Accidental Sire(36)

And he was more animated and cheerful than he had been in the entire time since he'd been turned. I recognized the brunette as the pretty girl he'd had his arm around in the picture in Jane's office. This was clearly Gigi, the infamous ex. They were chatting and laughing, probably remembering all of the awesome times they'd had together.

She was even prettier in person. Big bright-blue eyes with long, sooty lashes. Plump, naturally pink lips. Dark hair that fell in waves around her shoulders. She had that effortless beauty that lit up any room when she walked into it.

I kind of hated her more now.

"This is Gigi," Ben said. "She's my boss over in programming. I'm going to be working on her project."

It took all of my special vampire superpowers to control the muscles in my face.

Ben's ex-girlfriend was his boss?

Ben was talking to me? Directly? With a smile on his face?

What the what?

"Hi!" she said brightly. "Nice to meet you!"

Did Jane put Ben in Gigi's department on purpose? Did she want Ben to get back together with Gigi? Should I take that personally somehow?

And I still hadn't spoken.

"Nice to meet you," I said, stretching my hand forward to shake hers.

She smiled sweetly and shook my hand. At least she didn't try to pull some weird territorial move where she squeezed my hand until the bones buckled. Did vampires do that? That seemed like a vampire thing to do.

And unlike Jolene, Gigi didn't have a crazy nasal twang to balance out her incredibly above-average hotness. Her voice sounded like angels whispering to fluffy kittens.

"I can't tell you how glad I'll be to have someone my own age around at the family get-togethers. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Jane, Gabriel, Dick, everybody. But after a while, I just want to talk to someone who knows that Tumblr isn't for sipping scotch, you know?"

My brows drew together in what I was sure was a "skeptical Meagan is skeptical" face. Why was she being so nice to me? Did Ben not tell her that I was the one who turned him? So far, that hadn't inspired warm, fuzzy feelings among his friends and family. I mean, at the very least, she should see me as some sort of threat just because I was a hot girl living in the same house as her ex. 

My eyes narrowed a bit. Wait, was this because she was, like, a nine and a half, and I was circling around a nine-point-three? Because I hadn't even tried wearing makeup over my new luminescent vampire skin. I could be a nine-point-eight. Easy.

And all this crazy-person math was preventing me from speaking.

"Oh, yeah, Jane's friends are really nice," I said, and then quickly added, "Old! I mean, they're super-old. But nice."

Oh, come on, why was I still speaking? Why?

Even Ben seemed to sense something was off, because he said, "OK, well, we'd better get to our lunch break if we're going to finish that coding by the end of the night."

God bless Ben Overby, conversational lifeguard.

Gigi gave an awkward little smile. "OK, well, we'd better get to it."

I waved my fingers without actually moving my hand, because I was paralyzed by mortification. And off they went. I rolled my head back to scream silently at the ceiling tiles, Whyyyyyyyy?

Rubbing my hand over my face, searching for the embarrassment that should have been scorching my cheeks, I slumped back to my desk. And then tried to hide under it. Forever.

But because the space underneath my desk was too small for a leggy nine-point-three like myself, I had to be satisfied with hiding behind my monitor. Which I decided to use to e-mail Miranda, one of the few preapproved e-mail addresses listed in my contacts under "Transportation Contractors." And one of the few people in Half-Moon Hollow I felt comfortable randomly e-mailing without a lot of How are you? preamble.

I opened the computer's e-mail program, savoring the opportunity to message someone who was not one of my professors. My fingers hovered over the keyboard as I wondered what would be the least intrusive way to ask.

To: Miranda.puckettfangmail

From: administration2wcftetotu

Hey Miranda,

If I asked you a weird, random question about people you know better than I do, would you answer it?

-Meagan

Before I could spend too much time talking myself out of it, I hit send.

Well, that was super-cryptic and sure to set off all sorts of alarms.

I waited, for far longer than anyone of my generation was used to waiting for anything. Ugh, this was why I needed access to instant messaging. Because Miranda had better things to do with her time, so I probably wouldn't get an answer for hours. Just enough time for me to regret sending it and try to come up with an alternative plausible question that could inspire such a weird message.

Sighing, I looked up Jane's calendar for the next week to try to figure out which of her days would be busiest and therefore involve the most fetching of chocolate-based coffee-blood concoctions.