“Nothing.” The look was gone as quickly as it’d appeared. “Do you need help getting that out to your car?”
“I think I can manage.”
“Well, I hope you weren’t planning on leaving without a kiss.”
Malcolm closed the distance between them with a few long strides, and he kissed Gavin sincerely. He had the sort of kiss that you could feel in your toes, the deep and passionate kiss that people wrote songs about. Gavin bit back a sigh of contentment, not sure if he wanted Malcolm to know just the sort of effect he had on him.
“Be careful. Have fun and all that. Be extra merry for me or whatever,” Malcolm told him. His eyes glinted mischievously. “Tell Jason I said hi.”
“You’re such a sadist.”
“You love it.”
Malcolm stood at the door as Gavin made his way to his car. After getting the sealed pitcher and bag of gifts into the passenger seat, Gavin slid behind the wheel with a wave to his vampire. It wasn’t weird to be going to the party without Malcolm, of course, since he was used to going alone.
Still, a part of him wished that Malcolm hadn’t reacted so negatively to Christmas. He tried not to dwell on it as he pulled out of the driveway. At least he still had Valentine’s Day to look forward to, he supposed.
The party wasn’t much of a party, Gavin learned.
Aria Martello-Foster usually invited around ten to fifteen people to her and Jason’s house on Christmas Eve—coworkers, friends, neighbors—but this year was different. When Gavin asked about it, she said she’d rather just have a quiet dinner this year, that the big parties were getting to be too much for her. She did look tired, so Gavin didn’t push the fact.
But a smaller party meant that he’d feel guiltier when he wanted to leave early. There were only two other people there besides him, Aria, and her husband: one of Aria’s closest and oldest friends from high school, a wedding planner named Lisa, and one of Jason’s coworkers, a woman called Pamela.
And Gavin would have to tell Malcolm that everyone did think the eggnog was homemade, thank you very much. Of course, now they all thought that Gavin couldn’t make eggnog to save his life, and they only sipped at it out of politeness. He’d added too much bourbon, apparently, and it didn’t sit well with the cheap eggnog.
“Where’s your vampire?” Jason had asked when Gavin had given him the customary brother-in-law handshake.
“I told him to stay home,” Gavin had said, and that was that. He couldn’t tell, but it looked like Jason visibly relaxed at the news that Malcolm Travers wouldn’t be joining them.
At dinner, Aria sat at the head of the table, with Gavin to her left and Jason to her right. Lisa sat on Gavin’s other side, and across from her sat Pamela. Pamela seemed to be the only one still drinking Gavin’s eggnog, and it actually looked like she was beginning to enjoy it. That should have spelled out trouble then and there, but Gavin thought nothing of it.
“This is so weird,” he said to his sister while they ate. “I’m so used to your parties.”
Aria smiled. She looked a lot like Gavin—her slender face, her olive skin, and her naturally thin and pretty eyebrows—and more than once, they’d actually been mistaken for twins. “Me too, but I’ve been feeling kind of… under the weather lately.”
“I think it has something to do with him,” said Lisa quietly, gesturing to Jason with a little smirk. Jason didn’t seem to notice, as he and Pamela were chatting about something work-related.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gavin asked, looking between his sister and her friend.
“How do you feel about being an uncle?” Lisa asked, and Aria gave her a half-scolding, half-playful look.
“What?” Gavin asked. “Are you serious? Aria?”
“Well, Jase and I are trying,” she said. “No luck yet.”
“That’s great—well, not that you haven’t had any luck, but that you’re trying,” Gavin said. “I was wondering when you two were going to give it a go.” Aria was two years older than him at twenty-nine, and he had been wondering if she ever planned on having children.
“Trying too hard, I’m afraid,” Aria said on a little sigh. “I never thought it would be this stressful.”
“If you need anything, you can always come to me,” Gavin said.
“I know, and I thank you, Gavino,” she said, using his real name. She only ever called him that when she was feeling sentimental—she’d had a little too much of the eggnog, apparently. Though it was the name that had been written on his birth certificate, he’d started going by Gavin at a young age because it was more American and it fit better with his classmates.
“Gavino?” Lisa echoed, and she wiggled her eyebrows playfully at him. “How exotic-sounding…. Say, are you still with that guy, what’s his name?”
“Malcolm,” Aria said.
“Yeah, him.”
“Yes, I am, and unless you grow a penis, I’d never be interested in you anyway, Lisa,” Gavin said, and he elbowed his sister’s best friend lightly. She gave a little laugh and elbowed him back.
“What are we talking about?” Jason asked, apparently having heard part of what Gavin had said.
“I was just telling Gavino here that I’m good girlfriend material,” Lisa said. “Shame he’s not interested.”
“Crying shame,” Gavin said, making her laugh again. At least Christmas Eve wasn’t turning out to be a total bust.
Dinner went by smoothly, and Gavin enjoyed himself. He still found himself wishing that Malcolm was there with him, and he contented himself with thinking about the things they could do when he returned home. He’d leave after the dessert was served, he decided, since Aria always made killer desserts. His mouth watered at just the thought of one of her homemade pies or puddings.
It was chocolate fruitcake this year. Gavin was so, so grateful for his fast metabolism.
Of course, dessert was right about the time that his bourbon-heavy eggnog went to a certain guest’s head. Pamela, apparently the only one still drinking what Gavin had brought with him, had quite a few opinions on the current state of society.
In particular, vampires.
And she had no problem voicing these opinions to any and all who would listen. Apparently her younger sister, much to her family’s chagrin, was dating a vampire. How scandalous. The nerve she had.
“We took her to see Reverend Daniels, and he was just appalled when we told him.” Though Pamela seemed to be speaking only to the bemused Lisa, she was loud enough for the others to hear what she was saying. “It was like an intervention, but she’d hear none of it.”
“Wait, and you work with this woman?” Gavin asked Jason. He didn’t bother keeping his tone low or private; if Pamela had no qualms about speaking her mind, he didn’t either. Not that it mattered, since she was so absorbed in herself that she didn’t seem to hear him.
Jason, surprisingly, looked quite apologetic. There was unexpected sympathy in his eyes as he gazed across the table at Gavin, as well as a bit of embarrassment.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I felt bad for her. She was going on and on about how she was going to be spending Christmas alone this year because her son moved to Ohio. She said she didn’t have anyone else to celebrate with.”
“Well, I can’t imagine why,” Gavin said sarcastically. He looked down the table at Pamela, who, it seemed, still hadn’t noticed that other people had been talking.
“I mean, what kind of person voluntarily dates a vampire?” she was saying, sounding both incredulous and dramatic. “Someone sick in the head, that’s who. How desperate do you have to be to let one of those monsters near you?”
“I don’t know if that’s very fair,” Lisa said, and though her tone was civil enough, she sounded like she thought Pamela was batshit insane for bringing this up at the dinner table.
“They’re vampires, child—unholy creatures, devils in disguise. Half of them are murderers, and unapologetic ones at that! You have to sink real low to let one of th
ose beasts near you.”
Gavin hadn’t wanted to say anything. He really hadn’t. But he thought about his vampire, sitting alone at home and waiting for him to return. He thought of Malcolm’s stormy and expressive eyes, the shark’s grin, and the way his voice sounded when he awoke at sundown. Maybe Malcolm wanted to convince everyone that he was a monster, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t love as much as any human.
“Excuse me,” Gavin said to her before she could open her mouth again. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jason sink lower into his chair. When Pamela looked up at him, Gavin gave her a sweet smile. When she had first started drinking earlier in the evening, she’d babbled about two different ex-husbands, so he at least had something to go on. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but you’re divorced, aren’t you? How many times have you been married?”
She was aghast. “What?”
“Gavin,” Aria murmured, but he ignored her.
“I’m just curious. It seems that someone who can’t manage to keep herself a husband doesn’t really have any right to be talking about other people’s romantic lives,” he said.
Pamela, as though she couldn’t believe someone was disagreeing with her, looked to Aria. It was funny, actually—she was looking at Aria the way one might look at the parent of an unruly child. Aria, her expression passive and her gaze lowered, smoothed a hand through her hair.
“You are being a bit harsh, Pamela,” she said calmly.
“Are you kidding me?” Pamela asked. “My own sister—she’s dating a monster.”
“So am I,” Gavin said.
Pamela blinked at him, and it looked as though she were trying to process the words. Lisa seemed to be biting back a smile, and she wouldn’t look Gavin’s way, like she might laugh if she did.
“You?” Pamela looked at Aria as if she expected her to be shocked. “Your brother…?”
“He’s actually a rather nice vampire,” Aria said, glancing sideways at Gavin with the tiniest hints of a smirk. “Unfortunately, he couldn’t make it tonight, or else you would have gotten to meet him.”
“Him?” Pamela squawked. She looked back at Gavin again, once more seeming to have trouble processing all this information. “It’s a male vampire?”
Gavin smirked. “Can’t you tell?”
She looked almost faint. She turned to Jason like he was the last sane person at the dinner table. “And you would allow this monster into your home?”
“Do you mean me or my boyfriend?” Gavin asked, but she ignored him.
“Malcolm has been in our home before, yes,” Aria said, speaking for her husband.
“You invited him? He can come whenever he wants now!”
“I find myself kind of wishing he had come with me tonight,” Gavin said. “He’d have such a blast with a dogmatist like you.”
The woman blanched. She looked as if Gavin had just told her that she only had seven days left to live. Aria, meanwhile, looked impressed.
“Dogmatist? Where’d you learn that one?” she asked under her breath.
“Word-of-the-Day calendar,” he answered. He turned back to Pamela. “Vampires are monsters, sure. But at least most of them have learned to get along with us humans. They’re trying to live among us, to be our equals. The same can’t be said for people like you, who just can’t help but project your negativity and hate on all of us.” Gavin paused. “She’s your sister.”
Pamela had grown very red in her anger and embarrassment—and her drunkenness, of course. She looked to Aria again. “You let this go on? You let your brother… hobnob with the undead?”
“Oh, he hobs my knob, all right,” Gavin said, earning a snicker from Lisa but a slightly reproachful look from Aria.
“It’s his choice,” his sister said.
“To be with a monster? What if the vampire turns on him? What if the vampire turns him?”
“They aren’t animals, Pamela,” Aria said.
“Exactly—they’re worse. They’re smarter than animals; they can comprehend things that we would never think of. They’re more manipulative.” Pamela looked at Gavin, and a look of genuine pity came into her eyes. “I’ll pray for you, young man. I’ll pray that you find your way. First from the undead, and then from the homo—”
“You need to leave, Pam.”
The table grew quiet, and Gavin turned to look at Jason with a furrowed brow. His brother-in-law was sitting straight in his chair again, and he was giving Pamela a very stern, very serious look. Gavin was so shocked that he just sort of gaped at him, eyes bulging in astonishment.
“What?” Pamela asked.
“Yeah, what?” Gavin asked.
Jason ignored him, keeping his gaze steady on Pamela. “It was nice of you to come, and the peppermint bark was a thoughtful gesture. But you should go,” he said.
“Why? Because I have justifiable beliefs about vampires?” Pamela asked.
“You mean prejudiced?” Gavin asked.
She opened her mouth to reply to him, but Jason cut her off.
“Because you’re being unfair and acting inappro-priately,” Jason said. “I don’t want that in my house. Now I know you’ve had a bit to drink, and I’ll be more than happy to call you a cab if need be.”
Pamela was stunned into silence. For that matter, so was Gavin. Who was this man and what had he done with the real Jason Foster?
“Well,” Pamela finally said, and she stood up very slowly. Somehow she maintained an air of dignity and pride—Gavin had to give her that. “If that’s how you truly feel, Jason.”
“It is.”
“I’ll see you out,” Lisa said quickly, jumping to her feet awkwardly.
“And me,” Aria said. Gavin knew she was only doing so because it was her home—it was only out of courtesy that she escorted the woman out.
As the three women disappeared into the hallway, Gavin glanced uncertainly at Jason. Outside of the room, they could both hear Pamela say something about taking her peppermint bark with her, and Gavin almost told her to take his eggnog too, since she’d seemed to enjoy it so much.
But he figured he’d probably stoked the fire too much as it was. He felt somewhat guilty, but only a little.
“Is that, ah, is that what I sound like?” Jason asked suddenly. He was staring down at his untouched piece of fruitcake.
“Sometimes you’re a little… worse,” Gavin said honestly. “It’s why I stopped coming around after I started dating Malcolm.”
Jason sighed. “I’m sorry, Gavin. I guess I never thought about what I was saying. I was just raised that way.”
“An apology from my brother-in-law? This must be a Christmas miracle!”
Jason gave him a skeptical look, but then he laughed. When he did, it was easy to see why Aria had married him—he had a boyish grin and a rich, genuine laugh. Gavin supposed she could have done a lot worse, even if Jason had been a vampire-hater most of his life.
The front door opened, then closed, and a few moments later, Lisa and Aria reappeared. Aria looked a little drained, though she wasn’t unhappy, and Lisa beamed at Gavin.
“I’m dating a vampire too,” she said as she reclaimed her seat. “I was too afraid to say anything, but you didn’t have any reservations about it. That was… awesome.”
“We have to be proud of our vamps,” Gavin said. “Or else they’ll turn on us like wild animals and kill us without a second thought.”
She laughed. “From now on, I will be. No more cowering from those dogmatists.”
It wasn’t long before the dinner party was officially coming to an end. Lisa and Aria went to the kitchen to deal with putting away the leftovers, and Gavin and Jason cleared the table. It gave them time to talk, which Gavin may have normally considered strange, but not after what Jason had done.
“This is kind of bizarre, not going to lie,” Gavin said. “The last time we were together, you were so immature and narrow-minded. No offense.”
“None taken,” Jason said, shaking his head. “I guess I k
ind of was. I don’t know. Ever since Aria said she wanted to have kids, I realized I’d better step up my game. I don’t want my kids to be raised the way I was—my dad was an asshole.”
“Well thank God you came to your senses.”
“Speaking of God, we should probably be praying for your soul now, you homo vampire-lover,” Jason said, and for the first time, Gavin shared a real laugh with his brother-in-law.
Lisa left shortly after, and Gavin was almost right behind her. He needed to get home—he needed to be with Malcolm. He just wanted to be near the vampire, to tell him that he loved him and hated being away from him. He also couldn’t wait to tell him about Jason’s astounding turnaround.
He said goodbye to Jason, and Aria walked him to his car, despite his protests that she should stay inside where it was warm. Snow flurries—which had been on and off since he’d arrived—were falling again, and this time they appeared to be sticking to the ground.
“I’m sorry about Pamela,” Aria said when they reached his car. “I didn’t know she was so… extreme. She seemed so sweet the first time I met her.”
“She probably is. I think maybe I was too hard on her, too fast to judge,” Gavin admitted. “For all I know, she has valid reasons for hating vampires. Still kind of a bitch, though, what with the whole ‘My sister is a desperate and dirty whore for being with a vampire’ thing.”
“Yeah,” Aria said, nodding. “Why didn’t Malcolm come tonight, anyway? Can you imagine how fun that would have been?”
“Well, it turns out that Malcolm actually kind of hates Christmas,” Gavin said. “We had a little argument last night—I overreacted, as per usual. Vampires are just difficult sometimes. It’s like dealing with children, no matter how old they are. Things have to be his way. I’m supposed to be able to read his mind and tell exactly what he wants.”
“Sounds like Jason at the beginning of our relationship. In fact, I think that sounds like a lot of men in relationships,” she said. “How old is he, anyway? I don’t think you’ve ever told me.”
“I don’t know—don’t look at me like that, it’s hard to remember sometimes. He’s, like, a hundred and six or something.”
The Vampire Grinch Page 3