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While most vampires develop special abilities, some do not. If you run into vampires who do not have gifts, it is not wise to mock them. They still have vampire strength.
—From The Guide for the Newly Undead
The Hollow’s vampire grapevine works even faster than the human gossip lines. After word of my super-secret council tribunal got out, my nights were suddenly filled with calls and visits from my new underworld buddies.
Dick called, but he just left dirty voice-mail messages. Let’s just say if I’m ever in the market for a massage involving canola oil and marabou feathers, I’m covered.
Missy called, but her message was more of the lowdown-dirty girl variety, instead of plain old dirty.
“Jane, honey, I’m sorry if I’m breaking up, but I’m in my car, and you know how the Bottoms are. It’s the Land That Cell Phone Towers Forgot.” Her tinkling laugh rattled my ear through the receiver. Even from across the living room and muffled through the phone, Fitz’s head cocked up at the shrill sound.
“You’re where?” The Bottoms were low-lying areas of McClure County near the river, mostly swampland and marshy pastures, hardly the kind of property that would interest the Hollow’s top vampire real-estate agent.
“The Bottoms, honey, the Bottoms. There’s a little farm down here I’m trying to get my hands on. Just between you and me, the owners don’t know how much the property’s going to be worth in a few years. So it’s up to me to talk them into retiring and letting me take the property off their hands so they can move in with their kids in Florida.”
That struck me as sort of evil, but in the great spectrum of possible vampire evildoing, probably not that bad.
“The reason I called, honey, other than to check on one of the Hollow’s latest undead additions, is to invite you over to my place for my famous Mojito Mixer Monday!”
When my confused silence buzzed over the line, Missy informed me that she hosted this bastion of undead yuppiedom twice a month, featuring imitation Cuban cocktails and real vampire professionals. It was a chance for the local undead to make connections, meet potential pets, and become more established in the Hollow ’s “night life.” Missy had a rotating guest list that included a mix of newbies and long-established vampires. I could only guess that her Rolodex was a dark, scary place.
“Everybody’s going to love you! We’ve never had a librarian in the mix before. It will be so interesting. And Dick Cheney’s going to be there. He’s a close personal friend. He mentioned that he met you the other night. He says you have a great personality!”
“Isn’t that like saying I’m stump-ugly in man language?”
“Come on, shug, we have to get you out there. You’ve got to network!” She wheedled in her syrupy voice.
Considering that my social interactions with other vampires so far had amounted to a beating and a cranial route canal, I did my best to decline politely. “I really appreciate the invitation, but cocktail parties aren’t my thing, Missy. Also, I don’t have a job at the moment, so networking with me would probably be a waste of time.”
“Are you enjoying the gift basket?” Missy asked sweetly.
“Loved it. I’ve been meaning to write a thank you note,” I said, gritting my teeth at the rather obvious social strong-arming tactic. Missy was not so subtly reminding me that she’d done something nice for me, and here I was being rude, when all she was asking me to do was attend a nice party. This was the way Southern women worked—all peaches and cream laced with arsenic.
“Oh, honey, don’t worry about it. I know you haven’t had time,” she said. “The first few weeks are so hectic. Working out your feeding schedule, sleeping arrangements. I’m surprised you’re as together as you are.”
Grr.
“Are you suuuuure you couldn’t make it on Monday?” Missy asked. “It’s just a little party. I just want to see you make some new friends, that’s all.”
“I’ll think about it,” I promised.
“I’ll send you an e-vite. You’ll love it, shug. Byeeee!” She giggled before hanging up.
I looked down at Fitz, who was lying on his back, flipping his ears back and forth over his eyes. Not for the first time, I envied the simplicity of his life. “How exactly did she get my e-mail address?” I asked.
Andrea broke our contact embargo and called. Her council questioning was far friendlier than my own, by the way. Ophelia even paid for Andrea’s pancakes. When someone is a link in your food chain, you tend to be more polite to them. Sensing my boredom and distress, Andrea offered to brave the wrath of the council and bring over some dessert blood and her favorite girlie movie. But I had only sat through The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood once in my prevampire days. I considered it a sort of afterlife resolution never to suffer through that again. We settled for ice cream (for her) and Queen of the Damned (for me).
We’d gotten as far as the concert scene when one of Andrea ’s clients texted her. He’d been attacked by several quarrelsome “business associates” outside a Dairy Queen and needed an emergency transfusion. As she slid into her strappy black sandals and downed some iron supplements, Andrea admitted a stunted social life was an occupational hazard for blood surrogates.
And my excuse was what, exactly?
I made good use of my free time. I made a strong effort to read every page of the Guide for the Newly Undead, twice. I made arrangements with a company that sold and delivered synthetic blood in bulk, so I wouldn’t have to run out to Wal-Mart every week. I experimented with various fake-blood concoctions that would add some variety to my diet. There were a few bright spots, but it was generally a progression of entertaining and spectacular failures. Let ’s just say that tomato juice, Tabasco, and blood should not be mixed. Bleh.
I even looked up meditation exercises to try to find ways to focus my energy and harness my chi and all that stuff. All right, so I probably didn’t take it as seriously as I should have. But I found out I can stand on my head for extended periods of time.
I spent a lot of time with Aunt Jettie or dodging Aunt Jettie. Now that I was aware of her presence, she felt free to move objects at will and follow me anywhere in the house. Undead senses or not, I still got startled when someone suddenly appeared behind me in the shower. We had a long chat about boundaries and the ready availability of exorcism rites on the Internet.
On a more menacing note, it was very subtle, but a few times, I thought I felt someone watching the house. If I stayed still enough, I could sense someone standing at the edge of the woods, and the presence was downright jarring. But by the time I got to the backyard, whoever it was had vanished.
