The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires (18 page)

“Hey, you were just starting off. You hadn’t grasped the concept of bake-sale-scale cooking yet.” Gigi chuckled, spearing a bite of pancake.

Cal’s brow furrowed. “Starting off?”

“As my parent and/or guardian.”

I beamed as Gigi pushed her plate toward our guest. “You wanna try some?”

Cal shrank back from the plate. “I’m pretty sure those would look disgusting even if I was human.”

“They’re delicious,” Gigi said, her cheeks puffed slightly with syrup-soaked pancake.

“They will make me vomit.”

Gigi swallowed loudly and gave him the stink-eye. “Well, that’s rude.”

And for the first time, Cal actually seemed concerned that he had offended a lowly human. He shook his head and explained. “No, no. Vampires lack the enzymes to digest solid foods, which is part of the reason we instinctually shy away from it. It smells rotten to us and tastes worse. If I were to take a bite, I would be overwhelmed with the scent and taste of something like roadkill, and I would throw it right back up.”

“Thank you for describing that. Vomit talk always gives me a big appetite,” Gigi said, rubbing her stomach. I burst out laughing, which made Gigi giggle. And as Cal looked on, perplexed and irritated, the pair of us sat at the table and cackled like a couple of hyenas.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him as Gigi snickered on.

Cal frowned. “You’re laughing at me.”

“But not in a serious way. We’re just teasing you. You have no problem teasing me when it’s just the two of us,” I reminded him.

“I guess I’m not used to being mocked by more than one person at a time.”

Gigi reached over to pat his arm while stabbing more pancake with her other hand. “You’ll get used to it. That’s what families do. Families are the people who will always call you on your crap and will laugh at you no matter how serious the situation. Because you know they don’t mean it.”

The little lines etched in Cal’s face deepened. I could
tell that he was trying to find some graceful way to remind Gigi that he wasn’t family. He wasn’t even a friend, really. He was just the guy sleeping in a tent in our basement. And honestly, I was grateful to him for not just blurting it out, so I said, “I’ve been telling her she should stitch that on a sampler, but she doesn’t like handicrafts.”

“Needles intimidate me,” Gigi admitted.

Cal snickered, and the little lines smoothed back out. Gigi proved to be quite the conversational buffer, peppering Cal with questions and observations about his vampire status. She’d never met a real “live” vampire before. I’d made sure of that. And now that she was face-to-face with one, she wanted to know whether he fed on live donors, what his sleeping arrangements were like at home, where he’d traveled. It was the best possible way to avoid the postmauling awkwardness. Except that Gigi’s questions seemed to be giving Cal a headache. His eyes were glazing over, and the corner of his mouth was starting to twitch. But instead of giving in to his tendency to be grumpy and taciturn, he turned the tables on my sister. He asked about her classes at school, her friends, her previous run-ins with Sammi Jo’s grandmother. He basically talked her into the ground, until she was practically dropping off over her plate.

“That was impressive,” I told him as Gigi bid us good night and trod up the stairs. “I’ve never seen Gigi outtalked by anyone.”

“She seems to be a level-headed, good-natured girl. I think you’re past the worst of it.”

I dunked a tea ball full of my own rosehip-and-raspberry
tea into an “I Heart My Big Sister” mug. “Worst of what?”

“Adolescence,” he said, shuddering. I chuckled. “She’s a lucky girl, to have you taking care of her.”

“I’ll rest on my laurels when she’s thirty, living independently, and not working a job that involves a webcam,” I muttered, blowing over my tea.

He gave a violent shudder and backed toward the basement door. “And on that note, I bid you good night. I’ve got some paperwork I need to go over before I turn in at dawn.”

“Where are you going?”

Glancing at the stairs, he said softly, “With Gigi here, it would be better if I were to go back downstairs. But I appreciate your offer to upgrade me to a ‘family room.’ ”

That set me back on my heels. He was right, of course. What did I expect? That we would continue what we’d started in the foyer while my baby sister slept twenty feet away? I cleared my throat and tried to school the edge of disappointment from my features. “Do you have everything you need down there?”

He pursed his lips, his eyes shining mischievously. “Well, not everything I need … but yes, I’m comfortable. Are you going to be all right? No lingering feelings after what happened earlier?”

Was he talking about my assault by his mysterious vampire intruder? Or Paul’s visit and the subsequent kissing? Because one had my nerves in an uproar, and the other was just damned annoying. Now, if I could only decide which was which …

Unable to answer that question aloud, I nodded, keeping my eyes glued to the sink full of dirty pancake dishes that I’d resolved to wash in the morning. The awkward silence hung heavy between us, and I wished I could find something clever to say about his technique. But the encounter at his house, the vodka, and the late hour had taken their toll. I was too tired for sarcasm.

He cleared his throat. “If you have trouble sleeping, you know where I am.”

—

I did have trouble sleeping. Exhausted, I tossed and turned, unable to find a comfortable position, the right angle for my pillows. The blankets were too warm, but the sheet was too cool. And there were moments during that lonely time between two and four
A.M
. that I seriously considered toddling down the stairs to the basement and crawling into Cal’s tent. But my apprehension was twofold. First, Gigi would hear me, and the teasing would be excruciating. And second, Cal had me all wobbly and off balance. And crawling into his tent after he’d seen that mortifying scene with Paul, after the way I’d mounted him against the door, felt like a concession.

Instead, I took advantage of the whatchamacallit in my nightstand.

I was not this woman, this ill-tempered, impulsive bimbo who resorted to nightstand candy in the face of a little stress and writhed all over clients just because they happened to be present and shirtless. I was a levelheaded, responsible single-parent figure, who had responsibilities and bills to pay and no time for ill-fated
dalliances with the undead. Instead of sleeping, I made a mental list of reasons that starting any sort of personal relationship with Cal was stupid on the level of alligator wrestling or electing a member of the
Jersey Shore
cast to public office.

By sunrise, I had a list of 268, including “Stockholm syndrome be damned, you have to serve as a good example for Gigi” and “Vampires do not date ‘the help.’ They eat ‘the help.’ ” But most of them applied to vampires in general, not Cal, whose only flaws so far were snark and emotional unavailability.

I dragged my butt out of bed, flinging myself out the door at first light without benefit of coffee or refined sugar, and began my workday as usual … after a stop at Walmart for one of those tacky Vampire Home Defense Kits.

Vicki Stern, who was used to seeing Faux Type O and Fang-Brite Flouride Wash in my cart, did a double take at the red polyester gym bag emblazoned with a Count Chocula look-alike with little Xs over his eyes.

“It’s a gag gift,” I told her, rolling my eyes, tossing an Almond Joy onto the register belt. “One of my clients has a weird sense of humor.”

Given the way she was yawning, I’m guessing that Vicki’s interest waned pretty quickly.

I entered each house that day with liquid silver hidden in my hip pocket and a stake in my sleeve, despite the fact that spotting me with anything like that would have resulted in the loss of my contracts with the Council. I slipped through every front door like a cat burglar,
silver spray at the ready, and completed my tasks with my back against a wall at all times. It made work tedious and stressful, but at least I was able to restock Ms. Wells’s blood supply without my hands shaking.

I rushed through my tasks, sure to leave the last client’s home long before sunset. I came home to find Gigi had gone to study at Ben Overby’s. Ben, a classmate of Gigi’s at Half-Moon Hollow High, was a sweet boy who bagged groceries at the Super Saver and drove his grandmother to church on Sunday mornings. He had big puppy-dog eyes the color of new moss and dark hair that sort of flopped over his forehead. Lanky, lean, and clean-cut, he actually went to class and cared about what he did while he was there. He was a nice boy, the kind you could count on to show up on time, to call when he was supposed to. You could trust that he wouldn’t drop mind-altering substances into your soda if you left it unattended around him. He was not exactly Gigi’s type, which ran toward the bigger, jockier, “I could bench-press you if I wanted to” variety. I hoped that Ben’s presence was a sign of her having some sort of dating epiphany.

Cal was sitting at my kitchen table, curtains drawn tight against the setting sun, typing something on his laptop. He looked up at me and smiled. I sensed some saucy opening line coming my way. For some reason, “Making any progress?” slipped out of my mouth.

Right then, right to business. No talk of grinding against door frames or slippery fingertips. Internally, I slapped a palm to my face and called myself a coward.

Cal’s shoulders sagged under the weight of … disappointment?
Insult? Hell, maybe he was hungry. I couldn’t read this guy if he had bold print on his face. He recovered quickly and shook his head. “I hate to harp on this point, but I still need my files. You’re sure they weren’t in the front bedroom?”

“Well, I did spend some quality time in that closet. I think I would have noticed a big white file box.”

He sighed. “If the Council claimed the files from my house, they will be stored in my office or Ophelia’s—most likely Ophelia’s, since she wouldn’t trust anybody else with it. And there are few items on my desk that would be helpful.”

“How could someone who has secret cash and an emergency weekend bag stashed in his kitchen not keep his files on a flash drive?”

“I do have a flash drive … at the Council office. I have some digital scans of the important documents saved on my hard drive here, but other reports and some samples were left at the house. If they’re at the Council office, I need them back.”

“And calling Ophelia to tell her what you need is out?”

“Do you think I haven’t thought of that? Do you think it hasn’t crossed my mind every waking moment? But I can’t do that now, not after you were hurt in my house. Clearly, someone on the Council is trying to hurt me, even if they have to do it through people who are only loosely connected to me.”

Loosely connected? What the hell did that mean? I turned my back on him, heating water for a cup of tea. It
gave me an excuse not to look at him and ample time to mull over how quickly my thrall had dissipated.

“You can’t re-create them?” I asked, rinsing out the tea ball. Cal grunted, which I assumed was a negative response. “Well, I guess I’m going to have to visit the Council office.”

“No.” He went into the living room, snagged his laptop bag, and rifled through it for some random piece of paper.

“Why not? You didn’t have any problem sending me to your house when you needed information.”

“That was before—before I thought it was possible that someone could be lying in wait to hurt you. They weren’t supposed to be able to do that, Iris. They weren’t supposed to be able to get into my house. I had to sit there and listen while you were—It won’t happen again. I won’t have it.”

“You won’t have it?” I shot back. “You won’t
have
it? Where in your contract did it say, ‘Cal the vampire makes all decisions for Iris Scanlon?’ Have you ever seen me at the Council office before, Cal?” I asked.

He ground his teeth, which I took as a no.

“And why do you think that is? I mean, I have to stop by the office on a regular basis to collect paperwork, drop off invoices and deliveries. The offices are only open at night. How do you think I conduct my business without being seen by anyone but Ophelia? I’m like a ghost in that place. You spend enough time around people who are hardwired to see your kind as prey, you learn to
move quickly and quietly, to stay in shadows and behind doors. I know how to stay as unobtrusive as possible.”

“To drop off paperwork, yes,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Not to break into Ophelia’s desk.”

“I’m not going to break into anything,” I protested. “Ophelia hates to file. All of her papers are kept in stacks on the table behind her desk. And she’s rarely in her office, unless she’s expecting me, so it should be easily accessible. And as for your workspace, if your house is any indication, there’s hardly anything there. It should be easy to sift through
your
desk, too.”

“I said no.”

“And that would matter if you were my daddy. But since you’re not—Look, the sooner you have your information, the sooner you can finish your investigation and the sooner you can get out of my house and leave my little armpit of a town. That’s what you want, right?”

“Not like this, I don’t.”

“I just want to help. How am I supposed to sit around the house, watering plants and balancing my checkbook, knowing that you’ve toddled off to that nest of vipers, weakened and not quite at your stealthiest, to get yourself even deeper into trouble?”

“Weakened?” He growled. He hauled me against the wall with his hand gripped around my throat, squeezing lightly. I was pinned by his hips again, scrambling for purchase as I fought gravity and an irritated vampire. I flailed my limbs and ended up wrapped around him like a climbing vine. He glared at me, his fangs down. “This is what matters. Strength. Even
weakened
as I am, I would
be able to hurt you, Iris. It has nothing to do with gender or how intelligent you are. Is it better for me to treat you as an equal, as someone with thoughts and opinions and feelings as important as my own? Yes, but at the end of the day, the only way to stay alive is strength.”