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Gently, he leaned me against the cabinet. I pressed tentative fingers against the raw, ravaged skin of my cheeks as Dick rummaged for a wet rag. “What. The. Hell. Was. That?” I wheezed.
Rubbing his wrist as the flesh reformed and healed, Dick said, “You were having the vampire version of a bad allergic reaction. Can you explain to me how you managed to release aerosol silver directly into your own face? What’s next for you, stake juggling?”
And with that, Dick had recovered from his fit of fraternal devotion.
“Why are we assuming that I did this to myself?” I growled, my voice still hoarse. Dick gave me a flat stare. “It was worth a shot,” I said, swiping the rag across my cheeks. “Andrea! Andrea opened the box. Is she OK?”
“I’m fine,” she said, peering over the counter, rubbing her own face with a dust rag. “It doesn’t even hurt. I’m sorry I screamed. It just freaked me out.”
“Eh, just promise you’ll let me have the panic attack next time we’re accosted by the mail.”
Dick seized Andrea’s shoulders and hugged her long and hard. “Dick … can’t … breathe,” she wheezed.
“Sorry, delayed reaction to you using your panicked voice. I love you like crazy, woman. It does strange things to me,” he said before kissing her. He winced as the silver sizzled against his lips. He pulled away, carefully sniffing her face.
“That was so sweet,” Andrea said. “Until you sniffed me.”
“Colloidal silver,” he announced. “A pretty strong dose of it.”
“The health-supplement stuff?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Why am I not surprised that you know what it is?” Andrea grumbled, rinsing her face under the coffee-bar tap. “OK, geek girl, would you mind filling in the people who don’t memorize everything they read?”
“It’s basically microscopic clusters of silver particles in liquid. New-age types use it for everything from burns to eye infections, because it supposedly keeps germs from being able to metabolize. Hundreds of health-supplement Web sites sell it. It’s perfectly safe for humans, with the exception of people who take too much over a long period of time. They have a tendency to turn blue. But obviously, it seriously screws with vampires.” Andrea stared at me, her expression amazed and amused. I shrugged. “I saw it on Oprah .”
“But how did it get sprayed at us from what was supposed to be a box of books?” Andrea griped. “What supervillain did you piss off this time, Jane?”
Dick examined the box carefully. “It looks like a pretty simple device. Once the tape was ruptured and the box top split, a lever compressed on this spray can and sent the silver into the air. In fact, if that had happened in a room full of humans, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But obviously, someone thought there would be a good chance you would be opening the box.”
“You seem to have to figured that out awfully fast,” I commented dryly.
“It’s a common trick if you’ve pissed off a vampire,” Dick said. I narrowed my eyes at him. He gave me his best impression of an innocent person’s indignant protest. “Not that I’ve ever done it.”
“So, basically, we’re looking for the Unabomber or MacGyver,” I muttered. “Why is someone always trying to kill me? This never happened to me when I was alive.”
12
Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. Sometimes we have to bare our souls to our vampire mates and say, “Yes, I’m invincible and immortal, but you can still hurt me.”
— Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less
Destructive Relationships
We’d underestimated how far the silver had sprayed. I could see faint misting spatters of the grayish liquid along the far wall of the shop. Suddenly very weary, I wondered how long it would take to clean up the mess. Not that I was much help in that department, anyway. Andrea and Dick forced me to sit across the room, farthest from “ground zero,” with an ice bag on my cheeks, while Andrea wet-vacuumed the carpet. Dick was wearing a surgical mask and elbow-length rubber gloves to wipe down the bar with disinfectant.
I sat there, feeling sort of useless, as Gabriel came roaring through the front door, his eyes wild. From the panicked, crazed look on his face, I thought he’d finally snapped and was going to go to all bunny-boiler on me. But when his eyes connected with mine, there was such powerful relief there that I couldn’t be afraid. He bounded across the room and tenderly cradled my blistered face between his palms, poring over the damaged skin. Even though I was still mad at him, even though I still had enough of my pride to sting at the thought of him seeing me in full Freddy Krueger mode, I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his neck.
“It’s OK. It’s OK.” I sniffled. “I’m fine.”
I relaxed into Gabriel’s arms and let him rock me gently back and forth. I knew things weren’t settled yet. We were going to have to have a lot of long, long talks about trust, fidelity, communication, and not dropping one’s sexual partner’s naked ass onto concrete. But for the moment, I was willing to skip it all. I just wanted someone to care whether my face disintegrated or not. I don’t think that’s a violation of feminist principles.
“What is he doing here?” Andrea demanded, giving Gabriel the Glare of One Thousand Suns.
“I called him,” Dick muttered.
“You what?” Andrea cried.
Gabriel lifted his head from my shoulder and growled at Dick, “How could you let this happen?”
