by Molly Harper
I laughed as Gabriel stroked an easy hand over my hair.
“From now on, you’re both wearing tracking chips. I don’t care if we have to implant them under your skin,” a tiny female voice said from somewhere near my waist. I looked down to find Georgie’s arms wrapped around me.
“You’re going to microchip me, like Fitz?” I asked her, even as I heard Jane growling into her phone inside the house.
“Yes, I am,” Georgie told me.
“This is becoming awkward, isn’t it?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes, it is,” Ben said, and we all broke apart. Georgie dragged me through the front door, where I found everybody Jane knew huddled in the parlor. Their cell phones were all plugged into various chargers, as if they’d been making so many calls that they’d drained their batteries. Zeb was holding a stack of neon-green “Have You Seen These Vampires?” fliers featuring the photos Ben and I had used on our employee badges. So I looked especially tragic.
Iris and Sam’s girlfriend, Tess, appeared to be passing out mugs of blood to the vampires, while Cal stood in the corner cursing into his phone in . . . Greek, maybe? Andrea had a rolling whiteboard, the kind you would see on Law and Order, where someone had written “Potential B&M Locations” and listed “Lucky Clover Motel,” “Got lost in the Council office subfloors,” “Bus station,” and “Ben’s parents’ house.” Hell, Gigi was on her laptop, typing furiously as maps scrolled across her screen. Gigi’s cute Russian boyfriend, Nik, was pinning photos of various Council employees up on a wall marked “Suspects.”
At first, people froze when we walked through the door, and then they cheered, rushing forward as if they were going to hug us, too.
“I’m really grateful, but I’m kind of hugged out right now. Yipe!” Fitz bounded forward from the back of the house, pounced, and knocked me onto my back, pinning me to the floor by my chest and covering my face in doggy kisses. I took it for about a minute, because it was nice to know my favorite dog missed me, and then I stood, brushing off the slobber and sheddings with as much dignity as I could. “Thank you for putting together this missing-persons command center, though. I really appreciate it.”
“We’re sorry we put you through this,” Ben said. “If we could have called, we would have.”
“We found Meagan’s purse and both of your cell phones under the sink in the R and D subfloor’s break room,” Nik said. “We tried to follow your scent, but whoever moved you managed to cover your trail quite effectively. I heard Georgie’s suggestion of chipping you. Is not a bad idea.”
“Honey, no,” Gigi told him. From her body language, I could see that she wanted to walk over to us, but she respected the “no hug” boundary, which I appreciated. “We do not chip our friends. Because . . . of privacy? Wait, why don’t we chip our friends again? It would save a lot of time.”
“It really would,” Jane said, nodding. “I mean, Libby and Wade put about two hundred miles on her minivan driving circles around the county, trying to use her ‘mothering instincts’ to track you down. That kind of mileage adds up.”
“You will not chip us,” Ben told her sternly. “We are not badly behaved cocker spaniels.”
“I’ve got something special cooked up for you,” Tess promised, bustling into the kitchen. “Twice the iron, none of the aftertaste.”
I wanted to respond, but the sheer volume of people and activity in the room finally struck me. All of these people had come to look for us. I mean, sure, I’d had some nice conversations with some of them. They were all very kind. Libby was clearly awesome. But I would never have expected them to put themselves out for me like this, to drop everything they were doing to look for me, just in case I was in trouble. I didn’t feel connected to them like that. But how much of that was my own reluctance? And they weren’t just here for Ben; they seemed just as pleased to see me as they were to see someone they’d known for years. These were good people. I needed to stop shutting them out. But I couldn’t express any of that, because a lump the size of a small boulder was lodged in my throat.
“The Lucky Clover?” I asked Andrea. “That place across town with the creepy half-filled pool? Really?”
“Things happen there,” Andrea said with a shrug. “Tacky things. Naked tacky things.”
“Speaking of which,” Georgie piped up. “You two reek of—”
I clamped a hand over her mouth. “Manure. We reek of manure, you know, from the field.”
Ben nodded. “Uh-huh. We slept in a field. Lots of fertilizer.”
“I’m going to go shower,” I said, hand still firmly clamped over Georgie’s mouth. It was a good thing she didn’t have to breathe.
“Me, too,” Ben announced as I jogged up the stairs. “I mean, not at the same time as Meagan. I’ll wait until she’s done. Not out in the hallway or anything. I’ll give her space while she’s naked. Like normal.”
I stopped on the steps, out of view of the others, and mouthed, What are you doing?
Ben threw up his hands and grimaced. I shook my head and hustled up to the second floor.
“I’m just going to go upstairs now,” Ben said.
“What is wrong with you?” I hissed as he reached the second landing.
“I don’t know! I panicked!”
“I am in charge of all emergency postsex moments from now on.”
“Agreed.”
12
Holidays are a volatile time for new vampires. They will miss their biological families and their traditions. Try focusing on the things they won’t have to put up with anymore—gravy-pushing aunties, “whose pie is better” debates, holiday weight gain.
—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire
Dr. Hudson was taken into Council custody with very little effort from Jane. He hadn’t tried to hide, even after he arrived in the field and found his murder box empty. He just went back to his lab and continued working. Like, Oh, well, my attempts to incinerate the not-quite-interns failed. Guess I should find some other way to be super-creepy and cheerful.
He clearly didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, given the disjointed rantings he aimed at Jane as she had the undead emergency response team frog-march him to the “containment floor.” He was a scientist! He was only doing what others didn’t dare, bringing vampires into the new millennium! Jane was denying him greatness!
We were not present for said rantings, as Jane put us in Protocol: The Ladykillers, which involved us staying at River Oaks, surrounded by Jane’s family of choice and most-trusted UERT officers, watching horror movie remakes with Georgie. Because Prom Night made her laugh. But one of the nicer UERT guys, Ray McElray, let me watch the video of Dr. Hudson being tased, which felt pretty good, even after the fifth time I watched it. Ben made a still of Dr. Hudson slumped to the floor with his ass in the air while he drooled and peed his pants. I saved it as my laptop’s wallpaper.
Jane came home and assured us that it would be safe for us to return to work, that Dr. Hudson was secured in a holding cell under the interrogation floors, seven levels below our offices, and that he would be left there to think about his actions for a decade or two. While locked in a metal mesh box, standing upright, surrounded by pictures of clowns, and with heavy metal–polka fusion played at top volume.
“I’m not even going to ask if that’s really necessary,” Ben said.
“Agreed,” I told Jane.
“Yes, well, you try to put my kids in a death box and stake them out for the sun, I tend to take that a little personally.” Jane sniffed, patting our heads.
I would not allow myself to feel that little tingle of warmth in my chest at hearing her call me one of her kids. I just wouldn’t. I ducked my head and tried to keep the stupid smile off my face.
“I mean, having Georgie around is like having a child of my own, only I’m pretty sure an actual child would be ninety-two percent les
s terrifying,” Jane said. “But you, Ben, you are the low-maintenance childe I don’t remotely deserve. You are a genuinely good kid, and you have to know how much I appreciate that. And Meagan, you are the little sister I always wished I had. Kind, levelheaded, bright, and a total smartass. Also, because my mom would have been so distracted by your puppy-eyed adorableness that she wouldn’t have even noticed me. High school would have been a completely different experience. This is as schmaltzy as I’m going to get. I love you both. Good night.”
And the stupid smile would not go away, especially after the household went to the grave for the day and Ben sneaked into my room, snuggling against my back as we drifted off to sleep.
Jane loved me. And not just in the “Aw, you make my life easier and fetch me coffee” way. She fought for me, protected me, cared for me. She treated me like part of her family. And I wanted that. I wanted to belong to her family. I just wasn’t sure how to do that.
Work became almost routine again, without the threat of medical experimentation hanging over our heads. With Dr. Hudson in violation of his contract, he no longer had any privileges in the science department, and Jane was able to reassign his staff to Council outposts all over the world. Dr. Gennaro ended up sampling bat guano in the Amazon. Considering his participation in the whole “death test” thing with Dr. Hudson, I didn’t feel sorry for him.
The good news was that Jane was allowed to completely restaff the science department with noncrazy people. After she made them sign nondisclosure agreements the thickness of my geography textbook, she allowed them to perform another round of blood analysis and various tests of our endurance.
Hudson’s analysis of our blood had been spot-on, but the new scientists, led by a Dr. Denise Oxmoor, were doing a more complete analysis of our DNA to try to explain why we had so many animal and plant bits inside us. And while we didn’t need another test to know that silver was a horrible, no-good, very bad idea, we knew that UV exposure up to direct, high-noon levels couldn’t hurt us. Dr. Oxmoor and her assistant had to hide behind a special lead shield while we were exposed to tanning-bed lights. But now that we knew we wouldn’t explode into dust, the experiment was far less stressful. And the more we were exposed to the light, the less dramatic the drop-unconscious-to-the-ground reaction became. We could stay conscious. We were slow, I would admit, but we were up and moving around, more and more efficiently with each exposure. Dr. Oxmoor speculated that within a year or two, we might be able to move around during the day completely unscathed and undetected.
It was fun testing the limits of our “above-average vampire-ness.” We were thirty percent stronger than the average vampire. I managed to flip a car by its bumper, and it landed on its tires, but I had to think about guys who posted “Make me a sandwich” memes on Facebook to work up the rage for it. We ran forty percent faster. We read faster and swam faster—which was a way more fun test. Who knew the Council complex had an indoor pool below the interrogation levels? We could go around eighteen hours without feeding, but we got super-cranky and then passed out wherever we stood. (Ben ended up facedown in the ten-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle being used to test his mental acuity.) We could scent blood from three hundred yards, where the average vampire maxed out at one hundred. We could not fly but not for lack of Ben trying . . . by jumping off the top of the Council offices. Fortunately, his ankles healed right up.
Unfortunately, knowing that her “kids” had superpowers and could beat her up seemed to freak Jane out a little. That was what I was attributing my recent raise to, since previously I wasn’t really getting paid for my hours at the Council office. Also, I was named Employee of the Month for preventing Jane from using the copy machine. Apparently, there had been an incident. I’d been awarded a slot on the plaque for “preventing serious damage to company property and coworkers.” Ben got a bonus for helping Gigi complete a special section of her project early, and Sammy named a quadruple espresso with plasma drizzle the “Overby Overdrive.” So yeah, I think we scared Jane pretty badly.
The weeks seemed to melt together. Ben and I completed our assignments online. I maintained the high B average required by my scholarships, but Ben edged me out with a low A. Morgan and Keagan didn’t call as often, with exams and holiday plans and all manner of distractions taking up their schedules. I missed them, but I was spending a lot of time with Ben, so I couldn’t exactly claim I was holding up my end of the friendship.
Ben sneaked into my room just before sunrise more often than not, and we weren’t even having sex the majority of those nights. He just wrapped himself around me and fell asleep with his face tucked into my neck. It was an adjustment for me to sleep with someone else. Hell, I went on a camping trip with my boyfriend freshman year, and I made him sleep in a separate sleeping bag with a cooler between us. I’d never trusted someone enough to let him that close. It was nice being able to relax like that with another person, to be still with him, and to know that he wouldn’t hurt me.
Of course, on those days when he slept with me, Ben woke just before sundown to haul ass back to his room. Jane was cool and slightly scared of us, but she still had the power of yelling really loudly.
Before we knew it, it was Thanksgiving week, and Jane was going into a cleaning frenzy, getting the house ready for Jamie to come home from school. Of course, Jane was hosting a meal, because no one else seemed to have a house large enough to accommodate everybody. To my surprise, Ophelia was planning to stay here at River Oaks, rather than at the house in town that she’d shared with Georgie. I was pleased to see my friend again, but I noticed that talking about her made Georgie a little . . . edgy. Edgier than usual for Georgie, like “cut off from her Nintendo DS for twenty-four hours” edgy.
We sat on the porch, waiting for Jamie’s pickup truck to roll down Jane’s gravel drive. Georgie was rocking on her heels, biting her lip, and unbraiding and rebraiding her hair. I tried to ignore these tells for as long as I could, because I didn’t know if we had the kind of relationship where we had heart-to-heart talks. But honestly, I could only watch her pigtail herself so many times.
“Hey, Georgie, can we talk about whatever’s bothering you before you braid yourself bald?”
Georgie scoffed. “I’m not bothered. You’re bothered.”
“Georgie, you’re braiding my hair now, and I don’t think you even realize it.”
She yanked her fingers out of my hair and grimaced. “It’s difficult,” she admitted. “I feel like a different person when Ophelia is around. With Jane and Gabriel, I’m allowed to be the child I never was as a human. Ophelia always treated me as an equal, which I appreciated, but . . .”
“It’s a lot of responsibility to put on a kid, asking her to be a grown-up before she’s ready,” I said, nodding.
“Exactly,” Georgie said. “And Ophelia and I tend to feed off each other, egging each other on to be more cruel, more threatening. With Jane and Gabriel, I’m . . . reserved.”
“This has been a filtered version of you?” I asked, frowning at her.
“My point is that I don’t want to slip back into that pattern with Ophelia, but I don’t want to hurt her feelings by behaving differently around her. I’m not sure what to do.”
“Has it occurred to you that Ophelia may have changed while she was away at school?” I asked her. When Georgie’s little brow crinkled, I added, “Oh, yeah, undergrads coming back home for the first time? They make a point of being as obnoxiously different as possible. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ophelia came back with a nose ring, drinking soy blood substitute.”
Georgie cackled, bending at the waist and propping her hands against her thighs. “Is it wrong that I’m hoping for that now?”
“No, and here she comes,” I said, nodding at the headlights bouncing along the driveway. “Jane! They’re”—a Jane-shaped streak whizzed past us as Jamie’s truck slowed to a halt—“here.”
Jane had her arms a
round Jamie before he was fully out of the car. He was lucky his seatbelt didn’t get caught around his neck as Jane let loose her nonsensical joyous squeals.
Ophelia emerged from the truck in full eye roll. I laughed and hugged her lightly. Georgie hesitated a bit but eventually wound her arms around her sister’s waist.
“I missed you.” Ophelia sighed, bending her head into Georgie’s hair.
“I was promised that you’d have a nose ring,” Georgie said.
Ophelia looked up at me, and I shook my head.
Ben and Gabriel emerged from the house for manly shoulder pats.
“It’s good to see a familiar face,” Ophelia told me, putting her hand on my shoulder. “I have a feeling that after this ‘holiday’ dinner, you and I will be hiding in the basement with a bottle of scotch.”
“You are really overestimating my ability to handle my liquor, even when I was alive,” I told her.
Ophelia wrinkled her nose. “Yes, Morgan and Keagan told me about the Jaegermeister incident.”
“I still contend that the mascot should have moved out from under the balcony when he heard me say I felt sick. Also, having a Jaegermeister incident in college is practically a rite of passage.”
Jane had finally stopped squealing long enough to coolly greet Ophelia. She sighed, wiping at her wet eyes. “OK, welcome home! We’re all set up for you. Ophelia, I have you in the extra twin in Georgie’s room, first door on the left. Jamie, I just put fresh sheets in the yellow room across from the bathroom.”
“But that’s my room,” Ben said, frowning.
“Yeah, I thought you would double up with Meagan, seeing as how you sneak into her room most mornings anyway and then hustle back into your room as if we don’t know what’s going on,” Jane said.
Ben turned a whiter shade of pale. “Sorry, what?”
Gabriel shrugged. “Yeah, we’ve known for a couple of weeks.”
