by Marta Acosta
“No, come along.” He took my hand and led me down the hall past a dining room, closed doors, and to the kitchen with its gleaming new appliances and hardwood floor. “I’ll leave it to you to decide where we put the mirror ball.”
“Is this an appliance-related gift?” I said. “Because, if so, it should match my chartreuse Margaritanator 3000.”
“It’s not an appliance.”
“Is it the yard?”
“No, but the yard does need a great deal of care. Perhaps you can recommend a garden designer.” Ian opened a back door and the first thing I saw was a laundry room. The second thing I saw was a small fuzzy thing coming at us with an abundance of wiggling and tail wagging.
I bent over and picked the puppy up. Her amber eyes gleamed and she squirmed and began licking my face. I loved her right away.
“Is she a clone?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t presume to dabble with God’s work. She’s just a rescue dog who reminded me of your dog, Daisy.”
“She’s wonderful. I love her.” I looked into the puppy’s face. “I think you’ll be Sweet Pea, because that means bliss and that’s what I feel.”
With a puppy in the house, there would be whining. But no matter how much I wheedled, Ian refused to let the dog sleep in our bedroom on our wedding night.
Mrs. K heard us from the kitchen and said, “Pardon, but I’m fond of the little thing and she can stay in her bed in our parlor. I’ll hear her if she’s lonely.”
“Thank you,” I said, and handed her the puppy.
“Good night, Mrs. K.” Ian put his arm around my waist and led me back down the hall.
“I have made one alteration to the house.” He stopped at the staircase. “I’ve had the master suite soundproofed.”
“Excellent. Now Mr. and Mrs. K won’t come running when I make you beg for mercy tonight.”
“That sounds like a challenge,” he said with a wicked grin. “I think it’s time we went to bed, my own girl.”
“Ian?”
“Yes?”
“All this lavishness is fab, but I didn’t marry you for your money or because you have a title.”
“I know exactly what you want from me. It’s in my pants.” With that he hauled me over his shoulder and ran up the stairs while I laughed.
Ian carried me into a sumptuous ivory and moss green bedroom and lay me on the bed. Candles in silver candlesticks flickered their warm light, a bottle of champagne rested in a wine cooler, and there were vases of antique roses in creamy shades.
Ian gazed at me and said, “I thought I might never have you and now that I do, I’ll never let you go.”
“‘Thus though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run,’” I quoted. “Kiss me, Ian.”
The next day, we took a flight to the Caribbean, and then we were taken by sloop through azure waters to a tiny green island that had been abandoned by terrified and superstitious tourists over a century before. Ian held the legal title only to protect the true owners, a tribe with a name that could only be sounded with whistles.
Wil and Nettie greeted us at the pier. He was wearing board shorts and a guayabera open on his chest, a white stripe of sunblock on his nose, and sunglasses. “Welcome, welcome, Milagro and Lord Ducharme!”
“Hi, Wil, Nettie,” I said, happy to see that they looked almost healthy.
Wil was about to hug me when Ian said, “Hello, Spiggott. Do keep your hands off my bride at least for the honeymoon. Then you may resume your flirting, but no more.”
Wil looked fondly at his girlfriend. “Yeah, Nettie feels the same way.”
“Hello, Nettie,” Ian said, and took her hand. “I hope your recovery is going well.”
She ducked her head shyly, and Wil said, “The shaman says that normals can take months to recover. I was different because I’m a vampire. Was a vampire. But Nettie will be as right as rain in a few more weeks. Meanwhile, I get to chat without interruption.”
Nettie slapped Wil’s chest, and he said, “Oh, cutie, you know what I like.”
I noticed that my friend was a slightly darker shade of greenish. “Wil, you’ve got a tan! How’s the surfing?”
“Kick-ass, great barrels on the flip side of the island, draw you in, spit you out. I’ve been teaching Matthews a few basics.”
“So you guys are getting along?”
“Yeah, now that he’s loosened up. He’s a changed man. Well, we all are,” Wil said. “I’ll take you to your hotel.”
He helped load our things into a jeep and drove us up a narrow road to a neglected but still grand white hotel among the palm trees.
When we entered the empty terra-cotta tiled lobby, Wil said, “The shaman said that the Poindexters should stay in the village. The tribe is caring for them.”
Wil suggested that we all go to the lounge for a drink. We went into a magnificent old bar with mostly bare shelves. Only a few other people were here, greenish hued and relaxed as they raised their glasses toward us and smiled as a greeting. A few were people who had “disappeared” when Ian was sent to solve an intractable problem.
Ian waved toward them and said to me, “We keep things simple here, darling. I hope you don’t mind.”
“It’s lovely,” I said. “It reminds me of a campus that’s been emptied out for the summer.”
Wil went behind the bar and pulled out a plate of sliced mangos and a pitcher of sangria, and Nellie got glasses for us. Wil said, “The local zombies are friendly, but they’re basically nocturnal. Been there, done that—now I want to spend all my time in the sun.”
When we were seated, I said, “How are the Poindexters adjusting?”
“Good.” The surfer grinned. “Anger and aggression, greed, all those things vanish when you change over. I don’t know if it’s seeing death, or because we’re more like plants than people.” He looked at Nettie and took her hand.
“We’re happy,” she said softly, gazing at Wil.
“Everyone should consider becoming a zombie,” he said.
I shook my head. “Weren’t you the one who was talking big ideas about a progressive vampire movement?”
“I was more interested in getting in your knickers,” he said. “You were the one who made the charts and action plan.”
“I thought I was helping. I’ve come to see that maybe it’s better to understand a situation before jumping right in to change things.”
Ian began laughing, stopped himself, and said, “Sorry, darling.”
I picked up the pitcher and filled our glasses. Then I lifted mine in a toast. “Well, here’s to this lovely nameless place and its people.”
“It’s not nameless,” Wil said. “The tribe calls it Isla Milagro.”
When night came, we visited the tribe, whose name meant the Caretakers, at their village of low huts. They made a feast for us of grilled fishes, vegetables, and fruits, and Ian and I watched the shaman dance around a fire with aromatic smoke from herbs that were used in the weavings.
Cricket and Ford, both wearing woven tunics had wreaths of flowers on their heads. They watched contentedly as they held hands and sat cross-legged on a mat.
Ian and I thanked our hosts and took a walk up a hill. We could hear the faint music coming from a zombie band that played in the empty hotel every night.
I stared at the bright stars above. “There are Castor and Pollux. I know who told me that now. It was just before I was attacked by Vidalia in werewolf form.”
“Your life has had many surprises.”
“One of them is that your international bon-vivanting had a higher purpose.”
“Not all of it, darling. Some of it was so that I would meet a certain delicious and elusive young woman who also was more serious than she seemed.”
“And sillier than she should be?”
“That is what I loved about her,” he said. “Once when I was in Sozopol—”
“Which is where?”
“On the Black Sea. We’ll go there,” he sai
d. “I met an amusing little man who said he was studying folktales and shapeshifting.”
“And was his name Don Pedro?”
“It was. We went to a dinner with music by a mystic, we smoked opium, and I had just met a captivating local beauty when Don Pedro seemed to go into a trance.”
“Let me guess. He had an eerily prescient vision.”
“Exactly. He told me I would meet a woman with hair as black as midnight, a living miracle, and that she and I would do good for the world, and she would be my partner in life and that I would love her till death and beyond death.”
“So you went in search of me.”
“Certainly not. I wasn’t going to disappoint my pretty companion because of a lunatic’s prophecy,” he said. “I forgot all about it until years later when the Council sent me to meet a girl who had miraculously survived infection.”
“And then you fell madly in love with me.”
“I wanted you for my own, but you had the audacity to reject me for Oswald Grant.”
“I had a crush on Oswald first. So then you met me again and fell madly in love with me.”
Ian smiled his dangerous smile. “It took some time to take Don Pedro’s visions seriously, especially when you seemed so reluctant to return my affections. I stopped counting the times you broke my heart.”
“I wasn’t sure you had one, Ian.”
He took my hand and placed it on his chest. “I do, and I entrust it entirely to you.”
“I promise to care for it.” I kissed his warm hand. “How many of Don Pedro’s stories are actually your own adventures?”
“We have the rest of our lives, together, and I think I shall save those stories for other nights. You and I will have so many adventures.”
Laughing, I said, “Ian, I think I can dedicate my life to going to parties in order to save the world.”
“I never doubted that you could, my own girl. Shall we go for a swim?”
“Go ahead, mi vida, mi corazon, mi amor,” I said, because he was all those things to me: my life, my heart, my love. “I’ll meet you on the beach.”
He kissed me and strolled off, leaving me alone but not lonely as I looked into the star-spangled sky.
Before meeting the vampires, I was a girl with dreams. I dreamed of being in love with a fabulous yet worthy man and being loved in return. I dreamed of having my stories published. I dreamed of having a home. I dreamed of being surrounded by friends and family. I dreamed of making a difference.
My stories were dreams, too, of a world that was bigger and more fantastical than what seemed prosaic reality.
And all those things had come true for me. I was loved by a fabulous, amazing man who could laugh with me. I had success as an author, albeit under Don Pedro’s name. Oswald’s family had become my family, and now I also had the Ducharmes and all my friends.
I’d made a difference. I’d united couples, created gardens, and thwarted the dangerous ambitions of madmen, death merchants, and extremists, while always finding time for friends and fun.
As for my home, the earth was my home, and, like Ian, I was a citizen of the world.
Death and happy endings were only the transfer points of an amazing journey. My story had just begun.
I walked down the hill to the beach. The white sand sparkled in the bright light of the moon. I pulled my clothes off and ran into the water and into my husband’s arms.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
One: Love to Blood You, Baby
Two: Good Help Is Fine to Bite
Three: Once Bitten, Twice Snide
Four: An American, a Broad
Five: My Fair Vampire
Six: Bite Me, Spank Me, Make Me Bite Your Neck
Seven: Blood the One You’re With
Eight: Love Lies Bleeding
Nine: Dance with the She-Devil
Ten: Is That a Stake in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?
Eleven: Countrycide
Twelve: Headshrinkers, Blood Drinkers, Mental Blinkers
Thirteen: Once Bitten, Twice Snide
Fourteen: You’re No Body Until Somebody Bloods You
Fifteen: Shrinks, Kinks, and Drinks
Sixteen: Zombies and Vamps, Oh, Please
Seventeen: This Is Your Brain Unplugged
Eighteen: Dead Reckoning
Nineteen: Fly Me to the Loon
Twenty: Get Me to the Club on Time
Back Cover