by Molly Harper
I turned back toward the bookshop, hoping that Jane wasn’t watching me make out with a strange vampire on the street. I stammered, “Wh-who are you?”
But as I turned back, he vanished.
The hell?
Mishaps will occur during holidays with the undead, just like holidays with the living. The trick is not to overreact, because sudden movement around vampires is not a good idea.
—Not So Silent Night: Creating Happy and Stress-Free Holidays with Newly Undead Family Members
I was having what could only be described as a Christmas movie hangover. Starting a Home Alone marathon that late at night was just inadvisable.
It had started off well. Cal liked all movies, because motion pictures were still pretty much a novelty for him. And Iris was nose-deep in her Sangre Select, so nothing would bother her until February. Ben was super enthusiastic about watching the first one, snuggling up next to me on the couch and keeping me supplied with Junior Mints. But as the night wore on (and on—why the hell did we choose Home Alone for a theme?), Ben noticed that I was putting space between us. I was squirming in my own big vat of guilt juices, replaying my kiss with my maybe-a-hallucination-but-definitely-not-a-ghost vampire friend in my head. One minute, I was practically giddy, pressing my fingertips against my lips, which I swore still felt swollen and tingly from his kiss. And the next, I felt like my stomach was being turned inside out by dread and self-loathing.
Ben kept looking at me, as if he could tell I had done something wrong. And I kept rubbing the sleeve of my sweater across my mouth, because that would keep him from figuring out that I had kissed a total stranger on the street. Sometime between Home Alone 3 and 4, Ben announced that he was heading home, and when he went in for a good-night kiss, I countered with a hug.
It was a nice hug but probably not what he was looking for to end the evening.
And because my guilt was an extremely effective natural sleep deterrent, I stayed up through Home Alone 4, which meant that I was wide awake when Mary’s Wish List started. And I got to see Iris line up shot glasses and take hits off the reddish-black sludge in Andrea’s thermos. It was funny caffeine-based twitching, really.
By the time the credits for Mary’s Wish List rolled, I was facedown in our couch cushions, praying for Iris’s leg twitches to stop resulting in kicks to my head. I’m not sure when I passed out, but I woke up on Christmas Eve afternoon to find a to-do list the length of my arm. It was stuck to my arm with a Junior Mint as adhesive, a misuse of perfectly good candy.
My neck was sore from sleeping facedown between cushions. My mouth was dry and tasted like peppermint gone bad. I wasn’t even sure how peppermint went bad, but it tasted like evil toothpaste. And I couldn’t see through my own hair, which was wrapped around my face.
Iris had already set the table up to Martha Stewart standards with Mom’s china, a beautiful red tablecloth, and centerpieces made from cylindrical glass vases, fresh cranberries, and candles. According to Iris’s carefully drawn timetable, I would need to start cooking now if we were going to have enough food to feed bottomless-werewolf-pit Jolene, her husband, Zeb, and their two ravenous toddlers, plus Tess, Miranda, and me. Granted, Tess was doing most of the heavy lifting with roasting the turkey and baking the more complicated carbs. But I was going to have to do several sides, including dressing that Iris insisted had to be made from bread crumbs we’d crumbled ourselves and dried on top of the fridge for three days—even though she wasn’t going to be eating it—because she was going to drive me insane with tradition.
But I was going to shower first, because nothing about me screamed food-safe and sanitary. The only thing I had going for me was that Cal had left a lamp on so I wouldn’t have to stumble around in the dark. And Ben wasn’t going to be able to make it, because his family did their annual Christmas gathering that night.
I stuck the to-do list to the coffee table and crawled up the stairs. It took several rounds of eucalyptus and mint shampoo before I felt awake enough to operate the security system and open the damn first-floor window shades. Unfortunately, this meant I was also awake enough to remember the kissing incident from the previous night and all of the guilt and anxiety that stirred up.
I leaned my head against the shower wall and let the hot water beat down over my shoulders. When I closed my eyes, all I could see were those gold eyes and the little smirk as he bent his head to kiss me. I rubbed my fingertips over my lips. I couldn’t get the sensation of his lips sliding against mine out of my head. His lips, his tongue, the faint taste of iron. I’d felt more in that one ill-advised kiss than I had in years of kissing Ben. What did that say about me? Was it just the lure of doing something wrong and naughty? Or did I have some sort of magical chemistry with the vampire kissing bandit?
Honestly, who vampire-speed-walks up to a total stranger on a public sidewalk, gives her the most earth-shattering, life-altering kiss of her life, and then just—poof—disappears? That is not good manners. And I would tell him so the next time I saw him. Maybe we could do the whole thing over but with proper etiquette.
“No. No. This is insane,” I told myself, feeling very resolute as I scrubbed conditioner through my hair. “You have to stop kissing strange vampires. It’s not safe. It’s not smart. And it’s a little skanky. If you see this guy again, you will tell him that polite people introduce themselves to their stalking targets. And that there will be no kissing . . . anymore . . . until he introduces himself. Right, good plan.”
This would have been a great, mature, decisive moment if I wasn’t massaging body scrub through my hair right now.
Two hours later, I had carefully prepared several side dishes—including green beans cooked with bacon and brown sugar until they no longer resembled a vegetable.
And I did not understand the purpose of sweet potatoes. In their natural state, they were the gross, earthy-sour cousin of real potatoes. And doctoring them up with red-hot candies and marshmallows just to make them more palatable was unnatural and wrong. But I had gamely uncanned pounds of the little devils, mixed in brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon, then added a carefully spaced topping of sugary treats. The smell alone was enough to make me want to yack. I slid the pan into the oven and prayed the house wouldn’t smell like freshly baked feet.
I was peeling carrots when I heard a car door slam outside. I practically sank against the counter with relief. Miranda, Tess, and Jolene had arrived early to help me finish up dinner and get the vampire blood buffet ready.
“Knock-knock,” Jolene called quietly as she nudged the door open. “How’s it going?”
“My house smells like baked cat food,” I whined.
Miranda stuck her head through the door and grimaced. “Sweet potatoes, huh?”
“Yep.”
The ladies carried in a foil-wrapped casserole dish that smelled strongly of ham, plus a Crock-Pot and several small butcher-paper-wrapped bundles marked with the Southern Comforts logo. When Jolene put the bundles on the counter, I opened one and found smoked pork shoulder.
“I thought we were just doing the turkey,” I said.
“For y’all, sure,” Jolene said, giving me a hug. “But the extra ham, the pork shoulder, the roast beef, and the chicken wings are for me and the twins. They get grumpy if they don’t get a full dinner before bedtime.”
A twenty-pound turkey was not a full dinner. I would never get used to the werewolf metabolism.
Tess grinned broadly at the expression on my face. “The bird is perfectly done, if I do say so myself. We just have to let it rest a bit and carve as the others show up.”
I peeked under the foil and found that the turkey appeared to be wearing a sweater made of bacon. “What the?”
“Just trust me,” Tess promised, adjusting the carefully woven layer of bacon over the turkey breast and clamping the foil back into place. “There is nothing better than a turkey that has basted
itself in bacon fat. And it will make the gravy insanely good.”
“I will trust the bacon sweater,” I swore, as Miranda sang “Ahhhh!” as if an angelic choir was praising the bacon sweater.
I couldn’t help but feel that I’d been rescued. The girls were a welcome, meat-bearing cavalry.
With the human guests due to arrive in an hour and the vampires due to wake any moment, we started on the last-minute dinner tasks: setting out the serving dishes, making gravy, whipping cream for the pies, and carving the turkey. I intentionally avoided the kitchen and took to prettying up the dining room with floral arrangements and carefully folded napkins.
And I might have forgotten about the casserole full of baking evil in my oven.
“Honey, I think something’s burning,” Jolene said with a sniff.
I was leaning over the dining table, lighting the little votive candles in Iris’s centerpieces without setting the cranberries on fire. “Oh, I spilled some squash casserole on the bottom of the oven earlier. I’m sure that’s just smoking a little.”
“It couldn’t hurt to check,” Tess told me, scooping an enormous amount of whipped cream out of our mixer bowl.
“We don’t take risks with fire around here,” Miranda muttered.
“Not with you around,” I retorted, and gamely opened the oven. “Ack!” I shrieked as oily black smoke poured out of the oven. The flames licked upward toward the ceiling of the oven, leaving a nice ashy residue on the heating coil. Somewhere in the house, the smoke alarm went off.
That was super helpful, timing-wise.
Tess scrambled to our pantry, searching for baking soda, while Jolene stood behind me blowing on the flames. It took us a full box of soda and a few werewolf breaths, but we took out the world’s stinkiest birthday candle.
She huffed and puffed and blew the fire down.
I grabbed a damp dishtowel from the counter and wrapped it around the blackened dish before yanking it out of the oven. Even before Tess yelled, “Gigi, no!” I knew I’d made a mistake. Moisture from the towel became steam, allowing the heat from the dish through to my skin, burning the absolute hell out of my fingers. I yelped and bobbled the dish, dropping it onto the tiled floor.
As the dish shattered, I hopped out of the way, moving my feet out of sweet-potato range. The flaming marshmallows seemed to have formed some sort of lava-like force field around the orange goo, rapidly cooling into a rubbery chunk the consistency of asphalt.
“What the hell?” I cried over the wailing of the alarm, shaking my burned fingers.
Jolene had already disappeared to shut down the smoke alarm. Tess was sprinkling baking soda into the oven. Miranda grabbed a large plastic spatula from a drawer and wedged it under the sweet-potato disaster. But the spatula did nothing. The mass was stuck so firmly to the floor that she couldn’t pull it up. Tess knelt beside her and added her weight to the leverage. She looked up at me, eyes wide with alarm, even as she bit her lip.
I closed my eyes, shaking my head. “You can laugh now.”
Tess’s tight grip on her giggle let loose, and she practically collapsed on the non-potatoed section of the floor. “Oh, Mylanta, that was the funniest fricking thing I have ever seen. I haven’t seen a cooking eff-up like that since culinary school!”
“Yes, yes, I am hilarious,” I grumbled, kneeling next to the smoking black-and-orange mass.
“It was pretty funny.” Jolene snorted. “Jane would have been proud of that stunt.”
“Let’s just get this mess off the floor before Iris wakes up,” I said.
“How are she and Cal sleeping through all of this, anyway?” Tess asked.
“Disrupted sleep schedule,” I said, as Tess tugged on the spatula handle.
“I think I need help,” she said. “Jolene? Werewolf strength, please?”
Jolene took hold of the spatula and jerked it up. The plastic handle broke off in her hand.
“I think it’s fused to the floor or something!” Miranda exclaimed.
My jaw dropped as Tess’s loon-like laughter sent her to the floor again.
I swatted at her. “Pushing it, Tess.”
“OK, OK.” Tess sighed, grabbing a sturdier metal pancake-sized spatula from the drawer. She shoved it under the lump with all her might. The three of us gripped the spatula handle like it was a party game and pushed. The lump broke loose from the linoleum with a pop and flew across the kitchen, denting the front of the dishwasher.
OK, even I found that funny.
Jolene collapsed against my legs, knocking into Tess, who overcorrected and ended up sprawled over on Miranda’s side. I started giggling, which made Tess laugh. Miranda appeared to be in shock. Jolene was shamelessly cackling, because why protect my feelings? This completely inappropriate outburst of hilarity was interrupted by Tess gasping.
“Oh, crap, Iris is going to kill us,” she cried, covering her mouth with her hand.
Sitting up, I saw that the lump’s magma-like crust had burned some sort of impenetrable sweet-potato-cement ring-slash-stain-slash-burn pattern on the aquamarine tile, like a tiny nuclear explosion had gone off in the middle of the floor. Iris’s new kitchen had been magazine-perfect, and she was rabidly proud of it. And I had just burned a bomb pattern into the floor and dented an appliance.
“Gigi?”
My head jerked up so quickly I practically gave myself whiplash. Ben was standing there in the doorway, a poinsettia in his hand and a concerned expression on his face. He’d dressed up, wearing khakis and the shirt and tie he only wore when his mom made him go with her to church.
“Are you OK?” he asked. “What happened?”
“Nuclear potato explosion,” I said.
Miranda, Jolene, and Tess exchanged confused looks, or at least half as confused as the one Ben was giving me.
“Oh . . . OK,” Ben said, helping me to my feet.
“I thought you were going to your family’s Christmas thing tonight,” I said, brushing the bits of ceramic and orange goo from my jeans.
“Uh, yeah . . . Geeg, can we talk for a minute?” He had his serious face on. His serious, nervous face. This couldn’t be good.
“Oh, I should really stay and help clean up.”
Jolene waved me away. “Go on, hon. We’ll clean up Hurricane Gigi’s path of destruction.”
“I would say that’s harsh, but I just turned complex carbohydrates into an incendiary device,” I muttered. “I’ll come back and help in just a second.”
Ben and I walked out of the kitchen just as I heard Tess say, “Maybe we can throw an area rug over the burn mark. Iris wouldn’t notice that, right?”
Jolene scoffed, “Oh, no, I’m sure someone with super-vision won’t notice that we threw a random rug in the middle of the floor for no reason.”
Ben handed me my coat and opened the front door, making my heart sink a bit. It had to be a really serious discussion if he didn’t want the others to overhear. He was going to break up with me. Considering the whole “making out with strange vampires on a public sidewalk” issue, I didn’t have much room to be upset. But still, this wasn’t the way I wanted to end things between us.
Oh. No.
What if someone saw me making out with said stranger? Half-Moon Hollow was a small town. You never knew who was going to drive by to witness acts of reckless hussyness, and the more embarrassing the behavior, the more likely it was that you’d be seen by someone who knew you. Or knew someone who knew you. It didn’t matter how shaky the connection was, word of your hussyness would eventually make its way back to your loved ones. What if some friend of Ben’s cousin’s parents decided to take a detour through the seedier parts of the Hollow and saw me attached at the face with Tall, Blond, and Fangy?
I was wrong before. This was proof that I was the worst girlfriend in the world.
OK, Scanlon, I told myself
sternly, you danced to the skanky tune, time to pay the piper. Ben has every right to break up with you. You’re not the right girl for him. It’s over and has been for a long time. Just try to get through it with some dignity.
I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath as Ben gestured to the front step, the same front step where we had sat together after countless dates, the same step where we had posed for prom pictures. I hissed as my butt met the cold cement, sending a shiver up my spine.
Dignity was just a little too much to ask.
The sun was fading into the horizon, leaving hazy orange cloud trails in the sky. I blinked against the light, trying to concentrate on the long black shadows cast by the trees, the iron fawn, the silly inflatable Santa Claus, as my eyes adjusted. I heard a burst of laughter from inside the house and wished desperately that I was in there with the other ladies. Anywhere but here, in this awkward, awful girlfriend limbo.
Ben dropped to the spot next to me while I rubbed my slightly sweaty palms together. He deserved to yell at me. I’d kissed another boy—scratch that, man. It didn’t matter that the kiss was done sneak-attack-style and the perpetrator had disappeared. I’d enjoyed it, a lot. Too much for it not to count against me in the great Book of Really Stupid Girlfriend Tricks. Ben deserved to yell at me and dump me in some humiliating fashion that would probably end up on Abadcaseofthedates.com.
Ben rubbed his hands on his khakis and hopped up from his spot. He paced a bit on the brick walkway before sitting next to me again. He didn’t want to dump me, I realized. He was a nice guy, even now, with our relationship falling down around our ears. Maybe I should talk, I supposed, since he couldn’t seem to get this started.
But before I could produce the “Buh” in “Ben,” he was saying, “Gigi, we need to talk about us.”