by Molly Harper
My mouth opened to say ‘yes, please!’ but then Jane’s cell phone jangled in her back pocket. She pulled it out, grinning at the screen. “Iris? What’s up?”
I could only hear a distressed jumble of words, muffled by Jane’s ear being pressed to the phone. Jane gasped. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I’ll come on by right now. No, it’s no trouble. Does Cal think I need to send the UERT guys? No, that’s not an overreaction! Okay, okay, I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
“Why would Iris need the Undead Emergency Response Team?” Dick demanded.
Jane blew out a long breath as she hung up. “Meadow, I’m going to need a bunch of that Calm Your Ass Down Blend to go. Iris will appreciate it.”
“What’s going on?” Andrea asked as Meadow started frantically looking through her box of teas.
“Somebody threw bricks through all of the windows at Cal and Iris’s place. Spray painted some nasty stuff on the porch. Threw bleach on her rose beds. She’s beside herself,” Jane said. “That was her parents’ house. You know how she feels about it. I’m going to head over there and talk to her with my Council hat on, take a report. Which means a meeting with the local sheriff, Lord help me.”
“I thought people had pretty much accepted vampires around here!” I exclaimed. “I haven’t seen any sort anti-vampire stuff since the first few years after the Coming Out.”
Except for the anti-vampire stuff my family said on occasion. But I didn’t think that would be a helpful contribution to the conversation right now.
Jane nodded. “That’s what Dick and I have been working toward during our whole tenure. We’ve worked to encourage vampires to pay taxes at unprecedented rates, recycle, participate in Neighborhood Watch programs, volunteer. Hell, Libby’s an officer in the PTA, now. People are comfortable with us being here. Why would that suddenly change?”
I thought about my parents, and the way they muttered angrily under their breath any time they saw positive vampire news on TV. But I didn’t think it was a good idea to bring that up here and now.
“I thought Cal and Iris had all those fancy security systems,” Dick mused.
“She said it must have happened just after dark. They only keep the steel shutters down during the day,” Jane said as Meadow handed her a package containing a lot of dried tea. “They woke up at sundown. Everything was normal. Cal went into his home office. Iris was down in the basement, something about seedlings and grow lights. She was talking super-fast and it was about gardening, and you know I don’t do well with that particular subject. Anyway, they’re settling into their day and bam, broken glass and anti-vampire slurs painted on their porch.”
“Poor Iris,” Dick murmured. “How’s Cal handling it?”
“Also, beside himself,” Jane said as she grabbed her purse. “He’s talking about building some sort of secret underground lair to protect Iris. Again.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Dick said. “But if Cal is serious about the secret underground lair, I know a guy.”
Jane shot an alarmed look at Andrea, who said, “He hasn’t built one for us because I threatened to burn all of his t-shirts.”
“Of course, you know a guy,” Jane sighed. “And no, I will not encourage secret underground lair-building. Next thing you know, Gabriel will be shoving me into one, whenever he thinks I’m in danger.”
“Maybe stop being in danger so much,” Dick suggested.
“Stop saying ridiculous things,” Jane told him, kissing his cheek. “I’ll see y’all later.”
Jane dashed out the door, leaving us in her wake.
“I take it that you don’t have that sort of thing happen very often around here?” I asked.
Andrea shook her head. “Not since Jane and Dick took over the Council office. They’ve devoted so much time to getting humans and vampires on the same page, the humans tend to write grumpy letters to them now instead of outright vandalism.”
“It’s the first report we’ve had like this all year,” Dick mused. “And it just happens to be one of our friends.”
“You’re getting that look in your eye,” Andrea warned him. “That ‘Danger approaching, build a secret underground lair' look.”
“Please don’t tell Erik,” Meadow pleaded.
“I’m just saying that it helps to get ahead of the curve on these things,” he protested.
“All of your t-shirts, Dick,” Andrea said sternly. “Even the ones without writing.”
The bell jangled over the door. I turned, sure that somehow, my parents had psychically sensed me thinking about moving out earlier and had stormed into Specialty Books to put a stop to it.
But it was just Alex was walking through the door, that warm smile on his face. In his hands, he held a flat package wrapped in purple paper with a silver bow. In fact, it was the exact purple of the upholstery, mugs and walls. That seemed…odd.
“Hello,” he said, his expression confused, as I appeared to be surrounded by vampires. “Is everything all right?”
“Oh, I was just talking to Dick and Andrea Cheney, who run the shop. And this is Meadow Schwartz. She owns Everlasting Health down the street. Everybody, this is Alex Bonfils. He owns a music school here in town. He’s the twins’ coach.”
“Nice to see you again,” Alex said, offering his hand to Dick. He waited for Andrea to extend hers.
“Oh, you’ve met?” I asked.
“When I moved into the region, I made it a point to stop by the Council office and introduce myself,” Alex said.
My cheeks flushed warm. Of course, he’d met them. You didn’t just move into the Council’s territory without so much as a by-your-leave. I was reminded all over again how different my life was, compared to Alex and these other people who seemed to want to be my friends. Not for the first time, I wondered if we were making a big mistake even meeting here tonight. I thought it was smart to meet a vampire in a place he would be comfortable in, but members of my family wouldn’t be—other than Jolene, that is. But while Jane and Dick and the rest were super nice, they were also very loyal to my cousin. What if they told Jolene about this? And despite the fact that logically, I knew I wasn’t really doing anything wrong, the possibility of Jolene telling my parents seemed very real. And that was terrifying.
What was I thinking? I’d been so caught up in the moment, the excitement of Alex being interested in me that I hadn’t considered the very real consequences until he was right in front of me. It had seemed like some pleasant dream, a distraction from the drudgery I went through every day at home. But now it was real, and I was having second, third and fourth thoughts.
Vampires and werewolves didn’t date. In fact, generally speaking, we didn’t get along all that well. On our side, there was too much hostility—probably barely-repressed envy that they got to live out in the open. Vampires, particularly older ones, could be, well, snotty. We only enjoyed solid diplomacy here in the Hollow because of Jane’s efforts and her friendship with Jolene.
And I was processing all of these thoughts while standing in front of him. And Dick Cheney, whose eyes were tracking between the two of us as he frowned. “What is happening here?”
Alex pressed the wrapped package into my hand. “I thought you might like this. I’m told that flowers and chocolates are outdated.”
“What is happening here?” Dick asked again.
“Thank you.” I opened the package and burst out laughing. He’d given me the illustrated sword guide I’d been holding at the library when the bookshelf tried to murder me.
“Now you don’t have to take the risk of going into the history section,” he said.
“Thank you, that was very sweet, and I think I was unofficially banned from the history section, so it’s extra thoughtful. Did you get this here?” I asked, holding up the purple paper.
“I ordered it over the phone earlier this week,” he said. “It seemed rude to bring a book into someone’s bookstore.”
“Like bringing a cake into a restaurant,” I sugg
ested.
“I haven’t ever done that, but I’m assuming it’s…very bad?” he guessed.
“It’s not good,” Andrea told him.
“What is happening here?” Dick asked again, much louder this time. “Are you here on a date with Ty? Was that book a courting gift?”
My heart sank at Dick’s angry tone. I thought he liked me, but I guess that was easier when I didn’t want to mix in with his kind. I shrunk away from the group ever so slightly, back toward my table, just in case I needed to pack up and get out quickly.
For his part, Alex seemed caught off-guard by Dick’s vehemence. “Is there a problem?”
“Only in that Dick never thinks any man is good enough for the women in his life,” Andrea said as Dick drew me against his side, his arm around my shoulders.
“Damn straight,” Dick muttered. “As someone who’s not good enough for his wife, I know what I’m talking about.”
“He offered to keep a getaway car warm for Jane at her wedding,” Andrea said. “And he was the best man.”
“He gave Erik the shovel speech. In German,” Meadow added. “He paid someone on the Internet to translate a threatening speech into my boyfriend’s native language just so it would come across as more intimidating.”
“I sure the hell did,” Dick agreed. “You’re a nice girl, just like Ty here. Someone needs to look out for you, make sure that anybody who wants to have any sort of connection to you knows that you’re not alone in the world. That you have people who would be very responsive if you were upset or mistreated or even irritated a little bit.”
I gritted my teeth and inhaled deeply through my nose. I would not cry. I had more eye make up on than usual and I did not want to spend half of our first date in the bathroom scraping it off of my cheeks. I was used the pack having my back, but lately, that felt more like having a whole platoon of people who wanted to tell me what I was doing wrong with my life. The support, the assurance that the pack was supposed to give me, had been missing for a long time. I didn’t get this sort of reaction from people. Granted, most of my interactions were with other werewolves, but even within my own pack, I was considered weird. Too bookish, too stubborn, too mouthy, and overall off-putting. I’d only known these people for a short time, and they’d given me more acceptance than I’d had since I was a child.
“Half of that German speech was grammatically incorrect, by the way,” Meadow told him. “But thank you, for trying.”
“Got the point across, didn’t it?” Dick asked, leveling a long, meaningful look at Alex. “So don’t make me learn French, Bonfils. You be a gentleman. Or else.”
“I wouldn’t dream of making you give another ‘shovel speech,’” swore Alex, who seemed to be taking this all very seriously.
Dick squinted at him for a long moment and crossed the store to the self-help section. He came back to the counter and slapped a copy of a softcover book on the counter. It was called A Gentleman in Any Era: An Ancient Vampire’s Guide to Modern Relationships and had a bright blue cover featuring a man in a sharp suit, standing inside an hourglass. “Just in case you have any questions on how to stay a gentleman. Consider it a gift, and a warning.”
“Sorry, hon, he’ll lighten up after a few…years,” Andrea promised me.
“All right then, why don’t you two go sit down, and we’ll make you some drinks. And we’ll be watching, from over here,” Dick said, while Meadow and Andrea rolled their eyes fondly.
“It’s really okay,” I told her, my voice suspiciously raspy.
“I’ll make your drinks, so Dick isn’t tempted to tamper with anything,” she offered. “What would you like?”
“I’ll try a mocha this time,” I said.
“Just a filter coffee with a little B-positive, please, if you have it,” Alex asked, keeping his tone very polite as he pulled my chair out from the table.
“Is that like ordering a plain drip coffee at Starbucks?” I asked Andrea.
She nodded. “Essentially, but we’ll do it, no problem.”
Alex slid into the chair across from me.
“This is a little more awkward than I expected,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I went on a date. I’m not sure I’ve ever really dated, to be honest. I certainly never had to deal with my lady friend’s disapproving friends and family.”
“What do you normally do?”
He tugged at his collar, as if he hadn’t meant to venture into this conversational territory. “Most of my partners have been vampires. We tend to stay to our own places, only venture out to gatherings hosted by other vampire gatherings. It’s more of a private situation.”
“Oh, well, this is what we do now. We meet in public and let our friends harass our dates to the point of embarrassment,” I told him.
“It wasn’t that bad,” he assured me. “There was no actual shovel involved. And it’s nice that you have so many people who care for you. I will put up with the questions and the concealed threats, even if it’s not entirely in my nature.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to try to want something that isn’t really in your character?” I asked.
“No, but that’s half of the fun.”
“You’re a very strange man.” I smiled as Andrea brought our drinks to the table. Alex thanked her politely. Dick made the “watching you” gesture, pointing two fingers at his eyes and then at us.
“We agreed to stay away from age as a topic, right?”
“Yes, we did,” he said. “But just in case you start making pop culture references, I suppose I should tell you I’m around six hundred years old. So, I probably will not get those references. It’s not personal.”
I tried to keep my jaw from going slack. I really did. But he was older than anything I knew. He was older than my country. I was just able to drink legally a few years before. I had so many questions—what country was he from, how was he turned, what had he seen? But all I could squeak was, “And the music school. How do you get into something like that?”
“Practice?” he suggested, grinning when I gave him a glare with no real heat in it. “I’m afraid I have led what you might have considered a dissolute life. I was disowned, ran away from home to study music, caught the attention of the wrong vampire while performing at a concert. He didn’t ask me, he just drank from me and told me that if I wanted to live, I would have to drink from him. He said he wanted to give me time to perfect my talent for centuries. I did not respond well. There was crying. And some whining. My sire was immediately sorry he turned me, but he was stuck with me until I was ready to go out on my own.”
“I’ll bet he didn’t do that again.”
“As far as I know, he did not,” he said, shaking his head.
“So you’ve just wandered around the last six hundred years, playing your instrument?” I asked, immediately wanting to suck the words back into my mouth. “Yeah, I heard it.”
Alex just suppressed a little smirk and said, “I’ve had plenty of time to master all of the strings. I learned from some of the best musicians on the continent. I taught students of my own and discovered how much I enjoyed working with young musicians, polishing their talents. I performed in grand concert halls and tiny salons and country dances, wherever I could earn coin and shelter over my head. And when I couldn’t find work playing, I did lots of things to survive. I fought for causes I didn’t particularly believe in, which is how I met my friends who live nearby. The friendships outlasted the battles by a long shot. I worked aboard vampire-owned ships. I worked on archeological digs in environments where breathing would have been a problem. But I always come back to music. It’s what I love doing.”
As his words wove a tapestry of images in my head, I pictured him standing on stage in front of an adoring crowd, as a soldier running across a battlefield, wearing the full Indiana Jones outfit and the whip.
I would file the Indiana Jones image away for later.
He’d been to so many places, had so many adventures. By compari
son, my life felt small and half-lived. How was I possibly going to keep him interested when he’d seen so much?
“Did you meet anyone famous? Like Mozart?”
He grinned.
“What?”
“It’s just so interesting that you would ask the same sort of question a human would. It’s a common misconception. Just because we’ve lived longer than the average person doesn’t mean we’re more likely to meet famous people.”
“Well, you’re more likely to meet famous people than I would be!” I objected.
“I saw Mozart play once,” he confessed. “From the nosebleed section in a concert hall in Amsterdam. He was only a child, but he was a genius. It was obvious, even then. In a way, I suppose that was what inspired me to teach, seeing such potential in a musician so young. I knew I would never reach that level myself, but maybe I could help someone else find it.”
“So how did you end up here in the Hollow?”
“Those local friends I mentioned,” he said. “In all that ‘wandering’ as you put it, I’ve never had a home. I’ve never really wanted one. I enjoyed chasing one adventure to the next. To put a vulgar point on it, over the years I have built considerable wealth—certainly not from music, just solid investments and a lot of time to let them build up—but not much else. I have no home, no family, not even nestmates. If I were to be dusted, I would leave no mark on the world. And I find myself longing for…permanence.”
“And yet, you seem to be resisting the very idea,” I said, snickering.
“I talked to Cal and Nik over the last few years. They seem so contented, having found their place with people they love. And I wanted it for myself, that security, the feeling of belonging somewhere,” he said. “Maybe that sounds a little strange, but one can only face near-death so many times before it’s no longer thrilling. I wanted to wake up in the same place every night and know that I didn’t have to be ready to pack up and leave at any moment. I wanted to know people. Other than Cal and Nik, I didn’t have friends. I could go months without speaking to anyone and that seemed wrong.”