Blood Ties (3 page)

“Nice! Would you?” Sledge seemed to think this was a fine idea. “I keep asking Ms. Fitch to make me a vamp or a zombie, anything!” He frowned. “She never does it. Having some powers would be the best.”

A girl's voice spoke from behind him. “Well, you've already got the power to be annoying.” A tall girl with long blond hair stepped out and shoved Sledge across the porch like he was an empty cardboard box rather than a six-and-a-half-foot-tall meat wagon who would have been every human football coach's dream if he could stay in school. “Hey, Oliver,” the girl said casually, continuing across the porch and down the steps.

“Hey, Autumn,” Oliver replied. These were Dean's homeschool classmates.

Autumn's hair fell down her shoulders, which were barely covered by a tank top, and she wore short cutoffs and flip-flops. Oliver considered, as he often did, that Autumn would probably be pretty attractive if she wasn't a zombie. But since she was, her skin was splotchy with purple and gray decay and had rotted off in places, like almost to the bone on her left shoulder, and that just wasn't very … pleasant. Plus, her mother, Ariana Fitch, while apparently a great homeschool teacher, was a pretty earthy zombie and didn't believe in odor concealment. The combined scent of Autumn and her mother was practically unbearable to a sensitive vampire nose.

“Good evening, Oliver.” Ms. Fitch joined them on the porch now. Her black dress was barely visible because of the hair wrapped around her. As with vampires, zombies' hair and fingernails continued to grow beyond the grave. Not only that, they grew much more rapidly than humans'. Oliver had to get his hair cut nearly every two weeks. Many zombies just chose to shave their heads or pull all their hair out, though they often lost some scalp in the process.

Ms. Fitch, however, hadn't cut her hair in probably thirty years. It was curled into thick blond dreadlocks and dropped like a nest of pythons off her head, wrapping completely around her waist, then around one shoulder, then the other, winding down one arm, and finally across to the other, where she held the ends in her hand.

“Hey, Oliver.” Dean appeared in the doorway. “Have a good summer, guys!” he called to his schoolmates.

“Later, Aunders,” Sledge called to Dean. “Let me know if you guys are going out killing or anything,” he said with a smile. “I'd love that—hey, ice cream!” Sledge immediately turned and ran toward the far end of the street, as if the convenience store, which had always been there, had just appeared out of nowhere.

“Bye, Dean,” Autumn said warmly. “Maybe we can hang out sometime this summer…”

“Um.” Dean gulped. “Sure.”

“Enjoy your vacation, Dean,” said Ms. Fitch with a sly smile. She and Autumn walked around the side of the house to cut through the yards. Their pod lived beneath the nearby Safeway supermarket.

“So…” Oliver said. “Autumn?”

Areas of Dean's face went a slightly darker shade of purple. “Yeah, um … I don't know about that.” He stepped back into the house. Oliver followed him through the dark living room, toward the candlelit kitchen.

“She seems nice,” Oliver offered.

“I guess.” Dean shrugged. “Um … hey, only two days until we leave!”

“Yeah.” Oliver tried to sound upbeat. He was glad that Dean was coming along on the Nocturnes' vacation: That was another bonus of everyone believing Dean was his servant.

“Hey, Oliver!”

Oliver looked around Dean and felt a familiar rush of tingling nerves. There was Emalie, smiling from beside the kitchen counter. “Hey,” he managed to reply.

Emalie, her hair in two braids, was busily spreading white frosting on the sides of a chocolate cake. A second spatula was applying frosting as well. It hovered in the air as if held by an invisible hand. Now it dropped to the counter and there was a rush of black, like a faint mist, across the room.

Oliver felt a slight, cool tingling by his shoulder. “Hi, Oliver,” said a mousy voice.

“Hey, Jenette,” Oliver said to the misty wraith. “You got away from The Shoals again?”

Jenette sighed. “Yeah, it wasn't easy, but I wanted to see you guys before you left!”

At this, Oliver's sensitive ears detected the slightest sigh from Emalie, who had finished icing the cake and was now covering it with small peanut butter cups.

“I can't believe you'll be gone for three whole weeks.” Jenette slipped from one of Oliver's shoulders to the other. “I'll be so bored.”

“Yeah, well…” Oliver had no idea what to say.

“You can always haunt my brother,” Dean offered.

“Hey!” Dean's younger brother, Kyle, shouted from the other room.

“Oh, wait! I'll help!” Jenette called, and darted back to the counter, where Emalie had finished with the cake and was now gathering handfuls of silverware to bring to the dining room. Oliver noticed Emalie roll her eyes. Ever since Jenette had been hired by the Brotherhood to possess Emalie and slay Oliver, she had been trying to make amends by helping Emalie out. Or at least that was why she
said
she came around.… She always seemed pretty excited to see Oliver.

“All right, everyone, to the table!” Dean's mom, Tammy Aunders, appeared behind the kitchen counter, standing up from the oven with a tray of breaded chicken. She was improbably tall, with wild, curly hair. “Hello, Oliver,” she said pleasantly, then turned her eyes to the ceiling. “Mitch!”

“Dad's still having trouble adjusting to his new night job,” Dean explained as they passed through the kitchen. “He wants to be nocturnal so someone's on my schedule, or at least that's what Mom wants.”

Oliver noted Tammy zipping around, doing four things at once. As usual, there were thick old library books scattered across the counter. Oliver caught a few titles:
Brains and Your Health, Preparing Raw Organ Sushi, Better Carcass Technique…

They entered the dining room to find Kyle, who was eight, and Dean's sister, Elizabeth, who was ten, already seated at the table. The lights were off. Above the table, the Aunderses had replaced their light fixture with a small, candlelit chandelier.

“Hey, Oliver!” Kyle called excitedly. He was wearing a small headlamp to read a comic book in the gloom.

“Hey,” said Oliver.

Elizabeth gave Oliver and Dean only a glance, then gazed sullenly back into a space somewhere in the middle of the table.

Kyle stared at Oliver as he took his seat, making Oliver squint. “I've been reading about Dracula!” he said excitedly.

“Ugh, turn the light off,” Dean said, and snatched the headlamp off Kyle's head.

“Eeww!” Kyle recoiled from Dean's hand. “Don't touch me!”

“Dracula, huh?” Oliver said to Kyle, trying to be polite.

“Yeah,” Kyle continued, “I read he can turn into a bat, or smoke. Can you do that stuff?”

“Not yet,” Oliver replied.

Kyle shrugged his eyebrows. “Oh. Well, also, I read that Dracula can control people's minds and make them into his minions. He made this one guy eat bugs!”

“I can make
you
eat bugs,” Emalie said from across the table. She flashed a mischievous grin at Oliver and Dean, and then, with a nod, made Kyle's fork rise off the table. It turned and started to float across the room. “Let's go find some bugs for Kyle!”

“Stop it!” Kyle shouted, his little round face suddenly draining to white.

Oliver watched Emalie as she gazed intently after the fork. He saw her left hand gripping a small black velvet bag and knew it was one of her Orani charms. Emalie had been studying with her great-aunt Kathleen throughout the spring, learning more about her Orani powers.

Emalie was a descendant of a secret line of women. Her mom, Margaret, had been missing for two years. She had left behind notebooks full of enchantments and charms, which Kathleen had been helping Emalie decipher.

Most of what Emalie could do now involved reading people and getting inside their heads. Orani weren't big on sorcery or magic, but Emalie could also manipulate simple objects by making a connection between the energy of a person's emotions and the item.

In this case, Emalie had taken Kyle's thoughts of food and bugs, combined with a bit of the fear that he secretly felt when Oliver was around, and channeled these emotions to move the fork. Oliver knew that since Kyle was young, his fears could grow quickly, and if Emalie wasn't careful, that fork really would travel all the way to the basement, spear a nice juicy spider, and bring it up to Kyle, whether Emalie wanted it to or not. This was the constant balance with the energies that Emalie could harness. If they got out of control, there could be trouble.

“Don't do that!” Kyle shouted. “Mom! The witch is making me eat bugs!”

“Kyle David!” Tammy scolded from the kitchen.

“I was just kidding, Kyle,” Emalie said grumpily. The fork returned to Kyle's plate with a clang.

“All right.” Tammy swept to the table with two plates of chicken and macaroni and cheese. “Here you go, kids,” she said as she placed them in front of Kyle and Elizabeth. She returned a moment later with a similar plate for Emalie, and one for her own seat.

“Thanks, Aunt Tammy,” Emalie called brightly. Dean's mother was her dad's sister.

Dean's father, Mitch, trudged into the dining room, wearing a bathrobe and slippers. The little hair remaining on his head was frizzed this way and that, and his eyes were barely visible over deep bags.

“Hey, Dad,” Dean said. Oliver saw Dean watching his father carefully.

“Rise and shine, Mitch,” Tammy said cheerily, yet it sounded to Oliver like an order. She appeared at the table with a plate of eggs and toast and a cup of coffee.

Mitch dropped into his seat and looked around the table, seeming to glance past Dean quickly, and Oliver even more briefly. He grabbed his coffee, took a sip, then stared over his mug, his eyes finding the same lost space in the center of the table that Elizabeth was gazing into. “So,” he said, “school's out for the vampires, too?” Mitch sounded very tired.

“We got out last night,” Oliver replied.

“Our last day is tomorrow,” Emalie added.

“Mmm.” Mitch started eating his eggs.

“Oh, honey … Mitch is still getting used to his new hours,” said Tammy as she returned to the table with one last plate. “Here you go, Dean,” she added quietly.

Elizabeth glanced at Dean's plate and a thin huff escaped her scowling lips.

“Gross,” Kyle confirmed.

“Thanks, Mom,” Dean said unexcitedly, looking down at the heap of raw chicken carcass. “How'd it go this time?” he asked. Since Dean had returned, the Aunderses had taken to keeping chickens in a backyard coop.

“Well, you know…” Tammy sighed as she headed back into the kitchen. “I did a little better with the beheading. And the defeathering is getting faster. It's no big deal.” Then she added, “It's how our ancestors lived!” She almost sounded enthusiastic, but not quite.

Dean leaned toward Oliver. “She says that all the time.”

Oliver nodded. He didn't envy Dean for having to eat that. Tammy's skills at preparing a carcass were definitely getting better, but the results were still rough.

Now she returned a final time, with a small juice glass of blood for Oliver. She met Oliver's eyes, but looked away quickly. “That's all I could get from the chicken.” She put it down. “Sorry there isn't more. I've
got
to buckle down and get my reading done—I know I can extract blood more efficiently.”

“It's plenty,” Oliver said, trying to be polite.

“No, no.” Tammy spun and disappeared, still talking from the kitchen. “I didn't have time to do any baking this week.…” Oliver was reminded of how Phlox got sometimes, when she was doing too many things at once. Tammy popped back in. “But I got you these.” She placed the plate in front of Oliver and finally sat down herself.

“That's perfect,” Oliver assured her, hiding his disappointment at seeing the two Twinkies on the plate. Vampires considered Twinkies practically a poisonous food, with all the junk ingredients inside them.

“Well, dig in, everyone. Here's to summer!” Tammy said with a smile, raising a glass of red wine, then glancing sideways at Oliver and Dean, as if realizing that summer wasn't something to celebrate if you were nocturnal. “Or…”

“No,” Dean said quickly, raising his own glass of pure lemon juice (a favorite of zombies that was good for regulating bacteria), “that's cool, Mom. To summer.”

Everyone toasted and then began eating. A silence fell over the table. Mitch yawned. Elizabeth ate quickly. Tammy watched everyone to make sure that they were eating and barely touched her own food. Oliver found Kyle watching him now and again. Emalie had to wait to start eating as Jenette unfolded her napkin and placed it in her lap for her.

Tammy finally took a few bites. “So,” she said a moment later, “are you guys excited about your trip?”

“Yeah,” Oliver replied, trying not to scowl at the artificial taste of his Twinkie.

“I know Dean hasn't done his packing yet,” Tammy said with a smile toward her son.

“Mom—” Dean sulked.

“Dean,” Tammy intoned, “if you wait until the last minute, we'll end up running all over town to get things and it will be extremely stressful. What time did you say the charion train leaves, Oliver?”

“Eleven p.m.”

“Ugh,” Elizabeth said softly.

“What is it, Lizzie?” Tammy asked.

Her nose wrinkled with a look like she might be sick. “I can't eat with the … smell,” she said, still staring into the table.

“Well…” Tammy glanced guiltily at Dean, her brow furrowed. “It's not that bad, Lizzie. You can—”

“No—” Tears were welling in Elizabeth's eyes. “I can't.” She sniffled.

Oliver saw Tammy's eyes momentarily well up, too. For the past four months, he'd watched the Aunders family trying to make it work with Dean. Sometimes it made Oliver feel a little jealous. Dean never had to hide who he was when he was at home. But still, both families were trying to pretend things were normal, when they just weren't. Oliver wondered if Dean's family would ever really get used to him being a zombie. Oliver had never heard of a zombie living with a human family. Could there ever be normal happy dinners, or would it always be a struggle? Would there always be tears just beneath the surface?