Zeb scrubbed his hand over his face as Mr. Wainwright faded out of sight. “I was prepared for one baby. I don’t know if I can handle two.”
“It’s a little late for that. There’s a very strict no-return policy on babies.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Jane.”
“Well, what do you want me to do? Take one off your hands? There’s not much I can do, except pay someone else to babysit. Are they boys or girls?” I asked.
“Don’t know yet; it’s too early to tell. To be honest, I didn’t catch much after ‘two heartbeats.’ One of them was doing a sort of Homer Simpson shimmy. I’m guessing that’s the one that takes after me.”
“Look at it this way: you’re lucky it’s not triplets or quadruplets.”
That seemed to cheer him.
“If you keep going, you can form your own basketball team,” I suggested. He furrowed his brow and frowned at me. “Too soon?” He nodded. “I’ll fix you some herbal tea. It’s soothing,” I said, patting his hand. “How’s Jolene? Is she craving pickles and ice cream yet?”
Zeb groaned. “If only. It’s more like Canadian bacon and ice cream. Peanut butter and turkey sandwiches. Tuna noodle pie. She actually made what she called ‘bacon chip cookies’ the other day—a chocolate-chip cookie recipe with bacon pieces instead of chocolate chips. She said it’s her body’s way of getting as much protein as possible for the babies, but I swear if I see her eat one more of those pies, I’m going to yark.”
“Well, the good news, is whenever I regret not being able to eat, I’ll call those images to mind. I’ll never want solid food again.” I shuddered, rubbing my stomach.
Zeb perked up as he said, “By the way, I got a call from the reunion committee today. They wanted some pictures of you for the memorial wall.”
“But I’m not dead!”
Zeb smirked. “Well, that’s not the way the committee sees it.”
“That’s it. I’m not going to this thing.”
“Oh, come on,” he said, accepting a cup of chamomile. “You’ve got to go to the reunion. It’ll be fun! You can scare the crap out of all our former classmates.”
“It will be fun for you. You’re married to a beautiful woman who adores you to the point that she’ll probably maul the first doofus who tries to give you a commemorative wedgie. And she’ll be pregnant, so everyone will know you’ve had sex with her. I, however, will most likely be going solo which will probably just cement all those lesbian rumors. Oh, wait, dead lesbian rumors.”
“So, you haven’t made up with Gabriel yet, huh?”
I shook my head. Cindy the Goth Good-Luck Charm walked through the door, acknowledged me with a nod, and headed for the graphic novels. “You know, I used to be alone, and I got along just fine. It’s simpler this way. Less messy, less complicated. Less time wondering what the hell is going on in my own life and whether it’s my fault. At least, this way, I know it’s my fault.”
Zeb grimaced. “Well, that’s cheerful.”
“I do what I can,” I said, shrugging as the front doorbell rang. “I met a really nice doctor the other night. And then he saw me beat a guy senseless, so I don’t think he’s going to want me to call.”
“You beat some guy senseless?” Zeb cried.
“Dick made an attempt to cheer me up. It was either a bar fight or cow tipping.”
Zeb’s nose wrinkled. “You and Dick have a complicated relationship.”
I shrugged. I put a mocha latte on the counter for Cindy and left it out for her, like cookies and milk for an Emo Santa Claus. “Besides, Adam Morrow’s going to be there, and I’m still feeling a little weird about him.”
I’d had a huge crush on Adam since elementary school. He was the blond, dimpled football hero to my tuba-toting band geek. I never really got over that teeny-bopper obsession with him, which was why it was so difficult for me to see that his efforts to get “reacquainted” a few months before had nothing to do with me and everything to do with Adam’s weirdo sexual fascination with vampires. It turned out that despite attending school with me for twelve years, he hadn’t remembered the name of that “egghead who used to annoy him in class” until someone reminded him at my almost-grandpa Bob’s funeral. I dropped Adam like a clove of garlic and mended damaged fences with Gabriel before it was too late.
Of course, I didn’t realize at the time that it was already too late and Gabriel had moved on to Jeanine. I’ve really got to work on rerouting my thought process so every subject doesn’t come back to Gabriel.
It seemed unfair that I felt some measure of break-up anxiety over Adam when we never technically went out. But to this day, I couldn’t even hear his name without a rush of guilt and embarrassment. I would have enough to deal with at the reunion—such as my placement on the memorial wall—without delving into those issues again.
“But crushing Adam’s hopes and dreams is going to make the reunion even better! You, the untouchable hottie that he can’t, well, touch. It’s going to be such a blow to his ego!” Zeb exclaimed. “I never told you this, because you had that thing for him in school, but I always wanted to just punch that guy in the face with his ‘Oh, I’m tall and blond and dreamy, and everybody loves me because I’m such a nice guy’ shtick. Maybe there were other guys in the class who were just as nice. Maybe there were some guys in the class who should have been Swing Choir president but didn’t get elected because Adam was ‘so dreamy.’ Maybe there were some guys who wanted to take Dawn Farber to Homecoming but ended up going stag because Dawn was holding out for Adam ‘just in case.’”
“Maybe you shouldn’t go to the reunion,” I said, sorting through the day’s mail. “Should I start putting horse tranquilizers in your tea?”
As Zeb ranted on, I sifted through the day’s mail, mostly bills and publishers’ catalogues. An ivory linen paper envelope slipped out and fluttered to the counter. I stared at it for a moment, wondering if I was imagining the spidery black writing that spelled out my name and the shop address. There was no return label. The postmark was in Half-Moon Hollow.
“You OK, Janie?” Zeb asked, reaching over to jiggle my shoulder. “You’re pale. Paler than usual.”
I nodded and handed the heavy envelope to Zeb. My hands were shaking. “Could you open that for me?”
Zeb arched an eyebrow, concern stretching his mouth in a grim line. “Sure.”
I took the letter from his hands and laid it on the bar to keep it steady enough for me to read. There was no opening greeting, just cramped paragraphs crowding the elegant slip of stationery.
You don’t know who I am, but I have been watching you for a long time, Jane.
Gabriel Nightengale isn’t the man you think he is. He’s not even the vampire you think he is. Gabriel takes advantage of those who are weaker. He doesn’t care for you. He is incapable of caring for anyone but himself. Even his jealousy and possessiveness, his claims that he wants to protect you, come from his desire to own you, to keep you to himself, like a favorite toy, until he is through playing with you.
I was once like you, young and innocent. Gabriel claimed he was drawn to me because of that innocence, my goodness. He said he could follow my scent across the world, that it was part of what bonded me to him. He said he loved me. Foolishly, I thought he was exciting and dashing—a dark prince taking me away from a life of boredom, from a gilded cage of limitations and demands. He killed me. He damned me, as he has damned you.
You are nothing special. You are not different from any girl who has ever walked the earth, despite what he may have told you. And when you have served your purpose, he will grow tired of you. He will use and abandon you as he used and abandoned me.
I know where you go. I know with whom you spend your time. You seem to enjoy your little life. For your sake, for the sake of the people you care about, you should stay away from Gabriel.
A Concerned and Vigilant Friend
I looked down and saw the corner of a photo sticking out of the envelope. I tipped it and slid several photos out into my hands. I gasped as I recognized the subjects. Gabriel and I in a hotel room. The camera was obviously outside a window, but I had no idea where we were or when the picture had been taken. We were stretched out on one of the wide hotel beds, a rare moment of relaxation on the Trip from Hell. My feet were draped across Gabriel’s lap as he painted my toenails a delicate strawberry color. There was another picture of us in London as we walked toward the theater. I was wearing the red dress I’d bought just to attend a performance of As You Like It . There was a photo taken while we were in Rome. I was sitting at a little outdoor café, alone and looking worried, because Gabriel had just gotten up to take another “business call.” Another photo of me, this time alone on my front-porch swing, reading New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, a book I’d chosen in hopes of exorcising my own traumatic vampire break-up issues. The camera seemed focused on the teardrop trailing down my cheek, as if that was the whole point of the picture. The final photo featured Andrea, Jolene, and me sprawled out in my living room, watching TV.
Andrea had seen someone at my window that night. This person had taken pictures of us, laughing and eating junk food. They’d probably followed me out into the woods on my idiot’s errand. I realized how foolish I’d been to leave the house. This person could have doubled back to the house and hurt Andrea, hurt Jolene and her babies. My stomach twisted into a cold, watery knot. This person had followed us for months, had been privy to intimate, happy moments I wanted to keep private, had enjoyed watching me work through pain. My fangs snuck over my lip. The razor-sharp tips caught the tender flesh and made blood well into my mouth, sending my senses into overdrive. I growled.
“Janie, what’s wrong? What does it say?” While I was reading, Zeb had stepped around the bar and had an arm wrapped around me. “Bad news?”
I fought to get my temper in check, to get my emotions under control. I didn’t want to worry Zeb with this. He had enough to deal with, worrying over Jolene and the babies. Through force of will and a barrage of unappetizing imagery (basically, any episode of CSI ), I made my fangs retract.
“No.” I blew out a breath and faked a smile as I refolded the letter over the photos and stuck them under the counter. “It’s fine. Just really persistent junk mail.”
“It doesn’t look like junk mail. What’s with all the pictures?”
“Don’t worry about it, Zeb.”
Zeb didn’t seem convinced, but then customers started coming in, and I didn’t have time to answer questions. I waited until Zeb’s back was turned to fish the letter out and read it again. Obviously, this “concerned and vigilant friend” was the same person who sent Gabriel letters in Europe. Was it the mysterious Jeanine, the woman whose name had popped up frequently on Gabriel’s cell phone in the last year? And if it was, who the hell was she? And how long ago had Gabriel “used and abandoned” her? And perhaps the most important question, what was she doing in the Hollow?
8
It’s important to remember to spend time with your family. It’s important to temper your absorption into the vampire culture with contact with the human world.
—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less
Destructive Relationships
When a smell is powerful enough to wake a vampire up at noon, it’s time to call an exorcist.
The sex dreams hadn’t subsided since that horrible fight with Gabriel at the shop. In fact, they seemed to grow more intense after Gabriel’s return. In this particular dream, I was strapped into complicated Victorian underwear. Gabriel was wearing an old-fashioned cut-away tux. We were in an expensive-looking hotel room, lit by gas lamps. Still clad in his white shirtsleeves, an enthusiastic Gabriel peeled my corset away, pushed me back onto the bed, and kissed his way from the curve of my linen-covered breast to the lacy little pantaloons I was wearing. He smiled up at me, the way he used to when we made love, as if I was the most beautiful creature on the planet. I felt my human flesh grow warm and pliable under his hands. He stripped the last of my underthings away, lapping away at my core with strong, sure strokes. He nibbled and kissed until I was panting. When he finally touched the very tip of his tongue to that vital little bundle of nerves, I exploded, screaming his name as I rode wave after wave of dark, shuddering ecstasy.