by Hannah Jayne
I put my melon-soaked hands on my hips and sighed. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re talking to fruit. Fruit that you’ve named Grandma. Maybe you want to sit down. Sit down for a bit while I call the doctor?” Nina moved to the wall and picked up the phone.
I frowned. “No. I’m perfectly fine.” I looked back at my melons. “Okay, I guess this looks a little weird. It’s that ...”
“Sophie!”
Both Nina and I snapped to look at the face in the fruit as it beckoned to us. Grandma looked from side to side. “What’s with all the cantaloupe?”
“I was looking for you everywhere!” I said, as if there were a natural connection between communication and cantaloupe.
Grandma raised her bushy grey eyebrows in the sly, sexy fashion that grandmothers should never use in front of their grandchildren. “Sorry, I was indisposed. Turns out Ed McMahon and I got along better than I expected.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest, my hip jutting out in instinctual irritated-teenager fashion. “You mean you were canoodling with Ed McMahon in my moment of need?”
Grandma sucked her teeth and looked annoyed. “Sophie, you’re a grown woman and lately, you have a lot of moments of need.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Sometimes your grandma has her own moments of need.”
Nina pressed her palms over her ears and clamped her eyes shut. “Okay, I don’t know what’s weirding me out more: seeing your grandmother in half a cantaloupe, or hearing that Granny’s getting it on with Ed McMahon posthumously.”
I gave Nina a dirty look and turned back to Gram. “This is serious. Grandma, I met Will Sherman today.”
Grandma blinked, her eyes flat in the cantaloupe flesh. “Is he some sort of rapper or something?”
“Will Sherman, Grandma,” I enunciated. “My guardian? You know, because I’m the Vessel of Souls.”
Grandma paled, despite the fleshy orange cantaloupe color. “How do you know that?” she asked, her voice a hoarse rasp.
“Did you know I was the Vessel of Souls, Grandma?”
Grandma nodded very slowly.
“And you didn’t tell me?” My voice was rising to near hysterics. “How could you not tell me that I was a Vessel?”
Grandma rolled her cantaloupe-colored eyes. “Please, Sophie. You locked yourself in your bedroom and cried for two months straight when I said you were going to have to get braces. I didn’t think telling you that you were a supernatural holding tank would go over all that well. So sue me!”
“I need you to tell me the truth. About everything.” My hysteria was giving way to tears and I fought to keep myself from crying. “Did my mother kill herself ?”
Grandma pressed her lips together, her eyes rolling upward as if the answer she was looking for was somewhere above her.
“Oh, God, it’s true. That’s why she doesn’t appear to me. She’s”—I paused, swallowing saliva that had gone metallic and sour—“not in the same place as you are, right? She can’t appear to me.”
“Sophie, who told you this?”
“Tell me the truth, Grandma. Did my mother commit suicide?”
“Your mother loved you very much.”
“Did she do it?” My voice was barely above a whisper.
I watched the grey-tinged curls on my grandmother’s head waggle as she nodded her head, her chin low in defeat. “Yes, it’s true. But Sophie, you have to understand—”
“And my father? Lucas Szabo, the college professor. Only he wasn’t a college professor, was he? Did Mom know, Grandma? Did Mom know that he was the devil?”
My grandmother looked away and I felt a pang of despair as I watched a glistening tear roll silently down her cheek. “She wasn’t sure at first,” Grandma said. “She promised me she didn’t know.”
I gritted my teeth. “She killed herself. If anything would have happened to you, would my father have taken care of me?”
“We had to keep you safe.”
“And suicide was my mother’s answer?”
“The Vessel of Souls existed long before you did, Sophie.”
I crossed my arms, slumped into a dining room chair. “What does that have to do with anything? My mother took up with the devil. My mother fell in love with Satan.”
“To her credit, he was very charming.”
“Grandma!”
Grandma’s eyes were stern. “You don’t know everything, Sophie.”
The tears started to spill over my cheeks before I even knew I was crying. “She fell in love with him and then she abandoned me. Is it because she knew what I was? Because she knew I wasn’t real—that I was a Vessel?”
“Sophie Lawson, you are as real as any of us in this room.”
I stood up angrily. “Forgive me if that doesn’t give me much comfort, Grandma. You’re a cantaloupe and Nina’s been dead for a hundred years!”
I sniffed, storming past Nina, who stood in the kitchen, stunned, and leaving my grandmother, openmouthed, in half a cantaloupe. I was about to walk into my room when I heard my grandmother’s voice ring through the apartment.
“Being the Vessel of Souls is not a bad thing, Sophie Lawson. But dying to protect it is!”
I slammed the door behind me and flopped down on my bed, letting the tears come. If it weren’t for me, my mother would still be alive. My mother killed herself and Ophelia knew it. I rolled onto my side and curled my knees up into my chest and let the tears shake me. One time in my life the strangest thing was being the only breather in an office full of the undead. Now I had no idea who—or what—I was, though it seemed like the whole world already knew. I hugged my knees, rested my head on my arm, and fell asleep.
I tossed and turned most of the night, staring at the red numbers on my digital clock and finally putting on my iPod to try and drown out the chatter that was going on in my brain. The next morning I awoke with the cord from my headphones wrapped around my neck and my sheets bunched on the floor. I was still achy and tired but did my best to keep the events of the last night—from jail to Vessel to suicide—out of my head. When I padded into the kitchen Nina was still there, sipping from a coffee mug and leaning against the cabinets, ChaCha asleep at her feet.
“You look good today,” she said with a cheerful smile.
“I love that I can always count on you to lie to me.”
Nina handed me a Starbucks from the fridge and slung her arm across my shoulders. “That’s what best friends are for.”
I unscrewed my drink and slumped at the kitchen table. Nina sat across from me. “So, speaking of fabulous best friends, I couldn’t sleep last night.”
“Because you’re a vampire?”
“Yeah, and because my best friend feels like her life has been turned upside down.” Nina reached out and grabbed my hand, giving it a squeeze.
I felt another lump forming in my throat, but I smiled. Nina’s skin may be cold, but her touch warmed me nonetheless.
“You need answers, so I’m going to help you get them.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?”
Nina offered me a wide grin that showed off her white teeth—pointed incisors and all. “Close your eyes.”
I laid my head against the table and moaned. “No, no more surprises. From now on, I’m never losing consciousness, never closing my eyes, never opening doors. And I’m only eating clear broths.”
I could practically hear Nina’s eyes rolling.
“I was in jail!” I wailed.
I looked up as I heard the paper fall onto the table. A piece of folded yellow notepaper lay in front of me. I grabbed it.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.”
I raised a suspicious eyebrow and Nina snatched the paper out of my hand and unfolded it, smoothing it on the table. At the top of the paper was written Lucas Szabo, and underneath it, his full address. I felt my jaw drop.
“You found my father.” My voice was a near whisper. “What? How?”
&n
bsp; Growing up without a father, I went through the typical stages of child-abandonment feelings: making believe my father was looking for me, never wanting to see my bastard-making father, assuming he had a good reason for leaving, dating guys who wore blazers and used fatherly expressions like “cotton-pickin’” and “malarkey.” At times I pored through old records or did halfhearted Internet searches. As angry as I wanted to be, I couldn’t help but feel a meaningful tug around Father’s Day or The Men’s Wearhouse, but not knowing where my father was—only that he existed somewhere out in the world—gave me a weird sense of comfort. Not anymore.
“Lorraine owed me a favor,” Nina said, her voice smug.
I felt a little stab of warmth. “And you used it on me? How? When?”
Nina shrugged. “Turns out Lorraine’s as much of an insomniac as I am.”
I looked at the paper, pinching it hard between my thumb and forefinger. “Thank you.”
Nina threw her arms around me, engulfing me in one of her cold vampire hugs. “I’m really sorry about everything, Soph.”
I barely heard her as I stared at my father’s address. He lived in Marin County, less than forty-five minutes from my home in San Francisco. I wondered how long he had lived there. I wondered how long he had lived just across the Golden Gate Bridge and had never bothered to see me.
“I want to see him,” I finally said.
“What? Now?”
“No, not now. I want to see him, at least see his house. I want to see where he lives, but I don’t want him to see me.”
“Because he might be Satan?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t want him to see me because I’m not ready for that. I just want to see where he lives. I want to see what I can find out about him before I actually”—I swallowed hard—“meet him.”
Nina and I shared a glance.
“And also, I guess I wouldn’t mind finding out if he is actually the devil.”
“We can go there. He lives close,” Nina said softly.
Too close. My father lived less than an hour away from me, yet made no attempt to find me. Satan or not, shouldn’t every father want to check on his little girl? I steeled myself, reminded myself that my so-called father just might be the cornerstone of evil, the King of Darkness, Hell personified. Not the kind of guy you want driving your car pool.
Nina put her hands on her hips. “What are we supposed to find at his house, though? Pictures of his Hell-adjacent condo? Pitchfork in the coat closet?”
I grinned in spite of myself. “Whatever works.”
Nina shrugged. “Either way, I guess a little sleuthing couldn’t hurt.”
“Unless we’re found and flayed alive,” I said helpfully.
Nina slung an arm over my shoulder. “Sophie, do you really think your dad would flay you alive? And he should be happy to see me. Technically, I’m one of his people.” She bared her fangs. “He probably even has my soul somewhere in one of his file cabinets. Alex’s, too.”
I stood up, my heart hammering in my chest. “Then this isn’t a crazy idea?”
“Of course it is. It’s downright suicidal.” She licked her lips as my stomach sank. “But I love a challenge. It’ll be a midnight mission.” Nina held out her tanned arms. “And now I won’t stand out in the dark. We’ll go tonight.”
My heart stopped. I tried to swallow, but my throat was suddenly bone dry.
I had spent the last thirty-three years pretending that I didn’t care about my father’s whereabouts and inwardly hoping that somehow, he was searching for me. Now, in less than twenty-four hours I could be face-to-face with the man who abandoned me, who walked out, leaving behind my mother and a four-day-old infant. I could ask him why and he could tell me. He could tell me that he missed me and that he looked everywhere for me, that he dreamed of me, too. Or he could tell me that he just didn’t want me.
“Okay, then,” I said, my voice wavering. “Tonight.”
Nina put out her pinkie, hooked it with mine. “To your family tree. May it not be growing in Hell.”
Chapter Seventeen
At just after four o’clock—my second break, and forty-five minutes after hefting an armload of “slightly irregular” skinny jeans to the front of the store—I slumped into a plastic break-room chair and called Nina.
“So, I got the text! How did I know you’d get hired in a heartbeat? So, what are you doing? Where are you working?”
With the excitement of last night—felonious misunderstandings, a rather invasive strip search, and a vampire with a spray tan—I had forgotten to mention my new career in the retail sector to Nina. I tried to call and tell her over the phone, but for some reason I couldn’t make the statement “I work at People’s Pants” come out of my mouth. Besides, didn’t rayon look better in print? Instead, I had shot her a vague text while holding my cell phone under a round rack of extended-size cargo pants.
I held the phone to my ear and looked around at the bank of metal lockers, most etched with cheerful sayings like Mike was here and Hell=People’s Pants. I glanced at the big row of time cards stuck to one wall.
“Well,” I started, “I guess you could say I’m in the fashion industry.”
“Oh my God, I am so dying with envy right now! I would give my soul—if I had one—to work around clothes. You are so lucky!”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I think I’m going to keep looking. Oh, and I’m apparently closed to the occult, says my seventeen-year-old supervisor.”
“Seriously and seriously? You, closed to the occult, and you, with a seventeen-year-old supervisor?”
“I am the lucky one. Look, I’ll meet you at home as soon as I leave here.”
I heard Nina stammering on her end of the phone. “Um, actually ... would you mind meeting me here?”
My stomach clenched. “At UDA?”
“It’s just that I have a project that I need to finish up and I brought the stuff with me and it would just be way easier to hop on the freeway from here. Besides, Dixon’ll probably be gone by the time you get over here. He’s getting a haircut at five-thirty.”
“I don’t know, Neens.” My eyes shifted across the break room to Avery, who stood in the doorway pointing at the tattooed spot on her wrist where a watch would be. “Fine. Whatever. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Can’t wait,” Nina said.
The sun was setting outside People’s Pants when Avery officially dismissed me. I locked my terrible blue smock with the trainee name tag in my newly assigned locker—number forty-three, the one etched with Hell=People’s Pants—snatched out my purse, and headed for the door. After yesterday’s strip search, having Avery paw through my shoulder bag didn’t bother me quite so much.
I was sitting in Nina’s visitor’s chair at the UDA when Dixon poked his head in, his wide, slick-as-leather smile going solid and forced when he saw me. “Ms. Lawson.” I’m not sure if it was meant to be a greeting or a question, but the tone of his voice made my hair stand on end.
Nina jumped up, panic crossing her dark eyes. “Sophie is just here to see me. To ride home with me.”
Dixon’s forced smile faltered minimally. “That’s nice.” He gave an odd, stiff nod in my direction. “Nice to see you.”
I gritted my teeth and returned his approximation of a smile.
“Is there anything you need, Dixon?” Nina shimmied impossibly close to him.
“I’m leaving for the day, actually, but thank you,” Dixon said. And then, with a polite glance toward me, “Good night, ladies.”
I waited until Dixon was out of earshot before starting. “He is—”
“I know, fantastic, right? I really think he might be the one.”
I stood up and shut the door softly. “The one? I’m not even sure he’s the one to run the UDA. I mean, what’s his background even?”
Nina shrugged. “I don’t know. French?”
“I mean his business background. What do you even know about him?”
Nina th
ought for a second. “I know he’s a Leo. You know how well I do with Leos.”
“You also know that he fired me. Your best friend.”
“Relinquishing you to find an amazing job in the fashion industry.”
Amazing. Fashion. People’s Pants. Nope.
I shook my head. “So, back to the plan.”
Nina rubbed her hands together. “I’ve been looking forward to it all day.”
I stood up, my heart beginning to hammer in my chest. “Then this is something we should do? It’s not crazy?”
“Of course it is. But it’s par for the course with the whole demon-slash-angelic world looking at you as some sort of cosmic prize.” Nina clapped her hand on my arm. “Maybe I should take you for myself.”
I gave her a look and she licked her lips, grinned. “Kidding. But as I said before, I love a challenge.”
“Okay, then,” I said, hands on hips. “I guess we go.”
“Wait.” Nina stood up and upturned her shoulder bag on her desk, the contents spilling out onto the floor. “You can’t just break and enter looking like that.” She gestured to my standard sheath dress distastefully.
“Are you kidding me?” I slumped back into my chair. “There’s a dress code for breaking and entering?”
“Hello? Watched any CSI lately? Black, black, and more black.”
“And let me guess? Ski masks?”
Nina’s hand went to her silky dark hair and stroked a lock. “No. That would mess up my hair. Anyway, I, obviously, am already dressed.” Nina twirled in her black velour Juicy Couture sweat suit, the word Juicy bedazzled in rhinestones across her butt.
“The Juicy is a nice touch.”
Nina wiggled her butt at me and grinned. “I got to dress down because I was helping Dixon redecorate his office. We had to move some furniture.” Nina waggled her eyebrows.
“I’ll bet.”
“Yeah,” Nina said, her eyes trailing over me. “The only problem is that I don’t have a whole lot of black in my wardrobe.”
I gaped and Nina crossed her arms, one hip jutting out indignantly. “I hate it how you all think that just because I’m a vampire that I have an entire wardrobe of black leather dusters and Elvira dresses.”