“Fine. I want to talk to you about the house,” Jenny said, sighing.

“No!” I threw up my hands. “My lawyer said I’m not supposed to talk to you about the house or its contents without him being present. That’s why we’ve been handling this frustrating yet not at all rewarding task over e-mail!”

“Jane, I think we can settle this without the lawyers.”

“How do you figure?”

Jenny actually had the good grace to look slightly timid, twisting her wedding band around her finger as she said, “Well, your situation has changed. You need to stay close to town now that you’re running the shop. And besides, you don’t need that big old place, all by yourself—”

“If you finish that sentence, I’m going to punch you in the head.”

“Don’t you threaten me,” she said, shoving my shoulder.

“Don’t you tell me what I need,” I said, shoving her back, sending her chair scooting across the floor.

“Jane, you have so much stuff! I don’t understand why you need everything the family’s handed down! You’re all alone. No one even sees all those beautiful things. They won’t be appreciated in your house like they would be in mine.”

“I’m not having this discussion with you again,” I told her, pushing back from the table. “Let’s just get through this carnival from hell, I’ll find a way to fake my death and escape from the chamber, and you can fight Head Courtney to the death for her position as queen of the evil hive. And then we never have to see each other again. You can pretend I died or something.”

“You did die,” Jenny said, rolling her eyes.

“So it should be easy for you.”

“Why can’t you just discuss this with me like a rational adult?” she demanded.

“Why? Are you going to behave like a rational adult?” I shot back.

She grunted and tossed her folder of chamber materials across the bar at me. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this, which is all the time . I’m going.” She huffed and puffed while she slung her purse over her shoulder. “But this isn’t over, Jane. You’re going to have to deal with this sooner or later.”

Jenny blew back out of the shop like a bitchy hurricane, leaving a trail of scattered prize committee papers in her wake. And when she’d tossed her folder at me, she’d knocked a huge stack of mail off the counter.

Perfect.

I ran around the shop, picking up sheets of paper detailing Jenny’s campaign to wheedle free floral arrangements and colonics out of the Hollow’s business community. I also cursed a rather impressive blue streak that eventually began to rhyme and was soon coming out in iambic pentameter.

Andrea had enrolled us in a poetry seminar.

And when I finally managed to assemble the papers on the bar, I was confronted with the envelope. I’d been avoiding the mail for the past couple of days. Frankly, between the creepy Jeanine letters and my Visa bill, the U.S. Postal Service wasn’t exactly bearing me good news lately. But I couldn’t ignore today’s note, the creamy linen envelope stuck between humdrum bills and catalogues.

I seriously considered tearing it up without reading it. Insight into my sire and his crazy possible ex’s relationship didn’t exactly make me happy. But the more I read, the more I wanted to know. Whoever this woman was, Jeanine knew exactly how much information to reveal, how much to play close to the vest, to keep me confused, wound up, and coming back for more. She should have been a mystery author or maybe run for Congress.

I took a deep yoga breath and prepared myself for whatever obsessive looniness the letter had in store for me. And as I scanned the page, one word jumped out at me: “whore.”

I really hated it when people called me that.

“ I saw you. I saw you with him, rutting in an alley like some common whore. I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen. What do I have to do to make you understand that you have to stay away from Gabriel? Do I have to do something drastic to get my point across? You have no one to blame but yourself now.”

“Oh.” My hands trembled, and the letter fluttered to the counter. My stomach pitched, pushing the salty-sweet remnants of synthetic blood into my throat.

The fact that someone had watched me engage in intimate acts in an alleyway seemed far more pressing than the fact that she was threatening to “do something drastic.” Personally, I thought the drive-by fruiting of my front porch was pretty drastic. But she’d seen us? Someone had watched Gabriel and me having sex behind the shop? She’d seen my sex faces? Heard the noises I made? Watched when Gabriel dropped me on my ass? I felt as if I’d been doused in ice water. What if she’d taken more pictures? What if she sent them to people I knew? Posted them on the Internet? What if that’s what she meant by having no one else to blame?

I tried to imagine explaining nude online pictures to my mother. If she thought me becoming a vampire was embarrassing, how would she react to “accidental amateur porn star”? I leaned my forehead against the counter. “Oh, not good.”

What do you do in a situation like this? I certainly wasn’t going to the police, who weren’t exactly helpful in cases where vampires were concerned. I’d probably pressed Andrea’s and Dick’s nerves to the limit with my “erotomania” talk and the relationship hysterics. Zeb didn’t need to be dragged into this, what with his procreative worries. That left one person, one man who would understand the situation, my feelings of paranoia and guilt and revulsion.

And I wasn’t talking to my sire at the moment.

My computerized calendar alarm sounded from the register. Andrea had set it so I wouldn’t conveniently forget my scheduled progress meeting. It was being held at Puerto Vallarta, the only restaurant in the Hollow that served Mexican food without a drive-through window. The theory was that the planning committee would build better connections and work more creatively in a social setting. Basically, it was an excuse for the Courtneys to get knee-walking drunk off half-priced margaritas on a weeknight. And because Nice Courtney wasn’t a committee head, I wouldn’t even have her as a social shield.

“Forced bonding time with inebriated Courtneys in a restaurant, where I’m going to have to hide the fact that I don’t eat,” I groaned, flopping my head onto the counter. “Peachy freakin’ keen.”

11

If you’re new to a relationship and your plans for the evening involve alcohol, consider this formula to determine your consumption: however many alcohol units it takes to get you to start complaining about your last boyfriend minus 100 percent.

—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less

Destructive Relationships

I was, of course, the first person to show up at the restaurant, because, silly me, I assumed that when a meeting starts at seven, that’s when you’re supposed to show up. The rest of the Courtneys, and Jenny, showed up at 7:20, just as a table for ten became available in the crowded dining room. Apparently, I was the designated table saver.

This was going to be a fun night.

Puerto Vallarta was run by the Gonzalez family, first-generation Mexican-Americans whose parents had come to Kentucky in the 1970s to find seasonal work on the tobacco farms. The three siblings served affordable, delicious Mexican cuisine with just the right amount of “authentic” mariachi-ized ambience and a smile— even when the locals butchered Spanish while ordering “case-o-dillias.”

Hector, the oldest Gonzalez, led us to the back room, which was set up for large parties. When Head Courtney saw the unassuming spot under crisscrossed guitars and a neon sign for Dos Equis, she shook her head and said, “We would like a different table,” with loud, deliberate pronunciation. Then she repeated the phrase with big, swooping hand gestures.

Apparently, Head Courtney didn’t think that Hector spoke English. But she did believe that when you speak really slowly and loudly, English automatically becomes whatever language is understood by the person you’re yelling at.

“We want that table,” Head Courtney said, pointing to another long table underneath huge hanging bunches of dried garlic and chili peppers. Then she added more hand gestures.

Hector, who had been the go-to grammarian for my honors English class at Half-Moon Hollow High, looked to me with a puzzled expression. I rolled my eyes and shrugged.

Several of the Courtneys seemed to be watching me as we approached the table. As we were seated, I mentally reviewed the benefits of belonging to the Chamber of Commerce. Legitimacy, contacts, free advertising. I said it over and over in my head, like a mantra to keep me from strangling one of the Courtneys with their imitation Coach purse straps.

“Thank you,” Head Courtney said loudly. Hector nodded.

“Good to see ya, Jane. I’ll have a server with y’all in just a few minutes,” he said in his perfect, heavily-Southern-accented English. Hector, who insisted on being called Heck in school, had always looked a little like Lou Diamond Phillips and sounded a lot like Larry the Cable Guy. I winked at him.

Head Courtney looked momentarily confused but quickly forgot her ethnic profiling as she watched me settle in with a menu, ignoring the cluster of dried garlic hanging over my head. Contrary to what movies would have you believe, vampires aren’t allergic to garlic. It does, however, smell to high heaven, and we have supersensitive noses. But it had been a long time since the specimens overhead had remotely resembled usable food. The smell was strong but not unpleasantly so. It reminded me of coming to Puerto when I was living. Zeb and I would come on Tuesday nights to split a carne asada platter and chat with Hector over cheap beer.

“Are you OK here, Jane?” Cankles Courtney asked, peeking carefully over her menu. She nodded up to the garlic. “Jenny said you have … allergies.”

I’ll bet she did. I glared Jenny’s way, but she seemed completely absorbed by her menu. I smiled sweetly at Cankles Courtney. “Thanks for asking, but I’m fine.”

Cankles Courtney gave Toady Courtney a triumphant look, as if to say, “See, I told you! She’s not a vampire.”

I sighed, making a show of studying the menu. I missed carne asada. And chocolate. And ice cream. And lasagna. And cheeseburgers. Basically, I missed all food, except brussels sprouts. It still irked me that my last meal had consisted of potato skins and liquor. People who get the chair receive a better culinary sendoff.

I wasn’t going to order the carne asada, because that would just be depressing, even if I used Jolene’s disgusting food-craving imagery. I decided on tamales. They were mushy and messy, and it would be difficult to tell how much, if anything, I was eating. Plus, I’d never liked them much, so staring at them for an hour or so without being able to eat them would be bearable.

Our server suffered through our ordering pronunciations with a brave face. When he came to me, I ordered the tamales, and whatever remaining interest the Courtneys had in my eating habits seemed to melt away. The server stared at me for a long moment and then asked, “And to drink?”

I thought about sweet, fortifying tequila, since all of the Courtneys were planning on bellying up to the margarita trough. But I wanted to keep my wits about me so I wouldn’t get wrangled into cleaning up after the petting zoo or any of the other undesirable jobs Courtney had lined up.

“Water’s fine, thanks.” The server seemed to sense a weakening in my resolve and continued staring at me. I took the bar menu from the little plastic console in the middle of the table. “Actually, I’ll have a beer.”

The Courtney on my left gasped in horror. Jenny sneered as I looked over the beer selections.

“El Torrente Sanguíneo?” he asked.

For a moment, I and my three years of poor Spanish instruction thought he was asking if I wanted a raincoat with that. I squinted at him. He pointed to a selection near the bottom of the menu. The little dark brown bottle on the illustration looked like any beer. I knew that Sanguíneo probably had something to do with sangre , which translated to “blood.” And torrente probably meant “river” or “stream.” So it probably translated to something like “blood stream” or “vein.” Was he offering me synthetic blood?