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“That’s not necessary, Mama, really.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. I’m sure you didn’t have time to find a laundromat when you were gallivanting around God knows where.”
“Actually, the hotels had very nice laundry services. I didn’t even know hotels did that.”
“You let a stranger wash your clothes, but you don’t want me to?” Mama gasped.
“If it will make you happy and let me get back to sleep, wash away,” I told her.
“No problem, honey.” Mama grabbed the freshly folded dirty clothes and walked out. She popped her head back into the bedroom doorway. “You were just teasing about the zombies, right? They’re not real?”
I pulled a sleep mask over my eyes and did not answer.
My mother ironed my jeans. With starch.
And because I am obviously incapable of washing my own clothes properly, Mama gathered all of my clean clothes out of my closet and washed those while I slept. So, without other pants options, I was basically moseying into the shop, John Wayne-style.
On the drive to Specialty Books, I worked on a self-improvement plan, a personal to-do list, if you will. I had taken way too much time adjusting to my new vampire lifestyle, using it as an excuse for just floating along, reacting to problems as they came up. It wasn’t surprising, really, when you considered that if there was a “Most Likely to Be Paralyzed by Fear of Change” award, a picture of me cringing would have been prominently featured in my high school yearbook. I had to get proactive. I had to demand things from the universe. I had to start kicking some ass … though not in the physical sense, because I’d basically lost or nearly lost every fight I’d gotten into since being turned.
Moving on.
My plan to become a Brave New Jane went a little something like this:
(1) Develop a healthy, normal romantic relationship, preferably with Gabriel.
(2) Create a fulfilling career for myself.
(3) Demand that my family love me without judgment. Even if it means I have to rent a new family over the Internet.
(4) Find a solution for world peace.
I can live without that last one, though I know it’s far more likely than the other three.
Considering that I was estranged from a sibling and a boyfriend, so far I’d failed miserably at the list—with the exception of the shop. It was barely recognizable, and not just because we’d torn down a wall and expanded into the porn store next door. Other than the plywood Dick had nailed over the broken window, there were no signs of a break-in. Books that might have been damaged by the hands of thieves were laid out carefully on the bar. The rest were piled haphazardly under heavy plastic drop cloths.
The space had been realigned, expanded. The front counter, still the same antique leaded glass and maple affair Mr. Wainwright had left behind, had been moved closer to the door. New beige carpet had been installed and was prepared for the bolts needed for the new shelving system, a shelving system that would actually allow customers to find what they want and navigate their way back out of the store, neither of which was encouraged by the previous system. While I planned on offering general-interest books and classic literature, the inventory would focus on vampire needs: cookbooks, history, finance, investment advice. I had already ordered two hundred copies of The Guide for the Newly Undead.>“I missed you, too, Aunt Jettie,” I grunted as I disengaged my fingernails from the plaster and hopped down to the bed. “Is Mr. Wainwright here?”
She smiled as she thought of her beau, who also happened to be my recently deceased boss. “No, he’s really beating himself up over this break-in, so he’s standing guard at the shop. I told Zeb not to bother you with it, but he insisted you’d want to. Why are your eyes all puffy?”
“Oh, it’s just the French,” I said, wiping at the oh-so-attractive bloody tear tracks drying on my cheeks. “They were so damn rude.”
“I thought you were in Brussels,” Jettie said as I climbed back into bed. Outside my bedroom window, creeping fingers of sunlight were flirting with the edges of my blackout curtains. My internal clock told me it was almost six A.M., and I was so tired I could actually feel the drag on my limbs. Aunt Jettie pulled the covers up to my chin as she asked, “Where’s Gabriel?”
“Still in Brussels,” I said. “He had some things to take care of.”
Jettie studied my face in that unnerving X-ray method of hers. Fortunately, any penetrating wisdom on her part was cut short by my mother’s sudden appearance at my bedroom door.
“Hi, baby!” Mama cried. “Thank goodness you’re back!”
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” I howled, chucking a pillow at her. “What are you doing here so early?”
“Oh, I’ve been coming by every day to check on the place,” she said, throwing her arms around me. “Let me look at you! Oh, don’t ever go away for that long again, honey. I got so nervous not being able to see you or check in on you.”
Mama’s idea of a good vacation spot was the Blue Pineapple Motel in Panama City Beach, Florida. She did not see why it was necessary for me to see the world or why it was necessary to run off “God knows where” and share hotel rooms with a man I was not married to. She insisted that the hoteliers would know that we were not a married couple and we would give people a bad impression of America. I told her that if American tourists hadn’t already done that by eating string cheese while they toured the Louvre, I doubted my premarital sleeping habits would bother them all that much. She didn’t laugh.
Mama’s predictions of travel tragedy included my getting mugged. (I have superpowers, so it wasn’t likely.) Or developing food poisoning. (I don’t eat, so that was even less likely.) Or getting a rash from hotel soap. (OK, that actually happened, but it cleared right up.) But I doubt she foresaw me getting dumped in such a halfhearted, half-assed way. She definitely would have warned me.
Wait a minute. My brain finally caught up to what she’d just said.
