And then I felt the pain. My eyes flew open. Gabriel’s fangs were sunk deep into the flesh of my thigh, twin trickles of blood flowing onto the sheets as he fed greedily. He snarled up at me, my blood dripping obscenely from his fangs. I screamed again, for entirely different reasons. And he launched himself at me, snapping his teeth against my throat and draining me. He rolled away, sated, and disappeared into the sheets. Horrified, I raised my bloodied hands and saw them turn slowly gray. They seemed to decompose before my very eyes. I was a corpse, rotting and decayed.

That certainly explained the smell.

I woke up with a start and immediately clamped my hand over my nose. As I shook off the last blood-smeared images of the dream, my stomach roiled. I had not smelled anything that foul since an eighteen-wheeler packed with live hogs overturned near my elementary school. My nostrils actually burned with the scents of decaying fish and ammonia. I sat up slowly, my body sluggish in the wake of the peaking sun. I felt as if I was swimming through molasses. I pressed a dirty sock against my nose, which frankly smelled a lot better than whatever was wafting through my house.

“Aunt Jettie!” I yelled. “Has there been a septic-tank explosion?”

Ignoring the weird cotton-wool sensation of daylight consciousness inside my head, I padded toward the stairs. The smell was getting stronger. I steadied myself and resisted a strong urge to gag. I crept downstairs and checked the bathroom to make sure there hadn’t been some sort of sewer mishap.

“Whatcha doing, honey?” Jettie asked, appearing over my shoulder as I carefully took the lid off the toilet tank. “Do you have any idea what you’re looking at?”

“Not particularly. I’m just trying to figure out where the stench of death is coming from. No offense.”

“None taken. What stench?”

“You don’t smell that?”

“I don’t smell anything. I don’t have a nose,” Aunt Jettie reminded me gently.

“Trust me, you got the better end of the deal.”

I wandered toward the front door, my eyes watering as the smell took on a new hideous note with every step. It was coming from the porch. Fitz was waiting by the door, thumping his tail on the floor because he thought I was about to let him out. Obviously, whatever was out there, Fitz was desperate to roll in it. Considering the Great Dead Skunk Caper of 2002, this was not a good sign.

I put on the Jackie O sunglasses, a heavy raincoat of Aunt Jettie’s, and a floppy straw hat and wrapped a scarf around my face. I pulled back the blackout curtains and hissed at the slap in the face even obscured noontime sunlight dealt me. I squinted through the light. I couldn’t see any dead animals or toxic waste strewn across the lawn, but it did seem to get stronger the closer I got to the window glass. I snapped the curtain shut and backed away. Fitz whined and did the “let me out to play” dance.

I gently shoved him away from the door. “Sorry, buddy, I don’t think they make doggie shampoo strong enough.”

There was no way I could leave the house to clean it up, so I was stuck. I went to the attic, the farthest point of the house away from the porch, and slept on an old velvet sofa. Well, I tossed and turned and kept a pillow clamped over my face.

When the sun finally set, I grabbed my car-wash supplies out of the garage and dragged the hose to the porch. There was a slimy, creamy yellow substance smeared on the front door, the banister, the porch swing, the railing, the boards of the porch itself. It smelled like burnt almonds and the orifice of a dead horse. Smashed against the front door was a weird-looking round hull the size of a volleyball. It looked like a spiky, greenish coconut.

“What in the name of all that’s holy is this?” I wondered, holding the shell at arm’s length.

I turned to see Zeb’s car pulling to a stop in front of the house.

“Hey, Jolene sent me over with some flyers for the next FFOTU meeting.” His head tilted at the curious object in my hand. “Where did you get—mother of God!” Zeb yelled. “What is that smell?”

“I don’t know. I think my front porch has been slimed or possibly defiled by a sea monster.” I held up my fingers to show him the buttery yuck. “I’ve been trapped in the house all day while this stuff baked in the hot sun. I just wish I knew what this thing was, so I would know which haz-mat team to call.”

A smug grin spread across Zeb’s face, and he crossed him arms and leaned back in the porch swing.

“What?” I asked. “Care to let me in on the joke?”

He examined his fingernails nonchalantly. “I’m just reveling in knowing something you don’t. So, this is what it feels like … to be the smartest person in the room. I like it. I feel all … tingly.”

“Zeb.”

“Sorry,” he said, nudging the husk with his foot. “That’s a durian. I saw it on the Travel Channel. That guy who thinks turtle gall bladders are a great lunch option swears they’re a delicacy. He did a whole segment on them for his Indonesia episode. You know, people are seriously injured, even killed, by these things every year? They fall out of the trees when they’re ripe, and splat . It’s like having a spiny cannonball dropped on your skull.”

Zeb sniffed. “The odor is so strong that Asian governments have banned them from subways, elevators, hotel rooms, basically any enclosed space where people can’t escape the smell.”

“You’re enjoying your position as smart guy way too much,” I told him. “So, someone brought stinky fruit all the way from Indonesia to play the world’s cruelest olfactory joke on me? How do I get rid of it? Burn down the house?”

Zeb rolled up his sleeves and held out his hands for a brush. “A little elbow grease, some borax, perhaps a nuclear device.”

“Thank you, that’s very helpful,” I said, slapping the scrubbrush into his palm.

The smell did not come out. We scrubbed for hours to deslime the porch, but apparently the wood of River Oaks is very absorbent. The project did give us quality time to spend together not talking. I resisted my natural urge to jabber and just worked. Companionable silence was sort of nice. It felt mature.

Zeb finally broke when he realized that we’d nearly scrubbed the paint off my porch but hadn’t made a dent in the smell.

“I think we made the smell angry,” Zeb said, wrinkling his nose. “The good news is that we just happen to have intimate information of a personal nature about a certain vampire who knows how to obtain a pressure washer at eleven P.M.”

“One, I hope you mean Dick,” I said as he dialed his cell phone. “And two, whatever intimate personal information you have about Dick, please don’t share it with me.”

We went inside for some cold drinks. Zeb stripped his shirt off, wiping the durian remains from his hands. “You know what, I have to say the whole unkempt-workman thing is a good look for you. You should go home to Jolene right now all sweaty and manly.”

“I can’t. I smell like …” He shuddered. “I can’t go home to Jolene like this. I’m always telling her not to come home stinky after she’s rolled in something dead.”

I stretched out on the porch steps, flexing my tired legs. “Wait, you do mean in wolf form, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at me as if I was the crazy one.

“Your marriage is not like other marriages,” I told him. “So, how are you guys? Have you adjusted to the whole twins thing yet?”

“You were right,” he said sheepishly.

I smirked. “I usually am.”

“I don’t have much of a choice in the matter. The babies are on their way, so the best thing to do is just hold on and enjoy the ride. And when you think about it, it’s pretty cool,” he said, pausing to take a drink. “Besides, Jolene’s cousin Raylene is having triplets, so it could be worse.”

“Well, there you go.”

Zeb wiped his forehead off and considered. “This stinky-fruit drive-by is a weird thing to do to someone. Do you think Gabriel did it?”

“This isn’t really Gabriel’s style. This involves a certain whimsical malice that he lacks. Besides, he’s not mad at me. He just can’t seem to grasp why I’m mad at him, which is infuriating. And even when he was mad at me, he was much more likely to lecture me sternly or give me a spanking than leave putrid fruit paste on my porch.”

“I’m going to ignore the spanking reference,” he said under his breath.

“Probably for the best,” I agreed.

“So, who do you think is the fruit bomber?”

I shrugged. “Could be some random person in town who doesn’t like vampires. Could be a member of the Chamber of Commerce who has decided they don’t want me there after all. Now, that’s the place for whimsical malice. Heck, this could be Dick’s idea of a hilarious practical joke to lift my spirits. It could be anybody.”

“That’s not comforting.” Zeb said.

Or, I thought, it could be my mysterious pen pal, hoping I would be disoriented enough from lack of sleep and olfactory overdrive to stumble out of the house in full daylight to investigate the smell.

“It sucks to be this popular,” I said, reaching into the front hall to pull out my purse. “Which is why I went to the scary sporting-goods store last night and bought this.”

I pulled my new stun gun out of its holster and pressed the trigger, smiling as the arc of current connected between the two prongs.

“You bought a stun gun?” he cried. “Why did you buy a stun gun?”

“Do you want to smell my porch again?” I asked. “There’s some stuff going on right now, Zeb. I need something for protection, and I lost the mace Gabriel gave me. And I lost Gabriel. I can’t depend on anybody to protect me. I think we can agree that buying a gun would be much more likely to end in my shooting myself or innocent bystanders.”

“But you’re a vampire! You have superstrength. I’ve seen you kill someone with your bare hands. Well, there was a wooden stake in your bare hands. But still.”

“I don’t like carrying this thing around with me, either, Zeb. You know me, I only resort to violent impulses when I feel I have no option—”

“Or you’re cranky or startled, or your blood sugar is low, or you have a hangnail—”

I cut him off with a glare. “This will keep me doing too much damage to the other person while still giving me enough time to get away. And this will keep me from getting my hands dirty or, you know, dusty.”

“You know you’re going to end up electrocuting yourself, right?”

“I know it’s highly likely,” I conceded.

As if I didn’t have enough odd, emotionally hamstrung men in my life, Emery Mueller started spending a lot of time at the shop. A lot of time. Enough time that I started to consider making up with Gabriel just so he could reach into Emery’s brain and wipe out any memory he had of where the shop was located. It was a skill neither Dick nor I possessed.

After seeing that I would not be closing the shop after all, Emery claimed that he wanted to keep an eye on the “family interests.” So, he spent every night at the shop, annoying the hell out of Andrea with questions about her “alternative lifestyle.” It appeared that he’d developed a bit of a crush on my favorite blood surrogate and frequently asked her to join him at church. When she refused, he blamed it on the influence of her “unfortunate choice of suitors” and spent most of his time giving her the moon eyes. Andrea spent most of her time trying not to be creeped out by her boyfriend’s great-great-grandson’s advances.

How many women could say they had that problem?

Dick stopped showing up on Wednesday nights, claiming he was calling in sick for “terminal disappointment.” At least he offered an excuse. Mr. Wainwright just disappeared.