By the time he called, “Jane!” in a warning tone, I had already grabbed Mama from a gaggle of tutting church ladies and dragged her into an alcove. “Lyme disease, Mama? Really?”
“What?” Mama asked, the picture of innocence.
“You told the uncles I have Lyme disease!”
“I told them you’d had some health issues,” she spluttered. “They just assumed it was Lyme disease.”
“No one assumes you have Lyme disease,” I whispered. “How do you just assume Lyme disease? I know this hasn’t been easy for you, Mama. I know you’re embarrassed that I’m different. I know it took you months to work up the nerve to be around me without being afraid or ashamed.”
“I’m not ashamed of you,” Mama insisted. “It’s just that everyone makes these assumptions about me and your daddy. I know it’s not true, but it’s so difficult knowing that people are looking at me and judging and whispering.”
“But it’s not even like this makes me the most scandalous member of the family. I’m bothered by the fact that Junie manages to pick up singles without using her hands while she performs at the Booby Hatch. But do I say anything? No.”
It was at that moment that I realized that we were standing next to a podium. A podium with a mic on it. A mic that was on.
Crap.
We turned to find most of the bereaved watching us, horrified. And my cousin Junie didn’t look thrilled with me, either.
5
Hostility toward human males marrying into were clans is to be expected and taken seriously. Potential sons-in-law may want to carry wolfsbane or silver items in their pockets. Weres find both substances to be extremely irritating.
—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were
Despite Bob’s being laid to rest on a cloudy day, I elected not to go to his burial. I thought it might build strange expectations for Mama. Aunt Jettie, who relished her role as my go-to daytime spy, reported that Bob’s burial was much more entertaining than his visitation.
Grandma Ruthie had gone from grieving widow to seeing herself as some sort of postmodern, postmenopausal Juliet. She wore an even bigger veiled hat to the cemetery and a black crepe dress with a full, flowing skirt and trailing sleeves. I’m thinking she bought it from the Gone with the Wind Widows Collection. She wailed and screeched her way through the eulogy, screamed, “Why, Lord? Why?” through the final blessing, and tried to snatch Bob’s service flag away from his son when it was presented by the honor guard. Also, she demanded front-row center seats for her and her male companion, Wilbur.
That’s right. My grandma brought a date to her fiancé’s burial. She’s all class, that lady. Apparently, she’d met Wilbur at Whitlow’s as he was heading into an old Army buddy’s visitation. Sparks flew, time stood still, and Grandma Ruthie snagged another victim. On the upside, I think Wilbur’s presence may have been the only thing that kept her from flinging herself into the grave on top of the casket.
But somehow, my outing cousin Junie as a day-shift dancer at the Booby Hatch made me an embarrassment to the family. At the burial, Grandma had declared that she wouldn’t speak to me until I’d apologized to Junie. I would think this odd considering that Junie was a cousin on my dad’s side of the family and Ruthie was my maternal grandmother. But Grandma Ruthie liked ninety-nine percent of the general population better than me, so why not cousins on the other side of the family?
During my shift that night, Aunt Jettie came into the shop to give me all of the details of the cemetery theatrics. She was in the middle of reenacting this declaration when a little woman in a double-knit pant suit came into the shop to claim a phone order. Aunt Jettie made herself scarce.
On the phone, Esther Barnes’s voice had sounded deep and accented. In person, she was squat, with dyed jet-black hair, deep wrinkles at the edges of her eyes, and a smoky topaz cocktail ring the size of a door knocker. Her voice was reedy and thin as she asked whether I had the “Barnes order” ready yet. I pulled her reserved copies of Mind over Matter: Maintaining Your Psychic Ability and The Search for the Inner Id from under the counter and rang them up.
There was something off about Esther Barnes. Her eyes were too bright, too sharp. Her mouth was small, thin, pinched into a coral-painted, birdlike moue. From the way her gaze was sweeping across the shop, I would guess she was calculating the value of every item in the store.
“Are you new in town, Ms. Barnes?” I asked, my tone light and friendly, even as I watched her weigh a brittle amethyst ceremonial blade with her even more fragile-looking hands.
“No.” She put the blade down, slapped her money on the counter, and stared at me. I would guess this stare had put many a shopgirl in her place over the years. But, well, I was bored, and she was there.
I smiled pleasantly. “Have family around here?”
Her eyes narrowed as what little politeness she offered drained out of her voice. “No.”
I held up a newly printed Specialty Books brochure. “Would you like to be put on our mailing list?”
OK, at this point, I was just trying to be annoying.
Ms. Barnes narrowed her eyes at me. There was a buzzing sensation, like being slapped under the forehead.
Ow.
It was as if someone let loose a hive full of bees in my head, little stings and pricks on the edge of my brain. I gripped the counter as the room spun out of focus. My head dipped as if I were just a bit tipsy, then snapped back into place as I fought for focus. Annoyed, I closed my eyes and built up a wall around my mind. I focused on the little woman in front of me and attempted to slap back, but it was like grabbing at sand. I couldn’t get a grip. The edges of her consciousness kept slipping through my fingers. I did well just to maintain control of my own psychic defenses and not pass out at her feet.
Exhausted by what was really just a moment’s effort, I opened my eyes to find a smug smile stretched across Ms. Barnes’s face. “Better luck next time, dear.”
Did I just get psychically pimp-slapped by a little old lady?
After she sauntered out of the shop, I hustled back to the stacks and grabbed a copy of Mind over Matter: Maintaining Your Psychic Ability. “What the hell is in this book?”
I checked Mr. Wainwright’s “records” for Ms. Barnes’s contact information. And by records, I mean the stack of scrap paper he kept in the back of the cash-register drawer with scribbled customer names and addresses. She was nowhere to be found, which was not a surprise. He did, however, have the address for a man who lived in Possum Trot and called himself Nostradamus, which made a certain amount of sense.
I opened Mind over Matter and scanned a few pages, trying to find the section on how to use one’s mental talents to smack people around. Nothing. Esther Barnes was clearly playing a deck stacked with a few extra cards. How do you guard against someone who can reach into your skull and scramble stuff around?
“I’m going to have to make a tin-foil hat,” I muttered as the phone rang.
It was then that I realized how wrong I was to think that being brain-assaulted was going to be the worst part of my day. It was my mother, calling to remind me that the annual Jameson family tree-trimming party was coming up that weekend and that I needed to wear my Frosty the Snowman sweater for the family Christmas-card picture. Mama always artfully arranged our “candid” family tree-trimming picture one week after Thanksgiving, so she was able to send the Christmas cards out by December 14, one week before her arch-enemy and best friend, Carol Ann Reilly.
“Um, I don’t think Jenny and Grandma would be very happy about seeing me.”
“But y’all got along so well at the visitation!” Mama cried.
“Being glad that someone will wash dishes and being happy that they were present are two different things.”
“Now, you’re just being silly, Jane. You’re just going to have to learn to kiss and make up with Grandma and Jenny for the holidays. I won’t stand for this. It was one thing for you to miss Thanksgiving, but this is getting ridiculous. Where else are you going to go?”“Actually, I might have plans,” I lied.
Mama gasped. “What do you mean, you have plans? It’s not Christmas unless you’re with family.”
“Well, I have some new friends this year, and they don’t have family around here. I thought it would be nice to spend some time with them.”
“New vampire friends,” Mama said, just a hint of bitterness tingeing her tone.
“No, not all of them are vampires.”
“Well, if you want to throw away years of tradition, that’s your choice. If you really want to spend the first Christmas since we lost you with strangers, that’s your decision to make.”
“What do you mean, ‘lost me’? I’m right here!”
“I can’t keep talking about it, Jane.”
“Talking about what? We don’t talk about this. At all.”
Mama sighed, the slightest edge of a sniffle curling at the end. “Will you at least come to the tree-trimming party so we can take the family picture? Not everyone has to know that you and Jenny have had a falling out.”
“Can’t you just Photoshop me in or something?” I asked.
“I don’t even know what that means.” Mama grunted. “Just show up on Saturday at six.”
I hung up the phone and commenced thumping my head against the leaded-glass counter.
“If you keep doing that, it’s going to leave a mark,” a smooth, bemused voice said. “Even your healing powers have limits.”
I looked up to find Andrea Byrne standing in front of me, smirking.
“You look perturbed. Well, more perturbed than usual,” she said, examining the paling bruise on my forehead.
“What was your first clue?” I asked grumpily.
Andrea reminds one of what Grace Kelly might have looked like with red hair and a twisted backstory. Broke after her split with her (fickle bastard) undead ex and disowned by a firmly antivampire family, Andrea came to the Hollow years before to get a job in a boutique downtown. But her real income came from clients who enjoyed her blood in a mutually safe environment for a small fee. Andrea was the first—and last—human I fed from. It made for a rather awkward beginning to our friendship, but she was the one human I knew who truly understood the bizarre aspects of my new vampire lifestyle. She was sort of like my undead blankie, keeping me connected to the living world. Mama would have done the same thing but with more guilt and sunburns.
She hefted both Mind over Matter and The Spectrum of Vampirism off the counter and winced. “A little light reading?”
“Just researching my roots,” I said, flipping Spectrum to the chapter titled “Global Origins.” “Like this charming theory, for example: ‘Gypsies believed that vampires returned from the dead to seek vengeance on those who may have contributed to their death or neglected to give them a proper burial. Graves were watched carefully for signs of being disturbed. Exhumed corpses that were bloated or had turned black would be staked, beheaded, and burned.’ Well, why didn’t they just blast the remains out of a cannon? Humans are stupid.”
“I’m standing right here,” Andrea griped.
“Oh, you’re not really human. You’re like one of us, only with a pulse.”
“And Mr. Wainwright?”
“Same goes.” I nodded. “You don’t normally come in here. What’s up?”
“I’m bored.”
“Bored?” I asked.
She nodded. “Ever since Dick became interested in me, all but my most loyal clients have stopped calling. I don’t know if they are in doubt of my taste or frightened of Dick, but either way, it’s not good for business.”
“Well, thanks for thinking of me.” I grinned. “I’m off in a couple of hours. What did you want to do?”
“Oh, I know, why don’t we go out for a nice girls’ night, get into a bar fight, and then, just for kicks, one of us could end up suspected in a vampire murder. That could be fun,” Andrea suggested brightly. “Oh, wait, we did that already.”
“You think you’re being funny, but you’re not funny. When I tell the story, I don’t tell people about you being knee-walking drunk, ergo unconscious, during the whole fight. I think I’m going to change that policy.”
“You actually tell people that story?”
I nodded. “But when I tell it, Walter is six-foot-three and a trained cage fighter.”
Andrea chuckled.
I grinned slyly. “Dick has been looking for you.”
She grumbled. “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘restraining order,’ does he?”
“Technically, that’s two words.” I giggled. “Dick and Andrea sitting in a tree, B-I-T-I-N-G—ow!” I whined as she punched my shoulder. “You’re just mad because secretly, underneath that sophisticated exterior, you’re hot for Dickie.”
“I am not hot for Dickie,” Andrea spat.
“Me and my bruised shoulder say thou dost protest too much,” I said dryly.
“He’s practically stalking me. He just won’t let it go. He’s just being … he’s being a jackass with a flaky jackass crust and a delicious jackass filling.”
“So he’s jackass pie?” I asked, making my “ew” face.
“There’s no reason to be crass,” Andrea mewed primly.
“You know, you’re starting to talk like me. I find this more than a little troubling. Maybe we should spend less time together.”