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Nobody sticks around with that stuff going on.”
“Thanks, Aunt Jettie,” I said, falling asleep before the blankets settled over me.
As the sun set, my eyes snapped open. I felt great. Energized. Refreshed. All of the things those fancy mattresses are supposed to do for you. I bounded out of bed and threw the curtains back to bring in the moonlight. I wondered where I could get some of those fancy blackout shades that hotels use. I made a mental note to look up vampire redecorating Web sites.
I heard a knock at my front door, and my good mood dissipated. Mama was early. Knowing there was no time to get dressed, I trotted down the stairs and prepared for the parental pajama critique.
“Yoo-hoo?”
I skidded to a stop. Mama never said “yoo-hoo.”
I opened the front door. There was a pair of shapely legs sticking out from under a ridiculously large pink -wrapped gift basket. My world just kept getting weirder and weirder.
“Hello?”
“Hi!” the legs said. “I’m Missy Houston of the Newly Undead Welcoming Committee, Kentucky division.”
My uneasiness at letting a strange vampire into my home battled the manners Mama had pounded into my marrow. Manners, marrow, and Mama won out. “Would you like to put that down?”
“Thanks. Inhuman strength or not, this thang’s heavy,” she huffed, putting the mega-basket on my foyer table. Missy was wearing a perky petal-pink Chanel knockoff suit with a matching faux-Coach purse and heels. Even the headband in her perfectly flipped champagne-colored hair was pink. It was comforting to know that I didn’t have to give up pastels in my afterlife. I looked washed-out in black.
“It’s so nice to meet a newcomer,” Missy trilled in her melted-sugar twang, more Texas than Kentucky. (We tend to abuse our long I sounds as opposed to…all the sounds.) Missy shook my hand in a digit-crushing grip. Unsure of whether this was some sort of test, I resisted wincing and squeezed right back.
“Jane Jameson,” I said, keeping a bland smile plastered across my face. “How did you know I’ve been…”
“Turned? Vayamped out? Recruited to the legion of soulless bloodsuckers?” She trilled again at my perplexed expression.
“Oh, shug, you’ve got to keep your sense of humor about being undead. Otherwise, you ’ll just go toppling over the abyss into madness.”
Yet another throw-pillow saying to be stitched.
“I can sense the location of other vampires, their energy, ” Missy explained. “Newbies tend to give off mega-waves when they rise. That’s why I’m in charge of the welcome wagon.”
“Makes sense.” I nodded. “Haven’t I seen you before?”
“On my billboards, most likely. Up until two years ago, I was one of the top-selling real estate agents in the tricounty area. I went to a convention in Boca Raton. I had one too many margaritas, met a tall, pale, and handsome man in the bar, and woke up a vampire.”
“I was mistaken for a deer and got shot,” I offered.
“Oh.” Finally, she was speechless. It didn’t last long. “I have always loved this house. Great upkeep, considering the age.
They just don’t make them like this anymore. High ceilings. Huge kitchen. Wonderful windows. Great natural light, even though you can’t really appreciate that now. Original hardwood floors?”
I nodded, watching Aunt Jettie materialize at her writing desk. I glanced over to Missy, who was still appraising my floors as her needle-thin heels clicked on the polished wood. She didn’t notice the dearly departed Wildcats fan scowling in the corner.
“Well, this is just a little welcome gift from the local branch of the council, ” Missy was saying. “Sort of an orientation in a basket. SPF 500 sunblock, iron supplements, floss, a six -pack of Faux Type O, a bottle of plasma-protein powder, and the numbers of every vamp-friendly blood bank in the tristate area. There’s also a copy of The Guide for the Newly Undead.”
“There’s a handbook?” I asked, plucking it from the pink-wrapped cornucopia. “Thank God.”
Aunt Jettie cleared her throat and rolled her eyes toward Missy.
“Well, this is very sweet,” I said. “I really appreciate it. I’m sure I’ll see you at the next pot luck or something.”
Missy laughed, swinging her tiny pink bag onto her arm. “You’re gonna be a hoot at the meetings, I can tell.”
Meetings? I was just kidding.
A few more minutes of polite chitchat, and Missy was firmly ensconced in her black Cadillac. After watching her taillights depart through the window, I turned to Aunt Jettie. “What was with the facial charades?”
