3
There are many alternatives to drinking human blood, including synthetic blood and animal blood. Warm-blooded animals, such as pigs or cows, are recommended, as reptilian blood tends to be bitter. In order to make synthetic or animal blood more palatable, we suggest microwaving it for thirty-eight seconds at 75-percent power. Dropping a penny into the blood (after microwaving!) also gives it an authentic coppery taste.
—From The Guide for the Newly Undead
“I—”
“Wait,” Zeb said, pulling me off the couch and wrapping me in his long, gangly arms. I could smell traces of aftershave on his skin and French Onion Sun Chips on his breath. I could feel the blood coursing through his veins, see the staccato beat of his pulse at his throat.
Zeb was oblivious to these disturbing developments. “I’m really glad you’re OK…what’s with the pajamas?”
“I—”
“Seriously, where have you been?” he demanded. “I heard about you getting fired on Wednesday, and I came here Wednesday to see how you were doing, but you weren’t here. Did I mention that was on Wednesday? I can understand that you needed a self-pity bender, Jane, but you have to let someone know where you are. I’ve been feeding your psychotic dog for three days. Your mom’s been going nuts, and you know that means she’s been calling me.”
“I—”
“I’ve been able to hold her off from calling the police for this long, but I’ll feel bad if some pajama fetish freak has been keeping you in his basement this whole time.”
“Stop!” I thundered, my voice pitching to a deep smoker’s tenor. The raspy command seemed to settle Zeb down pretty quickly. He dropped to the couch, waiting for my next command. It was the first time in more than twenty years of friendship that he was completely silent and still.
“I’m fine.” I cleared my throat and returned to my normal voice, pushing the words around the strange stretching sensation in my mouth. My teeth felt as if they were growing. “Everything is fine…Wait, you already heard I got fired?”
Emerging from his stupor, Zeb shot me a look both pitiful and withering. Coming from Zeb, it wasn’t that intimidating. Picture Steve Zahn with big brown eyes and less impulse control. “It’s the Hollow, Jane. The whole town knows you got fired.”
“Oh, that’s not good,” I said, sinking next to him.
“Aww, it’s OK,” he said, putting his arm around me again. “I’ve told everybody you were fired because Mrs. Stubblefield was afraid you’d take her job. And that you had proof that she was drinking at her desk.” Zeb grinned, clearly thrilled with his own cleverness.
“Thanks, Zeb.” I nestled into the curve of his neck. He stiffened. This was not a normal move for me. We were in the strictly no-nookie, personal-space-respecting category of platonic friendship.
Just one little nip, a sly voice told me. He’ll barely feel it. Drink your fill. He might even enjoy it. I could picture his veins opening to me, pouring his blood over my lips, like drinking straight from a bottle of Hershey’s syrup. My tongue reached out to trace the path of his jugular.
“Um, Janie, I know you’re upset about your job and everything, but I don’t think this is the way to go,” he said, prying my hands away. Every muscle burned in the grip of my thirst, jumping under the skin. I clutched his shirt, tearing it as I pulled him to me. “I’m sorry, Zeb. I’m just so hungry.”
He laughed, a nervous noise that jangled my nerves. I could smell his fear, a thick tang of adrenaline over the sweat breaking on his lip. My stomach rumbled in response.
Zeb blanched. “How about we order a pizza? My treat?”
I clamped my hands over Zeb’s and pressed him back against the cushions. “Zeb, I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”
“Jane!”
I whirled and, I am ashamed to say, hissed as Gabriel threw open my front door. He swept into the room with the slow-motion, flowy-coated elegance you only see in the Matrix movies. Zeb gave a girlish shriek as Gabriel threw me off him and across the room.
“Sleep,” Gabriel told him. Zeb slumped over, and his face melted from blind twitching terror to blissful slumber.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, righting myself from my tumble into the (cold, dark) fireplace. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me!” he shouted, so loudly that I felt the echo bouncing around my skull. “I am your sire. I am to guide you through your first days as a vampire. Your first feeding is a rite of passage, a sacrament. It will not be wasted on some hormone-driven frenzy. This is why I wanted you to feed from me.”
“I will not drink it in a house, I will not drink it with a mouse. I will not drink it here or there, I will not drink it anywhere,” I wheezed, hoping I was able to communicate adequate sarcasm through the crippling belly cramps.
“Did you just quote Green Eggs and Ham?”
For future reference, my sire did not appreciate being silently flipped the bird by his panting, twitching protégé.
“Jane,” he said, gripping my shoulders so hard I felt my bones buckle. “My sire sent me out into the world with nothing. I was left in a root cellar to rise alone and ignorant. My thirst was maddening, bottomless. I came upon a couple of sharecroppers sitting on their front porch, enjoying the cool of the evening. I didn’t know how much I could drink. I didn’t realize how fragile they were.”
“You killed them?”
Gabriel nodded. “I didn’t know any better. I wasn’t prepared for what happened. This man is your friend, your closest friend in the entire world. I wouldn’t have you start your life as a vampire with such regrets.”
“But I’m so hungry,” I whined. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt or will feel again,” he said, smiling sadly. “You’re being consumed from the inside out; all you can think of is feeding, filling up that emptiness.
“Let me make it easier for you,” he said. “I’ve fed recently. I can nourish you.”
“That’s what they all say,” I said, slumping to my knees. My throat was closing up. I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t concentrate long enough to remember that I didn’t need to breathe. “Go away. This is too—” His hands were at the base of my head, pressing my mouth to his throat. I groaned, repulsed but still drawn as he dragged his nails across his jugular.
I resisted, but the smell of his skin and of the blood dripping from his wound was like freshly baked brownies. It sounds bizarre, but I’m trying to put it into terms of a smell humans can understand. It was as if I’d been sequestered on a fat farm for three days and someone was waving Godiva under my nose. I wanted Gabriel’s blood. I needed it with the instinctual urgency I’d felt on the side of the road.
It was revolting and compelling. I reached out, tentatively stretching to catch the first falling drops with the tip of my tongue. My teeth ached; that new stretching sensation I realized was my fangs extending. I scraped them across Gabriel’s throat, sinking into the skin. The blood gushed, lukewarm, over my lips. I swear I purred, relaxing into the curve of him. He wrapped my hair around his fist and pulled me closer. I lapped at the wound, lazily nuzzling his cheek. He sighed and rubbed my back, whispering to me.
I had flashes of images. At first, I couldn’t tell whether they were from my head or Gabriel’s. I think they were a mix of both. Gabriel reaching for my hand in the bar, squeezing it. Gabriel walking me to my car and the sad smile he gave me as I drove away from the restaurant. Big Bertha’s taillights in the distance as Gabriel followed me home on that dark stretch of road. Gabriel’s lips moving, telling me everything was going to be all right as I took my last breath. Gabriel watching over me as I slept in his house, reading passages from Emma aloud as he waited for me to rise.
When my stomach was finally filled, I pulled away. Gabriel grumbled a quiet protest. I let the images slosh pleasantly around in my brain as I watched the wounds on his neck close and purple into faint bruises.
“Did that hurt?” I asked, touching a fingertip to the fading mark.
He cupped my face in his hands and wiped at the corners of my mouth with his thumbs. “That wasn’t a pained moan.”
“Oh,” I said, my voice thick and stupid. “Oh.”
“You’re a rather messy eater,” he commented.
“You should see me around barbecue,” I said, yawning. “It gets ugly.”
“Well, I’m afraid I won’t have that pleasure,” he said, resting his chin on the top of my head. I raised my eyebrows, not quite catching the joke.
“Is feeding always like that?” I asked. “So…cozy?”
“No.” He stopped to pluck a pine needle out of my hair. “You set the tone. You needed to be soothed, so you were soothed. With a willing partner, feeding can be as violent, as sexual, as clinical and cold as the vampire wishes. And with a human, the sensations are much more intense. They’re more susceptible to our charms.”
Vampire. There was that word again. And suddenly, I was awkward. I couldn’t decide where to settle my weight. I wondered if I was crushing Gabriel’s arm. I wondered if I had vampire morning breath.
“Is Zeb going to be OK?” I asked, watching my friend snoring happily on my couch. “Before we, um…before, when you said that Zeb was my closest friend in the world. How did you know that?”
“Well, as I said earlier, before you ran out of my home like a crazy woman”—he shot me an arch look—“I told you, you have a very organized mind. If I want a piece of information, I can just pluck it out.”
I grimaced. “So, you read my mind?”
He grinned sheepishly. “No. You tend to ramble a bit when you’ve had too much to drink. You told me about Zeb at the restaurant.”
“That would be your version of humor, I assume?” I asked dryly.
Gabriel actually looked contrite for a second. It passed in favor of a brighter, intrigued expression. “You’re not all that experienced in the sexual arena.”
If this was a sitcom, I would have just spit water all over him.
“I told you that?” I gaped at him. I couldn’t think of a response rude enough, so I moved away under the pretense of checking on Zeb.
Gabriel relaxed against the wall, watching me prowl the room. “No. But I would be able to tell anyway. You smell different from most people. There’s an innocence about you, a freshness. It’s like the difference between cracking a good egg and a bad one.”
“So, I smell like a good, decent egg. Nice.” I stopped in my tracks. “Wait, is this a nice-ish way of telling me we had sex and I was lousy? That’s how you can tell I’m inexperienced? Because, if so, that’s just rude. And what were you doing at Shenanigans? And how did you find me on the road?”
Gabriel looked wounded. “To answer your questions in order: The only body fluid I exchanged with you is blood—”
“That’s very comforting, thank you.”
“The bartender at Shenanigans is a vampire pet. He keeps pints of screened donated blood behind the bar. If you know to order the Tequila Sunrise special, he mixes palatable liquor with a healthy dose of blood.”
“What’s a vampire pet?” I asked, suddenly overwhelmed by a vision of humans on giant hamster wheels.
“A human who is marked and kept by a vampire as a companion and a willing source of blood,” he said. “They often serve as daytime protectors and help the vampire stay in contact with the modern world. It’s a beneficial relationship for both sides.
“And after you left the restaurant, I was concerned for you,” he said, reaching out to touch my hand. “I wanted to make sure you arrived home safely. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow you closely enough. I couldn’t stop that hunter from taking his shot.”
“But why did you turn me?”
He ran a thumb along my brow. “I just couldn’t stand the idea of a life like yours being snuffed out in such a tragic, ridiculous way. You deserved a better death.”
“Oh, well, thanks,” I said. “How do you thank someone for turning you into a vampire? A fruit basket? Blood Type of the Month Club?”
He chuckled. I smiled. I was relaxing, feeling some reconnection to the charming, mysterious guy I’d met at the bar. In my head, I heard glasses clinking. I could smell imitation Calvin Klein cologne and the jalape?o poppers being served to the couple next to us. Through the fog of memory, I saw Gabriel’s lips curve into a smile as I compared the relative merits of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.
“Johnny Cash had all of the same talents and problems as Elvis—a poor upbringing in the rural South, exposure to gospel music throughout his childhood, a penchant for drug abuse,” I heard myself saying against the background of chatter and clinking glasses. “They had the same sort of influencing experiences, but Johnny Cash’s problematic relationship was with his father, not his mother. If he’d had the mommy issues that Elvis had instead of a compelling need to prove himself to his father, he wouldn’t have been the badass man in black, the guy in Folsom Prison watching the train roll by. Elvis was a lot of things, but even with the karate and the gunplay, he was more unstable than badass.”
“But you’re forgetting one thing,” Gabriel had said, motioning for the bartender to bring me another cup of coffee.
I’d sipped the coffee and added far too much cream and sugar. “What’s that?”
“Johnny Cash had June Carter.”
I had smiled. “Good point.”
“The love of a good woman can save a man,” I remembered Gabriel saying. “Or it can drive him to fits of unspeakable madness.”
I had stared at him a long moment before bursting out laughing. “Well, now I know how to inscribe my next Valentine’s Day card.”
Gabriel didn’t seem accustomed to a woman laughing at him. It had taken him a few seconds, but then he was laughing, too. Gabriel was a rare find. He was nothing like the men my age who lived in the Hollow. For one thing, he seemed to realize that wearing a baseball cap was not a substitute for combing one’s hair. He seemed to enjoy the contents of my brain, instead of looking at it as something that had to be canceled out by the contents of my bra. And I don’t think he’d even heard of NASCAR.
“How did we even get on this subject?” I’d asked, squinting at him.
“I honestly don’t know,” he had said, sipping his drink. “I asked you about your family’s church background, you went on a tangent about having to sit through the annual All-Gospel Sing and ‘Karen Newton’s atonal warbling.’ Gospel led to Elvis, Elvis led to Johnny Cash. I don’t think I’ve ever absorbed so much random trivia in one sitting. I do enjoy watching your mind work, though. I can practically see all the little cogs and wheels clicking into place. Tell me more. My knowledge of contemporary music is somewhat limited.”
“Contemporary?” I’d laughed. “We’re talking about rockabilly music from the 1950s.”
Gabriel had raised his hands defensively. “Well, I haven’t bought an album in a while.”
Looking back, I really should have picked up on that as a clue that I was dealing with a vampire. But I’d been too pleased with ebb and flow of the conversation to pay attention, one subject leading to another and another in lazy concentric circles like smoke rings over our heads.
The memory was like reliving a pleasant dream, one that leaves you disappointed when you wake up and realize it wasn’t real. Only Gabriel was real, and it seemed I could pick this dream up again if I wanted. Now I touched Gabriel’s shoulder and tried to speak as carefully as possible. “Look, I’m really grateful that you saved my life. I know what would have happened if you hadn’t intervened. It’s just I’ve had so much to absorb. And I didn’t adjust to change gracefully while I was living.”
He was quiet again, studying me intently, looking for rhyme or reason in a brain where I was sure he’d find little of either. I looked away, brushing at the bloodstains at the corners of my mouth with a tissue.
“So, you’re inexperienced,” Gabriel said, more of a statement than a question.
“Yes, I thought we just covered this.”
Gabriel would not be swayed from his line of questioning. “How?”
I blushed, a rush of Gabriel’s blood coming to my cheeks. “That’s none of your business.”
“I only ask because vampires with even the slightest hint of innocence are rare these days. For that matter, humans with the slightest hint of innocence are rare these days. It’s rather refreshing.”
“Why don’t you just put a big red stamp on my forehead?” I grumbled.
“Given your literary proclivities, why not a red letter sewn on your clothing?” he asked, his lips quirked.
I frowned at him. “I think it’s time for you to go.”
“I think I should stay and look after you,” he said. “Your first few days can be a difficult transition. Your senses, your feedings—”
“It’s already been a difficult transition.” Besides, I wondered, where was Gabriel going to stay? Where would he sleep? Where would I sleep? Where would I get blood? Who would pry Zeb off my couch? “I just need some time to myself. I promise to send up the bat signal if I need you.”
“After spending more time with your kind, you will realize that remark was in very poor taste,” he said, rising. “I’ll take your friend home.”
I used some super-speed of my own to block Gabriel’s path to the couch. “Wait, you can’t just take him. I mean, how do I know you’re not going to snack on him on the way home?”
“I give you my word,” he said, looking wounded again. He was awfully sensitive for someone who’d lived off the blood of the innocent for more than a century.
“But what, specifically, will you do?” I demanded. “You’re not going to leave him in a ditch or anything, are you? You don’t even know where he lives.”
“I’ve lived through two world wars and the disco era. I think I can manage.” I must have appeared unimpressed. He sighed. “I will look at his driver’s license and take him home. I will use his keys to take him into his house. He will remember that you are a vampire, but he will have no memory of your attacking him.”
“You can just wipe his memory?” I asked. “Can I do that? Because I’d kind of like to get my uncle Dave to stop telling the story about me flashing my panties at his wedding reception.”
Gabriel stared at me.
“I was three,” I explained. “Pink panties were a big deal.”
He snorted, an intriguing and undignified noise. “Yes, you might develop the talent. And you may be able to replace those memories with new ones of your own design. It’s a handy trick when one needs humans to forget how they sustained neck punctures. Every vampire has different abilities, talents. Just as every human cannot carry a tune…” He trailed off as he read my horrified expression. He rolled his eyes, exasperated. “I’ll give him a good memory, with sports victories and beer drinking.”
“Thank you,” I said, wondering how my Zeb, my sweet, Doctor Who-watching Zeb, would react to memories of touchdowns and Budweiser.
“I will see you soon,” Gabriel said, taking a step closer to me. I stepped back. He let a frisson of disappointment pass over his features and hefted Zeb off the couch.
“Wait, I thought you had to be invited before you could go into someone’s house,” I said as Gabriel moved effortlessly to the door.
He shifted, jiggling Zeb. “It’s a common misconception. And under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t. It’s just rude.”
I closed the front door behind Gabriel and locked it. Then I unlocked it. What the hell could an intruder do to me, really? Then again, I didn’t want some Buffy wannabe sneaking into my house and staking me. So I turned the lock again. Irritated with myself, I sank to the floor and scrubbed my hand over my face. “Three days ago, I was a law-abiding librarian. I had a dental plan and baking soda in my fridge. Now I’m unemployed, undead, and apparently kind of skanky.”
“Rough day, pumpkin?”
“Yeah,” I said, pressing the heels of my hands over my eyes to ward off a gathering headache.
My great-aunt Jettie appeared at my left and pushed my hair back from my face. “Don’t worry, honey, things will work out. They always do.”
“Yeah.” I said, willing myself not to cry. Vampires, surely, didn’t blubber like little girls.
Aunt Jettie patted my head fondly. “There’s my girl.” I smiled up at her through watery eyes.
Wait. My great-aunt was dead. The permanent kind of dead.
“Aunt Jettie?” I yelped, sitting up and whacking my head against the wall behind me.
Note to self: Try to stop reacting to surprises like a cartoon character.
“Hey, baby doll,” my recently deceased great-aunt murmured, patting me on the leg—or, at least, through my leg. My first skin-to-ectoplasm contact with the noncorporeal dead was an uncomfortable, cold-water sensation that jolted my nerves. Blargh. I shuddered as subtly as possible so as not to offend my favorite deceased relative.
Aunt Jettie looked great, vaguely transparent but great. Her luxuriant salt-and-pepper hair was twisted into its usual long braid over one shoulder. She was wearing her favorite UK T-shirt that read, “I Bleed Blue.” The sentiment was horribly appropriate, all things considered. It also happened to be the shirt she died in, struck by a massive coronary while fixing a flat on her ten-speed. She looked nothing like the last time I saw her, all primped up in one of my grandmother’s castoff suits and a rhinestone brooch the size of a Buick.
Jettie Belle Early died at age eighty-one, still mowing her own lawn, making her own apple wine, and able to rattle off the stats for every starting Wildcats basketball player since 1975. She took me under her wing around age six, when her sister, my grandma Ruthie, took me to my first Junior League Tiny Tea and then washed her hands of me. There was a regrettable incident with sugar-cube tongs. Grandma Ruthie and I came to an understanding on the drive home from that tea—the understanding that we would never understand each other.
Grandma Ruthie and her sister Jettie hadn’t spoken a civil word in about fifteen years. Their last exchange was Ruthie’s leaning over Jettie’s coffin and whispering, “If you’d married and had children, there would be more people at your funeral.” Of course, at the reading of Aunt Jettie’s will, Grandma Ruthie was handed an envelope containing a carefully folded high-resolution picture of a baboon’s butt. That pretty much summed up their relationship.
Aunt Jettie, who never saw the point in getting married, was all too happy to have me for entire summers at River Oaks. We’d spend all day fishing in the stagnant little pasture pond if we felt like it, or I’d read as she puttered around her garden. (It was better if I didn’t help. I have what’s known as a black thumb.) We ate s’mores for dinner if we wanted them. Or we’d spend evenings going through the attic, searching for treasures among the camphor-scented trunks of clothes and broken furniture.
Don’t get the wrong idea. My family isn’t rich, just able to hold on to real estate for an incredibly long time.
While Daddy took care of my classical education, Jettie introduced me to Matilda, Nancy Drew, and Little Men. (Little Women irritated me. I just wanted to punch Amy in the face.) Jettie took me to museums, UK basketball games, overnight camping trips. Jettie was included in every major event in my life. Jettie was the one who undid some of the damage from my mother’s “birds and bees” talk, entitled “Nice Girls Don’t Do That. Ever.” She helped me move into my first apartment. Anyone can show up for stuff like graduations and birthdays. Only the people who truly love you will help you move.
Despite her age and affection for fried food, I was knocked flat by Jettie’s death. It was months before I could move her hairbrush and Oil of Olay from the bathroom. Months before I could admit that as the owner of River Oaks, I should probably move out of my little bedroom with the peppermint-striped wallpaper and into the master suite. So, seeing her, crouching next to me, with that “Tell me your troubles” expression was enough to push me over the mental-health borderline.
“Oh, good, it’s psychotic-delusion time,” I moaned.
Jettie chuckled. “I’m not delusion, Jane, I’m a ghost.”
I squinted as she became less translucent. “I would say that’s impossible. But given my evening, why don’t you explain it to me in very small words?”
It was good to see that Jettie’s deeply etched laugh lines could not be defeated by death. “I’m a ghost, a spirit, a phantom, a noncorporeal entity. I’ve been hanging around here since the funeral.”
“So you’ve seen everything?”
She nodded.
I stared at her, considering. “So you know about my disastrous fourteen-minute first date with Jason Brandt.”
She looked irritated as she said, “’Fraid so.”
“That’s…unfortunate.” I blinked as my eyes flushed hot and moist. “I can’t believe I’m actually sitting here talking to you. I’ve really missed you, Aunt Jettie. I didn’t get to say good-bye before you…It was over so fast. I went to the hospital, and you were gone, and then Grandma Ruthie started talking about moving all of your stuff out of the house. I felt so lost, and everybody just seemed to be talking over me—Mama and Grandma Ruthie, they just acted as if my opinion didn’t matter, even though I was the closest to you. And then the will was read, and Grandma Ruthie just lost her mind in the middle of the lawyer’s office and told me I had no right to the house, and it wasn’t supposed to go to me, and she was going to contest the will as invalid because you were obviously mentally incompetent. And I didn’t care about any of it, because none of it was going to bring you back—”
“Honey.” Aunt Jettie chuckled. “Take a breath.”
“I don’t need to anymore!” I cried.
In my years with Aunt Jettie, I’d learned to recognize her “trying not to laugh” face. She wasn’t even making an attempt at it. She was just rolling around on the ground, braying like a hyena.
“It’s not funny!” I cried, swatting through her insubstantial form.
Jettie continued to cackle while I pouted.
“It’s a little bit funny,” I admitted. “Dang it. Change of subject. Did you get to see your whole life played over instrumental soft rock before you died? What about your funeral? I didn’t get one, because no one knows I’m dead. But did you get to see your funeral?”
“Yeah.” Jettie grinned. “Great turnout. Shame about the suit, though. Couldn’t talk your grandma out of it, huh?”
I shrugged. “She wanted to send you to your grave with some semblance of decorum, or so she said.”
“I looked like Barbara Bush in drag,” Jettie snorted.
“Barbara Bush is dignified no matter what,” I offered. “Hey, if you’ve been here all along, why can I see you now?”
“Because I wanted you to see me.” Jettie seemed pained, brushing her icy fingers along my cheeks. “And because you’re different. Your senses have changed. You’re more open to what’s beyond the senses of normal, living people. I don’t know whether to be happy that you can see me or sad about what’s happened to you, sugar pie.”
I groaned. “See, now I know it’s bad, because the last time you called me sugar pie was right before telling me my turtle died.”
Awkward pause.
“So, what’s it like being dead?” I asked.
“What’s it like for you?” she countered.
I sighed, even though I didn’t have to, technically. “Unsettling.”
“Good word.” She nodded.
“What do you do? I mean, is there some sort of unfinished business I need to help you complete in order to move on to the next plane?”
Her voice rose to a Vincent Price octave. “Yes, I’m wandering the earth, seeking revenge on Ben and Jerry for giving me the fat ass and massive coronary. And I give out love advice to the tragically lonely.”
“Is that an ironic eternal punishment for the lady who died an eighty-one-year-old spinster?” I grinned.
“Single by choice, you twerp.”
“Banshee,” I shot back.
“Bloodsucker.”
I leaned my head against her insubstantial shoulder. “I missed you, a lot. Did I mention that?”
“A time or two,” she said. “I missed you like crazy, too. Even though I saw you every day, not being able to talk to you was just horrible. That’s part of the reason I just couldn’t let go. I wanted to keep an eye on you.”
“Well, good job, Aunt Jettie.” I rolled my eyes. “I lost my car keys three times last week, and I got turned into a vampire.”
“I know, as a guardian angel I leave much to be desired,” she said. “But if it makes you feel any better, the car keys were my doing.”
“You hid my car keys?”
“Had to amuse myself somehow,” Jettie said, her eyes twinkling with ghostly mischief. “I may be dead, but I’m still me.”
“Remind me to have that stitched on a sampler,” I muttered. “Though this certainly explains the vaguely obscene limericks composed with my refrigerator poetry magnets.”
Jettie shrugged but seemed pleased to have been noticed. I looked out the window and saw the pink streaks of dawn curling into the clouds. I felt my strength leeching from my bones. I was so tired even yawning seemed like a heroic effort. I couldn’t think about how I was going to explain my three-day disappearance to my parents or that I may have started a badly fated relationship with a guy who regularly bites people. I couldn’t think about the fact that I couldn’t die or get a tan anymore. All I wanted was sleep.
I climbed the stairs, drew the shades tight, and then threw a thick quilt over the curtain rod. I dropped into bed and felt Jettie’s clammy hands brush my face as she pulled the quilts up to my chin. In a few minutes, I was, to use a bad pun, dead to the world.