Author: Molly Harper

“Fast hands,” said my uncle Junior, the one who finds sneaking up behind me and startling me the height of hilarity.

“That just gets funnier and funnier every time you do it,” I retorted, poking through his paunch at his ribs.

“Aw, honey, he doesn’t know any better,” Uncle Paul said, shaking his head. “Mama dropped him a lot when he was baby.”

Paul and Junior were Dad’s brothers. I liked both of them, but when I was growing up, they were always so busy with their big, strapping sons, Dwight and Oscar. And they actually managed to move a whopping forty-five minutes away from Half-Moon Hollow, so I didn’t see them except around holidays.

“How’s my shortcake?” Uncle Paul asked.

“You’re seven feet tall, everyone’s shorter than you,” I said, kissing his cheek and following our usual “comedy” routine. “Just wait until old age catches up with you, we’ll see who laughs last.”

“Your mama told us you’ve had some health problems,” said Uncle Junior, who hugged me hard enough to crack mortal ribs.

“I guess you could call it that,” I said, suspicious thoughts beginning to churn in my brain.

“Those deer ticks are everywhere,” Paul said, clucking and shaking his head. “That’s why I duct-tape my pants legs around my socks when I go turkey hunting.”

Had I accidentally walked into a French film? It was as if they were having a totally different conversation. “Yeah …”

“But there are treatments nowadays, aren’t there?” Junior asked. “It’s not supposed to affect your life span or anything, is it?”

“No, quite the opposite,” I muttered.

“That’s great, sweetie,” he said, chucking me under the chin. “I’d hate to think of my niece keeling over from Lyme disease.”

Lyme disease?

“Lyme disease?” I thought it bore repeating outside my head.

“You just let us know if you need anything,” Uncle Junior said. “If those doctors don’t treat you right, we’ll kick their asses.”

“You know, most of our conversations end that way,” I noted.

“And we always mean it,” Uncle Paul assured me. “Now we’re going to say hi to your grandma and then give your dad a hard time.”

I turned and zeroed in on a woman simultaneously serving coffee and simpering. Mama. “I’ll see y’all later.”

I stormed as quietly and subtly as possible across the room. Daddy saw “that” look on my face, caught my arm, and pulled me to a quiet corner. “Honey, whatever you’re about to say to your mama, I’m sure she deserves it, but this is a funeral. Bob’s family, at least, deserves our respect.”

“Daddy, as the only sane member of my family, I love you and respect your opinion. That’s why I’m going to address the situation quietly and calmly in a nice private corner, where I will not make a scene …” The eerily calm tone got Daddy to release my arm before he heard me say, “While I slowly choke the breath from her body.”

By the time he called, “Jane!” in a warning tone, I had already grabbed Mama from a gaggle of tutting church ladies and dragged her into an alcove. “Lyme disease, Mama? Really?”

“What?” Mama asked, the picture of innocence.

“You told the uncles I have Lyme disease!”

“I told them you’d had some health issues,” she spluttered. “They just assumed it was Lyme disease.”

“No one assumes you have Lyme disease,” I whispered. “How do you just assume Lyme disease? I know this hasn’t been easy for you, Mama. I know you’re embarrassed that I’m different. I know it took you months to work up the nerve to be around me without being afraid or ashamed.”

“I’m not ashamed of you,” Mama insisted. “It’s just that everyone makes these assumptions about me and your daddy. I know it’s not true, but it’s so difficult knowing that people are looking at me and judging and whispering.”

“But it’s not even like this makes me the most scandalous member of the family. I’m bothered by the fact that Junie manages to pick up singles without using her hands while she performs at the Booby Hatch. But do I say anything? No.”

It was at that moment that I realized that we were standing next to a podium. A podium with a mic on it. A mic that was on.

Crap.

We turned to find most of the bereaved watching us, horrified. And my cousin Junie didn’t look thrilled with me, either.

5

Hostility toward human males marrying into were clans is to be expected and taken seriously. Potential sons-in-law may want to carry wolfsbane or silver items in their pockets. Weres find both substances to be extremely irritating.

—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were

Despite Bob’s being laid to rest on a cloudy day, I elected not to go to his burial. I thought it might build strange expectations for Mama. Aunt Jettie, who relished her role as my go-to daytime spy, reported that Bob’s burial was much more entertaining than his visitation.

Grandma Ruthie had gone from grieving widow to seeing herself as some sort of postmodern, postmenopausal Juliet. She wore an even bigger veiled hat to the cemetery and a black crepe dress with a full, flowing skirt and trailing sleeves. I’m thinking she bought it from the Gone with the Wind Widows Collection. She wailed and screeched her way through the eulogy, screamed, “Why, Lord? Why?” through the final blessing, and tried to snatch Bob’s service flag away from his son when it was presented by the honor guard. Also, she demanded front-row center seats for her and her male companion, Wilbur.

That’s right. My grandma brought a date to her fiancé’s burial. She’s all class, that lady. Apparently, she’d met Wilbur at Whitlow’s as he was heading into an old Army buddy’s visitation. Sparks flew, time stood still, and Grandma Ruthie snagged another victim. On the upside, I think Wilbur’s presence may have been the only thing that kept her from flinging herself into the grave on top of the casket.

But somehow, my outing cousin Junie as a day-shift dancer at the Booby Hatch made me an embarrassment to the family. At the burial, Grandma had declared that she wouldn’t speak to me until I’d apologized to Junie. I would think this odd considering that Junie was a cousin on my dad’s side of the family and Ruthie was my maternal grandmother. But Grandma Ruthie liked ninety-nine percent of the general population better than me, so why not cousins on the other side of the family?

During my shift that night, Aunt Jettie came into the shop to give me all of the details of the cemetery theatrics. She was in the middle of reenacting this declaration when a little woman in a double-knit pant suit came into the shop to claim a phone order. Aunt Jettie made herself scarce.

On the phone, Esther Barnes’s voice had sounded deep and accented. In person, she was squat, with dyed jet-black hair, deep wrinkles at the edges of her eyes, and a smoky topaz cocktail ring the size of a door knocker. Her voice was reedy and thin as she asked whether I had the “Barnes order” ready yet. I pulled her reserved copies of Mind over Matter: Maintaining Your Psychic Ability and The Search for the Inner Id from under the counter and rang them up.

There was something off about Esther Barnes. Her eyes were too bright, too sharp. Her mouth was small, thin, pinched into a coral-painted, birdlike moue. From the way her gaze was sweeping across the shop, I would guess she was calculating the value of every item in the store.

“Are you new in town, Ms. Barnes?” I asked, my tone light and friendly, even as I watched her weigh a brittle amethyst ceremonial blade with her even more fragile-looking hands.

“No.” She put the blade down, slapped her money on the counter, and stared at me. I would guess this stare had put many a shopgirl in her place over the years. But, well, I was bored, and she was there.

I smiled pleasantly. “Have family around here?”

Her eyes narrowed as what little politeness she offered drained out of her voice. “No.”

I held up a newly printed Specialty Books brochure. “Would you like to be put on our mailing list?”

OK, at this point, I was just trying to be annoying.

Ms. Barnes narrowed her eyes at me. There was a buzzing sensation, like being slapped under the forehead.

Ow.

It was as if someone let loose a hive full of bees in my head, little stings and pricks on the edge of my brain. I gripped the counter as the room spun out of focus. My head dipped as if I were just a bit tipsy, then snapped back into place as I fought for focus. Annoyed, I closed my eyes and built up a wall around my mind. I focused on the little woman in front of me and attempted to slap back, but it was like grabbing at sand. I couldn’t get a grip. The edges of her consciousness kept slipping through my fingers. I did well just to maintain control of my own psychic defenses and not pass out at her feet.

Exhausted by what was really just a moment’s effort, I opened my eyes to find a smug smile stretched across Ms. Barnes’s face. “Better luck next time, dear.”

Did I just get psychically pimp-slapped by a little old lady?

After she sauntered out of the shop, I hustled back to the stacks and grabbed a copy of Mind over Matter: Maintaining Your Psychic Ability. “What the hell is in this book?”

I checked Mr. Wainwright’s “records” for Ms. Barnes’s contact information. And by records, I mean the stack of scrap paper he kept in the back of the cash-register drawer with scribbled customer names and addresses. She was nowhere to be found, which was not a surprise. He did, however, have the address for a man who lived in Possum Trot and called himself Nostradamus, which made a certain amount of sense.

I opened Mind over Matter and scanned a few pages, trying to find the section on how to use one’s mental talents to smack people around. Nothing. Esther Barnes was clearly playing a deck stacked with a few extra cards. How do you guard against someone who can reach into your skull and scramble stuff around?

“I’m going to have to make a tin-foil hat,” I muttered as the phone rang.

It was then that I realized how wrong I was to think that being brain-assaulted was going to be the worst part of my day. It was my mother, calling to remind me that the annual Jameson family tree-trimming party was coming up that weekend and that I needed to wear my Frosty the Snowman sweater for the family Christmas-card picture. Mama always artfully arranged our “candid” family tree-trimming picture one week after Thanksgiving, so she was able to send the Christmas cards out by December 14, one week before her arch-enemy and best friend, Carol Ann Reilly.

“Um, I don’t think Jenny and Grandma would be very happy about seeing me.”

“But y’all got along so well at the visitation!” Mama cried.

“Being glad that someone will wash dishes and being happy that they were present are two different things.”

“Now, you’re just being silly, Jane. You’re just going to have to learn to kiss and make up with Grandma and Jenny for the holidays. I won’t stand for this. It was one thing for you to miss Thanksgiving, but this is getting ridiculous. Where else are you going to go?”

“Actually, I might have plans,” I lied.

Mama gasped. “What do you mean, you have plans? It’s not Christmas unless you’re with family.”

“Well, I have some new friends this year, and they don’t have family around here. I thought it would be nice to spend some time with them.”

“New vampire friends,” Mama said, just a hint of bitterness tingeing her tone.

“No, not all of them are vampires.”

“Well, if you want to throw away years of tradition, that’s your choice. If you really want to spend the first Christmas since we lost you with strangers, that’s your decision to make.”