Author: Molly Harper

I threw my arms around Zeb and hugged him tight. It was the first time I’d touched him since turning that he hadn’t stiffened his spine and gotten all awkward. “Oh, Zeb, why didn’t you tell me?”

Weird pause amid the hugging. “I just did.”

“You could have told me years ago. I would have accepted you, not matter what. It wouldn’t have changed anything. I love you.”

Weirder pause. “Accepted what?”

“You being, you know—” I said, trying to find the most sensitive way to handle this life change without hanging umpteen million crosses around my neck and stabbing him. I tried to learn from our mistakes. “But what about the redhead? Wait, is she a he? Because, if so, she’s pretty convincing.”

Zeb made a sound somewhere along the lines of “Wrok!” Then, “What? No.”

Well, now I was confused. “You mean, you’re not gay?”

“No! Why would you think that?” he cried.

“You said alternative lifestyles.”

“No, your alternative lifestyle, you tool,” he grunted, waving in the general direction of my head, which I guess meant my fangs. Or maybe my brain; sometimes it interfered with the way I was supposed to live my life. “Jane, I’ve joined a group called Friends and Family of the Undead. It’s a support group for people whose loved ones have been turned into vampires. We meet every week and talk about how to deal with our feelings about your new lives. You know, being unsure of our safety around you. Making you feel welcome in our lives and our homes. Stuff like that.”

I stared at him. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

“I didn’t want you to feel like I was so upset about your change I had to seek psychological help, even though, well, I did,” he said. “But it’s been great. There aren’t a lot of people who understand what going through this is like. It helps to talk about it. I think you should come with me sometime. It might help you talk to your parents.”

“Umm, I don’t know if I’m ready for something that public.”

“It’s anonymous,” he insisted. “It’s a lot like AA, without the drinking. One of the rules is that you can’t talk about what’s said at the meetings or who’s there.”

“This is the Hollow, Zeb. Twelve steps of confidentiality mean nothing. Remember that time Flossie Beecher started a Sex Addicts Anonymous group and ended up having to change her phone number?”

“No one will know you’re there because you’re a vampire,” he said. “You could just be there because someone you know has been turned into a vampire.”

“If I come to one of these meetings, can I meet the mysterious redhead?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact, that’s where I met the mysterious redhead,” he said, grinning. “She belongs to the group. Her name’s Jolene.”

There was a tone in his voice I hadn’t heard before—fondness, pride. Zeb was talking like a man in love. This did not bode well. Women do not usually respond favorably to their boyfriends having female best friends. Pretty soon, Zeb would break our movie nights to hang out with Jolene and their other “couple friends.” Our code of inside jokes would be broken by a woman who insisted on knowing what the hell we were talking about. I would slowly be phased out until I was that girl Zeb used to hang out with before he “grew up.”

I smiled brightly. “Well, now I guess I have to go.”

12

Trying to blend groups of friends from the living and undead worlds can be difficult. It’s better if social events involving both the living and the nonliving do not center around food. Some more comfortable themes include poker games, bowling nights, and historical reenactments.

—From The Guide for the Newly Undead

From the outside, Greenfield Studios looked like a respectable family photography business in one of the newer buildings of the Hollow’s riverfront business district. I didn’t know anyone who’d had their pictures done there, but the company had only set up shop a few months before, and it was difficult to get Hollow residents out of the Sears Christmas-card-photos habit.

I’d parked Big Bertha almost two blocks away and around a corner, trying to give myself some “pep talk and walk” time. If I’d needed to breathe, I probably would have been hyperventilating with my head against the steering wheel. I hadn’t been on a job interview since just after college. And if the head of the library board hadn’t been one of my favorite high-school English teachers, Mrs. Stubblefield probably would have launched me out of the room with some sort of spring-loaded chair.

I reread the want ad. Greenfield was advertising for an appointment secretary with a pleasant phone voice, good communication skills, and a “people-pleasing personality.” Having two out of three wasn’t bad.

One. One out of three wasn’t bad.

This was the first ad I’d come across that actually sounded somewhat appealing. I could handle an office job. I could handle pleasing people, to a certain extent, as long as it didn’t inconvenience me too much. It seemed sort of odd for a photography studio to be open all night, but the supervisor, Sandy, who was supposed to interview me said clients made their photo appointments after they got home from work.

I climbed out of Big Bertha and straightened what I hoped was an appropriately secretarial outfit—a red cardigan and a black pencil skirt that Andrea had helped me pick out. I had also accepted her ridiculously high black heels with the ankle straps because she said they made me look sophisticated yet sensible. On the walk to the office, I felt well dressed yet nauseated.

I rang the bell outside the brick front entrance and nervously fingered the manila envelope that contained my résumé. Sandy turned out to be a tiny, birdlike woman in her sixties. She reeked of Virginia Slims and had a voice like scraping the bottom of a whiskey barrel, but she looked like the poster woman for clean senior living, with fluffed curls of pure white and a face that was carefully made up. She was wearing a rose-colored track suit, a white golf visor, and a rhinestone pin shaped like a kitten at her shoulder.

“Come in, come in!” she said, smiling as she led me to an all-beige reception area. The lobby was clean, newly painted, and quiet as a church. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

Sandy gestured for me to sit, and I handed her my résumé. She crossed her leg primly as she sat in the overstuffed armchair to my left. She looked over my qualifications while I filled out the surprisingly scant job application. Greenfield Studios didn’t seem to want to know much about me beyond my name and social security number. However, one of the boxes asked for my “life status,” and I was supposed to check whether I was living or undead. While it was illegal to ask an applicant about race, age, or marital status, it was still perfectly legal to ask whether he or she was a vampire. Congressional lobbyists fighting against undead rights claimed it was a public-safety issue, saying that employers had the right to protect their workplaces from “dangerous predators.” I left the space blank and hoped Sandy wouldn’t notice until after I’d gauged the office’s general attitude toward vampires.

I handed her the application, and she smiled brightly. “Well, it seems that you are more than qualified. You have a solid employment history, which is always nice to see in someone your age. Could you do me a favor, honey, and read this out loud for me?”

Sandy handed me a badly copied sheet of paper with several paragraphs in all caps:

HELLO, MY NAME IS (BLANK), AND I’M CALLING THIS EVENING ON BEHALF OF GREENFIELD STUDIOS. OUR RECORDS SHOW THAT YOU HAVE INDICATED AN INTEREST IN HAVING YOUR FAMILY PORTRAIT TAKEN WITH GREENFIELD. I’M CALLING TO HELP YOU SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT AND TO TELL YOU ABOUT AN EXCITING NEW PRODUCT—

“That’s very nice,” she said, pulling the script from my hand. “So, when would you like to start?”

This seemed rather quick. Why wasn’t she asking me more questions? Why wasn’t she asking me to tell her about myself? Why was my potential supervisor wearing a track suit? And why exactly did the script appear to have me calling people at home to schedule appointments instead of the other way around? And what was the exciting new product?

“Um, the ad said you were looking for a receptionist?”

“An appointment secretary,” she said, nodding. “You would call people who have willingly and legally given us their contact information and book appointments for them to have their family portraits taken.”

Why were the words “willingly” and “legally” necessary? Wait a minute. Pleasant phone voice, good communication skills, and people-pleasing personality? This was not secretarial work, this was telemarketing.

“I don’t think this is going to work for me,” I said, hesitantly rising to my feet.

“Oh, honey, please, just give it a try!” she cried. “You’ve got the voice. And you’re well educated, articulate. People who are lonely, just waiting by the phone hoping someone will call, they’ll love talking to someone like you. You could make a lot of money doing this.”

OK, we were talking about telemarketing, not phone sex. Right?

“But I’ve never done telemarketing before,” I said, clutching my purse like a lifeline and taking a step toward the door.

“Oh, we don’t like to use that word around here. We prefer telecommunications-based sales.”

“And the difference is…”

Sandy ignored my question. “You said you needed a night job, and you won’t find many nice, safe sales jobs with hours available this late. We call the West Coast until eight P.M. Pacific time. You’ll get on-the-job training. And you won’t find a sweeter group of girls to work with. We’re just a big, happy family here.”

I chewed my lip and cast a longing glance at the reception desk, which I now noticed was brand new and looked as if it had never been touched. I could not afford to be proud or picky. I had bills to pay and a dog who expected to be fed occasionally. Besides, they probably weren’t going to ask me to do anything grosser than scraping chewing gum off the bottom of tables or degunking a grease trap, both of which I’d done regularly while working at the Dairy Freeze in my teens. Hell, I was the one who ran for the “vomit dust” whenever a kid got sick at the library. Nothing could be worse than that. Right now, something was better than nothing. And this was something.

“When can I start?”

As I rounded the corner, I couldn’t help but think I’d just made a rather large mistake. I was not a salesperson. I was definitely not a telecommunications-based salesperson. But I’d already given Sandy my social security number, and I think that’s the point of no return in terms of employment etiquette. Sandy had even given me an information packet on Greenfield Studios and how the company was bringing affordable family memories to you. I was supposed to review the materials before Friday, my first night on the job.

As I turned toward the block where Big Bertha was parked, the breeze carried the scent of blood. I looked around for an injured person, some source of the smell. But the scent was old, the blood long cold and dead.

The closer I walked to the car, the stronger the smell. I could make out splashes of red across the hood. I jogged closer to see that some ambitious soul had scrawled “BLOODSUCKING WHORE” in huge, dripping, bloody letters across Big Bertha’s paint.

“What the hell?” I gaped. “What—”

I slid my fingers through the crook of the U. The blood smeared sticky and cold across my fingers. It was animal blood, something gamey, deer blood. Cringing, I swiped my fingers across my skirt, too shocked to worry about the stains it would leave. I scanned the street for any sign of the vandal. There might as well have been tumbleweeds blowing across the asphalt.