by Молли Харпер
I couldn’t believe I was the practical one in this relationship.
“Well, yes, but I wasn’t trying to move anything, I was searching for the light switch, you see, and knocked the shelving unit over. I remembered a book I left in here that I thought you might be interested in,” he said.
“You remembered a book you left in here twenty years ago?” I asked him. “What am I saying, of course you did. Why don’t you tell me where it is, and I’ll get it for you?”
“Yes, I think that would be best,” he said. “Top shelf. In the box marked ‘Bell Witch.’ ” I spider-climbed nimbly up the wall and plucked the box from the top shelf. Mr.
Wainwright was grinning like a kid with a new comic book. He always got excited when I manifested my vampire powers. I unfolded the top of the carton and then thought better of it.
“If I put my hand in this box, is there anything that will bite, sting, cut, burn, or turn me into dust?”
This is one of the problems with working in an occult store. The previous week, I nearly lost a digit to a diary whose lock clapped a silver trap around keyless fingers. Vampires are allergic to silver. Touching it feels like a combination of burning, itching, and being forced to lick dry ice. If Mr. Wainwright hadn’t come along with the suspicious little lock-busting gizmo he carries in his pocket, I wouldn’t be able to make all those shadow puppets I like so much. Mr. Wainwright chewed his lip. “Just to be safe, I’ll do the honors.”
From the cobwebby, mouse-stained cardboard, Mr. Wainwright pulled a book titled The Spectrum of Vampirism. “Here we are,” he said, handing it to me. “I thought you might find this useful. It’s very good, written by a Harvard fellow named Milton Winstead in the 1920s.”
“Harvard?”
“Well, they can’t all be law scholars and presidential candidates.” Mr. Wainwright shrugged.
“There are actual shades of vampirism?” I asked, reading over the table of contents and flipping to a chapter.
Vampires do not produce their own blood cells, which is why they must consume blood. The ingested blood is infused with the vampire’s essence when metabolized, giving the vampire the ability to turn others. A vampire’s power depends on the amount of vampire blood consumed during transformation. To make a childe, a vampire will feed on a victim until he or she reaches the point of death. The sire must be careful not to leave the initiate unconscious or unable to consume the blood needed to complete the transformation, usually two to three pints. The process is literally draining for the sire, meaning that a vampire will create only two or three children in his or her considerable lifetime.
The stronger and older a vampire is at the point of creating a childe, the more likely that childe is to be a “healthy” vampire. A quick or careless turning can result in a sickly vampire, who may suffer from the vampire’s weaknessessensitivity to sunlight and silver—but few of the strengths. Some humans seek this level of vampirism to achieve eternal youth and enhanced beauty. Several devotees of the theatrical profession have been rumored to have partaken in this ritual over the years.
“Huh, I thought vampirism was pretty much a yea-or-nay proposition.”
“Oh, no, no,” Mr. Wainwright said. “There are many subtle levels of vampirism, of power and ability. You see, there is so much for you to learn. It’s so exciting for me to be here with you for the journey from bloodthirsty neophyte to sophisticated veteran vampire.”
“Happy to oblige,” I said, shrugging amiably. “Although technically, I’ve never been what you’d call bloodthirsty.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, dear,” he said. “But don’t you see how lucky you are? Vampires are among the few beings who trace their history as they live it. You can see the past, present, and future. You know who your great-great-grandparents, great-grandparents, and grandparents are. As your children or, in your case, nephews—now, don’t make that face, dear—as your nephews have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, you’ll be able to watch them grow and live and die, each generation, if you take care of yourself, for eternity.”
Staggered by the depressing nature of that thought, I patted his hands. “But you can do that, too, just on a smaller scale. I mean, everybody around here knows who their great-grandparents are. And you have your nephew. You’ve been able to watch him grow up and have children.”
“My nephew moved to Guatemala for mission work nearly five years ago, and I rarely hear from him. I don’t see him having children, if there is a just and loving God.” Mr. Wainwright shook his head fondly at the mention of Emery, his late sister’s Bible-thumping, personality-free son. “And I don’t know who my great-grandparents were, at least not any relatives in this area. My mother was from up north, upstate New York, and my father died when I was very young. I’m afraid their union wasn’t a very happy one, and she didn’t keep many of his things. He rarely spoke to her about his family. And it seemed to upset her to talk about him. It might have been nice to have relatives, but from what I can see, it’s a sort of genetic crapshoot. You’re not likely to end up related to people you like.”
“Case in point, my grandma Ruthie. But then you have wonderful chromosomal coincidences like my aunt Jettie and my dad.” He smiled. “How about I start clearing through these boxes and you can get back to the Internet orders?”
“Wonderful,” he said. “And Jane, dear—”
“Don’t throw anything away without showing it to you first,” I repeated. “How was I supposed to know that was spirit writing? It looked like a bunch of doodles on a cocktail napkin.”
By the time Mr. Wainwright brought me an ancient Limoges teacup filled with microwaved pig’s blood, I was covered in a fine layer of dust but had cleared away most of the stock into “Keep,” “Throw Away,” and “Burn on Consecrated Ground” piles.
“Thanks,” I said, accepting the cup with a grateful nonbeating heart.
“There’s a young man asking for you up front, Jane,” he said as I sipped. “I think he’s one of your kind. He looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t quite place him.”
“Did he mention working for the council?” I asked. “Things tend to go badly for me when they drop by for a visit.”
“I doubt it,” Mr. Wainwright said. “He’s wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.’ I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vampire in a novelty T-shirt before. Extraordinary, really.”
That could only be one vampire.
Richard Cheney, whom I delight in calling Dick, is an old friend of Gabriel’s—about 150 years old. Buddies from the cradle, they split over a gambling debt in their early twenties.
Dick was turned eleven years later, also over a gambling debt. Do you see a pattern here?
Dick is the local center for not-quite-legitimate commerce. If you want something, just ask Dick. But don’t ask where, how, or which international laws he broke while procuring it.
Also, you’ll want to pay in cash.
It wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected to blend my one living friend into my new undead circle. Dick and Zeb got along famously. As Dick put it, Zeb “grows on you, like a stray, spazzy puppy that followed you home.” And Zeb and Gabriel built a friendship on the shared experience of saving my ass from Missy, Dick’s murderous ex. Even better, Zeb had somehow formed a bridge between Gabriel and Dick, former childhood friends who had turned eternal life into a prolonged male pissing contest. Thanks to the time they’d spent with Zeb, Gabriel and Dick had declared something of a ceasefire. And while they certainly weren’t going to be getting matching tattoos anytime soon, at least Dick had stopped leaving silver shavings on Gabriel’s furniture.
If I was the best maid, then Dick could be considered Zeb’s man of honor. Dick secured his spot in the wedding party after spending several bonding-filled weeks on Zeb’s couch after his trailer blew up. Gabriel might have been promoted above groomsman had he been in town more often lately … and not made fun of Zeb’s extensive GI Joe colle
ction.
Whether it’s because he genuinely enjoys my company or enjoys irritating Gabriel, Dick and I had spent a lot of time together since I was turned. He became a regular visitor at River Oaks. In fact, he stayed on my couch for a few days after he wore out his welcome at Zeb’s. Using his secret vampire wiles, Gabriel anonymously set Dick up at a nearby apartment because of Dick’s tendency to make comments such as the following.
“Ah, the lovely Jane. I’ve always said you were a dirty girl,” he said, swiping at the dust on my cheek. Dick could be considered attractive if you considered laughing sea-green eyes, razor-sharp cheekbones, and full pouting lips permanently twisted into a mocking, yet somehow seductive smirk attractive. Combine that with the constant barrage of sassy banter, and you got a “You’ll regret me in the morning” charisma that had almost every female who crossed his path melting into little puddles of giggly goo at his feet. I was a rare exception and, as Dick often reminded me, his only strictly platonic friend who also happened to have breasts.
I had a soft spot for Dick Cheney. Technically, it was my fault that his trailer had been torched by Missy in an attempt to frame me for his murder. And in between the disturbing innuendos, there was normally a nugget of likability.
Buried deep, deep down.
“Wow, you are truly master of the single entendre.” I rolled my eyes. “Do your lines work on anybody, ever?”
“I just wanted to check on you, Stretch,” he said, patting my head, a gesture that he knew I hated. “Haven’t seen you in a few days. I worry when I’m not called to save your cute little hind end at least once a week.”
“I don’t have a cute little hind end,” I groused.
“I know, it’s more medium to large, but I was trying to be kind,” he replied, dodging the Pocket Guide to Poltergeist Activity I chucked at him. “Keep that up, and I’ll go outside, take that rusty bucket you call a car, and drive it into a quarry. It would be a mercy killing.”
I squealed. “She’s here?”
I ran outside to find my old Ford station wagon, Big Bertha, parked in front of the store.
Dick had used some of his not-quite-legal connections to barter for spare parts and repairs that I could not afford on a part-time shopgirl’s salary. I just had to tutor some were-skunk mechanic’s kids in English for the next semester.
“She’s beautiful.” I sighed, rubbing a loving hand over the dimpled hood.
“It looks exactly the same,” Dick said. “Pathetic. It probably cost you as much in repairs as it would to put a down payment on a decent car that doesn’t smoke when you turn the ignition.”
“Big Bertha was my first car, my first love. Aunt Jettie taught me how to drive in this car. I’m just not ready to give her up yet.”
Dick smiled, an indulgent patriarch tolerating my whims. “I figured, which is why I had Billy make some modifications.”
My hands froze mid-stroke on Bertha’s hood. “Dick, what did you do to my car?”
He grinned. “Well, let’s just say Billy had some ideas for how to make Big Bertha a little more vamp-friendly. Tinted windows, SPF 500, thank you very much. Side-curtain sunshields you can pull down in an emergency. Emergency sun-protection packs tacked under the front seats. A little refrigerated cooler for traveling with blood—it’s cooled through the AC. And the pièce de résistance.” He opened the back hatch. There was a coffin-sized door in the floor of the rear compartment. “An emergency hidey-hole.”
“This is great,” I said. “This is just, wow … “ He shook his head. “Would it be rude of me to question this sudden burst of generosity?”
“Well.” Dick stretched a companionable arm around my shoulders and offered what I’m sure he thought was a guileless smile. “You could put in a good word with your friend Andrea.”
This was the thousandth or so anvil-sized hint Dick had dropped on me to hook him up with my blood-surrogate friend. Most vampires are interested in Andrea Byrne’s delicately flavored, extremely rare AB-negative blood. But Dick was far more interested in the fact that Andrea is also coolly, elegantly, irritatingly gorgeous. The two of them had a strange chemistry, like ammonia and bleach.
Dick and Andrea moved in very different vampire circles. Most of Andrea’s undead clients had houses without wheels. In a deliciously karmic development, Andrea didn’t want much to do with Dick—not because she was a snob but because he reminded her so much of Mattias Northon, a vampire college professor who had seduced her, introduced her to life as a blood surrogate, and dumped her like a bad habit. Smooth, effortless charm just pissed her off. I think being turned down by a woman for the first time in his long, long life fried something in Dick’s brain, because he’d been obsessed since meeting her.
“Oh, you’re pure evil.” I led him back into the store. “You almost had me for a second there, pretending to be all sweet and vulnerable. Did you script this conversation out in your head before you came in here? Is your special vampire power flirty manipulation?”
Dick made a deep, distressed noise and covered it with a cough. “Obviously not. Why won’t she go out with me?”
“She knows your type,” I said. “She’s painfully familiar with your type, Mr. Love ‘Em, Bite ‘Em, and Leave ‘Em.”
“That seems … fair,” he said dejectedly. “Could you talk to her—”
“No,” I said, firmly enunciating each word very carefully. “I’m her friend, not her pimp.
Put your big-boy pants on and deal with this yourself. Maybe you could ask her to Zeb and Jolene’s wedding.”
He chuckled. “Speaking of the Gormless Wonder, I got this in the mail today.”
He took a cornflower-blue envelope out of his back pocket and slid it across the counter.
“Wow.” I marveled at the Lavelle-McClaine wedding invitation. I’d been trimmed from the invite list when Zeb and Jolene realized I was honor-bound to attend most of the wedding events anyway, so we didn’t need to bring engraved stationery into the deal. “I’d heard about them, but … there are no words.”
Jolene and Zeb were having a Titanic-themed wedding. Personally, I think centering your nuptials around one of history’s greatest maritime disasters is kind of creepy, but Jolene has a serious Kate-and-Leo complex. I guess I shouldn’t judge. When I was a little girl, I dreamed I would get married in an ancient English castle and ride away in a horse-drawn carriage. And my sister would be tied up in the dungeon. Of course, I also thought I’d be marrying Mark-Paul Gosselaar from Saved by the Bell, and we can all see how that turned out.
Jolene’s theme was a mix of the morbidly historical and old Hollywood glamour. Her wedding ensemble consisted of a rhinestone copy of the Heart of the Ocean and a slightly-too-flattering-to-be-true-to-period costume. Zeb just barely managed to talk her out of having decorative life preservers made up with their names and wedding date. She was, however, using a model of the Titanic to serve chips and salsa. The boat was split in two, the salsa in one side and the chips in the other. She ordered this monstrosity online, along with her wedding ensemble and the invitations with an embossed iceberg on the cover and the words “Struck by Love.” If you looked closely enough at the crags in the pressed-relief iceberg, you could make out Jolene’s and Zeb’s initials.
Some people should not be allowed access to the Internet.
“What exactly are the rules for bringing dates to werewolf weddings?” I asked. “I didn’t get an invitation per se, so I can’t exactly send back a response card with a ‘plus one.’ Then again, Gabriel is a groomsman, so I assume they know he’s coming. You, on the other hand, got an invitation, but it’s addressed to you alone. Are you allowed a ‘plus one’?”
“I haven’t been invited to a wedding in about ninety years,” Dick admitted. “I’m still trying to figure out what those little pieces of tissue between the envelopes are for.”
“Zeb said you guys are doing some sort of manly bowling-drinking-bonding thing this weekend. Do I have to give you the ‘Allow my friend to be h
urt by one of your less-than-reputable acquaintances, and you’ll wake up with my foot lodged in your nether regions’ speech?”
“No,” he said, grinning broadly.
“Good, because the title gives away the ending.”
Dick muttered, “See if I help you escape certain death again.”
“Well, do you have any other homicidal ex-girlfriends who might try to frame me for murder?”
He made a rude hand motion I choose not to describe here. It was enough to bring Mr. Wainwright out from the shelves to scold Dick for his lack of chivalry.
“In my day, gentlemen didn’t make gestures like that at ladies,” he said, drawing himself to his full height. All five feet and six inches of him. Osteoporosis had not been kind.
Dick grinned lazily, unashamed. “Once you spend more time with her, Gilbert, you’ll understand.”
Mr. Wainwright’s eyes narrowed, staring. “Do I know you?”
“Yes,” Dick said. He winked at me. “See you later, Stretch.”
“Do you know him?” I asked after Dick left.
He shook his head. “I have no idea. I have a much better memory for books than for people.”
“You’re probably better off,” I assured him.
“I couldn’t help but overhear you talking about Zeb’s upcoming nuptials, Jane. I think I have a book that might help you.” He held up a soft-cover volume titled Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were.
I opened to a section titled “Human-Werewolf Relations” and read aloud: “The best way for a suitor to win over a female werewolf’s father is to present him with a fresh carcass.
The larger the game, the more impressive the suit. Deer and elk make a bold statement. Squirrels and rabbits will get you laughed out of the pack.”
I kissed the top of his balding pate. “A book for every problem. I love you, Mr. Wainwright.”
He flushed with pleasure, squeezing my hands. “The feeling is mutual, dear.”