Unfortunately, Mom passed away when I was fifteen. That was how people preferred that I say it. My mother didn't die suddenly in a head-on collision after falling asleep behind the wheel on the way home from her second job. She "passed away." It seemed like a ridiculously gentle way to put it.
I was supposed to have not a perfect life but a smooth one. I was supposed to be convincing my dad that there was a boy on planet Earth good enough for me to date. I was supposed to be worrying about how not to hurt my parents' feelings while explaining that I couldn't come home to visit every weekend. I was supposed to have people back home who cared whether I was turned into a vampire after a tragic Ultimate Frisbee accident.
Yeah, I was going to have a hard time letting that one go.
I bit my trembling bottom lip and took a completely unnecessary deep breath through my nose. "Suck it up, Keene. You were supposed to have those things, but you don't, so deal with it. Just deal."
Taking a Sharpie out of my purse, I carefully wrote "Jameson-Nightengale" on the inside of the suitcase lid. I took out a set of clothes for the next night, put them on the desk, and slid the suitcase under my bed. I could feel the sun approaching, like the strength was leaching out of my arms and legs. Every step was like moving through Jell-O. I'd been fine just a few minutes ago, and now I felt like I'd been tranq'd with bear Quaaludes. Was this what vampires went through every morning? No wonder so many of them seemed so cranky all the time. This sucked.
///
My arms were so heavy it was difficult to lift them when I checked the sunproof shades. Was there any chance they could open during the day? Those things were supposed to have solar locks on them, but what if Jane had cheaped out on the guest rooms? What if someone came into the room while I was asleep and hit the shade button instead of the light switch? What if I woke up a little pile of ash?
I slumped toward the door and twisted the lock into place. Now I just had to make it to the bed before the sun came up.
Wait.
No.
My body dropped to the floor. My arms, my legs, even my chest. There just wasn't any strength in any part of me. In the eternity it seemed to take for me to fall, I thought, So this is what total loss of body control feels like. And the last sensation I felt was my face bouncing off the hardwood.
Ouch.
If I didn't know that was going to heal, I would be very upset.
Jane was just a little too smug about finding me lying unconscious, facedown on the floor in my room. Well, technically, Fitz found me lying unconscious, facedown on the floor, but Jane was the one who brought me blood and patted me on the head in a pretty damned condescending manner. While Fitz licked my face, Jane invited me downstairs to meet "everybody" after I finished the donor blood in the "Librarians Do It Between the Covers" mug she gave me. And after chasing Fitz out, I changed into a nonpajama outfit, because that was not the first impression I wanted to make.
" ‘I'm sure I'll be fine,' " Jane said, in what was clearly an imitation of me, while she walked toward the stairs. " ‘I don't need to sleep when the sun rises. I won't collapse on my face on the floor.' "
"I heard that," I called after her, before taking a long gulp from the mug.
"You were supposed to!"
Walking into the Jameson-Nightengale kitchen was like entering some surreal undead version of a 1950s sitcom. I could hear Fitz barking outside over the jazzy orchestral sound track in my head. A dark-haired man sat at the kitchen table, reading a French newspaper while he sipped blood from an espresso cup. Jane was serving a little girl in jeans and a "District 12 Archery Team" T-shirt, mixing Hershey's Special Blood Additive Chocolate Syrup into a tall glass of blood.
From across the room, I could tell it was real human-donor blood, A positive. Which was disturbing.
"So, are we collecting little vampires now?" the man was asking over the newspaper. "Is this your way of answering your mother's constant demands for more grandchildren?"
"Not . . . consciously," Jane said, frowning as she slid the blood across the table to the little girl. "And Georgie, do not get used to chocolate breakfasts, OK? The last thing I need is for Ophelia to gripe at me because your fangs are rotting out. I am only doing this for a week, because you won that bet, fair and square. I still can't believe that you beat me at Jane Austen trivia."
"Well, Georgie did read the books in first edition," the man said, stroking Jane's arm while he gave her a bemused smile. He dropped the paper, and my eyes went saucer-size. This guy looked like he should be rolling around in the sand in a wet dress shirt, staring off into the distance, in a super-classy cologne ad. Chiseled features, a strangely pretty mouth, gray eyes that flashed silver with amusement, longish dark hair that curved around his ears. It was not that Jane wasn't pretty, because she totally was. I just felt like she'd somehow restored the karmic balance for librarians everywhere.