Author: Molly Harper

“Gave me a zing, too,” I said, my fangs snagging my lip when I smiled.

He took a moment to get the joke and laughed uproariously. “Yes, yes, in the future, I suppose it would be more polite to offer vampires my left hand.”

“Or you could take the ring off,” I suggested.

“Oh, no,” he said, absently stroking the worn band. “I never take it off.”

“OK, then. Not cryptic at all.” I chuckled. “You have an interesting selection here, Mr. Wainwright. How much of this was added after the Coming Out?”

He gave me a curious look.

“You had books on vampire diets and after-death tax issues before you knew for sure that we existed?” I asked. He nodded. “Do you have any books on ancient vampire laws? Because I’m pretty sure I’m getting hosed on a murder rap.”

“Actually, no, but I can probably find something if you give me a few days,” Mr. Wainright said, apparently unimpressed by my mentioning the murder thing. This made me wonder about his clientele. “So much of my business is handled online now, I just don’t have time to keep things up here at the store.”

“You sell online?”

“Eighty percent of my sales are online. My Web site registers fifty thousand hits per month.” A smirk lifted the wrinkles at his mouth. “Loyal customers and eBay are enough to keep me going. Just last week, I sent three volumes on were-monkeys to Sri Lanka.”

“Were-monkeys?” I repeated, unsure if he was joking.

Obviously upset by my lack of familiarity with were-monkeys, Mr. Wainwright gave me a copy of A Geographical Study of Were-Creatures. He explained that he became familiar with the more exotic weres while he served in World War II. After that, he continued to pursue his interests abroad. There are some things you just can’t study in the Hollow. He’d returned home thirty years earlier to tend to his ailing mother, who had died only the previous year.

I scanned the shop. It had so much potential. And now, with the emerging vampire population, there was an emerging market. And I’d be able to work around books again. The schedule would be flexible, and the boss seemed to understand, nay, embrace, my special needs. Sure, there wouldn’t be a lot of kids in an occult bookshop, but you can’t ask for everything.

“I don’t suppose you’d be looking for a shop assistant, would you?” I asked. “I could box and ship orders, do some shelving, maybe a little light cleaning. I could start off part-time, night hours, obviously, on a trial basis to see whether it works out.”

Mr. Wainwright chewed his lip thoughtfully and patted his pockets. It looked as if he was searching for his glasses, which were perched on top of his head. I plucked them from his crown and pressed them gently into his hands. He smiled.

“I’ve worked in the public library for six years. I have a master’s in library science. I have experience helping people finding the right books for their needs.”

“It sounds like you might be overqualified, dear.”

“I’m not, really. I just want to work around books again.”

At the rear of the store, a bookcase collapsed, sending several leather-bound books skittering across the floor. He lifted a scraggly white eyebrow. “Perhaps you could start off with some reorganization,” he said, looking at the neat stacks of books I’d arranged around us. “You seem to have a steady hand at that.”

I had learned my lesson from Greenfield Studios, so we sat down to discuss schedules, pay scale, distribution of responsibilities, and the fact that at some point, he was going to want to see a copy of my résumé. I left the shop feeling considerably lighter than before. I believe happy people call this emotion hope.

I got as far as the parking lot before I ducked my head back through the door, thanked my new boss, and said, “Mr. Wainwright, do me a favor, if you meet a woman named Ruthie Early, don’t marry her.”

I emerged from my first night shift at Specialty Books covered in dirt and suffering several injuries that would have probably resulted in tetanus before I was turned. But I was happier than I’d been in weeks. It was like being given a glimpse into my life before my firing.

My first order of business was cleaning. I chased several generations of spiders from the storage closet with a very large broom. I scrubbed the windows until you could actually see outside. (I remained undecided about whether that was a good thing.) I hauled away the broken shelves and organized the stock into piles by subject. I had not found Mr. Wainwright’s office or computer, but I did find what could have been a blueberry muffin petrifying in the back of the cash-register drawer. Also a small vial of dirt, a mummified paw of some sort, a pack of Bazooka, and currency issued by twelve governments, three of which had collapsed.

And at the end of the day, you could not tell I’d done anything. But still, Mr. Wainwright was thrilled to have that paw back. He’d been looking for it for twelve years.

We didn’t have a single customer all night, but Mr. Wainwright assured me this was normal. He shooed me away just after one A.M. The shop was closed for the next few days, he reminded me, because he was about to leave town on a purchasing trip in deepest, darkest Tennessee.

“But I look forward to seeing you on Monday. It’s been so refreshing having someone else to talk to. I mutter to myself, of course, and to the plants, but I rarely answer back.”

I looked over the shriveled remains of a spider plant. “And the plants don’t seem to be on speaking terms with you, either.”

Mr. Wainwright was still hooting at that one as he bustled me out of the shop.

Euphoric about my newfound and respectable employment, I took my dog for a very long walk on the old farm property to celebrate. As happy as I was to have a job, I knew it meant Fitz would have to readjust to my schedule, just after getting used to me being nocturnal. Plus, even with Aunt Jettie’s “hanging around,” he would be alone more often after weeks of constant attention. I imagined this was what mothers felt when heading back to work after maternity leave…only with more slobbering and shedding.

Sensing my guilt-based permissiveness, Fitz decided to push at the usual walk rules: no running away where I couldn’t see him, no rolling in substances I couldn’t identify, and no chasing woodland creatures that can fight back.

We explored areas of River Oaks we’d never seen at night: the creek where I’d showed Jenny how to swing on wild grapevines on one of her rare visits to Aunt Jettie’s, the path where I had to carry Jenny when she fell off the grapevine and broke her leg, post holes left by a fence I’d had to tear down as penance for letting Jenny break her leg. Fitz chased irate bullfrogs on the normally peaceful shore of the cow pond and gave a possum the chance at an Oscar-winning death scene.

I found a sturdy-looking oak and climbed catlike, leaping from branch to branch until I could see the house, the road beyond, the faint-twinkling lights of town in the distance. It still seemed strange that all of this had been passed to me. River Oaks had always seemed like its own little kingdom when I was a kid. And I couldn’t honestly say that I’d seen every inch of it. It seemed right that I would be able to look after it for generations to come. Maybe if Jenny’s children’s children’s children managed to outgrow their genetic predisposition to jackassery, I would pass it along to them one day.

From the base of the tree, Fitz barked and spun in circles. He apparently didn’t care for my Tarzan routine. I jumped, careful to avoid smacking into branches on the way down. I landed on my feet with a soft thwump. Fitz, who was used to me landing on other parts of my body, sat on his rump and cocked his head.

“I know, it’s new for me, too, buddy,” I told him, scrubbing behind his ears. “You’ll get used to it, I promise. Do you want to race back home? Huh, boy? Want to race?”

At the word “race,” Fitz broke into a run, streaking across the field in a blur of dirty brown-gray. I gave him a few seconds’ head-start before running after him. When I loped past him, Fitz gave a confused bark, nipping at my heels as if to say, “This is not how we do things! You chase me! Not the other way around!”

I jogged up the porch steps, Fitz close at my heels. With long strings of thirsty doggie drool hanging from his jowls, he made a beeline for the water bowl I kept in the corner of the porch. As he did, some organic alarm crawled up my spine. Something smelled weird, which was normal where Fitz was concerned. But this scent was chemical, sweet, familiar. It was a garage smell, something I can remember my dad keeping on the shelf with wiper fluid and car-wash supplies. It seemed to be coming from the end of the porch.

Using all the speed I could muster, I leaped over my dog and slapped the water bowl out of his reach. I landed on my side with a thud. Water splashed across my chest, and the bowl skittered down to the lawn. Fitz cocked his head and stared at me with a “What the hell?” expression—which, frankly, was becoming far too familiar.

I swiped at the water soaking my shirt and sniffed. I remembered the smell. Antifreeze. There was antifreeze in Fitz’s water dish. If he drank it, he would have died a miserable, painful death, and I probably wouldn’t have realized what had happened to him. I wasn’t even sure I had antifreeze in my garage. There was no possible way it had accidentally landed in the bowl. Someone had come onto my property, onto my porch, and put it there. Someone had intentionally tried to hurt my dog.

This was not a stupid teenage prank. This was someone who was serious about hurting me through Fitz. What the hell? Who was angry enough at me to do that?

“It’s OK,” I told Fitz, who was sniffing at my neck. “It’s OK. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

I took the bowl inside and washed it carefully, then threw it away in a fit of compulsive madness, because I knew I’d never feel it was safe again. I fed Fitz a Milk-Bone and gave him fresh water. With shaking hands, I stroked his fur as he gnawed on his treat, blissfully unaware.

If you want to hurt me, fine. Take my books. Burn down my house. Shave my head while I’m sleeping. But nobody, nobody screws with my dog.

After the water-bowl incident, I was afraid to leave Fitz at home alone while I was at work. I decided the safest place for him would be at Zeb’s. I didn’t elaborate on the reasons, because, frankly, I hadn’t quite absorbed it all yet and didn’t want to have to explain what happened. I just told Zeb that I’d taken a night job and Fitz was having trouble adjusting. I asked Zeb and Jolene to keep an eye on him for a few nights. Jolene was thrilled, as she and Fitz got along famously. And short of a Secret Service detail, I didn’t think I could ask for better canine protection than a werewolf escort.

But when I dropped Fitz off for their first sleepover, Zeb looked, well, weird. Dazed and weird, while Jolene was practically jumping out of her skin. “We have something to tell you,” he said.

It was curious how quickly they’d become a “we.” “We wanted” and “we have.” And I used to be a “we.” Zeb and I were “the” we. And I was suddenly relegated to being a “you.” I would have sulked further if a loopy, stupid grin hadn’t split Zeb’s face as he said, “We wanted you to be one of the first people to know that—”

“We’re gettin’ married!” Jolene crowed, waving a ringed hand in front me. “We’re engaged!”

“What the hell?”

Jolene’s head snapped toward me as I let loose the first words that came to mind. Damn my nonexistent internal filter.

“Not the reaction I expected,” Zeb said, putting his arm around a paled Jolene. Clearly, it was not the reaction she expected, either.

“I think I’ll just go get a snack,” she mumbled as she walked away.

“What is wrong with you?” Zeb demanded as he pulled me outside onto his back deck.