“Why not? If you’re not going to let me see you naked, we might as well be girlfriends.”
“You’re a twisted little man.”
“Come on, Stretch, share with the class.”
“No!” I laughed.
“Prude.”
“Perv.”
“Schoolmarm.”
“Some other word that essentially means perv.”
We were laughing when Missy decided to join us out on the porch. “I figured I’d find you two out here together,” she said brightly. “Jane, you have to promise you’re going to come to my next mixer. Everybody wants to know if you’re coming. You’re like the vampire Jessica Simpson! They can’t understand why they’re interested in you, but they can’t stand not knowing what you are going to do next. You have some serious buzz going in there. I bet you start getting all kinds of business at your little shop.”
“Well, on that note, I think I’m going to call it a night.”
Missy grabbed my arm. “Are you sure, shug? We’re going to start playing Jenga pretty soon!”
“Well, as much as I love games that combine alcohol with fine-motor skills, I think I’ll pass.” I shot a wink at Dick, who was standing behind Missy, giving me a pleading look. “Dick, enjoy the Jenga.”
I slid the glass door open and was met with silence over jazz. Ever walk into a room and realize that someone has suddenly stopped talking because they were saying something bad about you? Ever had it happen in a roomful of vampires? Most of the guests pretended to be absorbed in their drinks or played with their cocktail napkins as they tried to contain their snickers. Others, including Hadley Wexler, just stared at me as if they hoped I would spontaneously combust as some sort of party trick.
“Well, good night, all,” I said, smiling pleasantly and winding my way through silent, motionless bodies. I closed the front door behind me and heard conversation rumble back to life.
I walked quickly toward Big Bertha, eager to put as much distance between myself and Missy ’s snotty vampire friends as possible. As soon as I reached for the door handle, the driver’s-side window exploded in front of me. I stood, dumbfounded, as little slivers of glass rained at my feet. A few seconds later, I heard several faint hiss -pops and felt hot, stabbing agony in my left shoulder, my lower back, my ribs. I fell to the ground as another bullet shattered Big Bertha’s rear window. Blood slowly trickled down my arms, soaking my clothes as I scanned the silent row of houses.
Even with my night vision, I couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from. While the pain of the wounds faded quickly, I experienced some residual panic, leftover sensations from the night I was turned. My hands shook, and my mind wouldn’t clear. I couldn’t focus enough to figure out how to open the car door. My thoughts spooled on a loop through my head—had to flee, get to safety, get home.
If anyone inside Missy’s house heard anything amiss, they weren’t making any move to come outside and help me. Against the yellow light of the closed window shades, I saw silhouettes of people talking, laughing. The music played on. Somehow I didn’t think I would find help if I ran back inside.
Whoever was pulling the trigger had stopped shooting. When my legs steadied, I jumped over Big Bertha’s hood, using her massive body as cover as I frantically searched with numb, clumsy fingers. I climbed into the front seat and slumped down as I started the ignition. As calmly as possible, I sped down the street toward home.
18
Sexual relationships can prove difficult after turning but no more difficult than they are for the living.
—From The Guide for the Newly Undead
Note to self: Bullet wounds tend to itch when you’re conscious during the healing process.
With Aunt Jettie floating helplessly by the tub, wringing her hands, I washed away the dried blood and inspected the wounds.
If she’d been living, I probably would have scared ten years off her life when I stumbled, bloodied and cursing, through the front door. Unsure of how to help me, she disappeared upstairs and ran a bath, while I staggered toward the fridge and glugged down three bottles of synthetic blood. As the thick, sweetened plasma rolled down my throat, the nausea and dizziness faded away. I was able to crawl up the stairs.
I’d been shot in the shoulder, near my right kidney, and a few inches left of the base of my spine. It stung considerably, especially when the healing tissue forced the small -caliber bullets out of my wounds. But at least I knew I didn’t have Bud McElray’s rifle shot floating around in my gut.
I’d given Bud quite a bit of thought during the drive home from Missy ’s. Now, as I sat in lukewarm pink water, draining another blood bottle of its contents, I kicked myself for not at least checking on Bud ’s whereabouts since the first shooting. I’d been far too passive through the whole ordeal, waiting for it to just go away, hoping it would stop if I ignored it. As the only person who’d ever shot at me, he was now the prime suspect in every weird incident over the last couple of months. And now I wanted to give him the whuppin’ he thoroughly deserved. I wasn’t entirely sure if (a) I could find him, and (b) I could get away with it.
I changed the water in the tub twice and still didn’t feel clean. I could still smell blood on every inch of my skin, sending the synthetic stuff in my stomach roiling. At the sound of a fist pounding on my front door, I ran to my room without bothering to towel off and threw on a bra and underwear. If Bud McElray was going to take another shot at me, I wasn’t going to be naked when he did it.
“Jane?” Gabriel called from my porch. “Are you home?”
Relieved, I threw on my robe and padded down the stairs. I was about to throw my arms around him and tell him the whole sorry tale when he barged through the door. “Why am I hearing rumors that you and Dick have had an intimate knowledge of each other in the dressing rooms at Wal-Mart?”
I groaned, pulling at the soaked robe as it clung clammily to my skin. “So, we’re at the Wal-Mart now?”
Gabriel blanched. “What?”
“Don’t worry about it. None of it’s true.”
“No, I do believe I—” He sniffed the air. “Why do I smell blood? Your blood?”
Given the way Gabriel’s fists were clenching and unclenching, I wasn’t sure I should tell him. Sensing my hesitation, Gabriel took my chin in his palm and made me meet his gaze.
I sighed, turned my back, and dropped the robe. “Someone shot at me as I was leaving a party earlier.”
“Why would someone shoot at you?” he demanded, roughly pulling me closer to inspect my healing skin. “Normal bullets wouldn’t be enough to kill you.”
“No, but it annoyed the bejesus out of me,” I grumbled, yanking my robe back together. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you about some things that have happened around here lately. Someone ’s been hanging around outside my house at night.
Someone used deer blood to paint insults on my car. They tried to poison Fitz with antifreeze. And then, obviously, tonight someone shot me. Again.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, his voice dangerously soft. “Jane, if anything happened to you…”
“I hoped it would just go away. I thought maybe it was some weirdo antivamp crazy who wanted to make me uncomfortable. But now, this combined with Walter’s being set on fire, I think the guy who shot me the first time, Bud McElray, is trying to scare me or finish the job or something. I don’t know what to do. Can I complain to the human authorities? Do I go to Ophelia and tell on him—” I saw Gabriel’s face grow tense at the mention of Bud’s name. “What?”
Gabriel grimaced. “You haven’t read your paper lately, have you?”
“Besides want ads? Not really,” I admitted. “Why?”
He went into my kitchen and shuffled through the old Half-Moon Herald s in my recycling bin until he found what he wanted.
He handed the news section to me.
“Half-Moon Resident Killed in Hunting Mishap,” I read aloud from a front page dated two weeks before. “Half-Moon Hollow native Bud McElray died Tuesday when the deer stand he was climbing collapsed, bringing a thirty -two-foot oak tree down on top of him. Coroner Don Purdue described the cause of death as multiple blunt-trauma injuries, including a broken spine, fractured skull, and massive internal bleeding. Purdue added that several empty beer bottles were found around the fallen tree. He said it would take several weeks for toxicology tests to determine whether there were drugs or alcohol present in McElray ’s system.”
Let’s see, the man who mortally wounded me with a hunting rifle while drunk was killed in a freak accident on a deer stand that he was too drunk to climb. That wasn’t suspicious.
“Jane, Bud McElray can’t be the person who shot you, and he’s not the one who’s been harassing you. He’s been dead for weeks.”
“I swear I didn’t do it,” I said, dropping the paper. “It wasn’t me.”
“Of course, it wasn’t you. Trees fall. Mr. McElray had the bad luck of standing under it at the time.”
“And that doesn’t strike you as…convenient?” I asked.
“No.” He snorted. “It was a terrible inconvenience to push a very heavy tree on top of Mr. McElray.”
I gaped at him, the salty-sweet gorge of faux blood rising in my throat. “You killed him,” I whispered.
He sat there, still as stone, as he stared at me. Looking back, this may have been Gabriel’s way of saying, “Duh!”
“Say something!” I yelled. “You can’t just tell me how inconvenient it was to shove a tree on top of a living human being and then not say anything. Please tell me—just say something.”
“He hurt you,” Gabriel said, his eyes flashing silver even in the dim light. “He left you to die like some animal and just went on living his life.”
“He thought I was an animal! How could you do that? You weren’t trying to feed or to defend yourself.” I whimpered, shrinking away. “You murdered him.”