Jane’s shop, Specialty Books, had started a sort of revolution on Paxton Avenue. She’d taken the original occult bookshop space and expanded into the former adult-video store next door to create a thriving store for readers living and undead. The next thing we knew, a children’s consignment shop had opened down the street, and a specialty embroidery business, then a gourmet cheese and wine shop and an artisanal candle store. The neighborhood that had once been an embarrassment to Hollow residents was on the verge of being a bit hipster. I wasn’t even nervous about parking my van outside of Specialty Books, but it took a long time for me to work up the courage to walk inside. I sat in my van, watching people walk in through the front door.
There were a lot of people gathered there. I could barely make out the well-stocked maple shelves through the elaborately lettered window. Opening the door, I was greeted by a mishmash of voices and smells. The shop managed to be quirky and cozy at the same time, with its tranquil purple-blue walls and the twinkling star-shaped light fixtures dangling from the ceiling. While it was modern and clean, the candles, the ceremonial items, and the antique maple-and-glass sideboard that served as a checkout stand kept it earthy.
Jane was pushing the comfy purple chairs into a semicircle just beyond the shiny coffee counter, where Andrea reigned supreme. She refused to let Jane near the large, rather intimidating copper cappuccino machine ever since some sort of incident involving a steamed-milk explosion. One man with broad shoulders and a prominent sloping forehead stood at the bar, glugging down some espresso-blood concoction that left a faint red ring around his thin upper lip. When I passed by, his watery blue eyes followed me, sending a shiver up my spine.
“What are you doing here?” Jane asked, grinning. “I’ve been trying to get you to come to one of these meetings for weeks!”
“Meeting?”
“The Newly Emerged Vampires Support Group,” she said, waving her hand at the people milling about the shop. “We started it up as a sort of spin-off program of the FFOTU. And since people were used to meeting here already, we found room in the shop’s schedule.”
“This is a support group?” I asked, frowning as I watched the vampires chatting, laughing, sipping their bloodychinos. I’d attended a few support-group meetings at my treatment center. They’d been considerably less cozy. “It looks like a book club.”
“We try to keep it loose and comfortable,” she said. “And since you clearly didn’t come here for the meeting, what’s going on? Is Danny OK?”
“He’s fine,” I assured her. “But you told me to tell you if anything strange ever happened, and I am here to file a report in an official capacity. Very official.”
Jane’s posture straightened, and her face went grim. “Come with me,” she said. “Andrea, could you get things started?”
With a nod to Andrea, Jane escorted me to an office at the back of the shop, small and snug, with a dark wood desk that occupied most of the space. A shelf behind the desk was littered with framed photos of Gabriel and Jane, Jane’s childe Jamie, Dick and Andrea, and the rest of Jane’s friends.
In a very businesslike manner, Jane and I sat down, and she questioned me. It was a very gentle interrogation but an interrogation all the same. She left no detail unexamined, down to the possible brand of the ninja’s ski mask.
“You did the right thing, coming to me immediately,” Jane said. “It means you are smarter than ninety percent of the vampires in the Hollow. Sidebar, please tell Gigi Scanlon I told you that, and make sure I am there when you do it, so I can see the expression on her face. I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to find this guy, but at least we’ll have a paper trail.”
“Very comforting,” I told her drily as she led me out of the office, arm around my shoulders. “Oh, by the way, my in-laws have filed suit against me for custody of Danny. And I am filled with bone-quaking terror.”
“Actually, I have good news on that front,” Jane said. “Your in-laws’ petition has been directed to Judge Holyfield in the local family court. Judge Holyfield has written several legal-journal articles on the rights of undead parents and the importance of keeping family units together as long as the parents, living or undead, are responsible and fit. So you have better than a fighting chance in this. I don’t want you to worry. We might be able to nip this thing in its early stages.”
I nodded. It was fortunate indeed that the Council was paying for my defense in the custody case, because the legal fees would have drained the comfortable but not exactly fluffy cushion that stood between us and homelessness. It was also fortunate that I wasn’t the state’s, much less the Hollow’s, first case of a grandparent trying to claim custody of a grandchild from a vampire parent. I did not want to live through this case on the front page of the Half-Moon Hollow Herald.