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I looked up at him, making the doe eyes. “It was worth a shot.”
So, we talked. Eager for normalcy, I savored the mundane details of the life that I’d been missing. None of the freshmen in Daddy’s summer class could write a complete sentence, which was nothing new. My second cousin Teeny ’s face-lift had gone wrong, which just went to prove that plastic surgery is one area where you shouldn ’t bargain-shop. My future grandpa Bob, Grandma Ruthie’s fiancé, was in the hospital having his hip worked on—which meant it was time for his monthly weeklong hospital stay. Why was this sweet man engaged to my grandma? I could only imagine that after surviving gall -bladder removal, knee replacement, dialysis, and chemo, Bob actually wanted to die, and he saw marriage to her as a legal form of assisted suicide.
While Daddy described Grandma Ruthie’s legendary surgical-ward histrionics, Gabriel returned to my kitchen door lugging a ratty cardboard box. I sincerely hoped vampires didn’t substitute pig pieces for flowers and chocolates. But I couldn ’t smell anything bloody, just the musty scent of old cigarettes and B.O. With his amazing vampire speed, Gabriel managed to shove the box into a nearby coat closet without Daddy’s realizing it existed.
Daddy went into suspicious-father mode, managing to question Gabriel without making it look as if he was interrogating him.
And Gabriel, far more accustomed to lying than I, performed beautifully. He deflected all possible vampire giveaways without an iota of irony. He complimented my father on raising such a “fascinating” daughter. He even praised Daddy’s textbook.
“I see now where Jane gets her inquisitive nature,” Gabriel said. I suppose I should have thanked him for saying “inquisitive”
and not “nosy and spastic.”
Stuffed to the gills with imitation Italian-style meat products, Daddy rolled out the door sometime later. I only had to drop seven “Wow, it’s really late” hints. I think the phone call from my mom was the only thing that could have pried him away from cross-examining my new “friend.” Daddy hadn’t had the opportunity in a long, long…long time.
“I think Daddy likes you,” I squealed to Gabriel in mock giddiness. “I only hope you ask for my hand before my skanky younger sister runs off with a scoundrel and ruins my reputation and hopes for happiness.”
Gabriel grimaced. “That’s not funny.”
“Pride and Prejudice references are always hilarious. What’s with the box full of funk? ” I nodded toward the closet.
Gabriel retrieved the box and opened it with a flourish.
A heretofore unknown and disturbing factoid: When you best a vampire in battle (no matter how sad and circumstantial the evidence of that battle may be), you take all of his stuff. No matter how icky that stuff may be. I was the unhappy recipient of the personal effects of Walter the Whitesnake fan: a silver-plate lighter engraved with “Screw Communism,” several concert T-shirts with discolored armpits, forty-two copies of Knight Rider, season two, and the complete works of Def Leppard on cassette tape.
“Walter’s mother was eager to have her basement back,” Gabriel explained. “She was glad to be rid of this. She brought it down to the council office this morning. No one else will want it, so Ophelia wanted you to have it. I believe it’s a reminder to stay on your best behavior.”
I tossed the cassette single of “Pour Some Sugar on Me” back into the box. “If you beat somebody up, you take their stuff?
Wait, what’s to keep someone from challenging another vampire to a duel just because they like their car?”
“Nothing,” he admitted. “As long as the vampire can find some reason for the duel, even if it ’s a contrived reason. Some petty perceived slight. The restrictions loosen a bit as you get older. The goal is to keep newly risen vampires from developing a taste for random killing, which is the only reason the council is taking such an interest in Walter ’s death. They’re trying to make an example of you.”>“Yes, wait—no!” he howled. “Why do you always reduce me to a blithering idiot?”
“This is blithering?” I grinned.
“For me,” he admitted.
I had to concede that one.
“You smell him on me?” I asked, sniffing my shirt. “What does he smell like to you? To me, it’s all lust and bergamot.”
“Uselessness,” he grumbled. He tipped his forehead to mine and kissed my temple, my forehead, the bridge of my nose. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply. “I do enjoy your scent, though, and I like you. Very much. I want to protect you. If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I would do.”
I lifted my head to eye him warily. “You’re not going to do something weird with my dryer lint, are you?”
“I never know what is going to come out of your mouth,” he said, staring at me. “I enjoy that, in a morbid way. I am saying that even before I turned you, your scent was part of what kept me close to you.”
“What did I smell like?”
“Mine,” he said, kissing the hollow of my throat, the tip of my nose, and finally my mouth. “You smelled like you were mine.”
“Can you take me home now?”
“Are you tired?” he asked. “Sophie’s methods can take a lot out of you.”
“No, I don’t want more people to see me making out with some random guy in the Cracker Barrel parking lot.”
“I’m hardly random,” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat. “I’m your sire.”
