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Mama looked horrified. I started giggling, which made Daddy laugh. Then we just kept braying like donkeys until tears were streaming down our cheeks. I was so glad that dying hadn’t ruined my sense of humor. Or Daddy’s, for that matter.
Mama wasn’t as thrilled. “Well, that’s fine, just fine! ” She cried fat crocodile tears, clumping her carefully feathered Maybelline Great Lash. “You two just sit here and laugh your fool heads off. You have your cozy little meeting of the We ’re Smarter Than Sherry Club, as usual. I’ll just go home and mourn my daughter’s death.”
“I’m not dead, Mama, I’m undead. There is a difference.”
“Well, pardon me for not knowing the right words,” Mama huffed. “I’ve never met a vampire. I don’t know any. No one I know does. Oh, my, what are people going to say? What kind of mother am I to let her daughter get turned into a vampire?”
I snorted. “I’m not asking you to march in any pride parades, Mama.”
Daddy stood, wedging himself in the crossfire. “Now, let’s not say anything we’ll regret.”
“Oh, I think we’re already there.” I was fully prepared to vamp out and leap onto the roof just to complete Mama ’s traumatic-offspring-treachery scenario. She was definitely sending Reverend Neel after me for this one. “You didn’t let me get turned into a vampire. I didn’t let me get turned into a vampire. It just happened. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Honey, please, we’re just trying to understand what’s happening,” Daddy pleaded.
Mama and I trenched ourselves in a sullen silence. Poor Daddy just looked back and forth between the two of us, like some spectator held prisoner at a tennis match.
“How do you expect to live this way?” Mama finally demanded. “How will you work? Where are you going to live? How will you take care of yourself?”
“I’ve been taking care of myself for quite some time now, ” I insisted. “I’m going to keep living at River Oaks, as long as someone doesn’t try to kill me for it again. And I’ve gotten a new night job at a bookstore. I’m going to be fine, Mama. You know, Zeb joined this group, the Friends and Family of the Undead. It ’s like a support group for people who know newly turned vampires. I think it might help you.”
“You told Zeb before you told us?” Mama shouted.
Oh, crap.
“How could you do that?” Mama cried. “We’re your family!”
“He found out the night I rose,” I said. “But no one else knows. Except for some of the vampires I’ve met. And Andrea, a girl who hangs out with a lot of vampires. Oh, and Jolene, Zeb’s fiancée.”
“Zeb’s getting married? Before you?”
Double crap.
“We just need to get you over to Dr. Willis and let him take a look at you,” Mama said, moving to pat my leg, then stopping, her hand frozen a few inches over me.
She was afraid to touch me. My own mother could not bring herself to lay her hands on me. Something inside me greeted quick, quiet death. “There’s not much he can do for me.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Mama snarled. “I’m not going to sit here and listen to you talk like this. You can ’t even try taking it seriously, can you? You died, and you have to make jokes, have to make me feel like an idiot for not understanding.”
“Mama, just let me take you home,” I said, reaching for her.
She shied away from me. “No, I think we’ll stay right here. Why don’t you go on home?”
“Well, because it’s not safe for you to be here by yourself. Who knows what Missy has here or whether one of her newbie minions is going to show up? You would be easy prey. I need to stay with you. And technically, I think this is my house, anyway.
When you kill another vampire, that usually means you get their stuff. Besides, you don ’t have a car. How are you going to get home?”
“We’ll have Jenny drive us.” Mama sniffed.
Great, bring up the living daughter. One more thing Jenny had on me—two kids, a husband, and a pulse.
I reluctantly untied my sister. With an indignant squeal, she broke loose from the ropes and pulled her gag away. She was about to scream at me when I clapped a hand over her mouth. “Don’t. Whatever you’re about to say, whatever excuse you’re about to give, don’t. I’m not talking to you for a while. Not until the urge to throttle you goes away. Stay away from the house, and stay away from me. Pretend that I don’t exist. It should be easy enough considering the practice you’ve had.”
“Jane, get your hands off her!” Mama yelled.
I stared at my mother. “You think I’m going to hurt her, don’t you?”
Mama said nothing. Daddy wrapped an arm around her. “Now, Sherry—”
