I'm Dreaming of an Undead Christmas

by Molly Harper

  “It’s an additional security measure. The sunproof shades only open if the appropriate code is entered or the outdoor sensors detect full dark. If someone managed to break into our home during the day, they would be human and therefore need lights to walk around in the house. Their stumbling about would wake us up and give us the opportunity to attack. Keeping the house dark gives us that added advantage.”

  “Cal, tell me how to turn on the lights, or I will tell Iris what you originally wanted to get her for Christmas.”

  “You punch in our wedding date and then the little lightbulb button,” he said quickly.

  The lights flickered on to reveal the recently renovated kitchen, with its soothing aquamarine tile and polished-aluminum appliances. It was a definite turnaround from the cheerful yellow country-chic kitchen of my youth, like something out of The Jetsons, only with more human blood.

  “And I still believe that a hedge trimmer is a perfectly nice gift. It’s useful,” Cal insisted.

  “Yes, because every girl wants to tell her girlfriends about the useful gift her husband gave her. Should I remind you of her reaction to the ‘Blender Birthday’?”

  Cal shuddered as he rifled through the cupboards for his favorite “Number One Vampire” mug. “Please, no.”

  “That’s what I thought. Now, why did you intentionally get up before Iris so you could talk to me without her around?”

  Cal’s lips quirked as he blew on his cup of morning blood. “How do you know I got up early so I could talk to you?”

  “Because you never get up early if you can help it, and you only use the ‘Number One Vampire’ mug I made you for Father’s Day for serious discussions, because you like to remind me of the pseudo-parental role you have assumed in my life.”

  He arched a dark brow. “No one likes a know-it-all, Gigi.”

  “Jane tells me that’s not true. So what’s up?”

  “I wanted to know whether you’ve thought about our conversation.”

  “Wow, we switched to the serious lane with absolutely no signal.” I took a long, fortifying sip of coffee. Other than my Ben issues and school, my thoughts centered on the discussion Cal and I had had while I was working at NetSecure in Nashville. The discussion about my future and a potential job offer with the information tech nology department of the local Council office. The job Cal strongly advised me against taking. Strongly.

  Inspired by the hospital staff’s heroics in treating Iris’s injuries after a scuffle with a particularly nasty vampire, I’d majored in nursing for about a year before I figured out that anatomy was a bit outside my wheelhouse. Computer science? That clicked for me. It was a random aptitude that came to me out of the blue in an intro class that I’d expected to hate. I’d only taken the class because Ben needed it for his major, and it was the one time slot I had open in my schedule for a shared class. (It was either that, or he joined my women’s self-defense class, which seemed unlikely.) So the girl who had trouble getting an iPod to work when she was in high school was suddenly able to write her own code, and it actually did what I asked it to do! It was like the codes had always been tucked away in my bloodstream, and putting my fingers on the keyboard set them free to create and build. It was enough to make me wonder what I could have accomplished in high school if I’d spent less time on the volleyball court and more time studying. Or any time studying.

  So now I was majoring in computer science. I had a 3.8 grade-point average and the support of almost every professor who mattered in my department. I’d already written several programs of my own. They were nothing worth selling but enough to keep my roommate from downloading a virus to my laptop because she believed she’d won a free iPad.

  And then, over the summer, a human Council lackey showed up at the NetSecure office, bearing an invitation to audition for a programming position with the Council. Since the Great Coming Out, vampires had developed a bit of a mania for connecting with their living kin. If hired, I would be working with computer techs across the country, setting up a user-friendly intranet search engine of vampires, allowing them to track their living descendants. It would be like Ancestry.com but with shadowy, unofficial connections and documents that are unavailable to nice, law-abiding humans. The coding would only be half the battle. Another significant issue was scanning, keynoting, and cross-referencing the aforementioned shadowy documents. And then, of course, that search engine would need to be maintained.

  If I managed to get past the interview, I would start coding that summer. The incentive package listed in my invitation was staggering: company car, clothing allowance, full benefits, and a salary that made not-quite-graduated me drool a bit. And there was the tantalizing promise that “qualified applicants” would be offered additional undisclosed perks to secure their interest.

  Frankly, it was the sort of job that Ben would have loved to take on, but because he wasn’t a “known trusted human” in the vampire world, he wouldn’t be receiving an invitation. This was quite a step up from the minimum wage I’d earned at NetSecure, which only paid its interns because of changes to labor laws. Still, the decision to work for the Council was not one to take lightly. The vampire community didn’t like to throw around words like “indentured servitude,” particularly around the press, but there would be no other job offers if I took a position with the Council. I would be exposed to too many of the vampire world’s secrets and machinations. I would have close access to their leaders. I would find out how vampires maintained that iridescent, glowy sheen to their skin. They couldn’t allow me to go work for the human government or, worse, Starbucks after that.

  Beyond the perks, the job was a challenge. It was a huge mystery waiting to be unraveled, and I was one of a very small subset of people who had the skills to do the thread pulling. And once the search engine was established, there would be other opportunities to work on the vampires’ secret projects. Who knew what I would see, what I could learn, where they would send me?

  I wasn’t completely without apprehensions. There was the small matter of Ophelia believing that I was luring her boyfriend away to college, beyond her reach. This could cause trouble if she was going to be my future boss. And, like humans, some vampires were not nice people.

  I didn’t have the same reservations that Iris did when it came to vampires. I mean, sure, I’d been duped and supernaturally hypnotized by a vampire sent by a local supervillain to date and/or kidnap me. But because of the hypnosis, I’d blanked out most of the manipulations and only remembered dreamy scenes of teen vampire romance. Iris, on the other hand, was fully aware of the awkward and dangerous positions she’d put herself in while working for vampires to support us. Although Cal’s undying love and washboard abs were helping her get over any resentment.

  I had still been perusing the invitation and job description when Cal had showed up just after sunset, scaring the NetSecure receptionist so badly she cut me a wide berth in the copy room for the rest of the summer. Cal had stopped short of ripping the envelope out of my hands, but it was a near thing. He was not happy that I’d been offered the audition. In fact, he’d done everything he could to persuade the Council reps not to send the invitation. But Ophelia had thwarted him by sending a human during the day, not so much because she wanted me in the position that badly but because she enjoyed thwarting a vampire as old and powerful as Cal.

  Cal was concerned about vulnerable, human me spending so much time around the vampires at the office. He worried about me learning too much about the inner workings of the vampire community and becoming expendable. Hell, as far as he was concerned, walking from the Council office to my car would be too dangerous.

  I had countered that I was pretty much ruined for normal nine-to-five life anyway. I might as well put my skills to use helping people like him, who could, for all he knew, have hundreds of descendants running around Greece. And in my downtime, I’d proposed that I be allowed to help Cal with various
investigations that he was involved with. Because I knew how to find things on the Internet that he did not. And, unlike him, I realized that you couldn’t just stick a fist through your monitor when it displeased you.

  “I’m going to do the interview,” I told him now. “But I don’t want to tell Iris yet. Not until we know that I’m hired and there’s something for her to be upset about. She’ll have plenty of time to yell at me then.”

  “I don’t like it. And I’m sure this will come back and bite me on the ass. But for now, it’s your decision, and I’ll abide by it,” he said. “And speaking of things that we don’t discuss with my beloved wife, have you thought about your other long-term plans?”

  “Besides potentially lifelong work commitments?” I asked archly.

  “You know what I’m talking about, Gigi.”

  “I know,” I said, stirring more sugar into my coffee, which was not an effective stalling tech nique.

  Cal wanted me to be a vampire. As in, he wanted me to be a vampire now. He didn’t like the idea of me being out in the world without vampire strength or superpowers to defend myself. Every day I walked around as my weak human beta version made him the vampire equivalent of a fretting human helicopter mom. Cal refused to let Iris lose her sister to calamity or even old age when he had the means to make sure I stayed with them “long-term.” Meanwhile, Iris objected to the idea of turning me before I had a chance to live a human life. And, personally, I was on the fence.

  “It’s something to think about. I mean, I won’t pretend that it’s something I’m not interested in. People my age are all about the vampires, with the books and the movies—”

  “If you compare me to Edward Cullen, I will never speak to you again.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “It doesn’t have to be me who turns you. Because if you want someone else to do it—Gabriel, Andrea, Collin, anyone but Dick—it wouldn’t hurt my feelings. Jane seems to be a reasonable, if excitable, sire. You and Jamie could be siblings.”

  “No, it’s not that,” I promised him. “I just need time. I’m thinking about the Iris Scanlon clause: if something happens to me, if I get injured and need to be turned to save my life, you have my permission to turn me.”

  “I know I can’t promise that nothing will happen to you. But I love you and your sister to distraction. I will do whatever it takes to make the two of you happy and safe.”

  “I know, otherwise you wouldn’t put up with the candy exchanges and the Joh n Hughes movie nights.”

  “And the bras hanging over the shower curtain,” Cal grumbled.

  I snorted, and he nudged me, making me giggle.

  “And the candy exchanges and movie nights aren’t so bad,” he added. “It’s been nice seeing Iris being accepted into a circle of supernatural friends. Jane, Andrea, Jolene, and the rest of them. They’ve made her transition from operating on the edge of the vampire world to being a part of it much easier.”

  “And you enjoy hanging out with a vampire named Dick Cheney.”

  “True.”

  I raised my coffee cup to my lips just as all of the window shades rose with a loud metallic clang, making me spit coffee all over myself. “Holy hell!”

  Cal did his best to keep a straight face while handing me a dishtowel for my coffee-splattered shirt. “The sun has set.”

  I glared up at him, dabbing coffee from my burned chin. “I can see that.”

  “I’m just going to go upstairs now.” He shook his head. “To wake up Iris.”

  “At least try to clear the stairs before you start laughing.”

  “Always do.”

  With the vampire’s new needs and schedule, older family members may resist changes to long-standing traditions. And younger family members may resent attention and consideration given to the new vampire. Telling these upset family members to “get over themselves” will not help resolve the situation.

  —Not So Silent Night: Creating Happy and Stress-Free Holidays with Newly Undead Family Members

  Much like Clark Griswold, Iris wanted to kick-start our old-fashioned, traditional family Christmas extravaganza by finding the absolutely flawless example of Yuletide tree perfection. She hoped to recapture the magic of Christmases past by hiking all over McDonough’s Tree Farm on Route 31 to find this specimen and chop it down ourselves, then drag it home, caroling all the way. There was only one problem with this scenario. We had never hiked around McDonough’s Tree Farm to pick out a Christmas tree. Not once. Not even when our parents were alive. But reminding Iris of, well, reality was proving to be futile.

  “Iris, we’ve used the same artificial Christmas tree since I was in middle school. Isn’t it sort of counterintuitive for a vampire to risk immortal life and limb in a place where there are a bunch of pointy tree stumps?” I huffed (and puffed) as we trudged up the dark, pine-scented hill on the far side of McDonough’s nursery.

  In the distance, Nate McDonough, third-generation tree farm proprietor and Iris’s high school classmate, was sitting in a cozy little outbuilding-slash-cashier station, warming his hands against a cup of hot cider . . . and probably laughing at us. I shivered into my standard-issue peacoat that all freshman girls get the moment they step onto a college campus. The only positive thing I could say about this experience was that it rarely snowed in western Kentucky, so at least I wasn’t slogging through drifts in my awesome-but-not-practical calf boots.

  I noticed we were the only family taking advantage of McDonough’s nighttime hours. It was more than a little creepy, wandering along rows of evenly spaced trees in the dark, armed with a flashlight and not much else. It was cold and cloudy, the ground was uneven, and I kept stepping in holes that threatened to break my ankles. Given these assorted factors, I may not have been as supportive as I should have been of Iris’s need to closely inspect, then reject, every single specimen in the tree lot. The Douglas fir was too tall. The blue spruce was too full. And the Scotch pine had weird bald spots that would reflect badly on the Popsicle-stick ornaments.

  “Oh, come on, this is fun!” Iris exclaimed, showing an annoying lack of fatigue as she flitted up the hill like a manic woodland fairy. Clearly, she was enjoying the “increased agility” part of vampirism, which was earning her the silent glare of sisterhood. Like me, Cal had lost his enthusiasm for the hunt about a dozen rejected trees ago and was balancing the rented tree saw on his palm. “We always wanted to do this when we were kids.”

  “Yes, but we never did, because you’re allergic to real Christmas trees!” I exclaimed. “Don’t you remember when Mom and Dad used to get a real tree every year before Dr. Swanson did all those tests on you, and you ended up sick as a dog every Christmas?”

  “Well, I’m not allergic anymore. No pulse, no allergies, no problem.”

  “Oh, you’ve got problems,” I retorted, making Cal snicker.

  Iris shot him a warning look even I could see in the dark.

  Cal cleared his throat. “What about that nice tree over there?”

  “Which one?” Iris asked.

  Cal made a sweeping gesture toward the pine crop with his long arms. “The one that gets us off this tree farm.”

  Iris rolled her eyes. “You two have no patience for perfection.”

  “That’s why we have you, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t try to butter me up,” she told him. “OK, we’ll split up and each pick a favorite. Cal, you go that way. Gigi, you take that row. I’ll go over there. We’ll come back in five minutes to discuss. Be careful, and try not to trip anymore.”

  “I don’t want to ruin this warm family moment, so it’s only mentally that I’m making a really rude gesture at you,” I yelled over my shoulder as I walked in my assigned direction.

  “Thank you for restraining yourself!”

  I kept my flashlight trained carefully on the ground, more to look for tripping ha
zards than to check out the trees like I was supposed to. The trees stood out like cone-shaped silhouettes against an even darker horizon.

  All alone on the pitch-black tree farm, I felt oddly anxious. When you lived with vampires, you got firsthand lessons on human vulnerability in the dark. Cal had provided me with a Taser, “Mr. Sparky,” and some law-enforcement-grade vampire Mace, but those were of only limited comfort to the panicky reptilian portions of my brain. Then again, he did also set off those panicky brain bits by sneaking up on me.

  Screw this. I loved my sister, but there were limits. I’d make a focused effort to look for a few minutes and then turn back. Surely Iris would find something to suit her. I just wanted to get out of here without injury.

  I swept my flashlight to the left, freezing when the beam of light fell across a small, furry gray body. The body in question whirled on all fours, opening its ratlike muzzle and revealing rows upon rows of sharp white teeth. And despite the fact that I was five feet taller and had a blunt object in my hand, the possum hissed and pulled back its paw as if it was going to swipe at me. I bit back the urge to shriek. Modern, sophisticated women who were able to interview for jobs with undead protection agencies surely didn’t yell for help when encountering a woodland creature.

  “Move along, cranky little marsupial,” I told the spitting little bundle of fur. The possum took one last futile “swing” at me and then toddled off, dragging its leathery pink tail in its wake.

  I laughed, swiping my hand across my cold cheeks. Randomly, I chose a tree for my “pick.” It was green and had branches. It would do. Turning on my heel, I headed back to our designated meeting point but stopped in my tracks after just a few steps.

  The clouds slid away from the moon, providing just enough light to get creeped out. I was being watched. I’d spent enough time walking around a college campus after night classes to know when someone’s eyes were on me. Was it Cal trying to test my reflexes again? Well, fine, if he wanted a simulation, we would do a full simulation. Even as the gooseflesh rose on my arms, my hand slid under my coat, reaching for the colloidal silver spray.