by Molly Harper
“Yeah, somehow that doesn’t help,” I told her.
“So the next few weeks, we’re going to focus on your self-control, dampening your bloodthirst, and general vampire education. Eventually, you’re going to be steady enough to go out into the world, have limited interactions with humans. And then we’re going to get you back to your campus.”
I tried not to pout, but honestly. “Homeschooling?”
“Homeschooling.” Ben groaned.
“Don’t look at me,” Georgie said archly. “I graduated from self-control school centuries ago.”
“You ate an entire circus once,” Jane countered.
Georgie scowled. “The nets gave the trapeze artists an unfair advantage. Call me a purist.”
“That’s not the word I would use,” I told her.
5
Make sure you know the basics before you start to teach your childe fancy feeding tricks.
—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire
If our next few weeks were a training montage in an ’80s action movie, well, it would mostly feature ugly crying and blood spatters set to power chords.
I’d hoped that since we were apparently some new strain, we could somehow skip the weird adjustment period from human to vampire. But no, Ben and I struggled with our thirst, though it was slaked with less blood than Jane or Gabriel needed. We weren’t used to our superhuman strength. And we never seemed to make it to our beds in time for sunrise, meaning we collapsed wherever we were.
It was like being a gawky teenager all over again, only instead of tripping over our own feet, we accidentally broke doorknobs off their moorings and suffered weird contusions-slash-carpet-burns.
Early on, Jane had found that keeping Georgie on a schedule was important to prevent her from committing mass murder, so she put Ben and me on the same routine. We woke up and drank breakfast as a “family,” and then Jane left us to do our schoolwork while she did Council business in her study. The awesome news was that we typed and read faster than even Jane and Gabriel. Georgie, fascinated-slash-annoyed by the fact that we could do something she couldn’t, ran us through typing-speed trials. I was the winner at 390 words per minute. But Ben was a faster reader, completing his copy of The Guide for the Newly Undead, Second Edition in an hour.
After homework, we got “yard time,” when Jane literally let us run around the yard to let off some steam. Sadly, this was the most entertaining part of our day, testing our strength and speed. Every day, we ran laps around the cow pond, leaped from inadvisable heights, and tried to see the lights of town (such as they were) from the tops of the trees. We could not.
Dr. Hudson gave us the undead version of heart monitors, bracelets that measured electrical activity in our brains, our metabolism, and other vital statistics. I took mine off as often as I could, because I didn’t like anything to do with McDerpy on my skin. I suspected the bracelets might have also included a tracking chip, given how often Ben wandered just a little too close to the woods near his family’s house.
After yard time, we had remedial vampire classes—sunscreen application, judging our bloodthirst, avoiding silver. We had to (slowly) read The Guide for the Newly Undead, Second Edition like it was Bible study so Jane could quiz us on chapter topics. Georgie would wear clothes from thrift stores saturated in several levels of human smell, in exchange for bribes of more Hershey’s Blood Additive and video games. This served two purposes. For one thing, it was very unsettling, feeling that crazy bloodthirst for a child-shaped person. The self-loathing gave you all kinds of negative reinforcement about not feeding from humans. And if that didn’t keep you from lunging, Georgie could be downright mean. She was a gouger and a hair puller.
Despite the gouging, Georgie was the most welcoming member of the “family.” She seemed to find my flailing newbie antics charming. Or at least amusing. She was . . . extremely freaking creepy. I would not lie. She had this flat, sarcastic way of speaking that just sounded wrong coming out of a cute little blond child. Also, the glassy sheen of her dead shark eyes made me think that she was secretly plotting my death. And I was pretty sure she was smart enough to get away with it.
Jane still watched me like she expected me to bolt with the family’s flatware. I maintained a polite distance from Gabriel. He was a perfectly nice guy, though he seemed permanently befuddled. He was the centered, steady yin to Jane’s clumsy, hyperverbal yang. But I’d been in enough foster placements to know that you didn’t get too cozy with the man of the house. Especially if your new foster mom already had some issues with trusting you.
Ben stretched my polite distance by miles. Not only would he not try to work around Jane’s Firewall of Death so we could contact our friends on campus, but he dedicated a lot of time to ignoring me. Maybe ignoring people who lived in the same house as he did was his special vampire talent.
Long gone was the adorable boy whose heady cookie-based flirting had left me weak in the knees. Oh, he wasn’t cruel, and he didn’t snub me to my face, but I could only take seeing so many smiles die on his lips when he saw me walk into a room. He went from happy and laughing at something Jane had said to completely dead-faced. So I stopped walking into rooms where I knew he would be. I wasn’t trying to be petulant about it. I just timed my day to be as Ben-free as possible. I did my homework in my room. During yard time, I ran at my own pace, which just happened to be fifteen yards behind Ben.
I decided not to let it bother me. I didn’t do romantic entanglements. I embraced casual sex and all its awesome, minimal emotional requirements. But I hadn’t done that very often, because the chances of turning up pregnant or contracting some weird disease were pretty high for my demographic.
I’d always prided myself on not investing in people who didn’t invest in me. Life was too short to attach yourself to people who didn’t really like you. If a friend reduced our interactions to nothing but texts and Facebook likes, I found new friends. If a guy didn’t call, I didn’t make up elaborate excuses about him “liking me too much.” I moved on to a guy who did call. Ben was no different. We’d had the beginnings of something that could have been special, but it had been destroyed by a forty-five-pound weight.
On the plus side, having little contact with the outside world or the people who lived two doors down from me meant that I threw myself at my school assignments like they were the only thing keeping me sane. Because they were. Which was sad. But my grades had never been higher.
Whether it was to keep us socialized or to give Jane a break, some of her vampire friends came to visit. It was mostly her friend-colleague hybrid Dick Cheney, who seemed super-defensive about his name when he first introduced himself for some reason. Dick came off as pretty sketchy when you first met him, like the kind of guy who lingered around campus asking girls if they wanted to go to his modeling school. But he was completely devoted to his wife, Andrea, in that googly-eyed, hung-the-moon way I’d only seen on the CW lineup.
After about two weeks of this, Jane trusted us enough to introduce us to the larger circle of vampire friends at a big potluck. Well, it was actually a test of our bloodthirst, dressed up as a potluck. Basically a training Trojan Horse.
It started with Jane’s vampire friends slowly filtering into the house. There were so many of them—pale, attractive, conspicuously coupled off—that I had a hard time keeping track of all the names. I’d met Dick and Andrea (indecently pretty, with clothes that looked like something on Mad Men). And then there were Miranda and her boyfriend-sire, Collin (uptight and British but yummy in that Michael Fassbender way that kind of made me understand why she put up with his constant grimacing). Then there was a tall dark-haired man named Cal (funny accent, cool vintage rock T-shirts) and his petite brown-haired wife, Iris (who seemed to want to mother me one moment and ground me the next).
Iris seemed particularly fond of Ben, given the way she tackle-hugged him the moment she ran th
rough the door.
“I’m so happy to see you!” she cried, clutching his face in her hands in a grip that I frankly found terrifying. “I mean, so sad that you’re dead but so happy to see you!”
“I’m so glad I don’t need to breathe,” Ben wheezed as Iris enveloped him in another hug. “Because it would be an issue right now.”
“OK, sweetheart, put the boy down,” Cal said gently. “Being picked up like a toddler in front of loved ones is emasculating.”
“Little bit,” Ben agreed as Iris set him on his feet.
“Gigi and Nik would have come tonight, but they thought it would be sort of weird for you,” Iris said.
I leaned toward Miranda, who was seated near me on the couch. “Who’s Gigi?” I asked her.
“Iris’s little sister and Ben’s ex-girlfriend. They broke up a year or so ago, when Gigi was still human. It was . . . it was unpleasant for them both. And then awkward. But mostly unpleasant.”
“Oh.” I felt a small flash of sympathy for Ben. It did have to be super-awkward to have an ex mixed into a friend group that he clearly valued. People took sides or tried to “stay neutral,” which meant they took the side that wasn’t yours. And next thing you knew, there were parties you didn’t know about and hangouts you weren’t invited to, and then your Facebook friend list shrank dramatically, and you were left wondering what happened.
I liked Miranda. She was a new vampire, too. She’d worked for vampires for a long time before she was turned, so she seemed amused-slash-exasperated by many of their antics. And she seemed to understand how uncomfortable I was in this situation, sticking close by to fill me in on this person’s relationship to Jane or how that person related to everybody else. All while Fitz sat between us and thumped his tail against my thigh.
More and more people moseyed through the door. They all sat around the parlor, trying too hard to look casual as they drank different bottles of blood they’d brought with them. Andrea set up a couple of pots of different types of blood concoctions she’d made at home. Apparently, Jane was not trusted to cook, even when the food wasn’t solid. Her friends contended that the original meaning of “BYOB” was “bring your own blood.”
Something about their easy warmth made my chest ache in a way that wasn’t entirely pleasant. And it didn’t help that Ben already knew so many of them, leaving me feeling like the odd man out all over again. Dick made an effort to keep me engaged, talking to me about my schoolwork and whether I was happy with the assignments the professors were sending me—something he claimed was part of his job as Jane’s co-representative on the Council. His eyes just about glazed over with boredom while discussing nineteenth-century British literature, but I appreciated his effort.
“Jane gave you the Council-issued phone, right?” Dick asked. “She told you to keep it with you at all times?”
I pulled the bright pink KidPhone from my back pocket. “Would we call this a phone?”
“Yes,” Dick said. “Now, if you ever run into trouble, I want you to press the one button three times and then hold it down until it beeps. And then you want to get about ten feet away.”
“What’s going to happen if I do that?” I asked him. “Is it like a tracking beacon or something?”
Dick opened his mouth to answer, but just then the door opened again, and the whole room went still. Dick moved between me and the door. A ridiculously gorgeous redheaded woman swanned in, grinning broadly at the crowd.
“Hey, y’all!”
Wow, that was some accent. It was nasal to the point that it hurt my ears, which was tragic because she was one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen.
I watched the redhead cross the room and could immediately tell that she wasn’t a vampire. Her skin tone was too healthy. And her heartbeat . . . she was calm, but it was thumping at a pretty steady rhythm. Heartbeat. Human. Was she human? Panicked, I clamped my jaw shut, willing my fangs to stay in my gums. But they never dropped.
Fitz huffed at the redhead, then laid his snout against my leg, which was a nice reminder to stay stuck to the couch like I was nailed to it.
The twangy newcomer didn’t smell right. She didn’t smell sweet or tangy or anything remotely good. She smelled . . . like a wet dog. A gross wet dog that had been rolling in something that had been dead for weeks.
Fitz looked up at me with his shiny brown eyes, as if he could hear my anticanine sentiments and was insulted by them. I shrugged.
Still, the stink coming off that stranger seemed wrong. Someone that attractive should have a regular bathing schedule.
I glanced at Ben, whose nose was wrinkled with distaste. Could he smell it, too?
Jane eyed us both carefully, looking confused when I sank against the couch and pressed my hand over my nose.
The newcomer walked closer to me. “You must be Meagan!” she cried, smiling cautiously. “So nice to meet you! I’m Jolene Lavelle.”
“Hi,” I said, waving awkwardly, not moving to shake her offered hand. Because her hygiene was in question, honestly.
Jolene looked to Jane, who shrugged. Jolene looked back over her shoulder. “Zeb, you comin’ in?”
A man with sandy-blond hair and bright blue eyes poked his head through the doorway. “Hi!”
Miranda glanced between me and the door. “Oh . . . no.”
It was immediately clear that Zeb wasn’t a vampire, either. He was tan and vital and healthy-looking. I could hear his slightly elevated pulse from the couch. But unlike his wife, he did not smell like wet dog. He smelled delicious, like fresh-baked apple pie and pumpkin spice lattes. I could practically see the blood throbbing through his delicate veins, under his skin, rich and warm and ripe.
My mouth watered. I could feel actual saliva seeping at the corner of my mouth, which was, frankly, gross. And my fangs dropped with a snick. Every muscle in my body was commanding me to jump forward, launch myself from the couch, bank off the wall, and tackle him. I could practically feel the skin of his throat give way under my fangs, flooding my mouth with hot red blood. But I gritted my teeth, stiffening and locking down my legs so they couldn’t propel me forward.
Ben was tensed on his chair, fingers gripping the armrests like they were lifelines. I reached over and wrapped my fingers around his wrist, his very, very tight wrist. It relaxed ever so slightly, but he didn’t move.
Zeb frowned at us. “Huh, well, that was anticlimactic. I was promised lunging, maybe even a minor flesh wound. It’s gotten kind of boring ever since everybody settled down and got seminormal. No one’s kidnapped me or hypnotized me or threatened to murder me in years. Between that and the kids starting school, I feel old.”
Jolene put her arm around Zeb’s shoulders. “Welcome to middle age, sweetie.”
“Your breath smells really nice, by the way,” Zeb told me.
“Good job, you two!” Jane said, rushing forward to pull Ben and me up from the couch, though I noticed that she stayed between us and Zeb. In yanking us to our feet, she knocked aside my grip on Ben’s arm. “I’m so proud!”
“What the hell, Jane?” I yelled.
“Zeb’s my best friend.” Jane said. “Has been since we were kids, and he’s one of the few humans left in our little circle of friends since Miranda was turned. I invited him over here to see how tight you’ve locked down your bloodthirst. The good news is, it’s pretty darn tight.”
“This was a test?” I yelped. “That’s freaking sick!”
“We’ve only been vampires for two weeks!” Ben cried.
“What? Zeb knows the risks, and there’s a whole room full of vampires here to protect him. Who better to test your control? And you did great!”
I frowned. “I still don’t like it.”
Jane shrugged. “Well, that’s fine, kids, but as your almost-sire, I reserve the right to test you as I see fit. And I did, and you were awesome, so accept it
and say thank you for my vote of confidence.”
“I think that the ‘thank you’ part would be easier if you didn’t call us kids,” Ben told her.
“You’re under twenty, and just this evening I found you watching Thundercats in my living room,” Jane pointed out. “In your pajama pants.”
Ben frowned. “She’s got me there.”
“Still doesn’t explain why I get lumped together with the ‘kid,’ ” I grumbled. “So what does performing well on your creepy little test mean? Do we get a special treat? An outing to vampire Chuck E. Cheese’s? Access to telecommunications?”
“An internship!” Jane exclaimed, with a big cheesy grin on her face. I swear, she actually did jazz hands and everything.
“That seems more like a punishment,” I said.
“Speaking as someone who has done two unpaid internships, I agree,” Ben told her. “Is this about my browser history again?”
I gave Ben an extreme side-eye.
“It’s not a punishment,” Jane insisted. “It’s just that with all of the remedial vampire training and the number of hours one of you spends watching Thundercats, it occurs to me that maybe you don’t have enough to keep you occupied.”
“Really?” Dick asked.
“It turns out that when you read and type at lightning speed and you don’t have to sit in on lectures, college classwork doesn’t take all night,” I said. “Which you should blame on the increasingly lax standards of the American postsecondary educational system. Not on us.”
“Well, I can’t have you sitting around my house all night unsupervised and unoccupied. Idle hands are the devil’s opportunity to break my furniture and walls.”
“Your walls?” I asked.
“Jamie,” she and Ben said together.
“Wow.”
“So, instead of leaving you alone with my precious, vulnerable walls, we are going to find something fun and exciting for you to do.”
Ben’s voice brightened. “Like what?”