by Молли Харпер
While that scenario was far more plausible, I still withheld the number, which prompted Mama Ginger to announce that she would never speak to me again. I was not properly devastated by this announcement, which just made Mama Ginger angrier. Mama Ginger had long held out hope that Zeb and I would one day wed, but now that she knew about my “unfortunate condition,” she was slightly ashamed to have wanted a vampire as an in-law. She was still less than civil to Jolene.
But she now preferred her daughter-in-law to me, because at least Jolene wasn’t a vampire. Of course, Zeb hadn’t yet broken the news about his new bride being a werewolf, but that was neither here nor there.
I’d promised myself that I was going to back off and stop interfering in Jolene and Zeb’s relationship, but it was so much healthier than talking about my own relationship. So, I think I earned a pass just this once. “Tell me you haven’t been watchingThe Howlingagain,” I groaned.
“You know it’s just a movie.”
Zeb gave me a distinctly not-amused look, then sighed. “Marriage is a little harder than I thought it would be. Just normal stuff, you know. Things that get on each other’s nerves.” He began ticking off Jolene’s numerous faults on his fingers. “She chews her fingernailsandher toenails.
She cannot stop herself from answering the questions fromJeopardyout loud, even when she knows she’s wrong. She sheds. She puts ketchup on her egg rolls.”
“Blasphemy.” I shuddered. “And as much as it would be in my own personal interest to interfere with your marriage and reclaim your full attention, you do realize that you are married to arguably one of the most beautiful women on the planet. And you are a male kindergarten teacher who collects dolls.”
“Action figures,” he corrected.
“And she stuck with you, despite the fact that your mother tried to make wedding-party casting changes during the rehearsal and had you hypnotized by a five-dollar psychic so you’d dump Jolene at the altar.”
“Her family put out a bear trap for me!” he huffed.
“Well, that just means that your families cancel each other out.”
He snickered, his expression softening. “She’s pregnant.”
My jaw actually hit the middle of my chest. “Well, that explains the egg rolls and ketchup.”
My throat tightened at the thought of Zeb having a baby. This was so huge, the last step toward Zeb really growing up. I’ll admit I was a little jealous. I was being left behind again. Zeb was doing something I would never do. But, as I’d discovered last year when Zeb’s mom dumped an infant on my doorstep in an attempt to jump-start my biological clock, I am not cut out to nurture.
And because I no longer have a pulse, I can’t have children—which works out nicely.
“But this is a good thing, right?” I shook his shoulder. “I’m going to be an honorary aunt.”
“It’s a great thing, except the idea of being responsible for a whole family sort of scares the crap out of me. We wanted to have kids right away, and given how fertile her family is, we knew there was no contraception on earth that would work. But that’s not really our problem. Her mother comes over every single day. Her aunts are always bringing over food, or they’re putting up curtains that they made, or they’re moving our dishes around in the cabinets without asking. And Jolene just lets them. And the men! If they don’t back off and let a contractor come out to finish the house, we’re going to be raising their grandchild in a pot-soaked RV. Is that what they want?
I’m just frustrated and feel … impotent.”
“Well, obviously, that’s not the case. When is she due?”
“In about four months,” he said.
“What? You guys were pregnant before the wedding? And you didn’t tell me!”
Zeb rolled his eyes. “No. It’s a werewolf thing. The average wolf pregnancy is only about sixty days. Werewolves sort of split the difference with five months.”
“Wow. So, you have very little time to get ready for this baby—babies? How many kids is Jolene going to have? Is it going to be like a litter?”
Zeb looked horror-struck.
“Seriously, you hadn’t thought of that before?” I asked him as little beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. “There are four sets of twins just among Jolene’s first cousins.”
“I’m still processing everything!” Zeb shouted.
“Maybe I should drive,” I suggested.
“No, let’s talk about why you think Gabriel would suddenly start cheating on you. That will keep me awake.”
“Let’s not,” I told him. “I don’t want to rehash the whole thing. I just want to pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Because denial usually works so well for you.”
“I’m going to deny that I just heard that. Should we stop by the shop? I’d like to see the damages, know what I’m getting into,” I said.
“Your internal clock must be off, world traveler. The sun’s going to rise soon.” He nodded to the lightening blue-gray sky on the horizon. “We’ll have just enough time to get you home.”
As the sky turned toward lilac, I snuggled under a blanket and dozed the last hour or so before we reached the family manse, River Oaks. More English country cottage than sprawling Georgian plantation, River Oaks is at its heart just an old family farm home that happened to be built before the Civil War. Despite my having spent the last few weeks in buildings that were much older and far more elegant, my house had never seemed so beautiful.
I kissed Zeb’s cheeks, mumbled a good night, and dashed for the door with the blanket over my head. In my room, on sheets that were weeks old and slightly musty, I lay down and, for reasons I hadn’t quite processed yet, cried.
2
Successful relationships are about compromise. If you agree not to bring up his undead exgirlfriends during arguments, he should agree not to seek out your old human boyfriends and kill them.
—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less Destructive Relationships
The problem with sleeping during the day is that people tend to overestimate the joys of earlymorning visits.
It started about an hour after I finally fell asleep, when Aunt Jettie sauntered into the house and discovered my carry-on by the door.
“Baby doll, you’re back!” she cried, materializing at my bedside.
“Gah!” I screamed, leaping off the bed and clinging to the ceiling. “Knocking! Aunt Jettie! We have a rule about knocking!”
My ghostly favorite aunt/roommate placed her transparent hands on her hips. “Oh, get down from the ceiling and let me look at you. I haven’t seen you in weeks. Don’t make me float up there, it makes me dizzy.”
Jettie Belle Early, sister to my grandma Ruthie, took me under her wing when I was around age six and when Ruthie and I both figured out that we were basically incompatible. (Grandma Ruthie wanted to give me a home perm and enter me in the Little Miss Half-Moon Hollow Pageant. I hid in her attic all day to avoid the perm, pretending that I was Anne Frank.) I spent entire summers with Jettie at River Oaks, which she inherited after spending her formative years caring for her elderly father. This was a great shock to Grandma Ruthie, who had already made plans to overhaul the house in time for the local historical society’s annual tour of historic homes.
Aunt Jettie was a linchpin in every major moment in my life. It was Aunt Jettie who helped me fill out financial-aid paperwork for college. It was Aunt Jettie who persuaded me to stay in school and get my master’s in library science so the local public library would have no choice but to hire me. It was Aunt Jettie who helped me through that first night as a vampire. It was Aunt Jettie whose upside-down face was now smiling up at me expectantly.
“I missed you, too, Aunt Jettie,” I grunted as I disengaged my fingernails from the plaster and hopped down to the bed. “Is Mr. Wainwright here?”
She smiled as she thought of her beau, who also happened to be my recently deceased boss. “No, he’s really beating himself up over this break-in, so he’s s
tanding guard at the shop. I told Zeb not to bother you with it, but he insisted you’d want to. Why are your eyes all puffy?”
“Oh, it’s just the French,” I said, wiping at the oh-so-attractive bloody tear tracks drying on my cheeks. “They were so damn rude.”
“I thought you were in Brussels,” Jettie said as I climbed back into bed. Outside my bedroom window, creeping fingers of sunlight were flirting with the edges of my blackout curtains. My internal clock told me it was almost six A.M., and I was so tired I could actually feel the drag on my limbs. Aunt Jettie pulled the covers up to my chin as she asked, “Where’s Gabriel?”
“Still in Brussels,” I said. “He had some things to take care of.”
Jettie studied my face in that unnerving X-ray method of hers. Fortunately, any penetrating wisdom on her part was cut short by my mother’s sudden appearance at my bedroom door.
“Hi, baby!” Mama cried. “Thank goodness you’re back!”
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” I howled, chucking a pillow at her. “What are you doing here so early?”
“Oh, I’ve been coming by every day to check on the place,” she said, throwing her arms around me. “Let me look at you! Oh, don’t ever go away for that long again, honey. I got so nervous not being able to see you or check in on you.”
Mama’s idea of a good vacation spot was the Blue Pineapple Motel in Panama City Beach, Florida. She did not see why it was necessary for me to see the world or why it was necessary to run off “God knows where” and share hotel rooms with a man I was not married to. She insisted that the hoteliers would know that we were not a married couple and we would give people a bad impression of America. I told her that if American tourists hadn’t already done that by eating string cheese while they toured the Louvre, I doubted my premarital sleeping habits would bother them all that much. She didn’t laugh.
Mama’s predictions of travel tragedy included my getting mugged. (I have superpowers, so it wasn’t likely.) Or developing food poisoning. (I don’t eat, so that was even less likely.) Or getting a rash from hotel soap. (OK, that actually happened, but it cleared right up.) But I doubt she foresaw me getting dumped in such a halfhearted, half-assed way. She definitely would have warned me.
Wait a minute. My brain finally caught up to what she’d just said.
“You come by the house when I’m not home?” I asked.
Mama gave me her patented “Well, of course, I’m invading your privacy, silly!” expression.
“You gave us a key for emergencies. Someone has to keep your plants watered.”
“I don’t have any plants.” I pressed the pillow over my head and muttered, “I’m getting a moat.”
Mama pretended not to hear me, instead dropping a pile of envelopes onto my lap. “Here, honey, I got your mail while you were away.”
“Touch that curtain, and I won’t give you your present.” I didn’t bother looking up as Mama approached the window. Mama considered for a moment and then backed away.
In general terms, Mama had stopped trying to rehabilitate me out of being a vampire. This was good, because I was out of the coffin to most of the community. I was one of a few vampires in the Hollow who chose to live out in the open and maintain relationships with the living. Studies showed that most vampires turned since tax consultant/vampire Arnie Frink outed us with his right-to-work lawsuit dropped out of sight and moved to big cities like New York or New Orleans. They assimilated into the large populations of vampires and learned how to adjust to their new lifestyles … or their neighbors claimed to have no idea how they managed to fall into a puddle of gasoline, then trip into a burning leaf pile.
Thanks in no small part to my former supervisor, Mrs. Stubblefield, the news of my vampirism had officially made the beauty-parlor and kitchen circuit. Mama said people had stopped talking whenever she walked into the pre-church coffees on Sunday mornings, which meant the congregation of Half-Moon Hollow Baptist Church was aware as well. She took to her bed for a few days. But ever since a well-known member of the cast ofAll My Childrencame out as the parent of a vampire and Oprah did a show featuring Friends and Family of the Undead, Mama figures my being a vampire makes her “current.” She now introduces me as her “vampire daughter,” even to people I’ve known since I was a kid. She’s got a little bumper sticker with two inverted white triangles on a black background, the international symbol of support for vampire rights. She’s even insisted on attending a meeting of the Friends and Family of the Undead, which, fortunately, had suspended activities after the foreclosure of the Traveler’s Bowl, the hippie restaurant that hosted our meetings.
Of course, Mama still stocked my freezer with homemade pot pies to tempt me off my liquid diet. She showed up while I was sleeping and opened windows, hoping that I would slowly build up a tolerance to sunlight. As much as she loved me and beingen vogue,Mama was determined to have a normal daughter. Even if it killed me.
I sifted through the alarming pile of mail while Mama bustled about my room, gathering dirty clothes. I’d been approved for an obscenely high-limit credit card that I hadn’t applied for. I’d been accepted as the newest member of the Half-Moon Hollow Chamber of Commerce, which I had applied for. My letter to the editor for the American Library Association newsletter regarding the nationwide need for more vamp-friendly resources and hours was rejected. The fancy linen envelope stuck out like a sore thumb among the cheap, glossy promotions. My hands shook a little as I turned it over in my hands. Had Gabriel’s mysterious pen pal finally decided to contact me? Imagine my horror when I saw the neat printed label addressed to “Miss Jame Janeson” from the Half-Moon Hollow High Alumni Committee instead. “Miss” was underlined. Twice.
“Oh, no.”
“What is it, hon?” Mama asked, folding my jeans with sharp creases.
I opened the overtly elegant invitation decorated with a palm tree. “My tenth high school reunion is this year. Ugh. And SueAnn Caldwell is our class president. I would rather face a den full of zombies than go to this thing.”
“Well, why on earth would you say that?” Mama cried. “You had such a good time in high school.”
“No, that was Jenny, the cheerleader. I was the one with the braces and the tuba.”
Mama winced at the venom in my voice when I said Jenny’s name. My older, perfect sister was not speaking to me for various reasons, including the dismissal of her lawsuit against me. The judge had this wacky idea that property that was willed to me in a legal and binding last testament should remain mine, even though I was no longer technically living. This, combined with her overall disgust with how I handled the outing of our potential step-grandfather as a ghoul, had prompted her to tell Mama that I was officially dead to her. Even Mama saw the lack of logic in that statement, but she declined to comment on it.
Crafty, blond, and born with a naturally disdainful curl to her lip, Jenny was the twin-setted, Martha-worshipping yin to my never-even-considered-baking-from-scratch yang. She was the undisputed “good daughter” between the two of us. She rarely disagreed with Mama. She enjoyed most of the things Mama loved: quilting, reading inspirational romance novels about Amish girls, actually ironing clothes instead of just throwing them in the dryer for a few minutes.
And she’d done her duty to the family by bearing two obnoxious spawn, Andrew and Whatshisface.
Life was oddly quiet and stale without Jenny’s needling and disapproval. I’d always thought I would be so much better off as an only child, but now, I sort of missed her. Of course, I would never admit this, even under pain of death and/or a threatenedBaywatchmarathon.
Mama rolled her eyes in a gesture that was somehow both dismissive and loving. “Oh, you have to go. Jenny went to her tenth reunion, and she had a wonderful time.”
I scanned the invitation. “Jenny organized her high school reunion. I’m sure she had a great time.
Oh, come on. Our reunion theme is ‘Enchanted Paradise,’ which was our senior prom theme.
They haven’t had an original idea since then!”
“I just think it would be good for you to go back and see that some of the people you went to school with weren’t as scary as you made them out to be. You gave them a lot of power over you.
Maybe it would do you some good.”
“Hmph.”
“When I went to my tenth reunion, everybody had gotten bald and fat. The Prom Queen was married to the Septic Tank King.”
“That makes it slightly more tempting,” I admitted.
“I’m going downstairs to get your laundry started up. You get your rest.”
“That’s not necessary, Mama, really.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. I’m sure you didn’t have time to find a laundromat when you were gallivanting around God knows where.”
“Actually, the hotels had very nice laundry services. I didn’t even know hotels did that.”
“You let a stranger wash your clothes, but you don’t want me to?” Mama gasped.
“If it will make you happy and let me get back to sleep, wash away,” I told her.
“No problem, honey.” Mama grabbed the freshly foldeddirtyclothes and walked out. She popped her head back into the bedroom doorway. “You were just teasing about the zombies, right?
They’re not real?”
I pulled a sleep mask over my eyes and did not answer.
My mother ironed my jeans. With starch.
And because I am obviously incapable of washing my own clothes properly, Mama gathered all of my clean clothes out of my closet and washed those while I slept. So, without other pants options, I was basically moseying into the shop, John Wayne-style.