15
Establishing dominance early in the relationship is key. Vampire children are like human children in that they can sense weakness. They will wait for you to be busy or too distracted to realize that you’ve given them permission to feed on the pizza guy.
—Siring for the Stupid:
A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires
Wedding planning and personal security seemed to take up most of my time for the next few days. Jolene’s amazing wedding-dress save allowed Iris to devote her attention to finalizing the details. The fitting went well, because Jolene’s mama had forbidden Aunt Vonnie from speaking directly to me. And it may have been a panic-based delusion, but I thought the werewolves’ copy was even prettier than the original costume. This was a good thing, because, surprise of all surprises, all fifty guests we’d invited had RSVP’d yes, including my cousin Junie, who hated me. I suspected that my mother’s friends and family just didn’t want to miss the spectacle.
Ophelia’s badly trained goons—Thing 1 and Thing 2—still lurked in the woods outside my house, hoping that Ray would show up. Jamie amused himself by trying to track them while they were trying to track Ray. Because my childe was apparently too damn dreamy for Ophelia to get annoyed with, she declared that this was good practice for a baby vampire and that the goons weren’t to hurt him or allow themselves to be tracked too easily.
In an attempt to be supportive, I sat on the porch with Fitz and watched as he stalked them. I got a look at Thing 1’s face when Jamie jumped out of a tree and tackled him. He did not look amused.
We managed to talk Ophelia out of a full security escort when Gabriel finally convinced me that Big Bertha was never coming back and that we needed to return to the all-night car dealership. I grumpily agreed to purchase a Honda Ridgeline because it was comfortable to drive but had a truck bed big enough for Dick’s connections to install a full-sized hidey hole. The salesman, Marty, annoyed me by directing all of his questions to Gabriel, even though it was my check paying full sticker price. But given that I still wanted to be driving Big Bertha, I was probably going to be annoyed by the situation anyway.
I decided that drinking Marty dry and leaving his body draped over his desk would probably be bad form.
Because there were a few other accommodations, such as superstrength sunproof tinting, that we needed from the dealership, we left my new truck in Marty’s care. Gabriel drove us home in his car. I used my night vision to read the owner’s manual and brochures for my new truck.
“Is it wrong that I’m actually considering pulling over so we can have sex without worrying about being heard?” he asked as we turned on County Line Road.
“Not as wrong as the fact that I’m considering it,” I said. I looked out the window for a suitable make-out spot and found none. All I could see out the window was the county’s water tower, silhouetted against the full moon.
“Stop the car!” I yelled.
“Jane, I was only kidding. I know that having sex in a car in the middle of nowhere violates your ‘How to avoid being killed like a dumb-ass second-string character in a horror movie’ rules.”
“Stop the car!” I hopped out before Gabriel was able to pull to a complete stop. The distance from the water tower seemed right, and the moon seemed to be in the right position, but I was viewing it from the wrong angle. In his jumbled thoughts, Ray McElray had seen the lettering on the tower, “HALF-MOON HOLLOW.” All I could see was “HA.”
“Jane, what’s wrong?”
“I think I know where to find him,” I said, thankful that I’d worn my sensible sneakers while car shopping. “Come on.”
“Jane!” he called as I took off running in a wide arc around the tower. “Don’t you think we should call Ophelia and her team before we go chasing after Ray?” he yelled as we ducked through the trees.
“The same team that was so afraid of a little silver that they couldn’t catch up with him the other night? The same team that Jamie can track with no problem and catch repeatedly?” I called back.
“Good point,” he said. “So, if and when we catch up to Mr. McElray, what are we going to do?”
“No clue.”
“Excellent. We’re throwing ourselves into imminent danger without a plan. The usual.”
“Hey, I have enough sarcasm of my own, I don’t need yours.”
“Jane, stop.”
“I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of cars being set on fire. I’m tired of hired guns lurking outside my house. I can’t handle it anymore. You keep acting like you’re trying to protect me, like I’m the one in trouble again. But you’re the one he’s after. You’re the one in trouble. You’re the one in danger. And I refuse to accept that. I saw the trailer where McElray is staying. I saw it in his head, and I’m going to find it. I am going to go find him and take his damn ‘message.’ And then I’m going to shove it down his throat. Now, you’re either with me or you can go home.”
“OK, then.” He grimaced. “Now that you’ve explained it to me in a rational manner, let’s go.”
“What?”
He kissed me softly. “I’m with you, Jane. Always with you.”
When we got closer, I saw that the trailer wasn’t a trailer at all. It was an old school bus that had been spray-painted in camouflage. The walls were covered in gouges and rust stains. There were no lights, not even a flickering candle or campfire. A deer skull was mounted on the front fender, and cardboard covered two of the windows, which seemed to have been kicked in. There was actual Spanish moss hanging from the trees and brushing against the pressed-metal roof. I didn’t even know that we could get Spanish moss this far north. Maybe Ray had bought it at a craft store and hung it for ambience.
“Holy Mary, mother of Cheez Whiz.” I gaped.
This was the thing we didn’t want people from outside Kentucky to know about. There are hardworking, middle-class, well-educated people living all over our fair state. People who have all their teeth, aren’t married to their cousins, and have never even seen an episode of Lizard Lick Towing. But somehow, every time there’s a natural disaster, news crews manage to track down one of these outdoorsy yahoos to interview about how the “twister came a-screamin’ down the holler” and destroyed the snake farm his family had been running for generations. Frankly, I was surprised the camera crews hadn’t found this place already.
I tilted my head as we studied the exterior. “You know those moments in horror movies where the two stupid teenagers are about to stumble blindly into the serial killer’s lair, and you’re screaming at the screen, ‘No, don’t go in there. That collection of creepy doll heads is not just for decoration!’ because you honestly cannot believe two people could be that stupid? Trust me, this is one of those moments.”
“I’ll choose this moment to remind you that this was your idea. We can still call Ophelia.”
“There’s no reason to now. I don’t sense any thoughts,” I said. “No thoughts, no heartbeat. I mean, his scent is strong here, but he’s not here.”
“His truck is here. I can see the glimmer of the grate under that brush over there,” he said. “And if I’m not wrong, this patch of woods is just a mile or so from River Oaks. It explains how he’s been able to hover so closely.”
“Do you think it’s weird that there are no booby traps? I mean, this guy shot you with an arrow full of anticoagulants. You’d at least expect a tiger pit filled with big wooden stakes or something.”
“It is a little odd.”
“This is where those hired goons would have come in handy. We could send them in as booby-trap finders.”
“We could go home and bring back Jamie.”
“Come on,” I said softly as we passed old lawn chairs and empty beer cans scattered across the ground.
The little stop sign on the side was still intact, and I used it to pull the bus door open. When that didn’t make the bus explode, I took it as a good sign.
Before I hopped up onto the first step, I turned and asked, “We don’t need tetanus shots, right?” He shook his head. “Good. How does someone actually live in a school bus?” I wondered as we climbed aboard. With our remarkable night vision, we didn’t need flashlights to look around, which was good, because we didn’t have one. “I mean, there’s no water, there’s no bathroom. He must have a generator or something, because how else would he—Oh, dear.”
Wallpapering the interior of the bus were pictures of us—long-range shots of Gabriel and me sitting on the porch swing, of our friends helping us move Gabriel’s stuff into the house, shots taken through the front window of my shop. Specs for my car’s model. Line drawings of my house. News clippings from the Half-Moon Herald announcing Bud’s death and our engagement.
“This is scarily thorough,” I muttered.
I looked at the meticulously arranged cork board, which included long-range pictures of me through the shop window. A copy of my weekly schedule was pinned to the cork.
“I think it’s fairly safe to assume that this is our guy. If he’s pissed at you, why is all of his research on me?”
“He wants to strike where it hurts me most, by hurting you.”
I cooed. “Aw, that’s sweet in a sick, psychotic way. Still, I’m not the one who dropped a tree on top of his brother. I feel like I’m getting hosed here.”
“Thank you for your concern.”
Ray had installed makeshift counters where the bus seats used to be. They were crowded with half-emptied cans of Beanee Weenees and Vienna Sausages. Flies were buzzing thickly over the congealed contents. Empty bottles of cheap whiskey were scattered across the floor. An overly sweet, decaying scent hung in the air, with an undercurrent of vomit. Frankly, the place reminded me of my dorm’s community bathroom on a Saturday morning.
“I know this is kind of a stupid question, but what’s that smell?”
I looked up and saw that Gabriel’s attention was drawn to a bunk bed bolted into the back of the bus. There was a dark shape huddled in the center of the mattress, covered by an old army blanket.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Judging by the smell, I’d say it’s a distinct possibility that’s Ray McElray himself,” he said, pushing me behind him as we crept closer. “He’s human. He’s definitely dead. The body has been here a few days and reeks of booze. He may have drunk himself to death after his failed attempt on you.”
I groaned. “I am not calling this in to Ophelia, got it? I am sick of her snotty little jokes at my expense.”
“Yes, because clearly, protecting your feelings should be our chief concern when finding a dead body.”
“Shut it.” I sighed as we stepped closer.
“Would you recognize Ray if you saw him?”
I nodded. “Probably. You don’t forget a guy with a curly mullet.”
Gabriel peeled back the blanket just an inch. I saw a head of dark curly hair peeking up from beneath the blanket. I stepped forward to get a better look, and we heard an ominous clicking noise. I looked down and saw that some sort of panel had been cut into the floor a few feet from the bed. And I’d just stepped on it. I looked more closely at the flooring behind us and saw several little panels cut into the floor. We were lucky that we’d made it this far without stepping on one.
From somewhere under the counter, I heard a tiny buzzing noise. Gabriel grabbed my hand. “I think we need to back away from the bunk bed and get off of this bus.”
“I would, but I’m sort of paralyzed with fear right now,” I said.
The buzzing became the blaring of an alarm clock. In a flash, Gabriel was at the nearest emergency exit window and yanking it down. He practically threw me out of the opening. Just as my feet cleared the metal lip of the window, there was a deafening roar, and I felt Gabriel’s weight crashing against me as we were blown away from the blooming burst of flame. The heat prickled across my back as he turned, throwing his arms around me and cushioning my fall. I landed with a wet thump, Gabriel on top of me, and we slid across the soupy mud of Ray’s yard as bits of school bus rained down on us.
Oh, and Gabriel’s shirt was on fire.
Gabriel wasn’t all that concerned about this as he seemed to be stunned into a coma. Coughing, I began beating on his back to put out the flames.
“Why are you hitting me?” he asked groggily as I shoved him off of me and rolled his back against the ground.
“Stop, drop, and roll!” I yelled as I rocked him back and forth in the mud.
“What?”
“You’re on fire! Roll around!”
“I thought I smelled something burning,” he murmured, settling his face back down into the mud.
I looked back at the flaming wreckage of the bus. “You hit your head pretty good, huh?”
“Yep. I should be OK in a few minutes.”
“I’ll wait,” I said, carefully moving his head onto my lap. I stroked his hair. “So, is it just me, or do these pranks make Missy’s and Jeanine’s seem cheeky and winsome by comparison?”
“Hmph,” he said, nestling his face against my thigh. “So, can we assume that the body in the bus was Ray?”
“It seems too much to hope for, that this whole thing was resolved by binge drinking and homemade explosives.” I shrugged. “But what are the chances that he had a roommate?”
Ophelia was surprisingly gracious about the whole “we went off without you” thing, once we explained that I happened to recognize the water tower. I supposed it helped that Jamie had seen the explosion and come running, so he was standing behind me while I was explaining the predicament. She probably didn’t want to look like a total shrew in front of him.
Ray’s remains were collected by the human authorities. There wasn’t much to collect, as the explosives had been stashed under the bunk bed. To me, that didn’t make much sense. Why would anyone sleep on top of a large bomb? But Ophelia suggested that maybe he wanted to take out anyone who got that close as he slept. He didn’t care whether he survived.
Sergeant Russell Lane of the Half-Moon Hollow PD, who seemed to be the only police officer on duty whenever I got into trouble, promised that they would identify the remains by dental records as soon as possible. I had the feeling that Ray didn’t have any dental records, which would make identification more difficult.
“Jane, do you think you’ll be able to keep yourself out of trouble for the remaining three days before your wedding, or will I need to double your guards?” Ophelia asked.
“I think I’ll be fine,” I said contritely.
Ophelia smiled blandly. “Well, I’ll still keep them stationed outside the house, just in case. I’m sure there’s more than one person interested in killing you in a splashy, public fashion.”
“I would take offense to that, but you’re probably right.”
Gabriel’s wounds healed quickly enough, although Jamie helped me load him into his car so we could drive home. Gabriel’s concussion also led to his singing various Motown songs, which Jamie recorded on his phone for his own amusement.
With precious little time left before the wedding, I logged as many hours in the shop as possible, preparing it and Andrea for the week Gabriel and I would be spending away at an undisclosed honeymoon location. I trusted Andrea and Dick to take care of the business. And I trusted Jamie not to run away with the circus. But I didn’t trust myself not to check my voicemail every five minutes to make sure nothing had blown up or been sprayed with battery acid in my absence.
Honestly, I was lucky to have the shop to distract me. I had very little to do wedding-wise, thanks to Iris. She’d emailed me an itinerary for the day before and the day of the wedding. I just had to show up at the right time and get dressed. If I wasn’t marrying one of the most beautiful men on the planet, I’d have been tempted to give her a big, wet kiss.
Andrea came toddling from the supply room, struggling to gracefully move a bulky, half-constructed cardboard display.
“What are you doing?” I asked as she flipped white cardboard tabs into place and flipped the top of the display over to reveal a pair of intricately printed silver bells that read “Eternal Bliss” in a curlicued font.
“Opening us up to whole new literary market,” she exclaimed, before dashing back to the storeroom. She came back with a case of books, similarly stamped “Eternally Yours.” Andrea abused her vampire speed, unpacking and shelving the books with a flourish and stepping back.
“Ta-da!” she shouted.
“You’ve fallen completely over the edge into asylum territory, haven’t you?”
She frowned. “No, you jerk, ‘ta-da’ as in ‘Welcome to the wedding-planning section of our shop. How can we separate you from your hard-earned money today?’ You would not believe how many people have become interested in vampire weddings over the last couple of weeks—whether it’s because of the stories circulating in the human community about your wedding or because it just became legal, I don’t know. But we’ve had several customers come in and request books and planners for vampire nuptials, and they were extremely disappointed that we didn’t have any. So I looked up a couple of distributors online and found these. A Novice’s Guide to Planning a Charming Vampire Wedding, Elopement for the Eternal, Weddings and the Dysfunctional Undead: A Vampire’s Guide to Establishing a New Family Without Killing the Old One. They’re great. Informative, thorough, and occasionally pretty damn funny.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me about these books while I was planning my own wedding, because?”
She chuckled. “Because the line was just launched!”
“And because seeing me drive myself crazy amuses you.”
“Jane, if you’d been able to read these books, would you have felt more prepared, or would you have worked yourself into an information-overload-fueled frenzy, convinced that you could arrange the whole wedding yourself, and eventually killed one of your loved ones in a glue-gun-related mishap?” she asked, her lips quirked.
“Probably that second one,” I admitted.
She hiked her fists on her hips. “OK, then, I think the words you’re looking for are ‘Thank you, oh newly promoted assistant manager, for finding yet another revenue stream for Specialty Books. Without you, my shelves would be empty. I would have few customers. And my coffee would burn holes in those customers’ throats.’ “
“I think that was implied.”
She shook her head. “No, no. I’m going to need to hear it.”
“Thank you, oh—” I stopped as I heard the little cow bell over the door jingle, indicating that a customer was walking in. “Oh, thank God, ‘cause there was no way I was going to really say that.”
I turned to find a familiar blonde tentatively poking her head through the front door.
“Mrs. Lanier?”
I reached under the counter for the pepper spray we kept there. Andrea circled the coffee bar to stand at my right. Her face was neutral but not friendly. Clearly, Andrea believed she was the only one allowed to abuse me. Mrs. Lanier was going to have to line up behind her.
Rosie Lanier tried to smile, but her muscles couldn’t seem to form the expression. She cleared her throat. “Jane.”
“Is there something I can do for you?” I asked gently, although my hand was still firmly on the pepper spray.
She cleared her throat again. I reached into the mini-fridge and pulled out a bottle of water for her. She stepped back, as if she wasn’t prepared to accept any sort of kindness from me.
“I can’t pretend I’m happy to be here, Jane. I never thought …” She crossed to one of the little tables and plopped down in one of the comfy purple chairs.
I took a stool near the coffee bar.
“When I heard what happened to you, I thought, ‘Oh, poor Sherry.’ I never even considered that something like that could happen to my own child. I thought we were safe. We were a good family, good people,” she said.
“So was my family … with the possible exception of Grandma Ruthie.”
Mrs. Lanier ignored me as if she’d already planned her speech out in her head and any interruption would only put her off her place. “I was so angry with you when I found out what happened. I mean, it was bad enough that Jamie had been turned, but that it was by someone we knew? It felt like you should have known better, like you should have been more loyal. ‘After all the time we’d spent together with her family,’ I thought. ‘After all those Labor Day picnics and camping weekends and New Year’s Eve parties, how could she do this to us?’ I hated you so much. The more I thought about it, the more you seemed to morph into this hideous monster in my head—this dangerous, vicious tramp who’d stolen my son’s life away.”
“I don’t know how to respond to that,” I muttered.
She chuckled, and for the first time in months, I saw her smile. “That changed one night when I was looking through some old albums, looking for pictures of Jamie. I found this.”
She slid an old, battered four-by-six photo across the table. I groaned as Andrea swooped in, grabbed the photo, and guffawed. I glared at her.
“Right,” she said, slapping the photo into my hand. “Sorry.”
The picture showed Jenny, Jamie, and me during a camping weekend at Barkley Lake. Jamie must have been six or seven, his straw-colored hair sticking straight up from the back of his head like a peacock’s tail. Somehow, paired with the thumb-width gap between his top front teeth, the freckles across his nose only made him more adorable. At twenty-one, Jenny was still blond, polished, and perfect and clearly humoring the both of us as we forced her to help us sing some old Oak Ridge Boys song, just because Jamie liked to sing the “oom-papa-mow-mow” chorus. And there was awkward, buck-toothed me, with the unfortunate bangs and knobby knees. I smiled goofily into the camera, with a sort of bemused confidence that this picture was going to come back and haunt me. Even then, I had a pretty profound grasp of future humiliation.
“I saw this picture. And I remembered this trip with your family. I remembered, even then, how good you were with Jamie, how you kept him out of trouble all weekend by telling him stories about Huck Finn and Daniel Boone. I remember telling your mama what a good mother you were going to make someday and how she just beamed at the thought. And I realized that girl would never do anything to put Jamie in danger. That girl, who devoted most of her adult years to helping kids learn to love books, couldn’t change so drastically. That girl would give her last breath to keep someone she saw as a child safe.” Her lip trembled, and her eyes filled. “It was me. I brought this down on us. It’s my fault. When you were turned, I felt so sorry for your mama, for such a thing to happen to her. But all the while, I was feeling smug and superior, because it could never happen to me. Not in my family. I’m being punished, don’t you see? I was so proud, so arrogant. I gave the Lord no choice but to smack me down.”
“It doesn’t really work that way,” I said. “I wasn’t turned as part of a great karmic payment plan. It just happened. The same with Jamie. It just happened. Trying to find a villain here is like trying to pin the blame on someone when a meteor lands on them.” I judiciously decided not to tell her about the driver who mowed her son down and how he may or may not have tried to do further damage to members of the household. That struck me as a “need to know” sort of thing.
She bit her lip, her eyes filling as she asked, “Is he happy?”
I reached across the table to pat her hand, but she withdrew it. I tried not to let that hurt my feelings. “He misses you. He’s confused, scared, but no more so than any kid who’s growing up. He’s a good kid, Miss Rosie. You did a wonderful job raising him. And he’s the very best kind of vampire. He’s just like he was as a human; he just has fangs. He doesn’t hurt people. He doesn’t abuse his powers. He’s still your boy. And he would love to see you.”
“I’m not sure if we can do that yet,” she said. “I’m afraid of what I’ll see when I look at him. It will break my heart if he still looks like my little boy. And it will break my heart if he doesn’t. I don’t know when I will be ready. I know your mama’s all onboard with the Friends and Family of the Undead, but I’m not ready to march in any nighttime pride parades. It’s going to take me some time.”
“Please at least consider it.”
She smiled, tight-lipped but sincere. “I will.”
“So, you’re not angry with me anymore?”
“No. I’m not going to be sending you a batch of macaroons anytime soon, but I think we’re going to be OK.”
“Damn, I wish you hadn’t reminded me how much I loved your macaroons. But thank you for forgiving me. You wouldn’t mind passing word around about our newly established peace treaty so I don’t get variations of ‘murdering bitch’ painted on my windows, would you?”
She cringed. “I’m sorry about that. I’ll admit, the first time was me. But I’ll call the phone tree and cancel it for everybody else.”
“That is a clear misuse of your PTA organizing skills.”
“We work with what we have,” she said, blushing sheepishly.
“I’ll keep you in mind the next time I’m arranging a vampire carpool.”