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Jane was a vampire, as were her manager, Andrea, and several members of the club. At first, I worried that it was a setup, that Sam had somehow managed to round up some of his undead friends to strong-arm me out of town. But then Jane referred to me as Jolene’s “pocket-sized new friend,” and I figured that was more humor than one usually found in a paid assailant.
Jane and Andrea were funny, smart, and snarky as hell, having both been turned in the last five years and having a more human perspective than most vampires. Although they were obviously close, the ladies were polar opposites on the vampire fashion spectrum. Titian-haired Andrea was polished and perfect in a peach sweater set and pearls, while tousled brunette Jane was wearing jeans over her impossibly long legs and a T-shirt touting “Dick Cheney for President—2012.” When I asked her about it, she grumbled that she’d lost a bet with Andrea’s husband.
After paying lip service to the book of the month, the women broke up into smaller “discussion groups,” and I learned all about Jane’s sordid history in the vampire community, including the fact that she’d been turned after a local drunk mistook her for a deer and shot her. A vampire, Gabriel, to whom Jane was now married, saved her by turning her, and they lived happily ever after. Sort of.
“Isn’t that an unusual way to be turned?” I asked, sipping the surprisingly tasty latte Andrea had prepared for me. “I mean, you’d think you guys would make it into the news more often if ‘mistaken for a deer and shot’ was the average vampire experience.”
“Yes, Jane is very unusual,” Andrea said, rolling her eyes. “But she was given a choice about whether she wanted to be turned, which is the norm nowadays. Despite the fact that it’s illegal to turn a human into a vampire against their will, some of us weren’t afforded that luxury. But we make the best of it.”
I noticed the slightly pained expression on Jane’s face as she gave Andrea’s shoulder a little squeeze. I got the feeling there were details about Andrea’s transition that I was missing, but it would be rude to ask. Andrea shrugged and handed Jane what looked like a mochaccino.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought you guys couldn’t eat human food.”
“We don’t. But Andrea and I have been experimenting for years with all those fancy coffees that folks can’t seem to live without, trying to find ways to make them more palatable for vampires.”
“Interesting!” I exclaimed. “Would you mind if I asked you about your techniques?”
“Tess is a chef,” Jolene said proudly. “In one of those big-city restaurants where the paparazzi lie in wait for celebrities.”
“Jolene made friends with a chef, color me shocked,” Andrea said, smirking and shaking her head.
Again with the cracks about Jolene’s eating? Had Jolene recently lost a bunch of weight? She’d eaten a pretty hefty lunch at the Three Little Pigs, so she wasn’t dieting. Either way, it was sort of shitty for her friend to poke fun at her.
I was about to jump to her defense when Jane piped up in a desperate tone, “So, Tess, I’m always interested in how people ended up in their professions. Why did you start cooking?”
“I’m good at it,” I said, shrugging.
Jane didn’t seem satisfied with this and leaned a bit closer, staring into my eyes as if there were secret messages written on my corneas. “But you didn’t know that until you started. And that’s what I was asking, how did you start cooking?”
A bit rattled by Jane’s gaze and feeling very much like a lobster over a pot of boiling water, I blurted out, “Cooking made sense, even when I was a kid. You put eggs, milk, and cinnamon on bread, you got French toast. As long as I followed the rules, I knew what the outcome would be. It was one of the few areas of my life that was predictable. And most of the time, if my parents were eating something I made, their mouths were too full to bicker. It was quite the incentive.”
My mouth snapped shut like a steel trap. I stirred my cappuccino, shocked that I’d said so much. I rarely talked about my parents, even with Chef. Hell, in those two sessions of therapy I’d attended, I hadn’t said more than, “My parents were well-intentioned but selfish people who would probably be making each other—and me by extension—miserable today if they hadn’t died.”
“Do you mind if I ask why you’re so curious about vampires?” Jane asked, sensing somehow that I needed a change in topics. “Jolene said you would probably have some questions for us.”
I cleared my throat, commanding my brain to produce more polite conversation. “Oh, I live with one. Not quite voluntarily.”
“Anyone we know?” Andrea asked.
“Sam Clemson,” I said.
Andrea and Jane both tilted their heads and gave me the “aw” face. “Poor Sam.” Jane sighed.
“Why ‘poor Sam’?” I asked. “I mean, other than he’s married to a ring-tailed bitch.”
Silence. My comment was met with complete, stone-faced silence. I bit my lip, afraid that I’d offended my new acquaintances. But then Jane burst out laughing and exclaimed, “Thank you!” while Andrea rolled her eyes.
Andrea said, “Lindy’s not that bad.”
“She tricked Tess into renting her house without telling her Sam was sleeping in the basement,” Jolene informed her.
“Oh, then she’s an evil she-beast,” Andrea conceded. I chuckled, and she shrugged. “My opinions are very adaptable. They have to be when you’re married to a vampire named Dick Cheney.”
Jane’s T-shirt made much more sense now.
“I actually meant ‘poor Sam,’ as in he was one of the vampires we were talking about, the ones who don’t get a choice about whether they were turned or not,” Jane said. “You know Sam was a contractor, right?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I don’t know anything beyond Sam’s the cranky guy who lives in my basement.”
