Better Homes and Hauntings (35 page)

“You are one judgmental pantsuit.” I flopped back on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Ever since I’d received the “you’re hired” call during Christmas break, I’d been trying to convince myself that I deserved this job. I was qualified for it. I’d gone through a particularly difficult test of my intelligence and ingenuity to get it. So why was I so nervous about my first day?

“Because, Gigi Scanlon, you are the Queen of All Neurotics,” I grumbled, scrubbing my hand over my face. “Long may you reign.”

Honestly, I was nervous because this job, programming an in-house search engine of vampires’ living descendants for the World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead, meant something. If I played my cards right, this would be the only first day of work I would ever go through. The Council was known for offering attractive perks and salaries to hold on to competent human employees, resulting in lifelong appointments. And if I played my cards
wrong,
this would be my last ever first day of work because I would be dead.

“That is not helping,” I told my brain, closing my eyes.

OK, if I continued this line of thinking, what would the final outcome be? Not taking the job with the Council. And then I tried to picture my sister Iris’s face if I told her that I’d decided not to take the job after all. First there would be elation, and then relief, and then the “I told you sos.” I really hated the “I told you sos,” which were sometimes accompanied by interpretive dance.

Even after months to adjust, Iris was displeased about my employment—if thunderous expressions and muttered threats when the job was mentioned could be considered “displeased.” She didn’t trust my supervisor, Ophelia Lambert. She didn’t trust the vampires I would be working with. She’d met and didn’t trust some of the humans I would be working with. She wanted me to have a nice, safe office job that didn’t
involve coworkers who might drain my blood. I knew Iris felt guilty for dragging us into the vampire world years ago, and how it may have ruined me for corporate America. But honestly, her worry was getting annoying.

“You can do this. You are more than the post–glory days high school jock. You are more than Iris Scanlon’s little sister. You just need to figure out what the hell that is.” I launched myself out of bed, slipped into the suit, and pinned my hair into a responsible-looking chignon. I was thankful, at least, that I didn’t have to deal with Iris’s hair. Her dark curly hair was beautiful—especially now that she had all that vampire makeover mojo on her side and looked like a sexy undead Snow White—but I could barely handle my own heavy, dark hair. I couldn’t imagine throwing crazy, sentient curlicues into the mix.

Iris and I shared our mother’s cornflower blue eyes and delicate features, though I’d inherited Dad’s height. It really irritated Iris when her “little sister” propped her elbow on top of Iris’s head. Which meant I did it every chance I got.

Yawning, I picked up my equally practical beige pumps and checked my purse for the third time that afternoon. I’d stayed up all night, then slept through the morning in an attempt to adjust my schedule to my new hours working from two
P.M.
until two
A.M
. This was considered the “early bird” shift for vampires, and it was going to take some adjustments for my very human body clock. But at least I would see more of my recently vampirized sister and her equally undead husband.

The house, as expected, was pitch-black, thanks to the heavy-duty sunshades Cal had installed to protect them from sun exposure. Carefully, I clicked a circular button at the end of the hall and waited for the circular tap lights to illuminate the stairs.

I turned the corner into the kitchen and punched my personal security code—3024, the number of a check I bounced for a gym membership I never took advantage of, because Cal and Iris had never let
that
go—into the security pad. Before I could use my clearance to open the downstairs windows, I felt a sudden strike at my neck, the sensation of hands closing around my shoulders. I gasped as my unseen assailant yanked me back against his chest, hissing in my ear. I curled my fingers around the offending hands and dropped into “base,” the stable fighting stance taught to me by the jiujitsu instructor Cal had insisted I train with for the past five months. Spreading my arms wide to loosen his grip, I thrust my hips back, knocking him off balance. Dropping to the floor, I stopped my face-to-floor descent with my palms, cupped both hands around his foot and yanked—
hard.
The force of my pull was enough to send him toppling back on his ass.

Springing up, I flicked the lights on to see my beloved brother-in-law sprawled on the floor with a big stupid grin on his face.

“Damn it, Cal!” I yelled, giving him one last kick to the ribs before climbing on one of the barstools. “What is wrong with you?”

“I just wanted to get your blood going with a pre-work reflex test,” he said, pushing to his feet. “Well done, you. Your reaction times are much faster.”

I threw a banana at his dark head, which of course he caught, because he had superhuman reflexes. Totally unfair. Cal had thrown these little tests at me nearly every day for weeks. Always at a different time, always in a different mode of attack. The fact that Cal had probably downed a half-dozen blood-laced espressos just so he could get up at this hour was somehow very sweet and super irritating all at the same time. I understood that he wanted reassurance that I could defend myself if necessary—and that the insane amount of time and money he spent on my martial arts education wasn’t wasted. Seriously, though, I just wanted to make coffee without someone putting me in a choke hold.

But since there were no jiujitsu schools in Half-Moon Hollow, Cal’s little tests were probably the most training I would get this summer.

“One of these days, Cal, you’re going to sneak up on me, and I’m going to stab you with something wooden and pointy. That’s not an idle threat. You’ve stocked my purse with a scary array of antivampire technology. If Ophelia ever decides to search me, I’ll probably be fired just based on the threat my change purse poses to the secretarial pool.”

“Which means my evil plan will finally come to fruition.” Cal snorted. He had lots of reservations about my working for the Council, so he’d arranged for me to take Brazilian jiujitsu classes, crossbow lessons, and small-blade combat training near my college campus. The good news was I was no longer afraid of walking through the campus parking garage at night. The bad news was that most of the people in my advanced programming
classes were now afraid of me, because they’d seen my knife-work gear in my shoulder bag.

“And if you manage to stab me, Gigi, I will deserve whatever pointy revenge you can inflict upon me.”

“You’re so weird.” I sighed, catching my reflection in the glass microwave panel. “Now I’m going to have to go fix my hair again.”

“It’s not that bad,” Cal protested. I ran into the bathroom off the kitchen and ran a spare comb through my mussed hair. Cal leaned his long, rangy form against the doorway, watching me fuss. “Iris would get up and wish you luck, but she hasn’t quite worked up to daylight waking hours yet. It’s more of an advanced vampire trick.”

“There’s also the small matter of Iris not wanting me to work at the Council office,” I said, leveling him with a frank smile. “It’s OK. Cal, you don’t have to try to sugarcoat it for me. I know I’m making Iris unhappy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said breezily, following me back into the kitchen.

“Aren’t you kind of old for blithe denial? Like several thousand years too old?” I asked, ducking when he attempted to ruffle my hair.

“Keep it up and I won’t give you this delicious lunch I packed for you,” Cal said, digging into the fridge and pulling a small, blue square canvas bag from the top shelf. I opened it to find that Cal had made me a California roll and nigiri with his own two vampire hands. I’d developed a taste for sushi at school and there were no quality Japanese restaurants in the Hollow. So Iris and Cal had watched YouTube videos to figure out how to make it for me, if for no other reason than to save me
from truck stop sashimi. This might have seemed like a minor gesture, unless one considered that to vampires, human food smelled like the wrong end of a petting zoo. “You’re the only human I know whose comfort food involves raw fish and rice.”

“Vampires living in blood bag–shaped houses shouldn’t throw stones,” I told him. “And this is very sweet. I sort of love you, Cal.” I kissed his cheek, something that had taken him years to accept without flinching or making faces.

“You completely love me. Now have a good first day at work. Play nice with your coworkers but don’t hesitate to use your pepper spray. If you get into trouble, there’s an extra stake sewn into the bottom lining of your purse. Call us before you drive home so we can wait up for you.”

“Your employment advice is not like other people’s employment advice.”

OPHELIA DID NOT
deign to visit us on our first day. My fellow recruits and I talked exclusively to Amelia Gibson, the stern vampire head of HR, while sequestered—I mean, seated—in a windowless human resources conference room decorated in “early American prison.” In fact, almost everything in the newly renovated Council office was gray: gray walls, gray carpet, gray cement block, and gray laminate office furniture. Cold, impersonal, efficient, it wasn’t exactly home away from home.

While the grim-looking security guards processed our security pass photos, we had to sit through the upsetting orientation videos. Most of them involved
strategies for not provoking our vampire coworkers into biting us. Since I was pretty familiar with these tips—including “Lunch Break Hazards: Say Goodbye to Garlic” and “Empty Toner Cartridges: Replace Them or Die”—I spent my time studying my coworkers.

It was interesting to me that none of the programmers was older than their midtwenties. The oldest of us, Marty, looked to be about twenty-three or twenty-four. Then again, working at the Council office full-time, we would be exposed to too many of the vampire world’s secrets and machinations. We would have access to their leaders. We would figure out how they managed to save enough money to survive on for centuries. That made us a liability as far as the vampires were concerned, and historically, people who were considered liabilities by the vampire community tended to disappear. Maybe sensible adults knew better than to work for vampires. Heck, maybe even vampire programmers were too prudent to work for other vampires, because there were no undead members of our department, either.

I was sort of a mixed bag when it came to vampires and trust issues. I mean, Ophelia was a four-hundred-plus-year-old vampire who looked like a teenager and thought like a Bond villain. So I was going to avoid any situation that would lead to sitting in her office . . . or any enclosed space, really. And sure, I’d been duped and supernaturally hypnotized by a vampire sent by a local supervillain to date me under false pretenses. But thanks to the hypnosis, I’d blanked out most of the unpleasant parts and only remembered dreamy scenes of teen vampire romance.

My mind wandered to the mystery vampire I’d “met” over Christmas break. And “met” was in quotation marks because I hadn’t actually introduced myself. Because, well, he hardly stood still long enough for me to see him, much less speak to him. At first I thought he was a ghost. I’d barely been able to make out his facial features the first few times I saw him. And when Mr. Barely Visible finally became Fully Visible (and ho boy, was the visual nice), he’d surprised the ever loving hell out of me by swooping in, kissing me like something out of a Nicholas Sparks movie, and then disappearing.

My imaginary vampire ghost literally just vanished, which was one of the few things pre–Coming Out TV and movies got right about vampires. The undead were stealthy and sneaky and could pop in and out of view in the blink of an eye, and they usually did it when a human was mid-sentence. Which in my opinion is super rude.

The tragedy was that the hot mystery vampire had disappeared, completely and cruelly dropped off the face of the earth after giving me the most world-altering kiss I’ve ever experienced. It had been months since The Kiss. And despite lip-glossing for months, just in case I ran into him, I hadn’t seen so much as a shadow. I was starting to think I’d imagined the whole thing, which would be completely plausible, considering my emotional turmoil over dumping my dependable, solid, and all-too-human boyfriend Ben.

Up close, my vampire had been center-of-the-solar-system hot. He’d looked like every hero in those Jane Austen movies that Iris’s friends liked so much, golden
hair that sort of curled around his face without being Bieberish, eyes so light brown they appeared gold, high cheekbones, long straight nose, chiseled jawline and a mouth that looked just smirky enough that you could imagine it saying some really filthy things. When I thought about meeting him again, he was always wearing a waistcoat and lounging around a stable full of fluffy, inviting piles of hay.

And that was a big part of why I didn’t tell Iris about this, because that’s the sort of thing for which she would mock me, mercilessly.

Of course, I didn’t know if I would ever meet him again. Considering his five-month absence, I was going to guess not. Why had he even been in the Hollow? He seemed awfully Continental for Kentucky, though that really wasn’t an indicator anymore as our little burg seemed to be a magnet for vampires of all origins. Miranda Puckett’s boyfriend, Collin, was an excellent example. Tall, smooth, and British, I’m pretty sure that guy
was
an extra in one of those Austen movies Iris’s friends liked so much.

But why had my vampire chosen me to pseudo-stalk? It would have been one thing if I’d only seen him the first time at the Christmas tree farm, but he’d seemed to follow me on several occasions. Had he known my schedule or was he just that good at guessing where I’d show up? Maybe that was his special vampiric gift: GPS. A Gigi Positioning System.

That sounded wrong, but fun.

Seeing my new (gray) office, the windowless workroom I would be sharing with my three teammates, did little to improve my concentration. Four modular desks
were stuck in four corners with four shelving units. I supposed the vampires considered it “private” since we would be working with our backs to each other.