Your Coffin or Mine? (21 page)

Killer, as usual, was thrilled to see me when I walked in the door. I’d barely stepped inside before I had to brace myself for his excitement.

He spared me a sleepy glance—
Keep it down, would ya? I’m trying to nap here
—and then snuggled back down on one of my discarded blouses (the rat fink).

A gun and a small coffin. That’s all I needed and my world would be right again.

I forced aside my destructive thoughts—I didn’t do destruction all that well
either
—and headed for the bedroom. I changed into my favorite pj’s, warmed myself some AB negative, checked the blinds, and climbed into bed. I drank my breakfast and then eased down onto my back. I stared at the ceiling and listened to Killer snore.

I threw a shoe and boinked Killer on the head and then I stared at the ceiling and listened to my neighbor snore until her alarm went off and CNN started to blare. I thought about boinking her with my other shoe, but I didn’t think my aim was that good (we’re talking a Jimmy Choo not a boomerang), so I flipped onto my stomach and stuffed my head under the pillow. I held the down pillow tight and tried to drown out the noise at the same time I tried not to think.

To freak.

Had I really done my Superman impression in front of
everyone
just to save Mr. Weather and his primo Gucci suit? Had I really committed myself to finding the perfect wedding dress from among Shirley’s blast from the past collection? Had I really lied to my mother? Had I really turned down the chance to have the most incredible sex of my entire life with one of the devil’s own? Had I really fallen head over heels for a made vampire?

No, no, no, and oh, no!

At least that’s what I told myself. (While I didn’t do death and destruction all that well, I kicked ass at denial.)

Even so, my mind kept replaying the past few weeks, the previous night, until even I (the proverbial queen) couldn’t ignore the truth. I sucked at being a born vampire, and not in the good way.

If I made the finals and any of the footage aired, I was so going to find myself a prime target for the SOBs (Snipers of Otherworldly Beings). While my fellow humans would assume it was some trick of the cameras and dismiss it as some really clever reality TV, the SOBs could spot a vamp at fifty paces. They would make me right away, not to mention I would draw the attention of the entire born vamp nation, the majority of which prided themselves on keeping a low profile. I would be a disgrace.

Oh, wait. That was me already.

But only within the warm, comforting embrace of my own family.

This would take things to a much higher level. I had a hard enough time dealing with my own mother’s disapproving frown. Multiply that by a gazillion, and you would have the general consensus at the next major vamp event. I would be ostracized. My business would take a major hit. Everything in my closet would be repossessed except for the Moe’s uniforms. I would be evicted. I would end up living on the street wearing Dockers and lime-green Polo shirts, sucking on rats for sustenance, and muttering to myself about the good old days.

A tear slid down my cheek and I slapped it away.

Okay, I told myself. Okayyyy. So what if I’d taken a few wrong turns and now found myself stuck on a dead-end road? All I had to do was backtrack. Rewind, so to speak. I would just tell Shirley she didn’t have a decent dress that could be worn in this particular decade. I would come clean with my mother (after the wedding, of course), and I would take Ash up on his offer the very next time I saw him. And I would go cold turkey on Ty once I saved his afterlife and made sure that he was safe.

As for
Manhattan’s Most Wanted
…

A mute point, I told myself.

It wasn’t like I would come even close to making the final cut. I’d said all of three sentences to Mr. Weather. He didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him, and there were a ton of other girls who’d been shaking their asses in front of him on the dance floor. Sure, I’d been the best dressed. With the most fantabulous hair. And a really rockin’ shade of magenta sunset lip gloss. But men didn’t notice things like that. If they did, then I wouldn’t be in business.

Clueless, remember? No, men noticed boobs and asses, and there’d been far too many of them right in his face for him to pick me.

Me making the final ten was right up there with the Hudson turning to wine or Oprah picking a novel for her next book club selection that didn’t make me want to slit my wrists.

I.e., it’s
never
going to happen.

“You made the final ten!” Evie beamed the moment I walked into Dead End Dating on Wednesday evening.

The news stalled me in the front lobby and I nearly dropped the latte I’d picked up at Starbucks.

Obviously, Evie noticed my sudden distress because she rushed forward, plucked the latte from between my fingers, and went back to her computer.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked her.

“I wouldn’t kid about something so incredible. They just called. I was jotting down a note from your mother: she wants you at her place early Sunday evening to help set up for the party. Anyhow, a limo will be picking up you and the other nine girls Friday night to take you to Devan’s on Central Park for dinner. You’ll each have an entire fifteen minutes with Mr. Weather that will be taped and broadcast on Saturday night. Isn’t that terrific?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re supposed to wear something colorful for the camera, something to make you stand out.”

“No problem. I’ll be the one in the killer heels with a bull’s-eye painted over my heart.”

“Don’t be so negative. Just because you’re open to love and commitment doesn’t mean that some guy is going to come along and shoot you down.” Evie had obviously taken my realism as a metaphor. “You have to be positive. Besides, Mr. Weather doesn’t seem like the heartbreaker type. He’s so cute.”

I wasn’t sure where being cute contradicted being a shit, but I was too upset to object.

She reached for a stack of messages while I gave myself a quick mental pep talk.

You still have your health.

You still have a great bod.

You still have three credit cards (out of sixteen) that aren’t anywhere close to the limit.

So what if you’re going to be on local television on Saturday night? It’s a cable channel, for Damien’s sake. How many people could actually watch? And—and this was the mucho important thing—it’s a
dating
show. News flash: Born vamps don’t date. Not in the traditional sense. They hooked up, had sex, declared their undying commitment, had more sex, squeezed out some baby vamps, and—you guessed it—had even more sex. They didn’t have candlelit dinners or dance in the moonlight, or anything else that could be considered remotely romantic. Meaning there was a 99.9 percent chance that no one in the born vamp community would even see the show.

The SOBs were another story, but since it was a local broadcast, the only attention I was likely to attract was Vinnie and his brother, Crusher, a couple of SOBs out of Jersey. They handled all takedowns for this area and, or so my mother said, could be bribed with a little green and free office supplies. (Being an SOB wasn’t just about staking vampires and popping a couple of silver caps into an unsuspecting
were.
Vinnie had a business to run: expenses, balance sheets, taxes.)

Which meant I wasn’t totally S.O.L. at the moment.

“There’s one more cut after this—from ten to five, then it’s down to the final two. If you make that,” she beamed again, “you get to be on the
Today
show.”

On second thought.

I tamped down a sudden case of nerves, arched an eyebrow, and went for the whole ultra cool vamp image. “Is that all?”

“Shirley called and said she needs a dress decision today.”

“Oh, no.” Bye, bye ultra vamp. Hello freaked out maid of honor. “Today?”

Evie nodded. “Otherwise there won’t be enough time to order it. Unless you pick something off the rack.”

Her words registered and snapped me out of my panic. My mind started to race.

“If you decide to go for rack,” Evie went on,” the seamstress still needs six weeks to make the appropriate alterations—”

“That’s it,” I cut in. “We can have the dress altered. All this angsting and the answer has been right there all along. So obvious. So easy.” I smiled for the first time since climbing out of bed. “You’re a genius, Evie. A total genius.”

“All in a day’s work.” She sipped her latte and went back to her computer.

I walked into my office, phoned Mandy, and told her Evie’s sudden brainstorm.

“Do you really think you can find someone to fix whatever dress we pick out?”

“Sure we can. Granted, we can’t go to any of the other bridal shops around town because they would all want to take credit for the dress, if they’d even touch it in the first place. And we can’t let Shirley’s seamstress do it because then she would know that we hate the dress.”

“Won’t she know that anyway when we show up at the wedding with a different dress?”

“A fantabulous dress,” I told my soon-to-be sister-in-law. “Which she will get full credit for. She’ll be so busy signing up brides that she won’t have time to wonder what happened.”

“Maybe.”

“Would you stop being so negative? It’s all going to work out.”

“Your mother stopped by today and brought Jack dinner.”

“My mother stopped at your place?” Jacqueline must really be worried. “That doesn’t sound so bad.” I tried to play off the gravity of the situation. “A bottle from Giovanni’s or the new imported stuff from Angelo’s?”

“A Rockette named Lola. I told you, she hates me. She wants to break us up.”

“Lola isn’t a break-up attempt. She’s food. Surely Jack didn’t—”

“No. He loves me. But what’s going to happen in ten years when I start to get old and Lola doesn’t?”

“Was she a vampire?”

“No, you’re missing the point. There will always be another Lola and Jack will always be young.”

“And so will you if you’re really serious about committing to him.”

“I know. I mean, we’ve discussed it. He’s going to turn me. We just thought we would wait until after we got married. I mean, there’s no rush at this second. I’m just letting my nerves get to me. With the dress on top of that, I can barely function.”

“You’ll soon be able to cross that off your list of freak-outs because this is so going to work.”

“You’re sure we can find a seamstress?”

“It’s a needle and thread, not rocket science. There has to be
somebody.
”

Twenty-four

“S
orry. I only do minor alterations. You couldn’t pay me enough to touch a wedding dress.”
Click
.

I crossed yet another name off the list Evie had printed out of local seamstresses and dry cleaners.

While it wasn’t hard to find someone to perform basic stuff—hems, waist tucks, tapering—no one, I repeat NO ONE, wanted to touch a wedding dress.

“They have specialists for that,” Jowanna Truman told me. She was seamstress number twenty-three on my list of—ahem—twenty-five.

“Do you know anyone who could help me out?”
You do
, I sent out the mental thought on the off chance that Jowanna, mother of five and devoted wife to Tim, might be attracted to the same sex and, therefore, putty in my manicured hands.
You know someone who would be happy to help me. Ecstatic, even. And you’re going to give me their name right now.

“I’ve got a girlfriend who does wedding dresses, but she already works for two downtown designers. She’s got her hands full.”

Hey, you can’t blame a vamp for trying.

I contemplated making my standard offer—love and happily ever after courtesy of a Dead End Dating profile and three prospective matches, but Jowanna’s husband owned the dry cleaners adjacent to Seams Sew Good, her alterations shop, and so they met for lunch—and for a quickie—everyday. (I’d gleaned this info from Tim, who
had
been putty in my hands. Too bad he didn’t know any seamstresses other than his wife.) Together, they were a pretty solid couple, which meant they didn’t need a matchmaker. Maybe a babysitter for the kids on account of they were driving Tim up the wall and he’d like for once—just ONCE—to be able to watch the Knicks without a bunch of yip-yap going on.

But I digress.

Point is, no go.

I hung up the phone and eyeballed the last two possibilities. Both were in Chinatown—i.e., New York’s Asian mecca—and while I had nothing against some really tasty chai or a silk kimono, I’d already called one seamstress in the same locale and hadn’t understood a word she’d said.

I know, I know. Ultrapowerful vamp. Impervious to bullets, bruises, and bunions.

But we’re talking an
accent.

I set the list aside, checked my e-mail, and flipped through folders for our latest Dead End Dating clients. Four were women who’d been at the dinner cruise (and hadn’t made it to the final ten). Three actually wanted dates while one, I was pretty sure, just wanted the inside scoop on my Speedy Gonzales impersonation. She’d filled out a profile and asked for a personal meeting with
moi.