Natalie yawned. A slow night at the morgue meant a chance to catch up on her paperwork, but after several hours at this, she was losing the struggle against nodding off. Her concentration had been shot from the get-go anyway. The argument she'd had with Nick earlier this evening kept coming back to haunt her.

"I have been trying!" he'd insisted, though something in his tone made her suspect he didn't even believe the lie himself anymore. "I have!"

"Come on, Nick." She'd glared at him across the cold metal exam table -- the same one he'd scared the willies out of her by coming back to life on a year ago. "Being mortal means doing all the things mortals do. Eating food. Not flying. And not drinking blood. Have you really tried to do any of those things for more than a brief night or two? Well, have you?"

He glowered. For a moment, she thought he would turn around and fly out of the morgue in an angst-ridden whoosh, as he had done so many times before. But he stayed, for the moment anyway. "It's not that easy," he muttered, staring vacantly down at the empty table. His eyes were glazing over. In another few seconds, he'd be eight hundred years away.

Nat smacked the metal table with both open palms, satisfied at his startled reaction. "I've got a news flash for you, Nick. It's not easy for us mere mortals, either. But at least we work at it!"

That had done it. He hadn't flown, but his hasty exit from the lab had very nearly bowled Grace over on her way in the door. She'd stepped out of the way just in time, and now stood against the blue-tiled wall with her mouth gaping. "What the hell...?"

Nat vented a long sigh and sank into her computer chair. "That," she opined, "is a very good question."

"That was Nick, wasn't it?"

Resisting the stupidly girlish urge to burst into tears and hoping that Grace wouldn't notice, Nat managed a tight-lipped nod.

Grace noticed. "Mm-hm," she said knowingly. "Girlfriend, I know it ain't none of my business, but..." She hesitated, considered something for a moment, then raised one hand, the index finger pointing upward. "You wait right there. I'll be back in a flash."

She'd returned a minute later, holding what looked vaguely like a miniature coffin. It had a gold-toned clasp and a mini screen inset into the lid, as though the little wooden box might contain something that required air. Well, Nat mused, that pretty much ruled out a miniature vampire. She squinted to read the red-lettered label under the clasp. In rather oddly-shaped script, it proclaimed, "My Pet Brick."

"Here you go." Grace plopped the thing into her hand and gave the box lid an affectionate pat. "I think you need him a whole lot more than I do right now. So he's all yours. Oh..." She pulled a small folded pamphlet from her lab coat pocket and tucked that into Nat's hand as well. "You'll need that." At the coroner's quizzical look, she added helpfully, "Instruction booklet."

"Thanks. I think." Nat gave her a lukewarm smile. "Er... what is it?"

"Just what it says. Go ahead, have a look see."

Frowning, Nat slipped a thumbnail under the clasp and popped it open, lifting the hinged lid. Inside, nestled on a bed of moss, sat a tiny clay brick with a face etched into one side. It gazed up at her with two beady eyes and a vapid smile.

"Okay. And just exactly what does one do with a..." Nat tilted the box to read the label again. "...Pet Brick?"

"Talk to it," Grace said with a grin. "Best cure for man troubles you ever will see. You just lay all your grievances on this little guy. He won't argue. And he won't run away." She glanced back at the lab door through which Nick had recently departed. "Guaranteed."

With a nervous laugh, Natalie sat the open box and its booklet down beside the computer. "A little catharsis might just help at that."

"You trust me on this." Her lab assistant waggled a finger at the box. "Talkin' to this little guy? It really does make you feel better. In fact, it does just as much good as talkin' to the real thing, girlfriend, if you could make the real thing stay put. Trust me. Just as much good."

Well, that would be true enough. For all that Nick ever seemed to hear her, Nat decided, she might as well be talking to a brick. "Thanks for caring, Grace," she'd said. "I'll give it a try."

Three hours and a mini-Everest of paperwork later, Grace had gone off shift, and Nat desperately needed a break from the eyestrain. At least filling out the reports had taken her mind off Nick -- for a while. She stood, stretched, and wandered back toward the computer desk, where the diminutive brick still smiled up at her from its mossy nest inside the box.

"What're you grinning at?" she snapped at it. She reached out, intending to close the lid over the silly thing. Instead, she found herself glaring down at it as though it weren't a hunk of clay with a dopey face etched on it at all, but the blond, blue-eyed vampire who'd charged out of here a few hours ago. "Do you have any idea how frustrating it is even trying to have a relationship with you? These moods you get into. Joking one minute and brooding the next. And that zoning-out thing you keep doing, glazing over smack in the middle of a conversation, drifting off to some other century. I hate it when you do that!"

The brick grinned stupidly back at her and, as promised, offered no argument.

"You won't commit to finding a cure, you won't stick to the dietary regimen, you won't work with me on any of this, and damn it, Nick, you never listen!" She slapped the desk's edge an angry, glancing blow. The little brick jumped once, settled back into its bed of moss, and went right on grinning.

Frustration vented, Nat exhaled a relieved puff of air, stared down at the corny little face, and couldn't help herself. She started laughing. She laughed so hard that tears blurred her vision, and she fell into the computer chair to wipe them away, still chuckling.

Grace was right. She did feel better. And hell, it wasn't as though Nick had ever made any real commitment, was it? Not like that louse who'd walked out on her friend Katy after four kids and twelve years of marriage. Or Marla down in forensics, who'd invested five years in a live-in relationship only to have the rat dump her for his silicone-enhanced secretary. They were the ones who could probably use a good laugh about now. In fact...

She pulled the instruction booklet from under the brick's wooden box and opened it, searching for an address. There it was, along with a website. The brick had a web page? Amazing, the things you could order on line these days.

Nat signed onto the office ISP and, still chortling, typed in the URL. "H-t-t-p, colon, slash slash," she murmured as she struck the keys (typing had never been her forte), "members.aol.com/JeanG477/," it was a long address, "petbrickad.htm."

"There," she said, and with the Nick-brick smiling up at her in dopey-grin approval, she punched the ENTER key.

Katy and Marla were going to love this.
 
 

-- End --