6
Be very careful approaching children’s social events. They will be fraught with dangers, including birthday candles, unsecured silverware, and clowns.
—My Mommy Has Fangs: A Guide to Post-Vampiric Parenting
I dumped yet another bag of gummy feet into a camouflage paper bowl and wondered how I’d gotten myself into throwing a Bigfoot-themed sleepover for a cabal of first-graders.
Danny was officially turning six, and it was his dearest wish to have a big-boy sleepover. We’d spent months discussing the best snacks to serve and the best games to play. He and Kerrianne spent most of the week creating an elaborate pillow fort in his new bedroom to house this sugar-fueled spectacular. He’d been pushing for it since he was four, but overnighting with a group of grumpy toddlers was a bit beyond even my mothering skill level, so I’d been able to put him off. But this was the year. We’d agreed that when he hit first grade, when it was almost guaranteed that his friends were potty-trained and could feed themselves, I would be willing to host them. Danny resented the “almost” guaranteed, but we shook on it and everything.
At least I was a nocturnal creature now and had a ninety percent chance of outlasting them, sleep-wise. But I’d woken up with a weird heavy feeling in my stomach that evening, a feeling of impending dread that had nothing to do with not picking up the cookie cake on time or the fact that I could only find one age-appropriate Sasquatch-related movie for the kids to watch. It turned out there were a lot of super-creepy, violent movies made about Sasquatch. Harry and the Hendersons was the least emotionally scarring option.
I couldn’t put my finger on why I was so unsettled. I tried to invite Les and Marge for cake and ice cream, at least, hoping to bridge the gap a bit with a magnanimous, slightly underhanded gesture. But they hadn’t returned my numerous calls. My conscience was clear, at least.
I may have overprepared a little bit, abusing my renewed Pinterest account to find Bigfoot-themed printables and games. I’d arranged for a moonlit Sasquatch hunt in the backyard, leading to a big footprint near the tree line that the boys were going to fill with plaster. I’d thought about ending it with a Bigfoot-shaped piñata, but I wasn’t comfortable with the idea that if you loved something you should hunt it down and beat it with a stick until delicious surprises fall out.
We’d followed the school’s unwritten party policy of inviting every boy in Danny’s class. The administration would not tolerate a child doling out party invites like a tiny Perez Hilton. The problem was that I didn’t know how many kids to expect. None of the mothers had RSVP’d. This was not unusual. In the Hollow, an RSVP phone contact was just the number a mother called to inform the hostess how many of the guest’s uninvited siblings would also be attending.
So why did I have this weird “Carrie before the prom” feeling pressing on my chest?
An hour after the party was expected to start, I got my answer. Not one single kid had arrived. Not one.
Danny was collapsed on the couch, his jeans and flannel shirt rumpled from his rolling around on the cushions, waiting for his friends to arrive. His little Outback hat had been thrown to the ground, forgotten. He’d started out so excited, bouncing on the balls of his feet while he waited at the front door for cars to roll down the driveway, and then slowly wilting into the pile of disappointment lolling on the couch.
It took iron control over every single muscle fiber in my face to keep a calm, cheerful expression for Danny’s sake. I couldn’t believe this was a coincidence. In all of the birthday parties Danny had attended, I’d never seen this happen. At least two or three kids showed up for every party, even in the homes where it was rumored that a meth lab was operating. I could not believe that this was not somehow connected to the fact that I was a vampire now. Danny was being shunned because of me.
“You put directions to your new address in the envelope, didn’t you?” Kerrianne whispered, refreshing the ice in the cooler full of sodas. “Maybe they don’t realize you moved.”
“I printed the directions in red, in all caps,” I whispered. “I can’t believe this! I can’t believe the other parents would pull this. I’ve seen their kids through accelerated reader testing and field trips to the freaking petting zoo and the Christmas programs—oh, my God, how many times can I loan out my dead husband’s bathrobe as a shepherd’s costume—but now, I’m trying to throw my son a freaking birthday party and they can’t be bothered to show up?”
Behind me, I heard a quick intake of breath and realized I wasn’t being nearly as quiet as I thought I was. Sure, the gasp I heard, but I didn’t pick up on his little feet shuffling across the carpet? Stupid inconsistent vampire senses.
“What do you mean, Mom? Do you mean no one is coming?” Danny asked, his lips trembling.
“No, not at all, sweetheart. I’m sure people are coming. They’re just running late,” I assured him, trying to keep the anxious note out of my voice.
“You’re sure?” Danny sniffed.
“Absolutely. There will be people here before you know it, lots of them.”
“OK.” He sighed. “Can I have a cookie while I’m waiting?”
I tried to weigh the pressures of proper parental nutrition standards versus keeping my son calm on what would no doubt be one of those traumatic birthday incidents he’d discuss in therapy ten years in the future.
“Half a cookie,” I told him.
“I’ll take it,” he said, nodding sharply and marching into the kitchen.
“Hey, does celebrating this birthday mean that you’re going to stop introducing yourself as being ‘five and five-sixths’?” I yelled after him.
“Mah-ommm.”
“I see we’ve reached the stage where I embarrass you just by having the power of speech. I have leveled up in motherhood!” I raised my hands in a semitriumphant pose until he was completely out of earshot. I dropped my arms.
Right, I would make this happen.
I turned to Kerrianne. “I need bodies. And I don’t mean in the creepy vampire way.”
Kerrianne gave me a crisp salute, and we both pulled out our cell phones and started dialing.
Once again, my friendly local Council representative came through. Jane activated some sort of vampire phone tree, and within fifteen minutes, I had guests pouring through the front door. Kerrianne called her mother, who dropped Braylen off with the makings for s’mores and Finding Bigfoot on DVD. Jane and her tall, dark, and ridiculously handsome husband, Gabriel, arrived first, and Gabriel distracted Danny by asking endless Bigfoot-related questions. (Gabriel’s secret vampire power was clearly picking up on party themes.) Jane fixed me a large double-vodka Especially Bloody Mary, for which I would be forever grateful. I didn’t even know you could mix liquor and blood together, but you could, and it was freaking transcendent.
Jane’s human childhood friend, Zeb Lavelle, arrived with his wife, Jolene, and their twins, Janelyn and Joe. A vampire named Sam Clemson and his girlfriend, Tess, arrived with several warmers full of dessert blood from Tess’s restaurant, Southern Comforts. Iris Scanlon and her husband, Cal, brought a four-foot-tall stuffed Bigfoot with a big blue bow tied around his neck. I didn’t even know where one would find a stuffed Bigfoot, much less on last-minute notice, but Iris ran one of the most successful vampire concierge services in the Southeast, so it stood to reason she knew people who could procure weird items on the fly. I would remember that for Danny’s next birthday. Who knew what the theme would be by the time he was seven?
I hoped Danny didn’t notice that said guests were strangers and several hundred years outside the expected age range. In my desperation for guests, I’d even called Les and Marge again, but they didn’t pick up either of their phones. Again. It would be the first birthday with their grandson they’d ever missed. I would take time to feel like a horrible person when I wasn’t in such a social panic.
As much as I fretted over the birthday boy’s mood, once “Mr. Dick” arrived, Danny was so excited to be showing off his stuffed Sasquatch he couldn’t care less who else was there. The vampires stood around my parlor, talking and laughing, filling my home with joyous noise while they sipped their blood. They’d all gamely donned their “Sasquatch-hunt” outback-style bush hats and pretended to nibble at their cookies, because Danny didn’t quite grasp the whole “vampires can’t eat solids” concept.
“I hope Danny doesn’t overwhelm him,” I told Dick’s vampire wife, Andrea, as Danny used his favorite vampire as a not-quite-living jungle gym.
“He loves it,” Andrea assured me. “He missed out on his own son’s childhood years, so spending time with kids now is a sort of privilege for him. He can’t get enough time with Jolene’s twins.”
Dick Cheney had a kid. Holy hell. I would file that under questions I would ask Jane when I wasn’t surrounded by birthday-party chaos.
“When are we going to start the Sasquatch hunt, Mom?” Danny called from the couch, where he and Dick were going over the Young People’s Guide to Cryptozoological Wonders, a softcover volume Jane had found in her shop.
“What’s a Sasquatch hunt?” Gabriel asked out of the corner of his mouth. “And will it hurt? Because if it hurts, I say we put Dick in charge.”
I grinned at Jane’s husband and wondered what karmic debt had been owed to Jane that she’d found a partner in life who fit her personality so well. The doorbell rang, distracting me. I opened the door to find a woman in peach nurse scrubs with unruly dark hair standing in my doorway. A tall man with sandy hair and a crooked smile was standing behind her, holding a bright blue gift bag.
“Sweetheart!” Dick crowed, hitching Danny on his hip and dashing across the room so fast even my vision couldn’t track him. He handed a squealing Danny off to me while he threw his arms around the brunette, lifting her off her feet with the force of his hug. “Oh, I have missed you so much, Nola. I think you’ve grown! Are these summer visits to Ireland really necessary? Can’t ya just tell the whole McGavock clan just to move their asses to Kentucky?”
“Yes, Pops, I’ll tell my Irish family to abandon their ancestral lands and move to the land of the Yanks because you have separation anxiety,” she said, her odd lilting accent muffled by her burying her face into his shoulder.
The sandy-haired man snorted at her comment and shook Dick’s free hand. “And you saw us a week ago when we got off the plane. And three days ago. And yesterday.”
“I know, Jed, I’m making up for lost hugs,” Dick said, not relaxing his grip.
“Is that your girlfriend, Mr. Cheney?” Danny demanded, his blue eyes narrowing suspiciously at Nola. “Because I thought you were married to Miss Andrea. I like Miss Andrea. She looks like a Disney princess.”
I had mentioned my son’s ability to pick up on potentially awkward social situations and zero in on them like a hawk, yes?
For a second, Dick looked completely horrified. Nola’s head popped up from Dick’s shoulder, and she let loose a great, braying laugh. Andrea took pity on both of them and said, “Danny, honey, this is Nola. She’s Mr. Cheney’s granddaughter. Several times great-granddaughter, but we shorten it for convenience’s sake.”
Danny’s eyes tracked between Dick, who was in his mid- to late thirties, and Nola, who was maybe pushing the bottom of that range. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
“It is, trust me,” Dick assured him. “And I haven’t seen my lovely granddaughter for two months because she just had to go visit her family in Ireland.”
“Let it go, Pops.”
“There are some really nice rentals right here in the Hollow. They could relocate. You could get them a group rate,” he noted.
Nola’s voice was flat as she said, “Grandpa Richard.”
Dick winced and took Danny by the hand. He told him, “When she uses my proper name, that means I’m in trouble. Let’s go get you another cookie, huh, bud?”
“There are cookies?” Jed asked brightly, following them to the snack table. “Do I get a cool hat, too?”
“You brought me a present, so yes!” Danny crowed.
Nola closed her eyes and shook her head. “Give me strength.”
“The infamous Nola,” I said, stretching out my hand to shake hers. “Nice to meet you!”
Nola grinned broadly, snapping out of her prayers. “Sorry, we should have stopped in days ago, but I’ve been settling back into my work schedule at the clinic, which is always difficult after getting back to the States.”
“I’m glad to meet you. Jane said you were a nurse, but she didn’t mention the connection to Dick. I’m sure we’ll be taking advantage of proximity the next time Danny wakes up in the middle of the night throwing up.”
“Does that happen often?” she asked.
“One time, I did it off of Seth Perkins’s top bunk,” Danny boasted, running across the room and climbing up my leg. “It was amazing.”
“Not for the kid on the bottom bunk,” I told him, hoisting him onto my hip.
“Well, Danny, distance vomiting notwithstanding, happy birthday to you,” Nola said, extending her hand for a shake. “Thank you for inviting us. I’ve never been to a Bigfoot birthday party before,”
Danny shook her hand firmly and whispered, “It’s the perfect spot for one, and do you know why?”
“Tell me,” Nola said, grinning.
“Because there’s a Bigfoot living in the backyard.”
Nola’s dark brow winged up. “Really?”
Danny nodded. “Uh-huh, I’ve seen him out my window.”
Nola glanced up at her boyfriend and gave a sort of exasperated roll of her eyes. “You don’t say.”
“Yep. And we’re going to catch him tonight,” Danny declared. “Mom got all of the equipment.”
Nola grinned suddenly. “I’d say you have a better-than-average chance. Now, I didn’t have time to go shopping for a present, but I’d like to give you this.” She pulled a Mason jar from the blue gift bag with a flourish. An empty Mason jar.
Danny, who had been schooled thoroughly on the proper response to presents—any present—glanced up at me and smiled very sweetly before responding, “Thank you very much, Miss Nola. I can use it to catch lightning bugs.”
Nola offered him an approving pat on the head. “Well, what lovely manners you have, birthday boy. And it’s funny that you mention lightning bugs, because this jar contains a night-light.”
Nola put her hands over the jar and closed her eyes. She seemed to be muttering something under her breath, but even my keen vampire ears couldn’t make sense of the words. A warm, golden-green glow fluttered to life inside the jar, reflecting brightly in the blue depths of Danny’s eyes.
“Whoa,” he whispered. “What is that?”
“A very special night-light,” Nola told him solemnly. “Whenever you are in your room and trying to fall asleep, it will glow until you drift off. But be very careful with it. If you break the jar, it won’t work anymore.”
“How did you do that?” he asked.
“An old family trick,” she said. “Take good care of it, OK?”
He nodded, carefully cradling the jar to his chest and running up the stairs toward his room. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you!”
“How did you do that?” I asked her.
“Old family trick,” Nola repeated with a shrug. “Will you excuse me? I need to go talk to my wayward boyfriend for a moment.”
“Sure.” I watched her walk away and wondered what exactly she meant by “old family trick.” Was she a witch? A fairy? Were there other supernatural creatures out there besides vampires? It stood to reason that if we were real, there were other beasties out there, lurking in the dark. Maybe Danny’s claims to have seen Bigfoot weren’t so impossible after all.
I shuddered as the doorbell rang, and I opened it, expecting more undead revelers. Imagine my surprise to find Wade the Cranky Janitor standing at my door, cheerfully wrapped present in hand, standing behind the little boy my son had dragged around like a rag doll on school registration night.
What the hell?
My jaw dropped, and fortunately, I was left unable to say anything to hurt the little boy’s feelings. Wade’s eyes narrowed before he smirked at me. “Crazy closet lady.”
“Of course.” I saluted him. “Cranky maintenance man.”
“Charlie!” Danny cried, running across the living room and throwing his arms around his friend. “You came!”
The little boy grinned and hugged Danny. “Yeah! I’m excited! I’ve never been to a sleepover party before.”
“I’m real sorry we’re late,” Wade said. “Harley was having a problem with his inhaler, and we had to make a last-minute visit to his doctor. I didn’t want to take any chances before a sleepover. I’ve got his sleepin’ bag and stuff in the truck. I thought I’d keep ’em there for a while. Give him a chance to bow out graceful-like if he changes his mind about sleepin’ over. This is new territory for him.”
I eyed Wade carefully. What did he mean by that? Was he really concerned about his son’s big-boy face? Or did he not want his son sleeping at my house because he didn’t want to leave him in my care? He had to have known whose house he was coming to when he saw the invitation. Oddly enough, I didn’t remember filling out an invitation for a “Harley.”
“Danny, I thought you said your friend’s name was Charlie.”
“I thought it was, too,” Danny said as he helped Harley shove a straw into a chilled Capri Sun. “By the time I figured out I was wrong, I was used to calling him Charlie, so I stuck with that.”
I turned to Harley, smoothing the strawlike blond cowlick from the back of his head. “Why didn’t you correct him, hon?”
Harley shrugged and sipped his juice. “I didn’t wanna hurt his feelings.”
“You don’t have to let someone call you the wrong name to be polite, Harley.”
“Oh, OK,” Harley said, nodding his head as if this was a big revelation.
“And Danny, make an effort to call him by the correct name. How would you feel if someone called you Fanny every day?”
Danny’s face twisted in disgust. “Ew, no.”
Harley snickered. “Fanny.”
Danny pointed a finger at Harley’s face. “Don’t even think about it.”
Harley pinched his lips together, but his little shoulders shook with repressed laughter.
“Harley, why don’t you and Danny go get some food? There’s plenty of hot dogs over there. Kerrianne will help you with your plates.”
“There are more adults at this party than I expected,” Wade observed.
“Not all of the kids came,” I said. “In fact, Harley is the only kid who came, so my friends are here to even out the room a little bit. You should know that most of the people here are vampires. So if that bothers you, you should find a way to make your excuses without hurting Danny’s feelings.”
Wade scoffed. “Hell, no, it doesn’t bother me. I know Jed from the gym. We went to Nola’s clinic once when Harley had an asthma attack. I’ve done some special modifications for Dick at my shop, which I’m not supposed to talk about ’cause of some paperwork I signed. They’re all nice enough.”
Nola’s hunky boyfriend walked over and handed Wade a beer. “Hey, man, come on in.”
“I thought you worked at the school. How do you find the time to work in a garage?” I asked.
Wade frowned at me. “I don’t work at the school. I’m a volunteer.”
“You clean the school for free?”
“I don’t actually clean the school,” he said. “I own my own shop, so I make my own hours. I’m at the school almost every day, mostly in the mornings. I help the kids take their reading-comprehension tests in the library. I try and fail to control the chaos in the cafeteria at lunchtime. And yeah, when the occasion calls for it, I help out with maintenance.”
“So why are you so territorial about the supply closet?”
“That’s where I keep my stuff,” he said. “You get thrown up on enough times, you learn to store extra clothes in a handy spot.”
“Yikes.”
He pursed his lips, making the golden-blond beard undulate over his cheeks. He nodded toward his son. “You’d think after nursin’ that one through every one of his stomach flus, I’da learned the signs of Vesuvius about to blow.”
I laughed, watching Danny drop an Outback hat onto Harley’s head while Harley scarfed down a hot dog. “It seems that our sons are inseparable.”
“It does.”
“So we might as well try to get along.”
“I s’pose.”
“Do you ever give answers with more than two words?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve heard you string together more words, but that was when you were yelling at me, so I figured that might be special circumstances.”
He smirked. “Sometimes.”
“Well, that’s still one word. But I’ll take it. Libby Stratton,” I said, offering him my hand.
“Wade Tucker.” He shook my hand, and I yowled in pain as my skin came into contact with something that burned and itched and stung all at the same time. Fangs sprung, I yanked my hand out of his grasp and stared at the dirty gray streaks across my fingers. I looked down at Wade’s hand and saw that he was wearing several silver rings.
“Huh,” Wade said, pursing his lips as I worked to get my fangs back into my mouth.
“It’s a problem,” I admitted, shaking my injured fingers. “OK, so you want to stay for a while and help us plow through an insane amount of beef jerky and foot-shaped cookie cake? Almost eighty percent of the guests cannot eat solids, so you’d be doing me a big favor.”
“I don’t think I can pass up an offer like that,” he said, shrugging.
I grinned and turned to the kids. “OK, boys, are you ready for your ‘Sasquatch hunt’?” I asked, using that hypercheerful voice only mothers who’d suffered through birthdays could fully understand. The boys abandoned their plates and bellowed a mighty hunters’ roar, dragging Dick and Braylen and Sam and Gabriel out to the backyard. The rest of us followed this brave battalion of cryptozoologists. I handed each boy his own binoculars with green Saran wrap over the lenses to make them look like night-scope goggles. They also got a flashlight and a butterfly net and beef jerky to sustain them on their perilous backwoods safari. Danny had his little camouflage digital camera strapped around his wrist, just in case he needed photographic evidence.
I wished I could accurately describe the heart-melting adorableness of fully grown, supposedly vicious vampires holding hands with little boys as they were dragged through the bluegrass, hunched over and searching for Sasquatch sign by moonlight. Wade and I followed at a casual pace. We exchanged grins every time the boys crowed over the clues. They loved the jerky wrapper I’d left by the rain spout, the faux fur I’d tangled around the rosebushes, the Swiss Rolls I’d dropped as Sasquatch scat. (Don’t judge me.) I tried to guide the boys toward the huge footprint I’d made in the softened earth just beyond the border of the yard, but my hints weren’t quite blatant enough. Before I could drop a more anvil-sized verbal clue, Danny yelled, “What’s that?”
In the distance, I could make out a tall, furry shape near the tree line, at least eight feet tall, with long, apelike arms covered in reddish-brown fur. Danny gasped, and the shape’s head whipped toward us. Its yellow-gold eyes flashed in the moonlight, and I sprinted across the grass to plant myself in front of the boys.
I clamped my hand over my son’s mouth and glanced around, wondering why the other vampires didn’t seem all that alarmed by the appearance of a Bigfoot in my backyard. Dick was freaking smirking at me. You didn’t smirk in front of Bigfoot. It was just asking for trouble.
I didn’t smell anything. It seemed completely wrong that this hulking, fur-covered creature was standing upwind of us and the only scent I could detect was a touch of sweat and Polo cologne. I stepped toward it, a growl forming on my lips, and Nola put her hand on my arm, smiling gently and shaking her head. “It’s OK,” she whispered. “Really.”
What in the flaming hell was going on here? Was this some sort of weird initiation into the vampire world? Social acceptance through cryptid pranks? Reluctantly, I loosened my grip on Danny and let him wander closer to the mystery guest.
“Look at him, Mom,” he whispered reverently. “He’s real.”
“Take a picture,” Harley hissed through the hand clamped over his mouth. I noticed that he’d hung back, clutching at my shirttail and watching the proceedings from around my hip.
“Oh.” Danny fumbled with the camera, but before he could raise it and hit the right buttons, the creature let out a low sound, a cross between a moo and a bark. He—I was assuming it was a he—made a strange hand-jerk gesture toward Danny and then lumbered into the woods.
It wouldn’t do, I suppose, for Bigfoot to pose for a selfie with the birthday boy.
“Let’s go after him!” Danny said, still trying to aim his camera at the retreating Sasquatch.
“Er.” I struggled to find the right explanation that wouldn’t scare Danny but would drive home the “don’t go running off into the woods alone in the dark” lesson.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Harley supplied. “It looked like he’s just eaten and taken a crap. He’s probably off to bed. You don’t want to interrupt a Bigfoot’s bedtime, Danny. It’s dangerous.”
“Solid logic,” I told Harley.
“Harley, we’ve talked about usin’ the word ‘crap’ like that,” Wade said pointedly.
“Sorry, he’d just taken a dump,” Harley amended.
I snickered but managed to hide it with a cough. I knew how much it annoyed me when other parents found Danny’s particular brand of “forthright humor” charming.
“Aw, man!” Danny cried, snapping a photo of our now empty backyard. “I could have had photographic evidence. But Mom, he waved at me. Did you see? He waved.”
“Bigfeet love birthday parties,” I told him. “They love cookie cake. It’s a scientific fact. And you know what? It’s almost time for cookie cake and presents. How about you and Harley go inside and wash your hands?”
“OK!” Danny dragged Harley back into the house. Wade’s poor son was going to have NBA-length arms come morning.
“That was awesome,” Jane told me. “You’re totally planning Jamie’s next birthday.”
“Darling, Jamie is almost twenty-one years old,” Gabriel said as he followed her through the back door. “He’s a little mature for streamers and goodie bags.”
“But I missed so many of his birthdays!” Jane protested.
Without a word, Wade wandered toward the tree line, as if he was considering following the creature into the woods. I might have worried, but Wade struck me as a particularly capable guy, as in, when the zombie apocalypse finally happened, I expected to see him rolling through town in a tow-truck-turned-tank, picking off zombies with a potato gun modified to launch grenades. And he would probably look crazy hot while doing it. Stupid effective cheekbones.
While I contemplated this disturbing postapocalyptic image, Jed jogged around the corner of the house toward my side of the yard, shrugging back into his shirt. When he realized I was watching him, he stopped in his tracks.
“I have so many questions,” I said, shaking my head.
“So, yeah.” Jed grimaced as he finished buttoning his shirt. “I’m a shapeshifter.”
“That’s a thing?” I exclaimed.
“’Fraid so,” Jed said. “I have this little genetic quirk that lets me take on the appearance of just about any livin’ thing, real or fictional. It’s like being a werewolf but having more options. For the longest time, my family thought we were cursed, but it turns out we just happen to have a couple of extra genes thrown in. Jane and Nola thought Danny would get a kick out of it. I’m sorry for not checkin’ it out with you before. I didn’t mean to make ya uncomfortable.”
“So . . . when Danny thought he saw Bigfoot out of his window the other night . . .”
He grimaced. “That was me. But to be fair, I wasn’t in Bigfoot form. I’ve been playing around with an ape-werewolf hybrid creature. You know, trying to keep things interesting. Nola’s helped me figure out that I’m more in control of my shifts when I’m not bored.”
“Could you maybe not do that where Danny can see you?” I suggested. “Or if you do, pick a non-scary, non-emotionally-traumatizing form? Like a giant bunny or something?” I asked.
“You don’t think he would find an unnaturally large bunny lurking outside of his house to be traumatizin’?” he asked, and when I gave him my mom look, he added, “I’m just sayin’!”
“I’m sending him to your front door when he has nightmares,” I told Jed.
Jed pursed his lips and nodded. “Fair enough. I’m gonna go get a beer. Shiftin’ takes it out of me.”
“Wait, Jed, what did you mean by werewolves?” I called after him. “Are werewolves a thing, too?”
He just smiled his adorable redneck smile and ducked inside the house.
“Jed?” I yelled. “That’s not an answer!”
“Man, when you throw a party, you throw a party,” Wade said, carrying a beer across the lawn. “Where do you even find a Sasquatch impersonator? And what kind of person makes a livin’ pretending to be a Bigfoot? That musta been an interestin’ Craigslist ad.”
“You’d be surprised what you can find online.” I chuckled awkwardly. “Look, I really appreciate you being so open-minded, bringing Harley here in the first place and then sticking around when you realized most of the guest list was, uh, pulse-challenged.”
“Hell, I told ya, I don’t care about that,” he scoffed. “You’re clearly crazy about your kid, and your friends seem nice enough. My family are all humans, and they can be a bunch of assholes.”
“I’m just glad you added more words after you said ‘crazy.’ ”
“We did kind of get off on the wrong foot, huh?” Wade blushed—honest to God, blushed—and even in the silver light of the moon, I could see the rich pink hue spread across his cheeks. The spread of blood through his tiny capillaries did strange things to me. I wanted to follow that blush’s path across his cheekbones with my tongue. I wanted to see how far it spread. Did he blush all the way down?
And he was still talking while I was ogling his circulatory system. I decided to tune in before I embarrassed myself.
“I’m sorry I was such a jackass when we met. School registration is always sort of hard for me. It’s like a punch in the face, seeing all those big, happy families. Signing all that stuff as Harley’s only parent-slash-guardian, it was like being reminded over and over that I’m doing this all alone. I got pissed off, and I took it out on you, and that’s not fair.”
“I can understand that,” I told him. “And that night at Walmart?”
“Well, you did compare my son’s name to chlamydia,” he noted.
“Touché.”
“It would be better, I think, if the two of us could find a way to get along, for the boys’ sake,” he said. “If nothin’ else, we could stop cussing at each other every time we make eye contact.”
“I would like that.” I stuck my hand out to shake. “Truce?”
“Truce,” he said, extending his hand with the rings. Then, remembering the silver issue, he switched and offered me the safer hand. His closed his fingers around mine and pumped my hand gently. His callused, warm skin felt heavenly against my own, like sliding into a bath with just enough heat to sting a little. He didn’t seem to mind how cool my skin was, turning my hand over in his.
“Huh,” he said, studying our joined hands.
I withdrew my hand from his, rubbing it against my denim-covered leg. “So do you have family around here?”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah, but I try to steer clear of them. My family are a bunch of screw-ups. Mostly on my mom’s side. My dad was a pretty great guy. He’s the one who was into motorcycles, showed me everything he knew in the garage. But he died when I was eight, and Mom ended up moving to Garden Vista. She brought home a bunch of ‘uncles’ who got more and more messed-up with every year. I got a couple of half brothers and sisters running around the Hollow. I try to keep them away from Harley, so they don’t try to borrow money off him. Hell, if they thought he had a twenty in his piggy bank, they’d take a hammer to it. And then call him a ‘selfish little jerk’ if he got upset over it.
“Growing up the way I did, I didn’t want Harley seeing that shit. I wanted him to have somethin’ normal and soft. I wanted him to know that when he came home from school, I would be there. I would be sober. And he wouldn’t have to be afraid when I walked through the door.”
I stared at him. If only he knew exactly how much I identified with that statement. When I was pregnant, I told myself it would be different from how I’d grown up. My baby would know how much I loved him. He’d have homemade birthday cakes and Christmas stockings that weren’t a knotted-up grocery bag. I would read him bedtime stories and take care of him when he was sick.
It wasn’t that my mom hadn’t cared. She’d worked night shifts at the Twelfth Street Launderette to pay for our lavish accommodations in the Garden Vista trailer park. I couldn’t say there was much animosity between us. We just weren’t particularly close. I knew she liked to paint. I knew her favorite color was purple. I knew she liked to listen to Stevie Nicks on the rare occasion that she cooked. But there were no long talks or maternal advice. The mothering gene was just missing in her, I guessed.
Mom seemed to be resigned to me, like some part of life that she had to accept—aching feet or the late-stage breast cancer she was diagnosed with at age thirty-seven. And even then, her dying process was very matter-of-fact. She just told me that her life insurance wouldn’t amount to much and not to let a preacher speak over her at any sort of funeral. After a couple of door-to-door evangelists had informed her that she and her bastard baby were headed for hell unless she joined their church that very Sunday, she’d never had much use for organized religion. And that was it. She might as well have been breaking a lease.
I had a much closer bond with kindly old Mrs. Patterson, who babysat me from the time Mom went back to work after her three unpaid weeks of maternity leave. Mrs. Patterson taught me to read by age four. She taught me how to make basic meals without the stove after Mom decided she couldn’t afford having Mrs. Patterson watch me every night and ten was old enough to take care of myself. She was the one who had to explain the birds and the bees to me when I started my period and ran to her trailer crying. Her trailer, which was apparently right down the row from Wade’s. And I’d never even met him.
“I grew up in Garden Vista,” I told him.
Wade burst out laughing. “Bullshit.”
I raised my right hand in a swearing gesture. “I did. We lived in the little blue-and-rust number at the end of the sixth row.”
Wade snickered. “I haven’t seen you at any of the alumni dinners.”
“Well, I took myself off the newsletter list. I married a nice boy, cleaned up the accent a little. I worked hard in community college and bought myself a word-of-the-day calendar to help beef up my vocabulary. My mother-in-law says you can hardly tell I grew up in a trailer now, which she thinks is a compliment. She doesn’t really mean anything by it, but she doesn’t have a real strong filter when it comes to condescension.”
He laughed. He was standing so close I could feel every warm breath whispering along my skin. I could make out every hair on his head, the golden sheen taking on a blue cast in the moonlight. The most insane urge took hold of my hand, to reach out, stroke my fingertips along his face, run my thumb along his full bottom lip. I wanted to kiss him, to bury my face in his iron-and-citrus-scented hair. I wanted to feel those rough hands stroking down my back. I wanted to trace the path of his jugular with my tongue, feel the warm spill of his blood into my mou—
Uh-oh.
I could feel my fangs lengthening in response to my sexy, bloody thoughts. My fangs were out. And I was alone, with a human, whose child was playing inside my house because I’d promised his father that they were safe with me and my vampire friends. Damn it. Damn it. I pressed my lips together, as if that could hide my unfortunate dental boner, and tried to think of something unappetizing. Something that would kill my libido.
The night before my wedding, Marge visited my apartment, gave me a pink lace nightie that looked just like the one she’d worn on her wedding night to Les, and tried to give me the “wifely duty” talk.
Aaaaaand away went the fangs.
Now that any trace of desire for anything had been thoroughly murdered, I was able to take a step back from Wade. I held my breath to keep that delicious scent of man and blood and leather from invading my senses again.
“I can’t believe I don’t remember you,” he said.
“I pretty much kept to myself when I was a kid,” I said. “It’s sort of a pattern with me.”
Wade glanced back at the crowded, noisy house. Just inside the window, I could see the vampires watching Danny and Harley play. “Until now.”
Just then, Jane stuck her head out of the back door and called, “Hey, Libby!”
When she saw the two of us standing so close, she did a quick double take and stepped back into the kitchen. “Sorry.”
“It’s OK, Jane. What’s going on?”
“Well, the boys are threatening some sort of cookie coup if you don’t get in here. Gabriel wants to try to negotiate, but I think Dick is secretly slipping them contraband candy to support their cause.” Jane ducked out of sight, calling, “Their blood sugar levels have given them the strength of ten men.”
“We’d better get in there,” I murmured. “I know they’re nice kids, but they can’t be trusted to make rational decisions right now.”
Wade nodded, stepping back. “Yeah, we’re not allowed back at Chuck E. Cheese after the cotton-candy incident at Emma Perry’s birthday party.”
“Harley is the kid who took out Chuck E.?” I gasped.
“Kids will do regrettable things for tokens.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I tried to turn it into an object lesson about violence and greed. But I just ended up bannin’ him from playin’ any of those Grand Theft Auto games, ever.”
“Seems reasonable.”