Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors (20 page)

“Well, Jenny had so many friends she had a hard time choosing from them. You said you understood.”

“Yes, because I didn’t want to wear the foofy pink dress she’d picked out. I think I’m doing her a favor in return,” I said.

“What will people think if you shut your sister out of your wedding?”

“They’re going to think, isn’t it nice that Jenny came to the wedding to support Jane instead of going through with that pesky lawsuit?”

Mama waved my concerns away with a flick of her wrist. “That’s just silly talk. Jenny, sweetheart, Jane
needs to talk to you about finding shoes to match your bridesmaid’s dress.”

Andrea and Jolene turned to me, twin expressions of confusion and shock on their faces. Having expected some maneuver like this from Mama, I tried to calculate the impact of futilely objecting to the bridesmaid shuffle versus future machinations. I decided to let Mama win this battle if it meant that she’d stay off my ass in other more important wars. So I bit my lip and said nothing. Jenny scurried around the car, followed by Jolene and Andrea.

“I thought I wasn’t going to be in your wedding party!” Jenny exclaimed.

“That’s what I thought, too, but Mama’s insisting.”

“Insisting that I wear that hag rag of a dress you picked out? Gee, thanks, Mama.”

“Hag rag?” Andrea repeated.

Jolene sighed. “I’m sure I had that comin’, considerin’ the color of peach I made you wear.”

I did my best to look contrite. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” Jenny muttered.

Andrea raised her hand hesitantly. “Can we go back to ‘hag rag’?”

“Just remember, I will be responsible for planning your bachelorette party,” Jenny told me.

I snorted. “Anything you do won’t be nearly as scary as what Jolene’s cousins did.”

At some point, your childe may challenge you to a fight. Try not to beat the childe too badly. Imagine having your mother knock you into unconsciousness. It would be emotionally scarring on several levels.

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

I
knew that Gabriel was feeling better when he threw Jamie through a wall.

Tension in the house had been increasing since I went back to work. I think Grandma Ruthie was making her presence known by moving cell phones and checkbooks and anything else we needed. She would hover over us in our sleep, whispering. She’d pop up behind us in mirrors and corners of rooms. Aunt Jettie was spending most of her time patrolling the grounds with Mr. Wainwright, but every time she sensed Grandma Ruthie materializing, she’d pop into the house. The amount of energy she was expending left her exhausted.

Gabriel and Jamie were increasingly cranky with each other. Gabriel’s recovery from the poisoning was
slow. We figured out that several small meals of donor blood throughout the night healed him a lot faster than bottled synthetic, but he was still pale and weak. He was able to get out of bed, but he hobbled like a man who was nearing his bicentennial birthday. Feeling weak, dependent, brought out the worst in him. He was still loving and appreciative of me, but everything about Jamie set his fangs on edge.

Little disputes over dirty laundry on the floor and sorting the recycling became screaming matches. Gabriel would corner me and complain about my “inconsiderate bratling” of a childe. Jamie would pout in his room until I came to investigate his absence, then make forced confessions of how much easier life would be without Gabriel living with us.

Things at the shop weren’t much better. Once word got around that I was back to work, every other person who came through the door asked me to turn them. I heard every sob story possible, from terminal illness to needing a few extra decades to pay off student loans. Oddly enough, my vampire clientele increased. It was as if I’d passed some sort of test. I was a “real” vampire now.

The vandalism had dropped off completely with the installation of the security cameras. The only glimpse we’d caught of the perpetrators was a hunting boot as the person stepped just a tiny bit into the frame, saw the camera, and ran away.

I lived on edge, fearful of what each evening would bring. I was afraid of walking to the door every night. I was afraid to let Gabriel get too close to the windows.
I tried to devote my attention to wedding details, to something hopeful, but with Iris on the case, there wasn’t much for me to do. After deciding on the Austen theme, she’d pretty much run the show, sending me daily progress reports and e-mailing pictures of the invitations, linens, and other items she’d arranged. And then Jamie got a look at the old-fashioned morning coat Gabriel would be wearing and nearly fell over laughing—which started another argument, which sent me running for work early that night.

So when I came home and heard the commotion from the driveway, I gritted my teeth and stomped up the front porch steps. At this point, I was hoping that the happy archer had broken into our home for a rumble, because I didn’t think I could put up with much more step-sire drama. How could Jerry Springer not have featured this on his show yet?

I opened the door to find Gabriel growling as he pinned Jamie to the wall by his throat. Panic rippled up my spine. I knew there had been an edgy tension between the two of them, but I never thought Gabriel would lose control of himself like this. He looked like one of those angry stepdads you saw in domestic-violence PSAs.

“What is going on here?” I yelled.

Gabriel’s eyes darted toward me, and Jamie took advantage of this and punched Gabriel in the jaw. He followed through the swing, clipping Gabriel’s chin with his elbow.

Gabriel’s hands closed over Jamie’s throat and squeezed. Jamie clawed at his hands, finally breaking the
hold by punching him in the chest. Gabriel dropped to the ground, sliding his feet against Jamie’s legs, knocking him forward. He hooked his hands under Jamie’s arms and tossed him as he rolled onto his back. Jamie yelped as he flew through the air and flopped bonelessly against the wall, which buckled under the impact. Jamie’s legs flopped through the drywall. From my vantage point, I could see his feet resting in the parlor and his torso stretching into the hall.

“Gabriel! Jamie! Stop it, this instant!”

“Hi, Jane!” Jamie said brightly. Gabriel took advantage of this lapse in attention and socked Jamie in the mouth.

Aunt Jettie materialized at my elbow. She looked amused but sheepish. “We tried to stop them, sweetheart, but it was too entertaining.”

Mr. Wainwright appeared next to her and added, “Did you know that Jamie used to wrestle with his friends in his backyard and upload the footage to YouTube?”

“Y-YouTube?” I spluttered. “What?”

“Jamie’s signature move was getting hit in the back with a folding chair,” Jettie said, a gleeful glint in her eyes. “I tried to find one in the garage, but I think your grandma Ruthie came over last year and ‘borrowed’ the card table and chairs for her bridge club.”

“Wait, wait—Gabriel, Jamie, what in the name of SpongeBob are you doing?”

“Gabriel was just showing me some moves,” Jamie said, elbowing Gabriel in the gut. Gabriel grunted and punched Jamie in the kidney. “We were watching
Underworld
, and Gabriel said Selene’s movements were
‘preposterous and tactically ill advised.’ ” The accurate yet slightly exaggerated pomposity in Jamie’s imitation of Gabriel sent a little shiver down my spine.

“Given the latex catsuit she was wearing, I tend to agree,” I mused.

Jamie grinned at me. “He tried to show me how one of the fight scenes would look in the real world.”

“And that ended in the partial destruction of a house that survived the Civil War, how?” I asked.

“Everything after the first hammerlock gets a little hazy,” Gabriel confessed, shaking his head as if there were something loose inside.

Jamie grinned and helped Gabriel up off the floor. Gabriel slapped him on the back and chuckled. They seemed to have bonded over beating each other senseless. I moaned and scrubbed a hand over my face. For the first time, I felt truly outnumbered in my own home. I thought perhaps I was better off when they were pointedly ignoring each other. Still, it seemed like a step in the right direction for Gabriel. He hadn’t had this much exercise in weeks. His face was no longer the color of overboiled oatmeal, and he was moving as if he had cartilage in his joints.

“Call the contractor to get this fixed. And try to stay away from the load-bearing walls, OK?” Jamie struggled up from the floor and tossed Gabriel into the kitchen by his ears. “On second thought, why don’t you take this outside?”

I turned toward Aunt Jettie and Mr. Wainwright, who
were already phasing through the door to check the woods around the house for intruders.

“I’m going to get a snack. I’ll be right out,” Jamie called, jogging into the kitchen. Gabriel met him at the doorway, elbow-checking him as he walked out, and then turned his attention to me.

“You worry me,” I told Gabriel as his arms slipped around my waist. “You worry me so much.” Gabriel slipped his hands under my shirt, tracing my ribs with his fingertips.

“I take it you’re feeling better?” I asked him.

He gave me a lopsided grin as he brushed kisses along my jaw.

“We can’t,” I whispered as he nipped at my earlobe and did that thing with his tongue that made my eyelids flap like window shades.

“We can’t what?”

“We can’t . . .” I made a meaningful eye gesture that in feminine circles meant “sex” or maybe “over there.” “Jamie’s just down the hall . . . and he has superhearing.”

“He’s a big boy, Jane. I’m pretty sure he knows that we have intimate relations.”

“Oh, why did you say it like that?” I groaned. “That’s what my grandma called it.”

Gabriel shuddered, dropping his hands away from my breasts and scooting away from me. “Well, bringing up your grandmother effectively prevented all future erections, so thank you.”

“I’m just uncomfortable with the idea of him being
in the house when we’re having . . .”
Don’t say “intimate relations.” Don’t say “intimate relations.”

“Happy Naked Fun Time?” Gabriel suggested.

“Exactly.” I nodded.

“So, what’s your suggestion?” he asked. “Are we going to resort to outdoor sex for the duration of his stay?”

“Not with Gabriel-hating archers waiting outside our door.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?” he asked.

“I thought it was pretty funny!” Jamie yelled from the kitchen. “And yes, I can hear you. Every word. And I do not want to be anywhere near Happy Naked Fun Time.”

Gabriel’s jaw went slack with horror, and I burst out laughing.

“Sinners!” Jamie yelled.

I backed toward the door, giving Gabriel a positively sinful smile. I’d closed my hand around the doorknob just as a knock sounded on the other side. Gabriel was at my side in a flash. He looked through the peephole and pulled the door open. Ophelia was standing on the other side. In place of her usual outfits, she was wearing khaki capri pants and a cute red-checked summer blouse with cap sleeves. Her thick brown hair was smoothed back with a little red headband, for goodness sake. She looked as if she was heading to a church picnic.

I wondered who, if anyone, stayed with Georgie while Ophelia was out. She was often running around on Council business. Did she pop in a DVD for Georgie and hope for the best? Would a four-hundred-year-old
child be offended if you got her a babysitter? Given her reference to plague rats, I would guess yes. But I knew that referring to Ophelia’s baby sister in front of Gabriel would not improve my tenuous rapport with my local Council representative. So, for the first time, I kept my mouth shut in front of Ophelia.

“You seem to be healing quickly enough,” Ophelia said, her tone dry, as she eyed Gabriel’s arm slung around my shoulders.

Gabriel cleared his throat and immediately became prim, proper, public Gabriel, which he always seemed to do when Ophelia was around. “Yes, I am.”

“You know, it’s customary to invite someone in when they’re standing on your doorstep,” she said, smiling sweetly.

“Won’t you please come in, Ophelia?” I asked, making an exaggerated sweeping gesture with my arm, like a game-show hostess on crack.

Rolling her eyes at me and looking very much her physical age, she strolled past me. She caught sight of the mangled interior wall and turned. “Remodeling?”

“Male bonding,” I responded, at which Gabriel nudged me in the ribs.

Ophelia chuckled. “Yes, that’s why I stopped by. I wanted to see how you and your young charge are getting along. I was a little concerned after our conversation. Between your siring duties and your usual personal peccadilloes, I would hate for you to be overwhelmed.”

“Peccadilloes?” I parroted. “That’s a bit unfair. Troubles? Sure. Drama? Certainly. But peccadilloes makes
me sound like something out of a Wilkie Collins novel.”