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Dick nodded as Jed climbed down the ladder. “Yes, he does.”
I snorted, making a paper ball from the other e-mails and tossing them, too. Jane watched me closely as Jed climbed down the ladder.
“You’re taking this far too well,” Jane observed as Dick and Jed carried the old fixture and the ladder out of the room. “You’ve been really relaxed the past few days, despite the fact that you’ve struck out with those buyers.”
“Well, with the Earth plaque broken, it feels like the pressure is off a little bit,” I said, shrugging. “I’m going to keep looking, because it’s the right thing to do, but I don’t know if the binding will work, even if I do find all four.”
“No, that’s not it,” Jane said, her eyes narrowing. “You’ve had sex. With Jed.”
“Shh!” I hissed at her. “Dick will hear you. We haven’t actually told him that Jed and I are involved, for Jed’s sake. And we haven’t told Jed that I’m related to Dick, because explaining my whole twisted family backstory is not something I’m ready for.”
“So why is Jed all nervous and twitchy?” Jane asked, glancing out to the backyard shed, where the menfolk were putting away tools.
“Because Dick keeps glaring at him and muttering under his breath,” I told her. “And don’t poke around in my head; we’ve talked about that.”
“She doesn’t have to poke around in your head,” Andrea protested. “It’s written all over your face. You might as well get ‘recently banged’ tattooed on your forehead.”
“I don’t know if I can be friends with someone who sleeps with a ‘Jed,’ ” Jane pondered, pointing at her friend. “Andrea, you set them up on that drive to Georgia; I blame you for this. Nola was such a nice girl.”
“So Stephen is no more?” Andrea asked, slapping Jane’s accusing finger away from her face.
“Well, I didn’t murder him,” I said. “I just stopped taking his calls.”
“So what’s going to happen when you have to go back home?” Andrea asked. “Are you going to try to keep seeing him?”
“It’s not like we’ve made any big commitment to each other,” I said. “I like Jed. And he clearly likes me, or, at least, parts of me. He’s a very nice man. He’s sweet and funny and smart. And he doesn’t ask a lot of questions about the amount of time I spend with vampires in an occult bookshop.”
“And he looks good naked,” Jane added.
I sighed. “Sooo good. But there are so many things I can’t tell him. As much as I like him, how could I have a real relationship with someone I have to lie to and omit huge portions of my life? How could that ever work?”
And that was what had been missing in my relationship with Stephen, I realized. I couldn’t share my life with him, because there was so much he couldn’t accept. He never directly asked me to give it up, but the message had been subtly clear. If I wanted Stephen, I would have to give up the connection with my family. I felt like an idiot now for not having seen that. He wouldn’t have made demands. He wouldn’t have forced me. He just wouldn’t have been happy otherwise. He wasn’t a bad man, just a “normal” one. And normal was something I was never going to be, no matter how hard I tried.
But where did that leave me with Jed?
I’d told myself I was keeping things from Stephen to keep the peace and to protect him. But that was based on that fact that I’d known he couldn’t accept the witchcraft or the weirdness. I thought perhaps Jed was just quirky enough that he could. At the very least, I could tell him about Dick. Or warn him about Dick.
“So you haven’t told him about the witchy stuff or the Elements or anything?” Andrea asked.
“It’s kind of hard to fit into a conversation,” I told her. “How did you tell people that you were a vampire?”
“I didn’t tell people, really, until I told my parents,” Jane offered.
“How’d that go?”
Jane frowned. “My mother asked me if I could try not to be a vampire anymore.”
“My parents disowned me way before I was turned,” Andrea said. “But they did get really indignant when I didn’t invite them to our wedding.”
“That’s remarkably unhelpful,” I said, covering my face with my hands. I was going to have to talk to Jed about some of these things. And the small matter of my returning to Ireland in a few weeks’ time. Otherwise, we were doomed to end up just like Stephen and me. And that wasn’t fair. If anything, I should let my personality and emotional baggage doom the relationship.
“You want to go back to talking about sending that Spanish guy the naked pictures?” Jane asked, nudging me with her elbow.
“No.”
* * *
It took a while to pry my vampire friends out of my living room. Jed had given up hours before, finding some excuse to retreat back to safe quarters on his side of the duplex. Jane and Andrea finally persuaded Dick to leave before he could try to replace other fixtures by reminding him of a Dukes of Hazzard marathon starting at midnight. I waited until I saw the taillights clear the driveway before sprinting across the porch. Before I could knock, Jed opened his door, yanked me into his foyer, and pinned me against the wall. Without saying a word, he pressed his lips against mine in a searing kiss. I moaned, twisting my fingers in the light cotton material of his long-sleeved workshirt as his hands slipped around my waist. Breathless and dizzy, I pulled away from him.
