I made a weird death-rattle noise in my throat, like that chick in The Grudge. “Oh, that isn’t good.”
“Wait, they get to share a room, but we don’t?” Ophelia asked.
“Yes, because I just made things so awkward they will never have sex under my roof again.” Jane turned on us, smiling. “Didn’t I?”
Ben could only grimace.
“I know I should be upset about this because I have these confusing maternal feelings, but I also know that you’re technically not related and can’t get pregnant,” Jane said. “So I’m just going to ask you not to do anything that I will walk in on. Because there is not enough therapy in the world.”
“Maybe this wouldn’t seem so weird if we lived out on our own,” Ben noted.
“Don’t push it,” she told him.
“If it makes you feel better, we’ve never had sex sex under your roof, mostly just—” I said as Ben stared at the sky. Jane shook her head. “Right, not helping. Never mind.”
I woke up to the smell of turkey roasting in Jane’s kitchen . . . and it was awful, like hot herb-y garbage. There were only a handful of solid-food-eating guests, but Tess had spent the afternoon preparing a full Thanksgiving feast. There were werewolves coming, and they counted as three or four guests each.
As soon as the sun set, the house was flooded with people. All of the partners and children who hadn’t been available to show up for previous get-togethers arrived in full force. I met Libby’s boyfriend, Wade, and his son. Nola and her adorable redneck fiancé, Jed the shapeshifter, brought smoked ribs and some cabbage-based Irish food I suspected would have smelled disgusting even without my vampire nose. Jane’s human BFF Zeb’s kids shifted from two to four feet and started chasing each other around on the front lawn, which no one seemed to register as a weird thing. I, on the other hand, was shocked enough to do a blood spit take, which is super-gross and ruined a really nice silk blouse that Andrea was wearing. She was nice about it, despite having to change into Dick’s “I’m smiling because punching you in the face is socially unacceptable” shirt, which he kept in his trunk.
I worried for a second that I might be a danger to Libby’s human son, Danny, or to the Lavelle twins. But frankly, the half-werewolf cubs smelled like wet dog, and Danny smelled like little-boy sweat and garlic, not exactly appetizing.
I was looking forward to a holiday for the first time in a very long time. For once, I didn’t feel like I needed to hover around the edges of the room. I wasn’t intruding on some hapless foster family’s holiday gathering. I was part of the group. I was in the mix, stirring the blood blends as Tess directed and lighting candles in Jane’s ornate harvest-themed centerpieces.
“Look at you, being a joiner,” Libby said, sidling up to me at the sink as I was washing dishes before dinner.
“Yeah, it’s nice,” I said, smiling. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a group of people this large where I actually knew and liked most of them? I mean, even when my mom was still alive—” I took a quick breath and tried not to let my voice suddenly go quiet and sad. “When my mom was alive, holidays were still pretty small. When my grandparents were with us, it was the four of us, with a pretty small turkey and chuchitos, because my Guatemalan grandpa insisted that Anglo people food was too bland. And when it was just me and my mom, sometimes we scarfed down a turkey sandwich before she ran in to do a holiday shift. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a holiday meal this loud before. And they’re not even watching football in there; they’re just talking. I’ve never met people who liked to talk so much.”
“And if you let them, I bet they’ll talk to you.”
“I’m working on it.” I laughed. “I even talked to Collin earlier about Dickens versus Fielding, and he looked like it physically hurt to have a conversation with me.”
“Yeah, Collin’s got some issues with people and proximity,” Libby said, picking up a towel and drying the dishes I’d just rinsed. “It’s nothing personal. He’s just trying not to see your future.”
“Oh, sure. That makes sense,” I said, pursing my lips. “Speaking of proximity, did you bathe your kid in garlic?”
“Well, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you’re a new vampire, and you’re under a lot of stress . . . and yes, I bathed my son in minced garlic. I put it in his shampoo. I had to roll down the car windows on the way over here. But this is what you do when you’re a parent. You lose your mind, just a little bit.”
“You’re insane,” I told her.
“But I did it because I care, so it shouldn’t be counted against me.”
“I don’t think that’s how that works.”
Libby cleared her throat. “I know that sometimes it’s easier to just take care of everything yourself, to close in, protect yourself. But eventually, that’s not enough. You’re not enough. You need other people.”
“Needing people is hard,” I told her.
“Yeah, and it occasionally blows up in your face. You lose friends, lose relationships, get your feelings hurt. But other times it’s pretty freaking awesome.”
“I know,” I said. And then I made a lot of ugly crying faces as my eyes burned with unshed tears. “It’s really . . . I love those weirdos in there.” I gestured toward the dining room. “Like way more than I ever thought I could, and it’s great, and it makes me feel all light and happy inside, like I’ve swallowed the freaking sun. Which is super-weird, considering that I’m basically a creature of darkness now. But . . .”
“But what, hon?”
“Is it weird that I still miss my mom?” I asked.
“No,” Libby assured me. “I had a crap relationship with my mom, and I still miss her. You two were really close, right?”
I nodded. “When I was on my own, I used to try to imagine how different my life would be if she had lived. I mean, it wouldn’t have been a fairy tale. We would have lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment, and our car would have been at least ten years old—before we got it. But we would have been together. And I would have had somebody to take pictures of me when I was getting ready for graduation or prom. I probably would have gone to prom, which would have been very different from spending the evening working at Taco Bell. Anyway, that was what I thought about when I felt really sorry for myself. And now there are times I feel so guilty for not wanting it as much anymore.”
“Aw, Meagan,” she said. “That’s normal. That’s what’s supposed to happen. This is totally normal.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
Suddenly, I heard a commotion by the front door. I heard Ben’s voice, raised, and I bolted toward the living room at a speed that left me sick to my stomach. Two people I didn’t recognize were moving toward Ben, who was standing stock-still with his hands clenched at his sides. I skidded to a stop between Ben and the middle-aged couple standing in Jane’s foyer, leaving two deep burn marks in Jane’s hardwood floors.
Jane grimaced. “Honey, we’ve talked about hard braking on the parquet.”
The couple at the door took two steps back, clearly frightened by the sudden appearance of a vampire. They were human. I could hear their heartbeats hammering in their chests. And I could smell the turmoil rolling off them in a stinky emotional potpourri—hope, anxiety, fear, uncertainty. I’d never smelled such fragrant humans. Humans that smelled a little like Ben.
I stared closer at the couple. The woman had Ben’s green eyes, though they were bracketed by worry lines. The man had Ben’s mouth and his straight nose. These were Ben’s parents. Jane had clearly invited them as some sort of holiday surprise. Which meant I was crossing quite a few boundaries.
“Oops,” I murmured, and realized that my fangs were down. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Overby. I’m going to move now, slowly, away from you. I’m sorry.”
Ben snickered. “Mom, Dad, this is my girlfriend, Meagan. Meagan, meet Bob
and Kim Overby.”
“Just call me Bob,” Mr. Overby told me in a shaky, hesitant voice as I stepped backward, behind Ben.
Jane quietly shooed everybody else into the kitchen, leaving the living room open for our incredibly uncomfortable conversation.
“I was interrupting a hug, wasn’t I?” I asked, willing my fangs to go back into my gumline.
Mrs. Overby began crying softly, and Ben stepped forward to hug her so delicately he barely touched her.
His father patted his back and ruffled his hair. “Missed you, son.”
OK, now I was getting a little misty. I needed to get out of here. I crept quietly toward the kitchen door to join the others. Also, did Ben call me his girlfriend back there? Why was I just now hearing that?
We weren’t to that stage yet, right? I mean, sure, we lived together and worked together and spent most of our free time talking about our favorite fandoms. We ate most of our meals together. And we slept together most nights.
Holy hell, I was Ben Overby’s girlfriend. That sneaky little vampire.
Just as I reached the kitchen door, Mrs. Overby asked, “So were you turned around the same time as Ben?”
I stopped. Did this mean Ben and Jane hadn’t told the Overbys how involved I’d been in their son’s transition? I looked to Ben, who had a completely neutral expression on his face.
“Um, yes, right before,” I said. “But we met before we were turned.”
“Well, that’s nice.” Mrs. Overby sniffled. “That he has someone he knows with him.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Overby. I know this has to be a shock, and then not being able to see him for so long . . .”
She interrupted me before I could confess. “We knew this was going to happen eventually. I mean, we weren’t hoping for it. We’re not particularly happy about it. But no one can spend that much time around vampires and not end up getting bitten somehow.”
Mrs. Overby was trying to put a happy face on it, but she still sounded a little bitter. It was going to take quite a bit of persuasion to recruit her to the Meagan fan club. Or just the “not stab Meagan through the heart with a wooden stake when no one is looking” club. I’d never met the parents of a boy I was dating—was “dating” the right word? How did you get your special man friend’s parents to like you? Were there Jezebel.com articles about this sort of thing? Maybe I should call Keagan. She was pretty stable, romantically speaking. I mean, I couldn’t ask Ophelia, because she had obviously failed at securing Jane’s affections.
Mr. Overby added, “We’re trying to focus on the positives. Ben will never get sick. He probably won’t die in some silly car accident or something. In some ways, it sets our minds at ease.”
“And in some ways, it’s awful,” Mrs. Overby confessed. “He’s never going to have kids, never going to be able to go out during the day.”
“But if it means that we can keep seeing Ben, we’re going to focus on the positives,” Mr. Overby said pointedly.
He glared at his wife, who stared back at him, and then she turned to me and smiled brightly before asking, “How long have you two been seeing each other?”
Oh, right, because Ben called me his girlfriend earlier. I had sort of blocked that out for a second.
My mouth dropped open, but I couldn’t seem to find an answer that didn’t make me sound like a son-turning, tobacco-field hussy. Ben also seemed hesitant to answer. And we were saved by the proverbial bell when Jane came out of the kitchen in a beeline for the front door and locked it, punching the code for the scarier parts of the security system to come online. Huge outdoor lights shone from the trees onto the house just before large metal shutters slid over the windows. Several dead bolts clicked into place, and the front door made this shhhup sound as it hermetically sealed itself. Ben’s parents clutched at each other in alarm.
“Jane, what’s going on?” Ben asked. “Are we at war or something?”
Jane’s mouth was set in an angry line. “Dr. Hudson has escaped Council custody.”
13
It is possible to be overprotective of your vampire offspring. If your childe disappears suddenly or starts threatening you with silver spray when you go in for a hug, it’s time to loosen the reins a bit.
—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire
It took logical thinking, Gabriel, and an enormous bottle of what Dick called vampire Prozac to talk Jane into dialing the cancel code into the security system. For one thing, there were too many people in the house to maintain our “panic room” state. Danny had school on Monday. Also, Jolene had some pretty serious Black Friday plans, and given her werewolf strength, I was pretty sure she could kick the metal window shades out if she wanted.
Ben’s parents were freaking out and started to demand that Ben go home with them immediately. Gabriel ended up doing something to their memories, using his special vampire talent, to keep them from remembering the whole systematic lockdown thing. Instead, they would recall a perfectly lovely evening with their well-adjusted vampire son, before suddenly developing the urge to visit some relatives in Florida. And by relatives, he meant Council-approved security agents who would be able to protect them if Dr. Hudson showed up. Gabriel’s power frightened me, and I hoped it didn’t work on other vampires.
Dr. Hudson had managed to escape from his cell using a stolen ID badge, a tiny bit of plastic explosive tucked inside his shoe, and a spork. We weren’t sure how the spork came into play. The UERT was still looking into that. Jane drove us to the office for safekeeping, and we were followed by the entire convoy of vampires, because Gigi insisted she would be able to crack open the security system and make it her digital bitch. Cal and Nik thought they could Sherlock Holmes some clues out of the polka torture cell using their special vampire gifts. Ophelia seemed to think she knew the building better than anyone else and could see some minute evidence that we wouldn’t. And Georgie, Dick, and Gabriel just didn’t want to be left out.
I was starting to wonder why everybody got special vampire talents but me, and then I figured not being set on fire by the sun was probably talent enough.
When Jane reviewed the security feed, the footage of the hallway outside Dr. Hudson’s cell skipped ever so slightly at around ten P.M. While this seemed like a fairly innocuous thing to me, Gigi and Ben noticed that after the skip, a paper pinned to the bulletin board moved in the draft from the air-conditioning in exactly the same way every three minutes. Someone had looped the video with a blank section of footage after ten P.M., so we wouldn’t be able to see who approached Dr. Hudson’s cell door or in which direction they ran. The parking-lot feed showed a laundry cart being wheeled out to a van labeled “Markham Linen Services” at 10:07. The man pushing the cart wore a baseball cap pulled down over his face. He jumped into the driver’s seat and peeled the van out of the parking lot at 10:08. The problem was that the Council didn’t use a linen service.
When Gigi and Ben had failed to track who had logged into the security system to loop the video feed, Jane put her hands on the conference-room table, where our laptops, notebooks, and security logins were spread around messily. “OK, so you two are going to be locked down in the containment unit until further notice, for safety and so I can sleep during the day.”
“The containment unit that Dr. Hudson was kept in to punish him for torturing us?” Ben asked.
“The containment unit that someone managed to sneak into, diddle with the security videos, and then bust him out of?” I added. “That doesn’t seem kind of ass-backward to you?”
Jane thunked her head on the table. “You’re right. It’s counterintuitive. Also, the tech guys haven’t been able to stop the polka loop, so it would probably drive you insane.”
“This might be a bad time to note that the security system was accessed internally, so whoever broke Dr. Hudson out probably had help from someone who works for the Council,” Be
n said.
“Why would you tell her that?” I asked.
“To keep from sleeping in the polka torture cell,” Ben told me.
“Fair enough.” I slumped back into my comfy conference chair and stared at the ceiling. Who could have helped Dr. Hudson’s liberator into the building? I didn’t have any enemies here. The only person who had reason not to like me was Gigi, and she’d been nothing but sweet. Heck, people let me skip ahead of them in line for the copier because I was willing to take on Jane’s schedule. Maybe it was someone on her “nope list”? Had some weirdo I’d banned from contacting Jane busted into the Council office and released Dr. Hudson so he could continue his medical poking and prodding?
But before I could pull up the nope list on my tablet, Ben slid a stack of papers in front of me. Really boring, science-y papers. I frowned.
“Cal has been helping me look into Dr. Hudson’s research history,” Ben said. “About twenty years ago, he wrote a paper for the Journal of Vampiric Medical Advancement called ‘The Next Stage in Vampire Evolution,’ where he talked about splicing vampire DNA with samples from a snake.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Ophelia cried. “I hired Hudson. I don’t recall anything about reptile research on his CV.”
“You hired a mad scientist, what a shocker,” Jane muttered as she scanned the papers, only to be elbowed in the ribs by her husband.
I skimmed the contents of Ben’s packets, speed-reading and absorbing the dry-as-toast academic info. My Introduction to Anatomy course had not prepared me for this. “He wanted to find a way to fix vampires’ sensitivity to sunlight. Snakes don’t get sunburned because they’re cold-blooded and covered in scales. So why not throw some reptile alleles into the genetic cookie dough and see what bakes?”
“Apparently, one slightly bitter cookie,” Cal said, frowning at me.
“Talk to me when you’re a test-tube vampire, Cletus,” I retorted.