Cal turned on Gigi and Ben. “You told!”
Gigi shrugged. “Some people find you intimidating. I thought that hearing your ridiculous birth name would help her relax.”
“Focus, children, please,” Nik said blithely, flipping through science journals.
“I didn’t know about any of this,” Ophelia swore, turning to Jane. “Hudson never mentioned a word of this to anyone while he worked under me.”
“Well, it takes time for the crazy to percolate.” Jane sighed.
“Dr. Hudson’s theory is not well regarded,” I said, holding up a review of his work that called Hudson a “card-carrying member of the nutcase brigade.”
“But,” Ben said, “it just seems a little too convenient that he did studies on mixing up our genes with snake juice, and the preliminary report he turned over to Jane mentioned rattlesnake genes. Also, every time he talks about the ‘genius’ who created us, he gets a creepy look in his eye. Like intellectual masturbation.”
“Gross,” I noted.
Jane shuddered.
“Do you think Dr. Hudson had something to do with us being turned?” I asked Jane. “Like maybe he had some connections in Lexington and somehow arranged for me to be turned by his dosed volunteer vampire sire? So he could experiment on me when you brought me back to the Hollow? Ben was just collateral damage.”
“It seems unlikely,” she said. “Why would he choose you, specifically? How could he know you would be brought back to the Hollow?”
“I didn’t say it was logical, I just asked if it was plausible,” I said.
“I’ll look into it,” Jane said, still sounding skeptical. “For now, let’s get the two of you back to the house. You are officially relieved of your on-site Council duties until further notice. It’s too dangerous having you here, possibly near Dr. Hudson’s accomplice. Not to mention the danger of traveling back and forth every night. You can do whatever work you can complete from home. Gigi, make Ben a list. Meagan and Ben, you should know that a few days into his incarceration, Dr. Hudson made some pretty specific threats against anyone you loved, if that’s what it took to get you back into his lab. So you will be assigned a UERT detail to guard the house. Ben, your parents will also be assigned a detail in Florida. Meagan, please call your friends Morgan and Keagan, and tell them that the men in black suits following them around the college day and night are Council personnel, so please don’t report them to campus security as stalkers. Please don’t tell me this is unnecessary. We have to protect the people close to you so they can’t be used against you.” She paused, as if she was waiting for us to argue.
I shook my head. “No, this is a logical plan. I will cooperate.”
Jane sagged in her chair. “Damn it, I had a whole speech prepared about how much I care about you and how I just want to protect you. There was love and drama and more than a smidge of guilting. My mother could have written this speech. It was a work of passive-aggressive mastery.”
“You can give it to us on the ride home,” I promised.
On the ride to River Oaks, while Jane delivered her masterwork of guilting, I texted Keagan and Morgan to ask for a three-way Google hangout. Despite it being two in the morning, they both agreed readily. I sprinted past the UERT members standing guard on the porch to get to my laptop and set it up in the still festively decorated dining room.
I opened the application to find one window showing Keagan propping her chin on her hands, drowsily bobbing her head up and down. Morgan was bundled up in coat and hat, the Best Buy sign behind her casting a yellow glow over her dark hair.
“Morgan, what are you doing?” I asked, making Keagan snap awake.
Morgan rolled her eyes. “My dad likes to be the first one in line for Black Friday sales.” She sighed. “It’s a tradition.”
“Please tell me you’re carrying pepper spray,” Keagan said with a yawn.
“Two cans,” Morgan swore, holding both up in front of her cell phone.
“Hey, Meg, it’s not that I’m not thrilled to see your face, but it’s two in the morning, and I’ve had enough carbs to put the Cake Boss in a coma. I am losing my sparkle.”
“OK, so happy Thanksgiving. I miss you both, and . . . you’re going to be assigned a Council security detail, day and night, on campus, because I’m in a little bit of trouble and you’re considered potential emotional liabilities. OKthanksbye.”
I reached to close my laptop lid, and both girls yelled, “Wait!”
“Are you OK?” Keagan demanded.
“Tell us where you are!” Morgan cried. “Do we need to come down there? Because I will leave this frozen wasteland of a mall parking lot and come down there. I will make that sacrifice for you. Because I love you.”
“What kind of trouble are you in?” Keagan asked, fully awake now.
“I didn’t do anything. A scientist who works for the Council got a little aggressive with his swabs and got fired over it, and now he’s pretty mad about it and made some threats against the people I love, and since that’s you . . . you’re going to have vampires and Council-approved humans following you around to keep you safe.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Keagan sighed.
“Will they be hot vampires and Council-approved humans?”
“Morgan!” Keagan cried.
“I haven’t been on a date in weeks,” Morgan shot back.
“Which is more important than the safety of our aggressively swabbed friend how?” Keagan asked.
“Please word that differently,” I told her. “Anyway, the Council will send official notice on Monday, but if you see Tina when the dorm reopens this weekend, you might want to tell her that Council personnel will be landing on campus. They might even take advantage of the vampire-friendly features at New Dawn—Why are you two looking at me like that?”
Both of my friends had “bad news” expressions on their faces, like my skinny jeans were anything but and they didn’t have the heart to tell me.
“Meagan, Tina’s gone,” Morgan said carefully.
“As in she’s supervising a different building?”
“No, Meg, she died about a week ago.”
“What?” I yelled. “Why didn’t anybody tell me? Ophelia!” I turned to see Ophelia and Jamie snuggled up on the couch in the parlor. “Why didn’t you tell me Tina died?”
“Oh, right, sorry. Tina died in a car accident last week,” Ophelia said.
“Why would you not tell me that?”
“Honestly, I didn’t think you and Tina were that close,” she said. “If Morgan or Keagan had died, I would have told you. Does that help?”
“Thank you, Ophelia,” Keagan called. “That’s really nice . . . for you.”
“OK,” Morgan said. “Tina’s car got stuck on some train tracks, and she didn’t pull off in time. The wreckage was awful. It burned for hours. Our photo guys got some really detailed gory shots, but the editor refused to print them because it seemed insensitive.”
I Googled “Tina Messinger wreck” on my tablet and pulled up a Lexington Herald-Leader news article about the crash. I cringed at the sight of the twisted wreckage of the car. “These were the ‘sensitive’ shots?”
Morgan nodded. “Yes, our guy got splashes of blood on the sidewalk. We didn’t use those.”
“Why do you ask these questions?” Keagan sighed.
“Was she in a car accident or a ‘car accident’?” I asked, turning to Ophelia.
“You know, the sarcastic air-quote fingers aren’t necessary,” Ophelia said.
“You did say you were annoyed with her over the whole contacts list thing,” Keagan supplied.
“Keagan, you’re supposed to be the nice one!” Ophelia grumped.
“Nice doesn’t mean stupid.” Keagan snorted.
“OK, I love you both, but I’m going to hang up and yell at Ophelia for her inability to tell imp
ortant details from useless stuff she doesn’t think I’m interested in,” I said. “Morgan, if you turn up on YouTube for snatching a vegetable steamer out of a child’s hands, I will share it on every available social media platform. Keagan, get your sparkle back.”
They waved at the screen as I shut down my programs and turned on Ophelia.
“You didn’t think our dorm director dying in a fiery crash was worth sharing?”
“It slipped my mind,” she said with a shrug. “You spent ten minutes at dinner detailing the outfit you wore to tell your economics study group to go on the Mammoth Cave tour and ignore the warnings against wandering. And why are you so interested in what happened to Tina?” When Jamie shot her a significant look, she added, “Other than her being a person you knew and would naturally be interested in.”
“Other than her being a person I knew and would naturally be interested in, I’m pretty sure Tina was the one who asked for your contacts and claimed it was Jane. But I don’t know why, and I can’t prove it.”
Ophelia’s lips pursed. “Why would she do that?”
“I just said I don’t know why,” I reminded her.
“It was rhetorical.” She pulled her phone from her back pocket. “I’m going to make some calls.”
I stared after her. Jamie came over and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I know it can be confusing when she just walks out in mid-conversation like that.”
I pouted as Jane called us to the dinner table. “No, I just remember what it was like having a grown-up cell phone.”
I dragged myself up the stairs. I was so very tired, and I had who knew how many weeks of not going to work, the one place I was allowed to go regularly, to look forward to. I slumped into my room and kicked off my shoes, nearly hitting Ben, who was sitting at the foot of my bed.
“Hey. How are you doing? I haven’t even asked how you’re handling the reunion with your parents, who seemed like perfectly nice but reasonably distraught people from the five minutes I talked to them.”
He shrugged. “It went better than I thought it would, to be honest. They get points for not freaking out, calling me a demon, and disowning me, which is how I’ve seen it play out for other members of Jane’s Newly Emerged Vampires Support Group. I get points for not freaking out and biting them. So points all around.”
“Not weird for you, then? Seeing them months after you died and introducing me as your girlfriend . . . after not talking to me about calling me your girlfriend.”
“Oh, no, that was weird as hell. And as for calling you my girlfriend, I probably overstepped there. I’m sorry. But I’m not planning to see anyone else. I like you, maybe more than like you, but I don’t think either one of us is ready to say more. I’m not saying we’re forever, which takes on a whole new meaning for me recently, but I don’t see myself wanting to date anyone else anytime soon. I would like it if you, also, did not date anyone else. This sounded so much better in my head.”
“I’m sure it did.” I kissed him, a quick peck on the lips. “And I agree that I don’t want to date anyone else, either.”
Ben grinned. He was nice enough not to mention my deliberately leaving out the bits about my feelings. “Excellent.”
I nodded toward a pretty silver-wrapped box he was holding. “What do you have here?”
“Something for you,” he said.
“It’s a little early for Christmas presents,” I said, opening the box to find a stack of CD cases, each labeled with a year, starting with 1996 and ending the year my dad died.
“What is this?”
“I took those videos from your dad, and I converted them to DVDs for you. I was going to give them to you before dinner. You know, because holidays are about family, and I wanted to give you a piece of yours back. But then Jane had me cleaning the bathrooms and moving furniture, and then I got ambushed with a reunion with my parents and Jane put the house in DEFCON 1. And I lost track of it.”
“Aw, Ben. Thank you.” I pulled his shirt, yanking him close and kissing him fiercely.
“It was no troub— No, I’m not even gonna lie. It took me weeks to track down the right sort of converter to transfer VHS tapes to DVD. It was a huge pain in the ass. But I wanted you to have them, because I like you so very much.” He handed me several thumb drives. “Here are the digital files, if you want to upload them to your cloud.”
“You are seriously overestimating my technical ability, but it doesn’t mean I appreciate the gesture any less.”
“Do you want to watch one?” he asked. “We could play it on your laptop.”
I was hesitant. I hadn’t watched these videos in years. I’d never shown anyone the tapes, not even Morgan or Keagan. It was very likely I would ugly-cry my way through any one of these DVDs. But Ben had done such a nice thing, and I kind of wanted to share this with him. I scanned through for one of the least emotionally stressful years. I popped the DVD into the slot on the side of my laptop and clicked play.
Ben was propped against the mountain of pillows, leaning against the headboard. I lay back, snuggling against his side. My dad’s handsome face filled the screen. The sight of his bright blue eyes, the straight nose I’d inherited, and the strong, square jawline made my chest go heavy and empty at the same time. My memories were so fuzzy now; I couldn’t tell what was a true memory and what was recalled from watching the tapes.
“I still think this is a bad idea. There is potential for some serious emotional warping here,” my mom’s voice said off-screen. My breath caught in my throat, and I could feel the tears gathering in my eyes. I missed her voice so much. I missed that exasperated, fond tone where you could tell she was smiling even if you weren’t looking at her. This was a mistake. I was going to end up full-on ugly, running-mucus crying in front of Ben. There was no coming back from that.
Dad waved her off. Ben put his arm around me and gave me a little squeeze as Dad said, “Meggie’s a gorgeous girl. Boys are going to be all over her. She needs to know which ones to toss and how to pick the very, very small number that will be worthy of keeping.”
“She’s three,” Mom protested.
“Baby doll, I’ve told her how to change her own flat tire and how to survive in the woods with just a knife and some duct tape. What kind of father would I be if I didn’t give her a survival guide for the jungles of the datin’ world?” He paused and looked directly into the camera. “Or not dating, sweetheart. Not dating is definitely an option you should consider. Lots of girls are becoming nuns nowadays. Don’t let the fact that we’re not Catholic stop you.”
“Jim.” Mom sighed, and a heavy silence filled the air. “I still think you’re jinxing yourself, making these tapes.”
All of the humor drained from his face for a moment. “It’s important, Nita. These are things Meagan needs to know, life lessons. How to be a successful, functional grown-up.”
“Fine.” Mom sighed again. “But fifteen years from now, when she shows these at your retirement party and your army buddies laugh at you, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”
My lips twitched at this funny little everyday moment between my parents, the teasing and gentle arguing. I only half listened as Dad went down the list of “automatic disqualifiers” for any boy who hoped to deserve me—no drunks, no druggies, no Creed fans—as I focused on the bantering. They sounded a little like Jane and Gabriel, exasperated but so in love it didn’t matter who ended up saying “I told you so.” I’d missed these nuances, watching the tapes as a kid. As a semiadult, I could imagine what my life might have been like having them both as I grew up.
“Now, Meggie, sweetheart, if you learn anything from this little conversation, I hope it’s this. Love isn’t always pretty. It doesn’t always fit with what you thought you wanted or needed. It’s not always easy. Lord knows, it hasn’t always been smooth going between your mom and me, mostly because of some idiot thing
I decided was an awesome idea.”
“The food dehydrator for my birthday?” Mom noted.
“You said the commercial looked interesting!” he exclaimed. He turned his face to the camera and frowned, as if to say, See?
“My point is that you can’t expect love to be all kisses and flowers all the time. It can be hard and ugly and end up with a food dehydrator smashed in your backyard. But at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, is this the person you can’t do without? Not just in that butterflies-in-the-stomach kind of way but when you’re scared and alone, is his face the first thing you think of? And when you get good news, is he the first person you want to tell? If he is, maybe you’ve found the person you want to be with. He won’t deserve you, of course. And I’ll spend all of my time reminding him that he’s not good enough for you, which will be fun for me. But if you’re happy, I’ll be happy for you. Of course, if you’re not happy, I will have purchased a wood chipper by the time you’re sixteen. And I’ll take care of the problem, no questions asked.”
“Well, that’s not going to scar her forever, threatening to Fargo her future husband,” my mom said.
“Like you’re not going to be standing behind me with a shovel in your hand,” Dad shot back.
Mom rounded the camera stand, throwing her legs over Dad’s lap as he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her soundly. Dad laughed and leaned his forehead against her neck. “You should turn the camera off before this gets weird.”
Mom laughed, reached toward the camera, and hit the power button. The screen went blank. I shook my head. It was a little emotionally scarring but only because of that last bit. Tears had soaked through the front of my shirt, and I used the hem to mop up my cheeks.
I turned toward Ben to thank him, hoping he wasn’t completely uncomfortable listening to my parents tell me what was acceptable in a partner. But he’d fallen asleep. All sweet and stupid, with his mouth hanging open. I couldn’t blame him. I would have fallen asleep, too, if I was watching videos of someone else’s parents. Plus, he was probably exhausted from all the parental reunions and emergency situations.