9
Although vampires are seen as lonely, brooding creatures, all of us, whether young or old, need socialization. Vampires who spend too much time alone lose their humanity, and with that their ability to safely attract and feed from their human prey.
—Siring for the Stupid:
A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires
My first day back at the shop didn’t go as I’d hoped. I pulled into the space in front of the shop to find Andrea scrubbing furiously at the window.
“Uh, sweetie, I think we’ve talked about the fact that our customers don’t really care about the cleanliness of the front window. They sort of like the idea that no one can see them from the outside,” I called as I climbed out of Big Bertha.
Andrea ignored me, continuing to swipe at the soapy glass. Her sleeves were rolled up, reddish bubbles slipping down her arms. There were words slashed across the glass, half-disintegrated by Andrea’s efforts. I could make out the top half of an M, a U … R … D … E … R … I … N … G … B … I … T … C …
“Aw, hell.” I sighed. Andrea kept her eyes down and focused on her task. Scanning the window, I saw the slightest traces of older paint in different areas of the glass. “This isn’t the first time, is it, Andrea?”
She heaved a heavy breath out of her nose. “No. Every night since the Laniers were informed, the same message. ‘Murdering Bitch.’ “
“Well, that’s just hurtful. And inaccurate.”
“Sometimes it’s in different colors,” she offered. “I have a feeling that the Laniers have been telling their tale to whoever will listen. Because the handwriting has looked different on a few nights. I didn’t want to tell you, because I didn’t want to worry you. But it’s been pretty strange around here lately. Stranger than usual. The Tuesday Night Book Club has suspended its meetings indefinitely, because the humans don’t trust the vampires enough to attend for the time being. The Chamber of Commerce called to reiterate that they don’t want you to be a member. Several of your old friends from the library called to cancel holds they had on books on order. Between hate mail and people calling to tell us that they’ll never shop here again after what you did to ‘that poor Lanier boy’ and the people coming in and begging us to turn them, too, the only store traffic we’ve had lately has been of the crazy variety. We haven’t had an in-store sale in days.”
“What about online?”
She shrugged. “Same, with the exception of an influx of orders for werewolf relationship guides out of Alaska, which is weird. We’re not so infamous that Mr. Wainwright’s old customers in Cornwall don’t want their Field Guides to Pixies and Fairy Folk. That will sustain us, but if we can’t lure back the locals, we’re going to feel it in a few months.”
“As in?”
“As in, that raise I was hoping to ask you for—I won’t even bring it up,” she said, frowning. I slapped my hand over my face. “It will work out,” Andrea assured me. “Once Jamie’s allowed back out in society and the truth comes out. The scandal will die down. Somebody will wander into the Piggly Wiggly drunk and topless, and everybody will forget all about you and your whole scarlet woman persona.”
“Scarlet woman?”
“Seducer of young men, ruiner of lives, danger to the morals of American youth.”
“I got it, thanks.”
Andrea hosed off her handiwork, and I dragged the soap bucket into the shop. She followed, rolling down her sleeves as I sorted through the disturbingly large stack of pink “While You Were Out” slips.
“I sorted them into piles: ‘Please turn me/my chronically ill parent/my dying cat into a vampire’ and ‘You’re an evil whore, rot in hell,’ ” Andrea said helpfully.
“The ‘rot in hell’ people actually left their call-back numbers?”
“Well, I did ask politely. I think it caught them off guard,” she said, wiping down the coffee-bar counter. “How’s Gabriel? Dick said he was staying at your place tonight to keep an eye on him and Jamie.”
“Still sleeping. But his color is getting better. He actually has a skin tone found in the spectrum of human shades. Dick thinks he might wake up in the next day or so.”
“Sounds promising.”
“Yep. OK, enough of this brooding crap.” I grunted, throwing the “rot in hell” stack into the wastebasket. “You are going to mix one of your evil high-octane coffee potions for me. We’re going to call Ophelia and tell her about the hate mail and window graffiti. We’re going to set up a video camera to train on the front door to get proof that the Laniers and their friends are defacing the shop, then hand the tapes over to the human and vampire authorities.”
Andrea made a wincing face.
“What?”
“We’re going to pull a sting operation on the grieving parents?” she asked.
“The grieving parents who are defacing my shop and maybe playing toxic William Tell games with my fiance? Yes.”
She winced again.
“What?” I demanded.
“It’s just that, archery shenanigans aside, if they’re just painting the shop window, I kind of understand why they’re doing it. They’re angry and confused, and the only target they see to lash out at is you.”
When Andrea saw the incensed look on my face, she changed conversational lanes abruptly.
“Which is obviously an inappropriate way to channel their grief, and the sooner we guide them toward professional help, the better.”
She ducked when I slung a copy of The Guide to the Newly Undead at her.
“And you need to find more appropriate ways to channel your anger! Aren’t you supposed to be planning a wedding right now?”
“Really?” I gaped at her. “My fiance has been poisoned into a coma, and you think picking out monogrammed napkins and color-coordinated Jordan almonds is going to make me feel better?”
She scoffed. “Well, no, Jordan almonds are so 1980s … I can tell from your expression you’re not going to have much of a sense of humor about this wedding thing, are you?”
I groaned. “I don’t even know where to start. I should just admit defeat now and turn the whole thing over to Mama.”
“So, you’re OK with the ribbons on the invitation matching the aisle runner, the bridesmaids’ dresses, the table linens at the reception, and your garter, all of which your mother chose because she thought sea-foam green would complement Gabriel’s eyes?”
I shuddered and thunked my head down on the counter. “I should have done a better job of selling elopement.”
“What you need is Iris Scanlon,” she said, digging through her purse for her wallet.
“Is Iris Scanlon an Internet-ordained minister who doesn’t ask questions?” I asked, sidestepping when Andrea chucked the Guide at my head.
As it turned out, much to my disappointment, Iris Scanlon ran Beeline, a new daytime concierge service for vampires. She was a combination event planner, notary public, and contractor. While many changes had been made to society overall to accommodate vampires, there were still some things that had to be handled during the day. Government buildings, for one, were still only open during daylight hours. And it was rare to find contractors and service people willing to come out to a vampire’s house at night.
Because vampire marriage was still a new phenomenon, the wedding industry was still very much daylight-oriented. One of Iris’s specialties was assisting in planning vampire weddings. It said so right on the business card Andrea fished from her purse. Iris was exactly what I needed—an indifferent, but committed, outside third party to handle the little details that would drive me nuts but that I couldn’t trust to Jolene, Andrea, or Mama without their personal tastes influencing their decisions.
“She does great work,” Andrea assured me. “She just started up, so I wasn’t able to use her for our wedding. But she helped out with Hadley Wexler’s wedding last month and she’s planning Sophie’s commitment ceremony to her longtime girlfriend.”
“Sophie from the Council?” I said, raising my eyebrows. “I didn’t see that one coming.”
“Call her, make an appointment, make your life easier,” Andrea said, sliding the card to me.
“Yeah, ‘cause that always works.” I snorted. “This still feels weird, planning a wedding while Gabriel is so sick.”
“Consider it a hopeful gesture,” Andrea said, rubbing my back. “Think of how happy Gabriel will be when he wakes up and sees how much progress you’ve made toward marrying him.”
“Really?”
“Ask Dick how thrilled he was when I neglected to ask his opinions on flower arrangements. He commissioned a T-shirt in my honor: ‘My Girlfriend Kicks Your Girlfriend’s Ass.’ ” When I squinted at her, confounded, she said, “In Dick’s way, that’s the highest compliment you can pay a woman.”
“I will never understand your relationship.”
Andrea grinned at me. “Right back atcha, sweetie.”
I did make the appointment with Iris. And by the time Gabriel woke up two days later, sore and grumpy and not entirely sure what had happened to him, Iris had already sent me fabric samples for the dreaded linens, aisle runner, and napkins. And there wasn’t a speck of sea-foam green in sight. From her e-mails, Iris seemed competent, no-nonsense, and completely unsentimental about this wedding stuff.
Iris was quickly becoming my favorite person. Ever.
Gabriel wasn’t entirely pleased with me for going to Ophelia, but I think it was more a matter of male pride than anything else. I came home to find him propped up on a stack of pillows, sipping blood through a crazy straw (because it amused Zeb) and wearing Star Wars pajamas (because it amused Dick). He was pale and drawn and still had purplish bruises under his eyes, but he was awake. And he was smiling at me.
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” I babbled, kissing him over and over until Zeb pleaded that we were grossing him out. Gabriel smiled blithely up at me as I hovered over him and then flinched as I grabbed a pillow and whacked him over the head with it. “And don’t you ever do anything like that again! I am the one who ends up in the stupid life-threatening situations. You are the levelheaded, responsible one in this relationship. Got it? This is how this whole thing works. We have to stick to our designated roles, or there is chaos!”
Dick snickered. “It’s true. If Zeb suddenly starts being all dashing and sexy, what am I going to do?”
Zeb took offense to this. “Hey, I can be dashing and sexy! Jolene says I’m like the human Wolfman.”
“Jolene lies,” Gabriel told him, his voice slightly hoarse from disuse.
Dick agreed. “A lot.”
“I’m going to play Madden with Jamie. He respects me, at least,” Zeb grumbled.
“No, I don’t!” Jamie called from downstairs.
“So, Dick says I’ve missed quite a bit while I was out. He says you paid Ophelia a visit?” he said, threading his fingers through mine. I pulled myself onto my knees and glared at our big-mouthed friend.
“It’s called heading a problem off at the pass,” I said.
“Is that a euphemism for emasculating one’s betrothed while he’s unconscious and unable to defend himself?” Gabriel asked dryly.
“No, it’s a euphemism for accessing resources that we don’t have by alerting the Council to our problem, rather than playing junior detectives ourselves. They’ve already installed a camera outside my shop door that is so scary and official-looking that the locals stopped painting my front window. Plus, this particular choice of directions doesn’t involve Ophelia suspecting me of hurting others for personal gain.”
“Unless Ophelia finds out that you’re Gabriel’s beneficiary on his life-insurance policy,” Dick said, snickering.
“I am?”
Gabriel seemed insulted that I didn’t think he would provide for me in the event of his staking. “Of course you are!”
“How do we even get life insurance?” I asked. “We’re dead.”
“Well, not according to the paperwork I filed with State Farm,” Gabriel said.
“But somehow, my reporting to Ophelia skirts an ethical line.”
“OK, so it was a smart thing to do,” Gabriel admitted. “When did you arrive at this ‘resources’ conclusion?”
“When I realized that I’d given Dick five thousand dollars and asked him to drive halfway across the state to a college crime lab for tests that may or may not have detected the poison in your system in a way that may or may not have helped us treat you,” I said, glad that I couldn’t blush.
“Clearly, your judgment goes out the window when I’m unconscious,” he said, managing to hide his smirk as he slipped an errant tendril of hair behind my left ear. “And how is Jamie doing?”
“Fine. He seems to be spending a lot of time in the shower,” I noted quietly, my voice so low that even Jamie’s superhearing couldn’t pick it up.
Dick chuckled, followed by Zeb and Gabriel.
“What?”
“Remember that summer I turned thirteen and my mom complained that she couldn’t ever get me out of the bathroom?” Zeb asked.
“Yeah, but that’s because you were—” I slapped my hand over my mouth. “Oh!”
“Welcome to the world of parenting,” Zeb said. “It’s one big, horrifying miracle.”
“Augh!” I grumbled.
I tried to defuse my embarrassment by talking about Iris and the progress she was making with the wedding. Although I was loath to admit it, Andrea was right. Gabriel was thrilled that I’d made the effort to call a wedding planner. He was so heartened by my apparent interest in wedding planning that he immediately perked up, called Iris, and arranged a meeting the next evening to be followed by an appointment at a wedding-dress shop in Murphy.
My stomach sank at the words “dress” and “shop,” and I searched my memory banks for my list of plausible reasons I could not go shopping. I hadn’t had to use them against Mama in so long that they’d receded from the tip of my tongue. “Wait, how did she manage to arrange that so quickly?”
“She said she has her ways,” Gabriel said. “Also, she’s been warned about what Andrea called your ‘unhealthy aversion to trying on clothes,’ so she will accompany you to the shop to provide hard liquor and moral support.”
“I think I love her a little bit,” I admitted.
“Hell, if she can sneak booze into a bridal store, I may love her a little bit,” Dick said.
“You know, it strikes me as sort of useless to be planning a wedding when we haven’t decided when the wedding will be,” Gabriel said, toying with the engagement ring on my finger.
“Actually, I had an idea about the date, but I didn’t want to do anything until you woke up,” I said. “What do you think of July eighth?”
“As dates go, I believe it’s a perfectly respectable one.”
“It’s Aunt Jettie’s birthday. I think it would be nice to get married on her birthday.”
“Aw, that’s sweet,” Dick said. “She’ll love that.”
“And it will be so close to July Fourth weekend that most of the relatives on Mama’s side will still be hungover, so maybe they won’t be able to make it.”
“That’s less sweet,” Gabriel conceded. “But I think it’s a good, strong wedding date.”
“And now that the wedding date is settled, you know what that means,” Dick said, gleefully rubbing his hands together in a way that made me distinctly nervous.
Gabriel’s voice was just as uneasy. “We can order those embossed matchbooks I love so much?”
“I can start planning the bachelor party,” Dick said, giving his best impersonation of an evil supervillain laugh. Or maybe it wasn’t an impersonation.
“This is not going to end well for me, is it?” Gabriel asked me.
I sighed. “Remind me to exchange some cash for pesos in late June. I don’t think they’ll accept American money when I have to bail you out of jail in Tijuana.”
Gabriel chuckled. “Still, July eighth. I’m very excited. It only gives us a few months to plan, you know.”
“If we don’t get it done by July eighth, it doesn’t need to be done,” I assured him.
“Be sure to explain that to your mama.” Dick snorted.
I laughed and smoothed the hair back from Gabriel’s forehead as he eased back onto the pillows, exhausted. My hand froze over his temple as the temperature just over my shoulder dropped by ten degrees. I could feel frosty breath on my cheek as my grandma Ruthie’s voice slithered into my ear.
“Keep making plans, little girl. This wedding will never happen,” she hissed.
I immediately glanced over to Dick and Gabriel, who didn’t show any sign of having heard the voice. I rolled my eyes. It would appear that my dear departed grandmother was choosing not to reveal herself to them, targeting me for her “loving” messages. Grandma Ruthie’s spectral presence around the house seemed to have diminished since her outburst with Aunt Jettie. There were little flare-ups here and there. My car keys would disappear. The windows would rattle. Random trash would appear on the counter, but I think that was Jamie. Jettie said that Ruthie was probably rebuilding her strength for another big blow-up.
But every once in a while, while I was lying in bed, I would hear her voice whispering over my ear. She knew exactly what to say to keep me from drifting off to sleep—that Gabriel was going to wise up and leave me standing at the altar, explaining to my family why I would spend the rest of my unnatural life pathetic and alone. Or variations thereof.
“Why would anyone want to marry you?” She had a sneer in her voice. “I never understood what you thought was so special about you. You’re not all that pretty. You have the figure of a linebacker. You don’t have any real talents. The only thing you’ve ever been good at is reading. A first-grader can do that.”
“Shut up, old woman,” I grumbled, refusing to let my lip so much as tremble.
Gabriel leaned toward Dick and quietly asked, “Is this a new endearment that became popular while I was unconscious?”