2
From were-weasels to werewolves, weres are territorial creatures. Once a pack has established a home, they will not leave that location for generations, until the local food sources have been depleted or they’re burnt out by angry farmers.
—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were
Half-Moon Hollow is a strange place for a vampire to spend her days. We don’t have a performing-arts center or a museum, but we have had our own “Rowdy Rural Towns” episode of COPS. The program had never before featured the arrest of a naked guy stealing anhydrous ammonia.
The chamber of commerce had a hard time fitting that into the brochure.
Living in Kentucky is a mix of the ridiculous and the sublime. The same state that is home to top-shelf research hospitals, major manufacturers, and thoroughbred horse racing is a place where you can attend a schoolbus crash-up derby. (They do take the kids off the buses before they race them.) We have Opera Houses and Opry Houses. We have cities that are home to hundreds of thousands and towns like the Hollow, where one day, if the right couple gets engaged, the entire population will be related by marriage.
News of my transformation was slowly making the rounds of the Hollow kitchen circuit thanks to my former boss, Mrs. Stubblefield, using my application for undead unemployment benefits as justification for firing me from my position as the library’s director of juvenile services. Of course, she fired me hours before I was turned, but that didn’t keep her from crowing, “I told you so!” She couldn’t possibly let someone “like that” work around the public, much less as a children’s librarian, she told anyone who would listen. Mrs. Woodley, whose five children I personally tutored in the library’s Reading Remedy program, told her to shut her mouth or she’d toss Mrs. Stubblefield’s lumpy butt out of the Half-Moon Hollow Ladies’ Garden Club. I sent Mrs. Woodley a dozen frozen pot pies as a thank you.
Mrs. Stubblefield had recently “retired” (was asked to retire) after a band of roving teenagers—without my after-school tutoring program to keep them occupied—stuck pages from nudie magazines in all of the encyclopedias. And no one on the staff noticed. For a month. Plus, there was evidence that Mrs. Stubblefield shared her morning coffee with Jack Daniel’s.
Mrs. Stubblefield’s retirement meant that her stepdaughter, Posey, was the most senior member of the library staff. Posey, who was brought in to replace me, couldn’t understand the Dewey Decimal System without “Sounds like …” clues and laughed the way it was written out: “Ha ha ha ha ha ha.” I hated her on principle. And that principle was bitterness. Through Mama, I heard about Book Club nights, trumped-up late fines, and items being checked out of the (cannot possibly be replaced, never to leave the library) Special Collections room. Grant application deadlines had been missed. Federal funding fell through for Puppet Time Theater and the Adult Literacy Program.
Slowly but surely, my favorite library patrons were making their way over to the bad part of town to seek me out for their reading needs. It started when the Wednesday Night Book Club president, Anne Woodhouse, stopped by to talk to me about a selection. Anne had lost faith in Mrs. Stubblefield’s suggestions after she recommended that the club read the sequel to A Million Little Pieces. Then Sally Dortch stopped by to ask about Newbery Medal selections for little Hannah’s book report, but she saw Mr. Wainwright’s display of fertility idols and bolted. To be fair, giant ceramic phalluses generally send me running for the nearest exit, too. Finally, Justine Marcum and Kitty Newsome, the same library board members who helped Mrs. Stubblefield give me the boot, put on trench coats and Jackie O sunglasses to sneak into the shop and magnanimously announce that the board was willing to overlook my vampire status and welcome me back to the staff.
I’m not going to say it wasn’t tempting. It bothered me to see my library—a place that represented everything human and familiar to me—suffering, to see programs that had taken me years to cultivate crumbling. And I missed my kids. I missed their little faces, still and enraptured, during Story Time. I missed helping each one find just the right book to help spark a love of reading, introducing them to the books that I loved as a kid: Roald Dahl, Louisa May Alcott, Ann M. Martin. I missed bringing teenagers back to reading after they finally got through that horrible “I’m too cool to like anything” phase. But I had entered a new phase in my life, and as far I was concerned, I could still do the kind of work I did at the library at Specialty Books.
I had done my best to keep in touch with the human world, be a respectable undead citizen. Andrea Byrne, my new blood-surrogate friend, was helping me find classes and other constructive activities to fill the night hours. We had started taking yoga together. Sure, I didn’t technically need breathing exercises anymore, but I was finally coordinated enough to balance on one foot. I had made a few friends there, several of whom switched to a different class after they realized I was a vampire. In further personal development, I’d started recycling everything in sight. Since I was going to be walking the earth a lot longer than originally forecast, I wanted it to last as long as possible. This, combined with the yoga, convinced my mother that I had joined a cult.
I was one of a few vampires in the Hollow who chose to maintain relationships with the living after being turned. Studies showed that most vampires who had turned since tax consultant/vampire Arnie Frink outed us with his right-to-work lawsuit dropped out of sight and moved to big cities such as New York or New Orleans. They became assimilated into the large populations of vampires and learned how to adjust to their new lifestyles … or they became addicted to chemically enhanced blood, passed out in a gutter, and woke up as the rising sun fried them to a crisp. At least, that’s what Mama told me when I mentioned that I might go to St. Louis for a seminar called “Emerging Issues for the Postmillennial Undead.” Apparently, Oprah did a whole show on “Vampires Led Astray.”
And somehow, I’d made it onto the undead junk-mail radar. I started receiving advertisements for Sans Solar sun-blocking drapes and specialized vampire “sleeping compartments,” which were basically coffins. But at least I’d stopped getting credit-card applications. After the government considers you dead, credit-card companies are less likely to extend a credit line to you. It’s the one discriminatory attitude toward vampires that’s fine by me.
But even the undead could appreciate the magical air in the Hollow as Christmas approached. The early December temperatures, always a crap shoot in western Kentucky, were hovering in the mid-40s. As a human, I’d been a summer person. But when “getting a little color on your cheeks” could leave you with third-degree burns and/or permanent death, you learn to appreciate the joys of winter. The days were getting shorter, meaning that I could get up and around earlier. The cold brought a sharpness to the scents of the living, bright splashes of scent against a misty gray.
The chill also gave me an excuse to wear the sleek new black coat I’d bought on a rather disastrous shopping trip with Andrea. She took me on a tour of these nice underground shops (not literally) on the outskirts of Memphis. And I didn’t buy a damn thing but the coat. But at least I no longer looked like I was walking around in a big puffy sleeping bag.
Christmas in the Hollow means spitting snow that never amounts to anything but still sends everyone running for bread and milk. It means exchanging decorative tins of cookies with acquaintances you don’t like that much. It’s mall Santas who arrive in fire trucks and challenging your neighborhood to a round of competitive outdoor decorating. Because you’re not really celebrating the birth of Jesus unless your house can be spotted by passing aircraft.
I stamped the whopping half-inch of snow (mostly sleet and mud) from my boots as I neared the door of Specialty Books. The familiar smell of dust and crumbling paper greeted me as I called out to Mr. Wainwright. The shop was much cleaner than it had been that fateful night when I had wandered in and narrowly missed a shelf collapsing on top of me. Well, the mess was newer. We had at least lined up the bookshelves so that customers could navigate without climbing. The soft hum of fluorescent lighting flickered over piles of browning paperbacks and splitting leather bindings. Gilt titles, rubbed away by loving fingers, glinted dully from their piles. I slid my shoulder bag behind the counter and surveyed the damage Mr. Wainwright had wrought since I had left twelve hours before.
Trying to organize the shop was an uphill battle, and I was making no progress. It wasn’t that Mr. Wainwright ignored my efforts, but when he looked for something, he had this way of tearing through like a tornado. We had a system: I spent three days painstakingly arranging a subject section; he destroyed it in less than an hour. It was like working for a slightly dangerous three-year-old.
I was, however, proud of the fact that there were no longer dead spiders occupying an entire shelf in the reference section. They were now occupying a jar in Mr. Wainwright’s office. He’s a nice man. I try not to ask questions.
Our evening routine consisted of two hours of cleaning and boxing the online orders. Then, with no customers to speak of, he would make tea or warm bottled blood, and we would sit at the counter. He would tell me stories of his travels across the world seeking demon artifacts, vampire horde houses, and packs of rare were-creatures. He even spent five years in Manitoba searching for Sasquatch.
“Hello? Mr. Wainwright?” I called again. I would never get to a point where I could call him by his first name. A person who knows that there was more than one Bront? sister deserves to be addressed with respect.
“Back here, Jane,” came a muffled voice from the rear of the shop.
I followed his voice to the stockroom, which we had only rediscovered the night before. Mr. Wainwright had “misplaced” the door behind a rack of old Tales from the Crypt comics sometime in the mid-1980s.
“Mr. Wainwright?” I saw two brown loafers sticking out from under a carton in a horrible parody of The Wizard of Oz. Mr. Wainwright’s about eighty years old and looks as if you could snap him like kindling. His being pinned under a giant box of heavy books was not going to keep my paltry part-time employment checks coming in.
“Are you all right?” I cried, lifting the box off him with little effort.
“Oh, thank you, Jane,” he said, sitting up from his spot on the floor. He seemed to have made the best of his predicament. His ever-present lumpy gray cardigan was pillowed under his head. Clutched in one hand was an old dog-eared copy of Stephen King’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes. “Fortunately, when the box fell on me, this bounced off my head. I haven’t read it in years. You must admire the universal accessibility of Mr. King. He scares the bejesus out of me every time.”
“And he’s the reason I have clown issues,” I said, shuddering at the thought of It. “How long have you been down here?”
He rolled his shoulders. “Oh, three or four hours at the most.”
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“I’m tougher than I look,” he said as I lifted him up and set him on a dusty folding chair.
“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to try to move things around without me here? After yesterday. When the other box fell on you,” I said, struggling to keep a patient tone. I couldn’t believe I was the practical one in this relationship.
“Well, yes, but I wasn’t trying to move anything, I was searching for the light switch, you see, and knocked the shelving unit over. I remembered a book I left in here that I thought you might be interested in,” he said.
“You remembered a book you left in here twenty years ago?” I asked him. “What am I saying, of course you did. Why don’t you tell me where it is, and I’ll get it for you?”
“Yes, I think that would be best,” he said. “Top shelf. In the box marked ‘Bell Witch.’ ”
I spider-climbed nimbly up the wall and plucked the box from the top shelf. Mr. Wainwright was grinning like a kid with a new comic book. He always got excited when I manifested my vampire powers. I unfolded the top of the carton and then thought better of it.
“If I put my hand in this box, is there anything that will bite, sting, cut, burn, or turn me into dust?”
This is one of the problems with working in an occult store. The previous week, I nearly lost a digit to a diary whose lock clapped a silver trap around keyless fingers. Vampires are allergic to silver. Touching it feels like a combination of burning, itching, and being forced to lick dry ice. If Mr. Wainwright hadn’t come along with the suspicious little lock-busting gizmo he carries in his pocket, I wouldn’t be able to make all those shadow puppets I like so much.
Mr. Wainwright chewed his lip. “Just to be safe, I’ll do the honors.”
From the cobwebby, mouse-stained cardboard, Mr. Wainwright pulled a book titled The Spectrum of Vampirism. “Here we are,” he said, handing it to me. “I thought you might find this useful. It’s very good, written by a Harvard fellow named Milton Winstead in the 1920s.”
“Harvard?”
“Well, they can’t all be law scholars and presidential candidates.” Mr. Wainwright shrugged.
“There are actual shades of vampirism?” I asked, reading over the table of contents and flipping to a chapter.
Vampires do not produce their own blood cells, which is why they must consume blood. The ingested blood is infused with the vampire’s essence when metabolized, giving the vampire the ability to turn others. A vampire’s power depends on the amount of vampire blood consumed during transformation. To make a childe, a vampire will feed on a victim until he or she reaches the point of death. The sire must be careful not to leave the initiate unconscious or unable to consume the blood needed to complete the transformation, usually two to three pints. The process is literally draining for the sire, meaning that a vampire will create only two or three children in his or her considerable lifetime.
The stronger and older a vampire is at the point of creating a childe, the more likely that childe is to be a “healthy” vampire. A quick or careless turning can result in a sickly vampire, who may suffer from the vampire’s weaknesses—sensitivity to sunlight and silver—but few of the strengths. Some humans seek this level of vampirism to achieve eternal youth and enhanced beauty. Several devotees of the theatrical profession have been rumored to have partaken in this ritual over the years.
“Huh, I thought vampirism was pretty much a yea-or-nay proposition.”
“Oh, no, no,” Mr. Wainwright said. “There are many subtle levels of vampirism, of power and ability. You see, there is so much for you to learn. It’s so exciting for me to be here with you for the journey from bloodthirsty neophyte to sophisticated veteran vampire.”
“Happy to oblige,” I said, shrugging amiably. “Although technically, I’ve never been what you’d call bloodthirsty.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, dear,” he said. “But don’t you see how lucky you are? Vampires are among the few beings who trace their history as they live it. You can see the past, present, and future. You know who your great-great-grandparents, great-grandparents, and grandparents are. As your children or, in your case, nephews—now, don’t make that face, dear—as your nephews have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, you’ll be able to watch them grow and live and die, each generation, if you take care of yourself, for eternity.”
Staggered by the depressing nature of that thought, I patted his hands. “But you can do that, too, just on a smaller scale. I mean, everybody around here knows who their great-grandparents are. And you have your nephew. You’ve been able to watch him grow up and have children.”
“My nephew moved to Guatemala for mission work nearly five years ago, and I rarely hear from him. I don’t see him having children, if there is a just and loving God.” Mr. Wainwright shook his head fondly at the mention of Emery, his late sister’s Bible-thumping, personality-free son. “And I don’t know who my great-grandparents were, at least not any relatives in this area. My mother was from up north, upstate New York, and my father died when I was very young. I’m afraid their union wasn’t a very happy one, and she didn’t keep many of his things. He rarely spoke to her about his family. And it seemed to upset her to talk about him. It might have been nice to have relatives, but from what I can see, it’s a sort of genetic crapshoot. You’re not likely to end up related to people you like.”
“Case in point, my grandma Ruthie. But then you have wonderful chromosomal coincidences like my aunt Jettie and my dad.” He smiled. “How about I start clearing through these boxes and you can get back to the Internet orders?”
“Wonderful,” he said. “And Jane, dear—”
“Don’t throw anything away without showing it to you first,” I repeated. “How was I supposed to know that was spirit writing? It looked like a bunch of doodles on a cocktail napkin.”
By the time Mr. Wainwright brought me an ancient Limoges teacup filled with microwaved pig’s blood, I was covered in a fine layer of dust but had cleared away most of the stock into “Keep,” “Throw Away,” and “Burn on Consecrated Ground” piles.
“Thanks,” I said, accepting the cup with a grateful nonbeating heart.
“There’s a young man asking for you up front, Jane,” he said as I sipped. “I think he’s one of your kind. He looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t quite place him.”
“Did he mention working for the council?” I asked. “Things tend to go badly for me when they drop by for a visit.”
“I doubt it,” Mr. Wainwright said. “He’s wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.’ I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vampire in a novelty T-shirt before. Extraordinary, really.”
That could only be one vampire.
Richard Cheney, whom I delight in calling Dick, is an old friend of Gabriel’s—about 150 years old. Buddies from the cradle, they split over a gambling debt in their early twenties. Dick was turned eleven years later, also over a gambling debt. Do you see a pattern here? Dick is the local center for not-quite-legitimate commerce. If you want something, just ask Dick. But don’t ask where, how, or which international laws he broke while procuring it. Also, you’ll want to pay in cash.
It wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected to blend my one living friend into my new undead circle. Dick and Zeb got along famously. As Dick put it, Zeb “grows on you, like a stray, spazzy puppy that followed you home.” And Zeb and Gabriel built a friendship on the shared experience of saving my ass from Missy, Dick’s murderous ex. Even better, Zeb had somehow formed a bridge between Gabriel and Dick, former childhood friends who had turned eternal life into a prolonged male pissing contest. Thanks to the time they’d spent with Zeb, Gabriel and Dick had declared something of a ceasefire. And while they certainly weren’t going to be getting matching tattoos anytime soon, at least Dick had stopped leaving silver shavings on Gabriel’s furniture.
If I was the best maid, then Dick could be considered Zeb’s man of honor. Dick secured his spot in the wedding party after spending several bonding-filled weeks on Zeb’s couch after his trailer blew up. Gabriel might have been promoted above groomsman had he been in town more often lately … and not made fun of Zeb’s extensive GI Joe collection.
Whether it’s because he genuinely enjoys my company or enjoys irritating Gabriel, Dick and I had spent a lot of time together since I was turned. He became a regular visitor at River Oaks. In fact, he stayed on my couch for a few days after he wore out his welcome at Zeb’s. Using his secret vampire wiles, Gabriel anonymously set Dick up at a nearby apartment because of Dick’s tendency to make comments such as the following.
“Ah, the lovely Jane. I’ve always said you were a dirty girl,” he said, swiping at the dust on my cheek. Dick could be considered attractive if you considered laughing sea-green eyes, razor-sharp cheekbones, and full pouting lips permanently twisted into a mocking, yet somehow seductive smirk attractive. Combine that with the constant barrage of sassy banter, and you got a “You’ll regret me in the morning” charisma that had almost every female who crossed his path melting into little puddles of giggly goo at his feet. I was a rare exception and, as Dick often reminded me, his only strictly platonic friend who also happened to have breasts.
I had a soft spot for Dick Cheney. Technically, it was my fault that his trailer had been torched by Missy in an attempt to frame me for his murder. And in between the disturbing innuendos, there was normally a nugget of likability.
Buried deep, deep down.
“Wow, you are truly master of the single entendre.” I rolled my eyes. “Do your lines work on anybody, ever?”
“I just wanted to check on you, Stretch,” he said, patting my head, a gesture that he knew I hated. “Haven’t seen you in a few days. I worry when I’m not called to save your cute little hind end at least once a week.”
“I don’t have a cute little hind end,” I groused.
“I know, it’s more medium to large, but I was trying to be kind,” he replied, dodging the Pocket Guide to Poltergeist Activity I chucked at him. “Keep that up, and I’ll go outside, take that rusty bucket you call a car, and drive it into a quarry. It would be a mercy killing.”
I squealed. “She’s here?”
I ran outside to find my old Ford station wagon, Big Bertha, parked in front of the store. Dick had used some of his not-quite-legal connections to barter for spare parts and repairs that I could not afford on a part-time shopgirl’s salary. I just had to tutor some were-skunk mechanic’s kids in English for the next semester.
“She’s beautiful.” I sighed, rubbing a loving hand over the dimpled hood.
“It looks exactly the same,” Dick said. “Pathetic. It probably cost you as much in repairs as it would to put a down payment on a decent car that doesn’t smoke when you turn the ignition.”
“Big Bertha was my first car, my first love. Aunt Jettie taught me how to drive in this car. I’m just not ready to give her up yet.”
Dick smiled, an indulgent patriarch tolerating my whims. “I figured, which is why I had Billy make some modifications.”
My hands froze mid-stroke on Bertha’s hood. “Dick, what did you do to my car?”
He grinned. “Well, let’s just say Billy had some ideas for how to make Big Bertha a little more vamp-friendly. Tinted windows, SPF 500, thank you very much. Side-curtain sunshields you can pull down in an emergency. Emergency sun-protection packs tacked under the front seats. A little refrigerated cooler for traveling with blood—it’s cooled through the AC. And the pièce de résistance.” He opened the back hatch. There was a coffin-sized door in the floor of the rear compartment. “An emergency hidey-hole.”
“This is great,” I said. “This is just, wow … “ He shook his head. “Would it be rude of me to question this sudden burst of generosity?”
“Well.” Dick stretched a companionable arm around my shoulders and offered what I’m sure he thought was a guileless smile. “You could put in a good word with your friend Andrea.”
This was the thousandth or so anvil-sized hint Dick had dropped on me to hook him up with my blood-surrogate friend. Most vampires are interested in Andrea Byrne’s delicately flavored, extremely rare AB-negative blood. But Dick was far more interested in the fact that Andrea is also coolly, elegantly, irritatingly gorgeous. The two of them had a strange chemistry, like ammonia and bleach.
Dick and Andrea moved in very different vampire circles. Most of Andrea’s undead clients had houses without wheels. In a deliciously karmic development, Andrea didn’t want much to do with Dick—not because she was a snob but because he reminded her so much of Mattias Northon, a vampire college professor who had seduced her, introduced her to life as a blood surrogate, and dumped her like a bad habit. Smooth, effortless charm just pissed her off. I think being turned down by a woman for the first time in his long, long life fried something in Dick’s brain, because he’d been obsessed since meeting her.
“Oh, you’re pure evil.” I led him back into the store. “You almost had me for a second there, pretending to be all sweet and vulnerable. Did you script this conversation out in your head before you came in here? Is your special vampire power flirty manipulation?”
Dick made a deep, distressed noise and covered it with a cough. “Obviously not. Why won’t she go out with me?”
“She knows your type,” I said. “She’s painfully familiar with your type, Mr. Love ‘Em, Bite ‘Em, and Leave ‘Em.”
“That seems … fair,” he said dejectedly. “Could you talk to her—”
“No,” I said, firmly enunciating each word very carefully. “I’m her friend, not her pimp. Put your big-boy pants on and deal with this yourself. Maybe you could ask her to Zeb and Jolene’s wedding.”
He chuckled. “Speaking of the Gormless Wonder, I got this in the mail today.”
He took a cornflower-blue envelope out of his back pocket and slid it across the counter.
“Wow.” I marveled at the Lavelle-McClaine wedding invitation. I’d been trimmed from the invite list when Zeb and Jolene realized I was honor-bound to attend most of the wedding events anyway, so we didn’t need to bring engraved stationery into the deal. “I’d heard about them, but … there are no words.”
Jolene and Zeb were having a Titanic-themed wedding. Personally, I think centering your nuptials around one of history’s greatest maritime disasters is kind of creepy, but Jolene has a serious Kate-and-Leo complex. I guess I shouldn’t judge. When I was a little girl, I dreamed I would get married in an ancient English castle and ride away in a horse-drawn carriage. And my sister would be tied up in the dungeon. Of course, I also thought I’d be marrying Mark-Paul Gosselaar from Saved by the Bell, and we can all see how that turned out.
Jolene’s theme was a mix of the morbidly historical and old Hollywood glamour. Her wedding ensemble consisted of a rhinestone copy of the Heart of the Ocean and a slightly-too-flattering-to-be-true-to-period costume. Zeb just barely managed to talk her out of having decorative life preservers made up with their names and wedding date. She was, however, using a model of the Titanic to serve chips and salsa. The boat was split in two, the salsa in one side and the chips in the other. She ordered this monstrosity online, along with her wedding ensemble and the invitations with an embossed iceberg on the cover and the words “Struck by Love.” If you looked closely enough at the crags in the pressed-relief iceberg, you could make out Jolene’s and Zeb’s initials.
Some people should not be allowed access to the Internet.
“What exactly are the rules for bringing dates to werewolf weddings?” I asked. “I didn’t get an invitation per se, so I can’t exactly send back a response card with a ‘plus one.’ Then again, Gabriel is a groomsman, so I assume they know he’s coming. You, on the other hand, got an invitation, but it’s addressed to you alone. Are you allowed a ‘plus one’?”
“I haven’t been invited to a wedding in about ninety years,” Dick admitted. “I’m still trying to figure out what those little pieces of tissue between the envelopes are for.”
“Zeb said you guys are doing some sort of manly bowling-drinking-bonding thing this weekend. Do I have to give you the ‘Allow my friend to be hurt by one of your less-than-reputable acquaintances, and you’ll wake up with my foot lodged in your nether regions’ speech?”
“No,” he said, grinning broadly.
“Good, because the title gives away the ending.”
Dick muttered, “See if I help you escape certain death again.”
“Well, do you have any other homicidal ex-girlfriends who might try to frame me for murder?”
He made a rude hand motion I choose not to describe here. It was enough to bring Mr. Wainwright out from the shelves to scold Dick for his lack of chivalry.
“In my day, gentlemen didn’t make gestures like that at ladies,” he said, drawing himself to his full height. All five feet and six inches of him. Osteoporosis had not been kind.
Dick grinned lazily, unashamed. “Once you spend more time with her, Gilbert, you’ll understand.”
Mr. Wainwright’s eyes narrowed, staring. “Do I know you?”
“Yes,” Dick said. He winked at me. “See you later, Stretch.”
“Do you know him?” I asked after Dick left.
He shook his head. “I have no idea. I have a much better memory for books than for people.”
“You’re probably better off,” I assured him.
“I couldn’t help but overhear you talking about Zeb’s upcoming nuptials, Jane. I think I have a book that might help you.” He held up a soft-cover volume titled Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were.
I opened to a section titled “Human-Werewolf Relations” and read aloud: “The best way for a suitor to win over a female werewolf’s father is to present him with a fresh carcass. The larger the game, the more impressive the suit. Deer and elk make a bold statement. Squirrels and rabbits will get you laughed out of the pack.”
I kissed the top of his balding pate. “A book for every problem. I love you, Mr. Wainwright.”
He flushed with pleasure, squeezing my hands. “The feeling is mutual, dear.”