Author: Molly Harper

“What do you mean, ‘lost me’? I’m right here!”

“I can’t keep talking about it, Jane.”

“Talking about what? We don’t talk about this. At all.”

Mama sighed, the slightest edge of a sniffle curling at the end. “Will you at least come to the tree-trimming party so we can take the family picture? Not everyone has to know that you and Jenny have had a falling out.”

“Can’t you just Photoshop me in or something?” I asked.

“I don’t even know what that means.” Mama grunted. “Just show up on Saturday at six.”

I hung up the phone and commenced thumping my head against the leaded-glass counter.

“If you keep doing that, it’s going to leave a mark,” a smooth, bemused voice said. “Even your healing powers have limits.”

I looked up to find Andrea Byrne standing in front of me, smirking.

“You look perturbed. Well, more perturbed than usual,” she said, examining the paling bruise on my forehead.

“What was your first clue?” I asked grumpily.

Andrea reminds one of what Grace Kelly might have looked like with red hair and a twisted backstory. Broke after her split with her (fickle bastard) undead ex and disowned by a firmly antivampire family, Andrea came to the Hollow years before to get a job in a boutique downtown. But her real income came from clients who enjoyed her blood in a mutually safe environment for a small fee. Andrea was the first—and last—human I fed from. It made for a rather awkward beginning to our friendship, but she was the one human I knew who truly understood the bizarre aspects of my new vampire lifestyle. She was sort of like my undead blankie, keeping me connected to the living world. Mama would have done the same thing but with more guilt and sunburns.

She hefted both Mind over Matter and The Spectrum of Vampirism off the counter and winced. “A little light reading?”

“Just researching my roots,” I said, flipping Spectrum to the chapter titled “Global Origins.” “Like this charming theory, for example: ‘Gypsies believed that vampires returned from the dead to seek vengeance on those who may have contributed to their death or neglected to give them a proper burial. Graves were watched carefully for signs of being disturbed. Exhumed corpses that were bloated or had turned black would be staked, beheaded, and burned.’ Well, why didn’t they just blast the remains out of a cannon? Humans are stupid.”

“I’m standing right here,” Andrea griped.

“Oh, you’re not really human. You’re like one of us, only with a pulse.”

“And Mr. Wainwright?”

“Same goes.” I nodded. “You don’t normally come in here. What’s up?”

“I’m bored.”

“Bored?” I asked.

She nodded. “Ever since Dick became interested in me, all but my most loyal clients have stopped calling. I don’t know if they are in doubt of my taste or frightened of Dick, but either way, it’s not good for business.”

“Well, thanks for thinking of me.” I grinned. “I’m off in a couple of hours. What did you want to do?”

“Oh, I know, why don’t we go out for a nice girls’ night, get into a bar fight, and then, just for kicks, one of us could end up suspected in a vampire murder. That could be fun,” Andrea suggested brightly. “Oh, wait, we did that already.”

“You think you’re being funny, but you’re not funny. When I tell the story, I don’t tell people about you being knee-walking drunk, ergo unconscious, during the whole fight. I think I’m going to change that policy.”

“You actually tell people that story?”

I nodded. “But when I tell it, Walter is six-foot-three and a trained cage fighter.”

Andrea chuckled.

I grinned slyly. “Dick has been looking for you.”

She grumbled. “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘restraining order,’ does he?”

“Technically, that’s two words.” I giggled. “Dick and Andrea sitting in a tree, B-I-T-I-N-G—ow!” I whined as she punched my shoulder. “You’re just mad because secretly, underneath that sophisticated exterior, you’re hot for Dickie.”

“I am not hot for Dickie,” Andrea spat.

“Me and my bruised shoulder say thou dost protest too much,” I said dryly.

“He’s practically stalking me. He just won’t let it go. He’s just being … he’s being a jackass with a flaky jackass crust and a delicious jackass filling.”

“So he’s jackass pie?” I asked, making my “ew” face.

“There’s no reason to be crass,” Andrea mewed primly.

“You know, you’re starting to talk like me. I find this more than a little troubling. Maybe we should spend less time together.”

“I could come up with jackass pie on my own,” she insisted, then mulled that statement over. “No. No, I couldn’t.”

“By the way, what are your plans for Christmas?” I asked.

“Pretending my parents haven’t disowned me, watching It’s a Wonderful Life, and drinking a few bottles of merlot. How about you?”

I chewed my lip. “I’m thinking of throwing together a little party for us disenfranchised monsters.”

“You’re using us as an excuse not to spend time with your family?”

“No, I’m choosing to spend time with my dearest friends,” I retorted. “Fine, it’s eighty percent spending time with you guys and twenty percent avoiding my family.”

Andrea shot me her best doubtful glare.

“Seventy/thirty,” I said as the doorbell tinkled. I was confronted with the sight of a weeping werewolf, clutching a bear trap in one hand and a wedding planner in the other.

There’s something you don’t see every day.

A curious Mr. Wainwright poked his head out of the office, illogically thrilled at the sight of a tearful werewolf in his shop. “This is the most traffic the shop has had in years,” he said, smiling brightly. “Jane, would your friends like a cup of tea?”

“Why don’t you put the kettle on?” I suggested in a voice as calm and soothing as I could muster. “Andrea Byrne, Jolene McClaine,” I said, eyeing Jolene and the bear trap warily. “Jolene, honey, what’s wrong?”

“Zeb!” she wailed plaintively.

“What about Zeb? Is he OK?” I demanded, sniffing the trap but finding no scent of blood.

“He’s fine.” Her deeply backwoods accent stretched the word out into “faaaaaaahhhnnnn” before she wailed, “He’s called off the wedding!”

Visions of an unworn, unreturnable peach sateen bridesmaid’s dress lurking in the back of my closet flashed before my eyes. I shuddered. “I thought we agreed that you guys weren’t going to come to me anymore with your problems.”

“But this time is different!” Jolene wailed. “This time I need help!”

“OK, OK.” I took the trap out of her hands and wrapped my arms around her. She sniffled into my shirt, leaving a spreading wet stain on my shoulder. “Are you sure about that he called off the wedding, Jolene? Sometimes Zeb misspells stuff in e-mails, and it comes across badly.”

“Of course I’m sure!” Jolene howled, drawing a sharp wince from Andrea, who was more accustomed to the slightly more sedate antics of vampires. “I’m not stupid!”

“OK,” I said, scratching behind her ears. It may sound condescending, but sometimes that calmed her down.

“Do you have anythin’ to eat?” Jolene asked, sniffing the air. “I can’t talk like this on an empty stomach.”

Jolene couldn’t do anything on an empty stomach.

Mr. Wainwright helped me scavenge leftover pizza, canned stew, and some Chef Boyardee from his apartment and then made himself scarce. Even his fascination with were-creatures wasn’t enough to keep him around a hysterical female. Note to self: Bring pot pies and bagged salad to the shop for Mr. Wainwright. This kind of diet could not be good for him.

“What happened?” I asked as she gorged herself on cold pepperoni. It was always oddly compelling to watch Jolene eat, with the stark contrast between the beautiful, trim girl and the huge amounts of food she shoveled into her face. If you didn’t know about her werewolf metabolism, you’d wonder where she put it all.

I tried to reach out to her mind, but the jumble of images—confused, pained, and frenetic—made me dizzy.

“My cousins played a little joke on Zeb, and he got so upset,” she said, gnawing on reheated crust. “I told him he was overreactin’ and he should be glad that my cousins were tryin’ to make him part of the pack. And then he said something about ‘not wantin’ to live on the farm with the Jerry Springer family’ and how we were going to lose our house thanks to them. I asked what the hell he meant by that. He said he was sure I knew all about it. I told him he sounded like a paranoid jerk. He said that if I really felt that way, then he wasn’t gonna to be able to marry me.” Her eyes welled up again. “How could he do that? How could he just break it off without even looking upset about it? How could he just leave me?”

I waited for the yowl of “meeee” to end. “What kind of joke did your cousins play on Zeb?”

“They put a bear trap between his usual parkin’ spot by the front door to Mama and Daddy’s place. It was just a joke,” Jolene insisted. “We do it to each other all the time.”

“Wolves set bear traps for each other? Isn’t that sort of, I don’t know, culturally insensitive or something?”

Jolene seemed befuddled by the question. “No, it doesn’t hurt that bad.”

“You heal ten times faster than the average human,” I told her. “That bear trap could have cost Zeb a foot. He’s already lost a pinkie toe to your family’s little jokes.”

“They’re just bein’ playful.”

“He lost an appendage, Jolene. That’s not playful, that’s wanton endangerment.”

Jolene sniffed. “Don’t! Don’t use the ‘talkin’ down the crazy person’ voice. And don’t act like you’re sad this happened. You probably set this whole thing up to get out of wearing the bridesmaid dress.”

“What is wrong with you?” I asked. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know!” Jolene cried. “He proposed to me! I was a normal person before this. He made me go crazy! I know my family is screwed up, OK? I know it’s not normal for your cousin to want to marry you or for your parents to make you move in less than a hundred yards away from them.

“I know it’s not normal to be so loud and in each other’s business all the time. I know they’re passive-aggressive and just plain aggressive and they pay no attention to boundaries. They know they could have hurt Zeb with these pranks, and that’s half of the fun for them. But what am I supposed to do? This is my pack. This is thousands of years of breedin’ and instinct. I can’t stop that.”

She sobbed and wiped at her eyes. “And that’s what I told him. Then I said he wouldn’t be so tense if maybe his parents were more supportive of us instead of torpedoin’ the wedding every chance they got. He asked me what I meant by that, and I said that it was obvious his mama would be a lot happier if he was marrying you instead of me. And when he told me that was crazy, I told him to take his ring and shove it where the sun don’t shine, and I stormed off, and now I’m sittin’ here, miserable, and with no idea whether I’m gettin’ married.”

Andrea goggled. “That was a Jane-worthy tirade. Really, very impressive.”