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Nodding, Jane pushed up from her chair and paced a bit, straightening a picture frame here, shelving a book there. Andrea seemed to understand that her employer’s silence meant something, so, along with her, I waited patiently for the other vampire to speak. When she finally came to a stop, she said, “So, basically, you need to rifle through my stock and my records to determine if any of those objects are still in the store. And if they’re not, you need to use any information you find here to try to track down where they went?”
I nodded. “Yes. Please.”
Jane shrugged her shoulders. “OK.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“No other questions?”
“No,” Jane said, shaking her head. She stepped closer, her eyes narrowing suddenly. “Understand that we will be monitoring what you do very carefully. You will not be given free access to the shop. You will not be given a key. And if you try to tell me how I should be running things, so help me God, I will—”
“Jane!” Andrea barked.
Jane cleared her throat, seemingly forcing herself to relax. “Sorry. One day, we will get you drunk and tell you about your great-uncle Emery.” Andrea shuddered violently.
I did not quite know how to respond to that, so I said, “I’ll start tomorrow.”
* * *
I rolled into the driveway to find Jed frantically moving some tools into his part of the house. It was cloudy, the banks of wispy fog moving over the waxing moon in patches. Given the dim lighting, I wondered how he was able to see. I would have smashed my face into the porch steps by now.
Jed practically flinched when he saw my car, such as it was, pulling to a stop on the gravel. Irritation, fueled by the gnawing tension left behind when I bared my soul to the vampires, flared in my belly. Really? He wanted to avoid me that badly? The sight of my seminudity was so unappealing that he was eyeing the open front door with desperation?
That seemed like an overreaction.
I threw open the car door. As my sight adjusted to the scant light of the porch lamp, I watched his eyes dart from me to the sky and back again. He seemed skittish, like a colt not quite sure of his master’s goodwill. His sandy hair fell over his eyes, giving him the perfect excuse for not looking up. A strange energy emanated from his entire body. A sort of restlessness of his cells, as if he was going to jump out of his skin at any moment. Was he on something? He seemed so healthy, too healthy to be a drug user. And his jumpy, erratic energy was different from that of my mother, who’d made enthusiastic use of every recreational substance she could get her hands on. His head snapped up, and he pulled an angry face, as if he could feel me staring at him.
“What?” he demanded, keeping a wary eye on the moon as the clouds slipped away. He was nearly flinching, as if he expected a slap instead of silvery light.
“Jed, is everything OK?” I asked, following him up the porch steps, under the protective shelter of the porch. The closer we moved to the house, the less agitated he seemed.
Once inside his front door, he said, “I’m sorry. I’m bein’ rude. I’ve just had a long day. Work stuff. I was just about to warm up some chicken and dumplin’s. How about you take over the stove while I take a shower? And then you can help me eat some of it?”
“You invite me to dinner, and I end up cooking? What sort of swindle is this?”
“You’re not cookin’, you’re warmin’ up,” he told me, eyeing the leather portfolio in my hand with some interest before turning that handsome grin on me.
“And I can’t use the microwave to do this?”
I was firmly antitechnology when it came to tea, but I didn’t see the point in dirtying up a bunch of dishes if I didn’t have to.
Jed unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it into a little laundry room off the kitchen. Oh, come on, now. I was starting to think he was doing this to provoke me. “Mrs. Reilly’s dumplin’s have been known to explode when nuked.”
I thought about the warmed-over chicken and rice casserole in my fridge and the prospects of trying to piece together a meal at this time of night. “Yes, if you explain to me what a dumplin’ is.”
He chuckled and dropped a heavy leather toolbelt near the front door. “You have your choice; you cook, or you eat dinner with someone smellin’ like he’s been diggin’ ditches all day.”
“Cooking sounds like the lesser of two evils,” I said, shuddering.
I placed the sketches in a drawer in my own kitchen, peeled my contacts out of my dust-plagued eyes, then locked my front door before rejoining Jed in his kitchen. He was setting out a large pot, French bread, and butter on the counter.
“Next week, I’ll invite you over to make me dinner,” I muttered, feigning indignation and trying hard to ignore the way he was stretching his massive arms over his head, making his shirttail ride up. This just wasn’t fair.
“Well, it would be the polite thing to do,” he said, grinning at me while he kicked off his boots, and I was thankful that he at least left the jeans on. I opened the fridge, boggling at the sheer number of labeled Tupperware containers stacked inside. “Just keep stirrin’. You don’t want it to stick.”
“If you don’t want to discuss your harem of church-lady caterers, can we talk about your tendency to strip in front of me?” I called after him. I dumped the congealed dumplings into a pot as he jogged up the stairs.
