I propped my sunglasses on top of my head and smirked. “What were you going to do if someone else fit the bill?”
“What’d you bring me? What’d you bring me?” he asked, hopping up and down.
“Tiny liquor bottles from the minibar,” I said, holding up my suitcase proudly and thumping it into his chest.
“Sadly, that’s the same thing my uncle Ron gave me for Christmas.” He snorted, taking my little carry-on bag onto his shoulder.
“I wrapped them in hotel towels from four different countries,” I added.
He grinned. “Excellent.”
I actually had gotten him and Jolene fancy 500-thread-count sheets and some very expensive snacks from Harrods. The hotel towels were for me.
We reached Zeb’s car, threw my luggage into the backseat, and took our places up front. Zeb started the car and paid the exorbitant parking fee. “So, tell me everything. Where did you go? What did you see?”
“Went to some parties, met strange and snotty people. Saw some great museums and restaurants, but being in France and not being able to eat chocolate is downright masochistic. Oh, we saw Carmen performed in Vienna. Did you know the whole first song is about cigarette smoke?”
“I didn’t know that,” Zeb admitted. “But I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”
“Oh, ha-ha. So, where’s your lovely wife?” I asked as we pulled onto the interstate. “What’s she doing letting you take off for Nashville after midnight? Doesn’t she know you get lost?”
Zeb grimaced. Things between Jolene and Zeb had been tense lately. They were still trying to build a home on the land I’d given them as a wedding present. The house was slow to finish because Jolene’s family was pressuring them to move back onto the McClaine family compound. Werewolves are notoriously territorial, and Jolene was the first McClaine to live “off-site” since they’d settled in the Hollow two hundred years before. The family owns multiple businesses in the Hollow, including several construction firms. And what they don’t own they could influence with scary male werewolf dominance. So, to say that it was difficult for Zeb and Jolene to get contractors to show up—risking pissing off Jolene’s kin—much less finish their work, was an understatement.
To top it off, the brand-newish trailer they’d been offered as an incentive to live on McClaine land had mysteriously evaporated when Zeb and Jolene announced they were building their own home, leaving the newly-weds with the camper recently vacated by Jolene’s stoner cousin, Larry. And one could live in the close quarters of a cannabis-saturated camper for only so long before one’s marriage began feeling like the last half of The Shining .
I would say that Zeb was a saint to put up with such interference from his in-laws, but his family’s no prize herd, either. Let’s just say that one of the Lavelle family’s favorite Christmas activities is to gather around the TV and watch their highlight reel from the “Rowdy Rural Towns” episode of COPS .
Zeb’s mother, Ginger Lavelle, had a number of reasons to shun me lately, the least of which was that I refused to let her ruin Zeb’s honeymoon. To bastardize Harry Potter, I was Zeb’s “Secret Keeper” for his honeymoon destination. Zeb told his family that he and Jolene were going to the mountain retreats of Gatlinburg, when he, in fact, took his blushing bride to Biloxi, for a week of Gulf shrimp, putt-putt, and blessed silence. Their hotel information was sealed in an envelope and given to me with the instructions that it was to be opened only if someone was dead or incapacitated … well, more incapacitated than usual.
While contrite over her wacky antiwedding antics, Mama Ginger could remain chastised for only so long. Incensed that she could not locate her son after calling every hotel in Gatlinburg, Mama Ginger called me to demand that I give her the location and phone number right now, because she was having chest pains and was being taken to the hospital. Used to this ploy, I refused. She switched tactics and said that she needed the number because Zeb’s father, Floyd, had dropped an automatic cigarette lighter into his lap while driving and was being treated for several third-degree burns in sensitive areas.
While that scenario was far more plausible, I still withheld the number, which prompted Mama Ginger to announce that she would never speak to me again. I was not properly devastated by this announcement, which just made Mama Ginger angrier. Mama Ginger had long held out hope that Zeb and I would one day wed, but now that she knew about my “unfortunate condition,” she was slightly ashamed to have wanted a vampire as an in-law. She was still less than civil to Jolene. But she now preferred her daughter-in-law to me, because at least Jolene wasn’t a vampire. Of course, Zeb hadn’t yet broken the news about his new bride being a werewolf, but that was neither here nor there.
I’d promised myself that I was going to back off and stop interfering in Jolene and Zeb’s relationship, but it was so much healthier than talking about my own relationship. So, I think I earned a pass just this once. “Tell me you haven’t been watching The Howling again,” I groaned. “You know it’s just a movie.”
Zeb gave me a distinctly not-amused look, then sighed. “Marriage is a little harder than I thought it would be. Just normal stuff, you know. Things that get on each other’s nerves.” He began ticking off Jolene’s numerous faults on his fingers. “She chews her fingernails and her toenails. She cannot stop herself from answering the questions from Jeopardy out loud, even when she knows she’s wrong. She sheds. She puts ketchup on her egg rolls.”
“Blasphemy.” I shuddered. “And as much as it would be in my own personal interest to interfere with your marriage and reclaim your full attention, you do realize that you are married to arguably one of the most beautiful women on the planet. And you are a male kindergarten teacher who collects dolls.”
“Action figures,” he corrected.
“And she stuck with you, despite the fact that your mother tried to make wedding-party casting changes during the rehearsal and had you hypnotized by a five-dollar psychic so you’d dump Jolene at the altar.”
“Her family put out a bear trap for me!” he huffed.
“Well, that just means that your families cancel each other out.”
He snickered, his expression softening. “She’s pregnant.”
My jaw actually hit the middle of my chest. “Well, that explains the egg rolls and ketchup.”
My throat tightened at the thought of Zeb having a baby. This was so huge, the last step toward Zeb really growing up. I’ll admit I was a little jealous. I was being left behind again. Zeb was doing something I would never do. But, as I’d discovered last year when Zeb’s mom dumped an infant on my doorstep in an attempt to jump-start my biological clock, I am not cut out to nurture. And because I no longer have a pulse, I can’t have children—which works out nicely.
“But this is a good thing, right?” I shook his shoulder. “I’m going to be an honorary aunt.”
“It’s a great thing, except the idea of being responsible for a whole family sort of scares the crap out of me. We wanted to have kids right away, and given how fertile her family is, we knew there was no contraception on earth that would work. But that’s not really our problem. Her mother comes over every single day. Her aunts are always bringing over food, or they’re putting up curtains that they made, or they’re moving our dishes around in the cabinets without asking. And Jolene just lets them. And the men! If they don’t back off and let a contractor come out to finish the house, we’re going to be raising their grandchild in a pot-soaked RV. Is that what they want? I’m just frustrated and feel … impotent.”
“Well, obviously, that’s not the case. When is she due?”
“In about four months,” he said.
“What? You guys were pregnant before the wedding? And you didn’t tell me!”
Zeb rolled his eyes. “No. It’s a werewolf thing. The average wolf pregnancy is only about sixty days. Werewolves sort of split the difference with five months.”
“Wow. So, you have very little time to get ready for this baby—babies? How many kids is Jolene going to have? Is it going to be like a litter?”
Zeb looked horror-struck.
“Seriously, you hadn’t thought of that before?” I asked him as little beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. “There are four sets of twins just among Jolene’s first cousins.”
“I’m still processing everything!” Zeb shouted.
“Maybe I should drive,” I suggested.
“No, let’s talk about why you think Gabriel would suddenly start cheating on you. That will keep me awake.”
“Let’s not,” I told him. “I don’t want to rehash the whole thing. I just want to pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Because denial usually works so well for you.”
“I’m going to deny that I just heard that. Should we stop by the shop? I’d like to see the damages, know what I’m getting into,” I said.
“Your internal clock must be off, world traveler. The sun’s going to rise soon.” He nodded to the lightening blue-gray sky on the horizon. “We’ll have just enough time to get you home.”
As the sky turned toward lilac, I snuggled under a blanket and dozed the last hour or so before we reached the family manse, River Oaks. More English country cottage than sprawling Georgian plantation, River Oaks is at its heart just an old family farm home that happened to be built before the Civil War. Despite my having spent the last few weeks in buildings that were much older and far more elegant, my house had never seemed so beautiful.
I kissed Zeb’s cheeks, mumbled a good night, and dashed for the door with the blanket over my head. In my room, on sheets that were weeks old and slightly musty, I lay down and, for reasons I hadn’t quite processed yet, cried.
2
Successful relationships are about compromise. If you agree not to bring up his undead ex-girlfriends during arguments, he should agree not to seek out your old human boyfriends and kill them.
—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less
Destructive Relationships
The problem with sleeping during the day is that people tend to overestimate the joys of early-morning visits.
It started about an hour after I finally fell asleep, when Aunt Jettie sauntered into the house and discovered my carry-on by the door.
“Baby doll, you’re back!” she cried, materializing at my bedside.
“Gah!” I screamed, leaping off the bed and clinging to the ceiling. “Knocking! Aunt Jettie! We have a rule about knocking!”
My ghostly favorite aunt/roommate placed her transparent hands on her hips. “Oh, get down from the ceiling and let me look at you. I haven’t seen you in weeks. Don’t make me float up there, it makes me dizzy.”
Jettie Belle Early, sister to my grandma Ruthie, took me under her wing when I was around age six and when Ruthie and I both figured out that we were basically incompatible. (Grandma Ruthie wanted to give me a home perm and enter me in the Little Miss Half-Moon Hollow Pageant. I hid in her attic all day to avoid the perm, pretending that I was Anne Frank.) I spent entire summers with Jettie at River Oaks, which she inherited after spending her formative years caring for her elderly father. This was a great shock to Grandma Ruthie, who had already made plans to overhaul the house in time for the local historical society’s annual tour of historic homes.
Aunt Jettie was a linchpin in every major moment in my life. It was Aunt Jettie who helped me fill out financial-aid paperwork for college. It was Aunt Jettie who persuaded me to stay in school and get my master’s in library science so the local public library would have no choice but to hire me. It was Aunt Jettie who helped me through that first night as a vampire. It was Aunt Jettie whose upside-down face was now smiling up at me expectantly.