10

Your childe may surprise you with his or her interests. Remember that a vampire with hobbies is forty percent less likely to have a “rampage” incident.

—The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire

Jane’s bookshop was a colorful, comfortable, quirky paradise. My inner book nerd rejoiced at the squashy purple chairs, the pretty knickknacks, the cozy smell of coffee and blood percolating behind the maple coffee bar. Crystals and silver figurines and geodes took up space along the upper shelves, displayed to catch the eye but high enough that they didn’t make the place look cluttered.

The book selection covered a little bit of everything: classic literature, graphic novels, straight-up occult studies, and a huge array of vampire self-help books. That made sense, given the number of vampires who circulated through the door.

I absolutely loved it.

It was safe for me to be there. While plenty of people would recognize Ben if he sat in the middle of Specialty Books working on his laptop, no one outside of Jane’s trust circle would recognize me. It reminded me of Pages, the little independent bookshop in my hometown where I spent a sad number of Friday nights in high school. While Ben was spending tonight working in the IT office, I’d gotten permission from Jane to take the night off so I could do a history assignment that had me stumped. Dr. Baker was a stickler for punctuality and punctuation, so my usual trick of turning in a first draft would not fly.

My IM pinged, and a little speech bubble popped up on my screen: Whatcha doin’?—complete with a Phineas and Ferb meme. I smiled. Jane had loosened the Internet policies ever so slightly after Ben and I had both come home from our “night walk” without incident. While the specter of Dr. Hudson and his science still made her nervous, Jane was giving us way more online freedom. We were allowed to talk to our friends as long as we understood that we still couldn’t reveal our location to anyone. Ben was even working up to an in-person visit with his family. All in all, everything was coming up pretty rosy for us.

Seriously, we just had a formatting meeting where we spent thirty minutes debating the “least historically offensive” fonts, Ben wrote. Please give me some news of the world outside. Is it beautiful there? Details, please, on the assignment you are working on. Use footnotes if you can. Citations are sexy.

And so I was having fun with Ben. Now that he’d made the monumental gesture of admitting that he (gasp) liked me, I’d put the burden completely on him to try to find some way for us to spend time together away from the house, a damn near impossible task. And until he did that, I was standing just a little closer to him as we both fished our breakfast out of the fridge in the evening. I was making a lot of direct eye contact. I was suggesting late-night study sessions. I was generally vexing him.

Hard at work, being very productive and studious, I have no time to talk nerdy to you, sir.

He sent me a little pouty emoji. You’re killing me, Smalls.

I sat back in my perfectly comfortable chair and rolled my shoulders. I scanned the bookshelves with my superior vision, taking in each spine. A few titles even I recognized—Fifty Ways to Introduce Variety to Your Undead Diet, Love Bites, The Office after Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace. My eyes lit on a bright green softcover volume titled The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire.

I scanned the back cover, which featured bullet points listing all the super-helpful tips unwilling undead parents could find inside. “Addressing the sire-childe power dynamic!” “Feeding difficulties and how to fix them!” “A how-to guide to interacting with your childe’s biological family!” This would be helpful if and when I ever met Ben’s family, which raised the question, did I want to meet Ben’s family?

Maybe the book could tell me.

“Andrea!” I called. “I’m taking this! Can you tell Jane I owe her eighteen ninety-five?”

“Jane opened an account for you. You’ll still have about eighty bucks before you hit your limit for the month.”

“Wow, that’s really nice of her. As soon as I’m done with the Skype chat I have scheduled with Morgan and Keagan, I’m going to go on an eighty-one-dollar shopping spree. And that is more exciting than it should be, which is an indication of my social life, really.”

“Honey, I once saw Jane weep while hugging a first edition of Sense and Sensibility. By that standard, you’re downright tame.”

“Good point,” I agreed, checking the time on my laptop screen. “My Skype thing is scheduled in about fifteen minutes. Would it be OK if I went into Jane’s office for it?”

“Sure, hon. Jane has lifted her online embargo, right? I don’t have to watch you to make sure you’re not contacting people you shouldn’t be talking to?”

“No, I understand the rules,” I said. “I know what I should and shouldn’t say, who to talk to and who to shout ‘I’m an Internet ghost!’ at and then shut off the webcam. I know the drill.”

“Behave, or I will wax your eyebrows while you sleep,” Andrea told me.

“That’s a very respectable threat,” I assured her.

Jane’s office was a little less organized than the shop. It was a small space dominated by a large, dark wooden desk and yet more framed photos. I’d gotten the impression that Jane needed these reminders of loved ones and good times around her in times of stress, considering that the highest concentrations of the photos were in locations where she either dealt with Council business or dealt with vendor issues and customer-service stupidity.

It would be nice, I thought, to have that kind of life, to have that support system Libby spoke of, to have all of those photos to put in my space to remind me that there were people out in the world wanting good things for me. But first, I had to graduate from school, get a job, and do the things I needed to do to establish that kind of life for myself.

After opening my laptop on Jane’s enormous desk, I worked on my paper for a while, keeping a Skype window open for my friends’ call. I was making pretty decent progress on my essay question when I heard the familiar Skype chime. Grinning, I hit the green accept button.

But instead of my friends, Tina’s face appeared in my screen. My mouth dropped open. I hadn’t even realized that Tina was on my list of accepted contacts. I’d never had problems with her as a dorm director. While she seemed to have good intentions, Tina seemed just a little too eager to be the “cool adult” in her charges’ lives, whether they were vampire or living. That sort of intensity could be off-putting.

No, wait. I remembered that in the first few weeks of school, Tina had added everybody in the dorm as a contact. I was pretty sure she didn’t have any friends on social media, and I felt too guilty not to accept the request.

Weird.

“Hi, Tina.” I cleared my throat. “I didn’t expect— This is a pleasant surprise!”

“Pleasant.” That was the word for it, right?

“Hey! Meagan!” she said, leaning just a little too close toward the camera. “How’s it going? Jane’s been sending me reports, but I wanted to talk to you face-to-face. I just figured out that your cell phone isn’t working. So how are you? Are you happy with your placement? Are your professors being responsive? I can contact them if you’re not getting enough help with your assignments.”

“Actually, yeah, the classes are going really well. And Jane’s great. Ben’s great. Everything is great.” Before being turned, I probably would have offered Tina much more information, details to prove that I was studying hard, meeting expectations, earning the extra attention the school was giving me. But somehow I held back. I had enough people here in the Hollow monitoring my progress. I didn’t need to add weekly Skype chats with Tina to my regimen of supervision.

“Good! I’m so glad. We miss you around the hall. New Dawn just isn’t the same without your cheerful presence.”

I kept my face pleasant, but I couldn’t help but wonder where this was coming from. I was pretty sure that Tina hadn’t spoken to me directly before I was turned. It’s not like she’d sent me a care package to Jane’s house. Hell, I’d barely thought of her, with the exception of those wonky financial reports she’d sent us.

Wait.

I couldn’t ask about the financials, because I couldn’t quote the numbers out of my head, and I still didn’t know whether the number fudging was Council-sanctioned or not. But I could ask her about the other weird discrepancy that came up in my paperwork overload. It would satisfy my morbid curiosity and show Tina that I was a semi-grown-up professional with work duties—who didn’t need adult “friends” checking in on her via invasive social media, thank you very much.

I smiled brightly. “Actually, Tina, I’m glad you called, because I had a question for you.”

Tina’s face practically glowed with pleasure. “Shoot. I’m here for you, anything you need.”

“You know that I’ve been working at the Council office to fill my hours, acting as Jane Jameson-Nightengale’s personal assistant?”

Tina’s expression faltered just the tiniest bit. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“And last month, you asked Ophelia to submit a list of her contacts in the area.”

Tina nodded. “Yes, I got an e-mail from Jane asking for a list of her contacts.”

I pursed my lips. Because Jane specifically said she’d never sent Tina such an e-mail. Something was weird here. And some suspicious itch at the back of my head wouldn’t let me drop it.

“Well, Ophelia responded to that request by sending Jane a pretty rude e-mail.”

Tina cringed. “Well, that’s not good.”

“Yeah, the response e-mail has to go into her disciplinary file,” I said, deliberately leaving out the part where Jane considered the e-mail too minor to punish Ophelia. “We have to document every little thing around here. You know how vampires are about keeping records.”

“Sure.”

“So can you send me a copy of your e-mail?” I asked. “I would print it off from our system, but somehow it got deleted from our server. Our IT department tends to purge anytime someone’s Internet activity gets the least bit suspicious.”

“I’m not sure I still have it,” Tina said. “I empty my in-box pretty often.”

Tina’s expression faltered for just a microsecond. I couldn’t tell if it was annoyance or fear that rearranged her face. From what I’d seen while living at New Dawn, Tina jumped at any chance to prove her loyalty and usefulness to any vampire who crossed her path. Why was she being so slow to jump on an opportunity to do a favor for the head-vampire-bitch-in-charge? Or was she afraid because she’d deleted the e-mail and thought Jane would be upset with her for not saving what could be an important communication?

“Well, just give your in-box a look and see if you can find it,” I said.

“Sure thing!” Tina chirped. “So you know, if you need anything—anything at all—you can always call me.”

“Just make sure Morgan and Keagan are doing OK, and Ophelia. They play it tough, but they’re basically people-shaped marshmallows.”

“I will,” she said. “Talk to you soon, Meagan.”

“Thanks, Tina.”

Andrea was nice enough to drive me home to River Oaks, which gave me time to mull over my conversation with Tina. My chat with Morgan and Keagan had been fun and far less perplexing—student government scandals, Homecoming, follow-up stories on the off-campus fire that amounted to no one knowing where the unidentified bodies came from and no one coming forward to claim missing relatives. But Tina’s information I didn’t know how to process. If Jane hadn’t asked her for the list of Ophelia’s contacts, why would Tina make the request? Could someone else at the Council office have done so through Jane’s e-mail account without her knowing? The Council seemed to have pretty tight IT security, and Jane made it a point not to leave her computer or her office door unlocked. Maybe this was something I should discuss with Ben before I went to Jane with my suspicions. Because that was all I had right now, suspicions, and I didn’t want Jane to think I was some hyperreactive Nancy Drew wannabe and therefore unqualified for this job. Not because I loved my job so much but because I had no idea what she would reassign me to.

I came through the door and called, “I’m home!” before I even thought about it. Georgie and Gabriel were still waiting for Jane and Ben to return from work.

“Dinner’s ready. We’ll sit down as soon as our wayward workaholics get here,” Gabriel told me, taking my bag.

“Did you get all of your homework done?” Georgie asked slyly, bouncing on her toes at the foot of the stairs.

“You know, you could enjoy the fact that I have homework a little less,” I responded, taking the stairs two at a time.

“It’s a cool, breezy fall evening, ripe with potential prey, and you spent your night at a bookstore, typing an essay on the economics of preindustrial England and its impact on literary culture. No, I don’t know if I could enjoy that more,” Georgie tossed back as I cleared the landing.

“Keep it up, and I’ll tell Jane what happened to the creepy china shepherdess in the parlor,” I whispered, just loudly enough for Georgie to hear.

Her jaw dropped. “That was an accident! Well, not so much an accident as a happy coincidence, but— You promised you wouldn’t tell!”

“Did I?” I whispered.

“Georgie, please stop teasing Meagan and set the table,” Gabriel called from the kitchen.

Georgie pointed an imperious finger at me. “This isn’t over!”

Laughing, I hustled into my room. Jane and Gabriel had clearly sunk a lot of money into renovating their upstairs bathrooms, putting luxurious showers even in the guest bath. I turned on the overhead rain shower and combined it with the body jets, sighing as the hot water washed over my skin. This was definitely superior to the communal showers back at the dorm.

I reached for my loofah and the body wash that Iris had mixed up for me, a soothing blend of jasmine and cassis meant to calm my nerves. She’d made something for Ben, too, but he was sticking to some body gel he liked because the commercials made him laugh. I flipped the cap of Ben’s bottle and sniffed. It wasn’t quite his scent, but it held a little bit of him, and I inhaled deeply.

Yeah, I had it bad for this guy.

This was embarrassing.

I stepped out of the shower and slipped into my fluffy blue terry robe; the first adjustment one made to dorm living was never going to bathe without outerwear. Outside, tires crunched over the gravel driveway. Downstairs, I could hear Gabriel on the phone, speaking German with someone. Georgie was taking advantage of her limited video-game time. I opened the door a bit to let the steam vent from the room.

“I’m just going to run upstairs,” Ben called.

I chewed on my lip, considering my reflection, and then dropped the robe.

I walked out of the bathroom with just a towel wrapped around my chest, steam billowing around me like something out of a 1980s rock video.

Ben had a carry-out blood cup in his hands and was sipping the dregs through a straw. He dropped it onto the floor, making the tiniest splash on the hardwood.

“Hey, are you just getting back from work?” I asked brightly, adjusting my towel.

He cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah.”

“Long day?” I leaned against the doorframe and tilted my head, drawing attention to the long line of my neck. Because apparently, I was sort of mean to boys who liked me and spent weeks jerking my emotional chains about it.

“Mmmm-hmm,” he mumbled.

“Well, dinner will be ready in a few. I’ll see you downstairs,” I said, passing by him.

And just by the way his mouth hung open, I could tell that the steam that followed me down the hall carried the floral sweetness of my body wash and my own natural aroma, the scent of his sire.

“Did you find a way for us to spend unsupervised time together yet?” I asked.

He shook his head, and a series of nonsensical clicks and syllables came tumbling out of his mouth.

I sighed and shrugged my shoulders, feeling the towel slip just a bit. “That’s too bad.”

Glancing over my shoulder, I caught sight of Ben’s face, which would have been the perfect gif for “mental grabby paws.” I smiled sweetly and closed my bedroom door with a snap behind me. I covered my face with my hands, laughing silently.

That was the most evil thing I’d done since becoming a vampire. It wasn’t much on the grand scale of undead evil, but it was mine, and I would claim it. I pressed an ear to the door, hoping to hear if Ben had any sort of response.

“Oh, you want to play naked. I can play naked,” he grumbled.

I laughed even harder, pressing my fist into my mouth.

I heard Ben’s shoes drop to the floor, as if he was stripping out in the hallway to prove his point. I was rolling.

And then I heard Gabriel’s voice. “I don’t want you to play naked. I would like you to put more clothes on, for the sake of my own well-being. Now. Put several more layers of clothing on now. Right now.”

“Uh, we don’t have to tell Jane about this, right?” Ben asked after a long pause.

“We will never mention this again,” Gabriel told him. “This never happened. You’re just lucky Jane went out back to walk Fitz.”

I heard footsteps and assumed Gabriel was taking the stairs back to the kitchen.

Ben’s voice sounded just outside my door. “You’re not even sorry, are you?”

“Nope!”