“I can’t avoid her forever. It’s too small a town.”
He couldn’t argue with that, and didn’t try. “That doesn’t mean you have to go to her welcome party. And if you want, I’ll dress up and take you out somewhere nice.”
“Nice being a relative term around here,” I said, but secretly, the idea that he was willing to put on a suit and take me to the all-night diner made me smile. “Thanks, sweetie. But maybe I should just suck it up and go. What could happen?”
“Oh, plenty,” he said cheerfully enough. And he was right. The two of us had rarely been to a party that hadn’t ended in some kind of disaster, whether it was the senior prom, where Chuck (aptly named) Joris had vomited in the punch bowl, or the EEK fraternity party, which had ended in a vampire attack. And let’s not even mention Mr. Evil Vampire Bishop’s big welcome party, which had been a truckload of trouble.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, and glared at the clothes tumbling on high heat. “I’ll play nice as long as she does.”
I turned around. Michael had come down the stairs and crossed the distance between us, noiseless as the air, and I melted into his arms with a sense of real relief.
He kissed the top of my head. “That’s my lady.”
I really hoped he meant that.
? ? ?
I woke up the next day expecting—oh, I don’t know, doom, disaster, and apocalypse; weirder things had happened in this town. But things seemed normal enough, even after I left the house and headed off to the day job. The one not-so-great thing that happened was that when I got to Common Grounds, guess who was there.
Gloriana. Deep in conversation with about a half-dozen admirers. She’d picked one of the tables in the darker section of the room, far away from the blazing sunlight, and at first I thought all her new groupies were vamps, but no, some of them were definitely still rocking a pulse. A couple of them were college boys, complete with the ubiquitous backpacks. I was pretty sure one of them was Monica Morrell’s future ex-boyfriend, what’s-his-name, the football player. Oooh, the fur would fly if Monica dropped in and saw her current squeeze crushing on the New Girl.
I was kind of hoping for that, but no such luck. Gloriana hung out for hours, laughing and talking, ordering regular rounds of whatever.
When she finally left, I saw Oliver watching her with a troubled look on his face. “Boss?” I asked. “Something wrong?”
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so. Not yet, at any rate.”
No matter how much extra effort I put into customer service, he wouldn’t elaborate, and that bothered me because (a) Oliver was pretty free with his criticisms for the most part, and (b) it wasn’t like him to look worried. Ever.
No apocalypse had been declared by the end of my shift, though.
I supposed that qualified as a win.
? ? ?
Gloriana’s party was fabulous, from the raised-ink invitations on paper so soft and thick it felt like skin (but wasn’t, thankfully) to the uniformed vampire doormen on duty at the party building, to the china and crystal and candles on the round banquet tables inside. The vampires had turned out in force; I guess they didn’t get much chance to party like it was 1499, either. I was wearing a slinky black velvet dress, with a train that trailed behind me like a fan. It was cut low in the back to show off the rose tattoo I had there, and although I didn’t have any really good jewelry, I’d bummed some pretty good costume stuff off people I knew. I looked fab.
Although in the company of vampires, I looked like . . . lunch. But if there was one thing I knew about Morganville, it was that your risk of being lunch was pretty much the same whether you were dressed like a movie star or dressed like a bag lady. Better to go out in style, if you had to go.
For all that, if Michael hadn’t been on my arm, the looks I got coming into the ballroom might have made me turn around and run.
Luckily, Michael stayed steady and whispered, “Easy. They’re not going to hurt us.” It was the us that did it—the fact that we were a unit, and he didn’t even try to think about it any other way. I took a deep breath, put on a brave smile, and raised my chin. That put my veins on display, but whatever.
Michael was wearing a nice black suit and a tie that wasn’t quite conventional, in this crowd, but he didn’t give a damn. Anyway, it was a music tie. They could munch ass if they didn’t approve.