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“You’re the most fascinating, maddening, adorable creature I’ve ever met,” he said, sighing and pushing my hair out of my eyes. “So, when I seem possessive or I’m raving like a lunatic, it’s just that part of me is still very afraid that I’ll lose that—that I’ll lose you. I love you.”
“That’s such a normal boyfriend thing to say. I’m so proud and yet a little freaked out.”
“Stop joking and listen to me,” he said. “I’m being serious.”
“So am I,” I objected. “That was a very normal thing for a boyfriend to say.”
He grinned down at me. “Does that mean I’m your boyfriend?”
“Oh, my Lord, this is such a juvenile conversation to have with a hundred-and-fifty-year-old man,” I groaned. “Yes, Gabriel, I would like you to be my boyfriend. I think we should go steady. I don’t want to be with any other vampire but you. I love you. Idiot.”
“We need new nicknames for each other,” he said. When I shoved at his shoulders, he grinned. “I haven’t loved anyone in a long time. And I’m glad it’s you. I’m glad I met you on the worst day of your life.”
“Well, you certainly made it more memorable.”
12
Bachelorette parties are less about celebrating the bride’s acquisition of a husband and more about making the female relatives feel vindication after the wedding planning process.
—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were
When we were kids, Zeb and I used to spend post-sleepover mornings eating Cap’n Crunch and watching the Smurfs. Somehow, I didn’t think Gabriel would appreciate the same routine.
I padded into the kitchen, still clad in flannel cows, and warmed up a healthy breakfast of donated Type A. Gabriel let Fitz out to snag the evening edition of the Half-Moon Herald from the end of the driveway. Unfortunately, Gabriel overestimated Fitz’s capabilities and had to get the paper himself. We climbed onto the porch swing to sip blood and read the happenings in the Herald while Fitz gamboled around the yard chasing his own tail.
It was strangely domestic, with the exception of finding another package on my doorstep. We were both relieved that it was just the genealogical information Daddy had found on Mr. Wainwright’s family. Despite my library background, my strength tends toward database research, whereas Daddy excels with the dusty-old-book route. After Mr. Wainwright lamented his lack of family history, I’d asked Daddy to use his mojo.
Gabriel left for some council meeting, and I ripped into the research without bothering to change out of my pajamas. Daddy had done an impressive job. He found copies of Mr. Wainwright’s old school pictures from Half-Moon Hollow Public School archives and an old newspaper clipping announcing Gilbert Wainwright’s engagement to Brigid Brannagan, a girl he met while traveling in County Cork. Daddy found Mr. Wainwright’s parents’ marriage certificate and both of their obituaries. Searching through old records kept in the courthouse basement—records Daddy accessed through a school chum named Deeter who worked there as a night janitor—Daddy found the origins of the Wainwright family. Gilbert Wainwright’s father, Gordon Wainwright, was the son of Albert Wainwright, son of Eugenia Wainwright, a laundry woman who had worked on the Cheney family farm. She had Albert in 1879 but drowned a short time later during the town’s inaugural Fourth of July picnic down at the riverfront.
Eugenia was unmarried, and there was no father listed on the birth certificate for young Albert. Albert was sent to an orphanage and raised there until he ran away at age ten. According to a book Daddy found in the library’s special collections, called The Hollow Frontier, Albert worked at the railway station and eventually took a job on a barge traveling the Ohio River, before returning home to the Hollow in the 1920s. He was known for opening one of the first successful saloons in the Hollow, the one my great-grandmother burned. While water-stained and crumbling, the book contained a copy of a tintype of Albert.
“Oh, man,” I breathed, startled by Albert’s face. I flipped to Daddy’s research on Eugenia, whom one of the groundskeepers at the Cheney farm described as a “big buxom piece of woman.”
I flipped back to the picture of Albert, who bore a striking resemblance to Dick. The same light, laughing eyes, the same devilish smile, the same long, patrician nose. But Albert looked to be at least fifteen years older than Dick had been when he was turned. I checked the date on the photo and did some quick math in my head, then groaned. “Dang it.”
I sat at Specialty Books’ counter, drumming my fingers compulsively against the glass. Mr. Wainwright was puttering in the back, tossing his way through the reference section I’d just spent the better part of two days cataloguing. Knowing that my nephew Andrew had a birthday coming up, he insisted that a tome entitled A Pop-Up Dictionary of Demons would be a perfect gift. I was inclined to agree with him, because it might make Jenny swallow her tongue.
In a rare show of discretion, I didn’t mention my discovery to Mr. Wainwright. I wanted to surprise him somehow, and I didn’t think blurting it out as soon as I opened the door would fit the occasion.
The front doorbell tinkled, and I turned to find Mr. Wainwright’s long-lost great-granddaddy standing at the counter with a scowl on his face.
“Well, Jane, you crook your little finger, and I come running,” Dick said, clearly in a very grumpy mood. “Seems I’m always running after women who aren’t interested.”
“Andrea turned you down again, huh?”
He made a sour face. The more I stared at him, the more I saw a resemblance to Albert—and, for that matter, to Mr. Wainwright. My employer had a smaller build and more delicate features but the same tilting smile, the same green, twinkling eyes. I was a little ashamed that I had missed it.
“Well, we could reminisce about the girl who didn’t get away,” I offered. “Dick, do you remember a woman named Eugenia? She used to work at your house?”
“Yes,” he said. His lips quirked at a memory I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, then locked into a completely un-Dick-like grimace.
“Did you know that she left your employ because she got pregnant out of wedlock? And that she drowned about six months after giving birth to the—” He refused to meet my gaze, looking to the left.
“You already know, don’t you?” I said. “You know about the baby, about Albert. You know.”
“What are you—who told you—how—” he spluttered.
“Which question do you want me to answer first?” I asked, cringing.
