10
Though you will go through an instinctual withdrawal from people you don’t completely trust, remember that your child needs contact and support from the living world, just as you need support from the vampire world. Also, there are only so many homes that can support a panic room.
—My Mommy Has Fangs: A Guide to Post-Vampiric Parenting
Someone was knocking on my basement door.
Why was someone knocking on my basement door?
I sat up slowly from the single bed I’d set up in my little underground sleeping compartment, slapping my hand around my nightstand, searching for my cell phone. It was 5:56 P.M. The sun was barely down. Why the hell was someone trying to wake me up?
Danny?
Was Danny feeling worse? His fever had broken the night before, just after Harley’s, but it could have spiked again. I sprang up from bed, stumbling as the sheets tangled around my ankles. I didn’t need a light to maneuver toward the stairs. I’d kept the basement as simple as possible, just a bed and a nightstand and a framed photo of me and Danny, convincing myself that it wasn’t really my bedroom, just a place where I slept while the rest of the household lived aboveground in the potentially fatal sunlight. All of my clothes and shoes and toiletries were upstairs in the master bedroom. Unfortunately, that included my hairbrush, and my hair was falling over my face like something out of The Ring.
I yanked the door open to find Kerrianne gnawing on her bottom lip. “What’s going on?”
“Your mother-in-law.”
“She’s here?” I exclaimed. “Has she tried to take Danny? Is he talking to her now?”
Kerrianne shushed me. “Yes, she’s here, but she’s out on the front porch. I didn’t want to let her in without talking to you first.”
“Close all the blinds,” I said. “I’ll be out in a second.”
“OK. Also, you might want to think about taking care of this area,” she said, waving at her head.
“That’s my whole face,” I told her.
She nodded. “Yes, it is.”
Several minutes later, I had thrown on jeans and a cardigan and was trying to look respectable as I sprinted to my front door. I was maybe eighty-two percent awake, but that was as good as it was going to get. Kerrianne passed me a freshly warmed bottle of synthetic blood as I whipped through the kitchen.
She was a wonder, that Kerrianne.
“Hi, Mom!” Danny cried as I passed the foldout couch. I paused to kiss the top of his head and gauge his temperature. I guessed it was slightly less than one hundred degrees. Wade and Harley, it seemed, had recovered enough to drive home.
Marge, as promised, was waiting outside my front door, holding an enormous CorningWare container of something that smelled like old socks—to me, at least. She was wearing her “Number 1 Grandma” sweatshirt and a tremulous smile.
I stepped out onto my porch, crossing my arms over my chest and shivering slightly. The air was finally starting to turn crisp after the remaining heat and humidity of September had ebbed away. Fall would be blowing us over before we knew it. Danny was still debating his costume choices for Halloween but felt pressure to narrow it down since most kids wore their costumes to the Pumpkin Patch Party. He and Harley were trying to coordinate, of course, and while Danny was lobbying for characters like Ninja Turtles or Avengers, Harley was pushing for something clever, like Danny dressing as toast covered in peanut butter and Harley dressing as toast with jelly. Danny was trying to undermine the idea by claiming it was rude to the kids who were allergic to peanuts.
They’d spent hours debating this matter from their sickbeds, to the point where I started coming up with fake “bookkeeping emergencies” so I could hide in my room with my laptop . . . until Kerrianne figured out what I was doing and gave me some super-judgmental looks.
“I heard that Danny is sick,” Marge said.
“You’re not supposed to be here, Marge. Not until we get everything settled with the courts,” I said. “I can’t believe I have to put it this way, but I don’t feel comfortable talking to you without a lawyer present.”
“I know, I know, but I couldn’t bear to think of Danny being sick without anyone to take care of him.”
“Danny has people to take care of him. The fact that you think I would leave him without someone to care for him while he’s sick, that’s probably why we have to have lawyers involved when we speak,” I told her, my voice ice-cold.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
I gritted my teeth. When Rob was alive, I let Marge get away with a lot of comments and criticisms under the guise of “not what I meant” because it was too hard to convince her that regardless of her intention, insults still hurt. Rob always told me to just let it go because “that’s just how she is.” Well, I was done letting it go. I was done playing nice. I was held accountable for every damn word I said. Marge deserved equal treatment.
“No, I don’t. Your court summons made it clear what you think of my parenting skills.”
“I didn’t come here to start any ugliness, Libby. I just wanted to bring Danny some of my chicken soup. It always made Rob feel better when he was sick.”
“Danny is not Rob. He’s a different little person entirely.”
Marge stared at me with a bewildered expression on her face and then suddenly turned chalk-white. She dropped her CorningWare as she sank heavily onto our front-porch swing. I caught the container before it hit the floor and handed it off to Kerrianne, who was waiting just inside the door. She made a wincing face as she whisked the soup away but did not offer an escape from this horribly awkward conversation.
“Do I need to call someone for you?” I asked.
“Is that—is that why you got yourself turned into a vampire?” Marge wheezed, fanning her clammy face with her hand.
“Please stop referring to it as getting myself turned,” I told her. “You make it sound like I contracted a social disease.”
“Is that why you wanted to be turned? Is that why you’re fighting us so hard on the custody case?” Marge amended. “Because you didn’t want us raising Danny? Because you think we’re trying to replace Rob with our grandson?”
She sounded more hurt than angry. And to be honest, the idea of hurting her seemed so much more painful than her being angry with me. But she needed to hear this, and I needed to say it.
“I didn’t trust you,” I told her. “Well, not so much you but definitely Les. You take him fishing, you talk about how much Rob enjoyed a certain spot or how Rob always liked using a cane pole. You watch Rob’s favorite childhood movies with him and eat Rob’s favorite foods. You don’t bother learning Danny’s favorite childhood movies or Danny’s favorite foods. That’s not fair to him, and it’s really unfair to you, because you are missing out on the opportunity to get to know who he really is. Because who he is, is really freaking amazing.”
“I can’t believe—I can’t believe that after all these years, this is what you think of me. As a mother, I would think you would understand what it would be like to lose your son. I would think you would understand how hard that loss would be.”
“I did think about it,” I told her. “I thought about it every day. I still think about it. So you should understand how desperate I was to make the decision I did. And you should think about how desperate I am, now that you and Les are trying to take Danny from me.”
Marge’s dark eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening us?”
“Not at all,” I told her. “I just think you need to consider this from my point of view. Consider how different this situation could be. If you two would just compromise, figure out a way for us all to be in Danny’s life instead of trying to make it an all-or-nothing situation, we might be able to get through this without destroying the relationship we have. Because as it stands, you two are doing a pretty good job of convincing the courts that Danny would be better off with me.”
Marge shook her head, biting her lip. “Les would never allow it. He’s convinced he’s doing the right thing, bringing Danny to stay with us. He’s going crazy, ignoring the court orders, saying he has every right to check up on his grandson and no judge is going to stop him. And it just keeps getting worse every time the judge sends one of those letters. He would be furious knowing I’m here talking to you. Getting Danny home with us has become his whole reason for living. I’ve tried getting him to talk to somebody, but he says he knows he’s doing the right thing.”
I sagged against the porch railing. This wasn’t new or unexpected information, but it was still distressing to find out that your worst suspicions were true. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”
“I’m sorry it’s come to this,” she said. “In a million years, I never would have guessed our lives would turn out so . . .” My mother-in-law was polite enough not to finish that particular thought, which I appreciated.
“What, vampire daughter-in-law wasn’t on your list of potential outcomes when you watched me toddle down the aisle?”
Marge made an undignified noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. And against my better judgment, I said, “If I let you in to see Danny, could you talk to him without upsetting him or pumping him for information? Without reporting back to Les or the judge? Just a regular visit with Mamaw?”
Marge’s eyes brimmed with tears, and she nodded frantically. “Yes, I could do that.”
“Could you do it without telling Les about it? Or anyone else?”
Marge’s head stopped mid-nod. After a long silent moment, she said, “Yes, I could do that.”
I was trapped in the vampire version of Adventures in Babysitting. I remembered watching that movie when I was a kid and thinking, Wow, Elisabeth Shue’s night could not possibly get worse, and then being proven wrong over and over again. Nostalgic déjà vu was a bitch.
It started off easily enough. I had to drive to Murphy to pick up a packet of gift cards for gas at a service station owned by a student’s grandfather. Considering it was more than five hundred dollars in gas cards that would be raffled off, I didn’t think it was asking too much for me to drive an hour to pick them up. Wade had to work late on a special order, so Harley was keeping Danny company with Kerrianne and Braylen.
I hoped I’d made the right decision, letting Marge visit with Danny. They’d both enjoyed it enough to warm even the cockles of my still heart. They fell right back into their dynamic, without a mention of their separation. Danny simply kissed her cheeks, told her about his new friend Harley and their “sick-person campout.” He showed her his new room and his new Ninja Turtle and asked for a bowl of her soup. It was as if he’d seen her just a few days before.
For purely selfish reasons, I hoped that renewing Marge’s visits with Danny would somehow result in Les going the opposite of crazy and dropping his suit. But I also hoped it would give Danny a greater sense of security, one more thing in his life that hadn’t changed. Because with the direction things seemed to be going with Wade, I couldn’t help but think that something in our lives was about to change all over again.
Just as I reached the far east side of town, my van’s dashboard lit up in an explosion of color, beeping and flashing like one of the video games I refused to let Danny play. I couldn’t tell which of my warnings was going off; I just knew that my engine was very angry with me and I should probably do something about it soon.
I glanced around, trying to determine my exact location. I was just inside the town limits, on Cary Street. Because the street was lined with storage facilities and used-car lots, there was no traffic at this time of night. In fact, the only motion I could make out nearby was a lone pedestrian walking down the middle of the street toward me, which didn’t make me feel entirely safe. I mean, as a vampire, I had a higher-than-average chance of surviving a mugging, but that didn’t mean I wanted to test the theory.
I could park my van here, lights and alarms flashing, and call Jane or Dick or Wade—wait, Wade’s shop was on this side of town. I pulled my phone from my purse and Googled the address of HMH Custom Cycle Parts. I was only two miles away. Maybe I could make it without my van catching fire?
I gently guided my poor vehicle around the corner, while the dashboard continued to bleat and flash. By the time I pulled into the shop’s parking lot, the van’s alarm system was going off for reasons I couldn’t quite figure out. I was surprised to find that instead of a mechanic’s shop, it looked more like an engineering firm. A clean, quiet blue building with an unassuming, unlandscaped entrance. The exterior didn’t even have a garage door, more of a freight entrance.
Wade came out the front door, a scowl on his face. When he saw me climbing out of the van and frantically clicking the keyless remote, his expression switched to one of concern. He rushed over and yelled over the noise, “Hey, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know!” I shouted as he ducked into my car and popped the hood. He started yanking and pushing, all the while looking very competent. “I was just driving along, and everything was loud and bright and—”
Suddenly, the blaring horn died. Wade straightened, looking triumphant.
“Oh.” I sighed. “That’s better.”
“That’s gotta suck when you’ve got superhearing, huh?”
“You have no idea,” I told him.
“What are you doing out on this side of town? I thought the boys were with you tonight.”
“Well, Kerrianne decided to show the boys how to make homemade pizza, which made the house smell to high heaven. I made my escape to drive over to Murphy to pick up some stuff for the Pumpkin Patch. And then my car had some sort of tantrum.”
Wade commenced poking things in the engine. “Yeah, I think the motherboard for your computer system has short-circuited. And your brake line looks a little worn. But I’m not sure. I can have my guys take a look at it. Terry loves that kind of thing.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t. You said you had a special project to work on tonight.”
“Eh, we’ve reached a stopping point. And frankly, the guys could use a change of pace. They’re starting to get a little punchy, which is never good. I’ll give you a ride over to Murphy while they take a look at it. We’ve probably got the parts you need right here.”
“What is it exactly that you do here?”
He grinned at me but didn’t answer. “Just hold on a second.”
He jogged back into the building, and a few minutes later, the freight door opened. Two men came walking out—a tall man of solid build and a much shorter man with a rounded belly that hung over his belt. They were both young, the taller one much younger than me, with faint acne scars still spotting his cheeks. But they were moving swiftly toward me, as if eager to meet me. In fact, the shorter of the two had his arm outstretched before he was anywhere close.
“Hi!” he exclaimed. “I’m Terry. Are you Wade’s lady friend?”
“I am his friend,” I agreed, adding awkwardly, “who is a lady.”
“He said you’re having some trouble with your motherboard?” the taller man asked. Standing two heads taller than me, he was practically a giant, with high cheekbones and a prominent forehead. He looked like he should be swinging a broadsword somewhere instead of handling the comparatively tiny mechanisms of my engine.
“That’s Junior,” Terry supplied cheerfully. “He doesn’t stand much on introductions.”
“It’s no problem, really,” I said. “Now that it’s turned off, I can just have it towed to the dealership. I’m sure it’s just a problem with a spark plug or something. I don’t want to bother you when you’re working on something else.”
“A spark plug? You have no idea what you’re lookin’ at, do ya?” Junior asked me, his expression not quite friendly.
“It’s . . . an engine,” I said.
“I thought you were a vampire,” Terry exclaimed. I couldn’t help but notice Junior’s face going from irritated to downright livid at the word “vampire.”
“That doesn’t mean I know how to fix cars. It’s not like they download information into our brains like in The Matrix.”
“Well, I, for one, am glad I finally found something you’re not good at . . . besides socializin’ with the normals,” Wade teased as he approached with two motorcycle helmets in hand.
“Oh, hush,” I told him, making Terry raise his eyebrows. “I’ll show you my accounting software sometime and let you try to make heads or tails of it.”
Wade scoffed. “The difference is, I know my limits. And that limit is long division.”
“Hardly,” I muttered.
“Y’all see what you can do to fix up the mom-mobile. I gotta get this little lady to Murphy.”
“But your project—” I said, grimacing guiltily when I saw the irritated expression on Junior’s face.
“It’ll keep,” Wade told me. “The boys get their overtime, one way or the other. And Terry’s savin’ up for an engagement ring for his gal, aren’t ya, Terry?”
Terry ducked his head, and his rounded cheeks flushed pink.
“Well, OK, I need a ride, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to ride on that thing!” I exclaimed. “I’ll probably go flying off the back when you hit a bump or something.”
“You’re a vampire,” he said, strapping on his own brain bucket. “You’re invincible. If anything happens, you’ll just heal up anyway.”
“That won’t save my pride,” I told him, watching Junior carefully as he eyed my van. Well, great, now I had to worry even more about my brake lines.
I threw my leg over the motorcycle, thankful that I’d worn jeans and a thick canvas jacket, and slipped my arms around Wade’s waist.
“Hold on tight,” he told me, squeezing my hands.
“Oh, don’t worry,” I told him.
It was curiously pleasant to ride along on the motorcycle, the vibrations sending little thrills up and down my spine. I propped my chin against Wade’s shoulder and for a few precious moments let myself forget my legal troubles, Danny’s needs, the Pumpkin Patch, the million little tasks I had to accomplish to keep our lives running. I wrapped myself around Wade’s back, enjoying the warmth seeping through his clothes to my chest. I closed my eyes and took in his metallic, citrus scent. And I just enjoyed the experience of flying down the highway.
It took a few minutes for me to feel the first drops of rain against my skin.
It appeared that Wade and I were about to be caught in one of the Bluegrass State’s sudden “change of season” thunderstorms.
Within minutes, we were being battered by sheets of rain, which quickly soaked through my clothes. Tree limbs whipped over our heads like hysterical mothers throwing their arms up in the air over ungrateful children. The wind changed directions, throwing leaves and debris into the mix, so now we were battered and blind.
“I’ve got to pull over!” Wade yelled over his shoulder. Even my ears could barely pick up his voice over the roar of the storm. But we were on a deserted highway in the middle of nowhere. There was no convenient Starbucks where we could take shelter. In the distance, against the backdrop of lightning, I saw the outline of some sort of structure.
“There!” I yelled, pointing over Wade’s shoulder. He nodded and sped toward what looked like an old tobacco barn, leaning under the weight of disuse. Before Wade could stop, I leaped off the back of the bike, skidding in the mud and yanking the old barn door open. Wade slowed, his brake lights casting an eerie red glow around the empty barn.
Tobacco farmers used to use outbuildings like these to smoke the leaves after they were harvested, great billowing piles of burley painting the interior walls with the tar grime and a rich scent that still hung in the air years after western Kentucky’s farmers all but abandoned the state’s traditional cash crop. The barns were usually located on the far outreaches of the farms, to keep the smell and fire risk far from the farmers’ homes. Now this barn was being used to store old tractors and what looked to be an inordinate number of old rusty scythes spread out on antique tables, which was . . . concerning.
“This is why people drive cars, with roofs and windows and stuff!” I exclaimed as Wade shut off the engine.
“Well, if I knew I was going to be carrying a passenger through a storm, I woulda taken my truck to work tonight.”
“Don’t make your meteorological miscalculations my fault,” I teased. “How far did we get?”
“About halfway,” he said. “No sense in callin’ anyone. We’ll just wait it out.”
“Or be sacrificed by the scary tobacco cult that clearly holds its meetings here.” I put my cell phone on flashlight mode and held it up so Wade could see the tables full of scythes.
He recoiled. “Yep. We live in a strange town.”
I nodded. “So just you and me. In a tobacco-torture-cult barn.”
“Can’t say I don’t know how to show a girl a good time.”
“If you try to tell me that we should ‘get out of these wet clothes,’ I will smack you. A lot.”
Wade laughed and jostled me with his shoulder. “Smartass.”
“My appeal is ninety-two percent sass-based.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Wade shook the water out of his hair. “It’s more a sixty-forty split.”
“Oh, really? And does the other forty percent depend on my ‘greatest rack in the history of racks’?”
Wade’s blue eyes bugged out of his head. “That wasn’t a dream?”
“Oh, no, it was very real.” I laughed as he dropped his head to his shoulder and groaned. I giggled, giving his shoulder a comforting “sorry you made an ass out of yourself” pat.
“Thank you for not killin’ me in my sleep,” he muttered against my damp skin.
“Eh, you’re cute, and you smell nice, so I think I’ll keep you.”
“That’s all of my good qualities?” he muttered. “Thanks a lot.”
I laughed, tilting his chin up so he had to meet my gaze. “OK, you are a good man and an excellent father. You are funny and smart and kind, and you listen to me. No one has ever really listened to me before. And you remind me that these insane things I’m doing, I’m doing them for the right reasons. And you just drive me crazy sometimes with how pretty you are, which I don’t think should be overlooked, in terms of a virtue—”
Wade closed his mouth over mine, effectively shutting me up. His hands, warm and alive, slid under my wet jacket and pulled me closer, so I could feel the beat of his heart against my own silent chest. I threaded my fingers through his damp hair, rubbing my thumb over his pulse point. It jumped with every stroke.
He broke away, chuckling softly as he backed me toward one of the tables. I could feel my nipples drawing tight and hard against the wet fabric of our shirts. I felt desire flicker between my thighs, and for the first time in years, I knew that desire was about to be fulfilled. Waves of an entirely different sort of hunger rolled through me, and I could feel my fangs stir, aching to break through and strike at Wade’s neck. The very idea of his sweet, warm blood flooding my mouth, into my throat, made me moan, even as the more human, rational parts of my brain rebelled.
I turned my head, capturing his lips to distract myself from the temptation of his jugular. I growled in appreciation at the taste of his mouth, cinnamon gum and the hint of smoke. He took advantage of this, sliding his tongue across my lips to dance with my own. He spread his hands over my ass and lifted me, wrapping my thighs around his waist. He hitched me up, raking my aching center over the growing bulge behind his zipper.
“We need to get you out of those wet clothes,” he rumbled against my lips as he carried me across the room to a table only half full of deadly farm implements. Laughing, I smacked at his arms, even as he spread me out over an empty spot on the table. He pushed at my wet jacket, protecting me from the rough wooden boards with its damp, heavy material. He rubbed his thumb across my bottom lip, raising his eyebrows, as if to ask permission.
I nodded and kissed him, hoping I was giving him some idea of how much I wanted him, how much I wanted to touch and be touched, how glad I was that it was Wade here with me. He propped my ass on the edge of the table and pushed his wet jacket back, letting it drop to the ground. His fingers splayed across my collarbone, tracing its curve down to the swell of my breasts. He kneaded them, teasing the nipples through the wet cotton of my shirt. I moaned, arching into his hands, bucking my hips. My ankles locked at the small of his back, trapping him against me. He tried not to let the wince show, but it was clear I was hurting him. I relaxed my legs from their vise-like grip, and he fell against me, face tucked into the valley of my cleavage.
I retreated, embarrassed by my lack of control, pulling my hands back and uncrossing my ankles. But Wade caught my thighs in his hands and wrapped them back around his hips, thrusting ever so slightly against me, showing me that his want for me hadn’t waned one bit. He reached for the button of my jeans, popped it loose, and dragged the stubborn denim down my hips. I was grateful that I’d worn one of the nicer pairs of panties I owned, cornflower-blue sateen with strategic lace panels. The warmth of his palm spanned between my hips, over my mound, and I sighed in contentment.
Grinning, I reached for his shirt, pulling it gently over his head. No matter how many times I saw his sculpted, inked upper body, I would never stop admiring the curves of his toned torso, the way his tattoos accentuated the length of his arms. I traced them with my fingertips, the flashing golden flames of the phoenix curling over his shoulder, the curve of antlers from the deer skull on his forearm, the graceful dance of lettering on his ribs.
He caught my wrist, urging my hand down his belly to his zipper, and I made quick work of it. My panting joined his as I slid my cool fingers under the elastic of his underwear and wrapped them around the hot length of him. Groaning, he bucked forward, and his hands abandoned my breasts, landing hard beside my shoulders to brace himself.
The noises he made were fan-freaking-tastic. I could hear them, even over the howling of the wind and thunder outside.
He was kissing me again, making me forget my nerves, teasing my opening with warm, rough fingers, working me into a state of shameless, shaky need. I guided him toward me, sure that if he wasn’t inside me soon, I would die all over again. Growling softly, he slid home. I sobbed, throwing my head back and whacking it against the table as I rolled my hips, desperately trying to bring him closer.
He cradled my crown in one hand while he secured my ass on the table with the other. I clung to his shoulders, undulating against him. The more I moved, the tighter that delicious tension coiled inside of me. I could feel the coil of excitement gathering, building to something I couldn’t quite name but desperately needed. And in focusing on that feeling, I let my control slip.
Being so close to Wade, surrounded by his lovely human smell, the sound of his pounding pulse, it made my mouth water all over again. I could sense his blood flowing through his veins, under all that golden skin, mere inches from my lips. I could practically taste the tangy, warm throb of it over my lips. My fangs extended, stretching farther than I’d ever felt them go.
Just a little nip, a cold, hissing voice seemed to whisper in my head. He’ll hardly miss it. And it will be soooo good.
I licked my lips, tracing the line of Wade’s jugular with my eyes to find just the right spot to sink my teeth— Then I froze suddenly, sitting up and clamping my hand over my mouth. My throat was positively burning with thirst, and in my rush to get out the door earlier, I’d barely had breakfast. The synthetic blood I’d planned to drink during the evening I had left in my van. I didn’t want to feed from him. I’d managed to keep to my strict “vampire vegan” policy so far . . . and damn, he smelled like everything that was good and delicious in the world.
I would drain him dry.
I panicked, scrambling away from Wade, nearly uncoupling us. He frowned, holding on to me. When he saw me clutching my hand over my fangs, his golden brows rose, and he slowly peeled my hand away from my face. He kissed me, deliberately pressing his lips against each of my canines. He edged his mouth along my jaw, nipping and biting until he reached my throat. This left his neck exposed and vulnerable to my mouth.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I whispered.
Wade shrugged, moving his hips and nudging against an absolutely wonderful spot inside me that even I didn’t know existed. “So don’t.”
I keened, digging my fingernails into the table. Panting, I licked my lips and tentatively scraped my fangs against his skin. Wade clutched me to his chest, preparing for the pain. I could feel the table buckling under my fingers as I concentrated on being gentle. My teeth sank into his vein, and warm, fragrant blood burst into my mouth.
I had missed out on a lot. Real, warm human blood straight from the source was better than any food, drink, or drug ever devised by man. I was drinking stars. His life was flowing into my mouth, satiating every taste bud, wetting my parched throat. And he never missed a stroke, moving over me as I drank from him. I could feel every cell in my body, his body. I could feel everything. I could feel more.
Grunting, Wade picked up the pace, slamming his hips into mine. I curled around him, drinking deep. I had to stop. I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t want to take too much. I didn’t— Wade reached between us, arm bent at an awkward angle as he circled his fingers just above our joined bodies. I wrenched my face away from his neck as that coil inside me snapped and my whole body seemed to seize. I threw my head back, howling, as a racking climax burst through me. I felt the table crumble in my hands as I rode out the waves of pleasure.
Wade followed me over the edge, hips bucking, face buried against my collarbone. I collapsed back against the table. I stroked my hands down his back while his breathing settled.
Despite the cold and the wet and the adjacent serial-killer training ground, I could stay sprawled across that table forever. His weight on top of me only added to my contentment as I came down from my high. Maybe this was some sort of side effect of drinking real blood? Was this why “live-feeding” vampires seemed to be less angsty?
“Did I take too much?” I asked. “Do you feel OK?”
“I can’t feel my face, but I don’t think that has to do with the blood drinkin’,” he muttered against my cleavage. He slowly withdrew from me but kept me propped against the table, comfortably bearing my weight.
I lifted his head so I could inspect his wound. I was rather proud that I had only made two small punctures over his vein, leaving barely a swipe of blood on his skin.
“I feel fine,” he assured me. “Better than fine.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Barely felt it. Are you sure you got enough?”
“Yeah, I didn’t have to drink as much as I normally do.”
“That’s what you get when you go organic,” Wade said.
I snickered, batting weakly at his back. “That’s so wrong. And unless you’re a vegan who uses one of those salt-rock things as deodorant, I don’t think you count as organic.”
“So was that your first time?” he asked.
“Having sex in a death barn? Yes.”
“Drinkin’ blood from a human,” he said.
“Yes, you took my fang-ginity,” I told him. “Sorry about that. I didn’t feed properly before I left the house.”
“You’ve gotta take better care of yourself, Libby,” he said. “You run around takin’ care of everybody else but you. I know you’re immortal and all, but I think that only counts if you’re a fully functionin’ vampire.”
“I know, I know.” I sighed, tracing the path of the koi that swam along his arm.
“You can ask,” he said.
“Didn’t this hurt? I mean, clearly, you kept going back, so it couldn’t have been that bad, but . . .”
“Oh, no, it hurt like a bitch,” he said. “But it was a good hurt. And I love all of ’em. I’m assuming you don’t have any.”
“No. Rob didn’t like them, thought they looked trashy. And I don’t think I could get one now, since I basically heal up within seconds of getting a wound.”
“That’s a shame,” he said. “Because I think you would look insanely hot with ink.”
“I’m insanely hot without ink,” I countered.
“Of course you are,” he said. Leering a little, Wade bent, rummaging through his pants pocket, and pulled out a black Sharpie. He balanced my ass on the edge of the table as he methodically wrote something along the curve of my rib cage.
“If you’re writing ‘Property of Wade,’ I will punch you in the throat,” I told him, craning my neck as I tried to make out what he was writing.
“Nope.” He bit the tip of his tongue while he finished his work with a flourish.
He hitched up his pants, crossed back to the bike, and grabbed my purse. “Use your mirror thingy to look.”
“Thank you for not going through my purse,” I told him, plucking my compact from a side pocket. “Also, thank you for knowing that I have a reflection.”
“I may be a redneck, but I ain’t fool enough to go through a woman’s purse uninvited. And everybody knows that vampires have reflections.”
It took me a second to figure out how to read Wade’s neat handwriting backward, but I eventually read, “I had sex in a death barn, and all I got was this temporary tattoo.”
“Wow,” I said, shaking my head.
“Hey, a girl’s first tattoo, that’s a milestone. That, your fang-ginity, and your first barn sex all in one night. I’m just glad I was here for it.”
“Well, it’s been so long since I’ve had sex, you might get credit for taking my actual virginity,” I muttered into his neck.
“How long?” Wade asked, smirking down at me.
“About two years . . . two and a half . . . three. It’s been three years since I’ve had sex,” I told him. “Oh, my God, this is pathetic.”
“Nah, it’s not pathetic—three years?” he marveled. “How is that possible? Your husband’s only been dead for two years.”
“Well, the last year with Rob was . . . distant.”
“Were y’all living in the same state?”
“My marriage was far from perfect!”
“You know, every time I think I like ya just enough, you go and say something like that, and I like ya even more.”
“There is something very wrong with you,” I told him as he helped me right my clothes.
“And you love it,” he said, kissing me.
“Yeah, I kind of do. Which means there’s something wrong with me, too.”
I was proud of myself, knowing that I’d said I loved it and not him. I hadn’t melted into a postorgasmic puddle of overenthusiastic-to-the-point-of-being-sad confessions of affection. I’d come out of my first sexual experience (involving another person) in three years with about seventy percent of my dignity intact. Even if I had, technically, had sex with him before our first actual date.
I liked my relationship with Wade. It was comfortable and fun and seemed to meet both of our needs for now. Would I like to see it grow into more? Absolutely. But with things being so unsettled with my custody case and my attachment to Finn, I didn’t know if I could handle “more” right now. Barn sex and sassy banter were my current limit.
Wade smirked, offering me his hand as if he were a knight aiding a lady stepping down from a carriage and not the girl he had just ridden hard and put up damp. He helped me slide into my jacket and carefully folded the collar under my chin. “I think the rain’s let up a little bit. Do you want to make a break for Murphy?”
I grinned at him, toying with the buttons of his own jacket. “Would it be weird if I said no?”
“Well, as much as I am sure I would enjoy round two, I’m gonna have to get some juice and a cookie in me, or my whole standin’-upright situation is gonna get ugly.”
“Yeah, I should probably start carrying an emergency blood-donor pack in my purse for next time,” I said.
“You sure you don’t already have one in that giant-ass bag?” he asked wryly. “And it’s kind of nervy of you to assume there’ll be a next time.”
I gasped. “First of all, that’s a fair statement about my bag. But who said that the donor packet would be for you?”
“Oh, so you’re going to just bite me and drop me?”
“Well, if you didn’t like it, I’m sure I could find someone who—”
Wade caught my wrist and yanked me close for a hot, demanding kiss. “I liked it,” he told me, his voice stern. “Trust me, I liked it.”
“Good. Let’s go get you that cookie.”
I had officially taken the evening off. Between work, Les and Marge, the Pumpkin Patch madness, and whatever I was doing with Wade, I felt like I’d been missing too much time with Danny. So I’d sent Kerrianne home at sundown, made Danny’s favorite chicken nuggets with a bandanna tied around my nose, and spent the evening watching him run around our front yard, searching for Bigfoot tracks. Eventually, he got tired of chasing his own tail like a Jack Russell terrier and joined me on the front-porch swing, where we read Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses (six or seven times).
I was proud of my progress—having Danny sit on my lap, letting my chin rest on his sandy hair without a twinge of worry about whether I would be tempted by his blood. Now that I’d experienced live feeding and connected it to sexy Wade-based feelings, there was no way I could consider it in any way related to Danny. Ever.
“Mom, who would win in a fight, a werewolf or a vampire?” Danny asked, flipping through his copy of Bigfoot Cinderrrrrrrella.
“Well, sweetheart, there are a lot of Web sites devoted to this debate, but I’m not really sure.”
“But werewolves have fangs and claws, and they’re super-fast,” Danny reasoned.
“And vampires have fangs, and they’re super-fast. And they’re super-strong,” Finn noted, stepping onto our porch.
My sire had just walked onto my front porch mid-conversation, as if it were totally normal for him to drop by in the middle of the night. I smiled, because I couldn’t think of any other expression that wouldn’t convey, Oops, I slept with some other guy since the last time I saw you.
While I was the master of multitasking, I was not good at this semi-sort-of-juggling-two-men thing. Surely this was going to come back and bite me in the ass. I knew that on the scale of potential evil I could do as a vampire, it was pretty minor. Still, I knew I was going to have to make it clear to one of them at some point that he was relegated to the friend zone.
I just had to figure out which one it would be.
Finn returned my smile, looking at me like I was something precious, which was not helping me in terms of friend-zone designation. It was the sort of expression you’d hope to see on the face of a husband and father returning home at the end of the day to find his wife and child waiting for him—except that he wasn’t Danny’s dad . . . or my husband . . . or even my significant other . . . and he was a dead guy.
“Yeah, but vampires can’t go out during the day. All a werewolf would have to do is rip the lid off your coffin, and you’d be dead,” Danny scoffed, but there was mischief in his eyes. He was teasing Finn, testing how far he could push the big bad vampire and not get busted for being rude to a guest.
And Finn was playing along, blithely ignoring my son’s sass. He sat next to us on the porch swing, careful to put a respectable distance between himself and Danny. “You make a valid point.”
“Does that mean I win?” Danny asked me.
“I think it means you and Mr. Finn are at a tie,” I told him.
“Miss Steele says there’s no such thing as a tie, that’s something new-age parents made up to keep from hurting their kids’ feelings when they lose.”
I snorted. “That sounds like something Miss Steele would say.”
“But that’s OK,” Danny said. “Because I don’t want Mr. Finn’s feelings to be hurt because he lost.”
“I’m not sure that’s the case,” Finn said.
“So Mr. Finn, do you drink blood from people or bottles?”
“A bit of both.”
“How old are you?”
“Most vampires don’t like to answer that question.”
Danny nodded. “Neither does my mom.”
“Easy,” I warned him.
Finn chuckled. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you, Danny?”
“Mom says that’s my job. How am I supposed to learn anything about the world if I don’t ask questions?”
“I seem to recall mentioning something about being polite when learning about the world,” I muttered.
“I could be worse,” Danny noted. “Hayden McTieg shoves people off their chairs when he says hello.”
“That’s true. I should lower my standards to McTieg levels.” I snorted. “Danny, how about you go brush your teeth and get ready for bed?”
“Actually, before you go up, Danny, I have something for you,” Finn said, digging a small blue-wrapped package out of his jacket pocket. “I noticed that you really like LEGOs.”
Without hesitation, Danny popped the small blue box open and gasped. “Mom! Clutch Powers!”
Danny showed me the dark-haired mini-figure inside the box, dressed in painted-on blue jeans and a leather jacket. Clutch Powers was the main character in a LEGO adventure movie that Danny watched over and over until we could both quote the DVD from memory. But despite his numerous notes to Santa and birthday requests, I had never been able to track down a mini-figure Clutch, not even on eBay.
“This is the best present ever!” Danny exclaimed. He threw his arms around Finn’s waist. “Thank you, Mr. Finn!”
And so Danny explained to Finn why this was such an awesome present and why Clutch Powers was the greatest character created since the invention of literature. And they debated the merits of LEGOs versus the Lincoln Logs that Finn had played with when he was growing up. Finn was a little stiff at first, but he managed to approach Danny from the level my son appreciated most. He didn’t want to be talked down to or patronized or treated like an adorable brainless moppet. He just wanted you to talk and listen.
“All right, sir, it is bedtime for you,” I interrupted at last.
Danny huffed in protest. “But I wanna talk to Mr. Finn some more!”
“You’ll see him some other time.”
“OK.” He sighed. “Good night, Mr. Finn. Thank you for my present.” He held up his hand for Finn to give him a high five.
The corner of Finn’s mouth lifted as he slapped it. “Good night, Danny.”
Danny scrambled off the couch and up the stairs like a monkey.
“He likes me!” Finn exclaimed, sounding downright giddy.
“You brought him a rare LEGO. You could burn down our house, and he would still look at you all googly-eyed.”
“Don’t ruin this moment for me,” he said, shushing me.
“Just wait until you step on one of them with bare feet,” I muttered. “I don’t do that very often, by the way. Let him talk to men that I’m . . . I don’t even know what to call what we’re doing. I don’t know you. I don’t know what your intentions are. Just don’t—don’t hurt him. Don’t be nice to him because you’re trying to show me what a good guy you are. For that matter, don’t hurt me. Because if you do, I’ll have to—”
He kissed my cheek, running his hands along my hair. His nose twitched, and for a second, I worried that he smelled Wade on me. But his tone remained smooth and even as he purred, “I would expect nothing less than the no doubt very creative and terrifying threat that is about to fall from those lovely lips of yours, but it’s not necessary. I don’t want to hurt either of you. That’s the last thing on my mind. And as far as using him? I like Danny. I mean, I don’t have a lot of experience with kids, but he’s not an unpleasant little person. I can adjust. And he’s part of you, an important part of your life. How could I not want to get to know him better?”
“Let’s just . . . we need to take things slow in the ‘getting to know you’ area, OK?”
His lips quirked. “Does that cover occasional kissing?”
“It might,” I said. “But not in front of Danny, because he’s six, and kissing in all forms grosses him out.”
Finn nodded. “Cootie-phobia.”
“Exactly.” I giggled as he leaned in, brushing his mouth against mine. That same feeling from my dreams, the emotions I’d experienced when I was turned—acceptance, excitement, a thrill of fear—all came rushing back to me. It was a shockingly gentle kiss, questing, searching for some bit of softness in a world that had been just a bit too hard on him. I worried that he might be able to smell Wade on my skin, taste him in my kiss. But Finn simply pulled me into his lap, nibbling on my bottom lip as his hands traced the lines of my back. And then I recalled the feeling of Wade’s lips against mine, and I clutched at Finn’s shirt, prepared to shove him back.
But he retreated on his own, sliding his hand along my arm as he settled back in the seat. “So how’s my favorite vampire accountant?”
“I am doing well,” I said.
“Still have plans for the weekend?”
“Yes,” I told him. My date with Wade was cemented, with babysitters and everything. If nothing else, I really wanted a romantic outing with him that didn’t involve a death barn. “I’m assuming this is an unsanctioned visit?” I asked.
“I left Jane a voice mail,” Finn promised. “Which she will not get, because according to Dick, she doesn’t understand how to use her voice mail.”
I sighed, letting my head drop to his shoulder. “Why do you risk pissing her off just to see me? Why do I risk pissing her off just to see you? Is it just that you’re my sire? Is this why I feel drawn to you?”
“No,” he said, stroking his thumb along my cheek. “At first, there is an instinctual bond between the sire and the childe, to help the new vampire trust their mentor enough to get them through the transition. But it fades once the new vampire feels more settled in their new life. Most of the sire’s privileges after that? Rules designed by the Council to keep older vampires in power and younger vampires in line. Look it up in any of the guidebooks.”
“Oh, trust me, I will,” I told him. “Maybe your influence over me got extended because we didn’t get that time together at first? Maybe that explains the warm fuzzy feelings and the dreams.”
“Dreams? There were dreams?” Finn’s smile widened.
“I will never recap them.”
“Mom!” Danny yelled from upstairs. “I can’t find my ninja pajamas!”
At the sound of my son’s voice, I slid out of Finn’s lap. “Well, of course you can’t, they’re ninja pajamas! No one sees ninja pajamas.”
I got silence from upstairs. Finn stared at me.
“I thought it was funny,” I told him before calling to Danny. “I put them in your top drawer.”
“I’m still a little stung by the refusal to recap. I’m really not so bad as all that, am I?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed, laughing. “You are completely untrustworthy. You haven’t told me why you answered my ad. You haven’t even told me why you’ve stuck around and continued to see me, despite Jane threatening you with some very creative retribution.”
“I told you, your ad made you sound like a good person. I wanted to help you.”
I stared at him, silent and stone-faced.
Finn cleared his throat. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“No.”
He sighed. “OK, cards on the table. I turned you because of your talent.”
“You needed a discreet bookkeeper?”
He chuckled and cupped my cheek in his palm, settling a very serious gaze on my face. “Your vampiric gift.”
“I don’t have a vampiric gift,” I told him. “Jane said it would probably manifest itself within a few months of my changing. But nothing so far, and for some reason, she can’t get a read off me. “
“That’s because you’re a stabilizer.”
“What?”
“When you’re around, you suppress the gifts of the vampires around you. Jane can’t always read your mind. I’d bet she couldn’t read the mind of any human or vampire within twenty yards when you’re around. She’s just so focused on trying to read you that she hasn’t noticed.”
“Well, that’s a crappy power!” I exclaimed, unable to contain the disappointment of being told I was the psychic equivalent of a candle snuffer. “I was hoping for something cool, like telepathy. I would have settled for the squirrel thing!”
“No,” he said, holding my hands between his. “It’s an incredible gift, especially to someone like me.”
“Why?”
“My special ability involves a sort of mental possession. I can travel into other people’s heads, read their thoughts, see what they’ve done, what they plan to do. Occasionally, if the person I’m occupying is highly suggestible, I can move them around, physically, a little bit like a puppet.”
“Have you ever done that to me?” I demanded.
“I try not to invade my hosts’ privacy.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
Still not responding, he said, “My ability has become more unpredictable lately. I’m not sure why. It’s becoming . . . more. The door is swinging both ways. For months, when I’ve gone into other people’s heads, some of them have made their way back into mine. I’m losing consciousness in the middle of conversations while my mind goes on walkabout and I drag people in. I am walking around my apartment during the day, copying the morning routines of my neighbors. The day before I turned you, I woke up in my hallway, inches away from walking into a beam of sunlight.”
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“Our talents change over time. They grow and mutate. Your friend Jane couldn’t read the minds of vampires when she first rose, but now she’s able to read our thoughts easily, unless there’s some complication like your gift. My talent is just changing faster than I can control it.”
“And how does my gift work? How am I helping you?”
“Because you are suppressing my power. You’re stabilizing me.”
“How?”
“Without even trying, which is the best sort of gift,” he said. “Think about it. You’re one of the most stable people I’ve ever met. You’re nurturing and solid. It only makes sense that you would provide an anchor for the people around you.”
“But how did you even know that this would be my completely passive and useless-to-me gift? How did you know to turn me?”
“I was in the Hollow, months ago. You were sitting at a coffee shop at the hospital. I was visiting a human acquaintance who had gotten into a, let’s say, disagreement with a business associate.”
“So many of your stories involve violent disagreements.”
He poked my side, continuing as if I hadn’t said anything. “I passed by the coffee shop, and I saw you there. And you looked so very miserable. I don’t think I’d ever seen a human look so hopeless in all my life. I felt something for you. And I hadn’t felt anything for anyone, besides myself, in a long, long time. I couldn’t help but slip into your head, to see what was making you so unhappy.”
“So you have been in my head.”
Still no acknowledgment that I’d spoken. “I could sense it, that latent power, bubbling under the surface of your blood, the ability to suppress the abilities of the vampires around you,” he said. “You were my salvation, my solution, and you didn’t even know it. I settled into your memories, learning more about you. I saw you fighting with your husband, just before he died. I saw you sitting in the doctor’s office, receiving news about your test results. I saw your little boy sleeping and your terror at never being able to see him grow up. And before it even fully formed, I could see the birth of the inspiration for your plan to become a vampire. I knew you were going to follow through with it. And if you weren’t careful, you would either find some brutish vampire who would take advantage of you—or, worse, a human who would take advantage of you. So I stayed close to you. I dipped into your mind a few more times and made sure I was the first to answer your ad.”
“So you’ve been in my head multiple times?”
“And . . . I may have hired someone to hack the Web site to disable your ad so you wouldn’t get any other answers,” he admitted.
“That is the least disturbing thing you’ve told me so far,” I groused, rubbing my hands over my face. “So you only turned me to save your own ass?”
“It’s not that different from you seeking someone to turn you so you would have more time with your son.”
Damned if he didn’t have a point there. I couldn’t help but feel deceived, though. I’d thought that he’d done something for me for the sake of doing something good, but he’d done it because it benefited him. It felt like that episode in high school when Hal Morrow asked me to Homecoming only to ask me to do his math homework the next day. He’d made me feel special only to yank it out from under me. Finn was an enigma wrapped in a riddle coated in misdirection. He was a burrito of dishonesty.
Wait.
“I did have cancer, didn’t I?” I demanded, sliding out of Finn’s lap. “You didn’t find some way to fake my medical test results so you could manipulate me with this insane vampirism idea?”
“No. I’m devious, but I’m not evil.”
“That remains to be seen,” I muttered. “So you’ve been hanging around because being in my presence is sort of like a booster shot for controlling your power?”
“Well, yes, but that’s not why I want to spend time with you!”
“You know, you could have just told me this at the beginning. You could have just said, ‘I need a supernatural supplement from your aura.’ And I wouldn’t have minded. You didn’t have to put on this charming act, the whole ‘seduce the schoolmarm’ thing. You didn’t have to—”
“This isn’t an act!” he swore. “I do want more time with you. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to think that was the only reason I turned you. But I also didn’t want you to hear this from Jane before you heard it from me. Frankly, I’m surprised she hasn’t told you already.”
I stood up, putting space between myself and my sire. For the first time since meeting him, I wanted Finn out of my presence. Stat. I wanted to throw Wade up in his face. I wanted him to know that I didn’t need him in order to feel special. I didn’t need him in order to feel loved or appreciated.
“I need some time to think about this,” I said. “I appreciate your honesty, half-assed and delayed as it may be, but at the same time, I don’t. If you need a booster, I’ll meet you at the bookshop, and you can soak up my rays or whatever for a few minutes.”
“You’re upset.”
“I’m glad you’re picking up on that.”
“I didn’t tell you this to hurt you,” he said, rising. He moved toward me but seemed to think better of it. “I’ll see you soon.”
As Finn disappeared into the woods near my house, I flopped back onto my swing, whacking my head against the backing. Ouch.
I didn’t have the time or the emotional resources for a pity party. I was a grown-ass woman. I was a mother. Mothers didn’t pout. At least, the good ones didn’t.
“I thought you liked Mr. Finn, Mom.” Danny poked his head out around the screen door. He was carrying a freshly popped bag of extra-butter microwave popcorn, his favorite snack since I’d taught him how to use the microwave. It smelled like sour milk and oven cleaner to me, but Danny was chowing down like I would never allow him to have hydrogenated yellow food dye again.
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, despite the disgusting popcorn smell. This was what I’d dreaded, the idea of men drifting in and out of Danny’s life. Danny deserved stability. “I do like Finn, hon. But sometimes even grown-ups fuss at each other.”
“Does that mean that he’s not going to bring me any more LEGOs?”
“If anything, he might bring you more LEGOs.”
“That would be OK,” Danny conceded, climbing up onto the swing and settling against my side. The smell of his snack was making me gag, even if I craned my neck so far away that I felt a vertebra pop. “So Finn’s the guy who made you into a vampire, huh?”
“How do you know that?”
“You used the word ‘sire’ the other day when you were talking about him with Miss Kerrianne,” he said. “I hear Miss Jane say it when she’s talking about Jamie. So he’s like your vampire daddy?”
“I don’t really know how to answer that.”
“It’s weird.”
“Yes, it is,” I admitted. “But no matter who comes into our lives or goes out of our lives, it’s never going to change the way I feel about you. I might make new friends, I might start dating someone, but you will always be first for me, got it?”
“You mean you’re going to start dating Harley’s dad?”
“Wha—how—why do you say that?”
“Because when you look at each other, your eyes get all googly, like Madison’s stupid cartoon kitty-cat folder.”
I snorted. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t so smart.”
“And Madison says that means you like someone as more than a friend,” Danny told me, tilting the popcorn toward me. I shook my head and turned it so the popcorn was facing downwind.
“Is Madison pretty smart about this sort of thing?”
Danny nodded, his face solemn. “She knew that Mr. Brinker and Miss Hershell were going steady before any of the grown-ups figured it out.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter if Mr. Wade and I start dating; it will not affect whether you and Harley can play together. And it won’t affect whether Mr. Wade likes you. You’re a great kid, and everybody loves you.”
“Except for Madison,” he said. “She says boys smell.”
“Except for Madison,” I amended as Danny offered me his popcorn again.
“I can’t eat popcorn anymore, baby. I can’t eat any food.”
“Oh, OK,” he said, with a glimmer of mischief in his eyes as he moved the popcorn closer to my face.
“Are you taunting me with popcorn right now?”
“What does ‘taunt’ mean?”
“Waving the popcorn in front of my face because you know I can’t have it.”
“Then, yes, I am taunting you.”