AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I think I’ll just go get a snack,” she mumbled as she walked away.
“What is wrong with you?” Zeb demanded as he pulled me outside onto his back deck.
“Me? What is wrong with you? You’ve known her for two months,” I hissed, jerking my head toward the kitchen, where Jolene stood, nervously gnawing on Fritos.
“Could you be more rude?” Zeb demanded.
“I like Jolene, Zeb. She seems nice and everything, but you can’t spring ‘Hey, my girlfriend’s a werewolf’ and ‘Hey, we’re getting married’ in the same month. It’s just too much. Wolves mate for life. Did you know that? If you want to get a divorce, she could, I don’t know, eat you or something. And what about her family? We’ve already established that they don’t like vampires.
How pleased are they going to be that she’s marrying outside her species?”
He rolled his eyes. “Humans marry werewolves all the time. Sure, there are some old-school packs who pride themselves on their pure old blood and refuse to breed with outsiders. They’re the ones who turn out cross-eyed cubs with extra toes.
“Progressive packs, like Jolene’s, they’re actually grateful to have fresh genes stirred into the pool,” he said. “All right, fine, some of her cousins are kind of pissed about it. But her parents are really nice, much nicer than mine. Our children would be half werewolf, giving them fifty-fifty chance of being able to turn. Personally, I kind of hope they can, because that would be cool.”
I ignored the second abdominal twinge at the thought of Zeb having children. “But what if you’re not safe? What if she hurts you while she’s all, you know, grrr?”
“Funny coming from the girl who tried to make me her first vampire meal,” he said, ignoring the face I made at him. “Look, I didn’t think of you as any less human after you changed.”
“You stabbed me.”
“After my initial shock, I got over it, and I still saw you as the same Janie, ” he said. “You’re the same person you always were, which, of course, means you’re a giant pain in my ass. But you would never let anything happen to me. And neither would Jolene.” He held up his hand to shush me when my mouth popped open to protest. “Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.”
He huffed out a breath. “She could be suspicious of me having a best friend who’s a woman, but she’s not. And trust me when I say that being territorial is her nature. I would hope that you’d show her the same, I don’t know, courtesy.”
Well, that made me feel awful.
“Yeah, but Zeb…” I whispered. “Werewolf.”
“Vampire,” he said, pointing at me.
“Noted,” I muttered.
“I know, I don’t know everything about her, but I want to spend the rest of my life learning.” He sighed. “I love her. This is a woman I look forward to seeing every day, Janie, and I’ve never felt that way about anyone, except maybe you. I always figured, well, that you and I would end up in some nursing home together, fighting over the last pudding. But then you had to screw it up and go all immortal and ageless on me.
“Your change has opened my eyes to a world I never even imagined could be real. I knew vampires were out there, but I never thought I would know one, much less have one for my best friend. And seeing how well you’ve handled things…in your own special ass-backward way…I never would have had the courage to marry into Jolene’s family.”dn’t have a single customer all night, but Mr. Wainwright assured me this was normal. He shooed me away just after one A.M. The shop was closed for the next few days, he reminded me, because he was about to leave town on a purchasing trip in deepest, darkest Tennessee.
“But I look forward to seeing you on Monday. It’s been so refreshing having someone else to talk to. I mutter to myself, of course, and to the plants, but I rarely answer back.”
I looked over the shriveled remains of a spider plant. “And the plants don’t seem to be on speaking terms with you, either.”
Mr. Wainwright was still hooting at that one as he bustled me out of the shop.
Euphoric about my newfound and respectable employment, I took my dog for a very long walk on the old farm property to celebrate. As happy as I was to have a job, I knew it meant Fitz would have to readjust to my schedule, just after getting used to me being nocturnal. Plus, even with Aunt Jettie’s “hanging around,” he would be alone more often after weeks of constant attention.
I imagined this was what mothers felt when heading back to work after maternity leave…only with more slobbering and shedding.
Sensing my guilt-based permissiveness, Fitz decided to push at the usual walk rules: no running away where I couldn ’t see him, no rolling in substances I couldn’t identify, and no chasing woodland creatures that can fight back.
We explored areas of River Oaks we’d never seen at night: the creek where I’d showed Jenny how to swing on wild grapevines on one of her rare visits to Aunt Jettie’s, the path where I had to carry Jenny when she fell off the grapevine and broke her leg, post holes left by a fence I’d had to tear down as penance for letting Jenny break her leg. Fitz chased irate bullfrogs on the normally peaceful shore of the cow pond and gave a possum the chance at an Oscar-winning death scene.
I found a sturdy-looking oak and climbed catlike, leaping from branch to branch until I could see the house, the road beyond, the faint-twinkling lights of town in the distance. It still seemed strange that all of this had been passed to me. River Oaks had always seemed like its own little kingdom when I was a kid. And I couldn ’t honestly say that I’d seen every inch of it. It seemed right that I would be able to look after it for generations to come. Maybe if Jenny’s children’s children’s children managed to outgrow their genetic predisposition to jackassery, I would pass it along to them one day.
From the base of the tree, Fitz barked and spun in circles. He apparently didn’t care for my Tarzan routine. I jumped, careful to avoid smacking into branches on the way down. I landed on my feet with a soft thwump. Fitz, who was used to me landing on other parts of my body, sat on his rump and cocked his head.
“I know, it’s new for me, too, buddy,” I told him, scrubbing behind his ears. “You’ll get used to it, I promise. Do you want to race back home? Huh, boy? Want to race?”
At the word “race,” Fitz broke into a run, streaking across the field in a blur of dirty brown-gray. I gave him a few seconds’
