by Molly Harper
Staring in the glass, I fanned my fingers over the raw red patches on my throat left by Dick’s stubble. I sighed. Stupid, stupid girl.
I twisted my coppery hair into a knot on top of my head and slid into the just-short-of-scalding bath. I didn’t bother with salts or bubbles. I wasn’t in the mood for flowery scents or foam mountains. I just wanted to soak, to feel clean. Sinking until the water hit my chin, I winced at the sting of it on my scraped skin.
What the hell had I been thinking?
Dick Cheney was charming and winsome and naughty. I did not need charming and winsome and naughty. I’d had a pant-load of all that from Mathias Northon. And that had ended badly.
“So very badly,” I murmured, making little bubbles ripple over the surface of the water. I sank further and let my face slide under, enjoying the warm sensation of the water soaking through my hair to my scalp.
Mathias had been my European History professor at Northwestern. He taught evening classes, naturally, bringing tales of his ancient childhood to life with his lilting Nordic accent. Picture a well-built, paperback-romance Viking in jeans and a faded corduroy blazer. He tied his wheat-colored hair back with a strip of leather he claimed he’d been carrying since the seventh century.
I was an innocent teenager out in the world on her own for the first time and confident in my ability to make my own choices. Which, of course, translates to: I was a total idiot. I had fallen into the classic undergrad trap, plunging headlong into an ill-advised affair with a man who “understood” me as the “mature and independent woman” that I was at the ripe old age of nineteen. He assured me that it was the “bright inner light” of my soul that drew him to me and not the delicious rarity of my AB-negative blood.
Well, to be fair, he also liked the way I did his laundry.
I broke through the surface of the bathwater, sweeping my hands back over my wet hair and wiping my eyes. I leaned back against the rim of the tub and wished I’d brought vodka upstairs instead of tea.
By the end of sophomore year, I had been practically living in his off-campus apartment, providing his evening meals, folding his socks, and grading his tests. I was basically an unpaid-teaching-assistant-slash-human-juice-box. When my parents found out that I was “consorting with the undead”—thanks to the ill-timed surprise visit to the dorm room I was barely living in—they cut me off. Completely. They just couldn’t risk someone from the club or church or my dad’s business circle finding out that their child was tainted by association with vampires. For all intents and purposes, I was no longer their daughter. No tuition. No mention in the annual family newsletter.
So I was an uneducated, unpaid-teaching-assistant-slash-human-juice-box.
My parents couldn’t have made it easier for Mathias to take advantage of me if they’d written him a manual. Without their support—financial and emotional—I was so vulnerable that I was open to anything he suggested. I officially moved in with him—without any other faculty knowing, of course. He didn’t want anyone to “misunderstand” what was happening between him and his former student. And I went willingly because I was just so grateful to have someone who I believed loved me for me.
What followed was six months of subtle, carefully designed put-downs detailing my many failures. Oh, sure, I found wildly inappropriate e-mails from his undergrad students that he’d printed out and left on his desk. But I forgot to pick up his dry cleaning that time. Did I have any idea how that made him feel? Knowing that I didn’t care enough to retrieve his precious pleated slacks? I didn’t keep the apartment clean enough. I didn’t read the right books or listen to the right music. I didn’t eat the iron-rich (disgusting) foods that made my blood tasty for him. He couldn’t take me to faculty gatherings because my conversational skills—or lack thereof—embarrassed him.
With each new criticism, I twisted myself into knots trying to improve myself, to mold myself into the sort of girlfriend who would make Mathias proud. But he kept raising the bar. I spent too much time around my silly human friends, he said, so I withdrew from those circles and spent more time at the apartment with Mathias. My food expenses were too much for his budget, and besides, I was getting a little too “hippy,” anyway, so I limited myself to the blood-enriching diet Mathias recommended.
He kept finding faults until I’d changed so much I barely recognized myself. And then Mathias found fresher, younger sources, and suddenly I wasn’t needed anymore.
By the time I found my stuff neatly packed into boxes outside of what was no longer my apartment, I was a hollowed-out husk of a person. He’d taken everything from me—my blood, my love, my time. I had given him what I believed was most precious, and he had thrown it away like it was nothing.
Also, I had no savings, no job, no housing, no car, no credit. I tried to think of it as a blank canvas upon which to paint my brand-new life, but mostly, I was just broke and homeless.
I couldn’t go home to my parents. Over the previous years, I’d tried to reach out to them. I’d sent Christmas letters and cards for their birthdays, which they’d sent back marked “Return to Sender.” Eventually, I gave up and skipped my usual Father’s Day card. They took this opportunity to contact me and tell me how disappointed they were that I was no longer groveling as expected. That was the last I’d heard from them.
I crashed on the couch of the last human friend I had, or rather, a former roommate of that last human friend I had. Terri stopped talking to me after I canceled a third brunch date with her. (I’d overslept.) But Julie was super-nice and willing to accept dog walking in exchange for short-term rent. I went online, pouring my heart out in a support group chat room for women who’d survived abusive relationships with men, both undead and living.
I was reminded by several of the chat room members that I shouldn’t close myself off from the world of vampires. Mathias Northon was not a dick because he was a vampire. He was just a dick. They referred me to a counselor and suggested a number of ways I might be able to support myself using my familiarity with vampire culture, such as providing my services as a blood surrogate. It turned out to be a career choice that fulfilled me and healed a little bit of the pain I associated with the undead. I followed my clients on their migration to the Hollow. And my online friends may have exacted some revenge on Mathias that I never spoke of publicly, in order to prevent my being called as a witness for the prosecution. I was happy and settled, but if you guessed that this story ends with “And she never relationship-ed again,” you’d be correct.
It’d be fair to say that my heart still felt as if it had been run through a meat grinder. I wasn’t ready to let someone get close to me. I wasn’t ready to trust. I wasn’t ready to share so much as a stick of gum with someone else. I turned down any man who approached me, living or dead. And I maintained what I knew to be a doomed and superficial crush on unattainable vampire Gabriel Nightengale because I could tell myself my life wasn’t sad and weird if I was waiting for someone.
To be fair, it turned out he was attainable for Jane. He liked his women unruly and a little disaster-prone.
Still, I was happy with my choices. Solitude simplified my life considerably. I made meaningful connections with my clients. I made new friends. I joined a book club and took Bikram yoga classes, both of which I promptly quit because I was not good at balancing while sweating or talking about books I didn’t finish. I was able to volunteer for a network that supported victims of abusive relationships. I was alone, but I assured myself that didn’t mean I was lonely. I was calm. I was in control.
And then I met Dick Cheney.
The carefully constructed walls I’d built around my heart cracked with each single-entendre he sent my way. Yeah, he was a criminal and a bit of a pervert, but he made me want to be wanted again. I found myself looking forward to every little interaction with him as an indulgence. It was like ice cream. I knew it wasn’t good for me, but it always made me feel better. A
s long as he stayed in his little box marked “Nope!” I was safe.
But damned if Dick didn’t keep showing me his layers, like in the alley this evening. Why had he been so upset about Mr. Wainwright? I mean, we all loved the elderly bookstore owner; we saw him as a surrogate-grandfather-figure-slash-Team-Jane-mascot. But Dick had to have known and lost lots of humans over the course of his immortal life. Why had this one death affected him so deeply?
And the kiss.
I ducked my head back under the water.
That was not the kiss of a guy who planned to run off at the first sign of twilight. It was like the parts of me that hadn’t felt passion or excitement in years woke up all at once. And they were screaming at me to drag Dick Cheney back to my apartment and make him my love monkey.
Maybe I was just confused by the pairing off in my group of friends. Jane and Gabriel were obviously heading toward a meaningful relationship. And I was happy for them, even if it was a little awkward having received the “let’s just be friends or maybe even less” speech from him.
And Jane’s longtime friend Zeb and his fiancée, Jolene, were hurtling down the aisle, despite the efforts of Jolene’s werewolf relatives to kill Zeb before he reached the altar. That was not hyperbole. Her cousins had dropped a running chainsaw on him and taken one of his pinkie toes.
Maybe this recent square dance of partnering up in my peer group was just reminding me that I was alone. And because I was too anxious to really connect with anyone, maybe I was latching onto Dick because fretting over a possible relationship prevented me from going out and finding an appropriate nonfelon date.
I broke through the surface of the water again and rested the back of my head against the lip of the tub.
Yeah, that was it. Dick was a mirage of my own insecurities and self-destructive urges. I didn’t like him. I liked the idea of him. It had nothing to do with the way his bottle-green eyes took on a naughty sparkle when he made a joke, or the way he was covertly so kind to Jane, helping and supporting her even when it was clear that doing so wouldn’t result in either sex or money. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was respecting my boundaries even though he could use his vampire strength against me at any time. Nope, it had nothing to do with any of that.
This was doing nothing for my confusion.
I sank back down into the warm water, feeling for the tub plug with my toes. Maybe I should start hanging out with more werewolves.
As the water drained, my coral-frosted toes peeked up from the surface. Nope, no werewolves—I liked my pinkie toes too much.
3
While it’s important to shake things up, set new routines, and break free from destructive patterns, there are some habits that you should hold on to—like going to work, paying taxes, and performing basic hygiene.
—Surviving the Undead Breakup: A Human’s Guide to Healing
I needed space. I needed normal. I needed some daylight, because my pale skin had gone, well, beyond the pale. I was reaching creepy, transparent cavefish levels. So, the next morning, I did what any reasonable person did when they needed human interaction and vitamin D: I went to work.
Riverfront Gifts wasn’t exactly the jewel box of the downtown scene. But it was a nice, comfortable, circa 1913 brick building with pressed tin ceilings and oversized plaster medallions above the door. The owner, Margie McClintock, was a mostly reasonable employer who tried to balance the stock between the more refined tastes of the tourists who came into town on riverboat tours (snow globes, blown-glass sculptures made by local artists, handmade lap quilts) with items locals would buy year-round (“I’m with Stupid” T-shirts, “I’m with Stupid” keychains, “I’m with Stupid” aprons—we had a whole “I’m with Stupid” corner). Margie knew about my evening hours but maintained a strict “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy—other than telling me to wear a scarf over any tell-tale bite marks on my neck, because customers didn’t want to think about blood swapping when they were focusing on making vacation memories, of course.
Sorting through the various “I’m with Stupid” products, the Half-Moon Hollow commemorative spoons, and the tiny replicas of the Civil War memorial statue on the park square was soothing. I didn’t have to think about Jane and how much she missed Mr. Wainwright. I didn’t have to think about Dick and how his mouth felt against mine. I just had to count and fold and tell a mother of three that, sure, a commemorative Half-Moon Hollow shot glass could be considered a “tiny educational juice glass” appropriate for her children’s souvenir collections.
Margie dollied a case of little snow globes in from the storeroom as I bade the shot-glass mom good-bye.
“I know I shouldn’t judge your sales tactics, but sometimes it’s a little freaky that you can do that with a smile on your face,” she said, smoothing her braids back from her heart-shaped face.
Margie had smooth, teak-colored skin, wide brown eyes, and cheekbones I would’ve killed for. She was currently smarting from her recent ejection from the Half-Moon Hollow Chamber of Commerce. And while it was rumored that her being shown the door was related to her being African American, it had more to do with her age and the demerits she had been assigned for wearing the wrong shoes with her off-the-rack pantsuit. The Chamber of Commerce had suffered some sort of sorority coup and was run by a bunch of evil, pink-worshipping women, all named Courtney. Margie read the demerits for what they were—writing on the wall reading: You’re over forty. Get out.
“Well, if you want to have a conscience, you probably shouldn’t pay me based on commission,” I told her.
“That’s a good point,” she admitted. “I hear Jane’s having a hard time.”
“She really got close to Mr. Wainwright while she was working with him, sort of a surrogate granddaughter,” I said.
“Well, I’m glad Gilbert had someone toward the end of his life,” Margie said. “He was a really lovely man. He never had much of a family—just that creepy nephew of his, Emery.”
“You’ve actually met Mr. Wainwright’s elusive nephew? I thought he was at some missionary center in South America.”
“He still is.” Margie shuddered. “I only met him once, a few years ago, when Gilbert had some minor surgery. You know I volunteer in the hospital gift shop on weekends. Gilbert went in to have his gall bladder removed, and in swans Emery, acting like he owned the place. He was already talking about living wills and not prolonging his uncle’s suffering. Gilbert didn’t even have any complications! He came through the surgery just fine, but his nephew already had his hand on the plug.”
“Poor Mr. Wainwright!” I exclaimed. “Did Emery really hate him so much?”
“No,” Margie said, shrugging as she carefully lifted the little snow globe boxes from their crate and stacked them on the register counter. “But Emery is Gilbert’s only heir, and he wanted to make sure that he got his hands on his inheritance as soon as possible. He claimed that he wanted to donate it to the church, where it could do the most good, but I just didn’t trust him. There was something about him that made my skin crawl. I mean, who stays that pasty when you live in the jungle?”
“Inheritance?” My jaw dropped.
“Of everything I just said, that was the word you picked up on?” She snorted.
I protested, “But I thought Mr. Wainwright was basically broke. His shop is a decrepit old mess. And he lived above that decrepit old mess.”
Margie shook her head. “He has—or had—a big old Victorian house on the outskirts of town. He owned the shop building. And the contents of the shop . . . there are a lot of rare, weird old books in that shop. Who knows how much they’re worth?”
“It’s next to an adult bookstore!” I exclaimed.
“And that adult bookstore used to be a really nice furniture shop,” Margie said. “Turns out there’s more money in porn.”
“They should put that on the Chamber of Commerce sign,�
�� I muttered, making Margie snicker. “So basically, Jane will be fired, again, when this nephew rolls into town?”
“Probably.”
“Don’t suppose you’re looking for another salesclerk?”
“You probably shouldn’t have framed that as Jane being fired ‘again’ before you asked,” she said.
“She wasn’t fired from the library for performance reasons. You’ve met Mrs. Stubblefield. She’s incompetent and petty as hell. And after Mrs. Stubblefield fired her, Jane was almost immediately mistaken for a deer, shot, and turned into a vampire. Hasn’t she suffered enough?”
“I barely have enough business to justify your salary,” Margie said. “But I’ll keep my ears open.”
“Justify my salary,” I harrumphed, tossing the empty box behind the sales counter. “See if I sell any more of your tiny educational juice glasses.”
Several hours and an alarming number of “I’m with Stupid” potholder sales later, I arrived home to my apartment and considered another contemplative bath. It was long after sunset, and my living room was dark when I locked the front door behind me. I had a few hours before I had to be dressed and ready for an appointment with Sophie, a local Council member who needed me to help a reluctant newborn through her first live feeding.
Shy biters were always a little tricky. They could panic, clamp down too hard, and drain too much. Or they could overcome their aversion too quickly and drink too much. I only took the appointment because Sophie was a high-ranking Council official and had the influence to keep my business safe and profitable for years to come. And I liked to think that someone who had the nerve to go by only one name decades before Cher tried it would have the strength to control a newborn vampire if things got out of hand. I walked into my kitchen to down some iron supplements and eat a little something so I would be prepared.
“Do you always walk around your apartment in the dark?” a rough voice asked from the direction of my couch. “That’s not safe.”
