“Hey, hey! If you can’t respect the daiquiri, at least respect the shirt,” she griped, swiping at the liquor I’d made her spill on her celery-colored blouse. “I know better than to ask you to respect me.”

I blew her a kiss and poured more daiquiri as Andrea began her tale in an ominous tone. “Margie said it happened slowly. One cold October night, a Courtney attended her first meeting, then another and another. It was as if the chamber was a hive being invaded by really perky Africanized bees. And pretty soon, they were proposing extra events and creating committees to run those events, and they built a power base. They elected themselves as officers, moved the headquarters, rewrote the bylaws, and made life miserable for the old-school members. One by one, the charter members all left. Margie quit after they gave her a demerit for wearing brown shoes with a black suit. To Margie, that translated to: You’re over forty, get out.”

“What happened to all the men?”

Andrea shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess they just quit, or they got too many demerits …”

“I think the Courtneys ate them,” I countered.

“Your guess is there’s some supernatural reason for the pink chamber seal?”

I nodded. “My guess: coven of succubi.”

“Well, you should fit in well, being a vampire and all.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You did tell them that you’re a vampire, right?”

I sipped my drink to avoid answering.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to live in the coffin anymore!” Andrea cried.

“I’m not living in the coffin. I’m just not volunteering any information that wouldn’t come up in an introductory conversation. Do you walk up to people and say, ‘Hi, I’m Andrea. I’m a natural redhead.”

“I’m not a natural redhead.”

“I knew it!”

“Don’t deflect the question. So, I guess you’re not going back, huh?”

“I have to,” I mumbled. “I’m in charge of the prizes for the charity carnival.”

Andrea hooted. “They’ve pulled you in!”

“They did not!”

“They made you their prize bitch! And not in the dog-show way. You might as well have given them all your milk money and then done their homework for them.”

“I told you, they’re scary. And blond. We’ve established that I don’t do well with scary blond people. And you’re starting to talk like me the more time we spend together. I think we can both agree that having one person in the world who talks like me is too many.”

“Jane, maybe you could see this as an opportunity to grow as a person, to face your fears, to be a little less wracked by insecurity.”

“I am not wracked by fear and insecurity. I have completely normal fears: failure, clowns, spiders. What’s weird about that?” I groaned. “Oh, who am I kidding? It’s all gone pear-shaped.”

Andrea patted my head. “No more Kitchen Nightmares for you.”

“It’s Gordon Ramsay. I can’t help myself. All the yelling and the cursing … it’s so forceful. And he takes off his shirt at least once every episode to change into his chef’s uniform.”

She snorted. “Freak.”

“Look, I’m going to stick it out. I have to. Joining the chamber is good for the shop … it’s going to be good for the shop. Please, God, let it be good for the shop. And at least we know that they’ll let you quit if it’s not the place for you … or you exceed the maximum weight allowances.”

Andrea snickered. “You know, maybe you’d be a little more confident if you jazzed up your wardrobe a bit.”

I smirked. “You’re just looking for an excuse to take me on another humiliating shopping excursion.”

“Keep it up, and I’ll put you in a stylish poncho,” she said, giving me a mock evil glare.

I shuddered. “Vampires should not wear ponchos.” I made kissing noises and beckoned my dog. “Come here, Fitz.”

Fitz yawned and scooched even further under the porch swing, nuzzling his head into Andrea’s hand.

“Traitor,” I muttered.

“Oh, you got a shipment at the shop. I put it on your hall table,” she said, rising and dislodging Fitz’s head from her knee.

“Why didn’t you just leave it at the shop?” I asked, following her through the front door, pitcher in hand.

“Well, I thought maybe you’d want these for yourself,” she said, smirking, handing me the opened box. About a dozen books with blazing neon titles winked out at me.

“ Forbidden Thirst. Blood Lust. Penetrating Fangs. The Misadventures of Millie ,” I read, thumbing through the slick paperbacks. This went way beyond the cover of your average bodice-ripper. Let’s just say more was being inserted than fangs. “I didn’t order this! This is … porn! Vampire porn, but porn all the same.”

“I think the publishers prefer the term ‘erotica.’”

I shot Andrea my best withering glare. She shrugged, all wide, innocent eyes betrayed by her madly twitching lips. “Well, you said you were going to be lacking in sexual companionship. I thought maybe you decided to expand your horizons.”

“Your perception of me is disturbing.” I shuddered. “Is there a packing slip?”

“‘Hope you enjoy these samples. Let me know about ordering. Talk soon, Paul,’” Andrea read aloud before showing me the innocent slip of white paper. “Who’s Paul?”

“Paul Dupree, one of my suppliers in Atlanta. He specializes in vampire publishing. Normally, he sends me diet guides and self-help books.”

“Technically, that could be considered a form of self-help.” Andrea wriggled her eyebrows suggestively.

“Ew. I’m leather-bound editions, not this!”

“Maybe he just got stuck on leather-bound,” she said, cocking her head to get a better look at Millie, who seemed more than thrilled to be tied up, hanging upside down, and leered at by a vampire with implausible pecs.

“Did Dick give you a list of dirty quips? You’re enjoying this way too much.”

She snorted. “I’ve seen some of the titles in your personal library. I don’t think I would be too judgmental.”

“I’m not going to enter into a censorship debate with you. I have other things on my mind right now— Stop laughing!” I cried when she collapsed onto a chair. “All I can say is thank goodness Gabriel’s not here to see this. He’d probably go after Paul and rip his arms off for sending me this sort of thing, professional relationship or no … or he’d just say, ‘This porn stash is probably for the best’ and gift me with a lifetime supply of batteries.”

Andrea doubled over, laughing. I was glad someone could enjoy my pain. The truth was, I didn’t need any form of artificial stimulation. My body refused to believe that Gabriel and I were no longer together, unwilling to give up the orgasms he gave me, even if they had to be manufactured in my dreams. Every night, I had vivid, full-color dreams of Gabriel, his body, his lips, that thing he used to do with his index finger. My cruel subconscious dredged up memories of real encounters or provided elaborate scenarios, like the dream where Gabriel was a police officer and I had to use all my wiles—and a lap dance—to persuade him not to give me a speeding ticket. Or there were the dreams where he just stalked into the house, threw me down on the kitchen table without a word, and took me. Each night, I woke up in the middle of a screaming, head-spinning orgasm and was brought crashing down when I realized that I was alone. I was caught between being afraid to go to sleep and wanting to go to bed hours too early.

Finally recovered and rubbing at the stitch in her side, Andrea wiped her eyes. She sighed. “Still haven’t heard from him?”

“Nope.” She followed me into the kitchen, where I dropped the empty pitcher into the sink and pulled a Faux Type O out of the fridge. “And I’m caught in that hellish ‘I want to call him, but I would rather he call me, because that proves he wants to talk to me’ limbo. When did my life become a tragic episode of Felicity ?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means that I feel like I’m waiting for that very special boy to call, only that very special boy isn’t breathing. And he told me it was probably for the best that we part ways more than three thousand miles from home, and he hasn’t deemed it necessary to contact me in two weeks. Not even to make sure my plane didn’t crash into the Atlantic. At this point, I’m not entirely sure he’s not going to stay in Europe until he hears that I’ve moved away or become a nun or something.”

She patted my head fondly. “Well, next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. It is something to think of and gives her a sort of distinction among her companions.”

My face softened into a smile. “You read Pride and Prejudice .”

Andrea rolled her eyes. “Well, I figured if I’m going to survive working at the shop, I would have to. And you only hinted that a person of any intelligence was required to read at least one Jane Austen book, like a thousand times.”

I tapped a finger to my chin. “That doesn’t sound anything like me …”

It was two days from the reopening. The cash-register drawer was stuck. We were missing a rather large shipment of what I considered our cornerstone product, The Guide for the Newly Undead. And I was beginning to suspect that Andrea was slipping extra espresso into her magical mystery coffee potions because “caffeinated Jane” amused her.

The only thing we had going for us was a local dairy that was willing to deliver to an account as small as ours and to a location as bad as ours at night. In fact, it was a delight to come downstairs from Mr. Wainwright’s old apartment to find a tall man in an indecently tight blue Half-Moon Dairy uniform stocking our little coffee-bar fridge with half-and-half and heavy cream.

“Wow, is that our dairy guy?” I whispered. Andrea didn’t bother removing her eyes from the sight of Dairy Guy’s delicious blue-clad bottom swaying as he loaded the fridge.

“Yep,” Andrea answered absently.

“He’s going to be coming here regularly, right?”

We simultaneously tilted our heads as Dairy Guy’s hips changed angles. Andrea sighed, “Yep.”

“Maybe we should arrange for Dick to be elsewhere on delivery nights,” I whispered. “Because you’re drooling. And I don’t blame you because milk does a body goooo— Oh, my God.” My jaw dropped as Dairy Guy turned, and I recognized him as little Jamie Lanier, whom I used to babysit every summer.

Jamie loomed four inches over my tall frame. His warm green eyes twinkled at me from under a faded blue ball cap he’d slapped over his wavy dark blond hair. (Curse my weakness for all-American boys!) Every inch of him was toned and tan, and he smelled like Irish Spring soap. I bit back a sigh.

This was the danger of living in the small town where you grew up. Local hotties have to start off somewhere, and generally, it’s as the annoying towheaded Little Leaguer who would only eat smiley-face pancakes from ages five to seven.

“Miss Jane! Hi!” He flashed those devastating dimples. “It’s great to see you!”

“Jamie. How’s your mom?” I asked, flinching at his use of “Miss,” a sure sign that he thought of me as a senior citizen. “Still teaching?”

“Yep. But she says she’s going to retire now that I’m graduating and she and dad are going to have the house to themselves.”

“You’re graduating from college?” I said, an insane note of desperation in my voice as I tried to do the age math in my head.