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Cankles Courtney gave Toady Courtney a triumphant look, as if to say, “See, I told you! She’s not a vampire.”
I sighed, making a show of studying the menu. I missed carne asada. And chocolate. And ice cream. And lasagna. And cheeseburgers. Basically, I missed all food, except brussels sprouts. It still irked me that my last meal had consisted of potato skins and liquor. People who get the chair receive a better culinary sendoff.
I wasn’t going to order the carne asada, because that would just be depressing, even if I used Jolene’s disgusting food-craving imagery. I decided on tamales. They were mushy and messy, and it would be difficult to tell how much, if anything, I was eating. Plus, I’d never liked them much, so staring at them for an hour or so without being able to eat them would be bearable.
Our server suffered through our ordering pronunciations with a brave face. When he came to me, I ordered the tamales, and whatever remaining interest the Courtneys had in my eating habits seemed to melt away. The server stared at me for a long moment and then asked, “And to drink?”
I thought about sweet, fortifying tequila, since all of the Courtneys were planning on bellying up to the margarita trough. But I wanted to keep my wits about me so I wouldn’t get wrangled into cleaning up after the petting zoo or any of the other undesirable jobs Courtney had lined up.
“Water’s fine, thanks.” The server seemed to sense a weakening in my resolve and continued staring at me. I took the bar menu from the little plastic console in the middle of the table. “Actually, I’ll have a beer.”
The Courtney on my left gasped in horror. Jenny sneered as I looked over the beer selections.
“El Torrente Sanguíneo?” he asked.
For a moment, I and my three years of poor Spanish instruction thought he was asking if I wanted a raincoat with that. I squinted at him. He pointed to a selection near the bottom of the menu. The little dark brown bottle on the illustration looked like any beer. I knew that Sanguíneo probably had something to do with sangre , which translated to “blood.” And torrente probably meant “river” or “stream.” So it probably translated to something like “blood stream” or “vein.” Was he offering me synthetic blood?>“Fine. I want to talk to you about the house,” Jenny said, sighing.
“No!” I threw up my hands. “My lawyer said I’m not supposed to talk to you about the house or its contents without him being present. That’s why we’ve been handling this frustrating yet not at all rewarding task over e-mail!”
“Jane, I think we can settle this without the lawyers.”
“How do you figure?”
Jenny actually had the good grace to look slightly timid, twisting her wedding band around her finger as she said, “Well, your situation has changed. You need to stay close to town now that you’re running the shop. And besides, you don’t need that big old place, all by yourself—”
“If you finish that sentence, I’m going to punch you in the head.”
“Don’t you threaten me,” she said, shoving my shoulder.
“Don’t you tell me what I need,” I said, shoving her back, sending her chair scooting across the floor.
“Jane, you have so much stuff! I don’t understand why you need everything the family’s handed down! You’re all alone. No one even sees all those beautiful things. They won’t be appreciated in your house like they would be in mine.”
“I’m not having this discussion with you again,” I told her, pushing back from the table. “Let’s just get through this carnival from hell, I’ll find a way to fake my death and escape from the chamber, and you can fight Head Courtney to the death for her position as queen of the evil hive. And then we never have to see each other again. You can pretend I died or something.”
“You did die,” Jenny said, rolling her eyes.
“So it should be easy for you.”
“Why can’t you just discuss this with me like a rational adult?” she demanded.
“Why? Are you going to behave like a rational adult?” I shot back.
She grunted and tossed her folder of chamber materials across the bar at me. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this, which is all the time . I’m going.” She huffed and puffed while she slung her purse over her shoulder. “But this isn’t over, Jane. You’re going to have to deal with this sooner or later.”
Jenny blew back out of the shop like a bitchy hurricane, leaving a trail of scattered prize committee papers in her wake. And when she’d tossed her folder at me, she’d knocked a huge stack of mail off the counter.
Perfect.
I ran around the shop, picking up sheets of paper detailing Jenny’s campaign to wheedle free floral arrangements and colonics out of the Hollow’s business community. I also cursed a rather impressive blue streak that eventually began to rhyme and was soon coming out in iambic pentameter.
Andrea had enrolled us in a poetry seminar.
And when I finally managed to assemble the papers on the bar, I was confronted with the envelope. I’d been avoiding the mail for the past couple of days. Frankly, between the creepy Jeanine letters and my Visa bill, the U.S. Postal Service wasn’t exactly bearing me good news lately. But I couldn’t ignore today’s note, the creamy linen envelope stuck between humdrum bills and catalogues.
I seriously considered tearing it up without reading it. Insight into my sire and his crazy possible ex’s relationship didn’t exactly make me happy. But the more I read, the more I wanted to know. Whoever this woman was, Jeanine knew exactly how much information to reveal, how much to play close to the vest, to keep me confused, wound up, and coming back for more. She should have been a mystery author or maybe run for Congress.
I took a deep yoga breath and prepared myself for whatever obsessive looniness the letter had in store for me. And as I scanned the page, one word jumped out at me: “whore.”
