“See, you took a nice moment, and you took it too far.” I sighed, burying my face in his shoulder.

Gigi stuck her head through the doorway. She snickered and said quietly, “Iris, dismount the vampire and get out here.”

I straightened, holding the jacket out to Gigi. “Ixnay on the ampirevay,” I muttered, glancing toward Ben.

Gigi smirked. “You know that pig Latin went out with scrunchies and Smurfs, right?”

I warned her, “Easy.”

“We’re leaving.”

“Back by eleven,” I reminded her, then cut her off at the first sign of a groan. “Complain, and it will be ten-thirty … and if you’re not in that door on time, I’ll show up at the Dairy Freeze in my bathrobe, yelling your full legal name.”

“You wouldn’t.” She hissed.

“Try me. Now, have a good time.” I kissed her forehead. Gigi snatched the jacket from me, pulling Ben by the collar as she bustled out the door.

“Good night, Miss Iris,” Ben called as Gigi yanked him along.

Cal cleared his throat. “Remember what I said, Ben.”

Ben flushed red, then white, as he disappeared into the shadows of the porch.

11

You should set up a deadline for your vampire guest to depart your house. Vampires are creatures of habit. Unless you specifically order them off of your couch, they will not leave.

—The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires

“Must you torture the boy?” I asked, turning on Cal as we heard Ben’s car engine start.

“Yes, it’s a rite of passage,” he said, nodding emphatically while I flopped onto the couch. “Your threat to show up at the drive-in wearing your bathrobe was particularly inspired.”

He sat on the opposite end of the couch, relaxing into the cushions. It struck me as odd that we hadn’t shared this room since his first night in the house. It seemed so long ago that I was staring down at a pale, gaunt stranger whom I didn’t quite trust.

I wasn’t sure I trusted him entirely now.

I cleared my throat and slipped my feet into his lap, hoping that maybe treating him like furniture would make him less intimidating. “For a teenage girl, fear of embarrassment is far more powerful than fear of consequences. Gigi didn’t believe I would do it until last year, when I actually pulled into the Dairy Freeze parking lot twenty minutes after her curfew. I didn’t even have to get out of my car. My mere presence was enough to make her jump into Sammi Jo’s car and beg her to floor it.”

“Were you wearing the bathrobe?”

I nodded, grinning. “Over my T-shirt and jeans.”

“You’re going to make a fantastic mother someday,” he said, chuckling.

“I think taking care of one so early in life may have scared me off of having more. I have a child,” I said, nodding toward Gigi’s school bag, slung across the foyer table. “I’ve raised her, just as much as my parents raised me. I’ve loved her, lost sleep worrying about her, taken care of her when she was sick, suffered through embarrassing but informative anatomical conversations. If that doesn’t make her mine, I don’t know what would. And at least I got to skip the messy-diaper-and-two-A.M.-feeding phase.”

Cal seemed to be mulling that information carefully, so I added, “Now that we’ve hashed out my numerous issues, what are you doing tonight?”

Cal frowned. “More research. I’ve been trying to track Blue Moon and its various dummy fronts. Whoever set this up knows exactly how to put up as many paper shields as possible.”

“What about the employees at the synthetic-blood plant? Surely they didn’t just agree to put experimental additives in their product without so much as a meeting.”

“The arrangements were made by one employee, Margaret Rimes, Nocturne’s director of product development—not unusual considering it was a relatively minor change to the formula. Her notes show that she met with the Blue Moon representatives at their offices.”

“The abandoned office park?”

“Most likely dressed up with rented furnishings,” he agreed. “Ms. Rimes seemed pleased with the company’s work. Her supervisors stated nothing seemed amiss about her reports.”

“What does Ms. Rimes have to say about it?” I asked.

“Nothing. Ms. Rimes died in a car accident a month ago. She lost control of her car. It flipped and rolled one hundred yards down an embankment, then caught fire.”

“Let me guess, this took place late at night on a remote stretch of highway? Because it’s sounding less and less like an accident.”

“Convenient car accidents can solve a lot of problems.”

“Later, I’m going to Google how to check my brakes for tampering,” I muttered. “Give me the lab results. I had to take a lot of organic chemistry in college, so there’s a good chance I’ll understand some of it. It might help to have fresh eyes.”

“Please, take it.” He shoved the files in my direction unceremoniously. We sat there, sprawled on the couch, reading paperwork. I’d broken out several of my mother’s books to try to interpret the different lab reports. And then I broke out some Twizzlers, which Cal insisted I put away, because seeing me “orally toy with sucrose-based whips” was too distracting.

I told him he should be happy I didn’t go for the Blow Pops.

He made me face in the opposite direction.

Despite this refreshing change of perspective, I couldn’t make much sense of the lab reports. The analysis of the poisoned vampire’s blood showed compounds I’d never heard of and chemical traces that didn’t make sense. For instance, there were healthy amounts of silicic acid and saponins, consistent with extract of lungwort. But lungwort had astringent properties used to treat lung infections. Then there were traces of thymol, a natural antifungal that served as the active ingredient in most mouthwashes. Apparently, our culprit wanted the vampires disabled with healthy, minty-fresh breath.

I could not think of any possible reason for lungwort or balm plants to be used in a poison that was supposed to drive vampires crazy. The chemist who came up with this was either brilliant or brilliantly disturbed.

I flipped to the last page of the report and zoned in on one word. Aconitine. Huge amounts of aconitine. My first botany professor spent three days talking about the elegant “Queen of Poisons” derived from aconite, also known as wolfsbane or monkshood.

Dr. Bailey had been a big murder-mystery fan. He went on and on about the various people who had tried to bump off loved ones and not-so-loved ones with aconitine … Victims experienced numbness and tingling in the extremities, and if the dose was large enough, they felt burning pain followed by paralysis, then lung and heart failure. Dr. Bailey used aconite as an example of why we had to respect all plants, even the pretty ones, because they could be the deadliest.

Some ancient cultures used aconitine in battle to tip their spears and arrows, a sort of double whammy for those who survived wartime impalement. Cal should have found this interesting. But he seemed to be concentrating awfully hard on tax paperwork for Blue Moon, and if I interrupted, he might try to explain it to me.

Shudder.

After a few hours, my eyes started to cross over the tiny text. I stood, cracking my stiff neck and stretching my arms.

I wondered if Jane had this sort of thing in her shop, Specialty Books. She had an alarming range of titles, including werewolf relationship guides, biographies of the “real” Sasquatch, and remedial books for poorly trained witches. The copies of World War Z, a treatise on surviving the zombie apocalypse, were shelved in the nonfiction section under “self-help.” When I asked whether that was a joke, she sort of chuckled nervously and didn’t answer.

The problem with Jane is that I can never tell when she’s kidding.

“This is all starting to look the same.” I moaned. “I think we’re going about this in the wrong way. I’m looking up each chemical on the ingredients list to pin down which of them could cause specific symptoms. But botanical compounds work together. It may not be a one-to-one effect.”

“What if you looked up the individual symptoms and worked from there?”

“That’s a good idea,” I replied. “Except for the part where all of my resources refer to human symptoms. I would imagine that vampires are affected differently, since you’re … um, well, there’s just no other way to put it—you’re dead.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted.

“I am your detail girl,” I said, yawning widely. “I think I know where I can get some more relevant books. I could go online, but frankly, I don’t want to trust this to some wacko running a blog out of his mama’s basement.”

Cal growled and tossed his paperwork aside. Under the cursing and muttering, I could make out “clever bastard” and “goddamn invisible.” I shrank back into the couch cushions. When he saw me moving away from him, he closed his eyes. He stretched his hand out tentatively and stroked it up my calf.

“Why don’t you go up to bed?” he said. “You’ve been up all day, and you’ve spent the last three hours staring at chemical nonsense. You must be exhausted.”

“I want to stay up and wait for Gigi. And I don’t want to leave you unattended, in case you get ideas about ambushing Ben in the driveway.”

“The damage wouldn’t be permanent!” he protested.

“You’re not used to this level of frustration, are you?”

“No,” he admitted. “I won’t say that the answers I need fall out of the sky into my lap, but I’m used to having the full resources of the Council at my disposal. I’m used to working out in the open. I’m not used to being frustrated. I’m not used to feeling weak and indebted.”

“You’re not weak.” I scoffed, nudging him gently again. He shot me a scornful look. “OK, for a vampire, you’re not in top shape. But compared with me, you’re still practically Superman … or at least Aquaman.”

“I noticed that you didn’t tell me I wasn’t indebted,” he said.

“Well, you still owe me about forty thousand dollars.”

“Ah.” He chuckled. “How could I forget?”

“I won’t let you, trust me. You’re not the only one who can track people down.”

“Why does it sound so intriguing when you say it like that?” He leered at me, leaning closer. I angled away, not quite ready for close contact yet.

Just then, the door swung open, and Gigi came barreling through, flushed and happy. When she caught sight of her sister in some sort of smoldering staring contest with our houseguest, she rolled her eyes dramatically. “Is all of this unresolved sexual tension going to become a thing with you two? Don’t make me get the hose.”

I straightened, attempting to look like the respectable adult I was supposed to be. I crossed to the front window, where I saw Ben sprinting for his car like his shoes were on fire.

Cal cleared his throat and straightened his shirt, trying to keep some semblance of respectability. “We could have this discussion, Gigi. Or we could talk about the fact that I heard Ben’s car pull into the driveway at least fifteen minutes ago.” His lips twitched. “What have you been doing all that time?”

Mouth agape, I turned to Gigi, who looked stricken.

Clearly, vampire hearing could be very helpful in parenting.

“Well, I’m suddenly very tired.” Gigi pantomimed a huge yawn and broke for the stairs. “Good night, all! Happy straddling.”

“You are really getting the hang of this whole teenager thing,” I marveled.

“It’s all about elimination by escalation.” He sighed. “You humiliate them before they can humiliate you. They seek shelter elsewhere.”