Even if he does dress like Bela Lugosi.
At home I’ve come to love him like my own obnoxious little brother. On occasion I even helped make a protest sign or two for the organization Vlad championed, the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement. It was a group of like-minded vampires who protested the sparkly, soft-fanged portrayals of vampires in the media, and incited all of the organization’s adherents to bring the modern vampire back to the glory days of graveyard dirt and frilly ascots. They were wholly against vampire/demon mixing and sought to restore ultimate power back to the vampire. Adherents were expected to dress in the classic garb (more Nosferatu, less Edward Cullen) and do vampy things like brood and pace. While their up-with-fangs agenda might sound fearsome, the whole movement was basically the equivalent of an orthodontically gifted group of Dungeons & Dragons players.
And I was having a hard time getting used to Dungeon Master Count Chocula facilitating my yearly reviews.
“Nice weather we’re having, huh?” I said with a wide, eager grin.
Vlad quirked an eyebrow. “I prefer the fog.”
“Fog’s nice, too. Anyway—” I stepped back and poked at my wrist. “Time is money and my boss is a slave driver. Heh.” Before Vlad had the opportunity to break into my babble, I was in my office, seated at my desk, my heart doing a spastic patter. I grabbed a felt-tipped marker and scrawled the word VACATION-slash-HEART ATTACK over the entire next month in my calendar. Some days working with a Small World collection of the mythical, mystical, and undead is a wonderful, stimulating experience. Sometimes it’s a huge pain in the ass.
I was eventually able to calm myself down with three cups of Splenda-laced herbal tea and one and a half apple fritters, but every time someone passed by my office door or my phone rang, I was challenging my kegel muscles and trying to keep my heart from exploding through my chest. I hunkered down at my desk, and smiled at my clients, doing my best to avoid letting on that I knew anything more than anyone else in the world—like that the hunted, haunted, and left-for-dead werewolf Pete Sampson was currently at my house, stretched out on my hand-me-down chintz couch.
But every time a client cocked his head at me, or looked at me with a questioning eye (or three), I found myself doused in paranoia and re-convinced that someone was reading my mind, or was monitoring my spastic heartbeat, or had found out in some other way that I was hiding one hell of a hairy secret.
Even when I wasn’t saying anything, I couldn’t help but feel like my lies exuded out of my every pore. So when I ran into Lorraine in the bathroom, I tried my best to seem nonchalant and unaffected.
“Hey, Soph,” she said, strolling in.
I forced myself to smile, and the image reflected in the bank of mirrors was me, grinning like an idiot. “Hi, Lorraine. How are things? What are you doing? Is everything good?”
Some people have tells when they lie—tiny eye twitches, averted eyes, a blank expression. I went for babbling idiot.
“Nothing’s going on with me. Just washing my hands.”
Lorraine nodded slowly, her amber-colored eyes studying me. “Are you okay?”
My mind raced and I forced myself to clear it—or to focus on something banal. The last four episodes of Lost flashed in my mind.
Among Lorraine’s many talents—general witchcraft, home Tupperware saleslady of the month (although I don’t think it’s entirely kosher to threaten to turn non-buyers into squid), and finance—was also mind dipping. It was an art that not many witches were able to master—Kale, Lorraine’s protégé, was still trying, though I think her issue is the mind she most often tried to dip into was focused wholly on video games and vampire porn (Vlad—the flowers, remember?). Theoretically, her mind dipping can’t be used on me. Besides being the breathing, blood-filled darling of the Underworld Detection Agency’s Fallen Angel Division and one hundred percent magic free, I am also impervious to other people’s magic. Theoretically. Or . . . generally.
I may have the preternatural ability to walk amongst the demon Underworld, to easily see through the veil that keeps the breather population blissfully unaware of the demon one, and to recite all fifty states in alphabetical order, but the one thing I didn’t have, was grace.
So when Lorraine cocked her head, her eyes unfocused and unblinking, a zing of heat ran up my spine and bloomed red in my cheeks. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
I kicked open the nearest stall door and dry heaved, staring at the toilet water through misty eyes.
“Oh,” I heard Lorraine say, “Sophie, I’m so sorry.”