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The next night, I secured the plaque dust in Jane’s shop safe. I opened the drawers in Uncle Jack’s cabinet, as if I could make the other two Elements appear by force of will. Two left. It had taken me nearly a month, but I’d managed to find two. I knew this was a minor miracle, and that I should have been thrilled. But the fact that Earth was broken into bits was more than a little disheartening. It had certainly taken the shine off being halfway to my goal.
I had another month. I didn’t know where to begin looking for the other two Elements. I didn’t know whether I could try contacting Nana through the die again. There had been ridiculously few clues in Jane’s sales records. So far, I’d skated by on chance. And I didn’t know how to kick-start chance.
“Nola!” Jane called. My favorite vampire’s head suddenly appeared in the doorway to her office. Her lips were twitching a little. I was so glad she could find amusement in my abject discomfort. “Can you come up front?”
Oh, right, the heart-to-heart with Dick.
That sounded wrong, even in my head.
“I would really rather not.”
Jane laughed lightly. “Look, I know what you’re thinking. Literally. And I promise you, this situation is absolutely nothing like the disturbing worst-case scenario that’s going on in your head. Could you please just come and talk to Dick?”
I peered up at her over my reading glasses, skeptical.
“I promise you, if you’re propositioned in any way, I will serve as your getaway driver,” she said, holding up her hand in a mockery of the Girl Scout promise.
“Fine,” I grumbled, following her to the coffee bar.
Dick was a vampire the worse for wear. In the weeks since I’d seen him, he’d developed little worry lines where the undead weren’t supposed to get lines. He looked tired and pale, like a man who’d been beating himself up night after night, only to stay up half the day to do it some more.
This was about as comfortable as one of those intervention shows, when the clueless alcoholic walks into a hotel room to find a circle of friends with tear-jerking letters. When I stopped, Jane prodded me to keep walking. I walked around the bar and stood at the point farthest away from Dick, which Andrea seemed to find really amusing for some reason.
Dick was making a study of the ceiling and would not look at me. Jane cleared her throat. Dick shifted his eyes to the track lighting.
“Dick!” Jane exclaimed. “Out with it.”
Dick cleared his throat. “Um, Nola, Jane tells me you seem to have some misconceptions about my intentions toward you. I just wanted to apologize for any occasions on which I made you feel uncomfortable or objectified in any way.”
“Did someone write that speech for you before you came?” I asked flatly.
“I think he cobbled together portions of those ‘leaving to spend more time with my family’ speeches given by disgraced politicians,” Andrea said, sipping fresh blood and coffee.>Penny did, however, think it was rather hilarious that of all the people in the family, I’d been the one who inadvertently destroyed our heirloom.
“You are hereby the worst witch in the family!” she hooted. “I mean, clearly, it’s a tragedy, but the fact that you did it, and not me—”
“Too soon, Penny.”
“Stephen came by the clinic,” she said, in a quick change of subject. “It was rather shocking, him just showing up out of the blue. I know he avoids coming here unless it’s absolutely necessary. Anyway, he seems to think you’ve lost your mind. Did you really break it off with him?”
“I’m not sure. The conversation didn’t end with kissy noises, that’s for certain.”
“Well, if you did, I, for one, am glad. I was getting tired of talking to him. And I didn’t even have to sleep with him.”
“So, other than casting doubts about my mental capacity, what did Stephen have to say?”
“Nothing memorable; it was a conversation with Stephen. You know I only pay attention half the time he’s speaking. But do us a favor, and call him to settle things, so he stops pestering us? Uncle Seamus’s hexing hand is getting itchy.”
“I’ll call him and clear things up,” I promised. “Just not today.”
“And who, may I ask, is the person you are choosing to spend time with instead of our dear Stephen?” As I made an indignant squawking noise, she added, “And don’t try to deny it, I can hear that ‘I just did naked things’ quality in your voice.”
“I didn’t do naked things,” I said primly. “We were only seminude.”
It was true. Jed had left his socks on.
Penny gasped noisily. “Seminude as in shirtless?” she cried. “As in your shirt-hating neighbor? You got seminude with the gorgeous, shirt-hating neighbor?”
“I will neither confirm nor deny.”
