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A dishwater-blond male vamp wearing faded jeans and a “Virginia Is for Lovers” T-shirt sipped dark lager at the bar, ignoring the hullabaloo behind him. The rest of the tables seated groups of vampire women, immersed in pastel drinks and naughty conversations. Maybe these were vampire housewives?
Seriously, the scariest thing about this place was the sign advertising “Karaoke Tuesdays.” The idea of a drunk vampire belting “I Will Survive” off-key was somehow both compelling and terrifying.
I was calm, comfortable, and ready for a good time when Norm returned with a martini, which he declared “dry as dust”
with a fond pat on Andrea’s head. I got something frothy and the color of ripe cantaloupe.
“Um, what is this?” I asked Andrea, waiting for Norm to pass out of hearing distance.
“It’s a smoothie.” Andrea watched as I took a tentative sip. It was good, fruity with just enough coppery aftertaste. Andrea continued, “A special smoothie. Fruit juice, vitamins, minerals, protein powder, and a little bit of…um, pig’s blood.”
“Pig’s blood!” I yelped, spitting the smoothie back into the glass. Andrea shushed me. “You let me drink pig’s blood?”
Well, at least she didn’t dump it on me.
“Shh,” Andrea hissed. “Look, Norm uses pig’s blood because the artificial blood doesn’t mix well with the fruit juice. The enzymes make it go brown. And Norm has some ethical issues with serving human blood. Just try it. You ’ll like it. It’s like a zinfandel, light and sweet. At least, that’s what I’m told.”
“I’m not loving you right now,” I growled at her, swallowing a mouthful. It wasn’t bad, but I just couldn’t get the visions of a pleading Porky Pig out of my head. This attitude was pretty hypocritical given my before-death enthusiasm for bacon.
“See?” Andrea asked brightly as I took another sip. “Good girl.”
“Kiss my ass,” I grumbled.
Andrea ignored my grumpiness and gestured to the smoky barroom. “So, what do you think?”
“It’s OK,” I admitted. “Even with everything I’ve learned about vampires, I still expected moody lighting and Goth kids reciting bad poetry. Consider me pleasantly surprised.”
A lovely rose blush tinted Andrea’s cheeks. If she weren’t such a nice person, it would really piss me off that she looked like a redheaded Grace Kelly. Andrea was as out of place here as, well, me in a gym. Andrea was probably not the type of person I would have spent time with when I was living. She was too put together, for one thing. She made my sister seem rumpled. But she was the safest person I knew who could navigate her way through the vampire underground. And I really wanted to make up for making her feel like a hooker.
I’d already decided that if I was going to develop a healthy friendship with Andrea —whose last name was Byrne, by the way—I needed to know more than her deliciously rare blood type. I was not going to be able to feed from her again. It was far too intimate an experience, like making out with someone at the office Christmas party and spending New Year’s week pretending that person hasn’t felt you up. Not that I know what that’s like.
“What I want is some answers,” I said, picking a pretzel from the bowl on the table. Then, remembering the pot pie, I dropped it. “You know, basic stuff. Who you are, where you’re from, how you got into this line of work. You owe me, lady. Let’s start with why you can pronounce all your vowels separately, oh ye of little accent.”
I dutifully sipped my pig’s blood as Andrea told me a sordid tale worthy of her own country song. Andrea was pulled into the vampire world just before the Great Coming Out. She was a sophomore studying information systems at the University of Illinois when she met a vampire professor. Maxwell Norton, age 321, taught history, which was pretty unfair considering he’d been there when most of it happened. Norton, whose real name was Mattias Northon, scented Andrea’s rare vintage blood type on the first day of class. He separated her from the class like a wounded gazelle and nurtured her as a pet. She watched over him during the day, fed him, picked up his dry cleaning, graded his papers. And in return, she was introduced to vampire society —like a debutante with really big veins.
Norton taught her how to dress, to speak, to behave in a way that pleased his sophisticated undead friends. Then, seven years later, Norton found a newer, fresher freshman pet and tossed Andrea aside, despite the fact that she ’d dropped out of college and given up her life to be with him. Men, even dashing, mysterious vampire men, can be such bastards.
Andrea had suffered from her own overbearing helicopter parents, the kind of people who calculated how every breath Andrea took reflected on them and their family. They accompanied her to job interviews, called her dorm room at least once a day to make sure she was up-to-date on her assignments and her flossing. But as soon as her loving relatives found out she was consorting with vampires, Andrea was unceremoniously pruned from the family tree. Her dad stopped payment on the tuition check, and her mother let Andrea know she was no longer welcome in the Christmas-card picture. This may have been the point of her taking up with Norton in the first place. Vampires may bite you, they may bleed you, but they don’t judge you.
Andrea remained in the underground vampire community more out of necessity than anything else. Broke and lacking a degree, she found her rare blood type was the easiest and most lucrative way to make money. She moved to the Hollow to be near a friend she’d met through an online vampire pets’ community. She got a job in a boutique downtown that catered to riverboat tourists and the top one percent of Half-Moon Hollow’s socioeconomic caste. But her real income came from “protectors” who enjoyed her blood. She’d get a page, go to the client’s home, and offer up her veins. She said many of her clients were lonely and often asked her to stick around to talk for a while. They were generous and more than happy to pass her name on to other respectable vampires. Apparently, her line of work was all about referrals. The only occupational hazards were the constant need for turtlenecks and trying to fit enough iron into her diet.
I stuck with smoothies through the night, because after the Kahlua episode, I decided that alcohol and I weren ’t friends anymore. It was nice just to sit and talk as we discussed childhoods, family dynamics, and men—with the exception of the one man we both wanted to talk about. I deliberately skirted the issue of Gabriel and his relationship with Andrea, whatever that might be. It was cowardly, but Andrea seemed like my first shot at a friend who truly understood this new world I ’d been dropped into. I didn’t want to run the risk of alienating her.
“So, your experience hasn’t made you want to avoid vampires altogether?” I asked. “I’d probably be out burning the undead in effigy. Not that I want to give you any ideas or anything.”
“Vampires are just like humans,” Andrea said. “You meet good ones and bad ones. Pulse has very little to do with it.”
“Have you ever wanted to be turned yourself?”
“You know, I’ve never had a vampire offer to turn me,” she admitted. “They can feed off me if I’m undead, but it’s not as much fun, and the nutritional value of my blood drops. I guess they don ’t want to kill the golden goose, if you know what I mean.
But I like living. I’m not afraid of death, which seems to be a problem for people who get turned. No offense.”
“None taken,” I assured her. “I was afraid. I wasn’t ready to die. When I thought of the ways I preferred to die, I wanted to be a hundred years old and surrounded by generations of adoring descendants. Though a hair dryer and an ill-timed fall into a tub was far more likely. I never considered deer or drunk drivers.”
“Well, it’s certainly a more interesting story than a hair dryer and a bathtub,” she said. “What about you? Tell me everything.
Do you have a boyfriend or…”
