. . . Where my boss, Oliver, fixed me with a long, cold glare that had probably been terrifying underlings for hundreds of years. Oliver = vampire, obviously, although he did a good job of putting on a human smile and seeming like Mr. Nice Hippie Dude when he thought it would get him something. He wasn’t bothering today, because the counter was slammed three deep with people desperate for their morning caff fix, and his other help, what’s-her-name, Jodi-with-an-i, hadn’t shown up yet. I held up my clipboard and put on my best innocent expression. “I was doing inventory,” I said. “We need more lids.”
He growled, and I could hear it even over the hissing brass monster of the espresso machine. “Get on the register,” he snapped, and I could tell he wasn’t buying the inventory excuse for a second. Well, it had been thin at best. I mouthed, Sorry, and hurried over to beam a smile at the next harassed person who wanted to fork over $4.50 for his mochachocalattefrappalicious, or whatever it was he’d ordered. We made things easy by charging one price for each size of drink. Funny how people never seemed to appreciate that time-saver. I worked fast, burning through the backlog of caffiends in record time, then moved to help Oliver build the drinks once the register was idle. He’d stopped growling, and from time to time actually gave me a nod of approval. This was, for Oliver, a little like arranging for a paid vacation and a dozen roses.
We’d gotten the morning rush out of the way, and were settling into the slow midmorning period, when a door in the back of the store opened, and a girl came strolling out. Now, that wasn’t so unusual—that door was the typical vampire entrance, for those who wanted to avoid the not-so-healthful effects of a stroll in the sun. But I’d never seen this particular vamp before. She was . . . interesting. Masses of curly blond hair that had that salon sheen you see in commercials, but which hardly exists in the wild; porcelain-pale skin (without the benefit of the rice powder I was using); big jade green eyes with spots of golden brown. She was wearing an Ed Hardy tee under a black leather jacket, all buckles and zippers. She looked pretty much like any other twentysomething in any town in the U.S., and maybe in a lot of the world. Shorter than most, maybe. She was five feet three, tops, but all kinds of curvy.
I took a cordial dislike to her, on principle, as she meandered her way toward the counter. Oliver, who’d been wiping down the bar, stopped in midmotion to watch her. That seemed to be a male thing, because I noticed pretty much the entire Y-chromosome population, including the table of gay boys, watching her, too. She didn’t seem that sexy to me, at least in an obvious kind of way, and she wasn’t vamping (no pun intended) it up . . . but she got attention, whether she was demanding it or not.
I wasn’t using to being the wallflower, and it kinda pissed me off.
Still, I forced a smile as I went to the register. “Hi,” I said, in my best professional welcome voice. “Can I help you?”
“I’ll take this,” Oliver said, and nudged me out of the way. He was smiling, which normally would be a bad sign, but this one went all the way to his eyes, and all of a sudden he didn’t look like a vampire who would kick your ass, ra-a-a-ar; he looked like . . . a guy. Just a guy, kind of handsome in a sharp sort of way, although too old for me for sure.
The girl smiled back at him, and wow. I mean, it knocked me back a step, and I was (a) not male and (b) not any kind of interested. “Oliver,” she said, and even her voice was cute and small and sweet, with some kind of lilting accent that made her sound exotic and mysterious. Well, for Morganville, Texas, but then, we find people from Dallas exotic and mysterious. “My dear friend, I haven’t seen you in dark ages.”
“Gloriana,” he said. “I feared the worst, you know. It’s cruel to keep us in suspense. Where were you?”
She shrugged and fiddled with the zippers on her jacket, looking coy as she shot him a look from beneath full, probably natural lashes. “After the last great war, I lost track of you, and the rest of our family,” she said. “Those I found were—not healthy. I managed to avoid contracting the disease, but I didn’t dare take the risk, so I stayed away.”
“Where?”
“Oh, you know. Here and there. Europe, Australia was quite nice; I migrated here when they were still traveling by ocean liner. Since then, I’ve been drifting. I was recently in Los Angeles, where I ran into Bobby Sansome—you remember him?—and he told me almost everyone who was anyone was here, in Morganville. He also said that he’d come here to get the cure. I thought perhaps it was safe.”
“It’s safe,” Oliver said. “But you’ll need to present yourself to the Founder. There are rules of behavior in this town, accords you’ll have to sign in order to stay. Understand?”
“Of course.” Her charming smile got even wider. “Oliver, my sweet, do you really doubt that I know the rules of hospitality and good behavior? I haven’t survived this long by preying indiscriminately on the livestock. . . . Oh.” Her sparkling eyes flicked to me, inviting me to share the joke. “Not including you, naturally. I meant no offense.”
“No?” I raised my eyebrows, and let her know the sweet face didn’t impress me. “That ’tude will get you in trouble around here.”