by Молли Харпер
“Jenny, I’m surprised at you,” I said in my blandest tone. “I thought you’d be too ashamed to tell anybody about your sister’s shameful vampire condition. I mean, really, where’s the benefit in outing me? Aren’t you afraid of tarnishing your reputation?”
“Shister?” Head Courtney slurred. “What do you mean, ‘sister’?”
The silence was broken, and a rush of whispers rounded the table of Courtneys. Now it was my turn for my jaw to drop. I stared at Jenny. “You told them I’m a vampire, but you didn’t tell them I’m your sister?”
Jenny’s jaw clenched. Her face turned a pasty shade of oyster gray. “There was no reason to. Mysister died last year.”
I waited for the twist in my chest, the pain of being rejected by Jenny once again so she could spend time with people who were better, more important than me. But it didn’t come. I was used to it. She’d made her feelings clear a long time ago. There was a freedom in just not giving a damn anymore. And Jenny had granted me this gift. I was free. I could walk away. Part of me wanted to, to give Jenny and the Courtneys what they wanted. I could quit and walk out the door so they’d have to pay for my synthetic-blood tab. But the more perverse part of my personality was intrigued by the possibilities. So, I did something that shocked the Courtneys.
I laughed.
Everyone at the table winced as I threw my head back and laughed like a big old donkey. I giggled until my sides ached. I laughed for every fat girl, bookworm, and wallflower who’d ever felt powerless in the wake of the Courtneys of the world. I laughed because I knew that when I got up, Jenny was going to have to explain to the Courtneys why she had lied to them. She was going to be left holding the conversational bag for once. I laughed because this was such a silly high school drama to find oneself enmeshed in at the ripe old age of twenty-eight.
Once I’d recovered, I wiped at my eyes, hoping that there weren’t streaks of blood tears running from my lashes. Other diners had lifted their heads from their tacos and were starting to stare. I stood up, prompting another communal flinch, and tossed some bills on the table, enough to make up a 40-percent tip for my buddy the waiter.
“That is my big sister,” I said loudly. “Always looking out for number one. You girls are hilarious! Courtney, what a sense of humor you have! I had a great time tonight. Thanks for asking me. I’ll see you at the next meeting!”
I took two steps, then turned around, prompting the entire table to press back away from me, knocking Short Courtney off her chair. “By the way, the waiter figured it out faster than y’all did.
And he had a hell of a lot more class about it.”
I giggled all the way from the table to the front door, to the point that Hector stopped me at the door and asked if I was OK to drive.
“I’m fine,” I assured him. “Sober as a judge.”
“You haven’t seen Judge Frye in here after about three beers.” Hector snickered. “He wears a sombrero and everything. Hey, Jane, are you going to the reunion? It’s coming up pretty soon.”
“I don’t know … I haven’t really thought it through.”
“What’s to think through?” he asked. “You see some old friends, laugh at everybody who got fat and bald, get drunk off spiked punch, and go home. Come on, I’ll need someone to listen to my bad jokes. I miss seeing you and Zeb around here. You used to come in all the time, you know, before …”
I winced but realized that Hector was standing as close to me as he always had. The friendly warmth in his eyes was genuine. “Yeah … before.”
“Look, I don’t care. I haven’t been attacked by a vampire yet. I don’t figure you’re going to be the one to do it. I am a little hurt that you don’t come in here anymore. But I figure you have your reasons.”
“I can’t eat.”
Hector chuckled. “Well, that’s a reason. But we put that bottled-blood stuff on the menu for a reason, Jane. We don’t turn away anybody’s money here, dead or undead. You’re always welcome. But try for Wednesdays, because I want you to see Judge Frye do what he thinks is the Mexican Hat Dance.”
“Thanks, Heck.”
“Anytime,” he said, giving me a brotherly punch on the arm. “And the reunion, think about it, OK?”
“I will.” I laughed and bopped his bicep lightly.
“Ow,” he said, rubbing his arm dramatically. “You didn’t hit so hard in high school.”
“People change,” I told him, giggling as I walked out the front entrance.
Andrea and I were backed up on several days’ worth of deliveries that we hadn’t had a chance to open. So, we sat at the coffee bar, pretending it was Christmas.
“I think that’s the cookbooks I ordered,” I said, taking a load of packing peanuts to the trash as Andrea picked up anAmazon.combox. “Apparently, some chef in New York was turned and is doing amazing things with drinkable sauces that are tasty and won’t make vampires vomit. So I got a dozen of them.”
Andrea bounced the package gently. “It seems kind of light for a dozen books. I think it’s probably that unnatural number of Jason Statham DVDs you ordered.”
“He has to have filmed a nude scene at some point in his career. I don’t care how many shoot’em-up action movies I have to watch, I will find it,” I said solemnly. “Oh, yes, I will find it.”
Andrea rolled her eyes as she pressed the brass athame Mr. Wainwright used as a letter opener to the packing tape. “I know money isn’t really that much of a concern for you anymore, but have you ever stopped to examine some of your odder spending habits?”
“I’m comfortable with the balance I— Do you smell something?” The back of my throat itched as Andrea sliced through the tape. She squealed when the box hissed and then spattered her face with a sheer silvery mist. I tried to call out to her, but my throat wasn’t working right.
I screamed noiselessly as smoke rose from my arms. My skin crackled and burned. I think I made a very undignified, strangled screeching noise as I smacked the box off the counter to the floor.
Dick emerged from the back room, coughing.
I heard Andrea screaming, “What is it? What is it?” while I dropped to my knees and gave hoarse, choking, rattling coughs. My throat was closing up. I didn’t have to breathe, but the inability to draw in air was even more painful than the slow flames of pain licking at my face. I was going to die. For real this time, I could feel it. My strength was ebbing out of my limbs, and I could feel my body shutting down.
Gabriel. I would never fix things with Gabriel. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized I had expected that I would. As the edges of my vision began to darken and blur, I struggled to tell Andrea to find Gabriel, to tell him how sorry I was.
“Get it out of here!” Dick yelled as he swooped behind the counter. “Keep the door open.”
Andrea, still wiping frantically at her cheeks, tossed the box out through the front door. Dick propped me up against his chest and dragged a fingernail across his wrist. “Come on, sweetheart.
Come on, Jane, please, calm down and drink.” Dick coughed slightly as he pressed his wrist to my mouth. He hissed in pain as my mouth touched his skin. The flesh against my lips sizzled and turned black as his skin reacted to the silver on my face. He murmured soothing words as I struggled to swallow. “Good, good. You need this. It will help. There’s a girl. Long, slow sips.”
Despite the fact that our organs are no longer functioning, vampire cells actually reproduce at a rapid rate. When we’re injured, tendrils of tissue and muscle reach out to each other to replicate the previous alignment, which is why we don’t gain weight or age. Drinking the blood of another vampire, particularly an older one, speeds the process along. The blood pouring down my throat was a balm. The comfort was almost instantaneous. My skin stopped smoking; the burning subsided. My throat relaxed, allowing Dick’s blood to soothe and heal.
And laced through it all, like a gold ribbon streaking through the pain, I felt love. Dick really did love me, in a sweet, brotherly manner that
sent his thoughts scattered in a million directions.
Images whizzed by without rhyme or reason. Our meeting in the parking lot at the Cellar. Dick coming to River Oaks and realizing that Gabriel was my sire. Me introducing him to Andrea.
Dick bickering with Gabriel while I refereed. His trailer exploding. Dick spending time with Zeb.
Andrea and Dick dancing at Zeb’s wedding. Sitting with Andrea at her kitchen table. All of these little scenes were tenuously connected to his knowing me. He saw his life as being better after he met me. He didn’t want to lose that.
Aww.
I broke away from him and let him wrap his arms around me, hugging me close. “Don’teverdo that to me again, do you understand?” Dick demanded, his voice rough. I nodded, squeezing his shoulders, before he released me and checked the damage to my face. I didn’t mention the visions, even though we both knew what I’d seen. Dick wasn’t much for big emotional displays.
Gently, he leaned me against the cabinet. I pressed tentative fingers against the raw, ravaged skin of my cheeks as Dick rummaged for a wet rag. “What. The. Hell. Was. That?” I wheezed.
Rubbing his wrist as the flesh reformed and healed, Dick said, “You were having the vampire version of a bad allergic reaction. Can you explain to me how you managed to release aerosol silver directly into your own face? What’s next for you, stake juggling?”
And with that, Dick had recovered from his fit of fraternal devotion.
“Why are we assuming that I did this to myself?” I growled, my voice still hoarse. Dick gave me a flat stare. “It was worth a shot,” I said, swiping the rag across my cheeks. “Andrea! Andrea opened the box. Is she OK?”
“I’m fine,” she said, peering over the counter, rubbing her own face with a dust rag. “It doesn’t even hurt. I’m sorry I screamed. It just freaked me out.”
“Eh, just promise you’ll let me have the panic attack next time we’re accosted by the mail.”
Dick seized Andrea’s shoulders and hugged her long and hard. “Dick … can’t … breathe,” she wheezed.
“Sorry, delayed reaction to you using your panicked voice. I love you like crazy, woman. It does strange things to me,” he said before kissing her. He winced as the silver sizzled against his lips.
He pulled away, carefully sniffing her face.
“That was so sweet,” Andrea said. “Until you sniffed me.”
“Colloidal silver,” he announced. “A pretty strong dose of it.”
“The health-supplement stuff?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Why am I not surprised that you know what it is?” Andrea grumbled, rinsing her face under the coffee-bar tap. “OK, geek girl, would you mind filling in the people who don’t memorize everything they read?”
“It’s basically microscopic clusters of silver particles in liquid. New-age types use it for everything from burns to eye infections, because it supposedly keeps germs from being able to metabolize. Hundreds of health-supplement Web sites sell it. It’s perfectly safe for humans, with the exception of people who take too much over a long period of time. They have a tendency to turn blue. But obviously, it seriously screws with vampires.” Andrea stared at me, her expression amazed and amused. I shrugged. “I saw it on Oprah.”
“But how did it get sprayed at us from what was supposed to be a box of books?” Andrea griped.
“What super villain did you piss off this time, Jane?”
Dick examined the box carefully. “It looks like a pretty simple device. Once the tape was ruptured and the box top split, a lever compressed on this spray can and sent the silver into the air. In fact, if that had happened in a room full of humans, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But obviously, someone thought there would be a good chance you would be opening the box.”
“You seem to have to figured that out awfully fast,” I commented dryly.
“It’s a common trick if you’ve pissed off a vampire,” Dick said. I narrowed my eyes at him. He gave me his best impression of an innocent person’s indignant protest. “Not that I’ve ever done it.”
“So, basically, we’re looking for the Unabomber or MacGyver,” I muttered. “Why is someone always trying to kill me? This never happened to me when I was alive.”
12
Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. Sometimes we have to bare our souls to our vampire mates and say, “Yes, I’m invincible and immortal, but you can still hurt me.”
—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less Destructive Relationships
We’d underestimated how far the silver had sprayed. I could see faint misting spatters of the grayish liquid along the far wall of the shop. Suddenly very weary, I wondered how long it would take to clean up the mess. Not that I was much help in that department, anyway. Andrea and Dick forced me to sit across the room, farthest from “ground zero,” with an ice bag on my cheeks, while Andrea wet-vacuumed the carpet. Dick was wearing a surgical mask and elbow-length rubber gloves to wipe down the bar with disinfectant.
I sat there, feeling sort of useless, as Gabriel came roaring through the front door, his eyes wild.
From the panicked, crazed look on his face, I thought he’d finally snapped and was going to go to all bunny-boiler on me. But when his eyes connected with mine, there was such powerful relief there that I couldn’t be afraid. He bounded across the room and tenderly cradled my blistered face between his palms, poring over the damaged skin. Even though I was still mad at him, even though I still had enough of my pride to sting at the thought of him seeing me in full Freddy Krueger mode, I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his neck.
“It’s OK. It’s OK.” I sniffled. “I’m fine.”
I relaxed into Gabriel’s arms and let him rock me gently back and forth. I knew things weren’t settled yet. We were going to have to have a lot of long, long talks about trust, fidelity, communication, and not dropping one’s sexual partner’s naked ass onto concrete. But for the moment, I was willing to skip it all. I just wanted someone to care whether my face disintegrated or not. I don’t think that’s a violation of feminist principles.
“What is he doing here?” Andrea demanded, giving Gabriel the Glare of One Thousand Suns.
“I called him,” Dick muttered.
“You what?” Andrea cried.
Gabriel lifted his head from my shoulder and growled at Dick, “How could you let this happen?”
Dick looked sheepish. “I can’t watch her every minute, son. How was I supposed to know she’d be attacked by ground shipping?”
The two of them shared a look over my head. Gabriel made several threatening faces. Dick responded with rude gestures. Eventually, they looked like two inebriated mimes having a danceoff.
“Would someone clue the scabby girl in on the conversation?” I demanded.
“Dick was supposed to be watching you,” Gabriel admitted. “He’s been watching you for me for a while now.”
“Well, that explains why you’ve spent so much time at the shop!” I took a swipe at Dick, who lithely stepped out of the way toward Andrea. She smacked him in my stead. “I do not need the Dick and Gabriel Secret Service Detail!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Gabriel whispered. “It’s not that I didn’t trust you to take care of yourself. Between the letters and the pranks, I was scared. I just wanted to protect you.”
“Which is probably what put me in danger. Jackass,” I said, halfheartedly slapping at his arm.
“I love you. Love you so much,” he whispered into my neck. “I don’t know what I would have done if you’d been … I am a huge jackass.”
“That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me,” I told him, ignoring Andrea when she said, “That’s just sad.”
“She’s fine,” Dick said. “Really, Gabe. She’s going to be OK. She’s a tough little nut.”
“Dick saved me,” I told Gabriel. “Without him, I would be a little pile of Jane ashes waiting to be vacuumed up.”
“Thank you,” G
abriel told Dick. Dick seemed to be waiting for a punchline, so Gabriel repeated it. “I mean it. Thank you.”
Dick would have blushed if he was capable. Instead, he made a study of the floor.
“Can I see the device?” Gabriel asked.
Dick retrieved the box, which we had wrapped in a clear plastic bag.
“The label was intact, undamaged,” Dick said, showing Gabriel the address flap. “You couldn’t even tell the box had already been taped once until you took off the second layer.”
“So, whoever it was would have had to monitor our Dumpster closely enough to wait for a barely damagedAmazon.combox with an intact label to be thrown away?” I made a face and then winced at the pressure on my burnt cheeks. “You know, I think I’m more upset by that than I am the silver thing.”
“The silver is very pure,” Gabriel observed. “I can smell it, even from here. Colloidal silver tends to be higher in concentration than the mix used in defense sprays, and this seems to be a particularly potent batch. If this had sprayed you directly in the face, instead of Andrea, you might not have survived. It would be like someone who is allergic to bee stings stepping on a hive. Your healing ability would have been overwhelmed, and you would have been stripped down to the bone. Young vampires rarely come back from injuries like that.”
“Didn’t you say your new friend Courtney runs a sterling-silver shop?” Dick asked.
“Who’s Courtney?” Gabriel asked.
“I met her at the Chamber of Commerce.”
“You belong to the Chamber of Commerce?”
“Hey, I haven’t been sitting around moping after you. I am a very busy and important woman.”
Andrea gave me a smirking yet disapproving look. I amended, “I moped a little bit.”
