The Single Undead Moms(69)

“I’ll get some breakfast started,” Kerrianne said.

“My colds are cured by bacon!” Wade told her. “And more bacon!”

Kerrianne replied, “Oatmeal for everyone!”

“Bacon-flavored oatmeal?” Wade asked, his tone hopeful. He looked up at me, his eyes all pitiful. “She’s just making regular oatmeal.”

“I know, the very nerve,” I said, rubbing my hand on his back. “I miss bacon.”

“Maybe they could make bacon-flavored blood someday. I’m sorry you have to see me like this,” he said, waving his hand at his blotchy face.

“It’s not so bad,” I told him. “It’s actually kind of nice, you letting me see you all vulnerable and pathetic. Rob always went to his mom’s when he was sick and stayed for days at a time. Said her chicken soup was magic or something.”

“Rob was a dumbass. And was the ‘pathetic’ really necessary?”

“You’re begging for bacon-flavored oatmeal, so yes, it was.”

The boys stirred, almost simultaneously. Danny sat up, blinking blearily. Harley buried his face in his dad’s ribs and pulled the covers over his head. Seeing this, Danny rolled off the pallet and ambled around to my chair. He climbed into my lap and tucked his face into my neck.

“I hate everything,” Danny grumbled against my skin.

I laughed, hugging him tight. I could feel the weight of the sunrise, a wave of fatigue dragging me under. But I wanted to stay. I wanted more time with everybody. It seemed unfair, that I had to give up the daytime, that I missed out on so much of their lives. But I guessed this was the sacrifice I’d made for more time. A girl couldn’t ask for everything.

“Thanks for taking care of us all night, Miss Libby,” Harley said.

“There had to be some advantage to this vampire thing, like being able to stay up all night with you,” I said. “Well, that and the whole immunity to your gross germs.”

“The gloatin’ was definitely not necessary,” Wade warned.

“What are you going to do, sneeze on me?”

Wade made a face that was downright diabolical. “Might.”

“I already tried it,” Danny told him. “Didn’t work.”

“Dang it. New plan, boys. We lick random objects in the room and don’t tell her which ones are contaminated.” At this, the boys cheered. Well, they cheered as much as two sick boys could muster.

“And with that, I bid you good day,” I told them. “I’m going to bed.”

“Aw, come on, Mom!” Danny whined.

“I said good day!” I exclaimed, streaking toward the basement door. I took one last look at the boys, Danny hanging off the back of the chair while Wade and Harley sprawled on the couch. Sleep-rumpled and slightly snotty, they waved at me. I blew them a kiss and closed the door.

“I’m going to lick the remote!” I heard Danny exclaim.

I poked my head out of the basement doorway. “Don’t lick the remote!”

Boys were so weird.





10




Though you will go through an instinctual withdrawal from people you don’t completely trust, remember that your child needs contact and support from the living world, just as you need support from the vampire world. Also, there are only so many homes that can support a panic room.

—My Mommy Has Fangs: A Guide to Post-Vampiric Parenting

Someone was knocking on my basement door.

Why was someone knocking on my basement door?

I sat up slowly from the single bed I’d set up in my little underground sleeping compartment, slapping my hand around my nightstand, searching for my cell phone. It was 5:56 P.M. The sun was barely down. Why the hell was someone trying to wake me up?

Danny?

Was Danny feeling worse? His fever had broken the night before, just after Harley’s, but it could have spiked again. I sprang up from bed, stumbling as the sheets tangled around my ankles. I didn’t need a light to maneuver toward the stairs. I’d kept the basement as simple as possible, just a bed and a nightstand and a framed photo of me and Danny, convincing myself that it wasn’t really my bedroom, just a place where I slept while the rest of the household lived aboveground in the potentially fatal sunlight. All of my clothes and shoes and toiletries were upstairs in the master bedroom. Unfortunately, that included my hairbrush, and my hair was falling over my face like something out of The Ring.

I yanked the door open to find Kerrianne gnawing on her bottom lip. “What’s going on?”

“Your mother-in-law.”

“She’s here?” I exclaimed. “Has she tried to take Danny? Is he talking to her now?”