4
The best way to show that you’re independent is actually to be independent. Develop outside interests, attend cultural events, anything to show your wayward vampire mate that you’re not sitting at home pining away.
—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less
Destructive Relationships
I slunk up my front-porch steps, exhausted and in serious need of sedatives and/or lobotomy instruments. Andrea, on the other hand, looked cool and collected, stretched out on my porch swing, scratching my dog behind the ears, and sipping a tall icy beverage that I promptly stole from her.
“Hey!” she cried. “I used your best liquor to make that! And there wasn’t much to choose from.”
“It’s an emergency,” I told her between swigs of what I think was a daiquiri. Because of my sordid history with the demon alcohol and the inevitably humiliating results, I don’t usually imbibe. But tonight I was making an exception. I slumped onto the swing with Andrea and sighed. “Not that you’re not welcome here at River Oaks, but has it occurred to you that making yourself frosty cocktails while I’m not home is breaking and entering?”
“Yes, it did. But I was thirsty, and you left me your key ring to close up.”
“I’m way too trusting. Am I going to come home one night and find you taking a bath in my tub and wearing my clothes?” She arched her eyebrow, looking from her own stylishly cut silk blouse and slacks to my suit—which had been purchased by my mother. “Never mind.”
“I’m not going to go all single white female on you. But I do love this place. I still have a hard time believing you own a home with a name.”
“Well, for all of this, my sister is willing to sue me, steal from me, and have me audited. So, you might want to reconsider your whole romantic image of gentility.”
Andrea sighed heavily. “Why must you destroy my illusions? How was your networking?” she asked as I tried to beckon my dog. Fitz sniffed and rested his head on his paws.
“I’m not trying to say anything about sisterhood or women in power, but what a bunch of bitches.”
Andrea laughed and pulled a pitcher of daiquiris from behind the porch swing. She poured herself another drink, grinning as she said, “I thought you might feel that way. My boss at the gift shop used to complain about the meetings.”
“You knew?” I cried, chucking a cushion at her. “You knew, and you let me walk into that den of iniquity unprepared?”
“Hey, hey! If you can’t respect the daiquiri, at least respect the shirt,” she griped, swiping at the liquor I’d made her spill on her celery-colored blouse. “I know better than to ask you to respect me.”
I blew her a kiss and poured more daiquiri as Andrea began her tale in an ominous tone. “Margie said it happened slowly. One cold October night, a Courtney attended her first meeting, then another and another. It was as if the chamber was a hive being invaded by really perky Africanized bees. And pretty soon, they were proposing extra events and creating committees to run those events, and they built a power base. They elected themselves as officers, moved the headquarters, rewrote the bylaws, and made life miserable for the old-school members. One by one, the charter members all left. Margie quit after they gave her a demerit for wearing brown shoes with a black suit. To Margie, that translated to: You’re over forty, get out.”
“What happened to all the men?”
Andrea shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess they just quit, or they got too many demerits …”
“I think the Courtneys ate them,” I countered.
“Your guess is there’s some supernatural reason for the pink chamber seal?”
I nodded. “My guess: coven of succubi.”
“Well, you should fit in well, being a vampire and all.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You did tell them that you’re a vampire, right?”
I sipped my drink to avoid answering.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to live in the coffin anymore!” Andrea cried.
“I’m not living in the coffin. I’m just not volunteering any information that wouldn’t come up in an introductory conversation. Do you walk up to people and say, ‘Hi, I’m Andrea. I’m a natural redhead.”
“I’m not a natural redhead.”
“I knew it!”
“Don’t deflect the question. So, I guess you’re not going back, huh?”
“I have to,” I mumbled. “I’m in charge of the prizes for the charity carnival.”
Andrea hooted. “They’ve pulled you in!”
“They did not!”
“They made you their prize bitch! And not in the dog-show way. You might as well have given them all your milk money and then done their homework for them.”
“I told you, they’re scary. And blond. We’ve established that I don’t do well with scary blond people. And you’re starting to talk like me the more time we spend together. I think we can both agree that having one person in the world who talks like me is too many.”
“Jane, maybe you could see this as an opportunity to grow as a person, to face your fears, to be a little less wracked by insecurity.”
“I am not wracked by fear and insecurity. I have completely normal fears: failure, clowns, spiders. What’s weird about that?” I groaned. “Oh, who am I kidding? It’s all gone pear-shaped.”
Andrea patted my head. “No more Kitchen Nightmares for you.”
“It’s Gordon Ramsay. I can’t help myself. All the yelling and the cursing … it’s so forceful. And he takes off his shirt at least once every episode to change into his chef’s uniform.”
She snorted. “Freak.”
“Look, I’m going to stick it out. I have to. Joining the chamber is good for the shop … it’s going to be good for the shop. Please, God, let it be good for the shop. And at least we know that they’ll let you quit if it’s not the place for you … or you exceed the maximum weight allowances.”
Andrea snickered. “You know, maybe you’d be a little more confident if you jazzed up your wardrobe a bit.”
I smirked. “You’re just looking for an excuse to take me on another humiliating shopping excursion.”
“Keep it up, and I’ll put you in a stylish poncho,” she said, giving me a mock evil glare.
I shuddered. “Vampires should not wear ponchos.” I made kissing noises and beckoned my dog. “Come here, Fitz.”
Fitz yawned and scooched even further under the porch swing, nuzzling his head into Andrea’s hand.
“Traitor,” I muttered.
“Oh, you got a shipment at the shop. I put it on your hall table,” she said, rising and dislodging Fitz’s head from her knee.
“Why didn’t you just leave it at the shop?” I asked, following her through the front door, pitcher in hand.
“Well, I thought maybe you’d want these for yourself,” she said, smirking, handing me the opened box. About a dozen books with blazing neon titles winked out at me.
“ Forbidden Thirst. Blood Lust. Penetrating Fangs. The Misadventures of Millie ,” I read, thumbing through the slick paperbacks. This went way beyond the cover of your average bodice-ripper. Let’s just say more was being inserted than fangs. “I didn’t order this! This is … porn! Vampire porn, but porn all the same.”
“I think the publishers prefer the term ‘erotica.’”
I shot Andrea my best withering glare. She shrugged, all wide, innocent eyes betrayed by her madly twitching lips. “Well, you said you were going to be lacking in sexual companionship. I thought maybe you decided to expand your horizons.”
“Your perception of me is disturbing.” I shuddered. “Is there a packing slip?”
“‘Hope you enjoy these samples. Let me know about ordering. Talk soon, Paul,’” Andrea read aloud before showing me the innocent slip of white paper. “Who’s Paul?”
“Paul Dupree, one of my suppliers in Atlanta. He specializes in vampire publishing. Normally, he sends me diet guides and self-help books.”
“Technically, that could be considered a form of self-help.” Andrea wriggled her eyebrows suggestively.
“Ew. I’m leather-bound editions, not this!”
“Maybe he just got stuck on leather-bound,” she said, cocking her head to get a better look at Millie, who seemed more than thrilled to be tied up, hanging upside down, and leered at by a vampire with implausible pecs.
“Did Dick give you a list of dirty quips? You’re enjoying this way too much.”
She snorted. “I’ve seen some of the titles in your personal library. I don’t think I would be too judgmental.”
“I’m not going to enter into a censorship debate with you. I have other things on my mind right now— Stop laughing!” I cried when she collapsed onto a chair. “All I can say is thank goodness Gabriel’s not here to see this. He’d probably go after Paul and rip his arms off for sending me this sort of thing, professional relationship or no … or he’d just say, ‘This porn stash is probably for the best’ and gift me with a lifetime supply of batteries.”
Andrea doubled over, laughing. I was glad someone could enjoy my pain. The truth was, I didn’t need any form of artificial stimulation. My body refused to believe that Gabriel and I were no longer together, unwilling to give up the orgasms he gave me, even if they had to be manufactured in my dreams. Every night, I had vivid, full-color dreams of Gabriel, his body, his lips, that thing he used to do with his index finger. My cruel subconscious dredged up memories of real encounters or provided elaborate scenarios, like the dream where Gabriel was a police officer and I had to use all my wiles—and a lap dance—to persuade him not to give me a speeding ticket. Or there were the dreams where he just stalked into the house, threw me down on the kitchen table without a word, and took me. Each night, I woke up in the middle of a screaming, head-spinning orgasm and was brought crashing down when I realized that I was alone. I was caught between being afraid to go to sleep and wanting to go to bed hours too early.
Finally recovered and rubbing at the stitch in her side, Andrea wiped her eyes. She sighed. “Still haven’t heard from him?”
“Nope.” She followed me into the kitchen, where I dropped the empty pitcher into the sink and pulled a Faux Type O out of the fridge. “And I’m caught in that hellish ‘I want to call him, but I would rather he call me, because that proves he wants to talk to me’ limbo. When did my life become a tragic episode of Felicity ?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that I feel like I’m waiting for that very special boy to call, only that very special boy isn’t breathing. And he told me it was probably for the best that we part ways more than three thousand miles from home, and he hasn’t deemed it necessary to contact me in two weeks. Not even to make sure my plane didn’t crash into the Atlantic. At this point, I’m not entirely sure he’s not going to stay in Europe until he hears that I’ve moved away or become a nun or something.”
She patted my head fondly. “Well, next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. It is something to think of and gives her a sort of distinction among her companions.”
My face softened into a smile. “You read Pride and Prejudice .”
Andrea rolled her eyes. “Well, I figured if I’m going to survive working at the shop, I would have to. And you only hinted that a person of any intelligence was required to read at least one Jane Austen book, like a thousand times.”
I tapped a finger to my chin. “That doesn’t sound anything like me …”
It was two days from the reopening. The cash-register drawer was stuck. We were missing a rather large shipment of what I considered our cornerstone product, The Guide for the Newly Undead. And I was beginning to suspect that Andrea was slipping extra espresso into her magical mystery coffee potions because “caffeinated Jane” amused her.
The only thing we had going for us was a local dairy that was willing to deliver to an account as small as ours and to a location as bad as ours at night. In fact, it was a delight to come downstairs from Mr. Wainwright’s old apartment to find a tall man in an indecently tight blue Half-Moon Dairy uniform stocking our little coffee-bar fridge with half-and-half and heavy cream.
“Wow, is that our dairy guy?” I whispered. Andrea didn’t bother removing her eyes from the sight of Dairy Guy’s delicious blue-clad bottom swaying as he loaded the fridge.
“Yep,” Andrea answered absently.
“He’s going to be coming here regularly, right?”
We simultaneously tilted our heads as Dairy Guy’s hips changed angles. Andrea sighed, “Yep.”
“Maybe we should arrange for Dick to be elsewhere on delivery nights,” I whispered. “Because you’re drooling. And I don’t blame you because milk does a body goooo— Oh, my God.” My jaw dropped as Dairy Guy turned, and I recognized him as little Jamie Lanier, whom I used to babysit every summer.
Jamie loomed four inches over my tall frame. His warm green eyes twinkled at me from under a faded blue ball cap he’d slapped over his wavy dark blond hair. (Curse my weakness for all-American boys!) Every inch of him was toned and tan, and he smelled like Irish Spring soap. I bit back a sigh.
This was the danger of living in the small town where you grew up. Local hotties have to start off somewhere, and generally, it’s as the annoying towheaded Little Leaguer who would only eat smiley-face pancakes from ages five to seven.
“Miss Jane! Hi!” He flashed those devastating dimples. “It’s great to see you!”
“Jamie. How’s your mom?” I asked, flinching at his use of “Miss,” a sure sign that he thought of me as a senior citizen. “Still teaching?”
“Yep. But she says she’s going to retire now that I’m graduating and she and dad are going to have the house to themselves.”
“You’re graduating from college?” I said, an insane note of desperation in my voice as I tried to do the age math in my head.
“Actually, I’m still a senior at Half-Moon Hollow High. I’m just working at night to save for tuition.”
Forgive me, Lord, I’m the biggest pervert in the world.
“Say hi to your mom for me,” I said as he packed up his hand truck and headed out the door. He waved at us from the delivery van as he pulled away. I stared at the ceiling, then told Andrea, “You may laugh now.”
She guffawed, collapsing against the bar as she held her side. “I’m sorry. It’s just, the look on your face when he said he was graduating from high school !”
I rubbed my hands over my face. “My eyes, they burn.”
“I can’t believe I get to relive this humiliation with every delivery,” Andrea said, rubbing her hands together in anticipatory glee. “This is already my favorite job ever!”
“I think you forget sometimes, I am fully capable of hurting you—” We turned to the front door as a woman in a smart peach raincoat came into the shop, clutching her purse close to her side with one arm and carrying an enormous beribboned basket with the other. Courtney Barrows, Nice Courtney, eyed her surroundings suspiciously, apparently afraid to touch anything. “Courtney?” I said.
“Jane!” She sighed, relieved to see me.
“And it isn’t even my birthday!” Andrea was clearly thrilled that one of the chamber members had showed up for my brainwashing initiation so soon. She whispered, “Which one?”
I cleared my throat. “Courtney Barrows, this is my associate, Andrea Byrne. Andrea, Courtney Barrows. Courtney owns the Unique Boutique, the sterling-silver shop over on Dogwood.”
“Nice to meet you,” they chorused. I half expected Courtney to curtsy.
“It’s not that I’m not happy to see you again, but what are you doing here?” I asked.
Courtney let out a breathy laugh. “I know! I don’t normally come into this part of town, especially at night. But your store hours are just so odd, I wanted to make sure I caught you,” she said, hauling the giant gift basket onto the counter. “The chamber sent you this, and I volunteered to bring it by. It’s a welcome muffin basket. There’s an orientation folder, a directory, the memory book, and a suggested list of places where you should go begging for game prizes.”
Well, that capped it. If I’d learned anything from Missy the psycho real-estate agent, it was never to trust people bearing gift baskets.
“Memory book?” Andrea asked.
“It’s a little scrapbook for our special events, fund-raisers, that sort of thing.”
“Like a yearbook!” Andrea exclaimed cheerily, then scowled when I pushed the basket at her with more force than was probably necessary. She stifled a giggle and took it to my office. “I’m taking these muffins, by the way! They’re of no use to you!”
Courtney shot me a questioning look. I smiled. “I’m on a no-carb, no-sugar, no-gluten diet. But Andrea will love them. It was really nice of you to bring it by. You didn’t have to come all the way down here.”
“Well, I just liked talking to you so much at the meeting, I thought I’d come by for a visit. I just— I joined the chamber to make some friends. And the ladies at the chamber … I didn’t know what I was getting into when I joined. They’re sort of …”
“Scary?” I suggested.
“And blond?” Andrea shouted from the back of the shop.
I shot Courtney an apologetic smile, but she didn’t seem offended in the least that I’d been talking about the chamber members behind their backs. “Yes. But you were so nice. You know, you’re the first person I’ve met at one of those meetings that hasn’t made fun of the fact that my husband runs a construction company. As if my money is dirty or something, just because my husband’s not a doctor or a lawyer.”
“I was raised by a teacher and a meddlesome homemaker. I mock no one,” I told her, then amended, “unless they deserve it.”
“You’ve lived in the Hollow your whole life. You don’t know what it’s like to try to meet people here when you don’t know anybody.”
“I think you’ve been hanging around the wrong Half-Moon Hollow residents. See, I would imagine your husband probably outearns ninety-five percent of the people in this town. Frankly, I admire anyone who can operate heavy machinery without hurting innocent bystanders.”
She giggled. “See? I told you! You’re a hoot.”
“That you did. Pull up a seat.”
Courtney gave an exaggerated look around, her face open and pleasant as she climbed up onto the bar stool. “Your shop is, um, really interesting.”
“Thanks. Coffee?” I asked. I pushed a bunch of buttons and hoped a cappuccino would come out. Andrea came running at the rumble of the cappuccino machine, like a mama bear protecting her young. She shooed me away and finished making Courtney’s drink herself.
Courtney seemed almost shy as she handed me a little pink-wrapped box. “And I had a little gift made up for you.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said, opening the box. Inside was a little keychain attached to a silver disc inscribed with my initials. “That was really nice.”
Vampires are allergic to silver. Touching it feels like a combination of burning and being forced to watch Glitter over and over again. Your eyes burn, there’s an unpleasant squelching sound, and you’re left with dirty gray streaks that are very hard to wash off. I knew what I was in for when I politely held the little circle in my palm.
Andrea’s eyes widened as my hand began to sizzle like bacon. I mouthed, “I know!” Andrea started asking Courtney incredibly complicated questions about how she wanted her coffee. As soon as Courtney’s back was turned, I put the keychain on the counter and silently yowled, shaking my hand back and forth as the dirty gray stain faded from my skin.
“You OK, Jane?” Courtney asked, smiling sweetly.
“Fine.” I chuckled. Andrea rolled her eyes in my direction. “I’m just fine. I just have some allergies, a little eczema acting up … Wait, no, this is stupid. Courtney, you should probably know that I’m a vampire, have been for about a year now. If that’s going to get me banned from the Half-Moon Hollow Chamber of Commerce, so be it. I just don’t have the time or energy to try to fool you into thinking I’m normal.”
“Oh, I knew that,” Courtney said, patting my arm and turning over my burned hand to examine my palm. “The keychain was just a test to make sure. But it was obvious the other night what you are. You didn’t touch any of the food. Your teeth are a little sharper than they should be. You’re so pale and, well, sort of glowy. Your skin drove Head Courtney crazy, by the way. She kept trying to figure out what you use on it. I didn’t say a word.”
My forehead wrinkled. “So, what do you plan on doing with this information?”
“Nothing,” she said, smiling pleasantly and sipping her coffee.
“I’m confused,” I told Andrea, who shrugged.
“It’s just, you’re so much nicer than any of those so-called normal girls,” she said, patting my hand. “I figure, if you’re up front with me, you can’t be all bad. And personally, I want to see how long it takes the other girls to figure it out and how many different ways they manage to put their collective foot in their mouth.”
“You’ve got a bit of a dark streak in you,” Andrea told her. “My boyfriend’s going to love you. On second thought, maybe I should keep you two separate.”
Courtney giggled. “Besides, I experimented a little with vampires in college. Every girl does.”
I arched my brows at her. “You know I’m a completely straight vampire, right?”
Courtney threw her head back and laughed. She turned to Andrea. “Don’t you just love hanging out with her? You never know what she’s going to say!”
“Every day’s an adventure,” Andrea said dryly.