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“Vampire stuff?” he asked.
I considered. Of all of the things I was dealing with—a distant and secretive boyfriend, my potentially murderous step-grandpa, the possible mental breakdown of my best friend, his mother’s attempted jumpstarting of my defunct biological clock—none of it had much to do with me being a vampire. “Not really.”
“But I could see how being a vampire would be, you know, complicated. I mean, where do you get your blood?” he asked. “And what time do you wake up every night? Is it difficult for you to be around people without wanting to feed on them?”
“Are you writing some sort of book report?” I asked, making him flash that mile-wide grin.
“I’m just curious,” he said. “You never know whether what you read in the news about vampires is true. But it seems you have to make so many adjustments, just to function.”
“It’s not that big of a deal,” I told him. “OK, yeah, it is, but it’s worth it, especially if it means I can stay here, in my home.”
“But you could do anything, go anywhere.”
“This is where I want to be.”
Nonplussed, Adam asked, “How did this start? How were you turned?”
“It’s not a story I tell most people,” I said.
Adam seemed offended that I considered him “most people.” “Why not?”
“If there was a very special episode of I Love Lucy, where Lucy was turned into a vampire, she’d probably use my story. Let’s just say I didn’t have any choice. It was either death or this. I’m fortunate that my sire happened to be there.”
“This sire, is that the guy you’re seeing?” he asked.
I nodded. It was so weird to discuss this with him, the touch of jealousy tainting his otherwise clear tenor.>—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were
When I heard the baby crying on my front porch, I thought I was having a nightmare. Still in bed, I stuck a finger in my ear and wiggled it, hoping to pop loose whatever might be causing that godawful noise. But it persisted. I sat up. There was weak sunlight peeking around the edges of my blackout curtains. Judging by the why why why? reaction radiating from my internal clock, I guessed it was around five P.M.
I’d managed to race into bed before dawn the morning before. About an hour after Gabriel left my house, I Googled directions to his hotel and decided that I was going to drive down there to see what he was up to myself. I’d crossed into Tennessee by the time I realized that I was behaving like a crazy person. I pulled Big Bertha off onto the shoulder just outside Union City and leaned my head against the steering wheel. What was I doing? What was my plan? Was I going to follow Gabriel around with a pair of binoculars and spy on him? Break into his hotel room and tell him I just couldn’t resist surprising him? Gabriel had told me he didn’t want me there. At best, I would find nothing was amiss and look like an annoying, clingy psycho who didn’t respect boundaries. At worst, I would go to Atlanta and find him shacked up with some other woman or find that he wasn’t in Atlanta at all. And what could I do then? I would have a meltdown in the middle of a strange city with no connections, no friends, nothing. I would probably wander the streets in a daze until the sun came up and I was a little pile of Jane ashes on the sidewalk.
This was definitely a Marianne move, and not in the good way.
I drove back to the Hollow and pulled into the driveway just as the sun was rising over the roof of River Oaks. I dashed into the house and pulled the covers over my head, falling into a fitful sleep. Nightmares about crying babies fit right into that.
The baby’s squalling was soon joined by pounding on my front door. I stumbled down the stairs, calling for Aunt Jettie in a voice that couldn’t be heard by my visitor. No response. My dead aunt picked a fine time to become a social butterfly.
Careful to stay in the cool, dark recess of the foyer, I opened the door to find Mama Ginger standing on my front porch, holding a squirming bundle of pink blankets.
“What—what the—this had better be a hallucination,” I stammered.
“Jane!” Mama Ginger squealed. “I’m so glad you’re home! This is Neveah. We call her Nevie for short.”
“Neveah?” I repeated as she bustled into the house, trailing blankies and diaper bags.
“It’s ‘heaven’ spelled backwards, isn’t that clever?” Mama Ginger trilled, putting the baby into some sort of collapsible bouncy thing she pulled out of her bag.
“Way to sentence a kid to a lifetime spent popping out of cakes,” I muttered. I felt an immediate flash of guilt when the baby opened her heavily lashed blue eyes and focused on my face. I patted her tuft of dark hair gently. “I didn’t mean that.”
OK, I totally meant that.
Mama Ginger popped a pacifier into the baby’s mouth, which temporarily stopped the ear-splitting wails. “I was supposed to babysit little Nevie tonight, but poor Floyd is having an emergency down at the Goose Lodge and needs my help.”
Floyd frequently had emergencies down at the Goose Lodge, most of them involving injuries sustained while fistfighting the pinball machine.
“So I figured you wouldn’t mind watching her while I just popped over to the emergency room,” she said, hoisting her purse onto her shoulder.
“Wait, what? No!” I cried. Mama Ginger was startled as I cut her off at the door, trying to comprehend how I’d managed to beat her there. “I don’t know how to take care of a baby!”
