The Single Undead Moms(61)
“And what was that?”
“Bein’ a parent is a constant cycle of gettin’ yer ass handed to ya. Anytime you think you’re ahead of the game, that you got it all figured out, that’s when reality pops up and bites ya.”
“A man with a medical degree said that to you?”
“I’m paraphrasin’,” he said, shifting his shoulders.
I laughed. I couldn’t remember the last time someone—besides Jane—let me babble on like that. Wade actually listened to me, and he didn’t try to “fix” me. And while he did make the occasional grand gesture, like mass brookie consumerism, he recognized my need to handle things on my own. He didn’t try to tell me what I could be doing better or step in to take care of a problem for me. I could handle a little more of that in my life.
“Well, stop it. You being helpful is downright disorienting. And while we’re at it, stop calling me darlin’. It does funny things to my brain.” I smacked at his arm, making him laugh again.
He pressed a kiss to the side of my head, still snickering. “And that’s why I do it.”
9
Just because you have joined a new community, that doesn’t mean that everyone you meet in that community is going to get along. Try not to interfere with established feuds between vampires. Those situations have a tendency to take out bystanders.
—My Mommy Has Fangs: A Guide to Post-Vampiric Parenting
Chelsea Harbaker had her revenge, upping the deadline for my donation collection for the Pumpkin Patch Party by two weeks. It was a maneuver that was both elegant in its effective simplicity and super-bitchy.
So I was spending the evening at Specialty Books with my two favorite vampire ladies. Jane and I were going over a list of businesses in the chamber of commerce listing. We were dividing the list into two sublists, one of businesses most likely to donate raffle tickets and auction lots for the Pumpkin Patch Party and the other of businesses that would be good targets for me to approach for my bookkeeping operation.
Les and Marge were not pleased with me for reporting their breach of Judge Holyfield’s freshly released order. I could feel their displeasure as more of my clients—most of whom knew Les and Marge—had been dropping off my roster with excuses like “I’d be more comfortable with someone I can contact during the day” or “I’ve been friends with Les for twenty years, so . . .” Meaning I’d lost about ten percent of my client base in the last week.
According to Kerrianne, Les had been grousing to his cronies at the Coffee Spot that Judge Holyfield was obviously a shameless liberal, biased toward the undead. In a town as small as the Hollow, that was bound to get back to the judge eventually. I decided to take the opposite tack, so I would be able to meet the judge’s eye when we finally saw him. To show that my little family was being influenced by the most stable vampires in the region, Danny was sitting at the coffee bar, enjoying a large hot chocolate and telling Mr. Dick and Mr. Gabriel all about his latest schoolyard adventures with Harley. I noted that he did not mention his three-day TV ban as a result of his emotionally scarring threats to Chase Ramos.
Danny loved Miss Jane’s “magic shop,” with its mysterious candles and ritual items and the strange herbal smells. And if I wasn’t careful, he was going to talk Dick out of a third chocolate chip cookie.
Andrea slid into the seat next to me and shook her head over my two-page list of neatly handwritten business names.
“Never accept the prize committee position,” Andrea told me in a sage tone. “That way lies madness.”
Jane shrugged. “I tried to tell her.”
“Not helpful,” I told them both, sipping a particularly nice bottle of Plasmatein, a blend of synthetic blood and proteins that was supposed to stave off bloodthirst for longer periods of time.
“I don’t get it,” Jane huffed. “I mean, I was turned years ago, and I’m not facing the sort of prejudice you are. Sure, my former boss was a bit of a jerk about filling out my undead benefits paperwork, but all I had to do was make a few veiled threats, and she fell right in line.”
Dick protested, “Yeah, but you basically stuck to the nocturnal community. You got a job in a bookstore in a seedy part of town. You made friends in the vampire community. It’s easy to ignore someone who’s sticking to their own kind. Buttercup here is going to PTA meetings and cooking for the school bake sale. She’s rubbing her fangs right in their faces.”
“You do realize that I’m standing right here, yes?” I said, waving my hand, making Dick and Gabriel laugh. “And I am not rubbing anything in anybody’s face. And at least I’m not engaging in front-seat make-out sessions with my sire at a Cracker Barrel, Jane.”