The Single Undead Moms(37)

“What do you mean, Mom? Do you mean no one is coming?” Danny asked, his lips trembling.

“No, not at all, sweetheart. I’m sure people are coming. They’re just running late,” I assured him, trying to keep the anxious note out of my voice.

“You’re sure?” Danny sniffed.

“Absolutely. There will be people here before you know it, lots of them.”

“OK.” He sighed. “Can I have a cookie while I’m waiting?”

I tried to weigh the pressures of proper parental nutrition standards versus keeping my son calm on what would no doubt be one of those traumatic birthday incidents he’d discuss in therapy ten years in the future.

“Half a cookie,” I told him.

“I’ll take it,” he said, nodding sharply and marching into the kitchen.

“Hey, does celebrating this birthday mean that you’re going to stop introducing yourself as being ‘five and five-sixths’?” I yelled after him.

“Mah-ommm.”

“I see we’ve reached the stage where I embarrass you just by having the power of speech. I have leveled up in motherhood!” I raised my hands in a semitriumphant pose until he was completely out of earshot. I dropped my arms.

Right, I would make this happen.

I turned to Kerrianne. “I need bodies. And I don’t mean in the creepy vampire way.”

Kerrianne gave me a crisp salute, and we both pulled out our cell phones and started dialing.


Once again, my friendly local Council representative came through. Jane activated some sort of vampire phone tree, and within fifteen minutes, I had guests pouring through the front door. Kerrianne called her mother, who dropped Braylen off with the makings for s’mores and Finding Bigfoot on DVD. Jane and her tall, dark, and ridiculously handsome husband, Gabriel, arrived first, and Gabriel distracted Danny by asking endless Bigfoot-related questions. (Gabriel’s secret vampire power was clearly picking up on party themes.) Jane fixed me a large double-vodka Especially Bloody Mary, for which I would be forever grateful. I didn’t even know you could mix liquor and blood together, but you could, and it was freaking transcendent.

Jane’s human childhood friend, Zeb Lavelle, arrived with his wife, Jolene, and their twins, Janelyn and Joe. A vampire named Sam Clemson and his girlfriend, Tess, arrived with several warmers full of dessert blood from Tess’s restaurant, Southern Comforts. Iris Scanlon and her husband, Cal, brought a four-foot-tall stuffed Bigfoot with a big blue bow tied around his neck. I didn’t even know where one would find a stuffed Bigfoot, much less on last-minute notice, but Iris ran one of the most successful vampire concierge services in the Southeast, so it stood to reason she knew people who could procure weird items on the fly. I would remember that for Danny’s next birthday. Who knew what the theme would be by the time he was seven?

I hoped Danny didn’t notice that said guests were strangers and several hundred years outside the expected age range. In my desperation for guests, I’d even called Les and Marge again, but they didn’t pick up either of their phones. Again. It would be the first birthday with their grandson they’d ever missed. I would take time to feel like a horrible person when I wasn’t in such a social panic.

As much as I fretted over the birthday boy’s mood, once “Mr. Dick” arrived, Danny was so excited to be showing off his stuffed Sasquatch he couldn’t care less who else was there. The vampires stood around my parlor, talking and laughing, filling my home with joyous noise while they sipped their blood. They’d all gamely donned their “Sasquatch-hunt” outback-style bush hats and pretended to nibble at their cookies, because Danny didn’t quite grasp the whole “vampires can’t eat solids” concept.

“I hope Danny doesn’t overwhelm him,” I told Dick’s vampire wife, Andrea, as Danny used his favorite vampire as a not-quite-living jungle gym.

“He loves it,” Andrea assured me. “He missed out on his own son’s childhood years, so spending time with kids now is a sort of privilege for him. He can’t get enough time with Jolene’s twins.”

Dick Cheney had a kid. Holy hell. I would file that under questions I would ask Jane when I wasn’t surrounded by birthday-party chaos.

“When are we going to start the Sasquatch hunt, Mom?” Danny called from the couch, where he and Dick were going over the Young People’s Guide to Cryptozoological Wonders, a softcover volume Jane had found in her shop.

“What’s a Sasquatch hunt?” Gabriel asked out of the corner of his mouth. “And will it hurt? Because if it hurts, I say we put Dick in charge.”