5
Hostility toward human males marrying into were clans is to be expected and taken seriously. Potential sons-in-law may want to carry wolfsbane or silver items in their pockets. Weres find both substances to be extremely irritating.
—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were
Despite Bob’s being laid to rest on a cloudy day, I elected not to go to his burial. I thought it might build strange expectations for Mama. Aunt Jettie, who relished her role as my go-to daytime spy, reported that Bob’s burial was much more entertaining than his visitation.
Grandma Ruthie had gone from grieving widow to seeing herself as some sort of postmodern, postmenopausal Juliet. She wore an even bigger veiled hat to the cemetery and a black crepe dress with a full, flowing skirt and trailing sleeves. I’m thinking she bought it from the Gone with the Wind Widows Collection. She wailed and screeched her way through the eulogy, screamed, “Why, Lord? Why?” through the final blessing, and tried to snatch Bob’s service flag away from his son when it was presented by the honor guard. Also, she demanded front-row center seats for her and her male companion, Wilbur.
That’s right. My grandma brought a date to her fiancé’s burial. She’s all class, that lady. Apparently, she’d met Wilbur at Whitlow’s as he was heading into an old Army buddy’s visitation. Sparks flew, time stood still, and Grandma Ruthie snagged another victim. On the upside, I think Wilbur’s presence may have been the only thing that kept her from flinging herself into the grave on top of the casket.
But somehow, my outing cousin Junie as a day-shift dancer at the Booby Hatch made me an embarrassment to the family. At the burial, Grandma had declared that she wouldn’t speak to me until I’d apologized to Junie. I would think this odd considering that Junie was a cousin on my dad’s side of the family and Ruthie was my maternal grandmother. But Grandma Ruthie liked ninety-nine percent of the general population better than me, so why not cousins on the other side of the family?
During my shift that night, Aunt Jettie came into the shop to give me all of the details of the cemetery theatrics. She was in the middle of reenacting this declaration when a little woman in a double-knit pant suit came into the shop to claim a phone order. Aunt Jettie made herself scarce.
On the phone, Esther Barnes’s voice had sounded deep and accented. In person, she was squat, with dyed jet-black hair, deep wrinkles at the edges of her eyes, and a smoky topaz cocktail ring the size of a door knocker. Her voice was reedy and thin as she asked whether I had the “Barnes order” ready yet. I pulled her reserved copies of Mind over Matter: Maintaining Your Psychic Ability and The Search for the Inner Id from under the counter and rang them up.
There was something off about Esther Barnes. Her eyes were too bright, too sharp. Her mouth was small, thin, pinched into a coral-painted, birdlike moue. From the way her gaze was sweeping across the shop, I would guess she was calculating the value of every item in the store.
“Are you new in town, Ms. Barnes?” I asked, my tone light and friendly, even as I watched her weigh a brittle amethyst ceremonial blade with her even more fragile-looking hands.
“No.” She put the blade down, slapped her money on the counter, and stared at me. I would guess this stare had put many a shopgirl in her place over the years. But, well, I was bored, and she was there.
I smiled pleasantly. “Have family around here?”
Her eyes narrowed as what little politeness she offered drained out of her voice. “No.”
I held up a newly printed Specialty Books brochure. “Would you like to be put on our mailing list?”
OK, at this point, I was just trying to be annoying.
Ms. Barnes narrowed her eyes at me. There was a buzzing sensation, like being slapped under the forehead.
Ow.
It was as if someone let loose a hive full of bees in my head, little stings and pricks on the edge of my brain. I gripped the counter as the room spun out of focus. My head dipped as if I were just a bit tipsy, then snapped back into place as I fought for focus. Annoyed, I closed my eyes and built up a wall around my mind. I focused on the little woman in front of me and attempted to slap back, but it was like grabbing at sand. I couldn’t get a grip. The edges of her consciousness kept slipping through my fingers. I did well just to maintain control of my own psychic defenses and not pass out at her feet.
Exhausted by what was really just a moment’s effort, I opened my eyes to find a smug smile stretched across Ms. Barnes’s face. “Better luck next time, dear.”
Did I just get psychically pimp-slapped by a little old lady?
After she sauntered out of the shop, I hustled back to the stacks and grabbed a copy of Mind over Matter: Maintaining Your Psychic Ability. “What the hell is in this book?”
I checked Mr. Wainwright’s “records” for Ms. Barnes’s contact information. And by records, I mean the stack of scrap paper he kept in the back of the cash-register drawer with scribbled customer names and addresses. She was nowhere to be found, which was not a surprise. He did, however, have the address for a man who lived in Possum Trot and called himself Nostradamus, which made a certain amount of sense.
I opened Mind over Matter and scanned a few pages, trying to find the section on how to use one’s mental talents to smack people around. Nothing. Esther Barnes was clearly playing a deck stacked with a few extra cards. How do you guard against someone who can reach into your skull and scramble stuff around?
“I’m going to have to make a tin-foil hat,” I muttered as the phone rang.
It was then that I realized how wrong I was to think that being brain-assaulted was going to be the worst part of my day. It was my mother, calling to remind me that the annual Jameson family tree-trimming party was coming up that weekend and that I needed to wear my Frosty the Snowman sweater for the family Christmas-card picture. Mama always artfully arranged our “candid” family tree-trimming picture one week after Thanksgiving, so she was able to send the Christmas cards out by December 14, one week before her arch-enemy and best friend, Carol Ann Reilly.
“Um, I don’t think Jenny and Grandma would be very happy about seeing me.”
“But y’all got along so well at the visitation!” Mama cried.
“Being glad that someone will wash dishes and being happy that they were present are two different things.”
“Now, you’re just being silly, Jane. You’re just going to have to learn to kiss and make up with Grandma and Jenny for the holidays. I won’t stand for this. It was one thing for you to miss Thanksgiving, but this is getting ridiculous. Where else are you going to go?”
“Actually, I might have plans,” I lied.
Mama gasped. “What do you mean, you have plans? It’s not Christmas unless you’re with family.”
“Well, I have some new friends this year, and they don’t have family around here. I thought it would be nice to spend some time with them.”
“New vampire friends,” Mama said, just a hint of bitterness tingeing her tone.
“No, not all of them are vampires.”
“Well, if you want to throw away years of tradition, that’s your choice. If you really want to spend the first Christmas since we lost you with strangers, that’s your decision to make.”
“What do you mean, ‘lost me’? I’m right here!”
“I can’t keep talking about it, Jane.”
“Talking about what? We don’t talk about this. At all.”
Mama sighed, the slightest edge of a sniffle curling at the end. “Will you at least come to the tree-trimming party so we can take the family picture? Not everyone has to know that you and Jenny have had a falling out.”
“Can’t you just Photoshop me in or something?” I asked.
“I don’t even know what that means.” Mama grunted. “Just show up on Saturday at six.”
I hung up the phone and commenced thumping my head against the leaded-glass counter.
“If you keep doing that, it’s going to leave a mark,” a smooth, bemused voice said. “Even your healing powers have limits.”
I looked up to find Andrea Byrne standing in front of me, smirking.
“You look perturbed. Well, more perturbed than usual,” she said, examining the paling bruise on my forehead.
“What was your first clue?” I asked grumpily.
Andrea reminds one of what Grace Kelly might have looked like with red hair and a twisted backstory. Broke after her split with her (fickle bastard) undead ex and disowned by a firmly antivampire family, Andrea came to the Hollow years before to get a job in a boutique downtown. But her real income came from clients who enjoyed her blood in a mutually safe environment for a small fee. Andrea was the first—and last—human I fed from. It made for a rather awkward beginning to our friendship, but she was the one human I knew who truly understood the bizarre aspects of my new vampire lifestyle. She was sort of like my undead blankie, keeping me connected to the living world. Mama would have done the same thing but with more guilt and sunburns.
She hefted both Mind over Matter and The Spectrum of Vampirism off the counter and winced. “A little light reading?”
“Just researching my roots,” I said, flipping Spectrum to the chapter titled “Global Origins.” “Like this charming theory, for example: ‘Gypsies believed that vampires returned from the dead to seek vengeance on those who may have contributed to their death or neglected to give them a proper burial. Graves were watched carefully for signs of being disturbed. Exhumed corpses that were bloated or had turned black would be staked, beheaded, and burned.’ Well, why didn’t they just blast the remains out of a cannon? Humans are stupid.”
“I’m standing right here,” Andrea griped.
“Oh, you’re not really human. You’re like one of us, only with a pulse.”
“And Mr. Wainwright?”
“Same goes.” I nodded. “You don’t normally come in here. What’s up?”
“I’m bored.”
“Bored?” I asked.
She nodded. “Ever since Dick became interested in me, all but my most loyal clients have stopped calling. I don’t know if they are in doubt of my taste or frightened of Dick, but either way, it’s not good for business.”
“Well, thanks for thinking of me.” I grinned. “I’m off in a couple of hours. What did you want to do?”
“Oh, I know, why don’t we go out for a nice girls’ night, get into a bar fight, and then, just for kicks, one of us could end up suspected in a vampire murder. That could be fun,” Andrea suggested brightly. “Oh, wait, we did that already.”
“You think you’re being funny, but you’re not funny. When I tell the story, I don’t tell people about you being knee-walking drunk, ergo unconscious, during the whole fight. I think I’m going to change that policy.”
“You actually tell people that story?”
I nodded. “But when I tell it, Walter is six-foot-three and a trained cage fighter.”
Andrea chuckled.
I grinned slyly. “Dick has been looking for you.”
She grumbled. “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘restraining order,’ does he?”
“Technically, that’s two words.” I giggled. “Dick and Andrea sitting in a tree, B-I-T-I-N-G—ow!” I whined as she punched my shoulder. “You’re just mad because secretly, underneath that sophisticated exterior, you’re hot for Dickie.”
“I am not hot for Dickie,” Andrea spat.
“Me and my bruised shoulder say thou dost protest too much,” I said dryly.
“He’s practically stalking me. He just won’t let it go. He’s just being … he’s being a jackass with a flaky jackass crust and a delicious jackass filling.”
“So he’s jackass pie?” I asked, making my “ew” face.
“There’s no reason to be crass,” Andrea mewed primly.
“You know, you’re starting to talk like me. I find this more than a little troubling. Maybe we should spend less time together.”
“I could come up with jackass pie on my own,” she insisted, then mulled that statement over. “No. No, I couldn’t.”
“By the way, what are your plans for Christmas?” I asked.
“Pretending my parents haven’t disowned me, watching It’s a Wonderful Life, and drinking a few bottles of merlot. How about you?”
I chewed my lip. “I’m thinking of throwing together a little party for us disenfranchised monsters.”
“You’re using us as an excuse not to spend time with your family?”
“No, I’m choosing to spend time with my dearest friends,” I retorted. “Fine, it’s eighty percent spending time with you guys and twenty percent avoiding my family.”
Andrea shot me her best doubtful glare.
“Seventy/thirty,” I said as the doorbell tinkled. I was confronted with the sight of a weeping werewolf, clutching a bear trap in one hand and a wedding planner in the other.
There’s something you don’t see every day.
A curious Mr. Wainwright poked his head out of the office, illogically thrilled at the sight of a tearful werewolf in his shop. “This is the most traffic the shop has had in years,” he said, smiling brightly. “Jane, would your friends like a cup of tea?”
“Why don’t you put the kettle on?” I suggested in a voice as calm and soothing as I could muster. “Andrea Byrne, Jolene McClaine,” I said, eyeing Jolene and the bear trap warily. “Jolene, honey, what’s wrong?”
“Zeb!” she wailed plaintively.
“What about Zeb? Is he OK?” I demanded, sniffing the trap but finding no scent of blood.
“He’s fine.” Her deeply backwoods accent stretched the word out into “faaaaaaahhhnnnn” before she wailed, “He’s called off the wedding!”
Visions of an unworn, unreturnable peach sateen bridesmaid’s dress lurking in the back of my closet flashed before my eyes. I shuddered. “I thought we agreed that you guys weren’t going to come to me anymore with your problems.”
“But this time is different!” Jolene wailed. “This time I need help!”
“OK, OK.” I took the trap out of her hands and wrapped my arms around her. She sniffled into my shirt, leaving a spreading wet stain on my shoulder. “Are you sure about that he called off the wedding, Jolene? Sometimes Zeb misspells stuff in e-mails, and it comes across badly.”
“Of course I’m sure!” Jolene howled, drawing a sharp wince from Andrea, who was more accustomed to the slightly more sedate antics of vampires. “I’m not stupid!”
“OK,” I said, scratching behind her ears. It may sound condescending, but sometimes that calmed her down.
“Do you have anythin’ to eat?” Jolene asked, sniffing the air. “I can’t talk like this on an empty stomach.”
Jolene couldn’t do anything on an empty stomach.
Mr. Wainwright helped me scavenge leftover pizza, canned stew, and some Chef Boyardee from his apartment and then made himself scarce. Even his fascination with were-creatures wasn’t enough to keep him around a hysterical female. Note to self: Bring pot pies and bagged salad to the shop for Mr. Wainwright. This kind of diet could not be good for him.
“What happened?” I asked as she gorged herself on cold pepperoni. It was always oddly compelling to watch Jolene eat, with the stark contrast between the beautiful, trim girl and the huge amounts of food she shoveled into her face. If you didn’t know about her werewolf metabolism, you’d wonder where she put it all.
I tried to reach out to her mind, but the jumble of images—confused, pained, and frenetic—made me dizzy.
“My cousins played a little joke on Zeb, and he got so upset,” she said, gnawing on reheated crust. “I told him he was overreactin’ and he should be glad that my cousins were tryin’ to make him part of the pack. And then he said something about ‘not wantin’ to live on the farm with the Jerry Springer family’ and how we were going to lose our house thanks to them. I asked what the hell he meant by that. He said he was sure I knew all about it. I told him he sounded like a paranoid jerk. He said that if I really felt that way, then he wasn’t gonna to be able to marry me.” Her eyes welled up again. “How could he do that? How could he just break it off without even looking upset about it? How could he just leave me?”
I waited for the yowl of “meeee” to end. “What kind of joke did your cousins play on Zeb?”
“They put a bear trap between his usual parkin’ spot by the front door to Mama and Daddy’s place. It was just a joke,” Jolene insisted. “We do it to each other all the time.”
“Wolves set bear traps for each other? Isn’t that sort of, I don’t know, culturally insensitive or something?”
Jolene seemed befuddled by the question. “No, it doesn’t hurt that bad.”
“You heal ten times faster than the average human,” I told her. “That bear trap could have cost Zeb a foot. He’s already lost a pinkie toe to your family’s little jokes.”
“They’re just bein’ playful.”
“He lost an appendage, Jolene. That’s not playful, that’s wanton endangerment.”
Jolene sniffed. “Don’t! Don’t use the ‘talkin’ down the crazy person’ voice. And don’t act like you’re sad this happened. You probably set this whole thing up to get out of wearing the bridesmaid dress.”
“What is wrong with you?” I asked. “Why would you say that?”
“I don’t know!” Jolene cried. “He proposed to me! I was a normal person before this. He made me go crazy! I know my family is screwed up, OK? I know it’s not normal for your cousin to want to marry you or for your parents to make you move in less than a hundred yards away from them.
“I know it’s not normal to be so loud and in each other’s business all the time. I know they’re passive-aggressive and just plain aggressive and they pay no attention to boundaries. They know they could have hurt Zeb with these pranks, and that’s half of the fun for them. But what am I supposed to do? This is my pack. This is thousands of years of breedin’ and instinct. I can’t stop that.”
She sobbed and wiped at her eyes. “And that’s what I told him. Then I said he wouldn’t be so tense if maybe his parents were more supportive of us instead of torpedoin’ the wedding every chance they got. He asked me what I meant by that, and I said that it was obvious his mama would be a lot happier if he was marrying you instead of me. And when he told me that was crazy, I told him to take his ring and shove it where the sun don’t shine, and I stormed off, and now I’m sittin’ here, miserable, and with no idea whether I’m gettin’ married.”
Andrea goggled. “That was a Jane-worthy tirade. Really, very impressive.”
“Please don’t help,” I said, turning to Jolene. “And you, you’ve got to draw a line somewhere. You’re marrying Zeb. His safety and happiness have to be your priority, no matter what your family does. Stand up for him, if not to show your family that you’re going to be the first McClaine to break this weird-ass cycle of human abuse, then to show Zeb that you’re on his side.
“Apologize,” I said. “And then go perform some physical favors for him that I never have to think about. And both of you have to stop coming to me when you have relationship problems. I barely have time for my own problems, and yours are, well, weird.”
“You’re a really good friend, Jane,” she said, shoving the remains of pizza into her mouth.
I patted her arm. “I know. I was serious about that last part.”
Gabriel’s home on Silver Ridge Road would have been the crown jewel in any historical home tour … if anyone in town knew about it. Gabriel had worked for years to erase the house, with its white clapboard, big wraparound porch, and Corinthian columns, from public memory. The house was cozy and way less intimidating than you would expect inside. The rooms I’d seen were done in subtle, muted colors, soft fabrics, little knickknacks that spoke of Gabriel’s years of travel, the kind of rooms where you wouldn’t expect to find your boyfriend plying your best friend with liquor.
Poor Zeb looked absolutely miserable, splayed on the maroon leather couch with a glass in one hand and his head in the other.
When he looked up, I saw he was wearing an eye patch. This could not be good.
“OK, I heard about the bear trap. Did something happen to your eye?”
“No, I’m considering a career as a pirate,” Zeb snarked as he gingerly adjusted the patch strap. He winced when it snapped back into place over his eye. The elastic had given him a quailish cowlick in the middle of his dark blond crown. “Some of the boys out at the farm were shooting off bottle rockets a few days ago. Jolene’s cousin Vance wanted to show them how to use them to knock cans off the fence, and somehow one of the rockets went astray.”
“You got hit in the eye with a bottle rocket?”
“No, I got hit in the eye with the bottle. Vance wasn’t watching where he tossed it when they were running from the bottle rocket.”
“So, that combined with bear trap is why you’re doing the full-on Dean Martin routine?” I asked, looking at the bottle between them.
“I’ve been evicted,” Zeb said, turning away two fingers of very nice bourbon.
Gabriel huffed and slugged it back himself. Considering the average vintage in his wine cellar, I wasn’t surprised he wouldn’t let it go to waste.
“This has not been your day, huh?”
“My landlord left me a notice today,” Zeb said, making a face when Gabriel held up a bottle of vodka with a Cyrillic label. “I was supposed to renew my lease next week.”
“He can’t do that! Jolene worked so hard to leave her mark on that place,” I exclaimed. Gabriel gave me a cringing, questioning look. “With throw pillows and paint, I mean. Nothing gross.”
“I went to sign the papers with Mr. Dugger, but he’s decided to rent to another family,” Zeb said, his pale face stretched in tight, miserable lines. “He said Jolene’s fixed the place up so nicely he can charge more than we can afford. And somehow, Jolene’s uncle Deke just happened to call today to remind her that her plot of land on the pack compound is still available. He even offered us a brand-newish trailer as a wedding gift.” Zeb sighed, planting his face in his hands as Gabriel stood to pour him a scotch. “I don’t know how they did it, but they got to Mr. Dugger.”
“I think you might be giving them a little too much—yeah, you’re probably right,” I agreed, slipping an arm around his shoulders. “What are you going to do? Starting with, will you please pry the crying werewolf out of my shop? She’s starting to disturb the customer. Emphasis on customer; we only have one.”
“You saw Jolene?” Zeb grimaced. “She was crying?”
“Um, you kind of broke off your engagement. That can bring out the emotion in a gal.”
“I know, I need to apologize,” Zeb said. “But I’d like to have a home to offer her when I beg and plead.” He took a sip of Gabriel’s liquor, blanched, and coughed. “Seriously, that’s what it tastes like?”
“Zeb can only drink stuff that tastes a little like alcohol and a lot like fruit punch,” I told Gabriel.
“I’ll start keeping some around,” Gabriel said. “Until then, try to finish the expensive single-malt I just poured for you. Peasant.”
“I would insult you back, but you seem to own or know about all of the good rental properties around town.” Zeb snorted.
Giving new meaning to the words “saved by the bell,” Gabriel’s cell phone began singing. His face when he saw the caller ID stopped me from making a joke about voice mail, which Gabriel didn’t know how to use. Without a word, he left the room and said hello quietly into the receiver as he walked out onto the back porch.
For lack of something better to say, I told Zeb, “I wish I could help.”
“Aw, I appreciate that,” he said, leaning his head against mine. “But you’re, you know, broke.”
My jaw dropped. “You know about that?”
“I’m your best friend,” he said. “And you haven’t had a full-time job in months. I can do math above the kindergarten level. Besides, I would never take money from you. We’ve never mixed money into our friendship before.”
“We never had money before,” I pointed out.
“And so far, that’s worked out for us,” he said. “Besides, if we’re not going to take that kind of ‘help’—emphasis on the sarcastic invisible quotation marks—from Jolene’s family, it would be hard to justify taking help from you.”
“You have a well-thought-out and emotionally mature argument,” I admitted. “Dang it. On an unrelated note, here’s an interesting tidbit: Your mama kept trying to get me to eat at the funeral, which would have ended in my vomiting publicly. She does know that I’ve been turned, right? I assumed she has just refused to mention it because it interferes with her version of reality. But you did tell her, right?”
Zeb winced. “Every time I try, she repeats something stupid she hears on talk radio, like vampires should be rounded up and forced to live in communities far away from humans.”
“Still, you’re marrying into a werewolf clan, and you’re worried about telling her there’s a vampire bridesmaid? If anything, you could use me to take the heat off Jolene and Company.” I gasped as realization slowly dawned. “She still doesn’t know you’re marrying into a werewolf clan, does she?”
“No,” he admitted, covering his face with his hands. Whether it was from shame or to protect his eyes from my vampire death glare, I have no idea. “You know her. You know what she does with announcements like this. We’re talking Valium and screaming, taking to her bed for weeks at a time. I knew there was no way she’d accept you, much less Jolene and her family. I’m just trying to get through the wedding without her making a scene. I saw what it did to Jolene when my parents threatened not to come. Can you imagine how she would handle Mama’s werewolf meltdown? How much that would hurt her? Once we’re married, Jolene will realize that she’s better off with my family not liking her anyway.”
“Don’t you think your family will notice something’s off when the bride’s side mows through the buffet?” I asked.
“Oh, my family will be too drunk to notice,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Why do you think we’re having the open bar?”
“That’s not—actually, that’s brilliant.”
“I’ve tried everything to get Mama to behave, to be decent to Jolene,” Zeb said. “She says she’ll straighten up and be nice, and then I get a phone call from Jolene, crying about whatever Mama’s said now. I’ve told her to ignore Mama, but she just can’t. She can’t stand having someone not like her. And I’m exhausted. I’m tired of being the go-between. Why can’t she just handle this stuff herself?”
I arched my brows at the angry, exasperated tone Zeb was using. He seemed to shake it off after a moment, rubbing his hands over his patch and then moving them to pinch the bridge of his nose.
“In a few months, this will all be over,” he said.
“Because you will have succumbed to chronic stress headaches and bottle-rocket trauma?” I asked, taking one of his hands and gently pushing at the pressure point between his thumb and forefinger.
When he smiled, the skin around his visible eye crinkled. “Because in a few months, we’ll be married. And we can enter the witness-protection program.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, quirking my lips as I stared at him.
“What?”
I shrugged. “It’s just weird. Normally, I’d be the first person you’d call when something like this trailer deal comes up. But now it’s Gabriel. I think you’re entering into a functional adult relationship with someone besides me. I guess the wedding is the final sign that we’re growing up.”
“I don’t know how I feel about it,” Zeb said absently. He was looking at me intently; his good eye seemed glazed over, unfocused. This was not the way Zeb normally looked at me. This was the way Zeb looked at mint-condition, still-in-the-package GI Joe Battle Force dolls.
Since he was dealing with a traumatic injury, I was willing to attribute this bizarre behavior to a concussion. “It doesn’t suck.”
“It does a little bit.” He cupped the back of my head in his hand, bringing my face almost uncomfortably close to his. For a weird moment, it felt as if he was going to kiss me. Which, for our relationship, was highly unusual. I leaned away, pulling his hands from my neck.
Gabriel came in and found the two of us staring at each other, Zeb’s hands in mine. Zeb dropped his hands to his sides and looked vaguely guilty.
“If you weren’t Jane’s best friend and engaged to a beautiful and violently monogamous woman, I might find this upsetting,” Gabriel commented dryly.