the BOSS.

"It suits you," Mischa said, in a tone that sounded uncannily familiar.  "The fit's not bad for prêt-à-porter.  Do you like it?"

"It's fine," he said.  "It's nice."

She plucked it from his hands and made a beeline for the nearest uncrowded register.

Will lurched after her, taken aback by her speed.  He'd forgotten just how fast her kind could move, even when they were trying not to be obvious.  He reached to grab hold of the coat hanger where it dangled from her arm.

"No, no, hold up.  You can't pay for that."

She paused.  "Can't I?"

"I don't care how old you actually are. I'm not letting a kid in pigtails buy me a six-hundred-dollar coat."

Mischa turned to face him, her expression unfazed and bright.  "I'll tell you a secret, Mr. Graham.  This isn't really a present, and it isn't really for you.  It's gift wrap."

It took him a second to follow.  "You think I'm looking to get unwrapped?"

"I don't know.  Are you?"

Will felt a flush spread over his neck.  "He wasn't kidding when he said you were naughty."

"Honestly, I'm not.  I only want my brother to be happy."

Her eyes shone up at him, clear and brown and earnest.  My weakness, thought Will, how did you know.

"Give me that," he said.  He pulled the coat from her grasp.  She let him drape it over his arm with no further fuss.  For a minute they stood in silence together, waiting in line for the register.  Will spread his hand over the front of the coat.  

Eventually he said, "I haven't gotten him anything."  If he'd thought about it, he wouldn't have assumed he and Hannibal were at the present-giving stage.  Or that he'd be able to suss out anything worth giving to someone who could afford everything.  Trying to choose a bottle of wine to bring when Hannibal made him dinner was enough of an exercise in futility.  Coals to Newcastle.  "I'm not very good at presents."

"Oh, it's easy.  If you want to give my brother something--besides yourself in a handsome coat--ask him for something."

He gave her a sideways look.  "Isn't that backwards?"

"Trust me, Mr. Graham.  I've been his baby sister longer than you've been alive.  He likes to be indulgent.  It's one of his favorite things."

"You should probably be calling me Will," he said. Then, after a pause,  "Not sure how good I am at being indulged.  Not a lot of experience."

"So, why not try it and see?"

Why not, thought Will.

Mischa wandered away, attracted by the herd of Burberry deer.  By the time Will had paid for the coat, she'd disappeared entirely.  It was Chiyoh who came to re-collect him as he strayed among the racks.  

She glanced at the shopping bag on his arm.  "You got what you wanted?"

"She did," said Will.  Chiyoh said nothing, but some of the coolness in her expression seemed to thaw.

Without another word she led him to the entrance of the store and just beyond it, to a kiosk standing in the middle of the mall.  Mischa was there, bent over the kiosk's display case with an expression of abject woe.  She looked so tremulous--comically so--that it was on Will's lips to ask what was wrong, but then she caught sight of him and Chiyoh, and brightened.

"Look what I found!  Will, do you like macarons?"

Approaching the kiosk, he glanced at the rows of colored cookies under the glass.  To his eye they looked like little pastel hamburgers.  He shrugged.

"Never tried one."

It was as if he'd backhanded her across the face.  Even Chiyoh looked at him askance.  Mischa clutched her handbag to her chest.  

"Oh! I'd have brought a box from Ladurée if I'd known.  But you'll try one now, won't you?  Since you wouldn't let me get you the coat.  Chiyoh, erabu no tetsudatte?"

"They won't be any good," said Chiyoh, but she stepped up to survey the flavors as Mischa tugged at her sleeve.

"You don't know that."

Will drew back a pace to give them room, and then another.  It felt like a greater distance.  He watched them standing side by side, near enough to one another that their shoulders bumped: the girl in her pale coat, the woman in the dark one.  How far back would you have to peel those black sleeves, he wondered, before a set of twin fang marks would show? Or the high, stiff collar--how far would that have to bend to expose the bite wound on the neck?

Mischa turned.  She was speaking; he heard the sound of words as if from behind a thick pane of glass or underwater.  She held out her arm.  

There was something in her hand.  It wasn't hers, he knew: she was only the messenger, delivering.  He mirrored the gesture, and she laid the thing in his palm.  He stared down, startled by its starkness, by the deep purplish red against his skin.  The color of contusion.  It weighed almost nothing, and that startled him, too: he'd thought it would be heavier, full as it was.  The insides would be viscous and thick.  

As he stared the thing began to ooze, slowly at first and then with increasing urgency, like a bud unfolding in time-lapse at sickening speed.  The dark red welled and coated his hands--there was no way to contain it--and then the thing pulsed, once, then again, and with a lurch Will realized he'd been wrong to think it dead.  It was alive, all this time, still beating, still alive--

"Will?"

Blood pounded in his ears.  He blinked.  

Bright brown eyes peered up at him.  "Are you all right?  Do you not like raspberry?  We got lots of flavors, if you want to try something else."

The noise in his head receded abruptly, water down a drain.  In its place came the tinny strains of muzak from the nearest store:  the Carol of the Bells.  His collar felt tight around his neck, constricting. His ears and throat were hot.  He passed a hand over his face, knocking his glasses askew.  He'd forgotten he was wearing them, his flimsy extra shield against crowds, noise, invasive stares.  

"Sorry," he said.  

Mischa hovered in front of him.  "You don't look well.  Would you like to sit down?  There's a bench just this way, here--"

He let himself be herded.  The front of the bench collided with the backs of his knees.  Once he was seated, Mischa handed off the box of macarons to Chiyoh.

"I'll run and get you both something to drink.  Back in a tic."

In a flash she was gone.  She'd used her true speed, blinking in and out of visibility, like a skipping stone across the surface of a pond.  A few heads turned, but it wouldn't be the first time residents of suburban Baltimore had seen a vampire at the mall, in a rush like any other last-minute shopper.

Will leaned over his knees, waiting for a sense of solidity to return to him.  Chiyoh sat down beside him, placing the box of macarons between them on the bench.  

He licked his lips.  "What was I..."

"You were staring," said Chiyoh, "unresponsive.  As if in a trance."

"For how long?"

"Long enough to seem strange."

He drew a breath and released it slowly.  "Sorry," he said again.  "I'm a little off my feed."

Her eyebrows inclined only slightly, as if to say that any bizarre behaviors he might exhibit were hardly worth troubling herself or anyone else.  

"Hannibal has always had a taste for curiosities," she said.

"Curiosities," echoed Will.  "And what about your taste?"  He jerked his chin at the box of macarons.  "Do you even like those things?"

"They're extremely sweet," she said.

"So let me guess.  You eat the cookie, then cookie monster eats you?"

The stare she leveled at him was a flat, dark wall.

"What I haven't figured out is whether this is standard vampire behavior," Will said, "or Lecter family tradition.  The vicarious consumption."

"Wouldn't you be the expert on vampire behavior?  Considering your work."  Before he could open his mouth again, Chiyoh continued.  "Hannibal had many years to experience life as a human.  Mischa, not so many.  I don't begrudge her anything.  The family takes care of its own."

"But they haven't 'given you the gift.'"

"Not yet."

Mischa returned with a bottle of Perrier and hot tea in a disposable cup.  She passed the tea to Chiyoh and the water to Will, leaning nearer to take an unobtrusive sniff.  She frowned.

"My nose isn't as good as Hannibal's, but I do think you smell feverish.  I'm so sorry, I never should have dragged you out when you're still unwell."

"I'll be okay," said Will.  "Thanks for the water."  He raised the bottle to her in a feeble toast, then unscrewed the cap and drank.  

"It's the least I could do.  You should go and see my brother.  Have him give you a bit more of his blood.  That'll set you right, whatever it is."  She laid her hand on his sleeve with a gentle pat.

Will went still.  

Confusion caught him only for a moment.  The denial, the what do you mean by more died unspoken in his mind.  His eye fixed on the paper cup in Chiyoh's hand.  He remembered Hannibal in the kitchen, the motion of pouring tea obscured by his broad back, by Will's inattention in the moment.  The taste of earth and mineral, subterranean dark.  

His throat closed.  He gripped the neck of the green bottle in his fist.

"Will?"

He couldn't look at her.  He pushed his glasses up on his nose and arranged his mouth into a smile.

"Good idea," he said.

The cold clench of his insides helped to steady him.  When he stood up from the bench he didn't waver on his feet.  Chiyoh stood with him, and Mischa protested:  did he feel well enough to drive?  He hadn't even tried his macaron, he must take it with him.  

Looking down, he found the red thing again in his hand.  He could see now that it wasn't a heart.  He brought it to his mouth.  When he bit into it, the shell crumbled.  The taste was cloying, the texture like sugared ash.