“Now you’re pushing it.”
“And I was hoping that you might go with me to Zeb and Jolene’s wedding,” he added. “As sort of a trial date? In fact, maybe we could go to the rehearsal together and you could decide whether to go to the wedding with me. Like a pretrial date or a hearing . . . wait, no . . . that’s not right.”
I laughed. Jane had known Zeb since they were small children. He was a sweetheart—a goofy, unflappable guy Jane just sort of pulled into the supernatural world along with her. He wasn’t the alpha-male type. He was a kindergarten teacher, for goodness’ sake. And somehow he’d attracted the attention of one of the most ridiculously beautiful women I’d ever met—who also happened to be a werewolf. Jolene adored him, and he was comfortable with letting her be the alpha in the relationship. Their wedding promised to be the supernatural social event of the season—if everybody survived.
“You’re throwing around a lot of quasi-legal terms right now, Cheney, which makes me doubt the wisdom of agreeing to any sort of date with you.”
“But I do have you intrigued,” he noted. “Admit it.”
“I admit nothing.”
“Have I mentioned that it’s a Titanic-themed wedding?” he asked, grinning broadly.
“Of course it is. Why don’t you just go find some other girl to harass?” I asked him.
“I don’t want to harass other girls. I want to harass you.”
“You don’t know when to quit, do you?”
That familiar grin parted his lips, and somehow everything seemed right with the world for a brief second. “Never.”
4
Find ways to fill your time and meet new people. Join a club. Attend local support group meetings. Avoid rom-coms and ice cream.
—Surviving the Undead Breakup: A Human’s Guide to Healing
I didn’t really trust Dick not to follow me to my appointment, so I followed him back to his trailer—the new trailer to replace the one recently blown up by his crazy supervillain-with-benefits, Missy, the murderous Realtor—and made sure he had intentions to stay there. Because that was normal behavior, right?
I drove to the Lucky Clover Motel, where Sophie and her friend were waiting for me in room 140. Consisting of one squat story of battered, white cinder block, the Lucky Clover wasn’t quite a rent-by-the-hour flophouse . . . because city ordinances banned innkeepers from renting their accommodations by the hour. The neon sign sputtered to spell “L__ky _lover.” The parking lot was dark and occupied by a handful of beat-up cars. And I would not touch the worn-thin Kelly-green comforters on a dare.
But Sophie had wanted to meet on neutral ground, away from the Council offices, because the Council didn’t want bite-for-hire transactions to occur on the premises. Not because they were trying to protect me from other vampires who might be provoked by the scent of my blood but because no liability insurance carrier would touch them otherwise.
That made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
The vampires were waiting for me when I arrived. Sophie was standing precisely in the middle of the dingy room’s even dingier once-beige carpet, where she was least likely to touch any furnishings. Tall, platinum blond, and the owner of an inordinate number of black pantsuits, Sophie exuded a sort of European elegance that set her apart from the vast majority of Half-Moon Hollow’s population.
“Sophie,” I said, nodding in deference.
I didn’t know much about her. Nobody did. Even those who’d worked with her for years didn’t know her last name. She was beautiful in that overtly perfect, plastic manner that made her ethereal and timeless and sort of creepy. In other words, she immediately made me feel inadequate, frumpy, and shabby when I walked into the motel room.
A tiny, mousy blonde in an embroidered pink cardigan sat on the corner of the bed, which was enough to make me question her judgment. She refused to look at me as I crossed the room and set my handbag on the table. And she was wearing thick-framed pink glasses, a weird affectation when you considered that when she had been turned, her vision had automatically become twenty-twenty. Given her strange, hunched posture, I thought maybe the eyeglasses were like a security blanket—perhaps the pane of fake prescription glass made her feel protected from the world.
“Andrea, how lovely. Thank you for joining us,” Sophie purred.
“Sorry I’m late. It was unavoidable.” Opening my purse, I tucked a small leatherette toiletry bag under my arm. I took a deep breath, trying to center myself for “surrogate mode.”
“I’m sure it must’ve been very important for you to have delayed your arrival,” Sophie said, shaking her head. I chose the better part of valor, which was keeping my mouth shut. “Andrea, this is Darla. Darla, this is Andrea, a fully qualified blood surrogate on retainer with the Council to assist in special situations like yours.”
Darla glanced up and gave me a barely audible greeting, then immediately returned her gaze to the hands twisting in her lap.
“Hello, Darla. It’s nice to meet you.”
From what I’d read in the file Sophie sent me, Darla was a brand-new vampire, barely a month turned. As a human, she’d worked at the local Property Valuation Administrator’s office, attended services at the Half-Moon Hollow Baptist Church, and volunteered at the local animal shelter. She’d been turned by her boyfriend, who had apparently wanted more of a three-week thing rather than eternity. He’d dumped her, leaving her high and dry and in the care of Sophie, her Council-assigned foster sire. The trauma of her abandonment had left her with a severe drinking disorder. She shied away from live feeding because she couldn’t stand the sensation of her fangs sinking through skin. A few failed experiments left her unable to drink donor blood. She could drink bottled blood but only certain brands, and only tolerated those brands for a few days at a time before her body rejected that, too. So, basically, Darla was a colicky newborn vampire.