Blessed (39 page)

Zachary brightened. “You know, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

Finally, after much more chatter and laughter and Italian cuisine, it was time to say good night to family and friends, hand-in-hand with my tantalizing Wolf man.

On our way out, the GA winked at me, and Mrs. Levy gave Kieren a high five.

As we cut through the dining room, Sinatra was singing “Our Love Is Here to Stay.” I felt so light and normal and happy in the midst of all the pseudosupernatural activity. The fan boys and fan girls, the urban cowboys and cowgirls, the button-down types out for a night with wild things.

The frolicking pretend fiends. I admired the hot blonde with the cat o’ nine tails, the redhead in the monstrously huge pearl-and-diamond necklace, the pixie in a cool black felt cowboy hat. Mercedes’s dads dancing, cheek-to-cheek, in matching tuxes . . . the buxom woman in flapper fringe . . . and the beauty with the heavily kohled eyes and a crescent-moon
bindi.
Deliciously wicked and wickedly delicious.

Sanguini’s: A Very Rare Restaurant was my home.

“What’s with Meghan?” I asked. “She went gaga over Zachary.”

Kieren leaned in. “According to your angel, the pure of heart can recognize him for what he is. Little kids mostly. Mitch, before he was made undead.”

I thought about it. “So, I may have a whole soul, but I’m not pure of heart?”

Kieren waggled his thick eyebrows. “Makes my life more interesting.”

Wrapped around each other on a bench on the pedestrian bridge over Town Lake, Kieren and I stared at the heavens. It was hard to make out the stars, what with all the light pollution from the city. But we watched the black birds swoop and the black bats swirl. It almost looked as if they were dancing. If I someday reached Old Blood status, I’d be able to take bat form and join in their aerobatics. Just the idea of it was dizzying.

“I’ve been thinking . . .” Kieren began. “You’ll always look like you, and Zachary will always look like him. Meanwhile, I’ll grow old and mangy.”

“Mangy?” I glanced at him sideways. “Don’t say
mangy. Mangy
is harsh.”

“Hmm.” Kieren offered a Wolfish grin. “You don’t suppose my guardian angel is impossibly good-looking?”

“Doubt it,” I replied, and he growled playfully.

“By the way,” I added, taking his hand. “I keep meaning to thank you.”

He nuzzled my hair. “For . . . ?”

“Always believing in me.”

As Kieren leaned in for a kiss, I noticed Mitch shuffling toward us on the bridge. In scratchy lettering, his cardboard sign read:

Abraham “Bram” Stoker first introduced his title character Dracula, the king of all literary vampires, in a famed 1897 novel.

Blessed
and my two novels that preceded it —
Tantalize
and
Eternal
— are a conversation of sorts between me and Stoker about several of his themes, including the “other,” the “dark” foreigner, invasion, plague, the role of religion, and gender-power dynamics.

Throughout, I’ve made an affectionate effort to honor his classic while still being willing to reinterpret and extend its mythology. Nods to his work abound, not the least of them being the integrated epistolary elements (correspondence, menus, obituary) and aspects of the structure of this third novel. However, Stoker’s world doesn’t, for example, appear to have more than one kind of vampire, and so far as we know, his Count Dracula didn’t transform from one breed of undead to another. Consequently, I enthusiastically recommend studying
Dracula
yourself rather than relying on Quincie’s rather abbreviated summary and idiosyncratic interpretation of the text. And keep in mind, as Nora mentions, in my fictional world, Stoker’s story is only
loosely
based on truth.

Readers — both old-school and pop culture — may also spot passing references to the words and works of Forrest J Ackerman, Douglas Adams, Charles Addams, M. T. Anderson, Fred Astaire, Paul Barber (
Vampires, Burial, and Death
), L. Frank Baum, Jesse Belvin, Pat Benatar, William Peter Blatty, Blondie, Andy Breckman, the Brontë sisters, the Brothers Grimm, Dan Brown, Gottfried August Bürger (“Lenore”), Chris Carter (
The X-Files: I Want to Believe
), Stephen Chao, David Chase, Children’s Television Workshop, Rosemary Clement-Moore, Montgomery Clift, Gene Colan, Davy Crockett, Don DaGradi, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jean Evans, Bill Finger, Pink Floyd, Katie Ford, Clark Gable, Ward Greene, Doug Hajicek, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gaynel Hodge, Shirley Jackson, Ed James, Billy Joel, Bob Kane, Erich Kästner, Jacqueline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Joseph Kesselring, Edward Khmara, Annette Curtis Klause, Noel Langley, Jesse Lasky, Jr., Marc Lawrence, Michael Linder, Jeph Loeb, Susan Lowell, Caryn Lucas, George Lucas, Robin Menken, Richard O’Brien, Ovid, Luciano Pavarotti, I. M. Pei, Erdman Penner, Edgar Allan Poe, Giacomo Puccini, Nicholas Ray, Anne Rice, Joe Rinaldi, Jerry Robinson, Gene Roddenberry, J. K. Rowling, Joe Ruby, Jane Russell, Maurice Sendak, William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Fred Silverman, Frank Sinatra, John Sinclair, Ed Solomon, Ken Spears, Scott Spencer, Steven Spielberg, Henry Morton Stanley, David Swift, Algernon Sydney, Iwao Takamoto, J. R. R. Tolkien, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Matthew Weisman, Lawrence Welk, Joss Whedon, Curtis Williams, Marv Wolfman, Ralph Wright, and Vernon Zimmerman.

However,
The Blood-Drinker’s Guide, A Taste of Transylvania, Demonic Digest, The Gothic Gourmet, Underworld Business Monthly, Eternal Elegance,
the Eternal News Network (ENN), and other media references are entirely fictional.

Likewise, I had fun playing with historical figures and events.

Thank you, President Buchanan. Sorry to ruin your inaugural ball like that.

When it comes to setting, Austinites will note that the official name of Town Lake has been changed to Lady Bird Lake, in honor of former first lady Lady Bird Johnson. However, old habits die harder than vampires, and many of us still call it Town Lake.

Furthermore, my novel incorporates a handful of fictional streets, private homes, businesses, and the nonprofit Bat Anti-Defamation League.

My own creations also include Whitby Estates on Chicago’s north shore; New Schwarzwald, Michigan; and — I’m saddened to admit — Sanguini’s: A Very Rare Restaurant in south Austin. And yet I can assure you that the
essence
of the vampire-themed restaurant is quite real and eternally thirsty.

Thanks to the choirs of angels in the Austin children’s and YA book community, at Candlewick Press, and at Curtis Brown Ltd. Special thanks to Brian Anderson; another Brian (in admissions at the University of Texas); Elson Oshman Blunt; Gene Brenek; Shutta Crum; Ginger Knowlton of Curtis Brown; Shayne Leighton; Tracy Marchini and Anna Umansky; Elizabeth Miller (
A Dracula Handbook
); Greg Leitich Smith; everyone at Vermont College of Fine Arts; Jennifer Yoon; and especially Deborah Wayshak.

“Hey, Tiff, how ’bout a
man
in your future?” Aiden calls from the nearest concession stand as he pours butter-flavored oil into the popcorn popper.

The scent of rotating sausages and heating cheese makes my stomach rumble, but I yawn and hurry on my catty-corner path across the main drag toward my grandmother’s tent. What with working nights, I can’t seem to get enough sleep anymore. I spent this afternoon on the living lot crashed on a hammock in the sunshine.

The carnival scene is only vaguely freakish. Sure, talk has it that the carousel is haunted and my grandma really has the sight and the owner is some kind of shape-shifter, but that’s just talk. And our roustabouts are on the tough side, but you could say the same for the losers back at my high school in Detroit. Other than one bit-off ear and one small-time drug bust, nothing remotely interesting has happened all summer.

Right now, we’re set up on the outskirts of Nowhere, Oklahoma. It’s July, just past sundown, and the front gates open in fifteen minutes. It’s also ungodly hot, dry from the drought, and pink clay dust is blowing everywhere.

As I saunter on, exaggerated kissing sounds trail me from the ex-con taking position at the Ferris wheel. A low whistle emerges from his brother-in-law, who’s touching up the red paint on the barred wagon labeled MANEATING SNAKE.

Alongside a tin-can-alley game, I glimpse white teeth, the shadowy profile of a lean cowboy. A stranger. As I pause for a better look, he’s gone.

Still, I stretch my arms over my head and arch my back, just to give the rest of the boys something to look at, showing off how my orange baby-doll T and denim cutoffs accent my curves. I’m a flirt, I admit it. I love the attention, especially ‘cause it’s so new.

I’m what people call “a late bloomer.” This May, not long after my sixteenth birthday, I finally started my period for the first time and shifted from blah to bombshell overnight.

For me, it was a relief. My mom, on the other hand, had a full-scale panic attack. Before you could say “Xanax,” she packed me up and shipped me off to my grandmother, who at the time was predicting the future in Missouri off I-35.

I tilt my head at one last whistle as I enter Granny Z.’s tent.

“Cat calls,” she mutters, glancing up from the table where she’s filing her long nails. “You’re late.”