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“You saw Jolene?” Zeb grimaced. “She was crying?”
“Um, you kind of broke off your engagement. That can bring out the emotion in a gal.”
“I know, I need to apologize,” Zeb said. “But I’d like to have a home to offer her when I beg and plead.” He took a sip of Gabriel’s liquor, blanched, and coughed. “Seriously, that’s what it tastes like?”
“Zeb can only drink stuff that tastes a little like alcohol and a lot like fruit punch,” I told Gabriel.
“I’ll start keeping some around,” Gabriel said. “Until then, try to finish the expensive single-malt I just poured for you. Peasant.”
“I would insult you back, but you seem to own or know about all of the good rental properties around town.” Zeb snorted.
Giving new meaning to the words “saved by the bell,” Gabriel’s cell phone began singing. His face when he saw the caller ID stopped me from making a joke about voice mail, which Gabriel didn’t know how to use. Without a word, he left the room and said hello quietly into the receiver as he walked out onto the back porch.
For lack of something better to say, I told Zeb, “I wish I could help.”
“Aw, I appreciate that,” he said, leaning his head against mine. “But you’re, you know, broke.”
My jaw dropped. “You know about that?”
“I’m your best friend,” he said. “And you haven’t had a full-time job in months. I can do math above the kindergarten level. Besides, I would never take money from you. We’ve never mixed money into our friendship before.”
“We never had money before,” I pointed out.
“And so far, that’s worked out for us,” he said. “Besides, if we’re not going to take that kind of ‘help’—emphasis on the sarcastic invisible quotation marks—from Jolene’s family, it would be hard to justify taking help from you.”
“You have a well-thought-out and emotionally mature argument,” I admitted. “Dang it. On an unrelated note, here’s an interesting tidbit: Your mama kept trying to get me to eat at the funeral, which would have ended in my vomiting publicly. She does know that I’ve been turned, right? I assumed she has just refused to mention it because it interferes with her version of reality. But you did tell her, right?”
Zeb winced. “Every time I try, she repeats something stupid she hears on talk radio, like vampires should be rounded up and forced to live in communities far away from humans.”
“Still, you’re marrying into a werewolf clan, and you’re worried about telling her there’s a vampire bridesmaid? If anything, you could use me to take the heat off Jolene and Company.” I gasped as realization slowly dawned. “She still doesn’t know you’re marrying into a werewolf clan, does she?”>“I could come up with jackass pie on my own,” she insisted, then mulled that statement over. “No. No, I couldn’t.”
“By the way, what are your plans for Christmas?” I asked.
“Pretending my parents haven’t disowned me, watching It’s a Wonderful Life, and drinking a few bottles of merlot. How about you?”
I chewed my lip. “I’m thinking of throwing together a little party for us disenfranchised monsters.”
“You’re using us as an excuse not to spend time with your family?”
“No, I’m choosing to spend time with my dearest friends,” I retorted. “Fine, it’s eighty percent spending time with you guys and twenty percent avoiding my family.”
Andrea shot me her best doubtful glare.
“Seventy/thirty,” I said as the doorbell tinkled. I was confronted with the sight of a weeping werewolf, clutching a bear trap in one hand and a wedding planner in the other.
There’s something you don’t see every day.
A curious Mr. Wainwright poked his head out of the office, illogically thrilled at the sight of a tearful werewolf in his shop. “This is the most traffic the shop has had in years,” he said, smiling brightly. “Jane, would your friends like a cup of tea?”
“Why don’t you put the kettle on?” I suggested in a voice as calm and soothing as I could muster. “Andrea Byrne, Jolene McClaine,” I said, eyeing Jolene and the bear trap warily. “Jolene, honey, what’s wrong?”
“Zeb!” she wailed plaintively.
“What about Zeb? Is he OK?” I demanded, sniffing the trap but finding no scent of blood.
“He’s fine.” Her deeply backwoods accent stretched the word out into “faaaaaaahhhnnnn” before she wailed, “He’s called off the wedding!”
Visions of an unworn, unreturnable peach sateen bridesmaid’s dress lurking in the back of my closet flashed before my eyes. I shuddered. “I thought we agreed that you guys weren’t going to come to me anymore with your problems.”
