Wanda rolled her head on her neck and cracked her knuckles. “What’s happening to you has to be something paranormal. We know that because we’ve experienced the paranormal.”
“Have we ever,” Marty muttered, tucking her chin to her chest with a yawn.
Okay, that, she could almost wrap her brain around. “Are we talking ghosts here?” Maybe Nina and Marty were part of some ghost-hunting club and Wanda had taken an interest in it and joined a group they were both in?
“Well, not yet, but I wouldn’t rule that shit out.” Nina’s comment was dry.
Wanda flicked Nina’s thigh with her finger. “Not ghosts, Casey. Do you know anything about vampires and werewolves?”
“Or were-vamps, for that matter?” Marty chimed in.
Were-whos? “I’m almost afraid to answer that.”
“Vampires and werewolves. A were-vamp is half vampire, half werewolf,” Wanda supplied.
Good to know. She’d just tuck that away for later use. Until then . . . “How do vampires and werewolves that’re half vampires explain why you three don’t seem at all surprised I’m being kept in check with a pair of pantyhose?”
Wanda popped her lips, giving Casey a hesitant look. “Okay, no more soft shoe. We’re not surprised by your fireballs and levitation because, well, we’ve seen stuff—
experienced
stuff—in the past couple of years that makes what you’re going through seem like an afternoon at a day spa.”
Her mind swirled.
“Hey, Casey?” Nina called up to her.
“Uh-huh?”
“Gird your loins.”
She swallowed—hard. “Girded.”
“So, when I say we’ve experienced things, they’re the kind of things that at first you won’t believe. You’ll go through a range of emotions most likely beginning with denial, then disbelief, and then fear. . . .” Wanda winced, then confirmed her assessment with a nod. “Yes, fear. It’s sort of like the five stages of grief minus the bargaining stage because believe me when I tell you, you won’t want to swing a deal with us . . . though I can definitely see depression happening.” Wanda shook her head again with a wry look.
“Never mind. Anyway, we have proof. We can prove to you what we’re saying is true—”
“Oh, dude—can I be the one to show her the proof?” Nina interrupted, her tone very clearly riddled with maniacal glee.
Wanda narrowed her eyes at her friend. “No, you absolutely cannot.You’re just being spiteful and despite the fact that Casey set you on fire, I won’t let you exact revenge. Not on my watch.”
Nina flipped her palm up in Wanda’s face. “You’re always harshin’ my vibe, Wanda. She did set my fucking hair on fire. I owe her one.”
Wanda ignored Nina, gazing back up at a bewildered Casey. “Where was I?”
“Grief,” Casey reminded her. “The five stages.”
“Right. Well, then I suppose you’ll be angry that I didn’t tell you, but it’s not like I haven’t tried. You’re about as easy to get in touch with as a Tibetan monk.”
Casey didn’t know much about these stages, but laying on the guilt must be one of them.
“And then there’s acceptance. Which”—her sister swept her hand around the room—“is what we’ve all come to. We’re all very happy.”
Centered. Stay centered
. Casey reprimanded the half of her that wanted to punch Wanda and her butt- ass long-winded explanation in the head. And clunking her sister over the head had absolutely nothing to do with her prior, uncontrolled anger. Even Job would consider bodily harm as a mandatory point of action at this juncture. “Wanda?”
“I’m lingering?”
Casey puffed a long- held breath from between her lips, leaning to the left to counterbalance the constant tug of gravity. “Yes, and I’m being truthful when I tell you, I’m tenuous at best.”
“Sorry. Okay, so here we go. Ready?”
No
. “Yes.”
“I’m not the person you once knew. Not mentally and most especially not physically . . .”
At the word
physically
Casey instantly eyed Wanda’s breasts. Implants? No, definitely not. Then what? What, what,
whaaaaaat
?
“I’m not the same because I’m a were-vamp. Half werewolf, half vampire. I shift into what humans call werewolves, and I have fangs. And how all those things happened has a very long story behind it. Oh, and for the record, Nina’s just a vampire, and Marty’s only a werewolf. But I’m a were- vamp. Two for the price—”
“Wanda?”
Wanda exhaled. “Yes, Marty?”
“Rambling.”
“Stopping.”
A small giggle-snort erupted from Casey’s mouth before she could stop it. Well, that explained everything. Just everything. Of course that was why Wanda wasn’t disturbed by fireballs and floating. She was a were- vamp. All good were-vamps surely must be trained or at least have born witness to the art of fireball lobbing. “You’re fucking crazy,” Casey said before she could censor her almost always carefully planned words. Chalk it up to exhaustion, the mortifying notion that she’d been in the actual pokey—not the kind you see on TV in
Prison Break
, but the real thing—and it made for a combo pack of wildly swinging emotions she could no longer squash.
Nina rolled her shoulders as though a bell only she could hear had gone off in her head, signaling another round was due. “You got some set of gnads calling
us
fucking crazy. Was it us locked up in the big house after beating the shit out of an off-duty cop? No, I think that was you, mouth. If I were you, I’d be really careful about where you take this, ’cause it doesn’t look like too many people are lining up at your door to help you the fuck out. We’re sort of it.”
Which had proved hugely beneficial thus far. But Casey was all out of energy and a verbal response.
“Nina! Lay. Off. Don’t you remember how freaked out and scared you were after Greg bit you? Cut her some slack,” Marty chastised.
Who was Greg and why was he biting Nina? In fact, how did he get close enough to Nina in order to bite her before she bit him first?
“I was so not scared, Marty.”
“Were so.”
Nina’s eyebrows, naturally arched and dark, crunched together. “Listen, you furry, Milk-Bone lover, I was not scared—”
Wanda slid to the edge of the couch. “Cut it out! Both of you. God, the two of you are the bane of my existence, and to think I have to put up with you and your constant bickering for an eternity.”
Casey nodded in silent agreement with her sister. Indeed, an eternity was a long, long time. So if she were mentally organizing everything that had been said thus far correctly—biting, eternity, vampires, werewolves, were-vamps, and fur were responsible for their less-than-hysterical attitude toward her levitating.
Wanda rose and grabbed Casey’s hand. “Look, honey, trust me when I tell you I know what I’m talking about. We’re not crazy, and whatever’s happening to you has to be something that has to do with the paranormal. Just stay put and hear me out. Deal?”
As if escaping were a remote possibility when she was being held captive with a La-Z-Boy and a pair of Leggs. Casey merely nodded, seeking the kind of composure she’d needed when Lola’s video vixen days had caught up with her on the Internet.
Wanda began to pace as she explained while Casey drifted, Nina smirked, and Marty nodded from time to time with sympathy in her blue eyes.
And the facts were these: Marty, when she and Wanda and Nina were all Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics recruits, had been accidentally bitten by a werewolf while walking her teacup poodle Puffy . . . no, Muffin. That was it. Muffin.
The man who’d bitten her fell in love with her, but not before she was kidnapped, had to adjust to becoming a werewolf, and learned to fit in with her pack. They got married. Marty’s packman’s name was Keifer—or Keith.
Keegan
. Uh-huh. It was Keegan.
Nice.
Lovely, in fact.
Then Marty found out she was heir to Bobbie-Sue and skipped off through bright yellow fields of buttercups to live in Buffalo with her werewolf, pack mate, person of hairy origins who owned a rival cosmetics company called Pack Cosmetics. Obviously, someone out there in the universe had a killa sense of humor.
They now had a baby—a little girl.
Lovelier still.
Then Nina, the ultra-scary, after quitting Bobbie-Sue because she’d sucked at selling cream blush, got a job at a dentist’s office. While prepping a guy for some anesthesia, the guy accidentally bit her, turning her into a vampire. Now she drinks blood and stays up all night with her husband slash life mate, most likely concocting ways to kill people and take over the world.
But Casey didn’t want to judge.
Then came Wanda. Her sister, so different from the woman she’d once known, who claimed she was a were-vamp. She’d become a were-vamp because she’d been dying of ovarian cancer and in the process of dying she’d met her now husband, Heath, who applied to her ad for Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics. And Casey had to agree with her sister when she said it was strange—a man wanting to sell cosmetics. But there was a reason he’d wanted to join Bobbie-Sue, and Wanda informed her she’d explain that part of this Wes Craven story later.
Anyway, finally finding the man of her dreams at the worst possible time in her life, Wanda decided dying wasn’t an option she fancied, and she’d called on her friends to help her live—eternally.
Because they could—being vampires and werewolves and all.
In a rush of words Wanda fired at rapid speed, Casey had parsed out this: both Nina and Marty had bitten her because Nina thought Marty had done a shitty job of it, and it wasn’t working. When a vampire and a werewolf both bite you within a twenty- four hour period, the changes in your body overwhelm you and due to that, Wanda had become rabid.
Or snarling and drooling, if you listened to Nina’s version of it.
Heath, once a vampire himself, but then a reverted human, yet another story Wanda said was for another time, sacrificed himself to save Wanda. Because when you’re snarling and drooling, you need a human’s blood to set you on the path of the righteous. Ah, but when you sacrifice your human self, you also end your mortality.
Very dramatic.
That act of self-sacrifice on Heath’s part might have summoned a big, dreamy sigh from Casey if it wasn’t so completely whacked.
While Wanda claimed they still didn’t quite understand what happened the night of her “turning”—clearly another supernatural adjective—Heath somehow managed to come out of it okeydoke. The theory being that some of his vampiric traits had lingered and protected him from total annihilation. Now Wanda and Heath were mated for life, too, due to some ritual involving a vein and some blood.
So now here they all were, one big, fat paranormal meeting of the minds.
“Casey?”
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
This time, she really had to rock the calm, but someone had to in the midst of all this lunacy. “Oh, I’m fine. It’s the fucked up trio that is you women I’m worried about. I find it sort of uncanny that you enable each other the way you do. It’s kind of cute to the extreme.”
Wanda swatted her hand. “Casey! Watch your language, and we’re not effed up. We’re telling you the truth.”
“In what alternate reality does your truth exist?”
Nina popped up off the couch, lifting her sharp chin up to pierce Casey with her olive black eyes. “That’s it, powder puff—I’ll show you fucked up—so fucked up you’ll slink off to a corner and curl up in the position you were in for nine goddamned months. Get ready to cry for your mama when you have a look at
these
!”
Before anyone could stop her, Nina hissed as her mouth became a gaping hole.
With lots of teeth.
Unlike jail, which hadn’t been anything like TV, Nina’s teeth—or fangs, if you will—bore a striking resemblance to the kind of teeth you did see on TV. On someone who was, like, say, Dracula.
In closing, that was when Casey officially slipped over the metaphoric edge she’d been teetering on since this night had begun.
And then she did what all sissified, namby-pamby girls do when they’re confronted with the suspension of their safe, warm realities.
She screamed.
CHAPTER 4
Nina clapped her hands over her ears. “Shut her the fuck up, Wanda, or I will!” she bellowed.
Wanda gave a hard yank to the length of nylon securing Casey’s wrist, jolting her with the strength of a linebacker, and catching her full attention. “Casey!
Shhhhhhhhh
. Nina’s ears are very sensitive to sound—especially the kind of caterwauling you’re doing. Vampires have superhearing. Knock it off!”
A fissure of pain shot up her arm and rooted in her shoulder. “Damn it, Wanda, that hurt,” she moaned, but it had nipped her full-on freak in the bud.
With her terror semi in check, Casey sprung to action—or as much action as one can spring to when they’re being held hostage by three fruitcakes and some Leggs. Tugging back, she flapped her one good hand at Wanda, pointing a finger at her in warning. “You stay away from me, Wanda Schwartz Jefferson
were-vamp
! I don’t know what’s happened to you, or what kind of crap you’ve been up to with these two women, but keep them the hell away from me!” Wrapping her free hand around her wrist, Casey pulled, trying to free herself of the knot Wanda had tied like a Girl Scout.
Nina stuck a finger in her ear and wiggled it, looking to Wanda. “You do know she forced my hand, don’t you?”
“Jesus, Nina. Leave it to you to find the harshest possible way to introduce Casey to the paranormal. Sometimes—no wait, what am I thinking—almost all the time, you’re like a bulldozer with a vajayjay,” Marty jabbed.
Okay—she was out. Casey put her teeth to her wrist and began to tear at the nylons out of desperation, sticking her fingers under the tight knot Wanda had tied to try to free herself. If she levitated right out the window of this high-rise and sailed over Manhattan, it’d still be better than being in this room with these three women who apparently needed more psychiatric help than was available in the free world.