“But there have to be some things about being a vampire that make up for it, right?” Jolene looked to me for help in dragging my sister out of her cocoa-less funk.
“Yeah, superstrength,” I offered.
“Fast reflexes,” Jolene said.
“Having a gorgeous complexion forever. No wasting your money on eye creams that will never work,” I suggested. I looked to Jane and Andrea, who seemed amused by our assessment of their “perks.”
“Being able to smell pretty much anything,” Jolene added.
“Oh! You can get stabbed as many times as you want,” I reminded her.
Iris chuckled. “Geeg?”
“Yeah?”
“Stop trying to make me feel better.”
“OK, then.”
Christmas is not the time to make big emotionally significant announcements. That’s more of an Arbor Day thing.
—Not So Silent Night: Creating Happy and Stress-Free Holidays with Newly Undead Family Members
I was having just a little too much fun tooling around town doing errands in the Dorkmobile. I’d missed the Hollow. I’d spent so much time at school and internships that I forgot how much I enjoyed this backwater little town. I missed being recognized at the grocery store and people honking at me at stoplights to wave. Then again, driving around in a yellow minivan with Iris’s Beeline logo on the side was bound to get some attention from strangers, too. Either way, it was nice to feel like I had a place there.
It was after sunset, and I was still about an hour’s drive from home, which was going to set Cal on edge. But I still had to stop at the blood shop in Murphy, where they carried Iris’s favorite flavor of Sangre. It was not nearly as creepy as it sounded. Eli Kemper had run a plain old liquor store before the Great Coming Out. But he’d found that there was an untapped market for vampire customers who didn’t want the trouble involved in having to rustle up human food sources. Also, he was tired of dealing with college students and their laughably fake IDs. So he opened the Blood Barn, where he carried the tristate area’s largest selection of packaged donor and synthetic bloods.
Mr. Kemper was supposed to be holding the bottle of Sangre Select Chocolatier for me behind the counter. Yes, I knew it was sad to try to bribe my sister out of being angry with me before I even told her about my employment news. But I had to give myself whatever advantage I could.
I’d spent too much time at the mall doing my Christmas errands, so it was dark when I pulled into the Blood Barn’s parking lot. Iris had already left a few messages asking where I was, but I figured it would be better to ignore them. If we were going to survive living together that summer, Iris was going to have to adjust to the idea of my being an adult. That meant not checking up on me like I was still twelve years old.
Located in a strip mall just off Murphy’s Main Street, the Blood Barn looked like any store in any strip mall anywhere in America—plain brick, ugly neon-red signage, questionable ads in the windows, rows upon rows of liquor bottles that according to a lot of Internet videos could collapse at any second. This one just happened to stock a crap-ton of blood. Shivering into my peacoat, I went into the shop where a half-dozen living and undead customers wandered around, perusing the stock. Gray, grizzled, and slightly stooped from a lifetime of lifting heavy cases of bottles, Mr. Kemper was busy with a couple at the donor counter, picking out something special for their Christmas dinner.
After all these years, vampire marketing was still a hit-or-miss proposition. With a target audience from so many countries, cultures, and time periods, companies that made vampire products tried out every conceivable packaging theme to attract the eyes of their undead customers. Slick, plastic, and pop trendy battled with cut glass and Old English fonts. Prepackaged blood came in fruity, alco-pop-type flavors or in species-inspired meat varieties. (Ostrich O Positive, anyone?) By far the most disturbing selection was a Dickensian label on a paper milk carton, touting Blood Nog as the drink to serve your vampire loved ones this holiday season.
Yarp.
With Mr. Kemper distracted by dithering holiday shoppers, I wandered over to the shelves at the back and wondered if one bottle of specialty blood would be enough to soothe Iris’s temper. Maybe I should get her a “buttering up” bottle for before I told her and another “peace offering” bottle for after.
I caught sight of my reflection in one of the fridge doors. I frowned at my red cheeks and windblown hair, fluffing my hair out of its current frizz and tucking it under the cute lilac-colored knit hat Nola had left behind as my Christmas gift. I even pulled out a tinted raspberry lip balm and gave my mouth a quick swipe. “Yeah, that will fix the sister-fooling guilt,” I muttered, turning away from the sneaky girl in the glass.
I rounded the corner toward the “Sweets” section and tried to find some non-nog holiday-inspired bottle. I shuddered at the first label I spotted. Toasted-marshmallow-flavored vodka was gross. In a bottle of blood, it was just upsetting.
My eyes darted to the right at a slight movement in the corner of my eye. A man was standing behind me, watching me.
Or maybe not.
I’d only caught the impression of a tall blond man with broad shoulders and long legs, plus eyes so light brown they almost glowed gold against the fluorescent shop lights. That gold was the last image that remained, lingering like smoke after his face faded from my sight. Like a camera flash, there one minute, leaving only an imprint behind. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure he’d been there in the first place. Was it the tree farm all over again? Or was I imagining things?
“I’m going insane,” I whispered, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans. “First, I spray Ben at the Christmas tree farm and now phantom men in blood shops? . . . And now I’m talking to myself, which closes out the triple threat.”
“Miss Scanlon?” Mr. Kemper had finally found enough of a break between customers to call me over to the counter.
“The man in here before, a big, tall blond guy, goldish eyes. Do you know him?” I asked. It was a fifty-fifty shot in a small Kentucky town where everybody knew everybody else.
“I don’t think I saw a man who looked like that, Miss Scanlon,” he said. “Is that something you’d like me to put on special order?”
Retail humor, you slay me. “Thanks, but no.”
I finished my transaction without any further hallucinations and walked out to my car.
I spent the hourlong drive home contemplating this fun new element of my neurosis. Was my imaginary friend connected to the strange white face I’d seen at the tree farm? Could he be a ghost? Jane had made it clear that ghosts were real. Vampires saw them all the time. Her former boss and her late aunt had haunted her bookshop and her house for years after they died. Maybe my exposure to Cal and now Iris meant that I could see them, too? Was it weird that I was glad I’d fluffed my hair and applied lip gloss before he spotted me?
Or maybe I was just imagining seeing a handsome pale face because I was so unhappy in my relationship that I had to make up a supernatural stalker to cope. Because I was a big drama queen.
The twinkle-light extravaganza on our front porch, which was clearly visible from the highway—and possibly from space—guided me home. I climbed out of the car and dragged my shopping bags from the passenger seat. Judging by Iris’s voicemail messages, she was going to be more than a little grumpy with me when I walked in. She wanted to give me my space, she said. She understood that I was an adult with my own priorities and schedule and friends, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t fricking rude not to return phone calls and let my sister know that I wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere.
Given my efforts to sweeten her temper, ignoring her calls was probably a tactical error.
Sighing deeply, I shuffled under the weight of the bags, dragging myself and my purchases toward the wreath-bedecked front door. Just as I passed the shrubs flanking the driveway, I heard a loud “P
sst!”
I stopped in my tracks. Because, clearly, I had learned nothing from the tree farm encounter.
And then I heard it again: “Psst!”
A pale face popped up between the shrubs, like Satan’s jack-in-the-box. I almost let out a yelp, but the pale shape moved forward in a flash, clapping his hand over my mouth before I could make a sound. I raised my fist and swung hard, hoping to hit somewhere in vicinity of the face, but instead, the body easily sidestepped me.
A soft, accented voice whispered, “Please, don’t scream, Gigi.”
Fortunately, it was a voice I recognized.
“Collin?” I whispered when he removed his hand from my lips. I swung again, hitting Collin’s shoulder. “What the hell?”
The Brit took my feeble assault with grace, not even changing his somewhat chagrined expression as I smacked him around. “Let’s take the conversation out of Cal’s range of hearing, shall we?”
Without even letting me put down my bags, Collin picked me up and shifted me onto his back piggy-back style. He dashed across our yard, into the trees, while I buried my face in the shoulder of his suit jacket to keep from screaming or throwing up. (He was really fast.)
He gently set me on my feet, steadying me when my all-too-human equilibrium left me all wobbly. “What is wrong with you?” I exclaimed, dropping my bags long enough to smack his shoulders. “Does Cal know that you’re lurking outside our house in the bushes? Because that’s a violation of a few friendship boundaries.”
“No, Cal doesn’t know I’m lurking outside your house in the bushes,” Collin said, sounding very, very tired. “Which is why I just carried you across the lawn to a location out of his hearing.”
“OK, new question. Why are you lurking outside our house in the bushes?”
“Because I need to talk to you, and every time I have an excuse to come to your house, we’re surrounded by beings with superhearing.”
“Collin, if this is some sort of confession of hidden feelings, I think I should tell you that I have a brand-new canister of vampire pepper spray in my purse, and also, you’re a dick, because Miranda loves you.”
“What?” he exclaimed. “You? No. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“OK, first of all, ouch,” I said, pointing a finger in his face. “And second . . . there is no second. Just ouch.”
“You may punch me in the shoulder later if you just listen to me now,” he said. “I need to speak to you about what I saw the other night—when you asked me to predict whether you would be attacked by ‘any of the vampires in the room’ in the near future.”
“Yes, and Iris didn’t attack me, which you predicted correctly. Go, you.”
“I said none of the vampires ‘in the room’ would attack you in the near future,” he said.
“So which part are you being all cryptically emphatic about?” I asked. “The ‘in the room’ part or the ‘near future’ part?”
“Both.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, just like Cal, in the hope that it would alleviate the building pressure in my head. Nope, the pinching did nothing. “You are the least helpful psychic ever.”
“Well, it was the vaguest vision I have ever had,” he said. “It was spring or summer. There were green leaves on the trees and flowers. But I don’t know if it’s this spring or summer or in the next few years. I saw you and a vampire, whose form and face I could barely make out. He was trying to attack you, but you were fighting him off.”
“Well, that’s great. Go, me.”
“But you were losing.”
“That’s bad.”
“I didn’t see you get seriously injured, but it was obviously a confrontation that was not going well for you. I would have said something sooner, but this was the first evening I could sneak over without alerting Miranda.”
“Book club night at Jane’s?” I asked. He nodded. “So what do I do? Go to Cal? Go to Ophelia? Tell them I need a full antivampire security detail every summer until I’m old and gray?”
He shook his head and gave me his best impression of a reassuring smile. “No, the problem with my visions is that there are dozens of factors that could affect the outcome of what I see. Leaving your purse behind in your car, putting garlic salt on your morning eggs, wearing a turtleneck instead of a T-shirt, a little decision that could determine whether a vampire attacks you. The best thing you could do is find a way to protect yourself.”
I nodded. “Are you going to tell Cal or Iris about this?”
“No, predictions like this are very personal. You need to decide whether to include your family in the decisions you make as a result of what I’ve told you. I will say that I would encourage you to give yourself as many resources as possible, and that includes Cal’s apparently boundless cache of weapons and security tech.”
“I’ll take that into consideration,” I said.
“I’m sorry to give you bad news,” he said gently. “With this talent, it’s basically my lot in life. Shall we return you to the house?”
He began walking toward the twinkling Christmas lights decorating our porch.
I tapped him on the shoulder and shook my head. “One more thing,” I said.
“What?”
I pulled my fist back and punched his shoulder as hard as I could.
“Ow!” we both grunted at once. I shook out my hand, hissing at the pain in my knuckles. Collin was a lot firmer than he looked.
“Why did you do that?” he demanded. “And who taught you to hit that hard?”
“Cal, though I obviously need some sort of antivampire brass knuckles,” I muttered. “And I hit you because you told me I could. You will not sneak up on me in my yard anymore. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” he grumbled, rubbing at his shoulder. “I am sorry about the sneaking.”
“It’s OK, Collin,” I told him, awkwardly patting his shoulder. “I’m sorry I hit you.”
“That’s all right. Strong survival instincts will help you get through what’s to come.” The moment the last sentence slipped from his lips, his face scrunched into an embarrassed, decidedly un-Collin-like expression. “Sorry. That didn’t exactly help you feel better, did it?”
“No, it did not,” I said, shaking my head. “Now, carry me back to the house.”
He burst out laughing. When I didn’t let loose so much as a giggle, he scoffed, “Are you serious?”
“You carried me out here, so you’re carrying me back. These bags are heavy, so get to toting.”
He sighed. “Make one My Little Pony reference, and I will drop you.”
“Noted.”
Sometimes giving someone a special holiday memory isn’t about the big gestures. It’s about small, considerate acts.
—Not So Silent Night: Creating Happy and Stress-Free Holidays with Newly Undead Family Members
It was two in the morning, and I was sitting at the kitchen counter, glumly picking at a bowl of peppermint-stick ice cream. Bless Iris’s daytime concierge employees and their willingness to stock their boss’s fridge for living visitors.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Collin’s prediction. A vampire was going to attack me, maybe sometime soon. Would he really wait until the summer to do it? Vampires weren’t big on long games. For people who lived forever, some of them seemed to have very little patience. Could it be that the man-pression I saw in the blood store was a vampire who was going to come after me? I’d known hostility from the undead was a possibility since Cal came into our lives, but somehow it still hurt my feelings. I hadn’t done anything to my imaginary friend. Why was he going to try to injure me? Why couldn’t he pick on someone his own size and strength?
Iris padded down the stairs in her usual work outfit of pencil skirt and tidy white blouse, a black Sharpie securing the twist in her dark hair. She was flipping through a binder titled “Floral Desi
gns—Nocturnal Blooms.” I kept forgetting that this was the middle of the workday for her. She was humming a tuneless song, a sure sign that she was happy with the way her latest nuptial project was coming together.
She stopped at the foot of the stairs, nearly dropping her binder as if she was startled to see me there. I rolled my eyes at her theatrics. “Oh, come on. There’s no way you didn’t know I was down here. You heard my heartbeat from the top of the stairs, you goofball.”
“I know. But I thought it would be weird for you if you knew I was tracking your pulse from another floor.” She sighed. “It was the binder bobbling, wasn’t it? It was too much.”
“You’re so weird.” I snorted into my ice cream.
She peered into my bowl. “Wow, peppermint stick. You are hitting the hard stuff.”
“Yep.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Nope,” I replied, making a popping sound over the “p.”
“Well, too bad. That question was rhetorical. Come on, woman. Hit me with it.”
There were so many things driving me to ice cream it seemed almost impossible to pick which one to start with. Maybe I should go chronologically and work my way out. “It’s Ben.”
Iris made a tsk noise and tilted her head. “Did you spray him in the face with silver again?”
“No. He’s silver-free,” I assured her, taking a deep breath before I let the words spill out of my mouth. “I don’t think I want to see Ben anymore.”
Iris’s eyes went wide, and she plopped down on the stool next to me. “Wow.”
“I know,” I squeaked.
Iris put her binder aside. “I mean, you two have been Ben and Gigi for so long. I guess I just assumed . . . Well, who marries their high school sweetheart, anyway?”