Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors (25 page)

“I’ll come with you,” he said.

I nodded and leaped off the front porch and took off at full sprint toward the Lanier place on Melody Lane. As I ran, pushing myself faster than I could possibly have driven there, I thought of the horrors that could be waiting for us at Jamie’s house. What would I do if he’d hurt one of his family members? Could I blame him, after the things his mother had said to him? Would I be able to turn him over to Ophelia?

“You realize, of course, that we could have driven my car,” Gabriel said as we skidded to a stop at the end of Jamie’s driveway.

“About half a mile ago, yes,” I said, resisting the urge to pant. I scanned the front yard of the Lanier home. Jamie was nowhere to be seen, but I could sense three very active minds inside the house. The thoughts weren’t happy, exactly, more contented and relaxed, certainly not the thought patterns of a family being terrorized by their former son. I crept around the side of the house and found Jamie standing there, in the shadow of an elm tree, tracks of blood tears streaming down his cheeks as he peered through the lit window. He stood on the edge of that golden patch of light, barely visible even to my keen eyes. I approached him slowly. His ears perked up, and his eyes shifted toward me, but he didn’t move. I carefully closed my fingers around his arm.

In the gentlest voice I could manage, I said, “Jamie, we’ve talked about this. You can’t leave the house alone.
And you definitely don’t want to make contact with your family when they’ve told you to stay away.”

Jamie looked through the window and watched as his family sat around the kitchen table, eating pizza. They were talking about their day and laughing. It was hesitant, soft laughter, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Jamie’s jaw worked as he ground his teeth.

“Jamie—”

“I’m sick of this,” he whispered. “I’m sick of being locked away like I did something wrong. Look at them! They’re just carrying on with Pizza Night, like I’m not even gone. Like I was never there in the first place! Why did this happen to me? What did I ever do? This isn’t fair! I didn’t ask for this.”

I looked over my shoulder, where Gabriel was waiting. I thought of my own postexistential crisis, when I’d clung to the ceiling like a cartoon cat and accused Gabriel of slipping me a roofie so he could have his way with me and then turn me. So far, Jamie’s outburst was less accusatory but more heartfelt. He was far more levelheaded than I had been as a kid, YouTube antics aside. I thought back to all of the arguments I’d had with my mother growing up and how I’d hated it when she told me I was overreacting when I dared to express my feelings. So, instead, I nodded and said, “You’re right.”

Jamie did a bit of a double take and spluttered, “Wh-what?”

“No, you’re right, this sucks. I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry I was the one who did this to you. If I could go back to that night in front of my shop and
move just a little bit faster, do more to warn you about the car—I would do anything to keep you from getting hurt, Jamie. You deserved a normal human life. Going to the prom. Finishing high school. Accidentally knocking up your girlfriend your sophomore year of college. Getting a nine-to-five job, so you can support her after your shotgun wedding—”

“You know, you’re not making human life sound all that great.”

“Huh.” I chuckled. “I guess I’m not.”

“Probably better off as a vampire,” he admitted, dropping to the ground and leaning against the tree.

“Probably.” I sat down next to him.

“It’s not fair,” he said, his voice suddenly calm and clear. “It’s not fair that they can just kick me out of the family. It’s not right that parents can just decide not to love their kid anymore.”

“You’re right,” I told him. “You are absolutely entitled to be pissed right now. But the thing about family is that you can’t control what they do. Trust me when I say that. If I could control my mother, the world would be a good and decent place. You can only control how you respond to it. And if they never come around, if they shun you for the rest of your life, it’s their loss.”

Jamie nodded, his head bent so low that his chin was practically touching his chest. Slowly, inch by inch, he leaned his head toward me until his temple was touching my shoulder. Blinking furiously, I slipped my arm around his shoulder.

“Your life is never going to be the same, but it can
be so much more interesting,” I told him. “I would hate for you to miss out on it because you were scared or too hung up on your past to look to your future.”

He groaned. “Did Tony Robbins write that?”

And thus endeth the poignant siring moment.

“You are such a pain in the ass sometimes,” I told him as I helped him to his feet. “Look, I’m all for letting these emotional breakthroughs breathe, but we’ve got to get out of here before your family looks out the window and sees our pale asses lurking outside their window like a pair of undead Peeping Toms.”

In the distance, I could see Gabriel’s whole body relax as we moved away from the house.

“What even made you run off like that? I know you’ve been quiet and a little withdrawn lately, but I thought we’ve been getting along better.”

Jamie shot me a sheepish look. “For the last few weeks, I’ve been hearing this voice in my head, whispering. While I was trying to sleep. While I was playing video games. While I played with Fitz. It was telling me how I didn’t belong at River Oaks, that my family missed me, that my mother probably wanted to see me. How much I was hurting them by staying with you. And I just couldn’t take it anymore. Gabriel left, and I thought it wouldn’t hurt anything if I just ducked over to see them. And then I got here and saw that they weren’t exactly pining away for me.”

“This voice that whispered to you, was it male or female?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It sounded all hoarse and whispery, kind of like that Voldemort guy in the Harry Potter movies.”

“Yep, definitely Grandma, then,” I grumbled.

“But I thought you did that exorcism thing,” he said.

“The more time we spend together, the more you’ll see that I fail miserably at about half of the things I try.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Gabriel said, taking my hand and settling between us as we walked toward home, putting a brotherly arm around Jamie’s shoulder. “In fact, her failures are far more entertaining than her achievements. Have I ever told you about her foray into the local Chamber of Commerce?”

“Actually, my mom told me about that,” said Jamie, who was conspicuously not throwing off Gabriel’s proffered arm. “Didn’t you and your sister end up wrestling in the mud at the Fall Festival?”

“Yes, we did, and that’s why I don’t consider it a failure, because Jenny and I get along much better now that we’ve knocked some sense into each other,” I said, glaring at Gabriel. “I learn something from all of my failures, so it’s not something to laugh about, really.”

“What about the time you tried to move me into your house in the dead of night, so your mother wouldn’t know that we were premaritally cohabiting, only to have her show up on our lawn, screaming her head off? What was the lesson there?”

As Jamie guffawed, I ground out, “That when I tell
you to take a twenty-mile detour around my parents’ house while moving your stuff, you should do it, even if it sounds silly?”

Gabriel snickered. “What about the time—”

“Oh, my Lord, when will you run out of stories?”

“Never, I hope.” Jamie chortled.

Gabriel feigned offense. “So, you’re saying that I’m like your drunken, senile auntie?”

“Pretty much,” Jamie agreed. “So, tell me some more Jane stories. Is it true that right after she was turned, she ended up dancing naked in the fountain outside the library?”

I grumbled, “I definitely liked it better when you two weren’t on friendly terms.”

There are rewards to being a sire: companionship, passing along your knowledge, and keeping up to date with the more modern generation. And the added bonus of having someone who will honestly tell you, “Do not leave the house in that outfit.”

—Siring for the Stupid:
A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires

W
ith the household’s teen crisis averted and the research into Ray McElray and exorcism at a standstill, I went about trying to solve the wedding-dress problem in a way that did not involve further shopping.

For one thing, I resisted shopping whenever possible. And for another, I didn’t have a car. The reports had been dutifully filed with the insurance company and Ophelia, who, mysteriously, had come to the house to collect them. If she kept up with the visits, I was going to have to buy Jamie a case of that stupid Axe stuff.

Jamie, for his part, was trying to make up for his scampering off by being more helpful around the house. Even his room was less of a pit. And when he heard the faint whisperings of my grandmother’s voice, he either told
her off or came to me to tell me what she’d said. Grandma Ruthie was becoming quite the slippery little specter. Neither Jettie nor Mr. Wainwright could seem to catch up to her when she made her appearances in the house. She was always one room away, just a little bit too fast. She was the freaking Hamburglar of the ghost world.

Big Bertha was a total loss. Even Dick’s numerous contacts didn’t have the power to resuscitate a car from the dead. Her carcass was sitting at the Half-Moon Hollow Scrap ’n’ Salvage waiting to be cubed. Gabriel had offered to let me use his car. Heck, he’d even tried taking me down to an all-night dealership in Murphy to pick out a new one as an early wedding present. But I wasn’t ready for another car yet. And I was sulking a little.

So, Friday night found me in front of the mirror, trying on every dress I had, trying to salvage some sort of wedding outfit that would keep me out of the bridal shops. My choices so far had included a navy-blue church dress with a sailor collar that my mama had purchased for me in high school and a vintage red dress of Aunt Jettie’s that I’d worn to a Christmas party here at River Oaks. There was also a strapless black number that I’d worn to Jolene’s engagement party, only to be found by Zeb’s mother, rumpled and pantiless in a parking-lot clutch with Gabriel.

Wearing the black dress, I stood in front of the mirror, considering the red. It was perfect—fabulous, even. Cinched at the waist with a scarlet sash, the luscious, floaty material fell in a perfect bell around my knees. I even had a pair of sassy pomegranate-dyed pumps
to match, thanks to my many turns as a bridesmaid. It was sort of sweet to have something of Jettie’s to wear as my wedding dress. And the idea of a vampire wearing a blood-red dress down the aisle tickled me. But it wasn’t the gray dress.

I sighed. With a couple of quick phone calls, Iris could do away with the whole Austen theme. Hell, she could probably work with this dress and turn the wedding into some mod 1960s masterpiece. I was just going to have to suck it up and make the best of it.

Jolene came into my room, hefting a white garment bag. “Hey!” she sing-songed, laying the bag on my bed and kissing my cheek.

“If that’s your bridesmaid’s dress and you’re here to kick my ass, I will remind you that I asked your aunt to leave off the butt bow this time. Consider it a gesture of goodwill.”

“No, believe it or not, I am not here to avenge myself for the radioactive yellow you picked out,” she taunted. “I am a good friend, you jackass. And I have two surprises for you tonight.”

“Isn’t that what Marley told Scrooge?”

“Jane,” she huffed. “And by the way, it was three ghosts. Yes, I have read that book, so suck it. The first surprise is this. I didn’t want to get your hopes up until it was finished.”

Jolene unzipped the garment bag and whipped it away. She was holding my wedding dress, re-formed. The beading, the color, and the shape of the dress were all the same.

“How?” I asked, hesitantly fingering the water-soft material as if it would evaporate into smoke.

She grinned impishly. “The women of the pack recreated it from a picture of the original dress. I had some shots on my phone from the bridal shop, and Aunt Vonnie still had your measurements from the bridesmaid dress fittings. It turns out my aunts can make clothes that are actually flattering.”

“But your aunts hate me.”

She cringed. “Well, you’re not their favorite person. But my mama doesn’t hate you. And she’s the alpha female, so she told them to pull their heads out of their tails and do something nice for a girl who’s been such a good friend to me.”

My eyes stung, and I felt my nose tingle, a sure sign that I was about to burst into tears. Instead, I threw my arms around her and tackled her into a hug. She lost her footing, and we landed on my bed, my dress fluttering safely to the side as I sobbed.

Andrea came wandering through the door and made an ugly snorting noise. “Please, for the love of God, don’t let Dick see you doing that. He already writes too many imaginary letters to
Penthouse
without the help of visual aids.”