That’s right. My grandma brought a date to her fiancé’s burial. She’s all class, that lady.
Apparently, she’d met Wilbur at Whitlow’s as he was heading into an old Army buddy’s visitation. Sparks flew, time stood still, and Grandma Ruthie snagged another victim. On the upside, I think Wilbur’s presence may have been the only thing that kept her from flinging herself into the grave on top of the casket.
But somehow, my outing cousin Junie as a day-shift dancer at the Booby Hatch made me an embarrassment to the family. At the burial, Grandma had declared that she wouldn’t speak to me until I’d apologized to Junie. I would think this odd considering that Junie was a cousin on my dad’s side of the family and Ruthie was my maternal grandmother.
But Grandma Ruthie liked ninety-nine percent of the general population better than me, so why not cousins on the other side of the family?
During my shift that night, Aunt Jettie came into the shop to give me all of the details of the cemetery theatrics. She was in the middle of reenacting this declaration when a little woman in a double-knit pant suit came into the shop to claim a phone order. Aunt Jettie made herself scarce.
On the phone, Esther Barnes’s voice had sounded deep and accented. In person, she was squat, with dyed jet-black hair, deep wrinkles at the edges of her eyes, and a smoky topaz cocktail ring the size of a door knocker. Her voice was reedy and thin as she asked whether I had the “Barnes order” ready yet. I pulled her reserved copies of Mind over Matter: Maintaining Your Psychic Ability and The Search for the Inner Id from under the counter and rang them up.
There was something off about Esther Barnes. Her eyes were too bright, too sharp. Her mouth was small, thin, pinched into a coral-painted, birdlike moue. From the way her gaze was sweeping across the shop, I would guess she was calculating the value of every item in the store.
“Are you new in town, Ms. Barnes?” I asked, my tone light and friendly, even as I watched her weigh a brittle amethyst ceremonial blade with her even more fragile-looking hands.
“No.” She put the blade down, slapped her money on the counter, and stared at me. I would guess this stare had put many a shopgirl in her place over the years. But, well, I was bored, and she was there.
I smiled pleasantly. “Have family around here?”
Her eyes narrowed as what little politeness she offered drained out of her voice. “No.”
I held up a newly printed Specialty Books brochure. “Would you like to be put on our mailing list?”
OK, at this point, I was just trying to be annoying.
Ms. Barnes narrowed her eyes at me. There was a buzzing sensation, like being slapped under the forehead.
Ow.
It was as if someone let loose a hive full of bees in my head, little stings and pricks on the edge of my brain. I gripped the counter as the room spun out of focus. My head dipped as if I were just a bit tipsy, then snapped back into place as I fought for focus. Annoyed, I closed my eyes and built up a wall around my mind. I focused on the little woman in front of me and attempted to slap back, but it was like grabbing at sand. I couldn’t get a grip.
The edges of her consciousness kept slipping through my fingers. I did well just to maintain control of my own psychic defenses and not pass out at her feet.
Exhausted by what was really just a moment’s effort, I opened my eyes to find a smug smile stretched across Ms. Barnes’s face. “Better luck next time, dear.”
Did I just get psychically pimp-slapped by a little old lady?
After she sauntered out of the shop, I hustled back to the stacks and grabbed a copy of Mind over Matter: Maintaining Your Psychic Ability. “What the hell is in this book?”
I checked Mr. Wainwright’s “records” for Ms. Barnes’s contact information. And by records, I mean the stack of scrap paper he kept in the back of the cash-register drawer with scribbled customer names and addresses. She was nowhere to be found, which was not a surprise. He did, however, have the address for a man who lived in Possum Trot and called himself Nostradamus, which made a certain amount of sense.
I opened Mind over Matter and scanned a few pages, trying to find the section on how to use one’s mental talents to smack people around. Nothing. Esther Barnes was clearly playing a deck stacked with a few extra cards. How do you guard against someone who can reach into your skull and scramble stuff around?
“I’m going to have to make a tin-foil hat,” I muttered as the phone rang.
It was then that I realized how wrong I was to think that being brain-assaulted was going to be the worst part of my day. It was my mother, calling to remind me that the annual Jameson family tree-trimming party was coming up that weekend and that I needed to wear my Frosty the Snowman sweater for the family Christmas-card picture. Mama always artfully arranged our “candid” family tree-trimming picture one week after Thanksgiving, so she was able to send the Christmas cards out by December 14, one week before her arch-enemy and best friend, Carol Ann Reilly.
“Um, I don’t think Jenny and Grandma would be very happy about seeing me.”
“But y’all got along so well at the visitation!” Mama cried.
“Being glad that someone will wash dishes and being happy that they were present are two different things.”
“Now, you’re just being silly, Jane. You’re just going to have to learn to kiss and make up with Grandma and Jenny for the holidays. I won’t stand for this. It was one thing for you to miss Thanksgiving, but this is getting ridiculous. Where else are you going to go?”
“Actually, I might have plans,” I lied.
Mama gasped. “What do you mean, you have plans? It’s not Christmas unless you’re with family.”
“Well, I have some new friends this year, and they don’t have family around here. I thought it would be nice to spend some time with them.”
“New vampire friends,” Mama said, just a hint of bitterness tingeing her tone.
“No, not all of them are vampires.”
“Well, if you want to throw away years of tradition, that’s your choice. If you really want to spend the first Christmas since we lost you with strangers, that’s your decision to make.”
“What do you mean, ‘lost me’? I’m right here!”
“I can’t keep talking about it, Jane.”
“Talking about what? We don’t talk about this. At all.”
Mama sighed, the slightest edge of a sniffle curling at the end. “Will you at least come to the tree-trimming party so we can take the family picture? Not everyone has to know that you and Jenny have had a falling out.”
“Can’t you just Photoshop me in or something?” I asked.
“I don’t even know what that means.” Mama grunted. “Just show up on Saturday at six.”
I hung up the phone and commenced thumping my head against the leaded-glass counter.
“If you keep doing that, it’s going to leave a mark,” a smooth, bemused voice said. “Even your healing powers have limits.”
I looked up to find Andrea Byrne standing in front of me, smirking.
“You look perturbed. Well, more perturbed than usual,” she said, examining the paling bruise on my forehead.
“What was your first clue?” I asked grumpily.
Andrea reminds one of what Grace Kelly might have looked like with red hair and a twisted backstory. Broke after her split with her (fickle bastard) undead ex and disowned by a firmly antivampire family, Andrea came to the Hollow years before to get a job in a boutique downtown. But her real income came from clients who enjoyed her blood in a mutually safe environment for a small fee. Andrea was the first—and last—human I fed from. It made for a rather awkward beginning to our friendship, but she was the one human I knew who truly understood the bizarre aspects of my new vampire lifestyle. She was sort of like my undead blankie, keeping me connected to the living world. Mama would have done the same thing but with more guilt and sunburns.
She hefted both Mind over Matter and The Spectrum of Vampirism off the counter and winced. “A little light reading?”
“Just researching my roots,” I said, flipping Spectrum to the chapter titled “Global Origins.” “Like this charming theory, for example: ‘Gypsies believed that vampires returned from the dead to seek vengeance on those who may have contributed to their death or neglected to give them a proper burial. Graves were watched carefully for signs of being disturbed. Exhumed corpses that were bloated or had turned black would be staked, beheaded, and burned.’ Well, why didn’t they just blast the remains out of a cannon? Humans are stupid.”
“I’m standing right here,” Andrea griped.