Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors (12 page)

“I don’t know who you are since you became this
thing
!” she shouted at me.

“This thing is just like your son. Jamie’s the same sweet kid he always was, just a little different now. You have an amazing opportunity here. You almost lost your son, but you can still talk to him. You can still hold him. And tell him you love him. Can you honestly say that you don’t want that?”

“I don’t know!” his mother shouted.

“You don’t know?” Jamie and I chorused.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Jamie demanded. “I’m your son!”

“You’re a vampire,” she shot back. “You drink
blood
. You’re dangerous. We weren’t even allowed to know where you were until today, ‘for our own protection.’ Did you think we were going to bring you home with us? Did you think we’d let you near your sister?”

And by the look on Jamie’s face, I realized that yes, Jamie did expect to be taken home. Even though we’d explained that he was staying with us for the time being, he’d expected to go home with his parents. And he couldn’t comprehend that it wasn’t going to happen that night. It might never happen.

Suddenly, I realized that my mother was not so bad.

“Mom,” Jamie said, his voice dangerously close to a sob as he stepped forward and took her hand. “Please!”

“You stay away from us!” she yelled, stepping back toward the truck.

“You can’t just cut him off like that!” I exclaimed.

She yanked the truck door open. “I can do anything I need to do to protect my family.”

“He’s your son!” I cried.

Rosie slammed the truck door, but Jeff gave Jamie one last sad look. Quietly, he said, “Our son is dead.”

The engine roared to life, and the truck thundered back out of the driveway. I watched the taillights dim in the distance, mesmerized by the fading color. Jamie sat down on the porch steps with a thud. Although he was naturally quite pale, his face seemed ashy gray.

“Well, I don’t have to worry about school anymore,” he said. “Or baseball or college.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. It was a manly, though weary, gesture, and he might have pulled it off, if not for the faint bloody smudges of vampire tears around his eyes.

“It’s OK to be upset, Jamie. There’s nothing wrong with being hurt when your family rejects you. And it could have been worse. Gabriel’s family tied him to a tree and left him out for the sun.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“My mom keeps trying to force-feed me pot pie,” I added.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Have I not mentioned the ‘solid foods make us vomit’ thing?” I asked, cringing. “There’s a whole thing
with our enzymes—well, a lack of enzymes. The bottom line is that all human food will now taste like wet dirt and gym socks to you.”

“I’ve been too thirsty to think about it,” he said, his brow furrowed. “But now it makes a lot more sense that you don’t have any food in the house . . . Well, this day just keeps getting better and better.”

I smiled at him sympathetically. “It’s OK. You know, you’ve adjusted to this new life pretty well, considering. You haven’t had a big freak-out moment. I had several when I was first turned. You haven’t tried to run away. You haven’t tried to attack a bus full of nuns. As your sire, I’m very proud of you.”

He groaned. “What is your deal with the busload of nuns?”

“It’s an interesting visual,” I said, shrugging and pulling him to his feet. “Come on, we’ll go inside, and I’ll warm you up a bottle of blood.”

“What about your mom? Weren’t you supposed to go over there tonight?”

“I’ll call her and tell her I can’t make it. She’ll be fine.”

Unfortunately, Rosie Lanier managed to call my mother before I did. Mama took time out of her busy grieving schedule to call me and yell like I haven’t heard since that time she found the belly-button ring I’d sported for a grand total of three weeks in college.

“Oh, Jane, how could you?” Mama cried, so loudly that I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “You were doing so well, not eating people.”

“I didn’t eat him, Mama, I was saving his life. It was either this, or he was dead. It was the same sort of situation I was in, injured and not likely to get medical attention in time. Jamie asked me to turn him, just like I asked Gabriel to turn me. Would you have rather Gabriel just left me alone to die because he was afraid of upsetting you?”

“No, honey, you know that. It’s just—Oh, how am I going to face Rosie?” she fretted. “This is so much worse than that time Jamie threw that water pistol at your head and left you with that little divot in your eyebrow.”

The aforementioned dented eyebrow winged up to my hairline. I’d completely forgotten about that. Jamie’s mom had made him pay for my emergency-room deductible with his piggy-bank savings and birthday money. But he never pitched another tantrum while I was babysitting him. I was so bringing that up later.

Mama’s insistent voice jerked me out of my thoughts. “Aren’t you worried about what people will think?”

“When have I ever worried about what people will think?” I asked.

“That was before you owned a business that depended on the goodwill of your neighbors.”

Dang it, she made a good point. My vampire and werewolf customers wouldn’t care much about my emergency sire status, but a sudden exodus of walk-in human customers would hurt business. I would have to talk to Andrea about increasing our online sales presence, just in case.

“I’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Well, what does Gabriel think of all this?” she demanded.

“He’s fine with it,” I said, my voice rising to an octave only Fitz could hear. From across the kitchen, Gabriel gave me a sardonic little frown.

“Honey, you have to be careful. You’re in a very delicate stage in your relationship right now. You’re living together. Gabriel’s finding out about all of your annoying little habits.”

A little huff of outrage escaped my mouth. “What annoying little habits?”

“You’re discovering things about each other every day, not all of them good. Most of them not good,” Mama continued without pause. “And you’re not married, so Gabriel practically has an escape hatch built into the back door. And then you add an attractive younger man to your household—he’s practically an adorable baby bird with a broken wing. This is going to add stress to your already fragile relationship.”

“Fragile?”

“It’s like you’re trying to chase Gabriel away.” Mama sighed. “You’re not getting any younger, you know, honey.”

“I’m not getting any older, either.” I snorted.

“You know what I mean!” she exclaimed. “It’s like you’re trying to sabotage your relationship. Don’t you want to get married? Don’t you want to make a commitment to Gabriel?”

And suddenly, we were right back to the sort of conversation human Jane would have had with her
mother. Obviously, Grandma Ruthie’s death had sent Mama into a regressive tailspin.

“Actually, I’m not worried about making a commitment to Gabriel, because we’re already engaged. Have been for a couple of weeks now. ’K ’bye!”

I hung up the phone, despite Mama’s overjoyed shrieks, and banged my head against the countertop.

“I’m going to kill Ophelia for this. I don’t care how many intimidating quips she throws at me. Her adolescent ass is mine.”

A word about romantic relationships between sires and their children. That word is “complicated.”

—Siring for the Stupid:
A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires

F
or the record, exorcisms are not as easy to perform as you would think.

For one thing, when you cast a spirit out of the house, you have to be very careful to name a specific spirit, or you could bar other ghosts, namely Mr. Wainwright and Aunt Jettie, from ever coming near the property again. And second, if you do the rite with enough conviction, you can cast those spirits into the next plane whether they’re ready to move on or not. So, in other words, if I messed with forces I didn’t understand, I could accidentally send my most cherished relative to that big University of Kentucky basketball game in the sky.

Researching the various ways to evict my lifeless freeloader gave me something to think about, besides the gigantic pile of wedding-planning books Mama had left on my front porch that afternoon.

The Vegas route was looking better and better.

I already knew a little bit about ghosts, thanks to my experiences with Mr. Wainwright and Aunt Jettie. For instance, spirits are not confined to specific places. They can wander as far as their energy can take them. Aunt Jettie had always had the energy of a hyperactive kindergartner at naptime, so it was no wonder that it took her six days after the passing of her sister to touch down finally at River Oaks. Since Grandma Ruthie’s spectral presence had been popping up all over the house and generally making a nuisance of herself, I wasted no time in breaking the bad news to her.

Aunt Jettie responded by cackling. “Oh, sweetie, I know!” she crowed. “That’s where I’ve been the last few days. All of Ruthie’s exes got together as soon as they heard, and they’ve been throwing a party like you wouldn’t believe down at the cemetery.”

“Nice,” I muttered as Mr. Wainwright shared a commiserating glance with me and shook his head at my dead aunt’s doing the cha-cha around the parlor. Gabriel and Jamie appeared in the doorway. Gabriel chuckled at Jettie’s antics, but Jamie, who didn’t quite understand why there were transparent people in the living room, rolled his eyes and went to the kitchen for a bottled blood.

Aunt Jettie stopped two-stepping long enough to smirk at me. “There are a quite a few men around this town who have been waiting for this day for a while now, Jane.”

“So, if you knew Grandma Ruthie was here, why did you stay away for so long?” I demanded.

Aunt Jettie’s misty form stopped in its tracks. I would say that her face went pale, but ghosts pretty much corner the market in pale. I guess spirits turn sort of bluish-gray when they’re shocked to the point of vomiting ectoplasm. “That’s not funny, Jane.”

“Oh, I’m not laughing. Grandma Ruthie has decided that she’s going to haunt me out of the house.”

“Oh, hell, no. Ruthie!” Jettie yelled. “You get your skinny ass down here!”

I waited, but Ruthie didn’t respond.

“Ruth Ann Early, I’m calling you! Don’t pretend you don’t hear me!”

“Can she just ignore her?” I asked Mr. Wainwright, who nodded sagely.

“Absolutely. We don’t have to answer one another,” Mr. Wainwright said. “Though certain humans with necromantic or medium abilities can call upon the dead and compel them to answer, spirits do not have any authority over one another.”

“Though it’s pretty damn rude for someone who claims to be such a paragon of good manners!” Jettie yelled, glaring at the ceiling.

The windows and the china-cabinet doors began swinging back and forth. A clay handprint I’d made Jettie in third grade tumbled from a shelf and shattered. Gabriel crossed the room, prepared to protect me from flying objets d’art. Jamie came rushing back into the living room.

“The fridge door came open and smacked me in the face,” he said indignantly. The purpling bruise on his
forehead was already receding, but I could tell that Jamie was more afraid than hurt.

“Does it seem odd that she’s advancing so quickly?” Gabriel asked. “At this point, most spirits haven’t accepted their passing yet. Doesn’t it take weeks to build up this kind of kinetic energy?”

“Well, she always did succeed by being a pain in the ass while she was alive. Why not now?” Jettie called out.

There was an increased burst of activity. The curtains flapped like linen flames leaping from the windows. The cabinet door slammed against the wall so hard that the glass shattered. Figurines danced on the trembling shelves. And then, suddenly, nothing. Absolute quiet. Jamie seemed to relax instantly at my side, mirroring my movements like a nervous puppy.

“That hit a nerve,” Jettie said nastily.

“What happened?” I asked. “Why did it die out so suddenly?”

“I would say her tank ran out of gas, so to speak,” Mr. Wainwright said. “You said she appeared to you before, Jane? That she was able to speak to you for several minutes? She managed to seal a door shut? She made you uncomfortable by changing the atmosphere of the room?” When I nodded, he said, “For a new spirit, that would take a lot of energy. I would imagine she will be quiet again for a few days after this display.”

“It explains why we hadn’t heard from her again until now,” I mused. “So, she’s just lurking around in the ether, watching us and saving up her energy?”

“Essentially,” Mr. Wainwright responded while Jamie declared that it was “über-creepy.”

“I have a few books on the subject at the shop.”

I had the urge to kiss Mr. Wainwright on top of his balding, insubstantial head. “Of course you do. Any chance she could decapitate a deer and leave the head on my front porch?” I asked. They gave me twin expressions of confusion and concern. “Probably not. Hey, can’t you just kick her out of the house?”