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“Aw, shug, don’t take it personally. It’s not like I left any permanent scars. I just wanted to make you desperate enough, paranoid enough, to want to leave town. Whether it was to get away from the council or whoever you thought was out to get you, I didn’t care. I figured, since you don’t like your sister anyway and we’re such good girlfriends, you’d sell me the property and leave.
But you just wouldn’t budge. So I stepped it up, set my precious Dickie’s trailer on fire, framing you for his murder so I could challenge you. But then he intervened, and the council let you walk away scot -free. Nothing has worked, Jane. Nothing. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is?”
“I knew it!” I yelled. “I knew all that random stuff couldn’t happen to one person!”
“Well, subtlety has never been my strong suit,” she said, smirking as she sipped a virulently pink cocktail.
From inside the model home, I heard a voice call, “Missy? Are you out back?”
“It seems our last guest has arrived.” Missy smirked. “I believe you two know each other.”
“Jenny?” I yelled as my sister stepped out on onto the deck. “Run, Jenny, get out of here!”
“Why?” Jenny asked. “Wait, why are y’all tied up? Missy, what’s going on here?”
“You know her?” I demanded.
“Yes, I know her. Missy’s in my Thursday night scrapbooking group.”
“Oh, of course she is.” I groaned.
“This isn’t what we talked about, Missy,” Jenny said, staring at our bound parents.
“What do you mean, what you talked about?” I demanded. “You do know she’s a vampire, right?”
“Oh, sure.” Jenny rolled her eyes. “Like I’d spend Thursday nights scrapbooking with a vampire.”
In the calmest tone I could muster, I said, “Jenny, I’ve been waiting for a really long time to say this to you. You ’re a moron.”
Jenny ignored me. “Jane, what exactly have you gotten us into?”
“I’ll answer that,” Missy said sweetly, just before punching Jenny.
“I’m not going to say that bothered me,” I told Missy as she hog-tied my dazed sister.
“I thought as much.” Missy offered a vicious grin as she shoved the gag into Jenny’s mouth. She turned to me and put on her
“sales face.” “Jane, have you ever had a vision?”
“I had a reaction to antibiotics when I was five and saw tigers jumping out of the walls,” I offered.
“A vision,” Missy repeated, obviously annoyed. “The ability to anticipate future events and possibilities. The ambition to better oneself through the pursuit of an ideal, a goal. Vision, honey. So few people have it, living or undead. Even fewer appreciate it. Imagine my irritation when I see someone like you with a beautiful piece of property like River Oaks. ” She tinkled, her laugh hard-edged. “Did you know that I own every little bit of property surrounding your acreage? I’ve been buying it up, a piece at a time, for almost ten years now. In fact, I own quite a bit of property in this end of the state. The old-money vampires can’t seem to hold on to it. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that I tricked them into selling or killed them in battle.”
Missy bent so we were nose to nose, tilting her head so she could give me a winning smile.
“Real estate is the one thing you can always count on, Jane. It’s eternal, just like we are. Gold, jewels, stocks, bonds, they can fail you. But the one thing people can’t live without is land.”
“Do you realize you based your whole evil life philosophy on a quote from Lex Luthor? ” I asked. “How has the council not caught on to this?”
“Oh, the council’s not nearly as all-seeing as it likes to believe.” She sighed, toying with the tiny umbrella in her glass. “I have little helpers who claim the property for me, for a fee, and a few low-level council minions who turn a blind eye to loose ends, for a fee. I guess subtlety is my strong suit.”
“You want to move into River Oaks?”
“Oh, no, I want to knock River Oaks into the ground,” she said, standing with some ceremony and whipping the cover off the easel. “Jane, I give you my vision.”
A disturbingly pert sign read, “Half-Moon Meadows, a gated community for the undead,” and showed a pale, sophisticated-looking couple enjoying a glass of blood on their front porch. Different graphics showed sketches of a clubhouse, a trendy bar, a blood bank, a spa, a dentist’s office.
“What. The. Hell.” I gaped. Jenny made similarly distressed noises.
