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“But I’m not all that religious, Zeb. You should probably appoint someone who, you know, hasn’t been tossed out of their church for being an unholy monster, to head the kids’ spiritual development.”
“It’s more of a guardianship thing,” Zeb assured me. “If anything ever happened to me or Jolene, we would want to know that you would be there for the kids. No one would take care of them like you, love them like you would.”
“And you’re the least crazy person available for the job,” the barely conscious Jolene added.
“Well, that’s sort of sad,” I told them.
“We know,” Zeb admitted. “Doesn’t make it untrue.”
I peered down at the sleeping bundles in my arms. The burden of their weight seemed just a little bit heavier. Could I accept this kind of responsibility? Despite working with children for most of my adult life, I’d never really taken care of any. I didn’t have the kind of life that was conducive to child-rearing. I slept all day. There was rarely solid food in my house. There were lots of pointy, breakable objects down at child-eye level. I wanted to travel, to spend time with Gabriel, to run my shop. Was I really willing to turn all of that upside down if something happened to Zeb and Jolene? Could I raise two kids?
Baby Joe wrapped his little fingers around another of mine, mirroring his twin. I stared down at them.
Yes, I could.
I placed the babies on either side of Jolene and threw my arms around Zeb. “I will do everything I can to give the kids the kind of childhood we never had, Zeb,” I promised. “Unconditional love, holidays without drunken nudity, and birthday parties where they don’t end up crying. Of course, we’ll have to go underground to get away from your families. But I’m sure Dick can forge the necessary paperwork.”
Zeb squeezed me back. “You know, when I pictured us having this conversation, I didn’t think nudity and forgery would come into it.”
I sighed heavily. “And you think you know me so well.”
I basked in the new parents’ happy glow for a few more minutes before I excused myself. I wanted to call Gabriel, to ask why he and Dick and Andrea hadn’t made it down to the hospital yet. But when I walked out into the waiting room, Gabriel was waiting for me. I threw myself into his arms, gave him a smacking kiss on the lips. “Hey, I’ve been wondering where you guys were. You finally dragged yourselves down here to see the babies?”
Gabriel’s face was blank, taut. He had that look in his eye, the “I have bad news, and I’m trying to think of a way to break it gently” thing that always sent me into a panic. A nervous bubble of laughter escaped my throat, even as it constricted. “Gabriel, what is it?”
Gabriel swallowed hard, reaching out to take my hand. “It’s Andrea.”
“What do you mean, it’s Andrea? Is she hurt? Did something happen?” I babbled, panic racing through my chest.
My brain reeled through a number of horrible scenarios. Car accident. Robbery at the store. Halloween prank gone awry. The last thing I’d said to her was, “Watch it, or I’ll drop a house on you.” And she’d laughed. Oh, God, what if she was dead and those were my last words to her?
“Dick was at the store with her, and he went to run an errand right before closing. When he came back, Andrea was gone. Her car was missing. But the cash register was full. And Dick could smell …”
By now, tears were streaming down my cheeks. “What? Gabriel, what’s going on?”
“Dick could smell blood, Andrea’s blood.”
I don’t remember much about Gabriel driving us to the shop. The darkened streets of downtown passed by in a blur as my mind raced. Where could Andrea be? I tried to convince myself that it was perfectly reasonable to think that she might have simply hurt herself at the shop, that she’d driven herself to get help. It was so much better than the alternative, that someone had taken Andrea, dragged her, bleeding, out of the shop in her silly pink ballgown. What if it was one of us? I’d been so stupid. I put her right in the line of fire, working in a vampire shop when her rare blood type called out to the undead like a fine, irresistible wine. I wiped at my eyes, knowing it was pointless to try to stop the tears from falling.
“Dick called the police,” Gabriel said, his voice bleak. “He’s waiting at the shop for them.”
I moaned softly, leaning my head against the seat. For Dick to be willing to call the police, the situation had to be desperate.
We would have been better off calling Barney Fife.
Gabriel dropped me off at the shop. He thought his time would be better spent contacting the local Council members and various underworld characters who might have information about Andrea. So far, I had a lot more faith that he might find her than in the combined forces of the Half-Moon Hollow Police Department.
To say that the police were not exactly concerned about finding a woman who worked in an occult shop and lived with her vampire boyfriend would be a grand understatement. Sergeant Russell Lane, whom I’d gone to school with for thirteen years, seemed far more interested in treating us like suspects than in taking down any information about Andrea.
“Didn’t your boss die under strange circumstances here last year?” Sergeant Lane asked, as he scribbled notes in his duty notebook. He looked at Dick and me with a gleam of distrust, even malice, in his eyes.
“I don’t consider a seventy-nine-year-old man having a heart attack while moving heavy boxes to be strange,” I said, struggling to keep calm. I was a giant, exposed, twitching nerve just standing there, waiting for news, trying to keep from flashing my fangs at Lane.
Lane shrugged. “I just think it’s kind of a weird coincidence that your boss dies in the store, and a year later, your employee disappears from the store,” he said, giving me a long, appraising look. “Andrea Byrne was a registered blood surrogate, wasn’t she?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Dick growled.
“And you would be?” Lane asked.
