The Single Undead Moms(26)

I tamped down the panic welling in my chest. The next day was Danny’s last official day of summer vacation, and he was going to wake up without supervision, in a house where I was technically dead down the hall. There was no way that could go wrong.

Danny ran into the kitchen and threw himself at my side. Because my feet were planted, he bounced off my hip like a rubber ball. I shot my hands out at vampire speed and caught him by the elbows before his head could smack against the corner of the countertop. His eyes went wide with shock as I lowered him gently into a kitchen chair.

“You OK, sweetie?”

“Wow, Mom, you moved quick,” he whispered.

I gave an uncomfortable, clipped laugh. “Yeah, well . . . Mom’s been taking her vitamins every morning.”

“Like the orange ones that get stuck in my teeth?” he asked with a grimace.

“Yep, and if you want to be super-fast, you better take them, too.”

Danny had on his skeptical face, which made it a perfect time to change the subject from my unprecedented catlike reflexes.

“So why did you come barreling into the kitchen like a cannonball whose mother never taught him good manners or common sense?” I asked.

He had the good grace to look sheepish for a grand total of three seconds. “OK, so, when you buy my new backpack, make sure it’s not a baby backpack. No puppies or construction trucks or anything like that. Transformers or Avengers, and if they don’t have those, maybe The LEGO Movie. But that’s it.” Danny tugged on my T-shirt until I dropped to his eye level. “That’s it, Mom.”

“OK,” I said. “Any other instructions?”

“No lunch boxes. Nobody brings lunch, Mom. Everybody eats the cafeteria food, even though it can be gross sometimes. And I know you like to get me those little erasers shaped like pizza slices, but Carson ate them last year and started to cry ’cause he thought he was poisoned, so that’s not a good idea,” he said.

“Got it.”

“And no fat crayons. Everybody knows those are little-kid crayons. I need the skinny crayons.”

“OK, Danny.”

“And no—”

“Danny!”

Having finally made me bark at him, which was his goal all along, he burst out laughing and scampered off to his room.

I shook my head and asked Kaylee, “Are you sure you want to give all this up?”

Kaylee promptly burst into tears.

I blew out an unnecessary breath. “Oh, boy.”


While I drove into town, I mulled over the Danny situation and the fact that I would have no help in less than eight hours when he woke up. My first thought was to call his grandparents. It was an instinct born of years when calling anyone else to watch Danny—because I felt guilty asking for babysitting help every time we talked—caused disagreements with Rob and his parents, because they didn’t like the idea of anyone else watching Danny. Kaylee was only trusted because her mother went to Les and Marge’s church.

Again, it occurred to me how small my friend circle was now that I didn’t have other moms I could call for help. I doubted very much that Casey would be willing to watch Danny, since she seemed to be running some sort of gossip campaign about me.

Relinquishing the problem to my hindbrain for a thorough mulling, I pulled into the Walmart parking lot and brought the three-page school-supplies list out of my enormous mom purse. While I was walking to the entrance, I added several things we would need for the duplex: ice trays, a rug for Danny’s new bathroom, a countertop blood warmer, plus cracker packs Danny could put in his backpack for snack time. It was a far more interesting array of items than any of my preturning shopping lists.

It was nice to know that despite everything that had changed in my life, Walmart remained the same. I turned toward the special-dietary-needs aisle, the “vampire supplies” area where the undead could shop for fang floss, synthetic blood, and specialized sunscreen. I’ll admit I got a little overexcited at the number of new products now available to me. I dropped a tube of White Fang dental whitening gel into the cart, next to Hershey’s Special Blood Additive Chocolate Syrup and ReNu Skin revitalizing crème, because you never knew when you would suffer accidental sun exposure and need to regrow your epidermis. I might have overshopped a little, especially when one considered the metric ton of school supplies I was about to purchase, but so far, Casey’s and Marge’s calls hadn’t affected my bookkeeping business. I was going to consider that a good sign . . . or a sign that my clients were afraid to snatch business out from under a new vampire.

I turned toward the school-supplies section, praying that there was a Transformers or Avengers backpack left on the rack. While I dropped boxes of tissue, hand sanitizer, plastic bags, and paper towels into the cart, I tried to remember when exactly this stuff had become a parent expense. I turned the cart around the corner and crash—I ran right into another cart.