Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors (6 page)

Once again, I wondered why I surrounded myself with women who were much prettier than I was. Surely, there was some sort of self-defeating psychology at work here. Jolene was gorgeous in an exotic way that had almost intimidated me out of getting to know her when she first started dating Zeb. She had a perfectly oval face, with high cheekbones and wild curls that were a dozen different shades of auburn. My only consolation was that when she parted those lush pink lips, she sounded like Lulu from
Hee Haw
.

To be honest, not many guys cared about that.

“Mostly, we’ve been staring at each other, wondering what the hell we’ve gotten ourselves into this time,” I admitted.

“Well, you’re basically becomin’ parents. And let me tell you, that’s a relationship changer.”

“But you had two kids at once. Your perspective is kind of skewed. I mean, how much trouble could one teenager cause?” Jolene stared at me for a beat before I yowled, “I’m so screwed. Damn it, Jolene!”

“I thought you wanted my opinion!”

“Well, not if you’re going to bring reality into it!” I glared at her as I reached for the ringing phone, knowing that it was my mama before I picked up the receiver.

“Oh, honey, did you hear what happened to poor little Jamie Lanier?” Mama asked without saying hello first.
She’d returned to her “no greetings” method of phone communication since Andrea ratted me out about turning down Gabriel’s first proposal. “He was minding his own business, delivering his dairy, and he was attacked by a vampire. Carol Ann Reilly said they pulled him from the truck, drained him dry, and turned him.”

I huffed out a breath. “That’s not what happened!”

“What?”

I cleared my throat. “I mean, that’s not how it happens, Mama. Vampires don’t attack random strangers and turn them.”

“Oh, honey, I know, and I told Carol Ann that with bottled blood and willing donors, y’all don’t really have to attack people and drag them from their vehicles like in the movies. Really, I wish that woman would go to a couple of FFOTU meetings with me, she’s so close-minded.”

I bit my lip. But with Jolene’s wolfy hearing, she laughed freely.

“Your vampire Council sent someone over to tell poor Rosie and Jeff what had happened. And the worst part is that the Council won’t even tell them where he is! Their own son, dead, and they’re ‘not allowed’ to see him.”

I felt a lump grow heavy in my throat.
Please, please, please, don’t let Mama notice that I’ve stopped talking,
I prayed.
That’s always a tip-off that I’m not telling her something
.

“They’re so torn up over it,” Mama continued. “I went by to visit them, of course, to take them a casserole and tell them about Friends and Family of the Undead. And
you wouldn’t believe the throng of people over there. It was like a funeral without the body. Anyway, I was thinking maybe you might go over there to visit them, Jane, and show them that this isn’t the end of the world. They’ve always thought so much of you, honey. I think it would help them a lot.”

I felt that same hot, oily rush of guilt that I always felt when I was about to lie or omit very important details to my mother. How was I going to face her, tell her what I’d done? After her initial shock over my turning, she’d always written off the bloodier aspects of vampirism as something I had to do. Would she still think that? Would she fall back to her old ways and think I’d just lost control of my bloodlust and made Jamie into a snack? I cleared my throat, willing that huge breath-hindering lump away.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea right now, Mama. Technically, they’re in mourning. And they probably won’t want to see any vampires until they see their son.”

“I don’t think you’re giving them enough credit, Jane—”

“Mama, trust me on this one.”

“Fine.” With a sigh and an FFOTU platitude about family and acceptance, Mama moved on to breezier topics. My sister Jenny wanted to know if I wanted to join the scrapbooking class she was teaching down at her new paper-craft shop. And this time, she meant it in a friendly, nonmocking way. My grandma Ruthie and her ghoul-beau Wilbur were preparing for a weekend away
in Hot Springs, which was a scenario I didn’t want to imagine, ever. My father had finished a draft of a book on historically notable vampires of Half-Moon Hollow, which he’d written with Gabriel’s and Dick’s help.

After a few attempts to extract myself from the conversation, I finally convinced Mama that Fitz was choking on a baby toy and I had to rescue him with the doggie Heimlich. I hung up the phone and buried my face in my hands.

“If you keep doin’ that, you’re gonna get wrinkles,” Jolene said. I smirked at her. “Oh, I forgot, you’re never gonna get wrinkles. Bitch. But you could get some serious scratches from that rock. Wow! This is the first time I’ve had a good look at it.” She yanked my hand closer for inspection. “Very nice work, Miss Jameson. So, why isn’t your mama here right now, drillin’ you about wedding details?”

“Um . . .” I realized that it was the first time I’d spoken to my mother since getting engaged, and I hadn’t even thought about telling her. I hadn’t thought about anything beyond my immediate future. Suddenly, my engagement news didn’t seem so earth-shattering.

More than anything, I wished that Gabriel had taken me up on my elopement offer, because we’d be married by now. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t want to think about wedding plans for a long time to come. Of course, if we’d taken that impromptu trip to Vegas, that crazy driver would have hit Jamie without vampires nearby to help him. We would have come back from our honeymoon to attend his funeral.

As I mulled that over, Dick and Gabriel loped into the kitchen, with Zeb and Andrea at their heels, all with a strangely uniform “We need to talk” expression on their faces. I arched an eyebrow, but that was mainly because of the way Dick was dangling Joe by his ankles, while the baby giggled hysterically. Jolene sighed, retrieved her inverted offspring, and smacked the back of Dick’s head.

“This is why you’re an alternate,” she told him.

Gabriel cleared his throat. “Jane, I know that you’re still a bit in shock from Jamie’s turning, but we were hoping you might be ready to talk about a few things.”

His formal tone brought a ghost of a smile to my lips. “Such as?”

Gabriel and Dick exchanged uneasy glances, making me cry, “Stop doing that! I swear, I liked it better when you two were conspiring against each other, not me. Out with it!”

“Jane, you were nearly hit by a car today. Maybe it was an accident, but I think we can agree that there’s a ninety-percent chance that it was intentional,” Gabriel said.

“Ninety percent?”

“I did the math,” Andrea assured me. “The number of occasions in which you have been injured due to accident or miscalculated practical jokes, versus intentional injury.”

“The point is, we’re not going to wait around for trouble to find you this time,” Gabriel said. “This time, you’re going to let me use every resource at my disposal to seek this person out and stop him.”

“Agreed,” I said, nodding.

He arched an eyebrow. “You’re not going to protest?”

“No, I think you have a really good grasp on the problem. I’m not going to do anything that pushes us apart or drags the problem out. If you need to stay with me at the shop while I’m working, we’ll set up office space for you there. Hell, I’ll get you your own fax line. If you think we need to close the shop for a while, we can do that. Let me know what I can do to make this situation easier for you.”

Frowning, he sighed. “Now is not the time for sarcasm, Jane.”

“I’m not being sarcastic!”

“Then I have no idea how to respond.”

“You kiss me and tell me everything is going to be OK.”

He kissed me. “Everything’s going to be OK.”

“OK.”

“I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit,” Zeb griped.

“Stretch, you have any idea who might have been behind the wheel of that car?” Dick asked. “You said it swerved toward you after it struck Jamie. Do you think it’s possible that you were the target and Jamie was just collateral damage?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s actually been buzzing at the back of my brain since Jamie took his last breath. And after the last couple of years, I actually have a system for narrowing down a list of suspects when something like this happens. But honestly, I don’t think I have any
enemies left at this point. I mean, I haven’t done anything to anyone lately. And I don’t think I have anything that anyone else would want. That’s generally what gets me in trouble. First, there was Missy, the insane real estate agent who wanted to take my house and turn it into a tacky vampire condo development. Then Esther Barnes, the psychic who tried to scramble Zeb’s brain and prevent his wedding to Jolene. And of course, Jeanine. But those were all cases of my actually doing something to piss someone off.”

“What about the ladies in the Chamber of Commerce?” Zeb asked.

“Well, yeah, they’re plotting against me, but Nice Courtney says their plans are of the ‘make Jane a social pariah who dies pitiful, penniless, and alone’ variety. I think it involves getting all of my advertising changed to say ‘Specialty Hookers.’ ”

“Local vampire haters?”

“Nah. I can’t see one of them having a beef with me specifically. If anyone, they’d go after . . .” I pressed my lips together and gave Dick a speculative look.

“What?” he demanded.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Former employers?”

“Mrs. Stubblefield is drying out in a rehab center in Bowling Green.”

“Gabriel’s other errant vampire children?”

“He promises me there are no others,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes at him.

Gabriel elbowed Dick in the gut. “Jackass.”

Dick chortled and ducked a second blow from his childhood best friend.

“Have you noticed how many people don’t like you?” Jolene asked. “Your grandma Ruthie, my aunties, Mrs. Stubblefield, old lady psychics.”

“Ooh!” Zeb exclaimed. “What about all those girls you insulted-slash-made-cry in high school? We just saw them at the reunion. That probably stirred up some feelings.”

“I don’t think you’re helping there, Zeb,” Dick said, patting Zeb’s shoulder.

“And I didn’t ‘make’ those girls cry. In general, I was responding to bitchery in kind. I was provoked!”

“Every time?” Andrea asked.

“There weren’t that many times,” I insisted.

Andrea looked to Zeb, who was nodding. “Yes, there were,” he said.

“What about assassins paid by your grandma Ruthie?” Jolene suggested.

“That is . . . surprisingly plausible,” I grumbled. “Look, over the years, my unique sense of humor and perverse grasp of honesty may have led to some hurt feelings and long-held grudges. But overall, I’m a pretty likable person.”

They all seemed to bite their lips simultaneously to keep from snickering.

“I hate you all!” I exclaimed.

“I’m glad y’all are takin’ this so seriously,” Jolene said in her best motherly tone.

No one had the decency to look sheepish.

“OK, so the suspect list is long and somewhat vague,”
Andrea said. “The question is, how do we keep Jane—and by extension, her loved ones and colleagues—from getting shot, stabbed, poisoned, beaten, Tasered, burned, maced, or otherwise slapped about by anonymous yet incredibly determined forces?”

“We don’t let her work alone at the shop,” Gabriel suggested.

“We put her in a hermetically sealed plastic vampire habitat,” Dick said.

“We hire one of my nicer cousins to come over durin’ the day and keep an eye on the place,” Jolene added.

“We keep her from handling guns, knives, poison, Taser guns, fire, or mace so she doesn’t injure herself,” Zeb said.

“These are all good suggestions,” I said. “Except for putting me in a vampire hamster cage. But Gabriel’s right. I’m tired of waiting around for trouble to come to me. I’m tired of dreading a ringing phone because it could mean that one of you has been hurt. I’m tired of keeping my head in the sand. So I’m going to take a more proactive approach.”

“We,” they chorused.

“Instead of sitting around, waiting for the next incident, I—”

“We,” they corrected me again in chorale, which was a little creepy.

“We are going to try to find the person driving that car. The plate was obscured, but I got a partial number. Jolene, do you have any cousins who work in the DMV?”

“I’m insulted that you even have to ask.” She snorted, bobbing the baby on her hip. “I have three.”

I scribbled out a description of the car’s make and model and the partial license plate and handed it to Jolene.

“Can we get a whiteboard, like on
Law and Order
?” Andrea asked.

Dick nodded. “I was thinking official ‘Keep Jane from Being Murdered Task Force’ T-shirts.”

The team seemed ready to “break” to take on their individual tasks, when Gabriel raised his hands. I gritted my teeth and waited for the inevitable speech that could be summed up as “I think we should keep Jane locked away and ignorant for her own protection.” Instead, Gabriel said, “I would like to lodge a formal objection to the ‘go looking for trouble’ plan. I think it’s ill advised and very likely to get at least one of us hurt. But I’m also smart enough to recognize that it’s an empty gesture, and since you’re going to do it anyway, I might as well get onboard.”

I cooed. “Aw, you know me so well.” I pressed a kiss against his tensed, frowning lips. “You know, you’d think I would be used to someone trying to kill me by now, but it still hurts my feelings every time.”