Accidental Sire(45)

Oh, seriously, she was dating this one, too?

"Ew, older sisters present," Iris called as he bent his head to drop butterfly kisses down Gigi's neck. "I don't need these visuals." 

"Consider it payback for all the times I walked in on you and Cal," Gigi shot back, kissing the man's full lips.

Iris shuddered and dropped a throw pillow over her face, while Nola cackled. OK, so Gigi had clearly moved on from Ben to this new Greek-statue-like gentleman with the nice hair and sexy accent. So where did that leave Ben? Was that why he had been so grumpy before we started working-having his proposal shot down in favor of statue man? And then why he was so excited to be at work? Because it meant that he got to spend time with his ex-girlfriend again?

I was living in a vampire telenovela, I swear.

"I thought you were playing cards over at Dick's," Jane said, pausing the movie.

"We were, and then Dick slammed a good hand on the table with a little too much enthusiasm, and Jed got hit in the eye with a bottle cap," Nik said. All of us winced in unison. "Jed was startled and turned into a six-foot great white shark with legs."

Nola groaned. "Not the mutant land shark again."

Gigi snorted. "It's one of his favorites."

"Ben was not expecting to see the mutant land shark standing in front of him. He panicked and flipped the table at Jed, hitting him in the face with it, broadside."

"I'd better go get my medical bag." Nola sighed as she stood. She paused for a moment, snatched her glass off the coffee table, and glugged back the last of her drink.

I raised my hand. "Wait, what?"

Jane was suddenly alert, sitting up. "Is Jed OK? Did he bleed very much? Did Ben . . . OK, just tell me. Did Ben try to eat Jed?"

"No, no," Nik assured her. "We would have called you if there were serious injuries. Gabriel and Dick are icing down Jed's face now. And Ben handled it very well. As soon as he saw that Jed's nose was bleeding, he ran upstairs and locked himself in a bathroom. He is very fast, by the way, even for a vampire. He's still there, actually, waiting for you to give him the all clear to come out. Gabriel told him he'd be fine, but Ben wants to hear it from you, so he doesn't get ‘docked points.' He does realize you're not actually keeping score on his performance, yes?"

"Aw, that's great!" Jane cried. "And no, let's let him keep believing there's a point system. If it's this effective, what's the harm? Meagan, you're sworn to silence."

"Can we go back to ‘mutant land shark'?" I asked.

"We think maybe Ben wasn't as tempted by the blood because Jed's a shapeshifter," Nik said.

"Can't you just let me be proud for a moment without putting conditions on it?" Jane asked him.

"Wait! Wait! Wait!" I exclaimed. "What's a shapeshifter?"

"It's like Jolene's werewolf thing, only Jed can make himself into whatever form he wants," Gigi told me. "Jed's family thought they were cursed for generations, but it turns out they have this weird supernatural recessive trait. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm being rude. Nik, you haven't met Meagan Keene. She's Ben's sire and works with us down at the Council office. Meagan, this is my boyfriend and sire, Nik Dragomirov."

"So pleased to meet you. Gigi has told me so much about you," Nik purred, grinning at me.


      ///
       
         
       
        

And I would take the time to analyze what he meant by that after I processed the following.

"Jolene's a werewolf?"





7




One of the most important qualities in a sire is a protective instinct for his or her childe. But you can go overboard.

-The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire

After Jed's face was sufficiently iced and Ben was coaxed out of the bathroom, Jane had yet another "explain the facts of the supernatural world" talk with me, where she explained that yes, werewolves and shapeshifters were a thing. Yes, vampires knew about werewolves but not shapeshifters, as Jed and his family were some sort of supernatural rarity. And no, I shouldn't talk to humans about either, because nobody believed in shapeshifters anyway, and the werewolves were still waiting to see how well the whole Coming Out thing worked for the vampires before they made their debut.

Keagan, who was firmly planted on Team Jacob in the Great Twilight Debate, would have been so happy to know werewolves were real. But from what I gathered, they were less "dreamy dudes with soulful eyes and an aversion to wearing shirts" and more "rednecks who lived a little too close to their families and settled almost every argument with bloodshed."