The Single Undead Moms Club (Half Moon Hollow series Book 4) (36 page)

“What?” I turned the door handle and stepped out of the car.

“Wait, Libby, no!” Finn grabbed for my arm, but I was already on the pavement, walking toward the building. Even my keen eyesight strained to make out the movements of the person climbing down the building.

I heard Finn behind me, quietly creeping out of the car. My nostrils flared as the familiar scent of old burnt coffee hit me with full force. My fangs dropped as I hissed quietly. The figure above dropped to the asphalt with no noise at all, a considerable feat for someone his size.

He stepped into the moonlight, and it was Bob—coffee-hogging Crybaby Bob. The same Bob who sat at those damn meetings and whined about not being understood by his family. The same Bob I’d felt sorry for, despite the coffee hogging.

And me without my rake.

“You!” He growled.

I growled back. “You.”

“Libby!” Finn called out in warning, but I’d already ducked under Bob’s swing. I’d learned from our first encounter. I dropped so far down my ass nearly smacked against the pavement, but then I sprang up, fist at the ready, and caught Bob underneath his chin. I put all of my strength into the blow, knocking Bob back off his feet and onto the ground.

“Stay back!” I yelled at Finn.

“Libby!” Finn barked.

“Just let me do this.” I grunted as my boot connected with Bob’s ribs. He caught my leg and rolled, dragging me to the ground. I landed on my back with an
oof
but jammed my heel into his sternum—hard. I scrambled to a sitting position, straddling his massive chest and punching him in the face.

“Stay back!” I yelled at Finn again as he prepared to spring into the fray. “Let me handle this!”

“This is very emasculating!” Finn yelled.

Bob threw up his hips, tossing me aside like a rag doll. I rolled to my hands and knees, hopping to my feet as he was already charging at me.

“Why won’t you just die?” he yelled as I sidestepped him and shoved him into the wall.

“Force of habit!” I yelled back as he shoved me. My head smacked against the bricks behind me. Ow. “Also, you tried to kill me! I take that personally!”

“I only tried to kill you because your father-in-law paid me to,” he said, swinging his massive fist at me. I ducked again but stumbled over some garbage and ended up taking a kick to the ribs.

So that was it. Les
had
hired someone to kill me. In the back of my mind, I had known it was a possibility, but it still hurt my feelings that our relationship had deteriorated to the point of murder for hire.

Bob backhanded me across the face. Ow. I would take time to contemplate my hurt feelings later.

“It’s never personal when I take a job. But then you went and humiliated me with that spectacle at the school, resisting, throwing me off my game, blocking my talent. Do you know how long it’s been since I lost a fight?”

“The spectacle . . . that was witnessed by no one!”

“
I
witnessed it!” he roared, swinging at me. I dropped under the swing but popped back up and gave him a sound uppercut to his stomach. He wheezed a bit but shoved me aside, still venting his frustrated rage. “Do you know what it’s like, knowing that I’ve been beaten by a neophyte? By some suburban soccer mom who drives a minivan?”

“Why does everybody assume I’m a soccer mom? My son has very limited foot-eye coordination!” I exclaimed.

I head-butted him right in the hollow of his throat, making it hard for him to talk for the next few seconds. Then I clapped my hands over his ears, palms cupped. He dropped to his knees while I nursed my aching ribs.

“OK, now it’s a little more personal.” He groaned, his voice froggish and hoarse. “Look, if this is about my killing him, I did you a favor.”

Behind us, I heard the clomping of multiple boots on the ground. Jane and her miniature army had arrived, moving stealthily in formation. Jane did not look pleased with me.

“Apparently, we need to go over the importance of following instructions,” Jane said as the UERT guys surrounded Bob, stakes drawn. “Did you learn nothing from my tales of parking-lot fisticuffs gone wrong?”

“He was getting away,” I said, shrugging.

Jane glared at Finn. He threw up his hands. “I have a problem childe.”

Dick was standing behind Jane, smirking, but said nothing.

“Now,” Jane said, clearing her throat and nudging Bob with her boot. “I believe you were doing your bad-guy murder-confession thing? Please continue so we know exactly what to charge you with.”

“Do you have any idea what a pain in the ass it was trying to kill you?” Bob seethed at me. “You always had someone around you. If it wasn’t one of the damn Council leaders, it was some other vampire or that shifter or your human friends. It was hard enough trying to get you alone. And then, when I finally do, you pull that rake-in-the-face bullshit on me. That’s just not sporting. Honestly, a little decorum.”

“Yes, how rude of me to defend myself from your attempted murder,” I deadpanned.

“I couldn’t figure out why you gave me so much trouble. Normally, I just go in for the kill, easy-peasy, in and out. I’m not used to having to fight so hard. I lull my victims into a false sense of security, make them feel like they’re sliding into a warm bath with Mum’s pot roast in their bellies. They’re so relaxed they barely even feel it when I kill them. But you, I couldn’t get a fix on you.”

“Yeah, well, my power trumps your power, so suck it.”

I did feel a little less proud of my above-average fighting skills now, though, knowing that I’d basically taken out Bob’s main method of offense.

Bob huffed. “Les Stratton wasn’t going to stop at me. When we met up the night of your school carnival, after our little tussle in the yard, he was supposed to make the final payment of what he owed me. He got pissed when I didn’t get you on the first try and said he was going to offer the contract to someone else. He would have kept hiring people until he got the result he wanted. Bastard said he wouldn’t pay, though our contract clearly stated that he owed me the money even without proof of death,” he said. “He said he was going to need the money to hire someone else, since I had trouble closing the deal. It was an insult to my integrity as a professional.”

“So instead of killing me, you killed the guy who hurt your feelings and had me framed for his murder,” I muttered. “Kind of a dick move.”

“And you dominated my NEV meetings with your childish weeping just so you could pump us for information about your target, also a dick move,” Jane said, shaking her head.

“Framing you was more of a convenient coincidence than anything else,” he said. “I didn’t have any interest in what happened to you after the contract was, er, terminated. And I was being genuine at the NEV meetings, by the way. I’m not newly emerged, but those emotions were real. I have a lot of repressed pain.”

“If you start to cry, I will smack you in the face with that Dumpster,” I told him.

“Oh, the paperwork on this is going to suck so very much.” Jane sighed. “OK, Crybaby Bob, by the authority vested in me by the World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead, I hereby place you under arrest for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, assault, and generally behaving like a jerk. You don’t have the right to remain silent, because I’m going to need you to repeat this story to the human authorities so Libby here isn’t charged for your crime. Everything you’ve said has already been held against you, because you’ve already spilled your guts.”

The UERT guys clapped very sturdy-looking cuffs on him.

“Well, young Libby, I hope you feel better having watched justice being served,” Dick drawled.

“Not just yet,” I said. Before the UERT guy closest to me could react, I grabbed the extendable stake from his holster and stabbed the blunt end into Bob’s chest, right where he’d jabbed me with the rake handle. It wouldn’t enter his heart, but, as I knew all too well, it would hurt like a bitch.

Bob howled, only letting up when he realized I had not, in fact, killed him. “You’re crazy!”

“OK, now I feel better.”

“You can’t really do that when we already have him in custody,” Jane said.

“Well, then, charge me with abuse of a contract killer.”

Parenting is a lot of work, but whether you’re living or dead or somewhere in between, there are plenty of moments that make all that effort worthwhile.

—My Mommy Has Fangs: A Guide to Post-Vampiric Parenting

I
was using my vampire speed to whipstitch my son’s best friend into a sumo costume—which seemed like a misappropriation of vampire superpowers.

“Mom, hurry up, we’re next!” Danny hissed, smoothing his fingers over his upper lip to make sure his adhesive matador’s mustache was still in place.

Honestly, this was the strangest school Christmas play I’d ever seen.

Well, technically, it was a winter
holiday
play, because we weren’t allowed to call it a Christmas play. Even in Half-Moon Hollow, the schools had to give at least the appearance of separation of church and state.

The theme of the first grade’s presentation was “Peace on Earth,” and all of the kids were dressed like people from other world cultures. Well, stereotypes of people from other world cultures. Harley was a sumo wrestler. Danny was a matador. Other cast members included a chubby Italian chef, a mime, and, for some reason, a mummy. I found that offensive on behalf of living Egyptian people, but I also knew that Parker McHune’s mother couldn’t sew, so wrapping her son in Ace bandages was the best she could do.

I glanced around the painted globe backdrop and spotted Marge. She was smiling to beat the band, anxiously shifting in her seat, trying to get a glimpse of Danny backstage. He wanted his costume to be a surprise for his mamaw, and she could hardly wait to see her tiny bullfighter.

Danny and Marge had been spending more time together after school and had regular sleepovers with all the popcorn and extra-smelly treats he could reasonably consume. I couldn’t say there was
no
tension in our relationship now, but Marge was much more respectful of boundaries. When I said no to something, she actually agreed instead of trying to renegotiate. When I asked her to have Danny back home at a certain time, she brought him back at that time. She was his grandmother again, instead of a surrogate mother, and I’d like to think we were both more comfortable with it. I had hope for us both.

In other grandparental news, Max was sitting in the back row, next to Finn, recording the play on a very expensive-looking video camera. I could make out his huge, blinding-white smile even in the darkened auditorium. I was less open to letting Danny spend time with my father unaccompanied, but since Max seemed intent on quality time with both of us, that bothered him not at all. We’d had family movie nights and family park outings, which I would admit were a little strange after dark. But Danny loved having the swings all to himself, and it was . . . nice spending time with Max. He filled in holes in my history I didn’t even know existed, telling me stories about my mother, how they met, their courtship. While I didn’t quite trust him, I wanted to, and that was progress.

Wade was sitting in the front row, dutifully holding up his cell phone in preparation for Harley to walk out onstage and sing his line from “We Are the World.” He caught my eye and winked. I smiled, shaking my head. I finished stitching the torn sleeve of Harley’s fat suit and ran the thread across my extended fang, severing it.

“OK, sweetie,” I said, straightening the fake topknot on Harley’s head. “Go knock ’em dead.” I kissed his forehead. He tolerated the kiss in a manly fashion and had the good grace not to wipe it off in front of me.

“Me, too,” Danny muttered quietly as Harley waddled out onto the stage. I chuckled and kissed his forehead.

“Go out there and belt out some ridiculously outdated nostalgic tripe.”

Danny screwed up his face in confusion. “What?”

“Never mind.”

“Emma’s mom isn’t this weird,” he grumbled.

I clucked my tongue, adjusting Danny’s matador cape. “Well, sweetheart, your mom’s always going to be just a little bit weird compared with the other kids’ moms.”

“Eh, that’s OK,” Danny said. “You’re pretty cool.”

“I love you more than anything,” I told him.

“Love you, too, Mom.”

I pushed the matador hat over his ears. “You ready for your big moment?”

“Yep.”

I watched Danny walk out onstage, sweeping his cape as he sang, “We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving!” He stood next to Harley, wrapping his arm around his friend’s heavily padded shoulders. He was so happy. Happy and safe and secure.

I’d made the right choice, getting turned. If I hadn’t taken the sketchy route to immortality, I would have missed this moment, and so many moments to come. All of the trouble I’d had—the heartbreak, the confusion, the murder charges—was worth it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed movement backstage. Jane was lurking in the wings. Considering that she was neither a parent nor a staff member, this was unusual. She waved to me, pressing a finger to her lips. Dick appeared from behind her, waving, along with Andrea.