by Molly Harper
I grimaced. “Damn it.”
“I’m not implying anything, Meadow, I’m just making an observation,” Weston said. “I know how important your tea is to you. I’m just looking for a common thread.”
“So how do you think this happened?” Sammy asked. “What’s in my coffees that isn’t in your teas?”
“The condiments,” I said. “I don’t use the nonfood creamer or any of the flavor additives that you use.”
I crossed to the coffee bar and sniffed the various containers. When I got to what was supposed to be the nonfood, nondairy creamer, Café Au Vamp, instead of the saccharine chemical odor I expected, it smelled green and herbal. Rushmallow. A rare yellow flower that grew in the Appalachian Mountains. It was relatively tasteless and didn’t have a particularly strong smell. There was absolutely no reason for rushmallow to be mixed in with the coffee creamer. It was only known to undead herbalists as a powerful emetic for vampires. Something about the plant’s unusual alpha-ionone—the chemical that gave the blossoms their scent—punched a vampire right in the gag reflex. Which explained the gastro-pyrotechnics shortly after the meeting started.
But there was something else. I held the jug closer and smelled a faint trace of honey-sweet scent on the plastic. I sniffed a smear on the side. Starflower. It smelled like starflower. I checked the condiment bar for honey that might have smeared on the jug while someone was doctoring their coffee. But while Sammy had laid out coconut milk, almond milk, and Café Au Vamp, he had neglected the honey.
Sammy stammered, his gaze bouncing between Dick and Jane. “I’m so sorry. I mean, I filled the jug myself. I didn’t think it was possible for nondairy, nonfood creamer to spoil. It doesn’t even smell like anything. I just didn’t think—”
“It’s not spoiled, Sammy. Someone mixed rushmallow into the vampire creamer,” I told him. “It’s basically vampire ipecac.”
Sammy’s facial expression went from stricken to terrified. “I didn’t—”
Before he could stammer his response, Jane placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “I know, Sammy. If you were going to pull something, you would have taken one of your countless opportunities to give me vampire food poisoning while mixing my evening coffee. It’s OK.”
Weston rolled his eyes. “You don’t think you should question ‘Sammy’ more closely?”
“No,” Dick said. “Sammy’s been here longer than we have.”
“This is not how reasonable vampires behave.” Weston sighed. “I can’t believe that you’re not even going to explore the possibility that the human you allow to serve vampires beverages was the one who tampered with the drinks.”
I sighed, dropping my head as fast as my heart sank. Of course this would be how he approached this: black-and-white, no room for error or leeway.
“You don’t get to tell me how to handle this,” Jane told him. “You’re an investigator, not an advisor. Why don’t you step outside for a minute?”
“Do you smell something else?” I asked, handing the container to Jane, hoping to prevent Weston from aggravating her further as he hovered near the doorway.
“Yeah, I don’t smell rushmallow… because I don’t even know what that smells like,” Jane told me. “But you’re the one with the nose. Why do you ask?”
“Something I smelled while Weston and I were stuck in the elevator. There was this oversweet floral smell smeared on the control panel. I thought maybe someone just touched it at random. People get bored in elevators.”
Dick started to snicker, but held it in when I gave him an arch look.
“Now that I’ve smelled it in two locations where there has been active sabotage against you, I’m starting to think that it means something,” I said.
“Any idea what the smell could be?”
“I think it’s a plant called borage,” I said.
“Would there be any reason for someone to put borage in the creamer?” Weston asked from the doorway. “Does it double the effects of rushmallow or something?”
“No. That’s what’s kind of weird about it. It doesn’t really do anything for us. There’s no reason for a vampire to use it in anything besides liking the smell… which isn’t really all that appealing.”
“So it’s more sabotage.” Dick sighed. “Jane, honey, we can’t let this continue. It’s one thing to mess with our computers, but this is hurting our people. I won’t have it. We’re going to have to increase security measures even more. And the people we can’t vouch for? They might have to go.”
“I know it,” Jane said. “But for now, we need to wade through today’s mess and figure the rest out later. We’ll meet with Chloe and Arjun and a few key players once we get everybody cleaned up and rehydrated… and oh, my God, we have absolutely wrecked this conference room.”
Weston scribbled in his Moleskine notebook, closed it, and walked out.
“Be sure to note that in your report!” Jane sneered after him. “One of these days, I’m going to burn his little notepad.”
* * *
My living room was full of drunken lunatics, and it was amazing.
Normally, Jane hosted Tommy Nights over at her much more spacious “ancestral home,” River Oaks, but Gabriel had some big deadline coming for filing paperwork for one of his many businesses. Having a bunch of cackling women fueled by Tom Collinses and Tom Hardy movies would not have made for a productive working environment.
We decided on my place because it was a bit of a last-minute “emergency meeting,” and we were a relatively small group. Libby, Miranda, Jane, Andrea, and I were the only ones to make it. It meant the movie selections were a little simpler, but we were used to mixing drinks in bigger quantities. And… well, we were drunker than usual. But nobody needed to be drunk like Jane did at the moment. She’d had a very rough week.
The vampire VIPs had not been amused by what was being called the Coffee Incident. Well, Katarina had, because she, one, hadn’t thrown up, and two, hadn’t been in the “splash zone.” It had taken all of Dick’s legendary charm and persuasive skills to gloss over the incident as an unfortunate accident involving recalled blood. The meeting was rescheduled for a night I was working at the shop. No beverages were served. Our programmers accepted the assignment without incident, and the VIPs left town as soon as possible.
So Jane was rewarding herself with tonight’s bacchanalia. So far, the evening had involved two very heated debates: one, whether Tom Hardy’s American accent was superior to his English accent; and two, which Jane Austen character he could play. Jane, a rabid Austen buff, insisted that though his English accent was basically caramelized Quaaludes, he was too gruff to play anyone from the Austen canon. Libby insisted that any voice Hardy chose to use was just fine with her.
“And he would make an amazing Captain Wentworth,” Libby insisted, her voice slurring slightly over the “W’s.” “He looks like a man who’s been through some stuff. He could carry all those emotional wounds and gravitas.”
“I remain unconvinced,” Jane said, squinting at the screen, where Tom Hardy was also squinting.
“Just agree with her before she starts another round of Marry, Screw, Kill with the guys from the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma.” Miranda sighed.
“What’s wrong with that?” Libby demanded.
“Because you always end up yelling, ‘Kill Ewan MacGregor’s hair!’ and it sort of takes the fun out of it,” Andrea said.
“It’s truly terrible hair,” Libby insisted.
“I’m not disagreeing with you, but you could at least kill Mr. Elton every once in a while,” I muttered into my drink. “Smug bastard.”
“I thought you liked smug bastards.” Jane giggled.
I stared at her for a long moment, until I realized which smug bastard she was referring to. “Harsh!” I cried. “And untrue! Weston isn’t smug. He’s just… confident in his own opinion. And likes being right. And he’s happy when he’s proven right… OK, yeah, he’s a little smug, and it’s hard to deal with,
but we’re working on it.”
“You’ve got to tell us what’s going on there,” Andrea insisted.
“I honestly have no idea,” I said. “And that’s not stalling; I really don’t know. I like him— Jane, stop making that face!”
“I’m sorry, it’s just a natural response!” Jane cried. “He’s caused so much trouble at the office with his incredibly detailed and brutally honest reports. It’s driving me nuts.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, the heart wants what the heart wants,” Miranda said. “The first time I met Collin, I spent quite a bit of time considering the consequences of letting him get exposed to sunlight.”
“I’m pretty sure she had sex with him in the elevator at work,” Jane said. “Nobody gets that rumpled by an elevator drop.”
“Shhhh, he’s living on the other side of the wall. And he has superhearing!” I told them. “And yes, we did have sex in the elevator. I regret nothing.”
“Someone should be having crazy sex around here, what with all us old, married people stodging things up,” Jane said before she mulled it over for a minute. “I’m not even mad.”
A knock sounded at the door. I prayed that it was Sammy bringing up some sort of coffee concoction to sober us up.
“I told you these walls are thin!” I hissed at them as they fell all over my furniture laughing.
It was not, in fact, Sammy at the door. It was Weston, but he didn’t seem to have heard anything we’d just said. Or at least he was polite enough not to mention it.
“Hi,” I said. “I invited the girls over for Tommy Night, and it’s become a sort of Jane Austen Fan Fight Club? I lost track of what we were watching a long time ago, but the drinking games are hilarious. We’ll quiet down. Sorry about that.”
“Actually, I was hoping to talk to you in private,” Weston said, glancing over my shoulder at the women, who were pretending not to be listening as they stared at the screen. “But that is clearly a lost cause with this group, because you’ll only tell them later.”
“He’s learning,” Andrea said.
Jane nodded. “Yep.”
“Is everything all right?”
“I think we can agree that the last few weeks have been fun, relaxing, happy—other than the strange happening at the Council office. And if anything, the so-called Coffee Incident has shown me that I need to get you far from this place as quickly as possible. So I was thinking we should explore a more long-term arrangement.”
I cocked my head, nearly smacking it into the doorframe thanks to limited depth perception. “That’s unexpected.”
Weston gently pulled me out onto the walkway. “I can’t stay here, Meadow. I think we both know that.”
“All right. Those are two conflicting statements. You want to explore a long-term arrangement, but you can’t stay here. In Half-Moon Hollow. Where my life is. The life you could completely uproot with your reports and your investigations—”
“I told you, I’m obligated to report the truth to the Council. I’m not trying to hurt Jane, but I have to do my job,” he said.
“Which would be great if your job didn’t conflict with almost everything I hold dear!”
“I don’t want to leave you. I feel attached to you in a way I haven’t felt for anyone in a long time. I don’t think you love me yet, and I don’t love you yet. But I think we could get there eventually. I do know that leaving you here in this place would hurt my heart. After I submit my report, I was hoping you would consider traveling with me while I work to see where this is going. You could see some of the world beyond Kentucky. You’re so young, and you’ve barely seen anything yet, and I would like to be there when you do.”
I arched my brow so hard it actually hurt my forehead. This was a lot of information to process all at once. “I can’t just leave. I have my job with the Council. I have the shop. I have responsibilities. I have a home here.”
“I don’t have that, Meadow. I’ve never had a home, not since I was human. I was hoping you could help me make one.”
“By giving up my own? That’s hardly fair. And I’m still under the watchful eye of the Council. If I leave the area without permission, I could get into serious trouble,” I told him.
“So we ask the Council to remove your probationary status. You said yourself: you’ve been on your best behavior for years, with Jane’s limited supervision. Surely, that has to mean something. Why are you looking for excuses to stay in this backward town, when I’m trying to give you the world?”
All I could do was stare at him. How was it possible he had said something that was meant to be nice in such a backhanded manner? Wait, it wasn’t even backhanded. It was just insulting, toward me and my town and my friends and my shop and my commitment to that shop and… America and… ponies.
I was losing my own point.
After a long moment, he seemed to realize I wasn’t responding to his “offer.”
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” he asked. “Is it because you’re scared of commitments? Because I’m asking for more than Luke did?”
I growled through gritted teeth. “I don’t know what’s more infuriating: you assuming that my feelings for you are so powerful that they frighten me, you assuming that I’ll just abandon the business I’ve worked for years to get off the ground, or that you’re still such a snob about this place—this place I call home, where I’ve found people I love and who love me in return. You think I can walk away from all of that so easily?”
“I shouldn’t be the one making all of the compromises here. I don’t mind that you’re stubborn, unfocused, almost belligerently naïve—”
“Please stop describing my virtues; I just might swoon,” I told him flatly. “And I won’t bring up the fact that maybe the reason you’re not ‘good with people’ is that you genuinely don’t seem to care about anyone’s feelings but your own. So no, Erik Weston, I don’t want to see the world with you. I don’t want to be near you. I tried giving you the benefit of the doubt because I thought I saw something in you, something other than this cynical jerk. But the minute I let my guard down, you remind me why I don’t talk to anyone I grew up with. Just stay away from me.”
“All right, then,” he said. “I tried to be honest with you, Meadow. I thought that was something you wanted. Maybe I should have lied to your face like Luke Corso did; we might have been happier.”
He turned on his heel and walked into his apartment. I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. The office was going to be super awkward for a while. I was obviously not fit to date anyone or do anything resembling dating for a long time. I would just… date myself. Clearly, I was the only one suited for my personality.
Jane was just a few steps from the door when I walked into the apartment. She looked absolutely stricken. I groaned. “You heard everything, didn’t you?”
“He just Mr. Darcy’d you,” Jane said, shaking her head. “I mean, I have been waiting my whole life for someone to Mr. Darcy me—”
“Don’t tell Gabriel that,” Andrea muttered.
“But now that I’ve seen it in real life… not as romantic as I thought it would be,” Jane said. “He really went for the jugular in terms of insults, both to you and your life… and a little bit to your personality.”
“You’re telling me,” I said, flopping back into my seat. “I don’t know how this happened. We went from, well, not happy, exactly, but I thought we’d accepted our differences. But I guess he was just storing up all of his ‘observations’ until he could make a good case against everything I love.”
“Aw, honey, was he right when he said that you might love him?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had that sort of relationship… ever, really. But it felt significant. He certainly has a lot more power to hurt me than any of my previous partners.”
“Yeah, but by comparison, Luke seemed to annoy you a lot less,” Jane said. “Before he accused you of sleeping around and read your texts.”
“That’s definitely a deal-breaker. That’s like looking in someone’s wallet. Or touching their tools without asking,” Libby said. Jane shot her a confused look, so she added, “If you dated a mechanic, that reference would make more sense.”
“Yeah, I was way more bothered by having to change all of my damn passwords than I was about the sleeping-around accusations.”
“I’m bothered by the fact that Weston has sort of ruined Mr. Darcy for me,” Jane said. Andrea shot her an arch look, so she added, “Right, sorry, focus on Meadow’s problems.”
“I think I need to just stop doing anything resembling dating for a while,” I said. “Clearly, whatever I use for partner selection is programmed very badly.”
“Aw, don’t feel bad,” Libby insisted. “I picked a husband who was… not good.”
“Wow, Libby, thank you for that detailed description.” Andrea snorted.
“I still feel weird speaking ill of the dead!” Libby exclaimed. “And he was the father of my son, so he wasn’t completely awful.”
“You’re dead,” Miranda pointed out.
“Fine, my point is that I picked a less-than-stellar husband, and then I almost fell for someone who, while also not Darth Vader, would not have been a good partner for me. And definitely wouldn’t have been a good influence on Danny. But then I found Wade, and he is literally the best thing ever. Sometimes you just have to work through—well, I don’t want to say ‘issues,’ because that seems condescending, but stuff—while you’re picking. And you have so much stuff going on right now, it’s no surprise that you’re confused.”
I groaned and leaned my head back on the chair.
“You want me to have Dick kick his ass?” Andrea asked. “He would be happy to do it. He thinks of you like he thinks of his granddaughter, Nola.”
“So he’s my slightly perverse grandpa in this situation?”
“Technically, several-times-great-grandpa, but yes,” Andrea said.