2
Welcome to the world of vampire parenting. If you’re frightened, confused, and disoriented … that sounds just about right.
—Siring for the Stupid:
A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires
I sprawled on the couch in the break room, with Jamie’s head in my lap, unsure of what to do. I was exhausted, emotionally and hematologically. The blood loss involved in creating a childe takes a lot out of the vampire sire. It’s said to be the closest the undead can come to childbirth, which just sounds wrong.
In more than 150 years, Gabriel had created only three children. Two of those children turned out to be evil and went on killing sprees … maybe that’s why vampires only turn a handful of children in their lifetime.
Crap.
I scrubbed my hand over my face and leaned my head against the wall. Outside, I could hear Dick using a hose to clear Jamie’s blood from the street. We hadn’t done anything wrong. Dick assured me that we’d followed the Council’s protocols for the situation, but it still wasn’t a good idea to have a big puddle of blood out in front of the store. It was unseemly.
I reached for the phone several times to call the police, but Dick held it out of my reach and said that we should wait for the Council. We sent Andrea away just after we carried Jamie inside the store. We asked her to drive the delivery truck back to the dairy, then run home. It wasn’t that we were worried about Andrea’s control. After being a blood surrogate for years, live feeding—particularly on mortally injured minors—didn’t hold much attraction for her. But seeing Jamie go through the process brought up bad memories for Andrea, whose turning by Dick’s psychotic descendant had been nonconsensual and painful. She wouldn’t talk about it. She was so happy to wake up alive with Dick that she didn’t make much of it when she was first turned. But privately, Dick told me that she had nightmares about Emery turning her. She dreamed of pain and blood and dark shadows crushing the breath from her. And I wanted to dig up Emery’s ashes so I could kill his creepy, milquetoast ass all over again.
Jamie’s face was peaceful in death. He looked so young, untroubled. But when he woke, his life would be unrecognizable. He would be angry, confused. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that this was my fault. I hadn’t made that driver careen down an alleyway and smash into Jamie. And he’d asked me to turn him. But I’d hit a sort of stalemate in life when I’d been turned. I’d been an unmarried, unattached, unsatisfied (recently fired) workaholic.
Jamie still had potential. His was a life that was worth living. He could have grown up, gone to school, gotten a normal job, made some sweet local girl ridiculously happy when he proposed. He could have had babies and gotten into drunken brawls with the other church-league softball players on Sundays. And now he would be frozen forever at seventeen. He would be carded for the rest of his unnaturally long life.
I thought of Jamie’s parents, at home, completely unaware that their son’s existence had been permanently altered. My parents had celebrated New Year’s Eve with the Laniers as long as I could remember. They played cards and ate Chex Mix to the point of garlic overdose while the dads drank toddies that were way too strong. I was usually watching Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in the den with Jamie and his sister.
They were all going to hate me when they found out what I’d done.
I heard the cowbell tinkle over the front door. Ophelia Lambert, the scary forever-adolescent head of the local panel for the World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead, swept into the shop, followed by her panel of ancient flunkies. Ophelia, who had a penchant for themed outfits bordering on jailbait gear, was wearing a lavender poodle skirt with a matching cardigan tied primly around her shoulders.
Ophelia had overseen my prosecution for several random killings and fires the first year I was turned, and she scared the hell out of me—despite the fact that she had found me innocent and chosen not to put me to death. But Ophelia seemed to find my wacky antics entertaining and took a particular interest anytime I ran afoul of the Council’s policies.
I managed to focus long enough to register the rest of the panel lining up in an intimidating semicircle around me. There was cool blond Sophie, whose unlined, luminescent face was as unsettling as it was beautiful; the improbably named Waco Marchand, whom one might recognize from the Confederate memorial statue in downtown Half-Moon Hollow; and finally, gaunt and grumpy Peter Crown, who had never liked me … or anyone, as far as I could tell.
I stayed quiet, with my hands in my lap. Dick had taken his place at my right, his hand on my shoulder.
“No protests of innocence?” Ophelia asked, frowning at the battered, bloodied teen in my lap. I shook my head. “Very well. Explain yourself.”
I sniffed. “This is Jamie Lanier. He’s a local kid. He was doing his dairy deliveries, and … he came around the truck, and he didn’t see—The car didn’t even slow down …”
Seeing that I wasn’t going to be able to provide much more, Dick intervened, explaining about the reckless driver and the extent of Jamie’s injuries.
Ophelia’s crystalline gaze did not waver from my face. “And what led to your turning him? Did we get a little hungry in sight of the poor bleeding accident victim?”
“He asked me to turn him,” I told her, my voice a little firmer than it should have been, given the circumstances. “He didn’t want to die.”
Ophelia looked to Dick, asking for confirmation. He nodded.
“Dick helped me. He showed me how,” I said. “I gave him as much blood as I could before—before he faded out.”
The Council members turned to one another and started their silent conversation with lip twitches and various eye gestures. Peter Crown sneered at me, but that was actually friendlier than his usual expression.
I cleared my throat. “So, how much trouble am I in?”
Ophelia gave an uninterested shrug. “No, for once, you seem to have behaved appropriately.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. “Sorry, what?”
Sophie, whom I tried to steer clear of after she’d picked her way through my brain using her special truth-seeking psychic talents, smiled warmly at me. Of course, she smiled that way right before she used said special talents, so I leaned back a little on the couch. “Really, Jane, you should relax. You performed admirably. I would imagine even the human community would appreciate your efforts. We will, of course, contact the human authorities and inform them of young Mr. Lanier’s passing.”
I nodded.
While Waco, who’d always taken a gentlemanly grandfather stance with me, patted my head affectionately, Peter glared at me. I sat stone-still, unsure how to respond. Where were the not-so-subtle threats? The menu of horrific potential consequences? Ophelia’s barbed insults about my spazzery and/or wardrobe?
“This is the part where you say thank you,” Ophelia said, lifting an eyebrow.
“Thank you,” I parroted back to her.
“We’ll work on enthusiasm and sincerity some other time,” she said with a smirk.
“Give her a break, Ophelia,” Waco muttered. “Under the circumstances, she’s holding up very well. I’ve heard that your first turn as a sire wasn’t quite so neat and tidy.”
The great thing about people as composed as Ophelia is that when you finally crack them, the brief flash of anger across their features is blinding in its pissiness. Ophelia stood and smoothed her hands over her skirt. “Well, I’m sure you’d like to get home and start ‘feathering the nest,’ so to speak. You only have three days to prepare for your new arrival.”
I nearly dropped Jamie from my lap. “I’m sorry, what?”
Ophelia’s lip quirk deepened to a full-on smirk. “Your new childe, he’ll be living with you. It’s your responsibility to help him make the transition into the vampire world. Didn’t Gabriel explain the sire-childe dynamic to you when you rose?”
“Yeah, but I pretty much told him where to stuff it and lived how I pleased.”
“And look where that got you,” Peter retorted.
“In other words, congratulations,” Sophie chirped. “It’s a boy!”
“Are you being sarcastic or sincere right now?” I demanded. “Because honestly, I can’t tell.”
Sophie gave me a sharp little nod. “A little of both.”
“Awesome,” I grumbled, much to Peter’s delight.
Sophie handed me a black gift bag packed with sample bottles of synthetic blood, Blood-B-Gone stain-removing wipes, a GPS-enhanced alarm clock that tracked the sun’s movements, SPF-500 sunblock, iron supplements with what looked like a baby vampire on the label, and a copy of Siring for the Stupid: A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires. Well, that capped it. No successful endeavor in my life, undead or otherwise, had started with a gift basket.
“Seriously, who do you get to publish this stuff for you?” I demanded, holding up the copy of Siring for the Stupid. I looked to Dick, who seemed as perplexed as I was by the events unfolding in the break room. “Is this normal?”
Dick frowned, watching Ophelia warily. “It’s not abnormal. But, usually, if the Council doesn’t feel comfortable with a newly turned vampire’s restraint, the representatives take on the job of fostering themselves.”
“Well, this was an unusual case,” Ophelia admitted. “Jamie’s seventeen. He’s a minor. He can’t live alone unless he’s emancipated, which the state won’t allow under current vampire rights regulations. And we certainly can’t let him return home to his parents. Jamie needs someone who is accustomed to working with children. Jane has that experience from her former profession.”
“Jamie aged out of my library program once he stopped reading those Captain Underpants books,” I told her. Ophelia shot me one of her patented “why are you still speaking?” looks. I sighed. “For how long?”
“Until he’s ready to live on his own,” she said, giving Jamie a speculative glance. “Don’t worry, I’ll be stopping by frequently to check on his progress. As you know, your antics always keep me entertained, Jane.”
“I knew it,” I ground out. Peter actually chuckled under his breath, which was the first time I’d heard him express anything like humor.
Bastard.
“What about Jamie’s parents?” I asked.
“The Council is sending a representative to the Laniers’ home to explain what happened. It would be best if they don’t know where he is right now. Do not contact them until the Council arranges a supervised meeting with their son.”
“You’re not sending Peter, are you?” I asked. “Because the news might be better delivered by someone with, um, feelings?”
“Are you saying I’m insensitive?” Peter deadpanned.
“I was going to use the words ‘devoid of the milk of human kindness,’ but ‘insensitive’ will do.”
Waco snorted but covered it with a cough. “I’ll be visiting the Laniers, Miss Jane. Don’t you worry, I’ll soften the blow.”
I nodded. Maybe it would be easier to take such bad news when it came from a guy who looked like Colonel Sanders.
Probably not.
“What about the car?” I asked.
Ophelia shrugged. “What car?”
“The car that hit Jamie. Don’t you want to try to find out who caused all this?”
Ophelia gave an uninterested wave of the hand. “It was probably a drunk human, as you said, a hit-and-run driver. It would be a matter for the human police, if you care to report it. But as I recall, you and the local law-enforcement agencies don’t play well together.”
I had to concede that. The last time I’d had contact with the Half-Moon Hollow PD, I’d asked one of the officers if it was uncomfortable to have his head jammed so far up one of his own orifices. Filing a missing-persons report on Andrea was considerably more difficult after that.
“Jane?” Gabriel came crashing through the store and into the break room.
“Ah, the lover’s dramatic entrance,” Ophelia drawled.
“What’s happened?” Gabriel exclaimed, obviously confused to see the adolescent draped across my legs. “Are you all right? Were you hurt?”
I started to sniffle at the idea of having to explain the situation again, and Ophelia rolled her eyes. She muttered instructions to Dick, and the rest of Council swept from the room.
“We’d better get them home, Gabe,” Dick told him as he lifted Jamie from my lap. “I’ll explain later. Jane’s holding it together so far, but she’s about this close to a tirade like we’ve never seen before.”
I felt Gabriel shudder beside me, and despite myself, I felt my lips twitch as I elbowed him in the side. He slipped his arms under mine and led me out of the shop. Dick carefully laid Jamie in the back of Big Bertha and ran around to the driver’s side. I saw him instinctually reach for the handle of the driver’s-side door that was lying crumpled on the concrete. I giggled at the absurdity of the gesture. A wave of nausea and fatigue surged over me, and that giggle melted into an all-out hysterical, bent-over-my-own-knees guffaw.
Sensing the tirade unraveling, Gabriel ushered me into his own car. He tucked me into the passenger seat, and I tilted back against the seat, swiping at my eyes.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” I murmured as he turned the ignition. “I never mean for any of it to happen, but something always seems to sneak up and bite us in the ass, doesn’t it?”
He pulled me close and kissed my temple. “This time around, let’s just assume the best of each other and go with the flow,” he murmured. “It would save a lot of time … and Tasering.”
With that, my fiance drove me home, my head cradled on his knee.
This was what happened when you dated a guy who saved you from a gunshot wound in a muddy ditch. There’s a certain amount of drama expected in your relationship.
Gabriel and I had the opposite of a meet-cute. We had a meet-casualty. The short version is that when I was (unfairly, unceremoniously) fired from the library, instead of getting a severance check, I got just enough of a gift certificate to get rip-snorting drunk at Shenanigans. I met Gabriel, sobered, and flirtation ensued. My car died halfway home. I was spotted walking home by the town drunk, Bud McElray, who mistook me for a deer and shot me. I was left in the ditch to die, only to be found and turned by Gabriel.
But when I tell the story in public, Gabriel had to turn me because of wounds I suffered rescuing blind orphans from a flaming, totaled van.
Gabriel eventually tracked Bud McElray down and exacted ironic revenge on my behalf, forcing Bud from a deer stand and then shoving a tree on top of him to make his death look like a tragic hunting accident. Bud’s death and the ensuing dirty, naked argument we had over it is one of the darker episodes in our relationship. Not many couples can say they consummated their love after crashing through a coffee table.
We put Jamie in the guest room, the same room where Andrea had lain while we waited for her to rise. I hoped this wasn’t becoming a habit. I didn’t want to start a B&B for vampires in chrysalis.
Having been beaten, bled, concussed, and repeatedly electrocuted, I was unconscious during most of Andrea’s transition. I didn’t realize how mind-numbingly boring it was. Other than avoiding contact with my family and stocking up on bottled blood and comfortable clothes for my new charge, there hadn’t been much to do other than paint my toenails. And Dick’s. That would teach him to fall asleep on the couch.
Zeb brought by a selection of comic books and video games from his personal stash to keep Jamie entertained post-rising. Andrea and Dick ran the shop, because it seemed wrong for me to be away from home at the moment. Gabriel and I paced a lot.
By the second night, we were all going a little nuts. To help pass the time, Jolene dropped by with the twins, Joe and Janelyn. They’d become quite the fixtures at River Oaks since Gabriel and I had been appointed the only trustworthy babysitters Jolene and Zeb knew. (Andrea and Dick served as alternates.) Mama Ginger was bumped after she got baby Janelyn’s ears pierced without discussing it with her parents. And then there was an unfortunate episode involving Jolene’s pack, which a tight-lipped Zeb would only refer to as the “Greased Pig Incident.”
Our apparent willingness to supervise their offspring, combined with the fact that they lived on the edge of River Oaks’s acreage, meant that they were frequent visitors. It was nice to have kids running around the old house, considering that the opportunity for the pittering and pattering would be scarce over the next few centuries. There weren’t many routes around the whole “vampires can’t have babies” rules. Plus, it was always entertaining to watch Gabriel with my godchildren. He was always all stiff and formal with them, until we left the room and we heard suspicious raspberry noises and baby talk. Of course, when we returned, we usually found him reading them the stock report as if it was the Brothers Grimm.
It was fascinating to watch the new parents at work. Jolene and Zeb maneuvered like a well-oiled machine. If Joe needed a bottle, Zeb already had it mixed and uncapped before Jolene could reach for it. If Janelyn needed to be burped, Jolene had the cloth over Zeb’s shoulder before he could get the baby into position. The synchronized diaper changes had a graceful, if stinky, ballet quality to them.
Some nights, I felt as if they were in some sort of military maneuver, them against the babies. You will not drive us crazy. You will not beat us. We will have sex again someday.
Jolene had relaxed a lot. The little things that used to wind her up didn’t bother her anymore. I think that once a woman has pushed two watermelon-sized objects out of her body, sans drugs, the prospect of her in-laws not liking her doesn’t matter so much anymore.
We were settled, as so many people were when they reached their thirties. It had just taken Dick and Gabriel a while to get around to it. We spent weekends at my house, watching movies, the babies asleep upstairs in the old nursery. You’d think a bunch of supernatural creatures would find this boring as hell, but after two years filled with blood, heartache, hostage crises, and death, a quiet movie night seems downright decadent.
Sometimes I marveled at how grownup we’d all become, and then Dick would recite a sixteen-stanza penis-based epic poem, and I’d take it back.
While the kids played on the living-room floor, Jolene compared this endless stream of empty time to waiting for a baby to be born. Everyone was excited and on edge, but the details were uncertain and out of our hands.
“Have you and Gabriel discussed what’s going to happen when Jamie rises?” Jolene asked, tossing her hair.
Once again, I wondered why I surrounded myself with women who were much prettier than I was. Surely, there was some sort of self-defeating psychology at work here. Jolene was gorgeous in an exotic way that had almost intimidated me out of getting to know her when she first started dating Zeb. She had a perfectly oval face, with high cheekbones and wild curls that were a dozen different shades of auburn. My only consolation was that when she parted those lush pink lips, she sounded like Lulu from Hee Haw.
To be honest, not many guys cared about that.
“Mostly, we’ve been staring at each other, wondering what the hell we’ve gotten ourselves into this time,” I admitted.
“Well, you’re basically becomin’ parents. And let me tell you, that’s a relationship changer.”
“But you had two kids at once. Your perspective is kind of skewed. I mean, how much trouble could one teenager cause?” Jolene stared at me for a beat before I yowled, “I’m so screwed. Damn it, Jolene!”
“I thought you wanted my opinion!”
“Well, not if you’re going to bring reality into it!” I glared at her as I reached for the ringing phone, knowing that it was my mama before I picked up the receiver.
“Oh, honey, did you hear what happened to poor little Jamie Lanier?” Mama asked without saying hello first. She’d returned to her “no greetings” method of phone communication since Andrea ratted me out about turning down Gabriel’s first proposal. “He was minding his own business, delivering his dairy, and he was attacked by a vampire. Carol Ann Reilly said they pulled him from the truck, drained him dry, and turned him.”
I huffed out a breath. “That’s not what happened!”
“What?”
I cleared my throat. “I mean, that’s not how it happens, Mama. Vampires don’t attack random strangers and turn them.”
“Oh, honey, I know, and I told Carol Ann that with bottled blood and willing donors, y’all don’t really have to attack people and drag them from their vehicles like in the movies. Really, I wish that woman would go to a couple of FFOTU meetings with me, she’s so close-minded.”
I bit my lip. But with Jolene’s wolfy hearing, she laughed freely.
“Your vampire Council sent someone over to tell poor Rosie and Jeff what had happened. And the worst part is that the Council won’t even tell them where he is! Their own son, dead, and they’re ‘not allowed’ to see him.”
I felt a lump grow heavy in my throat. Please, please, please, don’t let Mama notice that I’ve stopped talking, I prayed. That’s always a tip-off that I’m not telling her something.
“They’re so torn up over it,” Mama continued. “I went by to visit them, of course, to take them a casserole and tell them about Friends and Family of the Undead. And you wouldn’t believe the throng of people over there. It was like a funeral without the body. Anyway, I was thinking maybe you might go over there to visit them, Jane, and show them that this isn’t the end of the world. They’ve always thought so much of you, honey. I think it would help them a lot.”
I felt that same hot, oily rush of guilt that I always felt when I was about to lie or omit very important details to my mother. How was I going to face her, tell her what I’d done? After her initial shock over my turning, she’d always written off the bloodier aspects of vampirism as something I had to do. Would she still think that? Would she fall back to her old ways and think I’d just lost control of my bloodlust and made Jamie into a snack? I cleared my throat, willing that huge breath-hindering lump away.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea right now, Mama. Technically, they’re in mourning. And they probably won’t want to see any vampires until they see their son.”
“I don’t think you’re giving them enough credit, Jane—”
“Mama, trust me on this one.”
“Fine.” With a sigh and an FFOTU platitude about family and acceptance, Mama moved on to breezier topics. My sister Jenny wanted to know if I wanted to join the scrapbooking class she was teaching down at her new paper-craft shop. And this time, she meant it in a friendly, nonmocking way. My grandma Ruthie and her ghoul-beau Wilbur were preparing for a weekend away in Hot Springs, which was a scenario I didn’t want to imagine, ever. My father had finished a draft of a book on historically notable vampires of Half-Moon Hollow, which he’d written with Gabriel’s and Dick’s help.
After a few attempts to extract myself from the conversation, I finally convinced Mama that Fitz was choking on a baby toy and I had to rescue him with the doggie Heimlich. I hung up the phone and buried my face in my hands.
“If you keep doin’ that, you’re gonna get wrinkles,” Jolene said. I smirked at her. “Oh, I forgot, you’re never gonna get wrinkles. Bitch. But you could get some serious scratches from that rock. Wow! This is the first time I’ve had a good look at it.” She yanked my hand closer for inspection. “Very nice work, Miss Jameson. So, why isn’t your mama here right now, drillin’ you about wedding details?”
“Um …” I realized that it was the first time I’d spoken to my mother since getting engaged, and I hadn’t even thought about telling her. I hadn’t thought about anything beyond my immediate future. Suddenly, my engagement news didn’t seem so earth-shattering.
More than anything, I wished that Gabriel had taken me up on my elopement offer, because we’d be married by now. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t want to think about wedding plans for a long time to come. Of course, if we’d taken that impromptu trip to Vegas, that crazy driver would have hit Jamie without vampires nearby to help him. We would have come back from our honeymoon to attend his funeral.
As I mulled that over, Dick and Gabriel loped into the kitchen, with Zeb and Andrea at their heels, all with a strangely uniform “We need to talk” expression on their faces. I arched an eyebrow, but that was mainly because of the way Dick was dangling Joe by his ankles, while the baby giggled hysterically. Jolene sighed, retrieved her inverted offspring, and smacked the back of Dick’s head.
“This is why you’re an alternate,” she told him.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “Jane, I know that you’re still a bit in shock from Jamie’s turning, but we were hoping you might be ready to talk about a few things.”
His formal tone brought a ghost of a smile to my lips. “Such as?”
Gabriel and Dick exchanged uneasy glances, making me cry, “Stop doing that! I swear, I liked it better when you two were conspiring against each other, not me. Out with it!”
“Jane, you were nearly hit by a car today. Maybe it was an accident, but I think we can agree that there’s a ninety-percent chance that it was intentional,” Gabriel said.
“Ninety percent?”
“I did the math,” Andrea assured me. “The number of occasions in which you have been injured due to accident or miscalculated practical jokes, versus intentional injury.”
“The point is, we’re not going to wait around for trouble to find you this time,” Gabriel said. “This time, you’re going to let me use every resource at my disposal to seek this person out and stop him.”
“Agreed,” I said, nodding.
He arched an eyebrow. “You’re not going to protest?”
“No, I think you have a really good grasp on the problem. I’m not going to do anything that pushes us apart or drags the problem out. If you need to stay with me at the shop while I’m working, we’ll set up office space for you there. Hell, I’ll get you your own fax line. If you think we need to close the shop for a while, we can do that. Let me know what I can do to make this situation easier for you.”
Frowning, he sighed. “Now is not the time for sarcasm, Jane.”
“I’m not being sarcastic!”
“Then I have no idea how to respond.”
“You kiss me and tell me everything is going to be OK.”
He kissed me. “Everything’s going to be OK.”
“OK.”
“I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit,” Zeb griped.
“Stretch, you have any idea who might have been behind the wheel of that car?” Dick asked. “You said it swerved toward you after it struck Jamie. Do you think it’s possible that you were the target and Jamie was just collateral damage?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s actually been buzzing at the back of my brain since Jamie took his last breath. And after the last couple of years, I actually have a system for narrowing down a list of suspects when something like this happens. But honestly, I don’t think I have any enemies left at this point. I mean, I haven’t done anything to anyone lately. And I don’t think I have anything that anyone else would want. That’s generally what gets me in trouble. First, there was Missy, the insane real estate agent who wanted to take my house and turn it into a tacky vampire condo development. Then Esther Barnes, the psychic who tried to scramble Zeb’s brain and prevent his wedding to Jolene. And of course, Jeanine. But those were all cases of my actually doing something to piss someone off.”
“What about the ladies in the Chamber of Commerce?” Zeb asked.
“Well, yeah, they’re plotting against me, but Nice Courtney says their plans are of the ‘make Jane a social pariah who dies pitiful, penniless, and alone’ variety. I think it involves getting all of my advertising changed to say ‘Specialty Hookers.’ “
“Local vampire haters?”
“Nah. I can’t see one of them having a beef with me specifically. If anyone, they’d go after …” I pressed my lips together and gave Dick a speculative look.
“What?” he demanded.
“Oh, nothing.”
“Former employers?”
“Mrs. Stubblefield is drying out in a rehab center in Bowling Green.”
“Gabriel’s other errant vampire children?”
“He promises me there are no others,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes at him.
Gabriel elbowed Dick in the gut. “Jackass.”
Dick chortled and ducked a second blow from his childhood best friend.
“Have you noticed how many people don’t like you?” Jolene asked. “Your grandma Ruthie, my aunties, Mrs. Stubblefield, old lady psychics.”
“Ooh!” Zeb exclaimed. “What about all those girls you insulted-slash-made-cry in high school? We just saw them at the reunion. That probably stirred up some feelings.”
“I don’t think you’re helping there, Zeb,” Dick said, patting Zeb’s shoulder.
“And I didn’t ‘make’ those girls cry. In general, I was responding to bitchery in kind. I was provoked!”
“Every time?” Andrea asked.
“There weren’t that many times,” I insisted.
Andrea looked to Zeb, who was nodding. “Yes, there were,” he said.
“What about assassins paid by your grandma Ruthie?” Jolene suggested.
“That is … surprisingly plausible,” I grumbled. “Look, over the years, my unique sense of humor and perverse grasp of honesty may have led to some hurt feelings and long-held grudges. But overall, I’m a pretty likable person.”
They all seemed to bite their lips simultaneously to keep from snickering.
“I hate you all!” I exclaimed.
“I’m glad y’all are takin’ this so seriously,” Jolene said in her best motherly tone.
No one had the decency to look sheepish.
“OK, so the suspect list is long and somewhat vague,” Andrea said. “The question is, how do we keep Jane—and by extension, her loved ones and colleagues—from getting shot, stabbed, poisoned, beaten, Tasered, burned, maced, or otherwise slapped about by anonymous yet incredibly determined forces?”
“We don’t let her work alone at the shop,” Gabriel suggested.
“We put her in a hermetically sealed plastic vampire habitat,” Dick said.
“We hire one of my nicer cousins to come over durin’ the day and keep an eye on the place,” Jolene added.
“We keep her from handling guns, knives, poison, Taser guns, fire, or mace so she doesn’t injure herself,” Zeb said.
“These are all good suggestions,” I said. “Except for putting me in a vampire hamster cage. But Gabriel’s right. I’m tired of waiting around for trouble to come to me. I’m tired of dreading a ringing phone because it could mean that one of you has been hurt. I’m tired of keeping my head in the sand. So I’m going to take a more proactive approach.”
“We,” they chorused.
“Instead of sitting around, waiting for the next incident, I—”
“We,” they corrected me again in chorale, which was a little creepy.
“We are going to try to find the person driving that car. The plate was obscured, but I got a partial number. Jolene, do you have any cousins who work in the DMV?”
“I’m insulted that you even have to ask.” She snorted, bobbing the baby on her hip. “I have three.”
I scribbled out a description of the car’s make and model and the partial license plate and handed it to Jolene.
“Can we get a whiteboard, like on Law and Order?” Andrea asked.
Dick nodded. “I was thinking official ‘Keep Jane from Being Murdered Task Force’ T-shirts.”
The team seemed ready to “break” to take on their individual tasks, when Gabriel raised his hands. I gritted my teeth and waited for the inevitable speech that could be summed up as “I think we should keep Jane locked away and ignorant for her own protection.” Instead, Gabriel said, “I would like to lodge a formal objection to the ‘go looking for trouble’ plan. I think it’s ill advised and very likely to get at least one of us hurt. But I’m also smart enough to recognize that it’s an empty gesture, and since you’re going to do it anyway, I might as well get onboard.”
I cooed. “Aw, you know me so well.” I pressed a kiss against his tensed, frowning lips. “You know, you’d think I would be used to someone trying to kill me by now, but it still hurts my feelings every time.”