12
There will be nights, just before dawn, when you will wonder, what has happened to my life? What happened to staying out all night and drinking the blood of the innocent? The answer is simple. You became a sire.
—Siring for the Stupid:
A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires
Of course, I immediately started looking into Ray McElray’s whereabouts. I didn’t plan to confront him. I just wanted to find him, so I could point the Council in the right direction.
I meant no offense to the Council and its resources, but I had a lot more faith in my own research skills. Do not mess with a librarian with a history of cyber-stalking her vampire sire and various step-grandparents.
Unfortunately, those skills got me jack squat. The house where Bud and Ray grew up had burned to the ground right after I left for college. None of the neighbors remembered anything about the family after their grandma Velma died. The Half-Moon Hollow Library hired a new youth librarian who realized that the library’s passwords to state databases hadn’t changed since I was fired, so that cut off my access to birth and death records. I had to use Google like everybody else. It was demoralizing.
As I was entering my credit-card information into PeopleFinder.com, I welcomed the distraction of Zeb and Jolene dragging the twins through my front door. Well, technically, Jolene had a baby under each arm. Zeb was loaded down with the ridiculous amount of paraphernalia required to sustain two babies.
Jolene huffed a breath out as she dropped the combined weight of three people on my couch. “My cousin down at the DMV says Ray hasn’t come in to renew his driver’s license, which did expire while he was in prison. Also, you owe him a ham, the expensive kind, from Italy.”
I took Janelyn from her and nuzzled her head of strawberry-blond hair. “I feel like I should be doing my own meat-based negotiations. Parma ham isn’t cheap.”
“Well, to be fair, he is risking his job to help you track the guy who could be trying to kill your fiance,” Zeb pointed out as I jiggled Janelyn on my knee.
“Oh, fine, put it in perspective, why don’t you?” I sighed.
“What about tax records, voter registration, magazine subscriptions?” Jolene asked.
“He can’t pay taxes on wages he doesn’t earn. I don’t think he’s legally allowed to vote. And I don’t think I want to know what kind of magazines he likes,” I answered.
“I think you’re going about this in the wrong way,” Zeb said. “You’re looking in all the right places, all the places the Council’s going to check anyway. You need to get down and dirty. You need to check all the places the Council won’t think of. You know things about the people who live here, the weird Hollow underbelly, that some ancient pencil pusher wouldn’t even consider a possibility. You need to embrace the Dick factor.”
Jolene opened her mouth to comment. I raised my hand and put a finger to her lips.
“So, what does that mean?” I asked. “Bars? Bingo halls? Parking lots of shady roller rinks?”
“Well, I haven’t heard a bad idea yet,” Zeb said. “But I think you need to think outside the coffin, so to speak. Where is he getting his money? Where would he spend his time? He just got out of prison. What’s his favorite food, the first place he’d head for a pig-out?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like I can find enough information on him to create a dossier. I have secondhand gossip from my mama.”
“Do you think she knows anythin’ else?” Jolene asked. “Maybe you should call her?”
“I’m doing pretty well keeping Mama off my back with all the wedding stuff, thanks to Iris’s brilliant maneuverings. I don’t think I should tempt fate—”
“Hi, sweetie!” I turned to find that my mother was bustling through my front door, carrying an enormous three-ring binder covered in pink Chantilly lace.
“What have you done?” I hissed at Jolene.
“Maybe a million dollars should drop out of the sky?” Jolene said, peering at the front door.
“Oh, sure, for that, your evil powers don’t work,” Zeb muttered.
Mama kissed my cheek and set her binder on the coffee table with a thud. Gabriel and Jamie had emerged from the kitchen to say hello to Zeb and Jolene, but seeing my mother, they simultaneously turned on their heels and used their vampire speed to disappear. I definitely liked it better when they weren’t getting along.
“Mama, what are you doing here? With binders?” I waited for her to look down into her binder and said, “I thought Iris had all this stuff at her house to protect it … er, keep it in one place.”
“Oh, I found her address and dropped by earlier to pick up some information I needed.” Iris had an unlisted number, lived in the middle of nowhere, and regularly took four different routes home to keep her clients from finding her house. Clearly, I had underestimated Mama’s resourcefulness. Again.
Maybe I should have asked Mama to find Ray McElray. She’d have him hogtied in the back of her car in time to go home and watch Law and Order.
“You didn’t break into her house, did you?”
Mama ignored the question, instead wedging herself between Jolene and me on the couch and plopping a sheaf of magazine pages onto my coffee table.
“Sweetie, I have a very important question for you,” she said, her tone solemn. For a brief, horrifying moment, I thought for sure she had figured out the whole “Grandma Ruthie haunting” problem and was going to ask me just to play nice with Ruthie for eternity, for the sake of family harmony.
Mama took a deep breath. “What are you thinking as far as wedding favors?”
“I have to say, I haven’t been thinking of them at all, really.”
“Well, I think those little packs of Jordan almonds are becoming sort of passe. And no one does the tiny bottle of bubbles anymore. I was thinking little white plastic caskets filled with candy.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head very slowly. “Not a chance.”
Jolene added, “One of our fancier cousins was really into Frisbee golf, so he and his wife had nice monogrammed Frisbees made up and gave them as favors.”
“You want to put Dick next to an open bar and then hand him something he can throw at us?” I asked.
“Well, we can table this discussion until we get some better ideas,” Mama said. “Oh, and I wanted to go over the menu for the reception with you. I know you don’t eat, but you know how your uncle Dave can be if his blood sugar gets low. So I think we need to double the variety of appetizers distributed during the photos.”
I sighed, reminding myself that photos were the only traditional wedding folderol that Mama was absolutely insistent on. She figured that this was the only wedding she was getting out of me, so she wanted it to be well documented. And serving appetizers while people waited around for us was just the polite thing to do.
“By his blood sugar getting low, do you mean he has too many beers and starts griping about Aunt Vi’s addiction to QVC?” I asked.
“Exactly,” she said, pulling a page ripped from a bridal magazine out of her binder and handing it to me. “What do you think of these?”
“Mini-cheeseburgers?” I asked, passing the burger pictorial to Jolene. “Are we going to let White Castle do the catering? That’s an idea I can actually support.”
“Don’t be silly.” She chuckled, pulling out another spread on the virtues of mini-quiches. “But your daddy would be thrilled. He just wants to make sure we have Swedish meatballs.”
“Why is all the food miniature?” Jolene whispered, clearly horrified. Werewolf metabolism ran ridiculously high to help fuel their change. They had to scarf down calories all day just to sleep all night, like a little hibernation. Thanksgiving in a werewolf clan was like a full-on farm livestock massacre. And major celebrations like weddings were the sort of horrifying tale that barnyard animals might whisper to their children to keep them in line.
Zeb muttered. “There’s going to be a full dinner afterward. Calm down.”
“Look, I don’t think you need to worry about all this,” I said. “Pick whatever’s going to make you and Daddy happy.” Jolene cleared her throat, so I added, “And Jolene.”
“But honey, you know what a nightmare it can be to make your aunts happy, meal-wise. Aunt Lyla’s on Atkins again. Aunt Gladys refuses to eat anything but tuna from the can—”
“I really don’t see anybody from the family coming to the wedding, Mama. I haven’t spent any time with them since I came out. I don’t think they’re going to be comfortable around me.”
“Oh, Jane, now you’re really being silly,” she said. “You spent Christmas with the family this year.”
“I spent Christmas with you and Daddy this year, after the other relatives left for dinner at Aunt Tootsie’s.”
“Well, that’s because you couldn’t join us for lunch!” She sniffed. “Now, let’s be serious, Jane. About these mini-quiches—”
Rather than face a cheese-versus-spinach debate, I blurted out, “Hey, Mama, do you remember Ray McElray?”
Mama made a clucking noise in her throat and claimed Joe from Jolene. She sighed and nuzzled the head of the closest thing she’d ever get to a grandbaby. “Poor Velma never could get those grandsons of hers straightened out. It just broke her heart, right up until the end. I’m just glad she passed before that no-account Bud had his hunting accident.”
Jolene raised her eyebrows at me, questioning. I gave an imperceptible shake of the head, and she pressed her lips shut.
“And then Ray being sent to prison over something as silly as lotto tickets? I say, if you’re going to go to jail for thieving, be a man about it and rob a bank. Go big or go home.”
“Sometimes your mom is freaking brilliant,” Zeb marveled.
Mama preened. “Thank you, Zeb.”
“But no one’s heard from him since he got out of prison?” I asked.
“Not really. I mean, I know he went by Margie Nash’s florist shop to make sure the flowers on Bud and Velma’s graves are changed every two months. Margie mentioned it at the quilt shop the other night. She said he seemed really torn up over Bud dying while he was in prison.”
“I don’t suppose he left a billing address?” I asked.
Mama shook her head, a perplexed expression creasing her brow. “You know, it’s funny, Margie said he refused to give her one.”
“Credit-card information?”
“Jane, what on earth is going on with you? Why are you asking all of these questions about someone you barely know? Oh, my Lord, is this another one of those vampire things? When did Ray get turned?”
“No, Mama, Ray’s not a vampire. Did Margie say she saw him during the day?” I asked. When she nodded, I said, “OK, so he’s still alive. I just need to talk to him. And I’m having a hard time tracking him down. That’s all.”
“Talk to him about what?” Mama demanded.
Shit. I was drawing a total blank. Why had my verbal incontinence chosen this moment to abandon me?
“She owes him money,” Jolene piped up. I shot her an incredulous look. Jolene, proud of her quick thinking, added, “Well, actually, she owed Bud money. He did some yard work for her right before he died, and she was never able to pay him. She’s felt guilty about it, and she wants to pay Ray instead.”
OK, I had to admit that was pretty impressive. Zeb beamed at her.
“You gave Bud McElray work, Jane?” Mama asked, her head tilted at me with this strange, unfamiliar expression on her face—pride. “That was very sweet of you. I hope he didn’t take advantage.”
“Oh, no,” Zeb said, grinning. “Bud’s work really blew Jane away.”
I glared at him and mouthed, “Too far.”
“So, if you see him, Mama, could you call me?” I asked. “Right away? And don’t approach him or anything. I’d like to talk to Ray about it myself, with him being so torn up about his brother and all.”
“Sure, baby,” she said, smoothing my hair back from my shoulder and patting my head fondly. “Oh! I almost forgot. I need to see your dress.”
Mama bustled out of the living room, leaving me to chase her up the stairs to the master bedroom. I abused my vampire speed to get around her and clean up any incriminating items that might have been lying around our room. “I just want to match the ribbons to the gray of your dress, honey. I think you’d call it Colonial Pewter, but Iris thinks it’s more of a Silverstreak.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” Mama held up a color wheel from the ribbon manufacturer, and I groaned. “You have to be stopped.”
“Just get the dress out of the closet, smart-ass.”
“Mama.” I gasped, downright proud that she’d called me a mildly foul name. I pulled the garment bag out of the closet. I knew that something was off the moment I pulled it free. The bag’s weight was distributed in a weird, bottom-heavy fashion, and the zipper was undone. I was paranoid about Gabriel sneaking a peek at the dress. There was no way I would leave it open like that. “That’s weird,” I muttered, carefully taking the hanger out of the bag.
Mama gasped. I was holding what looked like a burial shroud. The bodice of my dress was just a central location for the fluttering wisps of gray silk, the scraps left of the sleeves and skirt. It hadn’t been cut, it had been torn, viciously, over and over, until all that remained were shreds.
On the closet floor, amid the pile of gray scraps, I saw a pair of long silver sewing scissors. They’d belonged to one of my great-aunts, who’d been a quilting enthusiast. I’d hidden them from my grandma Ruthie when I was ten, after she’d made me one too many sailor dresses. I’d spirited them away to the attic and stuck them behind a loose panel in the wall. Clearly, Grandma Ruthie had found them.
Just behind my right ear, I heard it. Cold, hissing laughter. My grandma’s laughter. Disembodied laughter was probably all she was capable of, considering the effort she’d put into tailoring my dress.
My head swam as the slips of silky material fluttered through my fingers. My dress. My dress was destroyed. The only thing I’d actually liked about this whole wedding thing, beyond spending eternity with the man I love and all that hoo-ha, was the dress, and now it could have been used as a costume of a particularly slutty zombie.
“Jane?” Mama said apprehensively. I heard her step out into the hallway and call for Gabriel.
“That is it!” I screamed. Gabriel never told me exactly what I yelled after this, because it was sort of a high-pitched audio blur that made Fitz come running into the room. But in Jamie’s estimation, from two floors away, it was something along the lines of “Damn it! That is the absolute limit! It’s not enough that I have a teenager running around my house, drinking all my blood and reminding me how old I am. I have a crazy person trying to turn my fiance into a pin cushion. I’ve got to pick out food I can’t eat to feed people I don’t like and pretend that I’m some sort of sacrificial virgin just so I can sleep with someone who’s already living with me. And now I’m not even going to be well dressed while I do it, because some crazy-ass spirit decided to play Edward Scissorhands with the only bridal dress in the state of Kentucky that doesn’t make me look like a desperate hooker!”
My legs went to jelly, slipping out from under me as I collapsed onto the floor. I heard Mama calling my name, her voice muffled as if my head were underwater. Gabriel walked into the room, and some strange instinct had me wanting to hide the dress. Since it would be bad luck for him to see it. And then the fact that I was trying to shove ribbons of unrecognizable fabric behind my back made me giggle, and then I was all-out laughing hysterically as my vision blurred and my eyes rolled up.
I didn’t know that vampires could black out, but there I was, lying on the floor in my parlor with Andrea and Jolene standing over me, tutting sympathetically. Andrea helped me sit up, while Jolene handed me a warm cup of O-negative. Aunt Jettie and Mr. Wainwright were standing in the corner, Jettie wringing her hands and wiping at her cheeks while Mr. Wainwright stewed. I blinked hazily as my eyes adjusted to the lights, and I saw the pile of rags that used to be my wedding dress.
And I started to cry, like a big old hysterical bridezilla. Mama dabbed at the streaks of blood on my cheeks with a tissue. “I haven’t really cared about any of this wedding stuff. That dress was the one silly wedding thing I was really excited about. Why’d she have to take that away? What the hell did I ever do to her?”
“What is she talking about?” Mama asked. “Is she hallucinating? I don’t think she hit her head when she passed out.”
“Where’s Gabriel?” I asked, sniffing.
“Pacing outside the door,” Mama said. “I called Andrea, and we convinced Gabriel that this was more of a lady issue. I didn’t think you’d want him to see you like this. Also, Jamie heard you screaming and ran for the root cellar. What were you saying, anyway? You were talking so fast I couldn’t understand you.”
Huh. My mother had actually done what was best for me. Based on what I needed. I think that’s one of the seven signs of oncoming Armageddon. But instead of being a jerk about it, I said, “Thanks, Mama.”
“Jane, I am so sorry,” Jettie cried, while Mr. Wainwright patted her shoulder. “She’s gotten so good at hiding from us, operating under the radar. I had no idea what she was up to. If I’d had any idea …”
“I can’t believe she did it,” Andrea said. “Imagine the energy it took to shred your dress like that.”
Jolene growled. “This is it. We’re takin’ this dead bitch down. I don’t care who she is, Jane, you don’t go messing with a girl’s wedding dress.”
“What are you two talking about?” Mama asked. “Why are you calling Jamie a ‘dead bitch’? I know he can be a little disagreeable sometimes, but all teenagers are.”
“What does Jamie have to do with this?” Andrea asked.
“Well, he ran for the cellar, so I assumed that he destroyed Jane’s wedding dress in some sort of adolescent snit. Jane did it to one of Jenny’s pep-squad uniforms when they were in high school.”
“It was her away uniform. And she tore down my wall-sized collage of Keanu Reeves pictures. She had it coming.”
“Agreed,” Andrea said.
“But if Jamie didn’t do it, who did?” Mama asked. “You said ‘she.’ What did you mean?”
I tried to picture telling Mama that her own mother was (a) hanging around the earthly plane and (b) spending that time threatening/annoying the bejesus out of me. I didn’t see that going over well. So, of course, I was preparing a completely plausible story about further retaliation from the Chamber of Commerce, when Jolene said, “She means the ghost of—”
“The ghost of River Oaks!” I exclaimed, shaking my head at Jolene.
“Honey, that’s silly. The house isn’t haunted. River Oaks has been in our family for generations, and we’ve never heard anything about a ghost, much less a ghost that goes around cutting up dresses. Besides, there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“Mom, your daughter’s a vampire, and you can’t believe there’s such a thing as ghosts?”
She frowned. “Good point. OK, if it’s a ghost, who is it?”
Jolene, ever freaking helpful, said, “Oh, it’s—”
“A poltergeist,” I ground out, glaring at her. “A poltergeist with absolutely no backstory or personality whatsoever. It was most likely attracted by the chaos of Jamie’s adolescent energy. We only call it a her because it does such petty, teenage, dirty, vicious, bitchy, hateful—”
Andrea cleared her throat. “OK, Jane, we get it.”
“Yes, and I’m going to get something, too. An exorcist, do you hear me, old woman? I don’t care who else you take to the next plane with you. You’re out.”
“Well, I didn’t understand any of that,” Mama said. “And right now, I think we need to focus on your dress. Is there any part of it that can be salvaged?”
I held the two largest scraps. “As a formal blindfold, maybe.”
“Save that for the honeymoon.” Andrea snickered.
“Really? You’ve got jokes?” I muttered.
“We’ll just call the costume shop and see if they have anything like it,” Mama said. “And if they don’t, we might have to go back to the bridal shop.”
I groaned.
“I’m sorry, Jane, honey.”
“No you’re not,” I shot back.
She nodded. “You’re right.”
I barked out a soggy laugh and swiped at my cheeks. “Well, at least you’re honest.”
Mama hitched her purse over her shoulder. “I’m going to call Iris, honey. Don’t you worry about a thing. Mama’s going to take care of everything.”
With that, she kissed me on the forehead and walked into the hallway.
She called over her shoulder, “And you might let Gabriel know you’re OK, because he’s out here pacing a hole in the carpet.”
Gabriel came rushing into the room and threw his arms around me. “I’ve never heard you make a sound like that before. It was terrifying. Please don’t do it again. All screaming in this room should be of the pleasant variety.”
“Ew,” Andrea muttered.
“We are exorcising Grandma Ruthie,” I growled. “Tonight. She’s gone too far this time. Call me names, fine. Move stuff around, OK. But this is where I draw the line, do you hear me, Ruthie?”
I heard an indignant hiss behind me, but Ruthie wasn’t able to do much more than move a few strands of my hair. She was exhausted by her efforts. Now was the best time to strike.
“I just happen to have pulled out your ‘Exorcising Grandma Ruthie’ file while you were, er, indisposed,” he said, handing me the stack of papers I’d collected on exorcism rites. “You circled the ritual you thought would work best. I sent Dick out to collect a virgin goat.”
“You are so the guy for me.” I sighed and stood on my tiptoes to kiss him thoroughly. “Aunt Jettie!”
“Yes, honey, I’m standing right behind you,” she said gently.
I turned around to find her and Mr. Wainwright eyeing me as if I were one of those performing bears that turned on their owners. “I need you and Mr. Wainwright to get as far away from here as possible. I don’t really know what I’m doing, and I don’t want to accidentally send you into the white light.”
“If we go, we go,” Jettie said. “I don’t want you to keep her hanging around the house because you’re afraid of hurting me.”
“What’s existence without the risk of the unknown?” Mr. Wainwright said, stroking his cool, misty hand along my cheek.
“We’re not leaving you until the time is right.” Jettie’s cold arms embraced me, sending shivers down my spine. “We’ll come back tomorrow night, unless, of course, you jettison us into the great beyond.”
“That’s very helpful, thanks,” I said.
As the pair of them faded away, I turned to my favorite werewolf.
“Jolene, honey, I love you, but you and Zeb need to take the kids and go home. I don’t want some sort of creepy accidental possession thing to happen to the twins.”
Jolene opened her mouth to protest but quickly shut it. “You’re right. I know you’re right. And I hate it. I’ll find some other way to help. Be careful.”
Zeb and Jolene gathered up their brood and headed out. Dick arrived with the goat. I didn’t ask questions about where he got it or why he chose to load it into the backseat of Andrea’s car, rather than his El Camino. While Jamie and Gabriel helped him wrestle it off of the half-devoured backseat, Andrea asked, “Are you sure that you’re not rushing this?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Do you have any clue what you’re doing?”
“No.”
“Are you sure this is going to work?”
“No.”
She wrapped an arm around my shoulder and clapped me on the back. “Excellent. It will be just like running the shop, then.”