I'm Dreaming of an Undead Christmas (9 page)

“Well, it was the vaguest vision I have ever had,” he said. “It was spring or summer. There were green leaves on the trees and flowers. But I don’t know if it’s this spring or summer or in the next few years. I saw you and a vampire, whose form and face I could barely make out. He was trying to attack you, but you were fighting him off.”

“Well, that’s great. Go, me.”

“But you were losing.”

“That’s bad.”

“I didn’t see you get seriously injured, but it was obviously a confrontation that was not going well for you. I would have said something sooner, but this was the first evening I could sneak over without alerting Miranda.”

“Book club night at Jane’s?” I asked. He nodded. “So what do I do? Go to Cal? Go to Ophelia? Tell them I need a full antivampire security detail every summer until I’m old and gray?”

He shook his head and gave me his best impression of a reassuring smile. “No, the problem with my visions is that there are dozens of factors that could affect the outcome of what I see. Leaving your purse behind in your car, putting garlic salt on your morning eggs, wearing a turtleneck instead of a T-shirt, a little decision that could determine whether a vampire attacks you. The best thing you could do is find a way to protect yourself.”

I nodded. “Are you going to tell Cal or Iris about this?”

“No, predictions like this are very personal. You need to decide whether to include your family in the decisions you make as a result of what I’ve told you. I will say that I would encourage you to give yourself as many resources as possible, and that includes Cal’s apparently boundless cache of weapons and security tech.”

“I’ll take that into consideration,” I said.

“I’m sorry to give you bad news,” he said gently. “With this talent, it’s basically my lot in life. Shall we return you to the house?”

He began walking toward the twinkling Christmas lights decorating our porch.

I tapped him on the shoulder and shook my head. “One more thing,” I said.

“What?”

I pulled my fist back and punched his shoulder as hard as I could.

“Ow!” we both grunted at once. I shook out my hand, hissing at the pain in my knuckles. Collin was a lot firmer than he looked.

“Why did you do that?” he demanded. “And who taught you to hit that hard?”

“Cal, though I obviously need some sort of antivampire brass knuckles,” I muttered. “And I hit you because you told me I could. You will not sneak up on me in my yard anymore. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” he grumbled, rubbing at his shoulder. “I am sorry about the sneaking.”

“It’s OK, Collin,” I told him, awkwardly patting his shoulder. “I’m sorry I hit you.”

“That’s all right. Strong survival instincts will help you get through what’s to come.” The moment the last sentence slipped from his lips, his face scrunched into an embarrassed, decidedly un-Collin-like expression. “Sorry. That didn’t exactly help you feel better, did it?”

“No, it did not,” I said, shaking my head. “Now, carry me back to the house.”

He burst out laughing. When I didn’t let loose so much as a giggle, he scoffed, “Are you serious?”

“You carried me out here, so you’re carrying me back. These bags are heavy, so get to toting.”

He sighed. “Make one My Little Pony reference, and I will drop you.”

“Noted.”

Sometimes giving someone a special holiday memory isn’t about the big gestures. It’s about small, considerate acts.

—Not So Silent Night: Creating Happy and Stress-Free Holidays with Newly Undead Family Members

I
t was two in the morning, and I was sitting at the kitchen counter, glumly picking at a bowl of peppermint-stick ice cream. Bless Iris’s daytime concierge employees and their willingness to stock their boss’s fridge for living visitors.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Collin’s prediction. A vampire was going to attack me, maybe sometime soon. Would he really wait until the summer to do it? Vampires weren’t big on long games. For people who lived forever, some of them seemed to have very little patience. Could it be that the man-pression I saw in the blood store was a vampire who was going to come after me? I’d known hostility from the undead was a possibility since Cal came into our lives, but somehow it still hurt my feelings. I hadn’t done anything to my imaginary friend. Why was he going to try to injure me? Why couldn’t he pick on someone his own size and strength?

Iris padded down the stairs in her usual work outfit of pencil skirt and tidy white blouse, a black Sharpie securing the twist in her dark hair. She was flipping through a binder titled “Floral Designs—Nocturnal Blooms.” I kept forgetting that this was the middle of the workday for her. She was humming a tuneless song, a sure sign that she was happy with the way her latest nuptial project was coming together.

She stopped at the foot of the stairs, nearly dropping her binder as if she was startled to see me there. I rolled my eyes at her theatrics. “Oh, come on. There’s no way you didn’t know I was down here. You heard my heartbeat from the top of the stairs, you goofball.”

“I know. But I thought it would be weird for you if you knew I was tracking your pulse from another floor.” She sighed. “It was the binder bobbling, wasn’t it? It was too much.”

“You’re so weird.” I snorted into my ice cream.

She peered into my bowl. “Wow, peppermint stick. You are hitting the hard stuff.”

“Yep.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Nope,” I replied, making a popping sound over the “p.”

“Well, too bad. That question was rhetorical. Come on, woman. Hit me with it.”

There were so many things driving me to ice cream it seemed almost impossible to pick which one to start with. Maybe I should go chronologically and work my way out. “It’s Ben.”

Iris made a
tsk
noise and tilted her head. “Did you spray him in the face with silver again?”

“No. He’s silver-free,” I assured her, taking a deep breath before I let the words spill out of my mouth. “I don’t think I want to see Ben anymore.”

Iris’s eyes went wide, and she plopped down on the stool next to me. “Wow.”

“I know,” I squeaked.

Iris put her binder aside. “I mean, you two have been Ben and Gigi for so long. I guess I just assumed . . . Well, who marries their high school sweetheart, anyway?”

“Nice people,” I mumbled into my ice cream. “People who don’t dump boyfriends their parents would have been thrilled to meet . . . assuming that they were still alive.”

“Oh, honey, tell me you’re not staying in an unhappy relationship because you think Mom and Dad would have wanted you to. Because, trust me, that’s not what they wanted for you.”

“No, it’s nothing like that. I just feel guilty. There’s nothing wrong with Ben. He’s a great guy. He’s sweet, and he remembers my birthday, and he actually listens when I talk instead of spending that time coming up with what he’s going to say next. And if there’s nothing wrong with him, that means there has to be something wrong with me.”

“Gigi, you’re breaking up with a boy. It’s not like you’re going to steal his identity or his kidney or something.” She stopped and gave me a long stare. “You’re not, right?”

I stared at my sister with a completely deadpan expression. “Is your special vampire power sensing when someone is about to smack you? Because it should be pinging right now.”

“Hey, I want someone else to be the first one to use the emergency bail fund. Kidney theft would definitely qualify.”

I scooped up a good bit of ice cream and held it up to her face.

Out of habit, she leaned closer as if I was offering her a bite. And then she sniffed at it and gagged. “Oh, that was mean.”

“I have to use the few advantages I have.”

“Look, Geeg, if I learned anything from my relationship with Paul, it’s that you’re not doing anyone any favors drawing out a relationship that doesn’t make you happy. It’s better just to cut ties before someone gets their feelings hurt.”

“How did you break things off with Booty Call Paul? You never told me.”

“With good reason, because it was humiliating.”

“Did he find you straddling Cal?” I asked, barely suppressing my urge to smirk.

“Close to it,” she said. “But this isn’t about me. I broke up with Paul because even though the relationship worked on the surface, it wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t going to give me what I wanted in life. And it wasn’t fair to either one of us to pretend it was anything but over.”

“Yes, but what actual words did you use?” I asked. “Because I am drawing a blank.”

“That moment will arrive when you know you have to break it off, and you’ll know just what to say.”

“I don’t want to hurt him.”

“You can’t control whether he’s going to be hurt. You can only tell him the truth and hope for the best. Ben’s a good guy. He’s not going to become some raging jerk just because you broke up with him.”

“You sure you don’t want to just do this for me?”

“I’m sure.”

“Oh, fine, make me responsible for my own decisions.”

“It’s for the best, Gigi, really. Living honestly is the only way to go.”

Talk about the conversational gods giving you a segue. I took a deep breath and pushed away the ice cream bowl. “Speaking of which, Iris, there’s something I need to tell you. It’s about my plans for this summer.”

Her blue eyes went wide and saucer-like. “Oh, my God, are you pregnant? Is that why you want to break up with Ben? Because you’re having someone else’s baby?”

“No, that
would
be worse, but no,” I said, laughing now. “I am not pregnant. And no more recorded soaps for you, lady! I just wanted to tell you that I found a job.”

Iris scoffed. “I knew you would. Where is it? Microsoft? NetSecure? Some independent think tank that designs scary military phone apps?”

I scratched the back of my neck, staring at the fridge, the counter, the blender, anything but Iris. “Not exactly.”

“Gigi, please answer me before I start making crazy assumptions about stripper poles and webcams.”

I crossed the fridge, pulled out Iris’s bottle of Sangre Select, and put it in front of her. She arched an eyebrow and stared at the label and the price tag. “This is not helping my panic levels.”

“I’m going to work for the Council. They need help building a search engine for vampires’ living descendants, and I think I would be able to do a lot of good.”

If Iris could possibly lose blood from her cheeks, they would have paled to paper white. She clutched at the edge of the counter so hard it buckled in her hands. “So you’re going to be working for Ophelia? The same vampire I’ve worked with for years? The same vampire who I’ve made clear is about as sane and cuddly as a bag of snakes?”

“Yes.”

Her breath came out in a hissing wheeze. “And since Council offices don’t let their employees quit, this will be a permanent position?”

I nodded.

Her voice somehow went up an octave as she asked, “And have you already signed an employment agreement?”

I should just have told her that I was kidding and I
was
pregnant. And I’d gotten the father’s name tattooed on my boobs. That would be less upsetting for her, right?

“And how, pray tell, did you receive this job offer without Cal finding out and giving me a heads-up?” she asked, her voice deadly quiet.

I slid off the stool and stepped back. I pressed my lips together, because I liked Cal. He deserved not to wake up with his head superglued to his pillow.

“
Cal!
” she shouted, using her superspeed to bound up the stairs and locate her poor husband.

I stared at her blurred shape, wondering whether it would be better to stick around or slip out the door to hide out at Jane’s or Miranda’s. Gabriel or Collin wouldn’t mind an overnight guest, right?

Collin. Damn it.

“And I think I’m being stalked by an imaginary ghost-vampire,” I groaned, smacking my forehead. “That would have been a perfect distraction.”

Overhead, I heard Iris shout, “And you didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell me?”

“It’s too late now.”

My only defense now was to get another
really
good bottle of dessert blood.

From the second floor, I heard, “I have the right to know if my sister is signing her life away to the vampire underworld, Cal!”

Two bottles of really good dessert blood.

Two days later,
Iris was still pretty peeved about my new job. Her points of contention were reasonable. She hated the fact that I’d gone behind her back during the hiring process. She was upset with Cal for not telling her, even if I had asked him not to, really nicely. She didn’t trust Ophelia. She didn’t trust the vampires I would be working with. She’d met and didn’t trust some of the humans I would be working with. She wanted me to have a regular, human job in the regular, human world. It basically boiled down to an enormous amount of guilt Iris felt for dragging us into the vampire world years ago and how it may have ruined me for corporate America.

It took an entire bottle of Tess’s special bloody sangria and very reasonable, calm arguments from both Cal and myself to convince her that she could not, in fact, storm the Council office and demand that Ophelia release me from my contract. I may or may not have reminded her of the time Mom pulled something similar when Iris signed up to volunteer in Guatemala for the summer between high school and college. Iris had been humiliated when Mom stormed her idealistic English teacher’s office and demanded that Ms. Crandall remove Iris’s name from the “Do-Gooder Roster.”