16
Werewolves express many emotions through physical contact—joy, rage, a need for comfort. Prepare to be hugged, snuffled, snuggled, or possibly licked.
—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were
“Hello?” I called, propping a delivery box against the counter long enough to get the door shut. It had been locked, which was unusual. And Mr. Wainwright never left deliveries out front. There was too much crime in the neighborhood.
“Mr. Wainwright?” I called. Technically, it was my night off. I wasn’t supposed to come by the shop, but Gabriel had called me from the Nashville airport to let me know that he’d be returning to town that night and wanted to talk. I didn’t want to be home waiting for him. Despite my protests to the contrary, I didn’t want to have whatever conversation Gabriel had planned. As unhappy as I was with his evasiveness, I knew the truth would hurt worse. So I was using work as a defensive shield.
The shop was empty, eerily so. I cast my senses out and found nothing; no vampire presence, no humans.
Around the corner of the counter, I could see a pair of brown loafers poking out from a pile of seventeenth-century manuscripts on vampire feeding patterns.
“I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t try to move anything by yourself,” I said to the feet as I set the box down.
The silence seemed to buzz in my ears, slowing my ability to hear, to respond.
“Mr. Wainwright?” My boss lay prostrate on the floor, the books covering him like a crazy quilt. His eyes were closed, his face serene, as if he’d just lain down for a nap on the floor.
“Nonononononono,” I murmured, my numbed fingers searching for a pulse under his cold parchment skin. “Please, no.”
I wailed, my hot tears blinding me. “Mr. Wainwright! Please wake up! Please!”
Using what little I could remember from first-aid class in Girl Scouts, I shoved several books away and tilted Mr. Wainwright’s head back. I wiped my running nose and breathed through the sobs. I blew into his mouth. I pushed down on his sternum with both hands and shrieked when I heard something snap. I’d broken something, probably one of his ribs. I continued to pump his chest, praying to bring something back.
“Please!” I screamed again, burying my face in his shirt.
“Jane, dear, it’s time to stop that. As much as I appreciate it, it’s too late.”
I looked up and locked eyes with the former Mr. Wainwright. He was wearing the same gray cardigan and brown corduroy ensemble as the body lying on the floor, only more transparent. He smiled gently.
“Mr. Wainwright?” I whimpered. “What’s going on?”
“To a young woman of your intelligence, Jane, I would hope it would be obvious.” I shook my head, still sniffling. “I’m a ghost, Jane, have been for, oh, six or seven hours now.”
He held up his hand, examining the way the light filtered through it. “Look at that.”
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“Well, you were right about my not moving boxes by myself. I knew there was something wrong the moment I picked it up. I had all of the classic signs—shooting pains in the left arm, crushing sensation in the chest, shortness of breath. I just keeled over.”
“I’m so sorry. I should have been here.”
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t blame yourself. I was an old man, and I lived a good, long life. And you made me very happy during my last months. You’ve become very dear to me, Jane. I hope you know that. I was never meant to have children. But I like to think that if I had a daughter, or a granddaughter, she would be like you. Good Lord, is that really what my hair looks like?”
“Focus, please, Mr. Wainwright. Why are you still here? Do you have unfinished business or something?” I asked.
“No, no, I’m just not ready to cross over. There’s too much happening in the world right now. And my friendship with you, it’s so exciting. I want to see what happens next.”
“But don’t you want to see what’s, you know, on the other side?”
“I’m not afraid of crossing over,” he said. “I’m just not ready to go. As soon as I am, I will. As a wise man once said, ‘To the highly organized mind, death is just another adventure.’ “
“That’s from Harry Potter,” I said. “Dumbledore said it in the first book.”
“Trust you to know.” He smiled. “Everything’s going to be fine, Jane. Don’t you worry.”
“But what’s going to happen?”
“Who knows?” He shrugged, grinning wildly. “That’s the best part.”
“But what about—”
“Jane, I think you’d better call nine-one-one, dear, to pick up my body,” he suggested.
I nodded. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Not for a while yet,” he promised.
I thought about calling Dick, but I knew the mix of Dick and the authorities—human or otherwise—was not a good thing. Even though Mr. Wainwright’s death was natural, the 911 dispatcher apparently went to church with my mama and notified the responding paramedics that I was a vampire. And I guess they asked for a police escort. Also, when vampires cry, the tiniest bit of blood streaks through in their tears, so when the police arrived, my face was covered in red stains. Needless to say, questioning took a while.
“How long have you worked here, Miss Jameson?” Sergeant Rusty Bardwell asked as he scribbled in his little notebook. A tall, dark-haired fellow with a no nonsense set to his jaw, Rusty did not trust me. In fact, he kept a free hand on his gun for most of his visit. Pointing out that using it on me would be useless didn’t seem wise.
“Rusty, we’ve known each other since third grade. You threw up on me on the field trip to Mammoth Cave. Just call me Jane,” I said irritably as I sniffled into a tissue.
Rusty’s level gaze didn’t waver. “How long have you worked here, Miss Jameson?”
“About six months,” I said, my voice flat and annoyed.
“And how long have you known the deceased?”
“About six months,” I said.
Mr. Wainwright watched as the paramedics loaded his mortal coil into a body bag, then waved cheerfully as he was packed into the ambulance. I shook my head at him.
“And you were recently promoted to manager.”
“No.” I frowned.
“The deceased left a note on his desk,” Sergeant Rusty insisted, digging into an evidence envelope. “Note to Self: Have ‘Jane Jameson, Manager’ plaque engraved for Jane.”
“Aw, Mr. Wainwright.”
Mr. Wainwright ducked his head. “You deserve it, Jane. You’re going to be running the store now, anyway.”
Annoyed at my lack of attention, Rusty cleared his throat. “And you found the body?”
“Yes. I told the dispatcher that when I called nine-one-one.”
“And you performed CPR?”
“I did, but I think he’d been gone for a while at that point.”
“I thought vampires couldn’t breathe,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me.
“I don’t have to, but it doesn’t mean I can’t,” I told him. “Do I need to call a council representative? I’m allowed to under the Undead Civil Rights Act of 2002.”
“We’ll let you know,” Rusty said. “For right now, let’s just say that you’ll probably be hearing from us again.”
Rusty cleared out of the shop as if his polyester pants were on fire. The ambulance crew drove away with the body—I couldn’t think of it as Mr. Wainwright. I was alone. And it was suddenly so quiet. Numb, I sank into a chair behind the counter and stared at a ledger next to the register. I could make out Mr. Wainwright’s chicken scratch, a reminder for me to reorder a book called Life on Loch Ness. I ran my fingers over his indented scrawl, leaned my head against the counter, and cried.
I’m not sure how long I sat there. The next thing I remembered was Gabriel striding through the shop door, calling for me. I couldn’t seem to look up, to put together the words to respond. The smallest movement took too much effort.
“I’ve been calling you all evening,” he said, coming behind the counter to check me over for obvious contusions and stab wounds. “Normally, there’s a reason for your ignoring me. What’s going on?”
“Mr. Wainwright’s dead,” I said, tongue slow and heavy. I held myself together for a total of two seconds before bursting into hysterical tears again. Gabriel wrapped his long arms around me, and I suddenly didn’t care where he’d been or what he’d done. The important thing was that he was there, at that moment, when I needed him.
“Was it one of us?” he asked.
“Oh, no, completely natural. It was a heart attack,” I said, my eyes welling up again. “He was an old man. He said he lived a good life …”
Gabriel pressed me to his chest and let me sob there, until the front of his shirt was soaked. “Better?” he asked.
“No,” I said, wiping at my nose. “I must look a mess, which is really the least of my concerns right now. I’m not one of those women who are beautiful when they cry.”
“No, you’re not,” Gabriel agreed.
“So rude.” I smacked him.
“See, you feel better now that you’ve hit something.”
“I don’t know why I’m crying so much.” I sniffled. “It’s not as if I lost him. I mean, he’s happy as a clam, staring through his hands. He’s thrilled that he’s dead. Why do I feel this way?”
“If I suggest a theory, will you get angry?”
“Well, you’ve pretty much guaranteed that I will now.” I blew my nose.
“So much about your life has been unstable. You lost your aunt Jettie, your job, your life as you knew it. Mr. Wainwright and his shop became a touchstone of normalcy. It was somewhere you could go and know what to expect when you walked through the door. Now you can’t hold on to even the smallest shred of your former life or the shaky sense of security you’ve developed.”
I stared at him. Having someone inside your head is offputting.
“No, that’s not it,” I said. “Not it at all. I hereby revoke your license to play armchair psychologist.”
“What can I do to make you feel better?” he asked. I shrugged. “Happy Naked Fun Time?”
I laughed, a rusty sound that made my throat hurt. “You know, sometimes I forget that at the heart of things, you’re still a guy.”
“Well, let me remind you.”
“We need to call Dick.”
“I think we should leave Dick out of this.”
“Because—oh, God, it hardly matters now. Dick is Mr. Wainwright’s great-grandfather.”
Gabriel sank onto the couch. “Dick had children?”
“A son, that we know of. His name was Albert. He was Mr. Wainwright’s grandfather.”
“Dick had a child?”
I stared at him. “Did I break your brain?”
“It’s just, I gave up the idea of being able to have children long ago, for obvious reasons. I mourned, but I made my peace with it. I’d never even considered that Dick could … though it makes sense that he did. He always sort of played fast and loose with his, er, companions. How long have you known?”
“A month or so. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Dick asked me not to say anything.”
“Jane?” Dick came rushing through the door with Zeb on his heels. He skidded to a halt as he saw my tear tracked face, then whirled on Gabriel. “Why is she crying? If you made her cry, I’m going to kick your—”
“Why are you here?” Gabriel asked Dick.
“The clerk at the video store next door saw an ambulance over here and called me,” Dick said.
Zeb made a face. “The porn-store guy has your home number?”
I ignored this disturbing tidbit and wrapped my arms around Dick’s neck. “Dick, I’m so sorry. It’s Mr. Wainwright. He’s gone.”
Dick’s bravado melted away. “From where?”
“The earthly plane,” I said. “He died earlier tonight.”
His face contorted in pain. “I’ve been spending time at the shop—”
“No, no,” I said, clutching Dick’s hands. “Nobody ‘got to him.’ It was just a plain old heart attack.”
“I didn’t get to tell him,” Dick said. “I didn’t get to say good-bye.”
“Actually, he plans on sticking around for a while, so you could tell him right now.”
“Tell him what, exactly?” Mr. Wainwright asked, his transparent form sliding through the door.
It’s embarrassing to be surprised when you have vampire senses, particularly when the person who snuck up behind you is older than dirt. Also dead.
“What?” Mr. Wainwright asked, the gray tufts of his brows rising on his transparent forehead. “What’s wrong?”
“This seems like a private conversation. We should probably leave,” Gabriel whispered to Zeb, though both of them stayed rooted to their spots.
“OK, you two, out,” I told them.
“But, but, but—” Zeb spluttered pitifully as I shoved the pair of them into the office and closed the door behind us.
I waited while I heard Dick quietly explaining the situation. When Mr. Wainright didn’t respond, I poked my head into the room to make sure he was still there. There was an expression of relief around Dick’s eyes as Mr. Wainwright stumbled forward and hugged Dick in an insubstantial manner.
This was so strange, an ancient man calling this thirty-something fellow Grandpa; in a world where logic lived, the roles would be reversed. But years melted off Mr. Wainwright’s face as he studied Dick’s features.
“You have my nose,” Dick said sheepishly. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s a good nose,” Mr. Wainwright said. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Thought you’d be better off,” Dick said.
“But I wasn’t,” Mr. Wainwright said. “If you’d been around, if I’d known that vampires were real, I wouldn’t have felt so lonely. It’s no wonder my mother hated my interest in the paranormal. Every time I picked up a book on vampires, she was afraid I was going to turn out like you.”
Dick seemed ashamed, which was something I’d never seen before. “I never told your mother. I think she guessed, but she never asked, and I always figured it was better left unsaid. I’m sorry.”
“I have so much I want to ask you. About your life, about my father, and his father, and your son.”
“I can give you some answers,” Dick said. “The rest you may not want to know.”
“I’m not frightened,” Mr. Wainwright promised.
“This reunion is really touching,” I said, backing toward the office door. “But if I see one of you cry, I may actually implode. So I’m going to go elsewhere.”
How did I end up going to so many funerals in one year?
There was no one else to plan Mr. Wainwright’s service, which I found very sad. His nephew, Emery, sent a telegram from Guatemala saying that he wouldn’t be able to make it to town for weeks. Emery advised us to proceed without him. Seriously, he used those words. Real sentimental guy.
The nighttime service was held three days later, after the police finally released the body. Mr. Wainwright had a hand in the planning, which definitely helped me cope with the grief. He was in attendance at the memorial, of course, though very few others were. It was just me, Dick, Andrea, Gabriel, Jettie, Jolene, and Zeb. Daddy came, though we neglected to tell him that we couldn’t speak ill of the dead, not out of respect but because the dead was standing right there.
Mr. Wainwright didn’t belong to a church, so there was no one to give a eulogy. In fact, he’d left specific instructions that he did not want to be buried. He wanted his ashes spread into the Ohio River, where they would “float downstream to the Gulf of Mexico and out into the oceans, circulating around the world.”
There was no visitation, no pimento cheese, no irritating relatives circling like vultures.
In other words, it was the best funeral I’d ever been to.
The riverfront in Half-Moon Hollow was a series of half-finished cement docks and inlets. The county commission had started dredging to build a channel for a riverboat in the 1970s, hedging against the chances that riverboat gambling would be legalized in Kentucky. When the state referendum failed and the outraged populace voted the commission out of their seats, the project was abandoned, leaving a gap in the Hollow’s watery smile. Which, in a way, was fitting.
The one project that was completed and used was the public restrooms. I tried not to think about that.
The water, smelling of old pennies and new fish, lapped gently against the cement embankment. The moon was only half-full and half-mast, lending a soft, kind light to the proceedings. Mr. Wainwright asked that we avoid the traditional black in favor of cheerful colors, forgetting, of course, that Gabriel didn’t own anything in cheerful colors. Dick’s plain white T-shirt, sans sarcasm, lent an appropriate sense of solemnity to the proceedings.
The earthly remains of Gilbert Wainwright were stored in a hollowed-out copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls that Dick had purchased from a novelty store. Mr. Wainwright thought it was hilariously funny. I held the book in my hands and stood at the edge of the dock, shaking a little from the wind and the nerves.
“We’re gathered here today to say good-bye to the mortal body of Gilbert Wainwright. He was a good man and a good friend. I didn’t know him until late in his life. But he became very special to me in that time. He was a man with an endless thirst for knowledge. He asked the questions that other people are afraid of and never doubted that the answers were out there, waiting to be discovered. I’m going to miss you, Mr. Wainwright. You were kind to me when you didn’t have to be. You gave me a place to belong when I was adrift. Thank you.”
“You will always have a place there, my dear,” he said, chucking my chin with his clammy invisible hand.
I handed the book to Dick. “It’s only right,” I said, smiling despite the surreality of the situation. “He was your family.”
“Quite right,” Mr. Wainwright told Dick. “I’d be honored.”
“This is the weirdest funeral I’ve ever been to,” Zeb whispered.
“Shh,” I said as Dick stepped forward.
Dick cleared his throat. “It’s not right for a man to bury his children, so to speak. But this is the path we chose. It’s a vampire’s lot in life to watch those around him age and die. Gilbert, I’m sorry we didn’t get to know each other better.” In a low voice, out of my father’s earshot, he murmured, “But I hope you stick around for a while, so we can make up for that.”
Gabriel was looking at Dick with a strange expression. The whole “Dick reproduced” thing had definitely thrown him for a loop. I slipped my hand in his and gave him an encouraging nudge. Gabriel stepped beside Dick and with a stiff arm patted Dick’s back as he sprinkled the ashes into the churning water.
“Good-bye, cruel world,” Mr. Wainwright wailed in a fading mock cry.
Everyone but Andrea, Zeb, and Daddy turned to stare at him. He grinned. “Too melodramatic?”
“Why is everyone laughing?” Daddy asked.
“It’s a vampire thing. We laugh at death,” I told Daddy, who nodded sagely.
Mr. Wainwright insisted on a reading of his will right after the memorial. The funeral party, without Daddy, met Mr. Wainwright’s lawyer, Mr. Mayhew, the only male Hollow resident over seventy whom my grandmother had never dated, at the shop. He greeted us warmly and told us what nice things Mr. Wainwright had to say about us all.
“I’ve known Gilbert Wainwright for forty years. In that time, he spoke of two things ad nauseam: the supernatural and you. He enjoyed spending time with you, very much,” he assured me. “You made the last year of his life very comfortable and happy.”
“Is he here now?” Mr. Mayhew asked.
I looked from Mr. Wainwright’s apparition to Mr. Mayhew’s wry smile. “Yeah. How did you know?”
“He always said he would make appearances after death. I thought it was part of his wild ‘creatures of the night’ talk. Then, after the Coming Out, we found out that creatures of the night actually exist, so my mind opened a little bit.”
“Is it open enough to handle vampire wills?” I asked. “Because I’ve got some grabby relatives.”
He handed me his card. “Give me a call.”
“So, how do we go about this?” I asked. “I wasn’t allowed to attend any of my step-grandpas’ will readings.”
“Well, I need y’all to sit down and have a listen. I think you should know that Gilbert changed his will quite recently. When an elderly man changes his will to include a group of recently acquainted young people, it can be of some concern for someone in my profession. But Gilbert spoke very highly of you, and he wasn’t the type to gush.” He cleared his throat and used an official voice. “The will goes something like this. ‘I, Gilbert Richard Wainwright, being of sound mind and body as defined by the commonwealth of Kentucky’—a lot of legalese y’all are more than welcome to look over later, so we can skip to the good part—’do bequeath the following items to my loved ones:
“ ‘To Zeb Lavelle, I leave a copy of Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were, plus the entire stock of self-help guides related to inter-were-species marriage.’ “
“That was thoughtful,” Zeb said.
“That stock includes several illustrated antique marital guides which you will find in a locked box in the storeroom,” Mr. Wainwright whispered to me.
“Oh, ew.” I shuddered.
“He just made a joke, didn’t he?” Mr. Mayhew asked.
“Why don’t you just let him see you?” I asked Mr. Wainwright.
Mr. Wainwright chuckled. “It’s more fun this way.”
“ ‘To Jolene McClaine, I leave the rosewood box in my bedroom. It contains a collection of best-loved recipes I have collected from werewolf friends all over the world.’ “
“That’s very sweet.” Jolene sniffed.
“I thought you could put it to the best use,” Mr. Wainwright said.
“ ‘To Andrea Byrne, I leave my silver claddagh ring.’ “
“Oh, thank you,” Andrea whispered.
“It should have been included in my personal effects when my remains were collected,” Mr. Wainwright said.
“Actually”—I reached under the counter and grabbed the velvet pouch where I’d stashed the ring—”I didn’t think it was smart to send you to the funeral home wearing it.”
“This belonged to a lady who was very special to me,” Mr. Wainwright said as Andrea slipped it on. “Her name was Brigid, and she was special and beautiful, like you. And I loved her very much.”
Knowing that Andrea couldn’t hear him, I said, “That belonged to the love of his life.”
Andrea smiled.
“You’re going to want to be careful how you handle that around us,” Dick told her. “Might as well be wearing barbed wire around your finger.”
“Well, that has possibilities,” Andrea said, wiggling her finger at him. Not the rude one.
Dick muttered something I couldn’t quite make out.
“ ‘To Gabriel Nightengale, the selection of his choice from my personal literary collection. To Dick Cheney, my personal spirits collection, including the wine and brandy.’ “
Dick and Gabriel smiled.
“ ‘To Jane Jameson, I leave the Specialty Books shop located at 933 Braxton Avenue and all of its contents, including the apartment upstairs and my personal effects contained therein. I trust you to allow my nephew, Emery, to look over my personal effects and select what he would like to keep as mementos.’ “
My jaw dropped. I had expected a few books. Maybe a memento or Mr. Wainwright’s personal collection of Ouija boards. I had not expected him to leave me anything as important as the shop.
My eyes stung as I smiled shakily at Mr. Wainwright. I really didn’t want to start crying again. I’d just managed to stop. “This is too much. I didn’t do anything to deserve this. And I don’t know anything about running a store. Look, with your nephew coming soon, I think maybe we should consider—”
“No one will care about the shop the way you will,” Mr. Wainwright insisted. “No one will take care of the books, take care of the customers, such as they are.” He turned to Dick. “If I had known about you, I would have planned differently—”
“Not your fault,” Dick interrupted. “And you left me the booze, so it shows how well you knew me, even before you knew we were related.”
“And anything you want from the personal effects is yours,” I told Dick. “The store stock will be available at a twenty-percent bereaved-ancestor discount.”
Mr. Wainwright guffawed. “See, you’ve got the makings of a brilliant entrepreneur.”
I protested, “I don’t know anything about running a business.”
“Then sell it. Do whatever you think is best. I trust you.”
Those words, combined with Mr. Wainwright’s earnest, ghostly gaze, left a weird, heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach.