I'm Dreaming of an Undead Christmas (5 page)

Sometime around four, I passed out. Clearly, the late hours and the stress of finals and, well, everything else caught up with me, because it was almost twelve hours later when I was just crawling out of bed. It was strange, waking up in my childhood bed again, to a completely quiet house. Knowing that Iris wouldn’t be up waiting for me in the kitchen, ready to go over the details of our day, left me feeling sort of hollow and sad. But to every season and all that. Life had to change. Life had changed the moment Iris tripped over Cal. If she could turn her whole life upside down to take care of me, I could adjust my waking hours a little bit to accommodate her schedule.

With the sunproof shades in place, every inch of the house besides my room was completely dark. I stumbled down the stairs, making a mental note to start carrying a flashlight in my robe pocket. I punched my personal security code—3024, the number of a check I bounced for a gym membership I never took advantage of, because Cal and Iris would never let
that
go—into the security pad and found that I was only approved to open some downstairs windows—well, one small window over the kitchen sink—because my Ancient Greek brother-in-law was a paranoid freak convinced that the solar system was out to kill his family.

Considering my role models, I should get some sort of special medal for not needing serious therapy.

Guzzling coffee just as black as my resident adviser’s soul, I was contemplating this disturbing, though somehow endearing, aspect of Cal’s personality when a large dark shape came sweeping down the stairs and stopped just short of my face.

“
Gak!
” I shrieked, nearly tumbling off my stool. My face was saved from sudden introduction to the floor when a pair of cool hands circled around my upper arms and jerked me upright.

“Good morning,” Cal said calmly, as if he hadn’t just scared ten years off my life. “I see that your taste in sleepwear has not improved.”

I scowled at him, because no one should be that coordinated, really, but I refused to defend my choice of ratty flannel pants and a pink robe with holes worn in the elbows. He ruffled my hair and opened the blood warmer to take out his breakfast.

“Why did you do that?” I yelled, tossing a Pop-Tart box at his back.

With an almost bored expression, he caught the box before it hit him and put it on the counter. One day I would throw an object at a vampire and actually hit him or her. One day.

“To test your reflexes. I thought I taught you better than this,” he said, frowning at me, clearly disappointed with said reflexes. “Why did we spend all of that time doing judo drills if you were going to let your guard down?”

“Yes, I let my guard down . . . in my kitchen . . . in my home. I’m a hazard to myself.”

“You never know when you might be attacked.”

“Yes, yes, constant vigilance, I get it,” I muttered.

“It’s hard to be vigilant when you’re sitting in the dark.”

“I can’t figure out how to turn the lights on,” I told him. “Apparently, my security clearance isn’t high enough to use an illuminated bathroom.”

“It’s an additional security measure. The sunproof shades only open if the appropriate code is entered or the outdoor sensors detect full dark. If someone managed to break into our home during the day, they would be human and therefore need lights to walk around in the house. Their stumbling about would wake us up and give us the opportunity to attack. Keeping the house dark gives us that added advantage.”

“Cal, tell me how to turn on the lights, or I will tell Iris what you originally wanted to get her for Christmas.”

“You punch in our wedding date and then the little lightbulb button,” he said quickly.

The lights flickered on to reveal the recently renovated kitchen, with its soothing aquamarine tile and polished-aluminum appliances. It was a definite turnaround from the cheerful yellow country-chic kitchen of my youth, like something out of
The
Jetsons
, only with more human blood.

“And I still believe that a hedge trimmer is a perfectly nice gift. It’s useful,” Cal insisted.

“Yes, because every girl wants to tell her girlfriends about the
useful
gift her husband gave her. Should I remind you of her reaction to the ‘Blender Birthday’?”

Cal shuddered as he rifled through the cupboards for his favorite “Number One Vampire” mug. “Please, no.”

“That’s what I thought. Now, why did you intentionally get up before Iris so you could talk to me without her around?”

Cal’s lips quirked as he blew on his cup of morning blood. “How do you know I got up early so I could talk to you?”

“Because you never get up early if you can help it, and you only use the ‘Number One Vampire’ mug I made you for Father’s Day for serious discussions, because you like to remind me of the pseudo-parental role you have assumed in my life.”

He arched a dark brow. “No one likes a know-it-all, Gigi.”

“Jane tells me that’s not true. So what’s up?”

“I wanted to know whether you’ve thought about our conversation.”

“Wow, we switched to the serious lane with absolutely no signal.” I took a long, fortifying sip of coffee. Other than my Ben issues and school, my thoughts centered on the discussion Cal and I had had while I was working at NetSecure in Nashville. The discussion about my future and a potential job offer with the information tech nology department of the local Council office. The job Cal
strongly
advised me against taking. Strongly.

Inspired by the hospital staff’s heroics in treating Iris’s injuries after a scuffle with a particularly nasty vampire, I’d majored in nursing for about a year before I figured out that anatomy was a bit outside my wheelhouse. Computer science? That clicked for me. It was a random aptitude that came to me out of the blue in an intro class that I’d expected to hate. I’d only taken the class because Ben needed it for his major, and it was the one time slot I had open in my schedule for a shared class. (It was either that, or he joined my women’s self-defense class, which seemed unlikely.) So the girl who had trouble getting an iPod to work when she was in high school was suddenly able to write her own code, and it actually did what I asked it to do! It was like the codes had always been tucked away in my bloodstream, and putting my fingers on the keyboard set them free to create and build. It was enough to make me wonder what I could have accomplished in high school if I’d spent less time on the volleyball court and more time studying. Or
any
time studying.

So now I was majoring in computer science. I had a 3.8 grade-point average and the support of almost every professor who mattered in my department. I’d already written several programs of my own. They were nothing worth selling but enough to keep my roommate from downloading a virus to my laptop because she believed she’d won a free iPad.

And then, over the summer, a human Council lackey showed up at the NetSecure office, bearing an invitation to audition for a programming position with the Council. Since the Great Coming Out, vampires had developed a bit of a mania for connecting with their living kin. If hired, I would be working with computer techs across the country, setting up a user-friendly intranet search engine of vampires, allowing them to track their living descendants. It would be like Ancestry.com but with shadowy, unofficial connections and documents that are unavailable to nice, law-abiding humans. The coding would only be half the battle. Another significant issue was scanning, keynoting, and cross-referencing the aforementioned shadowy documents. And then, of course, that search engine would need to be maintained.

If I managed to get past the interview, I would start coding that summer. The incentive package listed in my invitation was staggering: company car, clothing allowance, full benefits, and a salary that made not-quite-graduated me drool a bit. And there was the tantalizing promise that “qualified applicants” would be offered additional undisclosed perks to secure their interest.

Frankly, it was the sort of job that Ben would have loved to take on, but because he wasn’t a “known trusted human” in the vampire world, he wouldn’t be receiving an invitation. This was quite a step up from the minimum wage I’d earned at NetSecure, which only paid its interns because of changes to labor laws. Still, the decision to work for the Council was not one to take lightly. The vampire community didn’t like to throw around words like “indentured servitude,” particularly around the press, but there would be no other job offers if I took a position with the Council. I would be exposed to too many of the vampire world’s secrets and machinations. I would have close access to their leaders. I would find out how vampires maintained that iridescent, glowy sheen to their skin. They couldn’t allow me to go work for the human government or, worse, Starbucks after that.

Beyond the perks, the job was a challenge. It was a huge mystery waiting to be unraveled, and I was one of a very small subset of people who had the skills to do the thread pulling. And once the search engine was established, there would be other opportunities to work on the vampires’ secret projects. Who knew what I would see, what I could learn, where they would send me?

I wasn’t completely without apprehensions. There was the small matter of Ophelia believing that I was luring her boyfriend away to college, beyond her reach. This could cause trouble if she was going to be my future boss. And, like humans, some vampires were not nice people.

I didn’t have the same reservations that Iris did when it came to vampires. I mean, sure, I’d been duped and supernaturally hypnotized by a vampire sent by a local supervillain to date and/or kidnap me. But because of the hypnosis, I’d blanked out most of the manipulations and only remembered dreamy scenes of teen vampire romance. Iris, on the other hand, was fully aware of the awkward and dangerous positions she’d put herself in while working for vampires to support us. Although Cal’s undying love and washboard abs were helping her get over any resentment.

I had still been perusing the invitation and job description when Cal had showed up just after sunset, scaring the NetSecure receptionist so badly she cut me a wide berth in the copy room for the rest of the summer. Cal had stopped short of ripping the envelope out of my hands, but it was a near thing. He was not happy that I’d been offered the audition. In fact, he’d done everything he could to persuade the Council reps not to send the invitation. But Ophelia had thwarted him by sending a human during the day, not so much because she wanted me in the position that badly but because she enjoyed thwarting a vampire as old and powerful as Cal.

Cal was concerned about vulnerable, human me spending so much time around the vampires at the office. He worried about me learning too much about the inner workings of the vampire community and becoming expendable. Hell, as far as he was concerned, walking from the Council office to my car would be too dangerous.

I had countered that I was pretty much ruined for normal nine-to-five life anyway. I might as well put my skills to use helping people like him, who could, for all he knew, have hundreds of descendants running around Greece. And in my downtime, I’d proposed that I be allowed to help Cal with various investigations that he was involved with. Because I knew how to find things on the Internet that he did not. And, unlike him, I realized that you couldn’t just stick a fist through your monitor when it displeased you.

“I’m going to do the interview,” I told him now. “But I don’t want to tell Iris yet. Not until we know that I’m hired and there’s something for her to be upset about. She’ll have plenty of time to yell at me then.”

“I don’t like it. And I’m sure this will come back and bite me on the ass. But for now, it’s your decision, and I’ll abide by it,” he said. “And speaking of things that we don’t discuss with my beloved wife, have you thought about your other long-term plans?”

“Besides potentially lifelong work commitments?” I asked archly.

“You know what I’m talking about, Gigi.”

“I know,” I said, stirring more sugar into my coffee, which was not an effective stalling tech nique.

Cal wanted me to be a vampire. As in, he wanted me to be a vampire
now
. He didn’t like the idea of me being out in the world without vampire strength or superpowers to defend myself. Every day I walked around as my weak human beta version made him the vampire equivalent of a fretting human helicopter mom. Cal refused to let Iris lose her sister to calamity or even old age when he had the means to make sure I stayed with them “long-term.” Meanwhile, Iris objected to the idea of turning me before I had a chance to live a human life. And, personally, I was on the fence.

“It’s something to think about. I mean, I won’t pretend that it’s something I’m not interested in. People my age are all about the vampires, with the books and the movies—”

“If you compare me to Edward Cullen, I will never speak to you again.”

“Duly noted.”

“It doesn’t have to be me who turns you. Because if you want someone else to do it—Gabriel, Andrea, Collin, anyone but Dick—it wouldn’t hurt my feelings. Jane seems to be a reasonable, if excitable, sire. You and Jamie could be siblings.”

“No, it’s not that,” I promised him. “I just need time. I’m thinking about the Iris Scanlon clause: if something happens to me, if I get injured and need to be turned to save my life, you have my permission to turn me.”

“I know I can’t promise that nothing will happen to you. But I love you and your sister to distraction. I will do whatever it takes to make the two of you happy and safe.”

“I know, otherwise you wouldn’t put up with the candy exchanges and the Joh n Hughes movie nights.”

“And the bras hanging over the shower curtain,” Cal grumbled.

I snorted, and he nudged me, making me giggle.

“And the candy exchanges and movie nights aren’t so bad,” he added. “It’s been nice seeing Iris being accepted into a circle of supernatural friends. Jane, Andrea, Jolene, and the rest of them. They’ve made her transition from operating on the edge of the vampire world to being a part of it much easier.”