by Molly Harper
But since I was not a math major, I wasn’t sure I was qualified to analyze Council spending. Also, as far as I knew, this was some creative attempt to cover the Council’s illicit spending on defense projects and Doomsday Preppers blood storage. And I definitely didn’t want to interfere with that. So I put those files in the scary red financial pile and forgot I’d ever read them.
6
It’s important to document your childe’s milestones. But make sure you know the difference between “memorabilia” and “evidence.”
—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire
It was Friday night, and I was doing homework. This was a truly embarrassing moment in my social history.
Jane had actually left Ben and me alone in the house unchaperoned so she and Gabriel could run some errands. It felt like a test of her trust in us, like she and Ben would both fail if he ended up running home to his parents. There was very little pressure on me. I could only fail if I ordered up pay-per-view porn and imported blood by delivery.
I didn’t know if I’d have the energy to go out if I had anywhere to go. I’d spent the last three days obliterating Jane’s filing backlog and learning to lie through my teeth regarding her whereabouts. I’d gotten to know Sammy a little better and some of the nicer people in the accounting department. I avoided Gigi, Ben, and the IT department like they were carriers of the actual plague, which was difficult, since Gigi turned out to be even nicer than I’d first thought and frequently stopped by my desk to see if I needed anything.
And so, emotionally and physically drained, I was sitting at the kitchen table, working on a lit assignment, when Ben walked in and, upon seeing me, stopped as if he was considering turning back around and skipping breakfast. Whatever he was thinking, he ended up sighing and walking to the fridge to pour himself a mug of A negative.
He sat across the table from me, pointedly not making eye contact as he took a deep sniff of his breakfast. I rolled my eyes and continued typing. Because it was super-easy to create concise, thoughtful analyses of the great works of literature when there was a boy pointedly ignoring you right behind your laptop screen.
I had typed a grand total of four words when I finally slapped the computer shut and said, “So, are you going to just ignore me forever, or . . .”
“I’m not ignoring you,” he insisted.
“Are you aware of the definition of ‘ignoring’? Because I’m pretty sure that on dictionary-dot-com there’s a little picture of your face next to the term.”
“Funny,” he muttered.
“And in that picture, you’re making that judgy face,” I added.
He sighed.
“Just the cat-butt face of righteousness, all in this area,” I said, waving at his head.
“Is there a clinical term for what’s wrong with you?” he asked.
I shot back, “Is there a clinical term for permanent cat-butt face?”
He grinned, though I could tell that he didn’t want to. “Cat-butt face of righteousness?”
“Trademark pending.”
He sighed. “I know I’ve been a bit of a douche to you over the last few weeks.”
I scoffed. “A bit? You passed ‘a bit’ a while ago.”
“I’m sorry. I know. I know it’s been hard on you, adjusting to all of this, and I’ve made it harder. But it’s hard enough, the idea that I’m dead and this is my life now.”
“That sentence makes no sense.”
“I’m aware. This is my life now,” he continued. “And everything I hoped for, every plan I had, it’s all gone. Through no fault of my own. It’s like finding out you have a terminal disease, only the disease makes you live forever, while cutting you off from the world for most of the day. And there’s no cure, no treatment, no end in sight. Add to that, we’re some sort of weird new species of vampires that no one has ever seen. We’re freaks in a society that’s already pretty damn freaky. We’re the only two people in the world—as far as we know—who are like this. So we could be stuck together for the rest of our lives because the Council could decide that we’re too dangerous to let out into the world and put us in an underground cell together and throw away the key. Or they could just decide to stake us and be done with it. And you did this to me! You may not have meant to, but that doesn’t change the fact that you did. So pardon the hell out of me for resenting you just a little bit.”
“Has it occurred to you that I’m in the exact same situation?” I yelled back. “That all of my plans and goals just got shot to hell, too? I have no idea what I’m going to do with the rest of my eternal life. I don’t even have a nice family to fall back on when times get rough. I have exactly two, maybe three people in the world I can trust, and I wouldn’t want to put the burden of dealing with all of this newborn-vampire crap on them.”
“No, I guess it didn’t,” Ben murmured. “I’ve been a little wrapped up in myself.”
“A little?” I growled.
“OK, I said I was a douche. I’m sorry.”
I sighed and covered my face with my hands. This was getting us nowhere. “So what did you give up?” I asked. “Those plans of yours. What did you give up because of the vampire thing? Kids? A girlfriend? A career as a tanning model?”
“Tanning model? No. I don’t look good in orange,” he said. “Mine are a pasty people.”
I snorted, and he continued. “Job plans? Yeah. After graduation, I was supposed to move to California to work at a start-up that just took off. It’s an app that combines all social media into one stream, so instead of posting a photo to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram, you go to the app, which contains all of your accounts, make one post, and you’re done. It’s a great idea but a programming nightmare, so they need someone like me.”
“California . . . where it’s really sunny, most of the time,” I said, grimacing.
“Yeah, but vampires live in California, so it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. I just hope I can graduate on time. Get Jane’s approval to move, which, considering all of our ‘anomalies,’ seems unlikely.”
And there was the guilt again. I had completely derailed Ben’s life. He didn’t know me. He didn’t owe me anything. He was a sweet boy who had come to see me in my sickroom after knowing me for less than twenty-four hours. And it had bitten him on the ass. Or the wrist. I was literally the worst.
And Ben, who was oblivious to me mentally kicking my own ass, was still talking. “Kids? Yeah, maybe, I was thinking that kids would be something I would enjoy,” he said. “I come from a good family. I had good parents, a happy childhood. There was no reason to think that I wouldn’t be happy being a family guy, with a minivan in the garage and two-point-four kids.”
“And then I came along and took that sweet, sweet minivan plan away from you,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
“I’m starting to accept it. I mean, we can do all of these other things, pretty cool things, really, that we’re going to get in exchange. Like never aging, never getting sick. And hey, male pattern baldness runs in my family, so I probably owe you one.”
“That’s kind of sick.”
“The main thing is my parents. Their faces when they saw me on the video chat. Not being able to tell them I’m just a few miles away. It’s killing me. And what’s worse is that I don’t even know whether they’re going to be able to accept me once I am able to see them in person.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured. But I noticed he hadn’t mentioned losing the life he’d planned with Gigi. Was that because now that they were both vampires, he thought they could get back together? Was he just being nice to me now because he was a nice person who didn’t want to be at odds with his unwanted roommate? Why didn’t he even mention her? Why was she such a taboo subject?
He sighed and gave me what passed for a smile. “What about you? You haven’t mentioned your parents. Kids. Plans. Pe
ts. Baldness?”
“Nothing special.”
“Oh, come on. I told you all of my boring details. Share with the class. What are your parents like? What were you planning on doing after graduation? Were kids something you’d considered?”
“No!” I said, cackling. “Sorry, that laugh was too loud.”
I cleared my throat. This was the stuff we hadn’t talked about in our enchanting conversation in front of the dorm. No one wants to hear about your tragic past on the first pseudo-date. I’d deflected, turned the questions back on him, not only to avoid talking about myself but also because I’d liked hearing about his normal childhood, his normal high school experience, his loving parents.
As if he could hear my train of thought, he said, “Come on, that night, in front of the dorm, you didn’t talk much about yourself. I mean, you talked about the ‘now,’ about school and your friends and that sort of thing, but nothing before you got to UK. It was like you were hatched as a fully formed undergrad. Why was that?”
“You don’t want to hear this,” I said, shifting uncomfortably in my seat.
“I do,” he insisted. “I really do.”
“Kids? No, I wasn’t considering them at all. I mean, maybe in ten, fifteen years, but I did not feel in any way prepared to take care of another person. And maybe in a couple of years, I’ll feel differently, like something was taken from me, but for right now, I’m good. I mean, Jane never had biological kids, and she’s raising three of us right now. You never know what could happen. Graduation plans? I picked an English major because I like to read, but I don’t think I’d ever want to teach little kids. I’m not good with them. You’ve seen how I talk to Georgie. That’s how I usually talk to kids, even if they aren’t basically tiny, terrifying adults. I just don’t have that thing that makes you good with them. Which is yet another reason that not having any of my own is not a huge blow to me.”
I continued, “I thought maybe I’d go to grad school, eventually get a PhD if I could afford it, and end up teaching at a college. I loved college. I loved living on my own, making my own decisions, controlling my diet, my schedule, my room. I loved my classes and feeling like I was a part of something bigger, a community. I could see myself being very comfortable in that kind of environment for the rest of my life. But unless I get this pesky urge to drink every human I meet under control, that’s probably going to put my teaching career off for a while.”
Ben was frowning at me. “Did you have super-controlling helicopter parents or something?”
“What?”
“Your diet, your schedule, your room. Did your parents not let you make those decisions on your own when you were at home?”
I bit my lip. Well, this was it. I could play it off by being glib, or just put it out there and hope Ben didn’t feel sorry for me. I really hated the face people made when they heard the words “foster kid.” It was always the same, a tilt of the head, a furrow to the brow, and sometimes there was even a sad little “Aw.” And it changed the way people interacted with me. If I was having a bad day, well, I must have abandonment issues, because I was a foster kid. If there was one cupcake left, I should have it, because I probably didn’t have many treats growing up as a foster kid. It was better just to let people think I’d had an average upbringing so I didn’t get patronized.
But I was probably going to be stuck with Ben for a while, and he was probably going to hear something from Jane eventually, so I pursed my lips and said, “My dad was stationed at Fort Campbell. My mom was working at a gas station, earning some extra money while she took nursing classes at the community college. He came into the station to fill up his truck, and bam. He said it felt like he’d been hit by lightning the first time he saw her. He said, ‘Twenty-five dollars on pump twelve, a Slim Jim, and how do you feel about dogs, kids, and men who leave their socks on the floor but are otherwise pretty damn charming?’ Mom was laughing so hard she could barely write down her phone number.”
“So there’s a family history of being approached by extremely clever men?” Ben suggested.
“If the last few weeks are any indication of your ‘approach’ technique, you have a lot to learn about ‘clever,’ buddy,” I told him.
Ben pulled a face. “Good point. Please, on with the story of your much smarter and socially savvy father.”
“Dad apparently came from one of those old horse-farming families, the people who train racehorses for Churchill Downs? Well, they weren’t thrilled with their son joining the military in the first place. They were even less thrilled when he started dating a girl who worked at a gas station, a girl whose parents were . . . Mexican,” I said, whispering the last word dramatically. “I guess that’s the way they said it, because every time my mom told me the story, she whispered, ‘Mexican.’ Also, my mom’s parents were Guatemalan, so the Keenes weren’t even accurately racist. Anyway, they ran a background check and found out about Mom’s brief stint working as a waitress at Cheekies—you know, the sports bar where they wear the short shorts? Mom only worked there for a month, but they called her ‘that stripper’ after that, which made for a very awkward toast at my parents’ wedding. They were not the type of people who were so charmed by their new grandchild that it changed their hearts. He called to tell them I’d been born, and they actually told him he’d ‘never be free of that stripper now.’ He didn’t want me to hear them talk about my mother that way. He didn’t know what they would say to me, how they would try to manipulate me with gifts and money, like they’d tried to control him growing up. He did know that they would treat my mom like crap while he was deployed in Afghanistan, and there would be nothing he could do about it from thousands of miles away. So he cut them off entirely. They made a big scene at his funeral, called my mom some names, scared me until I cried. I thought that rich people were supposed to be above that kind of behavior. But I guess rednecks are rednecks, no matter how big their house is.”
“How old were you?”
“I was four. It was rough, but my mom got us through it. She just refused to give up. She worked so hard, gave up a lot. And there were some army friends of my dad’s who helped us sometimes when the car broke down or the roof leaked.”
“And you’re speaking of her in the past tense,” Ben noted sadly.
“I was fifteen. She was driving home from her second job and fell asleep at the wheel. Even though I had heard all the stories about my grandparents, I still kind of hoped that they would have a change of heart, would want to take me in after my mom died. But they told Family Services that they had no interest in me. They only wanted to know where they needed to sign so they wouldn’t have to take responsibility.”
“What about your mom’s family? Couldn’t they help?”
“Her parents were almost seventy by the time I was born. They were great, just good, sweet, loving people. They died when I was around ten, within a month of each other. When Mom died, it would have been possible to send me to the extended family back in Guatemala. But I’m pretty damned American. I didn’t think I would do well over there, so I went into foster care.”
Ben didn’t say anything. He just looked mildly horrified.
“Yeah, I know, I’m the saddest sad sack who ever sacked.”
He shook his head. “It just sucks that you’ve lost so many people.”
“It’s safe to say I have some pretty significant abandonment issues. Also trust. And impulse control, on occasion, but that’s only if a pumpkin spice latte is involved. Which I don’t think applies anymore, since I’m dead and can’t have pumpkin spice.”
“It does explain a lot about how you’ve reacted to Jane. Her trying to mother you.”
“Yeah, I don’t think you’re qualified to analyze all of this,” I said, waving a hand at my head.
“I won’t try,” he promised.
“So can we start over?” I asked. “Meagan Keene. Total stranger and y
our sire.”
“Yes,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand. “Ben Overby, occasionally judgmental doofus.”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“You, too. So, how do you feel about expensive imported bloods?”
“Is that some sort of line? Is this your attempt to improve on your ‘approach’?”
Ben grinned. “No, but I just happened to see a bottle hidden in the back of the fridge with a great big gold bow on it, which probably means it was an expensive gift from a visiting vampire dignitary.”
“And it’s probably poisoned,” I noted. “There is no such thing as a free bottle of gourmet blood . . . and that is officially the weirdest sentence that has ever left my mouth.”
“Nah, I talked to one of the security guards at work, the ones who keep us from leaving the building like regular people? And he says that all of Jane’s and Dick’s gifts have to be scanned for poisons and contaminants before they’re delivered. After what happened to Gigi, they have a whole poison-scan policy.”
“What happened to Gigi?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you when we crack open that very expensive-looking bottle of blood.”
“Is this some sort of attempt to get me into trouble?” I asked. “Cat-butt face revenge?”
“No, I just don’t want Jane to feel like her job is too easy. We have to cause her a little trouble.”
“Fine.” I sighed. “But you’re taking the rap for this, Golden Child.”
“Don’t call me that, and I will accept full bottle-cracking responsibility.”
I never did get to hear what happened to Gigi. We’d just managed to pull aside the foil labeled “House of Rothschilde, Rh phenotype, 1968” and pop the cork when the kitchen door opened. Jane and Gabriel walked in, carrying shopping bags. They did that weird parent thing where they’re smiling and talking and then they see what you’re doing and that happy noise slowly dies off. When it’s not your parents doing it, it’s sort of hilarious.