Fangs for the Memories (2 page)

Oh, no.

I pulled back, pressing my lips together, and put a hand to his chest. To his credit, the moment I pushed away, Dick took a step back. “What?”

“I can't.” I shook my head. “I'm sorry. I just can't do this.”

I turned, running back into the shop as Dick yelled, “Andrea!”

2

Vampires tend to be very literal. They do not tolerate mixed messages, such as not liking them “that way” or “necking.”

—Surviving the Undead Breakup: A Human's Guide to Healing

D
ick Cheney was bad news.

And not just in the political sense, or the hunting-accident sense.

Thanks to Jane's prattling to an invisible dead man, I managed to get through the cluttered shop and grab my purse without having to explain why I was paper-pale and shaky. I'd kissed Dick Cheney. Hell, I was pretty sure I had been about to round third base with Dick Cheney. All those months devoted to holding him at arm's length, to staying aloof and unapproachable . . . wasted.

I couldn't talk to Jane about this. She tended to do jazz hands when she did her little “I told you so” dance. No one deserved smug jazz hands. Of all the weapons in a vampire's arsenal, they were the most demoralizing.

White-knuckling the steering wheel, I drove across Half-Moon Hollow to my cute little townhouse apartment. Compared with Jane's centuries-old stone farmhouse, River Oaks, it was sort of short on personality, but it was comfortable, airy, and in a nice part of town. And my neighbors weren't nosy about my weird hours and tendency to get dressed up and go out late at night. My last landlord fielded a lot of complaint calls about “the hooker” living in my apartment.

I dropped my keys in the little crystal bowl, shut the door behind me, and closed my eyes as I slid the lock in place. My apartment was my sanctuary, my safe little corner of the world that I kept to myself. I'd spent years creating a warm, calming environment in soft blue and green tones, light fabrics, and plush, comfortable furniture. This was where I retreated when the world got too loud and I needed to restore myself with rest and quiet. And iron supplements. Lots and lots of iron supplements.

I brewed a cup of chamomile tea, then went upstairs and ran a nice hot bath. I stripped out of my shop-cleaning clothes and stood in front of my mirror. I wasn't under any self-loathing misapprehensions about my looks. I was what my dad called a stunner. I never had an awkward phase. I wasn't vain about it; it was just the way it was. I had a certain elegance of features—good cheekbones; soft, clear, peachy-pale skin; wide, deep-set blue eyes; and a waterfall of smooth, wavy red-gold hair—combined with an hourglass figure that made some aspects of life easier . . . and other aspects much harder.

My parents pinned certain expectations on me because of my good looks, and none of them were exactly what you'd wish for in terms of your parents' ambitions for you. They didn't want me to be a doctor. They wanted me to marry a doctor. They made it pretty clear that while it was “nice” that I got good grades in high school, I was being sent to Northwestern to earn my MRS.

It was that sort of low expectation that kept my self-esteem in balance.

Staring in the glass, I fanned my fingers over the raw red patches on my throat left by Dick's stubble. I sighed. Stupid, stupid girl.

I twisted my coppery hair into a knot on top of my head and slid into the just-short-of-scalding bath. I didn't bother with salts or bubbles. I wasn't in the mood for flowery scents or foam mountains. I just wanted to soak, to feel clean. Sinking until the water hit my chin, I winced at the sting of it on my scraped skin.

What the hell had I been thinking?

Dick Cheney was charming and winsome and naughty. I did not need charming and winsome and naughty. I'd had a pant-load of all that from Mathias Northon. And that had ended badly.

“So very badly,” I murmured, making little bubbles ripple over the surface of the water. I sank further and let my face slide under, enjoying the warm sensation of the water soaking through my hair to my scalp.

Mathias had been my European History professor at Northwestern. He taught evening classes, naturally, bringing tales of his ancient childhood to life with his lilting Nordic accent. Picture a well-built, paperback-romance Viking in jeans and a faded corduroy blazer. He tied his wheat-colored hair back with a strip of leather he claimed he'd been carrying since the seventh century.

I was an innocent teenager out in the world on her own for the first time and confident in my ability to make my own choices. Which, of course, translates to: I was a total idiot. I had fallen into the classic undergrad trap, plunging headlong into an ill-advised affair with a man who “understood” me as the “mature and independent woman” that I was at the ripe old age of nineteen. He assured me that it was the “bright inner light” of my soul that drew him to me and not the delicious rarity of my AB-negative blood.

Well, to be fair, he also liked the way I did his laundry.

I broke through the surface of the bathwater, sweeping my hands back over my wet hair and wiping my eyes. I leaned back against the rim of the tub and wished I'd brought vodka upstairs instead of tea.

By the end of sophomore year, I had been practically living in his off-campus apartment, providing his evening meals, folding his socks, and grading his tests. I was basically an unpaid-teaching-assistant-slash-human-juice-box. When my parents found out that I was “consorting with the undead”—thanks to the ill-timed surprise visit to the dorm room I was barely living in—they cut me off. Completely. They just couldn't risk someone from the club or church or my dad's business circle finding out that their child was tainted by association with vampires. For all intents and purposes, I was no longer their daughter. No tuition. No mention in the annual family newsletter.

So I was an uneducated, unpaid-teaching-assistant-slash-human-juice-box.

My parents couldn't have made it easier for Mathias to take advantage of me if they'd written him a manual. Without their support—financial and emotional—I was so vulnerable that I was open to anything he suggested. I officially moved in with him—without any other faculty knowing, of course. He didn't want anyone to “misunderstand” what was happening between him and his former student. And I went willingly because I was just so grateful to have someone who I believed loved me for me.

What followed was six months of subtle, carefully designed put-downs detailing my many failures. Oh, sure, I found wildly inappropriate e-mails from his undergrad students that he'd printed out and left on his desk. But I forgot to pick up his dry cleaning that time. Did I have any idea how that made him feel? Knowing that I didn't care enough to retrieve his precious pleated slacks? I didn't keep the apartment clean enough. I didn't read the right books or listen to the right music. I didn't eat the iron-rich (disgusting) foods that made my blood tasty for him. He couldn't take me to faculty gatherings because my conversational skills—or lack thereof—embarrassed him.

With each new criticism, I twisted myself into knots trying to improve myself, to mold myself into the sort of girlfriend who would make Mathias proud. But he kept raising the bar. I spent too much time around my silly human friends, he said, so I withdrew from those circles and spent more time at the apartment with Mathias. My food expenses were too much for his budget, and besides, I was getting a little too “hippy,” anyway, so I limited myself to the blood-enriching diet Mathias recommended.

He kept finding faults until I'd changed so much I barely recognized myself. And then Mathias found fresher, younger sources, and suddenly I wasn't needed anymore.

By the time I found my stuff neatly packed into boxes outside of what was no longer my apartment, I was a hollowed-out husk of a person. He'd taken everything from me—my blood, my love, my time. I had given him what I believed was most precious, and he had thrown it away like it was nothing.

Also, I had no savings, no job, no housing, no car, no credit. I tried to think of it as a blank canvas upon which to paint my brand-new life, but mostly, I was just broke and homeless.

I couldn't go home to my parents. Over the previous years, I'd tried to reach out to them. I'd sent Christmas letters and cards for their birthdays, which they'd sent back marked “Return to Sender.” Eventually, I gave up and skipped my usual Father's Day card. They took this opportunity to contact me and tell me how disappointed they were that I was no longer groveling as expected. That was the last I'd heard from them.

I crashed on the couch of the last human friend I had, or rather, a former roommate of that last human friend I had. Terri stopped talking to me after I canceled a third brunch date with her. (I'd overslept.) But Julie was super-nice and willing to accept dog walking in exchange for short-term rent. I went online, pouring my heart out in a support group chat room for women who'd survived abusive relationships with men, both undead and living.

I was reminded by several of the chat room members that I shouldn't close myself off from the world of vampires. Mathias Northon was not a dick because he was a vampire. He was just a dick. They referred me to a counselor and suggested a number of ways I might be able to support myself using my familiarity with vampire culture, such as providing my services as a blood surrogate. It turned out to be a career choice that fulfilled me and healed a little bit of the pain I associated with the undead. I followed my clients on their migration to the Hollow. And my online friends may have exacted some revenge on Mathias that I never spoke of publicly, in order to prevent my being called as a witness for the prosecution. I was happy and settled, but if you guessed that this story ends with “And she never relationship-ed again,” you'd be correct.

It'd be fair to say that my heart still felt as if it had been run through a meat grinder. I wasn't ready to let someone get close to me. I wasn't ready to trust. I wasn't ready to share so much as a stick of gum with someone else. I turned down any man who approached me, living or dead. And I maintained what I knew to be a doomed and superficial crush on unattainable vampire Gabriel Nightengale because I could tell myself my life wasn't sad and weird if I was waiting for someone.

To be fair, it turned out he was attainable for Jane. He liked his women unruly and a little disaster-prone.

Still, I was happy with my choices. Solitude simplified my life considerably. I made meaningful connections with my clients. I made new friends. I joined a book club and took Bikram yoga classes, both of which I promptly quit because I was not good at balancing while sweating or talking about books I didn't finish. I was able to volunteer for a network that supported victims of abusive relationships. I was alone, but I assured myself that didn't mean I was lonely. I was calm. I was in control.

And then I met Dick Cheney.

The carefully constructed walls I'd built around my heart cracked with each single-entendre he sent my way. Yeah, he was a criminal and a bit of a pervert, but he made me want to be wanted again. I found myself looking forward to every little interaction with him as an indulgence. It was like ice cream. I knew it wasn't good for me, but it always made me feel better. As long as he stayed in his little box marked “Nope!” I was safe.

But damned if Dick didn't keep showing me his layers, like in the alley this evening. Why had he been so upset about Mr. Wainwright? I mean, we all loved the elderly bookstore owner; we saw him as a surrogate-grandfather-figure-slash-Team-Jane-mascot. But Dick had to have known and lost lots of humans over the course of his immortal life. Why had this one death affected him so deeply?

And the kiss.

I ducked my head back under the water.

That was not the kiss of a guy who planned to run off at the first sign of twilight. It was like the parts of me that hadn't felt passion or excitement in years woke up all at once. And they were screaming at me to drag Dick Cheney back to my apartment and make him my love monkey.

Maybe I was just confused by the pairing off in my group of friends. Jane and Gabriel were obviously heading toward a meaningful relationship. And I was happy for them, even if it was a little awkward having received the “let's just be friends or maybe even less” speech from him.

And Jane's longtime friend Zeb and his fiancée, Jolene, were hurtling down the aisle, despite the efforts of Jolene's werewolf relatives to kill Zeb before he reached the altar. That was not hyperbole. Her cousins had dropped a running chainsaw on him and taken one of his pinkie toes.

Maybe this recent square dance of partnering up in my peer group was just reminding me that I was alone. And because I was too anxious to really connect with anyone, maybe I was latching onto Dick because fretting over a possible relationship prevented me from going out and finding an appropriate nonfelon date.

I broke through the surface of the water again and rested the back of my head against the lip of the tub.

Yeah, that was it. Dick was a mirage of my own insecurities and self-destructive urges. I didn't like him. I liked the idea of him. It had nothing to do with the way his bottle-green eyes took on a naughty sparkle when he made a joke, or the way he was covertly so kind to Jane, helping and supporting her even when it was clear that doing so wouldn't result in either sex or money. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was respecting my boundaries even though he could use his vampire strength against me at any time. Nope, it had nothing to do with any of that.