by Molly Harper
“Just fine,” I said, with my sweetest smile.
“Really? Because I’ve heard Les and Marge are planning to sue you for custody of Danny,” Marnie said. “I just can’t imagine how I would feel if someone tried to take Brian from me. I would be so stressed out if I were you.”
“Well, it’s a good thing that you’re not me. But really,” I said, all easy smiles and wide eyes, “everything’s just fine with Les and Marge.”
Just at that moment, because the conversational gods hated me, a man in a plaid shirt and jeans tapped me on the shoulder. It was unusual to see dads at this sort of thing, which was part of the reason I’d assumed that Wade was a school employee. I gave him that same easy, empty grin. “Hi, can I help you?”
“Liberty Stratton?”
“Most people call me Lib—” My sentence was cut off as the man in plaid slapped an envelope into my hand.
“You’ve been served.”
My mouth hung open as the man strode away as if the hounds of hell were on his heels.
If vampires were capable of blushing, my face would be on fire at that moment. I unsealed the envelope and scanned the contents. Les and Marge had used a lot of scary legal terms to file for full custody of Danny.
I folded the papers back into the envelope and stuffed them into my back pocket, all the while schooling every muscle in my face into a relaxed, untroubled expression. I would not let these people see me worried or upset. I would not be fodder for the gossip mill—well, any more than I already was. I would walk out of here with my head held high and have a snotty, gross, undead breakdown in my van like a grown-ass woman.
“So I guess things with Les and Marge aren’t as OK as you think they are,” Marnie said, clucking her tongue.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Marnie,” I said, all sweetness drained from my voice. “That was just a little warning from the Council. They get really cranky when I bite random civilians without provocation. Of course, if I had provocation, they’d probably let me slide.”
I swept the tip of my tongue over my elongating canines and gave a very pointed look toward Marnie’s jugular. She went bone-white and took a step back. Behind me, I swore I heard Penny snicker, but she covered it with a cough.
“Good night, y’all,” I said, patting Jenny’s arm. I glanced at Marnie’s neck again, making her retreat even farther.
I walked out into the parking lot, teeth grinding as I searched through my enormous mom bag for my keys. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I knew my in-laws were going to file suit. It was the next step in the natural progression of this sort of legal situation. I just didn’t expect them to serve me at a freaking PTA meeting. Had they done it because they wanted to make sure there were witnesses or because they wanted to make sure I was embarrassed in front of the other parents? It wasn’t as if my evening schedule was unpredictable.
I could feel the fear and anxiety dragging me under the oily surface of paralysis. My hands were so cold and numb I could barely keep my grip on my purse. How was I going to fight them? How was I going to keep my son with me? Hell, how was I going to drive home?
So distracted was I that I didn’t even notice the footsteps falling behind me for several moments. When I did, I stopped, listening to make sure I wasn’t just hearing some other parent hightailing it out of the meeting. I turned and scanned the parking lot. A dark, exceptionally tall shape stood waiting at the end of the row, watching me.
“Jed, if this is another Bigfoot sighting, they’re getting kind of old,” I called. “You could at least shift to something interesting, like a land squid or a chupacabra.”
The shape didn’t move. It was hard for even my vampire eyes to make out details because he was dressed in relentless black from head to toe. He was even wearing a ski mask with strange meshlike coverings over the eyes.
We didn’t get a lot of ninjas in Half-Moon Hollow. And I’m pretty sure Jed would have responded. So I wasn’t quite sure how to react here. Was this some sort of test from Jane to determine whether I would survive a parking-lot attack? Couldn’t I just roll around in a gym with a practice dummy or something?
The figure cocked his head to the side, staring at me like some predatory creature considering his best approach. I dropped my bag and kicked out of my sandals.
I could do this. Sure, I had no fighting experience, but I had superstrength and speed on my side. Then again maybe this guy did, too. He could be a ninja chupacabra for all I knew. But I could survive this. I’d gotten through a trailer-park childhood, cancer, and ostracism from soccer moms.
I flicked my fingers at Mr. Chupacabra in the international gesture for “bring it.”
I could make out the shape’s long legs gathering for a leap, as if he was going to throw himself all the way across the parking lot in one jump. But across the pavement, someone blasted a horn and yelled, “Come on! I’ve got to get home before Scandal!”
More parents were filtering out of the school entrance. Brake lights flickered red across the darkness. I whipped my head back toward the dark figure . . . who was no longer standing at the end of the row. I scanned the parking lot, but there were no wayward ninja creatures lurking about.
I whipped my head around, searching for signs of El Chupacabra. But all I could see were my fellow parents and a sea of SUVs and minivans.
Great. Now I was having delusions.
Scooping my bag from the ground, I climbed into my van and slammed the door, locking it tight. And thanks to every woman-in-peril movie I’d ever seen, I knelt backward in my seat to check the back of the van to make sure no one was lurking there.
Jane had made it very clear that if I was confronted by any assailants, masked or otherwise, I was to come to her immediately and tell her every detail. After texting Kerrianne to tell her I would be a little late, I put my van in gear and pulled out of the parking lot, heading downtown.
Jane’s shop, Specialty Books, had started a sort of revolution on Paxton Avenue. She’d taken the original occult bookshop space and expanded into the former adult-video store next door to create a thriving store for readers living and undead. The next thing we knew, a children’s consignment shop had opened down the street, and a specialty embroidery business, then a gourmet cheese and wine shop and an artisanal candle store. The neighborhood that had once been an embarrassment to Hollow residents was on the verge of being a bit hipster. I wasn’t even nervous about parking my van outside of Specialty Books, but it took a long time for me to work up the courage to walk inside. I sat in my van, watching people walk in through the front door.
There were a lot of people gathered there. I could barely make out the well-stocked maple shelves through the elaborately lettered window. Opening the door, I was greeted by a mishmash of voices and smells. The shop managed to be quirky and cozy at the same time, with its tranquil purple-blue walls and the twinkling star-shaped light fixtures dangling from the ceiling. While it was modern and clean, the candles, the ceremonial items, and the antique maple-and-glass sideboard that served as a checkout stand kept it earthy.
Jane was pushing the comfy purple chairs into a semicircle just beyond the shiny coffee counter, where Andrea reigned supreme. She refused to let Jane near the large, rather intimidating copper cappuccino machine ever since some sort of incident involving a steamed-milk explosion. One man with broad shoulders and a prominent sloping forehead stood at the bar, glugging down some espresso-blood concoction that left a faint red ring around his thin upper lip. When I passed by, his watery blue eyes followed me, sending a shiver up my spine.
“What are you doing here?” Jane asked, grinning. “I’ve been trying to get you to come to one of these meetings for weeks!”
“Meeting?”
“The Newly Emerged Vampires Support Group,” she said, waving her hand at the people milling about the shop. “We started it up as a sort of spin-off program of the FFOTU. And since people were used to meeting here already, we found room in the shop’s schedule.”
“This is a support group?” I asked, frowning as I watched the vampires chatting, laughing, sipping their bloodychinos. I’d attended a few support-group meetings at my treatment center. They’d been considerably less cozy. “It looks like a book club.”
“We try to keep it loose and comfortable,” she said. “And since you clearly didn’t come here for the meeting, what’s going on? Is Danny OK?”
“He’s fine,” I assured her. “But you told me to tell you if anything strange ever happened, and I am here to file a report in an official capacity. Very official.”
Jane’s posture straightened, and her face went grim. “Come with me,” she said. “Andrea, could you get things started?”
With a nod to Andrea, Jane escorted me to an office at the back of the shop, small and snug, with a dark wood desk that occupied most of the space. A shelf behind the desk was littered with framed photos of Gabriel and Jane, Jane’s childe Jamie, Dick and Andrea, and the rest of Jane’s friends.
In a very businesslike manner, Jane and I sat down, and she questioned me. It was a very gentle interrogation but an interrogation all the same. She left no detail unexamined, down to the possible brand of the ninja’s ski mask.
“You did the right thing, coming to me immediately,” Jane said. “It means you are smarter than ninety percent of the vampires in the Hollow. Sidebar, please tell Gigi Scanlon I told you that, and make sure I am there when you do it, so I can see the expression on her face. I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to find this guy, but at least we’ll have a paper trail.”
“Very comforting,” I told her drily as she led me out of the office, arm around my shoulders. “Oh, by the way, my in-laws have filed suit against me for custody of Danny. And I am filled with bone-quaking terror.”
“Actually, I have good news on that front,” Jane said. “Your in-laws’ petition has been directed to Judge Holyfield in the local family court. Judge Holyfield has written several legal-journal articles on the rights of undead parents and the importance of keeping family units together as long as the parents, living or undead, are responsible and fit. So you have better than a fighting chance in this. I don’t want you to worry. We might be able to nip this thing in its early stages.”
I nodded. It was fortunate indeed that the Council was paying for my defense in the custody case, because the legal fees would have drained the comfortable but not exactly fluffy cushion that stood between us and homelessness. It was also fortunate that I wasn’t the state’s, much less the Hollow’s, first case of a grandparent trying to claim custody of a grandchild from a vampire parent. I did not want to live through this case on the front page of the Half-Moon Hollow Herald.
“I’m a mother. Worrying is basically how I pray,” I told her. “Wait, when you say the case was ‘directed’ to Judge Holyfield . . .”
“Sweetie, you don’t want to know,” Jane told me. “Let’s just say that as a local Council representative and the wielder of all of its questionable resources, I’m glad to finally wield for the sake of good.”
“Thanks, Jane.”
The storefront had gone very quiet as the tall man from before, the bloodspresso chugger, stood with his back to us, espresso cup in one hand, while he weepily explained how he couldn’t find friends in the undead community.
“It’s just so lonely,” he whispered, shoulders heaving. “I don’t understand why I can’t find friends among other vampires. I’m a nice guy once you get to know me.”
The reek of desperation could have something to do with it. Men who have to point out that they’re nice guys are very rarely actual nice guys, I thought, rather loudly, so Jane could hear me. But she didn’t respond. Weird.
“Who is that?” I whispered.
“That is Crybaby Bob,” she said. “Crybaby Bob is one of our newest members and a little nervous about finding a support system nearby. And by ‘nervous,’ I mean a person-shaped sieve constantly leaking tears. Hence the accurate but somewhat mean nickname.”
“You’re not going to try to set me up with Bob, are you? Because I’m not ready for undead playdates.”
Jane shook her head and whispered, “Bob is needy as hell and working my last nerve. He’s been a vampire for three years. You’d think that would be time enough to take the training wheels off of his fangs.”
“I just need someone who understands me!” Bob sobbed.
Jane cringed, and I mouthed, Wow.
I drove home, sipping on a blood-coffee-chocolate concoction Andrea told me was a guaranteed “better mood in a bottle.” I knew better than to ask questions, so I simply listened to Norah Jones and sipped my vampire Prozac while I slowly, calmly guided my van home. Because getting pulled over for speeding while drinking from an open blood container would not help my chances of keeping Danny at home.
From the highway, I could see an unfamiliar shape on my front porch. Kerrianne hadn’t texted to warn me of visitors, and Jed wouldn’t have let someone loiter on our shared porch. Frowning, I threw my van into park and jumped out, running toward the house with more speed than I could safely put on my engine.
I skidded to a stop in the gravel drive, crouching slightly.
Sitting on my front porch, cool and crisp as you please, was a man in a light blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled at the elbows. The even matinee-idol features were now brightened by a warm smile that crinkled the corners of his dark goatee. It was Mr. Gentleman, the vampire who had intervened in my conversation with Wade in the Walmart parking lot. And as the wind changed directions, the scent of sandalwood drifted toward my sensitive nose.
There was something familiar about him, and not just from that one incident in the parking lot. I knew him somehow. His smile filled me with what I could only describe as a warm, giddy sort of peace.
Attempting to keep some semblance of cool, I cleared my throat. “So did you just walk around, sitting on all of the front porches in town until you found mine?”
He snorted, and the warm, flirtatious smile bloomed into something more like delight. “Oh, I have my ways. Your babysitter made it very clear that I wasn’t welcome in the house. And if she hears one distressed sound out of you while we are talking, she’s going to, and I quote, ‘pepper my ass with salt and silver buckshot.’ ”
I looked over at my front window, where Kerrianne waved . . . what looked to be a shotgun. Where did she get a shotgun? Did Jed loan it to her? Then again, this was Kentucky. A better question would be where couldn’t Kerrianne get a shotgun.
For the record, answers to that question would not include the local bait shop, the church rummage sale, or the quilters’ guild luncheon. We would have to have a long talk about my concerns about gun safety and proximity to Danny some other time.
“She’s a smart lady, my babysitter.”
“Are you all right?” he asked. “That had to be frightening for you earlier, seeing that weird guy in the parking lot with the ski mask.”
“How did you know about that?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, I would love to stand out here with you and try to figure out your cryptic quips, but I have other things to do. Enjoy your night.” I took the steps, light on my feet, but he caught my hand as I passed.
“So do you remember me?”
He stood, close enough for me to appreciate the warm amber notes of the cologne he wore. I pulled back, but he used the instability of my momentum to pull me near. His lips were so close to my temple I could almost feel the soft brush of his beard against my skin. “Please, remember me.”
A rush of images flooded my brain. Hands sliding up my throat to cradle my head. Cheap, thin motel sheets stained with tiny specks of blood. Lips at my ear, whispering that it was all right to be afraid. That this part was always difficult, but when I woke up, I would be like him, strong and beautiful.
Cool, strong hands curled around my elbows, catching me before my knees buckled under me. I surfaced from the strange memory fog and found Mr. Gentleman
staring down at me, his lips quirked into an amused smirk.
Holy hell. No wonder he seemed so familiar. This guy was my sire.
8
Be careful of the connections and friendships you form in the world of the undead. Just as when you were living, you want to be careful of the influences you allow around your children.
—My Mommy Has Fangs: A Guide to Post-Vampiric Parenting
He was real. The man from my dreams, the matinee idol with the warm eyes and the naughty smile. He was standing right in front of me. He was real.
I remembered more and more, even as a thrill fluttered through my belly, hot and fast. I remembered his long, muscled arms winding around me, cradling me gently against his chest. I remembered him distracting me with stories—stories of his near-idyllic childhood in Cleveland in the 1950s and the Ocean’s Eleven–style heist gone awry that led to his being turned, along with his best friend, Max. It had taken the pair almost thirty years and several schemes before they paid off the debt to their vampire “creditor.” Someday, he promised, he would introduce me to Max, who he was sure would love me before he even met me.
My sire was every bit as physically imposing and, well, devilishly sexy as my dying brain had imagined. But he’d also been oddly considerate, comforting almost, in a way I hadn’t expected. He’d honestly tried to make my transition as painless as possible. It wasn’t his fault there was no such thing as a painless vampire birth.
My sire clasped my hands before sliding his own up both my arms.
“Well, you turned out just as I’d hoped,” he purred. “A simply divine creature.
“I’m sorry I missed your transition. Mrs. Nightengale made it very clear what would happen to me if I came anywhere near you. But I think I’ve given her warnings a respectable amount of consideration and am now going to ignore them.”
“Well . . . I have questions.”
He grinned, even as I pulled my arms out of his grasp and stepped back. “I knew you would.”