She giggled. “But you do it ‘cause you need to protect the people you love. And that’s not such a bad thing.”

“I know that I can be sort of—” I paused and then settled for “overbearing, when it comes to Zeb, his happiness and safety and hygiene. But I would like to say that I’m really glad that he’s marrying you.”

She sniffed and threw her arms around me. There’s nothing quite like an armful of drunk werewolf to help you find some perspective.

“I love you, Jane,” Jolene slurred. “I love Zeb. I really love Zeb. He’s the first man to ever see me as more than a pretty face and hot body.”

“It’s nice that you’re so modest.”

“He treats me special, not because of who my parents are or because I’m pretty but because, just because that’s his way,” she rambled. “He’s gentle and sweet and he loves me. And I love him.”

“I know.”

“And you love Zeb.” She giggled, the alcohol in her having clearly convinced her that this was a revelation.

“Yep.”

“But not in a love-love way,” she said suspiciously.

“Nope. I have a boyfriend. A boyfriend who engages in mind-blowing sex with me and then doesn’t return my calls for two days, but a boyfriend all the same.”

“Good. ‘Cause otherwise”—she heaved a drunken sigh and then giggled—”I’d have to kick your ass.”

“I’m aware.”

The cousins turned around to see us hugging and collectively rolled their eyes. We straightened up and focused on the show.

“Speaking of your groom-to-be, where has he been lately?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him in almost a week. Please don’t take this as a gripe against him being in a grown-up relationship, but normally he comes by the house every once in a while.”

Jolene rolled her eyes and sipped her drink. “Mama Ginger’s been runnin’ him ragged doin’ chores around their place. She said she’s afraid that after he’s married, I’m goin’ to run him ragged, and he’s not goin’ to have time to take care of ‘his poor agin’ parents’ anymore.”

“But Zeb has never done chores at his parents’ place. They don’t do chores at their place. Instead of raking their leaves, they just set fire to their whole yard every fall.”

“I think he’s just doin’ it to keep her off my back, poor thing,” Jolene said. “The more he does, the less she complains about him ‘abandonin’ his family.’ Of course, she still complains about me, but that’s different …”

A shadow seemed to pass over Jolene’s face. Her lip trembled, and I was afraid the drinks had caught up with her. I reached for her hand, but she straightened and took a deep breath. She stretched a too-wide smile over her face and turned her attention back to the stage.

“I wonder how much he spends on body waxin’?” she mused.

I smirked. “It’s probably a tax deduction. It’s a necessary item. I mean, it takes a little hair and a lot of confidence to dance around in that get-up.”

We tapped glasses. Jolene snorted. “Confidence and a couple of gym socks.”

After pouring several drunken lady werewolves into bed, I drove the McClaine van to River Oaks, taking a shortcut through a sketchier part of town. It was two streets over from where the shop is located. As I passed the Silver Bullet, a bar known for less-than-savory vampire traffic, I saw my grandma Ruthie’s new beau walking out of the place, carrying a case of canned drinks. I managed to stop the van, no small feat for someone unaccustomed to piloting a land yacht, and pulled into a dark corner of the adjacent parking lot.

Without enhanced night vision, I wouldn’t have been able to make out the labels on the cans, which read, “Silver Sun Senior Health Shakes.” It was the same kind of can Grandma Ruthie was toting around for Wilbur in her purse.

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence that he’s walking out of a vampire bar at four A.M. carrying mysterious beverages,” I murmured to myself as Wilbur hefted the case into his car. He looked around to make sure that no one was looking and popped the top of one can. He drained it in a few gulps, tossed it into a nearby Dumpster, and drove off.

“Well, at least he doesn’t litter,” I muttered.

Unfortunately, I found that Wilbur hadn’t tossed the can into an easy-to-find spot in the Dumpster when I inevitably climbed in to retrieve it.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” I grunted, sifting through endless beer bottles and newspapers drenched in a substance I dared not consider. “This is not normal, rational behavior, sifting through three days’ worth of extremely pungent bar garbage to find your future step-grandpa’s recyclables. There’s probably a perfectly reasonable, rational explanation for Wilbur being here. This is probably just some black-market health shake with ingredients that aren’t approved by the FD—oh, dear gah!” I squealed as something squirmed beneath my feet. I grabbed the can, leaped out of the Dumpster, and did the freaked-out girl dance for a few beats.

There was no list of ingredients on the side of the can. I held my “prize” to my supersensitive nose and sniffed. I sensed herbs, vitamins, some supplements for joint health (OK, that part was touted on the label), and beneath the slightly chalky bouquet, there was blood. Cold, dead pig’s blood.

“OK, maybe there’s not a reasonable explanation.”

I drove myself crazy over the next few days making complicated but ultimately useless “Explanations for Wilbur’s Drinking Pig’s Blood” line charts on legal pads.

This near-Oliver-Stone-level conspiracy theorizing kept me absorbed right up until the process server arrived on my doorstep. Jenny’s lawyers were demanding that a forensic accountant look through all of my financial records to determine whether I’d sold precious Early family heirlooms to pad my personal bank accounts during the course of her lawsuit. Against my better judgment, I had told Mama about the settlement, to assure her that I was financially secure for eternity and would never, ever need to move in with her, so please stop asking. And despite my dire warnings against doing so, Mama had mentioned my windfall to Jenny. And because Jenny does not believe I’m capable of improving my own situation without screwing her over, she concluded that I was up to no good in the Hollow’s vast antique black market. Basically, my sister was having me audited. Lovely.

Grumpy and frustrated beyond belief, I took advantage of my night off, turned off the phone, and, despite the siren’s call of Sense and Sensibility, I read a few more chapters of Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were. I finally found what a bloodening was. The women of the clan get naked under the new moon and track down a deer, killing it as a pack and bringing it home for a shared meal. It was supposed to be held during the week of the wedding to assure the bride symbolically that she was still part of the clan and that she would always be welcome to share its food but also reminding her that she was responsible to continue the clan’s traditions. It was a warm, though blood-soaked, sentiment. It was a special privilege for an outsider to be invited to witness a bloodening, much less run with the pack—which, as you might have guessed, as best maid, I was expected to do. I was going to need some sturdy running shoes and a really good sports bra.

I do not run naked.

My lolling about on the porch swing in the cold, making no effort to leave the house, seemed to disturb Aunt Jettie. “Is this sudden lean toward shiftlessness linked to all the time you’ve been spending with Dick?” Aunt Jettie said, in a tone that sounded eerily like Grandma Ruthie.

“Actually, Dick hasn’t wanted to spend much time with me lately, Aunt Jettie. We had an argument and he’s pretty irritated with me.”

“Is that why he’s coming up the drive?” She pointed to the driveway, where a battered El Camino was cutting through the dust. Dick climbed out of the car without making eye contact. He slinked up the porch steps and took a seat beside me. I closed my book and waited.

“Am I supposed to talk first?”

“Give me a minute.” He cut me off with a slicing gesture.

We sat in silence, with me staring into the distance, wondering what to do with my hands. Finally, he said, “I’ve been scared to say anything to Gilbert because I didn’t want him to be afraid of me or to turn away from me. It’s one thing to read about vampires and ghosts, it’s another to find out that you’re related to one.”

He studied the creases on his jeans. Unsure of my place in this exchange, I sat and waited.

“I knew Eugenia had the baby. My parents paid to keep her away while she was pregnant. When she had him, most of the town whispered about him being mine, but I didn’t do anything about it. I knew my parents were sending her money every month, and I figured that was all she needed from me. Don’t make that face at me, Jane. I was young and mortal … and stupid. I was sent away to handle some contrived piece of family business, and by the time I came back, my parents had sent the baby to an orphanage over in Murphy. They wouldn’t hear of bringing him to our home. The scandal, they said, the shame—even though I know for a fact my Daddy had several scandals of his own growing up around town. And then my parents died, and I lost the house to the jackass—”

“Gabriel,” I corrected.

“Right,” he said. “I told myself Albert was better off living at the orphanage, in a safe place, instead of bouncing around with me, living off card games, sleeping in a fine hotel one night and a ditch the next. That was just an excuse, of course. I didn’t know anything about kids. I wouldn’t have known what to do with him if I’d had him. I was a terrible father but a fun uncle. I’d visit Albert, give him penny candy and whatever money I could scrape together. But as soon as it came to real problems, the kid getting sick, getting into trouble at school, I was out of there.”

He grimaced. “When I got turned, I realized I shouldn’t be around him. It would be too confusing for him, a mysterious uncle who never aged and only visited at night. I was a piss-poor role model, anyway. And the people I did business with, they wouldn’t have minded roughing up a little boy to make a point. I stopped showing up for visits, and he ran away a couple of months later.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Part of me was almost relieved,” he admitted. “I didn’t have to worry. I didn’t have to bother. And then he came back, full-grown and the spitting image of me, especially in some of his less legal habits. And it was … nice. It was nice to be able to watch him, to see him running his business, being a man. I couldn’t always agree with some of his decisions, but at that point, I was supposed to be about sixty years old and still looked thirty something. I couldn’t exactly come back to give him a spanking and fatherly advice. He married, had a son. His son married, had a son. And I watched over them, all of them, watched them live their lives, enjoy their successes, make their mistakes. And most of their mistakes were a lot like mine. It’s sort of the Cheney family curse.”

“Good with women, bad with money?” I suggested.

He shrugged and smiled. “I never made contact,” he said. “I was still hanging around with the same type of people, and the less likely they were to connect me to the family, the better. I couldn’t stand it if any of them got hurt because of me. I thought I’d gotten rid of the paper trail when I set the fire in the courthouse.”

“Why do you tell me these things?” I huffed. “You know I have a Girl Scout complex.”

“I never made contact with them,” he said, ignoring me. “Not until Gilbert.”

“Why Gilbert?”

“He was the first in our family who looked like he might amount to something. He was such a good boy, and in a sincere way. He honestly cared about his mother, his little sister, his classmates at school, his country. He was one of the first boys in the Hollow to sign up for the Army after Pearl Harbor. He was the first man in our family to start college, much less finish it.” Dick smiled proudly. “And his sister was a sweet girl, just a little, well, stupid. But she was the first girl born to the family in about five generations, so she was special, too.