“Actually, I’m still a senior at Half-Moon Hollow High. I’m just working at night to save for tuition.”

Forgive me, Lord, I’m the biggest pervert in the world.

“Say hi to your mom for me,” I said as he packed up his hand truck and headed out the door. He waved at us from the delivery van as he pulled away. I stared at the ceiling, then told Andrea, “You may laugh now.”

She guffawed, collapsing against the bar as she held her side. “I’m sorry. It’s just, the look on your face when he said he was graduating from high school !”

I rubbed my hands over my face. “My eyes, they burn.”

“I can’t believe I get to relive this humiliation with every delivery,” Andrea said, rubbing her hands together in anticipatory glee. “This is already my favorite job ever!”

“I think you forget sometimes, I am fully capable of hurting you—” We turned to the front door as a woman in a smart peach raincoat came into the shop, clutching her purse close to her side with one arm and carrying an enormous beribboned basket with the other. Courtney Barrows, Nice Courtney, eyed her surroundings suspiciously, apparently afraid to touch anything. “Courtney?” I said.

“Jane!” She sighed, relieved to see me.

“And it isn’t even my birthday!” Andrea was clearly thrilled that one of the chamber members had showed up for my brainwashing initiation so soon. She whispered, “Which one?”

I cleared my throat. “Courtney Barrows, this is my associate, Andrea Byrne. Andrea, Courtney Barrows. Courtney owns the Unique Boutique, the sterling-silver shop over on Dogwood.”

“Nice to meet you,” they chorused. I half expected Courtney to curtsy.

“It’s not that I’m not happy to see you again, but what are you doing here?” I asked.

Courtney let out a breathy laugh. “I know! I don’t normally come into this part of town, especially at night. But your store hours are just so odd, I wanted to make sure I caught you,” she said, hauling the giant gift basket onto the counter. “The chamber sent you this, and I volunteered to bring it by. It’s a welcome muffin basket. There’s an orientation folder, a directory, the memory book, and a suggested list of places where you should go begging for game prizes.”

Well, that capped it. If I’d learned anything from Missy the psycho real-estate agent, it was never to trust people bearing gift baskets.

“Memory book?” Andrea asked.

“It’s a little scrapbook for our special events, fund-raisers, that sort of thing.”

“Like a yearbook!” Andrea exclaimed cheerily, then scowled when I pushed the basket at her with more force than was probably necessary. She stifled a giggle and took it to my office. “I’m taking these muffins, by the way! They’re of no use to you!”

Courtney shot me a questioning look. I smiled. “I’m on a no-carb, no-sugar, no-gluten diet. But Andrea will love them. It was really nice of you to bring it by. You didn’t have to come all the way down here.”

“Well, I just liked talking to you so much at the meeting, I thought I’d come by for a visit. I just— I joined the chamber to make some friends. And the ladies at the chamber … I didn’t know what I was getting into when I joined. They’re sort of …”

“Scary?” I suggested.

“And blond?” Andrea shouted from the back of the shop.

I shot Courtney an apologetic smile, but she didn’t seem offended in the least that I’d been talking about the chamber members behind their backs. “Yes. But you were so nice. You know, you’re the first person I’ve met at one of those meetings that hasn’t made fun of the fact that my husband runs a construction company. As if my money is dirty or something, just because my husband’s not a doctor or a lawyer.”

“I was raised by a teacher and a meddlesome homemaker. I mock no one,” I told her, then amended, “unless they deserve it.”

“You’ve lived in the Hollow your whole life. You don’t know what it’s like to try to meet people here when you don’t know anybody.”

“I think you’ve been hanging around the wrong Half-Moon Hollow residents. See, I would imagine your husband probably outearns ninety-five percent of the people in this town. Frankly, I admire anyone who can operate heavy machinery without hurting innocent bystanders.”

She giggled. “See? I told you! You’re a hoot.”

“That you did. Pull up a seat.”

Courtney gave an exaggerated look around, her face open and pleasant as she climbed up onto the bar stool. “Your shop is, um, really interesting.”

“Thanks. Coffee?” I asked. I pushed a bunch of buttons and hoped a cappuccino would come out. Andrea came running at the rumble of the cappuccino machine, like a mama bear protecting her young. She shooed me away and finished making Courtney’s drink herself.

Courtney seemed almost shy as she handed me a little pink-wrapped box. “And I had a little gift made up for you.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said, opening the box. Inside was a little keychain attached to a silver disc inscribed with my initials. “That was really nice.”

Vampires are allergic to silver. Touching it feels like a combination of burning and being forced to watch Glitter over and over again. Your eyes burn, there’s an unpleasant squelching sound, and you’re left with dirty gray streaks that are very hard to wash off. I knew what I was in for when I politely held the little circle in my palm.

Andrea’s eyes widened as my hand began to sizzle like bacon. I mouthed, “I know!” Andrea started asking Courtney incredibly complicated questions about how she wanted her coffee. As soon as Courtney’s back was turned, I put the keychain on the counter and silently yowled, shaking my hand back and forth as the dirty gray stain faded from my skin.

“You OK, Jane?” Courtney asked, smiling sweetly.

“Fine.” I chuckled. Andrea rolled her eyes in my direction. “I’m just fine. I just have some allergies, a little eczema acting up … Wait, no, this is stupid. Courtney, you should probably know that I’m a vampire, have been for about a year now. If that’s going to get me banned from the Half-Moon Hollow Chamber of Commerce, so be it. I just don’t have the time or energy to try to fool you into thinking I’m normal.”

“Oh, I knew that,” Courtney said, patting my arm and turning over my burned hand to examine my palm. “The keychain was just a test to make sure. But it was obvious the other night what you are. You didn’t touch any of the food. Your teeth are a little sharper than they should be. You’re so pale and, well, sort of glowy. Your skin drove Head Courtney crazy, by the way. She kept trying to figure out what you use on it. I didn’t say a word.”

My forehead wrinkled. “So, what do you plan on doing with this information?”

“Nothing,” she said, smiling pleasantly and sipping her coffee.

“I’m confused,” I told Andrea, who shrugged.

“It’s just, you’re so much nicer than any of those so-called normal girls,” she said, patting my hand. “I figure, if you’re up front with me, you can’t be all bad. And personally, I want to see how long it takes the other girls to figure it out and how many different ways they manage to put their collective foot in their mouth.”

“You’ve got a bit of a dark streak in you,” Andrea told her. “My boyfriend’s going to love you. On second thought, maybe I should keep you two separate.”

Courtney giggled. “Besides, I experimented a little with vampires in college. Every girl does.”

I arched my brows at her. “You know I’m a completely straight vampire, right?”

Courtney threw her head back and laughed. She turned to Andrea. “Don’t you just love hanging out with her? You never know what she’s going to say!”

“Every day’s an adventure,” Andrea said dryly.

5

Remember to fight fair. No name-calling, no use of words like always and never , no bringing up old issues to avoid the topic at hand—and no dismembering.

— Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less

Destructive Relationships

“Are you sure the whole pewter-figurine thing isn’t too kitschy?”

I repositioned the graceful fairy statues near our selection of amethyst geodes, which I’d moved because I wanted to make room for a display of The Guide for the Newly Undead next to the register. Now I was moving them around like my own personal nude pixie army. I bit my lip and bounced up and down on my heels as I considered their current formation.

“It’s too kitschy.”

“If you rearrange the fanciful bric-a-brac one more time, I’m going to stake you,” Andrea promised. “I thought we agreed that you would get a full day’s sleep before the opening.”

To say I was a nervous wreck on reopening day was a massive understatement. I must have changed my outfit ten times, which is almost painful for someone who doesn’t care that much about clothes. First, I put on an embroidered blue top and some jeans and decided it looked too casual. So, I changed into a red T-shirt and an Indian skirt—too hippie-dippy. The khaki slacks and polo shirt made me look as if I worked at Best Buy. Finally, I embraced the cliché: black slacks, black beaded top, tear-shaped carnelian earrings that looked like little drops of blood, and the black boots Andrea had practically forced me to buy at gunpoint. And then I got to the shop and immediately wanted to run home and change when I saw Andrea’s crisp white blouse and beautifully cut gray slacks.

Mr. Wainwright had come by and given his wholehearted support, then promptly disappeared, saying that he didn’t want to make me nervous on my first day. He promised to bring Aunt Jettie back at the close of business to celebrate my “entrepreneurial triumph.”

It was oddly lonely to have the shop open without my former employer’s spectral presence. But Dick and Andrea were there for me, running last-minute errands, cleaning up last-minute messes, holding a paper bag to my face when I did some last-minute hyperventilating—the irony of the latter compounded by the fact that I didn’t technically breathe.

“I tried to sleep, and then, despite my very specific and effective internal clock, I was lying there at noon today with a racing brain. I kept thinking I really jumped into this without thinking it through,” I said, putting the Spring Blooms fairy behind the Autumn Mystery fairy and then switching them back again. “I mean, I figured, I’ve already got a location, stock, and more capital than I needed. What else would I need for a successful business? What if I picked the wrong types of books? What if there were no bookstores specifically catering to vampires because most vampires are out living their unlives instead of reading? What if the coffee bar was a stupid idea?”

“Well, it was certainly a stupid idea to give you what amounted to three double espressos last night.” Andrea sighed, arranging pastries from Half-Moon Hollow Sweets onto a fancy doily.

“I knew it!” I hissed at her. “I knew you were slipping me extra caffeine.”

“I thought it would be much funnier than this.”

“I’m so sorry my wacky antics—which you caused—no longer amuse you,” I said flatly.

“Call it a misguided experiment,” she muttered, tossing the pink bakery box aside and wiping down the counter. An array of muffins, cookies, and lemon bars winked out at me from the glass case, mocking my inability to digest solids.

It may have seemed like a bad idea to give people sticky pastries and staining liquids, then invite them to peruse our books. But I wanted the shop to be the sort of place where you could sit for hours at a time and feel welcome—and therefore guilty enough to buy several expensive books. As an added precaution, we’d put the rarer volumes in a glassed-in special collections case, to which I carried the only key.