“I missed you, too, Aunt Jettie,” I grunted as I disengaged my fingernails from the plaster and hopped down to the bed. “Is Mr. Wainwright here?”

She smiled as she thought of her beau, who also happened to be my recently deceased boss. “No, he’s really beating himself up over this break-in, so he’s standing guard at the shop. I told Zeb not to bother you with it, but he insisted you’d want to. Why are your eyes all puffy?”

“Oh, it’s just the French,” I said, wiping at the oh-so-attractive bloody tear tracks drying on my cheeks. “They were so damn rude.”

“I thought you were in Brussels,” Jettie said as I climbed back into bed. Outside my bedroom window, creeping fingers of sunlight were flirting with the edges of my blackout curtains. My internal clock told me it was almost six A.M., and I was so tired I could actually feel the drag on my limbs. Aunt Jettie pulled the covers up to my chin as she asked, “Where’s Gabriel?”

“Still in Brussels,” I said. “He had some things to take care of.”

Jettie studied my face in that unnerving X-ray method of hers. Fortunately, any penetrating wisdom on her part was cut short by my mother’s sudden appearance at my bedroom door.

“Hi, baby!” Mama cried. “Thank goodness you’re back!”

“What the hell is wrong with you people?” I howled, chucking a pillow at her. “What are you doing here so early?”

“Oh, I’ve been coming by every day to check on the place,” she said, throwing her arms around me. “Let me look at you! Oh, don’t ever go away for that long again, honey. I got so nervous not being able to see you or check in on you.”

Mama’s idea of a good vacation spot was the Blue Pineapple Motel in Panama City Beach, Florida. She did not see why it was necessary for me to see the world or why it was necessary to run off “God knows where” and share hotel rooms with a man I was not married to. She insisted that the hoteliers would know that we were not a married couple and we would give people a bad impression of America. I told her that if American tourists hadn’t already done that by eating string cheese while they toured the Louvre, I doubted my premarital sleeping habits would bother them all that much. She didn’t laugh.

Mama’s predictions of travel tragedy included my getting mugged. (I have superpowers, so it wasn’t likely.) Or developing food poisoning. (I don’t eat, so that was even less likely.) Or getting a rash from hotel soap. (OK, that actually happened, but it cleared right up.) But I doubt she foresaw me getting dumped in such a halfhearted, half-assed way. She definitely would have warned me.

Wait a minute. My brain finally caught up to what she’d just said.

“You come by the house when I’m not home?” I asked.

Mama gave me her patented “Well, of course, I’m invading your privacy, silly!” expression. “You gave us a key for emergencies. Someone has to keep your plants watered.”

“I don’t have any plants.” I pressed the pillow over my head and muttered, “I’m getting a moat.”

Mama pretended not to hear me, instead dropping a pile of envelopes onto my lap. “Here, honey, I got your mail while you were away.”

“Touch that curtain, and I won’t give you your present.” I didn’t bother looking up as Mama approached the window. Mama considered for a moment and then backed away.

In general terms, Mama had stopped trying to rehabilitate me out of being a vampire. This was good, because I was out of the coffin to most of the community. I was one of a few vampires in the Hollow who chose to live out in the open and maintain relationships with the living. Studies showed that most vampires turned since tax consultant/vampire Arnie Frink outed us with his right-to-work lawsuit dropped out of sight and moved to big cities like New York or New Orleans. They assimilated into the large populations of vampires and learned how to adjust to their new lifestyles … or their neighbors claimed to have no idea how they managed to fall into a puddle of gasoline, then trip into a burning leaf pile.

Thanks in no small part to my former supervisor, Mrs. Stubblefield, the news of my vampirism had officially made the beauty-parlor and kitchen circuit. Mama said people had stopped talking whenever she walked into the pre-church coffees on Sunday mornings, which meant the congregation of Half-Moon Hollow Baptist Church was aware as well. She took to her bed for a few days. But ever since a well-known member of the cast of All My Children came out as the parent of a vampire and Oprah did a show featuring Friends and Family of the Undead, Mama figures my being a vampire makes her “current.” She now introduces me as her “vampire daughter,” even to people I’ve known since I was a kid. She’s got a little bumper sticker with two inverted white triangles on a black background, the international symbol of support for vampire rights. She’s even insisted on attending a meeting of the Friends and Family of the Undead, which, fortunately, had suspended activities after the foreclosure of the Traveler’s Bowl, the hippie restaurant that hosted our meetings.

Of course, Mama still stocked my freezer with homemade pot pies to tempt me off my liquid diet. She showed up while I was sleeping and opened windows, hoping that I would slowly build up a tolerance to sunlight. As much as she loved me and being en vogue, Mama was determined to have a normal daughter. Even if it killed me.

I sifted through the alarming pile of mail while Mama bustled about my room, gathering dirty clothes. I’d been approved for an obscenely high-limit credit card that I hadn’t applied for. I’d been accepted as the newest member of the Half-Moon Hollow Chamber of Commerce, which I had applied for. My letter to the editor for the American Library Association newsletter regarding the nationwide need for more vamp-friendly resources and hours was rejected. The fancy linen envelope stuck out like a sore thumb among the cheap, glossy promotions. My hands shook a little as I turned it over in my hands. Had Gabriel’s mysterious pen pal finally decided to contact me? Imagine my horror when I saw the neat printed label addressed to “Miss Jame Janeson” from the Half-Moon Hollow High Alumni Committee instead. “Miss” was underlined. Twice.

“Oh, no.”

“What is it, hon?” Mama asked, folding my jeans with sharp creases.

I opened the overtly elegant invitation decorated with a palm tree. “My tenth high school reunion is this year. Ugh. And SueAnn Caldwell is our class president. I would rather face a den full of zombies than go to this thing.”

“Well, why on earth would you say that?” Mama cried. “You had such a good time in high school.”

“No, that was Jenny, the cheerleader. I was the one with the braces and the tuba.”

Mama winced at the venom in my voice when I said Jenny’s name. My older, perfect sister was not speaking to me for various reasons, including the dismissal of her lawsuit against me. The judge had this wacky idea that property that was willed to me in a legal and binding last testament should remain mine, even though I was no longer technically living. This, combined with her overall disgust with how I handled the outing of our potential step-grandfather as a ghoul, had prompted her to tell Mama that I was officially dead to her. Even Mama saw the lack of logic in that statement, but she declined to comment on it.

Crafty, blond, and born with a naturally disdainful curl to her lip, Jenny was the twin-setted, Martha-worshipping yin to my never-even-considered-baking-from-scratch yang. She was the undisputed “good daughter” between the two of us. She rarely disagreed with Mama. She enjoyed most of the things Mama loved: quilting, reading inspirational romance novels about Amish girls, actually ironing clothes instead of just throwing them in the dryer for a few minutes. And she’d done her duty to the family by bearing two obnoxious spawn, Andrew and Whatshisface.

Life was oddly quiet and stale without Jenny’s needling and disapproval. I’d always thought I would be so much better off as an only child, but now, I sort of missed her. Of course, I would never admit this, even under pain of death and/or a threatened Baywatch marathon.

Mama rolled her eyes in a gesture that was somehow both dismissive and loving. “Oh, you have to go. Jenny went to her tenth reunion, and she had a wonderful time.”

I scanned the invitation. “Jenny organized her high school reunion. I’m sure she had a great time. Oh, come on. Our reunion theme is ‘Enchanted Paradise,’ which was our senior prom theme. They haven’t had an original idea since then!”

“I just think it would be good for you to go back and see that some of the people you went to school with weren’t as scary as you made them out to be. You gave them a lot of power over you. Maybe it would do you some good.”

“Hmph.”

“When I went to my tenth reunion, everybody had gotten bald and fat. The Prom Queen was married to the Septic Tank King.”

“That makes it slightly more tempting,” I admitted.

“I’m going downstairs to get your laundry started up. You get your rest.”

“That’s not necessary, Mama, really.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. I’m sure you didn’t have time to find a laundromat when you were gallivanting around God knows where.”

“Actually, the hotels had very nice laundry services. I didn’t even know hotels did that.”

“You let a stranger wash your clothes, but you don’t want me to?” Mama gasped.

“If it will make you happy and let me get back to sleep, wash away,” I told her.

“No problem, honey.” Mama grabbed the freshly folded dirty clothes and walked out. She popped her head back into the bedroom doorway. “You were just teasing about the zombies, right? They’re not real?”

I pulled a sleep mask over my eyes and did not answer.

My mother ironed my jeans. With starch.

And because I am obviously incapable of washing my own clothes properly, Mama gathered all of my clean clothes out of my closet and washed those while I slept. So, without other pants options, I was basically moseying into the shop, John Wayne-style.

On the drive to Specialty Books, I worked on a self-improvement plan, a personal to-do list, if you will. I had taken way too much time adjusting to my new vampire lifestyle, using it as an excuse for just floating along, reacting to problems as they came up. It wasn’t surprising, really, when you considered that if there was a “Most Likely to Be Paralyzed by Fear of Change” award, a picture of me cringing would have been prominently featured in my high school yearbook. I had to get proactive. I had to demand things from the universe. I had to start kicking some ass … though not in the physical sense, because I’d basically lost or nearly lost every fight I’d gotten into since being turned.

Moving on.

My plan to become a Brave New Jane went a little something like this:

(1) Develop a healthy, normal romantic relationship, preferably with Gabriel.

(2) Create a fulfilling career for myself.

(3) Demand that my family love me without judgment. Even if it means I have to rent a new family over the Internet.

(4) Find a solution for world peace.

I can live without that last one, though I know it’s far more likely than the other three.

Considering that I was estranged from a sibling and a boyfriend, so far I’d failed miserably at the list—with the exception of the shop. It was barely recognizable, and not just because we’d torn down a wall and expanded into the porn store next door. Other than the plywood Dick had nailed over the broken window, there were no signs of a break-in. Books that might have been damaged by the hands of thieves were laid out carefully on the bar. The rest were piled haphazardly under heavy plastic drop cloths.

The space had been realigned, expanded. The front counter, still the same antique leaded glass and maple affair Mr. Wainwright had left behind, had been moved closer to the door. New beige carpet had been installed and was prepared for the bolts needed for the new shelving system, a shelving system that would actually allow customers to find what they want and navigate their way back out of the store, neither of which was encouraged by the previous system. While I planned on offering general-interest books and classic literature, the inventory would focus on vampire needs: cookbooks, history, finance, investment advice. I had already ordered two hundred copies of The Guide for the Newly Undead.