by Molly Harper
“Can I go, Mom?”
“Sure, baby.” He scampered off with Charlie, and I was reminded, once again, that no matter how messed-up the consequences, I’d made the right choice being turned. I could be gone right now instead of watching my son making a new friend. I organized the paperwork carefully and retrieved the three-page list of school supplies he would need for the year.
I took a deep, unnecessary breath before walking out into the hall, fortifying myself for the onslaught of human noise and smells. Several of the parents called out to me, waving, smiling, telling me how glad they were to see me up and around. Mark Walsh, the school principal, who had been instrumental in keeping me in touch and informed about Danny’s academic and emotional status even when I was too fatigued to make a damn phone call, stopped me to remind me that the staff was there to help us with anything we needed in the new school year.
Jane was leaning against the wall, texting, waiting for me by the nurse’s office. She was frowning as she peered down at the screen.
“Council business,” she told me, shoving the phone into her pocket. “Are you done?”
“No, now I have to go to the cafeteria and find all of the right people to give the right pages to and then commando-roll out of the fire exit before I get recruited for the homework helper program. I love helping kids understand math, but I’m not willing to let the sun evaporate me in order to do it,” I said quietly.
“That seems reasonable,” Jane said. “Maybe we can find some online tutoring program for you to help with if you find you miss it a lot.” She shuddered as a rowdy group of kids stampeded by, waving blue “Go, Howlers, Go!” foam fingers. “You know, there are times when I’m really glad the childe I got had already graduated by the time I turned him. I’m not sure I would have survived all this. You’re well suited to it, though. You haven’t flinched once.”
I grinned. “Thanks, Jane.”
“Libby!”
Casey Sparks, a petite brunette with a sassy pixie cut, was bustling down the hall toward me.
“Friend or foe?” Jane whispered.
“Friend,” I whispered back, adding, “Ish.”
Of all the parents I knew through school, I was probably closest to Casey. We’d worked together on the raffle committee for the Pumpkin Patch Party, the school’s annual fall festival and biggest fund-raiser of the year for the PTA. Working that thing was like serving in the armed forces together. It changed a woman.
Casey and I occasionally met for coffee, and when I got sick, she’d brought some casseroles over to the house. With my symptoms and her four kids, that was about as much as either of us had time for. And honestly, I didn’t know how to offer more.
Casey threw an arm around my shoulder and squeezed me tight. I hugged her back with a fraction of my strength for fear of hurting her. Leaning away from the potential temptation of her pulsing throat, I ran through the list of things I was supposed to be doing—breathing, blinking, smiling—and tried to do them at a regular, human pace.
“They must have the air-conditioning cranked up pretty high—your hands are freezing!” she exclaimed.
My smile stretched tight. Actually, the air-conditioning was struggling under the body heat of so many people walking through the building while the doors were standing open. Everybody else’s forehead had a fine sheen of sweat. I supposed Casey was trying to be polite about my less-than-stellar immune-system-slash-everything-else. “Well, the system must be catching up from being off over the summer.”
“Wow, you’re looking really good,” Casey said, holding my hands and stepping back so she could survey me. “That new treatment seems to be a little easier on you. Have you been taking supplements or something?”
Remembering the horse-pill iron supplements I’d choked down that morning, I said, “Yep, vitamins and supplements. Health shakes. That sort of thing.”
Synthetic blood was a sort of smoothie, right? A meaty, metallic smoothie.
“Well, you look great. So did Danny get Mrs. Roberts this year?” she asked. The highly coveted first-grade teacher was a miracle worker with behavioral problems. Her class reading-comprehension test scores were through the roof. And she’d managed to make the first grade’s Earth Day play interesting three years in a row. All the parents wanted their kids to be in Mrs. Roberts’s class, so much so that the school stopped taking assignment requests as a matter of policy.
“No, he got Miss Steele,” I said quietly, nodding toward the empty classroom. “I’m sure he’ll be fine. I was when I was in her class. How about Peyton? How is she liking her last year of Sunnyside?”
Peyton was Casey’s youngest, a pink-obsessed princess obsessed with the Little Mermaid. She had cried, cajoled, and attempted bribery to get her mother to let her skip a year at Sunnyside preschool, Danny’s “alma mater,” so she could join her oldest siblings at big-kid school. Casey was a stronger woman than I, because I don’t know if I would have been able to say no to that level of cuteness. Or whining.
“Mrs. Bloom,” Casey said, her pink-glossed lips bending into a frown.
I winced. Danny and Mrs. Bloom had not gotten along well when she’d been his teacher. Mrs. Bloom seemed to be of the opinion that four-year-olds should be seen and not heard, which was an odd stance for someone who spent all day talking to four-year-olds. “Well, I’m sure it will be fine.”
“When Danny had Mrs. Bloom, you told me I should pray for her retirement or a falling cartoon safe before Peyton got to the four-year-old class.”
“I think I said cartoon piano, but OK. And maybe she was just having an off year when Danny had her.”
“I don’t think you’re allowed to have an off year,” Casey said. “A week, sure. Maybe a month. But not a year.”
“It will be fine,” I said. “Just ask Peyton a lot of questions when she gets home so you’re prepared for the phone calls.”
It felt wrong to be gossiping about teachers in what amounted to “faculty housing.” But I also knew that this happened in every hallway in every school in America. For every wonderful, talented, dedicated teacher out there, there was the one who triggered the fight-or-flight response during parent-teacher conferences.
“If you’re feeling up to it, let’s meet up for coffee once the kids are in school,” Casey said.
“Sure.”
As she walked away, I bit my lip. I hoped she liked drinking decaf at night. I relaxed a little, now that I didn’t have to play human quite so convincingly. I was suddenly so tired. Tired and kind of depressed that no one here knew me well enough to see how much I’d changed. The last time I was here, I looked like the walking dead, dang it, and now I was practically a mom supermodel, and people seemed to think it was because of some magic herbal pill. I just needed a few minutes. A few minutes of peace and quiet and fewer smells.
“You’re looking pretty tired, hon. Why don’t you take a little break?” Jane suggested, nodding toward the closet near the music room marked “Janitorial Supplies.”
“Thanks. I’ll be right back,” I said.
I ducked into the closet, using just a teensy bit of my vampire strength to wrench the doorknob’s fifty-year-old lock off of its pins. Promising myself that I would send the school a check to replace it, I leaned my forehead against the cool wood door and tried some of the relaxation techniques the nurses had suggested at the chemo center. I pictured warm, yellow sunlight filtering through the ceiling and relaxing my frazzled nerves. I pictured a warm beach, sand shifting underneath my back as my toes curled and uncurled under the grainy surface. I imagined the scents of coconut suntan lotion and ocean salt wafting toward my nose. I felt a pretend breeze against my skin. And I heard a voice, low and loving, calling my name. I’d heard the voice before, whispering in my ear while I was unable to breathe. He told me that everything was going to be all right, that this was part of it, and when I woke up—
Suddenly, the door popped open and smacked me in the forehead, knocking me back on my heels.
&nbs
p; “Oof!” I cried, clutching my face. Thank goodness I had rapid healing powers, because I was pretty sure I’d just sustained a concussion.
“Are you OK?” a gruff voice demanded.
“What the hell— Who are you?” I demanded.
“I’m the guy with the keys to this closet. Who are you?”
My eyes went wide. This was the school janitor? What happened to Ernie Houser? When I attended Half-Moon Hollow Elementary, the janitor had been a sweet old man who had a fluffy white walrus mustache and whistled “My Old Kentucky Home” through the gap in his front teeth.
The contemporary school janitor was made from a slightly different mold. Tall, lean, almost wiry, with respectable cords of muscles rippling over arms covered in a swirling cloud of colorful tattoos. His face was long and lean, with sharp features only softened by a scruff of white-blond beard and longish darker blond hair that brushed against the collar of his T-shirt. His eyes were a defiant blue. If Thor had a pissed-off, tattooed younger brother, he would be the guy blocking my exit from the supply closet. And yeah, he might have fit the bill for some of my more tawdry biker fantasies, but given the way he was glaring at me, I got the distinct impression that he didn’t want me touching him or his . . . hog.
“I came in here for a fresh shirt,” he said, nodding toward the flannel shirts hanging neatly from hooks on the closet wall. “The air conditioner was on the fritz . . .” He stared down at the ruined doorknob. “What the hell did you do to the door?”
“Nothing!” I exclaimed, but I hid my hands behind my back as if it would keep me from being caught red-handed.
“What are you even doing in here?” he demanded. “You don’t have any good reason to be in here, damaging school property. What the hell is wrong with you parents? Ya know, just ’cause you pay taxes doesn’t mean you own the school!”
My mouth was hanging open in response to his rudeness. I was sure my vampire impression of Munch’s The Scream was super-attractive. “I got turned around.”
“Well, turn back around and get out.” He jerked his thumb toward the open door behind him as he shrugged out of his sweat-stained gray Half-Moon Hollow Howlers T-shirt and into a blue cotton uniform workshirt with “Wade” stitched on the breast pocket.
My jaw dropped. Who the hell was this guy, and who did he think he was, bossing me around? Nobody had talked to me like this in . . . well, I couldn’t remember the last time someone talked to me with such an irritated tone, certainly not since I became a tragic terminally ill widow. I’d been treated with kid gloves lined with cotton balls for the past two years.
And holy Hades, he had even more tattoos underneath the shirt. Even with my super-vision, I couldn’t take in the details in the brief glimpse I got. Still, I got a good look at the big picture, and the picture was pretty damn nice. Long, sinewy arms, a broad chest, and a flat stomach tapering to hip bones that jutted out just a few inches above the waistline of his worn jeans.
How perverse was it that between the pretty face, the tattoos, and the surliness, I was actually beginning to feel the faint stirrings of attraction? Fine, they weren’t so much faint stirrings as a deep, reverberating echo between my thighs, like a super-dirty version of those Tibetan meditation bells. It was certainly stronger than anything I’d felt in years. For a while, I hadn’t been certain that all of my parts were still in working condition. Was this a side effect of vampirism? Unprecedented skankiness in response to hostility?
And I had been staring at him this whole time, which was starting to become awkward.
“Are you always this grouchy?” I asked.
“Only when nosy soccer moms invade my damn space! Now, get out!”
“Just as an FYI, in case the policy manual is outside your reading-comprehension level, most school employees don’t strip in front of parents.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. Why had I said that? That was mean. But my insult hadn’t even fazed “Wade,” who was waving me toward the door. “Keep walking, Bree.”
“My name isn’t Bree.”
He scoffed. “Your names are always ‘Bree’ or ‘Krissy’ or ‘Elizabeth.’ And then you slap it on everythin’ you own, including those stupid little stick figures you stick on the backs of your minivans.”
“It’s Libby,” I shot back.
“Which is short for Elizabeth. Thanks for proving my point.”
Actually, it was short for Liberty, because I was born on the Fourth of July and the pain meds made my mom all weepy and patriotic. But Sassy Janitor didn’t need to know about that.
“Do us all a favor and try to develop a nicer attitude before the kids come back to school.”
“I don’t need to. The kids know better than to go where they’re not wanted!” he shot back as I walked out to find a bemused Jane standing outside the closet.
I would not walk down the hall of an elementary school flipping double birds at a school employee, even if that hallway was empty. That was not something classy mothers did, living or undead.
“You couldn’t have stopped him from going into the closet?” I asked drily.
“I was distracted by text messages,” she said, sounding not at all apologetic. “You have a thing for tattoos, huh?”
“Don’t read my mind without my permission!” I hissed quietly. “That’s just rude!”
“Hey, I only got half of the picture before you managed to shut me out. How did you do that, by the way? Meditation exercises?”
“Do what?”
“Shut me out of your head,” she said. “The only other person who can do it is Nola, and she has an unfair magical advantage.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I said. “Let’s just get out of here before I make a bigger scene.”
“Eh, there’s so much background noise no one really noticed the muffled voices coming from the closet.”
I stopped in my tracks, turning on my heel and shouting toward the now closed closet door, “And my face is fine, by the way! Thanks for asking, jerk.”
Danny was still happily rolling about on the magic story-time carpet in the library when I found him, completely engrossed in Miss Lisa’s narration of Pete the Cat: Rockin’ in My School Shoes. Jane took a deep breath as we entered the library, as if she missed the smell. Afterward, I tried to give her some space as we walked to the car. She looked a little weepy. Danny filled up the silence with chatter about his new friend Charlie, Pete the Cat, Charlie, the cafeteria, Charlie, the music room, and Charlie. Charlie was apparently the source of all things cool. He had a dog named Ratchet and a collection of snakeskins and arrowheads.
“So I take it you’re excited about this year, buddy?” I asked him as I buckled his seatbelt.
“Yup. Charlie and I are going to be in the same class. We’re going to play pirates at recess. But close the door, Mom. I don’t want anybody seeing that I still use a Bubble Guppies booster seat.”
I nodded and saluted as I closed the door. The poor kid had always been a little sensitive about being smaller than the rest of the kids in his class. He considered his continued use of a preschool-brand booster to be on par with thumb sucking or needing a sippy cup. But he hadn’t outgrown it yet, and booster seats weren’t cheap.
“I’m proud of you,” Jane told me. “That was a lot of sensory input, and you handled it beautifully. And you didn’t even show any signs that you’d been turned. Do you know how hard that is? I barely got through a first visit with my mama, and she kept trying to force-feed me pot pie!”
“Thank you, vampire Yoda,” I said. “Do I get my ‘first outing’ merit badge?”
“No, but I’m going to ignore the fact that you’re sassing your mentor. You should consider that a gift.”
“I do,” I told her solemnly.
“Drive safe,” she called as she walked toward her tank of a car, an SUV she called Big Bertha, Jr. “I need to swing by my place, and then I’ll see you at the house.”
“I always drive
safe. It’s a minivan.” Just as I turned toward the car, which had been moved to the school while I slept by a helpful human Council employee, I tracked a flash of hot pink in my peripheral vision. My head whipped toward the movement, a predatory instinct that made me more than a little uncomfortable. About twenty feet away, Ashlynne Carson, the little sister of one of Danny’s classmates, was chasing her wayward “Welcome Back to School” balloon as it floated toward the parking lot. Ashlynne’s mother, Candace, was busy talking to Mr. Walsh and didn’t see her daughter in danger. And Nina Paltree was backing her huge Yukon out of its space and had no clue that Ashlynne was behind her. In fact, it seemed like no one was watching Ashlynne at the moment.
Without thinking, I sprinted the short distance at top speed. I caught Ashlynne under her arms and scooped her up, springing to the side, out of the path of the car. It would have been a graceful rescue had my foot not caught on the curb and sent me sprawling across the sidewalk. I wrapped my arms around Ashlynne’s squirming body, rolling across the pavement and taking the brunt of the impact on my back.
“Ow,” I grunted as Ashlynne and I rolled to a stop.
“My balloon!” the little girl wailed. “You made me miss my balloon! I want my balloon!”
“Everybody’s a critic,” I mumbled.
It seemed that while no one had seen me barrel across the parking lot at superhuman speeds, everybody had seen me take a dive on the pavement. Typical. Candace scrambled across the sidewalk and pulled Ashlynne from my arms. I could barely make out her “thank you”s through her alternate sobbing and fussing at her daughter. Nina drove the Yukon away, unaware of the drama left unfolding behind her.
A few other parents huddled around Ashlynne and her mother, while Principal Walsh and Casey ran to help me.
“Libby! Are you OK?” Mr. Walsh helped me to my feet. With every movement, I discovered new bits of gravel buried in my knees and palms.