Accidental Sire (Half-Moon Hollow #6)

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” Dick said, and didn’t add any sort of funny quip or defensive joke. That meant this was serious.

“I’ve never been so happy to see Jane tackle people in our yard,” Gabriel said. “Which happens more than you would think.”

I laughed as Gabriel stroked an easy hand over my hair.

“From now on, you’re both wearing tracking chips. I don’t care if we have to implant them under your skin,” a tiny female voice said from somewhere near my waist. I looked down to find Georgie’s arms wrapped around me.

“You’re going to microchip me, like Fitz?” I asked her, even as I heard Jane growling into her phone inside the house.

“Yes, I am,” Georgie told me.

“This is becoming awkward, isn’t it?” Gabriel asked.

“Yes, it is,” Ben said, and we all broke apart. Georgie dragged me through the front door, where I found everybody Jane knew huddled in the parlor. Their cell phones were all plugged into various chargers, as if they’d been making so many calls that they’d drained their batteries. Zeb was holding a stack of neon-green “Have You Seen These Vampires?” fliers featuring the photos Ben and I had used on our employee badges. So I looked especially tragic.

Iris and Sam’s girlfriend, Tess, appeared to be passing out mugs of blood to the vampires, while Cal stood in the corner cursing into his phone in . . . Greek, maybe? Andrea had a rolling whiteboard, the kind you would see on Law and Order, where someone had written “Potential B&M Locations” and listed “Lucky Clover Motel,” “Got lost in the Council office subfloors,” “Bus station,” and “Ben’s parents’ house.” Hell, Gigi was on her laptop, typing furiously as maps scrolled across her screen. Gigi’s cute Russian boyfriend, Nik, was pinning photos of various Council employees up on a wall marked “Suspects.”

At first, people froze when we walked through the door, and then they cheered, rushing forward as if they were going to hug us, too.

“I’m really grateful, but I’m kind of hugged out right now. Yipe!” Fitz bounded forward from the back of the house, pounced, and knocked me onto my back, pinning me to the floor by my chest and covering my face in doggy kisses. I took it for about a minute, because it was nice to know my favorite dog missed me, and then I stood, brushing off the slobber and sheddings with as much dignity as I could. “Thank you for putting together this missing-persons command center, though. I really appreciate it.”

“We’re sorry we put you through this,” Ben said. “If we could have called, we would have.”

“We found Meagan’s purse and both of your cell phones under the sink in the R and D subfloor’s break room,” Nik said. “We tried to follow your scent, but whoever moved you managed to cover your trail quite effectively. I heard Georgie’s suggestion of chipping you. Is not a bad idea.”

“Honey, no,” Gigi told him. From her body language, I could see that she wanted to walk over to us, but she respected the “no hug” boundary, which I appreciated. “We do not chip our friends. Because . . . of privacy? Wait, why don’t we chip our friends again? It would save a lot of time.”

“It really would,” Jane said, nodding. “I mean, Libby and Wade put about two hundred miles on her minivan driving circles around the county, trying to use her ‘mothering instincts’ to track you down. That kind of mileage adds up.”

“You will not chip us,” Ben told her sternly. “We are not badly behaved cocker spaniels.”

“I’ve got something special cooked up for you,” Tess promised, bustling into the kitchen. “Twice the iron, none of the aftertaste.”

I wanted to respond, but the sheer volume of people and activity in the room finally struck me. All of these people had come to look for us. I mean, sure, I’d had some nice conversations with some of them. They were all very kind. Libby was clearly awesome. But I would never have expected them to put themselves out for me like this, to drop everything they were doing to look for me, just in case I was in trouble. I didn’t feel connected to them like that. But how much of that was my own reluctance? And they weren’t just here for Ben; they seemed just as pleased to see me as they were to see someone they’d known for years. These were good people. I needed to stop shutting them out. But I couldn’t express any of that, because a lump the size of a small boulder was lodged in my throat.

“The Lucky Clover?” I asked Andrea. “That place across town with the creepy half-filled pool? Really?”

“Things happen there,” Andrea said with a shrug. “Tacky things. Naked tacky things.”

“Speaking of which,” Georgie piped up. “You two reek of—”

I clamped a hand over her mouth. “Manure. We reek of manure, you know, from the field.”

Ben nodded. “Uh-huh. We slept in a field. Lots of fertilizer.”

“I’m going to go shower,” I said, hand still firmly clamped over Georgie’s mouth. It was a good thing she didn’t have to breathe.

“Me, too,” Ben announced as I jogged up the stairs. “I mean, not at the same time as Meagan. I’ll wait until she’s done. Not out in the hallway or anything. I’ll give her space while she’s naked. Like normal.”

I stopped on the steps, out of view of the others, and mouthed, What are you doing?

Ben threw up his hands and grimaced. I shook my head and hustled up to the second floor.

“I’m just going to go upstairs now,” Ben said.

“What is wrong with you?” I hissed as he reached the second landing.

“I don’t know! I panicked!”

“I am in charge of all emergency postsex moments from now on.”

“Agreed.”





12




Holidays are a volatile time for new vampires. They will miss their biological families and their traditions. Try focusing on the things they won’t have to put up with anymore—gravy-pushing aunties, “whose pie is better” debates, holiday weight gain.

—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire

Dr. Hudson was taken into Council custody with very little effort from Jane. He hadn’t tried to hide, even after he arrived in the field and found his murder box empty. He just went back to his lab and continued working. Like, Oh, well, my attempts to incinerate the not-quite-interns failed. Guess I should find some other way to be super-creepy and cheerful.