Accidental Sire (Half-Moon Hollow #6)

Just as I reached the kitchen door, Mrs. Overby asked, “So were you turned around the same time as Ben?”

I stopped. Did this mean Ben and Jane hadn’t told the Overbys how involved I’d been in their son’s transition? I looked to Ben, who had a completely neutral expression on his face.

“Um, yes, right before,” I said. “But we met before we were turned.”

“Well, that’s nice.” Mrs. Overby sniffled. “That he has someone he knows with him.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Overby. I know this has to be a shock, and then not being able to see him for so long . . .”

She interrupted me before I could confess. “We knew this was going to happen eventually. I mean, we weren’t hoping for it. We’re not particularly happy about it. But no one can spend that much time around vampires and not end up getting bitten somehow.”

Mrs. Overby was trying to put a happy face on it, but she still sounded a little bitter. It was going to take quite a bit of persuasion to recruit her to the Meagan fan club. Or just the “not stab Meagan through the heart with a wooden stake when no one is looking” club. I’d never met the parents of a boy I was dating—was “dating” the right word? How did you get your special man friend’s parents to like you? Were there Jezebel.com articles about this sort of thing? Maybe I should call Keagan. She was pretty stable, romantically speaking. I mean, I couldn’t ask Ophelia, because she had obviously failed at securing Jane’s affections.

Mr. Overby added, “We’re trying to focus on the positives. Ben will never get sick. He probably won’t die in some silly car accident or something. In some ways, it sets our minds at ease.”

“And in some ways, it’s awful,” Mrs. Overby confessed. “He’s never going to have kids, never going to be able to go out during the day.”

“But if it means that we can keep seeing Ben, we’re going to focus on the positives,” Mr. Overby said pointedly.

He glared at his wife, who stared back at him, and then she turned to me and smiled brightly before asking, “How long have you two been seeing each other?”

Oh, right, because Ben called me his girlfriend earlier. I had sort of blocked that out for a second.

My mouth dropped open, but I couldn’t seem to find an answer that didn’t make me sound like a son-turning, tobacco-field hussy. Ben also seemed hesitant to answer. And we were saved by the proverbial bell when Jane came out of the kitchen in a beeline for the front door and locked it, punching the code for the scarier parts of the security system to come online. Huge outdoor lights shone from the trees onto the house just before large metal shutters slid over the windows. Several dead bolts clicked into place, and the front door made this shhhup sound as it hermetically sealed itself. Ben’s parents clutched at each other in alarm.

“Jane, what’s going on?” Ben asked. “Are we at war or something?”

Jane’s mouth was set in an angry line. “Dr. Hudson has escaped Council custody.”





13




It is possible to be overprotective of your vampire offspring. If your childe disappears suddenly or starts threatening you with silver spray when you go in for a hug, it’s time to loosen the reins a bit.

—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire

It took logical thinking, Gabriel, and an enormous bottle of what Dick called vampire Prozac to talk Jane into dialing the cancel code into the security system. For one thing, there were too many people in the house to maintain our “panic room” state. Danny had school on Monday. Also, Jolene had some pretty serious Black Friday plans, and given her werewolf strength, I was pretty sure she could kick the metal window shades out if she wanted.

Ben’s parents were freaking out and started to demand that Ben go home with them immediately. Gabriel ended up doing something to their memories, using his special vampire talent, to keep them from remembering the whole systematic lockdown thing. Instead, they would recall a perfectly lovely evening with their well-adjusted vampire son, before suddenly developing the urge to visit some relatives in Florida. And by relatives, he meant Council-approved security agents who would be able to protect them if Dr. Hudson showed up. Gabriel’s power frightened me, and I hoped it didn’t work on other vampires.

Dr. Hudson had managed to escape from his cell using a stolen ID badge, a tiny bit of plastic explosive tucked inside his shoe, and a spork. We weren’t sure how the spork came into play. The UERT was still looking into that. Jane drove us to the office for safekeeping, and we were followed by the entire convoy of vampires, because Gigi insisted she would be able to crack open the security system and make it her digital bitch. Cal and Nik thought they could Sherlock Holmes some clues out of the polka torture cell using their special vampire gifts. Ophelia seemed to think she knew the building better than anyone else and could see some minute evidence that we wouldn’t. And Georgie, Dick, and Gabriel just didn’t want to be left out.

I was starting to wonder why everybody got special vampire talents but me, and then I figured not being set on fire by the sun was probably talent enough.

When Jane reviewed the security feed, the footage of the hallway outside Dr. Hudson’s cell skipped ever so slightly at around ten P.M. While this seemed like a fairly innocuous thing to me, Gigi and Ben noticed that after the skip, a paper pinned to the bulletin board moved in the draft from the air-conditioning in exactly the same way every three minutes. Someone had looped the video with a blank section of footage after ten P.M., so we wouldn’t be able to see who approached Dr. Hudson’s cell door or in which direction they ran. The parking-lot feed showed a laundry cart being wheeled out to a van labeled “Markham Linen Services” at 10:07. The man pushing the cart wore a baseball cap pulled down over his face. He jumped into the driver’s seat and peeled the van out of the parking lot at 10:08. The problem was that the Council didn’t use a linen service.

When Gigi and Ben had failed to track who had logged into the security system to loop the video feed, Jane put her hands on the conference-room table, where our laptops, notebooks, and security logins were spread around messily. “OK, so you two are going to be locked down in the containment unit until further notice, for safety and so I can sleep during the day.”

“The containment unit that Dr. Hudson was kept in to punish him for torturing us?” Ben asked.

“The containment unit that someone managed to sneak into, diddle with the security videos, and then bust him out of?” I added. “That doesn’t seem kind of ass-backward to you?”

Jane thunked her head on the table. “You’re right. It’s counterintuitive. Also, the tech guys haven’t been able to stop the polka loop, so it would probably drive you insane.”

“This might be a bad time to note that the security system was accessed internally, so whoever broke Dr. Hudson out probably had help from someone who works for the Council,” Ben said.