Andrea said, “Lindy’s not that bad.”
“She tricked Tess into renting her house without telling her Sam was sleeping in the basement,” Jolene informed her.
“Oh, then she’s an evil she-beast,” Andrea conceded. I chuckled, and she shrugged. “My opinions are very adaptable. They have to be when you’re married to a vampire named Dick Cheney.”
Jane’s T-shirt made much more sense now.
“I actually meant ‘poor Sam,’ as in he was one of the vampires we were talking about, the ones who don’t get a choice about whether they were turned or not,” Jane said. “You know Sam was a contractor, right?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I don’t know anything beyond Sam’s the cranky guy who lives in my basement.”
“Sam was pretty well known around here for being a trustworthy guy,” Jolene said. “He did quality work at a fair price, and you didn’t have to worry about him raiding your jewelry box while you were out. We hired him to finish up our house after some, uh, other companies failed to do the work they’d been paid for.”
Jane smirked but didn’t elaborate. “Sam and Lindy moved here about six months before Sam took a job for an old-school vampire who’d just moved into the area. The vampire—his name was Hans something—asked for a light-proof sleeping compartment to be added to his bedroom closet. When Sam finished it, the vampire decided he didn’t want a human knowing where his evil lair was and drained him.”
“I thought it was illegal to forcibly turn a human.”
“Technically, he didn’t turn him. Hans just drained him until it would be impossible for Sam to survive and dumped him in the woods behind his house to let nature take its course. Fortunately, Hans was already under surveillance for some suspicious feeding activity over in Murphy. When the head of the local Council, Ophelia, saw him tossing Sam’s body, she stepped in and had one of her Council goons turn him. Ophelia would do just about anything to avoid scandal for the vampire community. Draining innocent human temp workers would qualify as a PR disaster.”
“Of course, Lindy pitched a fit, told everybody in town that Sam had gone off the deep end, had an early midlife crisis, fooled around with some vamp-tramp, and got himself ‘infected,’” Jolene said. “Oh, and because of the physical trauma he’d been through, it took Sam nearly five days to transform into a vampire, which is practically unheard of. The Council admitted that it was possible that Sam might not make it through the transformation to vampire, and Lindy managed to get some judge to declare him too dead and/or incompetent to handle his own affairs, which was a legal first. There was no will, and Lindy got everything. She controls every bit of their money until the divorce goes through. Sam gets an allowance for his blood and utilities.”
I mulled that over for a moment. Part of me felt sort of bad for him, in love with a woman who couldn’t see him as the same person she’d married, just because his diet and waking hours had changed. And then I remembered the previous Tuesday, when he’d hidden every product I had that contained caffeine—after keeping me up until 3:00 A.M. with the melodious screams of a jigsaw. My sympathy was short-lived.
“Honestly, I think he just hasn’t adjusted to unlife yet,” she said. “Sam seems like a do-it-yourself kind of guy. And those first few months as a vampire, all you need is help. You feel like you’re losing your connection to the human world and your place in it. You need someone to help you figure out your new schedule, how to feed without hurting your human donor, to vampire-proof your house. Sam went through all that alone.”
A strange, hot sensation twisted in my belly. What if Sam felt like that? What if he was lost and alone? Here I was making life that much more difficult for him, taking away from what little time he had left in his own home. I felt something shift inside me, a little spark of empathy I’d been missing for a while.
I jumped to my feet, nearly knocking over the little café table and our coffees. “I’ve got to go.”
“What? Why?” Jolene’s surprised expression morphed into wary resignation. “What did you do?”
I cringed, thinking of the various traps I’d left around the house for Sam. Suddenly, Jane burst out laughing and clapped her hand over her mouth.
My own jaw dropped. Could Jane read my mind?
Jane winked at me and nodded.
I would worry about that later.
I dug my keys out of my bag. “Someone may have sprayed down the basement steps with high-viscosity cooking spray, making them superslick.”
Jolene sighed as Jane struggled to cover her snickers with her hand. “Tess.”
I held my hands, defenseless. “No, I said someone.”
“Don’t you think you’ve taken this prank thang a little too far?” she asked. “I mean, some of these tricks are sort of stupid and juvenile, not to mention sort of mean.”
I dashed toward the door. “This was really the least stupid or juvenile idea I had. You should have seen what I had planned with a can of Sterno and a jar of pineapple jelly.”
Jolene slapped her palm over her face as I opened the door. Over the tinkle of the little cowbell above the door frame, I heard Jane say, “I really like her.”
—
After driving across town in record time, I dashed into the house just as Sam opened the microwave. The house was still standing, which was a good sign. Sam was in the kitchen, apparently uninjured, also a good sign. What was not good was that he was making his dinner, tossing a warmed bag back and forth between his hands to settle the red cells.
“Look, I’ve had a bad night at work, and I really don’t want to deal with you right now.” He sighed, his shoulders sagging underneath his faded John Deere T-shirt.
Stalled midwarning, I raised an eyebrow. Work? Since when did Sam work? And where? Was that where he was all those nights when the construction noises didn’t start until the wee hours? I thought he was slow-playing me, depriving me of sleep with the anticipation of torture. Had he been out on a job? This new perspective changed the way I’d looked at a lot of the stunts I’d chalked up to Sam’s mean temper. Maybe he was leaving the chores around the house half-finished because he didn’t have the time he needed, not because he wanted to the leave the house unlivable. Then again, that didn’t explain the Saran Wrap. Or the stove.
“Sam, you really don’t want to do that,” I cautioned as he reached toward the cabinet where we kept the coffee mugs. In my haste, I bumped into a saucepan I’d set on the stove. The handle came away in my hands, and the metal bowl clattered to the floor. I gasped in horror as the pieces of my dismantled darling came clattering to a standstill. I shot him a murderous look. He smirked at me, his dark eyes twinkling. I jerked open the drawer where I kept my pots and pans. Everything I touched came apart in my hands. Somehow Sam had managed to remove the rivets from my pans.
I whirled on him. “You no-good, undead douche!”
“You know, with those dulcet tones, it really is surprising that some lucky man hasn’t snatched you right up,” he said, smirking.
Snarling, I whipped the pan handle at him. He used his unnatural speed to duck out of the way, which was fortunate, because I threw it so hard that it broke through the plaster behind his head.
“You!” I growled. “What the hell is wrong with you? Do you have any decency? You wanna hide my stuff? Fine. Use sleep deprivation to drive me into a psychotic episode? All righty, then. But when you mess around with my pans, that’s going just one step too freaking far!”
“Really, this is what pushed you over the edge?” he asked blandly as he poured his warmed blood into a mug. “I messed around with your cookware?”
“You don’t touch a chef’s pans!” I shouted as he took a long drink, wincing as the blood rolled down his throat. I smiled sweetly, pulling a carefully wrapped dropper bottle from my pocket and placing it on the counter in front of me.
“What the?” he asked, clearing his throat and pulling at the collar of his plaid work shirt. By now, he was feeling that tickle of discomf
ort near the back of his tongue, that feeling that something was definitely not right with his evening meal.
“Ever hear of something called the ghost chili?” I asked, rolling the plastic-wrapped extract bottle between my thumb and forefinger. “In the pepper family, it’s basically the crazy cousin who just got out of prison, around a million units on the Scoville heat scale.” He gave me a confused frown, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was just the hint of sweat popping out on his upper lip. I didn’t know vampires could sweat. “That’s about four hundred times hotter than the average jalapeño pepper.”
“What did you do?” he demanded, rubbing at his throat. With the rush of spicy blood to his cheeks, I could see what he had looked like as a human, ruddy and virile, like something out of a “Hunky Farmhand of the Month” calendar.
I cleared my own throat, forcing myself to focus. This was war, damn it. Dirty, nasty, nonsexy war.
“Well, I called my friend Sakar, who works in my favorite spice shop, and asked him where I could find something special.” I grinned nastily. “For my roommate. He just happened to know a store about forty miles from here that carries extract of ghost chili.”
“You put it in my blood bag?” He grunted, coughing and spluttering as the capsaicin set flame to his tongue. He reached into the fridge, tore open another bag, and dumped the still-cold contents into his mouth.
I snickered. “Not just that bag.”
“Augh!” he cried, dropping the doctored bag and running for the faucet. He stuck the sprayer into his mouth and turned it on full blast. When that failed to quell the heat raging through his mouth, he ran for the shower.
“Did I mention that water only makes the oil spread around?” I called. I dropped the bottle into the trash. Thinking better of it, I fished the bottle out, emptied it, and buried it in the backyard so he couldn’t use it against me later.
When I came back into the house, a very wet, very red Sam was practically vibrating with rage. His fangs were down, and he looked every inch the dangerous vampire. I suddenly wondered about the wisdom of this weird little war. And it occurred to me that I should have had those worries before I pranked someone with superstrength.
“So, no yelling?” I asked, faking bravery as he glowered down at me. “No calling me names or making empty threats?”
“No.” He scooped his hands under the lines of my jaw and dragged me to him. I squeaked as his mouth clashed with mine, pulling my tongue into his mouth to dance with his. I braced myself against his bare chest, fingertips digging into the cool flesh. His lips dragged across mine, and his tongue rippled over every ridge and bump of my mouth. He bit harshly down on my bottom lip, drawing just the tiniest bit of blood to the surface. I could feel my nipples blossoming into little points through my shirt as he pulled blood from the wound. It was like some warm thread was running directly from my thighs to the flow of blood, and every time he pulled on it, that thread drew across my nerves with a luxurious tension.
I was panting as if I’d run a marathon by the time he pulled away.
“What the hell was that?” I demanded.
He leered, halfway between self-satisfied smirk and impish grin. “I just wanted to share.”
And that’s when the tingling started.
“Oh, motherf—” I gasped as the chili oil that now coated my lips and tongue began to burn. I clapped a hand over my aching, searing lips. “You!”
Sam laughed while I ran for the fridge. I felt as if I’d swallowed about a hundred yellow jackets and they were all stinging the absolute shit out of my tongue.
I reached into the fridge for the only solution I knew of: dairy and popsicles. I ripped the lid off a container of plain Greek yogurt and started licking the contents while I unwrapped a Fudgsicle. I alternated between the two, cursing at him the whole time.
Because cursing sounds superintimidating when it’s muffled by a Fudgsicle.
“Give up, you crazy woman,” he growled out. “And could you please, please watch the cursing? This isn’t a truck stop.”
“No!” I pulled the Fudgsicle out long enough to shout. “You apologize for dismantling my kitchen!”
“It’s not your kitchen!” he spat back. “You apologize for giving me doctored blood. No wonder you got fired. You’re like some sort of evil comic-book villain. You—you’re the Joker!”
“Oh, all I did was respond in kind. Look, I felt a little sorry for you earlier tonight, because of your bad luck and your tragic marriage. Clearly, empathizing with the enemy was a mistake. Now, either you fix my pans, or I will find brand-new places to put that chili extract, jackass.” I growled, backing out of the room and stalking toward my bedroom.
He called after me, “I’d say this one was a draw, wouldn’t you, sweetheart?”
Here in Lunch Lady Land . . .
6
Jolene was not impressed with my vampire-provoking shenanigans.
“Have I not explained how dangerous it can be to spend time with vampires when they’re in a good mood?” She sighed, frowning at me in that way that only mothers could master.
Jolene’s powers of emotional concentration would have been more impressive had she not been staring me down while turning her van into a dry cleaner’s parking lot. I was trying to treat the still-tingling nerves of my lips and tongue with a strawberry milkshake from the Dairy Freeze. I was starting to suspect that it was more than just physiological, because nothing was working. It wasn’t even unpleasant anymore, just a lasting, warm tingle over my skin. This couldn’t be normal. “I thought you were goin’ home to prevent your pranks from ‘goin’ off’ on Sam.”
“I tried to stop it,” I said lamely, clutching the door frame for all it was worth, so I wouldn’t smack my face into the window. “And then he took apart my pans and said mean things to me, and I sort of stopped myself from stopping it.”
“So he slipped down the basement steps?” she said, cringing as she pulled to a screeching stop.
“I forgot about that,” I said. “It would explain the loud thump I heard before bed.”
Jolene gave me a withering look.
“What?” I grumped, crossing my arms.
“Have you thought about the fact that under the fangs and the bluster, there’s a person with feelings?”
“I don’t really care how he feels, Jolene,” I protested. “I’m sorry for what he’s going through. But he’s not the only one out there in pain. I—what is it we’re doing here, again? I thought we were going to Jane’s shop.”
“I need to make a quick stop first. I work part-time for a vampire concierge service here in town. My boss, Iris, asked me to pick up some of her clients’ dry cleaning. Vampires are hell on clothes, let me tell you. I’ll just be a minute. Do you want to come in?”
I glanced around the busy corner of Main Street, right off the memorial square of downtown Half-Moon Hollow. There was a classic white gazebo in the center, flanked by golden ginkgo trees and statues of Civil War soldiers. There was a huge plastic banner stretched across the street, advertising “Burley Days! Food, Frolic, and Family Fun!” starting in two weeks.
“No, I’ll just wander around, if that’s OK. I’ll meet you back here in a bit.”
She glanced down the street at the small-town oasis drawing me in and grinned broadly. I was stunned for just a moment by the sheer brilliant expanse of that smile. There was a fierce quality to Jolene, something not quite human rippling under that beauty. I started to wonder whether the reason she was so comfortable with the supernatural was that she was something supernatural.
Not that I’d let something like that get between us. Other than Chef and George, Jolene was the only real friend I’d made in years. I was determined not to care about it. If she felt like it, she would tell me in her own time.
“You do that,” she said. “I’ll catch up to you.”
As Jolene ducked into AAA Cleaners, I perused the posters for Burley Days hung in various shop windows. “Family Fun” apparently included
rides, game, a parade, street performers, and something called the “First-Ever Faux Type O Bloody Bake-Off!” which sounded absolutely disgusting. I would be skipping Burley Days.
I wandered down the street, staring at the old 1930s architecture. In Chicago, these buildings wouldn’t be anything special. The Second City prided itself on preserving anything that had survived the Great Fire, the Depression, and both Richard Daleys. But it was clear that these old banks and general stores were the pride of the Hollow, lovingly restored and newly painted—all except this white and pink two-story building wedged between what were now an antiques shop and a florist. The windows were blocked over with soap, but I could still make out the faded paint reading, “HOWLIN’ HANK’S BBQ, Est. 1968.”
The white paint flaked off the brick front like falling snow. The door handle was damaged, as if someone had tried to kick it in. Someone had replaced the old faded Realtor sign with a new one: “A Honey of a Deal! Call Sherry Jameson, Hometown Realtors!” with Sherry’s contact information spelled out in bold red print. Another poster for the Bloody Bake-Off had been tacked over a broken pane in the front door but was now hanging loose at the upper right corner, giving me a glimpse inside.
Someone had loved this place once but gave up a long time ago. The maroon pleather booths were cracked and peeling. The napkin dispensers consisted of paper-towel racks mounted against the oak paneling. The tables flanked a stout oak bar/counter. Old neon beer signs still hung on the walls, the tubing broken in places; one particularly ornate Budweiser sign was home to a rather large bird’s nest. I could barely see the kitchen through the dining room, but I could make out a huge brick pit in the middle of the space.
I could see that the dusty tables had been intricately carved with messages. “Marcy Loves Joe Lee, 1976,” or “Petey and Maybelline, First Date, 06/23/81,” or a heart carved around the initials “MH + DW, 1992.” It was sort of sweet, all of these couples marking their lives together on the tables where they’d shared meals. And I was sad that those people, who most likely still lived in the Hollow, couldn’t come back there to visit their little milestone markers.
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