Accidental Sire (Half-Moon Hollow #6)

“Gross. Your job is even more boring than mine.”

“That’s the glamorous life of the vampire.” I sighed. “So what’s going on with you? I feel like we haven’t talked much lately. And most of our conversations have boiled down to ‘Miss you so much . . . ah, I don’t know what to talk about with you now because our lives are so separate.’?”

“It’s not that exciting around here—tests, classes, the usual. Nothing compared to dramatic death and vampire transformation scenes.”

“So gimme the campus gossip not included in that care package. Which I did appreciate quite a bit, by the way.”

“Uh, some girl freaked out at the haunted house fund-raiser and punched Carson in the nuts when he jumped out in front of her.”

“Carson probably did something to deserve it,” I said, remembering the time the handsy junior cornered me in the research library and tried to charge me a “hug tax” to get out of the stacks. I ended up knocking several volumes of Shakespeare analysis onto his feet to get past him.

“Probably,” she reasoned. “Professor Greene walked out of a class in protest after some guy turned in a three-hundred-word PowerPoint presentation instead of the twenty-page research paper he was supposed to do. Oh, and you know that fire off campus? The fire department went through the rubble and found three bodies in the basement.”

“Oh, no! Were they kids from school?”

“Not sure yet. Morgan is super-involved in the story for the school newspaper, so I’m getting so many details that I am having nightmares. The medical examiners haven’t identified them. But the coroner told Joanie—you know, the hyper girl who covers the police blotter—that the bodies didn’t have any ash or soot in their lungs, so they probably died before the fire. But that’s not even the weird part. The bodies were chained to the wall! Like something out of some creepy Eli Roth movie.”

“Ugh, that’s awful.” I shuddered but straightened in my chair when I saw Jane and Dick coming down the hall. “And I know this is a terrible moment to hang up on you, because you’re clearly distressed that your roommate is sharing autopsy reports with you. But I have to go, because my boss is coming. I love you, buh-bye.”

I dropped the receiver onto the cradle.

“Hey, Jane!” I said, smiling an “I wasn’t just making a somewhat personal phone call on company time” smile. I handed her a stack of phone-message slips, which she accepted with a hesitant frown. “Hi, Dick.”

Dick grinned at me and ruffled my hair, because he seemed to see me as some sort of vampire niece who would put up with this. I scowled at him, but that was short-lived when his “An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away, But Only If You Have Good Aim” T-shirt made me laugh.

“Is that Ophelia’s progress report?” Jane asked, picking up the nuclear-red folder. She opened the file and scanned the papers inside.

“And this is where I bow out, because I’m not an impartial party when it comes to Ophelia.” Dick excused himself, kissing Jane’s cheek and ruffling my hair one more time before retreating to the break room.

“Yeah, do you remember an e-mail that Ophelia sent you a week or so before I was turned?”

Jane peered over the folder at me. “A profanity-filled rant where she told me it was none of my blanking business who she blanking had contact with when it wasn’t on the blanking campus that she rarely blanking left since I wouldn’t let her own a blanking car and if I had blanking questions I could blanking well call her myself? And then explicit instructions to go blank myself? And then, oddly, with the list of her contacts in the area attached?”

I read over the e-mail. “That sounds about right.”

“Yes, it was memorable. But I sent her back a response saying I had no clue what she was talking about. She didn’t reply, and I figured she was either embarrassed, which wasn’t likely, or had realized she was mistaken and had already moved on to the next person on her curse-out list.”

“And you didn’t punish her for being disrespectful to you?”

Jane waggled her hand. “Eh, considering Ophelia’s previous interactions, the ‘go blank yourself’ e-mail was actually pretty cordial.”

“Really?” I winced, mentally counting the number of creatively employed four-letter words. “So I’m assuming that this e-mail should be included in her rehab progress file?”

Jane nodded. “Yes, just mark it ‘Informational only, not for sentence consideration.’?”

I gave her a little salute. “That sounds vaguely official. Do you want to include some note about what led to the ranty e-mail?”

“I don’t know what led to the ranty e-mail.”

“But I remember her talking about it. She said you sent Tina an e-mail asking for a list of her known associates in the area around the college. She was . . . not pissed, really, I think she was kind of hurt that you would be suspicious when she was making every effort to behave well.”

Jane frowned. “I never sent Tina an e-mail like that.”

“If you didn’t ask her for the list of Ophelia’s contacts, who did?”

She shrugged. “It’s probably some shady business associate of Ophelia’s trying to make new Facebook friends or something. Just make a note in the file about your recollections of the situation.”

“Will do.”

“Oh, and speaking of shady friends, I noticed that you added another asterisk to the nope list?” Jane held up a sheaf of paper from my out-box. “And a note. Dr. Fortescue has a PhD in ‘babbling loony.’?”

“I stand by my statement,” I told her primly.

“I didn’t know you could get a degree in ‘babbling loony.’?”

“It’s one of those lesser-known majors,” I said. “Like French literature or pottery.”

“This guy will not stop.” She sighed even while she laughed. “He’s been calling me for months. And he doesn’t seem to get that I don’t have room in my schedule for every babbling loony who has something to sell us. He’s like a telemarketer who just won’t give up. And I say that as a former telemarketer who gave up very easily.” When I arched my brows, she shook her head. “Long story.”

“Well, you might want to let security know that he’s threatening to show up and wait for you in the parking lot so you’ll have to listen to him.”

Jane snorted. “Well, let him try. Parking-lot fisticuffs in this town tend to go badly for nonvampires.”

“How about I let the security office know that he’s planning on waiting for you in the parking lot?”

Jane smiled indulgently at me. “I’ll let them know. Trust me, I’ve learned not to take chances with these things.”

“Thank you. I feel better now.”

Jane put her hand on my shoulder. “No, thank you. You’re doing a really good job here, Meagan. My schedule has never been so well organized. Your e-mails are clear and concise, without overloading me with information. And you always remember to stock my office mini fridge with those single-serve packets of Hershey’s Blood Additive that I like so very much.”