Accidental Sire (Half-Moon Hollow #6)

I probably would have appreciated living in New Dawn more if I’d known how much that little social experiment was costing our undead taxpayers. Did we really have that many vampire students living in New Dawn?

I flipped through the pages, using my superhuman speed-reading. The numbers just didn’t seem right. There were eight student residence floors in the building and forty to fifty kids a floor, dead and undead, depending on the number of students who demanded a single room. But the reports listed services rendered to more than 235 vampires. That would only be possible if two-thirds of the building was occupied by vampire students. And trust me, as someone who walked around that noisy lobby during daylight hours, that was not possible.

But since I was not a math major, I wasn’t sure I was qualified to analyze Council spending. Also, as far as I knew, this was some creative attempt to cover the Council’s illicit spending on defense projects and Doomsday Preppers blood storage. And I definitely didn’t want to interfere with that. So I put those files in the scary red financial pile and forgot I’d ever read them.





6




It’s important to document your childe’s milestones. But make sure you know the difference between “memorabilia” and “evidence.”

—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire

It was Friday night, and I was doing homework. This was a truly embarrassing moment in my social history.

Jane had actually left Ben and me alone in the house unchaperoned so she and Gabriel could run some errands. It felt like a test of her trust in us, like she and Ben would both fail if he ended up running home to his parents. There was very little pressure on me. I could only fail if I ordered up pay-per-view porn and imported blood by delivery.

I didn’t know if I’d have the energy to go out if I had anywhere to go. I’d spent the last three days obliterating Jane’s filing backlog and learning to lie through my teeth regarding her whereabouts. I’d gotten to know Sammy a little better and some of the nicer people in the accounting department. I avoided Gigi, Ben, and the IT department like they were carriers of the actual plague, which was difficult, since Gigi turned out to be even nicer than I’d first thought and frequently stopped by my desk to see if I needed anything.

And so, emotionally and physically drained, I was sitting at the kitchen table, working on a lit assignment, when Ben walked in and, upon seeing me, stopped as if he was considering turning back around and skipping breakfast. Whatever he was thinking, he ended up sighing and walking to the fridge to pour himself a mug of A negative.

He sat across the table from me, pointedly not making eye contact as he took a deep sniff of his breakfast. I rolled my eyes and continued typing. Because it was super-easy to create concise, thoughtful analyses of the great works of literature when there was a boy pointedly ignoring you right behind your laptop screen.

I had typed a grand total of four words when I finally slapped the computer shut and said, “So, are you going to just ignore me forever, or . . .”

“I’m not ignoring you,” he insisted.

“Are you aware of the definition of ‘ignoring’? Because I’m pretty sure that on dictionary-dot-com there’s a little picture of your face next to the term.”

“Funny,” he muttered.

“And in that picture, you’re making that judgy face,” I added.

He sighed.

“Just the cat-butt face of righteousness, all in this area,” I said, waving at his head.

“Is there a clinical term for what’s wrong with you?” he asked.

I shot back, “Is there a clinical term for permanent cat-butt face?”

He grinned, though I could tell that he didn’t want to. “Cat-butt face of righteousness?”

“Trademark pending.”

He sighed. “I know I’ve been a bit of a douche to you over the last few weeks.”

I scoffed. “A bit? You passed ‘a bit’ a while ago.”

“I’m sorry. I know. I know it’s been hard on you, adjusting to all of this, and I’ve made it harder. But it’s hard enough, the idea that I’m dead and this is my life now.”

“That sentence makes no sense.”

“I’m aware. This is my life now,” he continued. “And everything I hoped for, every plan I had, it’s all gone. Through no fault of my own. It’s like finding out you have a terminal disease, only the disease makes you live forever, while cutting you off from the world for most of the day. And there’s no cure, no treatment, no end in sight. Add to that, we’re some sort of weird new species of vampires that no one has ever seen. We’re freaks in a society that’s already pretty damn freaky. We’re the only two people in the world—as far as we know—who are like this. So we could be stuck together for the rest of our lives because the Council could decide that we’re too dangerous to let out into the world and put us in an underground cell together and throw away the key. Or they could just decide to stake us and be done with it. And you did this to me! You may not have meant to, but that doesn’t change the fact that you did. So pardon the hell out of me for resenting you just a little bit.”

“Has it occurred to you that I’m in the exact same situation?” I yelled back. “That all of my plans and goals just got shot to hell, too? I have no idea what I’m going to do with the rest of my eternal life. I don’t even have a nice family to fall back on when times get rough. I have exactly two, maybe three people in the world I can trust, and I wouldn’t want to put the burden of dealing with all of this newborn-vampire crap on them.”

“No, I guess it didn’t,” Ben murmured. “I’ve been a little wrapped up in myself.”

“A little?” I growled.

“OK, I said I was a douche. I’m sorry.”

I sighed and covered my face with my hands. This was getting us nowhere. “So what did you give up?” I asked. “Those plans of yours. What did you give up because of the vampire thing? Kids? A girlfriend? A career as a tanning model?”

“Tanning model? No. I don’t look good in orange,” he said. “Mine are a pasty people.”

I snorted, and he continued. “Job plans? Yeah. After graduation, I was supposed to move to California to work at a start-up that just took off. It’s an app that combines all social media into one stream, so instead of posting a photo to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram, you go to the app, which contains all of your accounts, make one post, and you’re done. It’s a great idea but a programming nightmare, so they need someone like me.”

“California . . . where it’s really sunny, most of the time,” I said, grimacing.

“Yeah, but vampires live in California, so it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. I just hope I can graduate on time. Get Jane’s approval to move, which, considering all of our ‘anomalies,’ seems unlikely.”