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“Janie.” There was the authoritative voice again.
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.”
I must have made my “that sucks” face, because Gabriel assured me, “There’s always been a pecking order, a demand for reason. Even more so now that we’re trying to appear civilized for the humans.”
“This is a stupid system.”
“Yes, so much less civilized than your corporate takeovers and mega-chains,” he said, hefting the box. “Where would you like this?”
“Not in my house,” I said. “Take it to the mudroom, and I’ll burn it later.”
Once again displaying that amazing vampire dexterity, Gabriel shifted the box to one arm and reached for the nearest doorknob. It would have been impressive had he not opened the door to the wrong room.
“No, don’t go in there!” I cried as Gabriel stepped into my library.
“You have a lot of unicorns,” he said, his voice shadowed in both awe and horror.
One of the few things I’d done to make the house my own was installing my collection of unicorn figurines on the library shelves. My late grandma Pat, who had been the oatmeal-cookies-and-Ivory-soap type, bought me a unicorn music box when I was six. I played that thing until the little motor wouldn ’t tinkle “You Light Up My Life” anymore. So, unicorn figurines, music boxes, and stuffed animals became the gift for unimaginative relatives to get me for birthdays, Christmases, Valentine ’s Days, graduations, Arbor Days. In fact, I’d just received two ceramic unicorn bookends the previous Christmas from my uncle.
For reasons even I couldn’t explain, I could not throw the little suckers away. The majestic sweep of their horns, their imperious painted eyes, held some sort of strange, unholy thrall over me. So, I stashed them in the library, where nobody goes but me. Except, of course, for the one person I really didn’t want to see them.
“A lot of unicorns,” Gabriel repeated.
I tried to close the door, but he stuck his foot in the jamb—most likely to get a better look at my ten-inch ceramic unicorn lamp with the revolving-color, fiber-optic tail. “Fine, fine. You know my secret. I have a unicorn collection.”
“That’s a very sad secret,” he said as he allowed me to shove his foot from the door.
