We didn’t have a single customer all night, but Mr. Wainwright assured me this was normal. He shooed me away just after one A.M. The shop was closed for the next few days, he reminded me, because he was about to leave town on a purchasing trip in deepest, darkest Tennessee.
“But I look forward to seeing you on Monday. It’s been so refreshing having someone else to talk to. I mutter to myself, of course, and to the plants, but I rarely answer back.”
I looked over the shriveled remains of a spider plant. “And the plants don’t seem to be on speaking terms with you, either.”
Mr. Wainwright was still hooting at that one as he bustled me out of the shop.
Euphoric about my newfound and respectable employment, I took my dog for a very long walk on the old farm property to celebrate. As happy as I was to have a job, I knew it meant Fitz would have to readjust to my schedule, just after getting used to me being nocturnal. Plus, even with Aunt Jettie’s “hanging around,” he would be alone more often after weeks of constant attention.
I imagined this was what mothers felt when heading back to work after maternity leave…only with more slobbering and shedding.
Sensing my guilt-based permissiveness, Fitz decided to push at the usual walk rules: no running away where I couldn ’t see him, no rolling in substances I couldn’t identify, and no chasing woodland creatures that can fight back.
We explored areas of River Oaks we’d never seen at night: the creek where I’d showed Jenny how to swing on wild grapevines on one of her rare visits to Aunt Jettie’s, the path where I had to carry Jenny when she fell off the grapevine and broke her leg, post holes left by a fence I’d had to tear down as penance for letting Jenny break her leg. Fitz chased irate bullfrogs on the normally peaceful shore of the cow pond and gave a possum the chance at an Oscar-winning death scene.
I found a sturdy-looking oak and climbed catlike, leaping from branch to branch until I could see the house, the road beyond, the faint-twinkling lights of town in the distance. It still seemed strange that all of this had been passed to me. River Oaks had always seemed like its own little kingdom when I was a kid. And I couldn ’t honestly say that I’d seen every inch of it. It seemed right that I would be able to look after it for generations to come. Maybe if Jenny’s children’s children’s children managed to outgrow their genetic predisposition to jackassery, I would pass it along to them one day.
From the base of the tree, Fitz barked and spun in circles. He apparently didn’t care for my Tarzan routine. I jumped, careful to avoid smacking into branches on the way down. I landed on my feet with a soft thwump. Fitz, who was used to me landing on other parts of my body, sat on his rump and cocked his head.
“I know, it’s new for me, too, buddy,” I told him, scrubbing behind his ears. “You’ll get used to it, I promise. Do you want to race back home? Huh, boy? Want to race?”
At the word “race,” Fitz broke into a run, streaking across the field in a blur of dirty brown-gray. I gave him a few seconds’
head-start before running after him. When I loped past him, Fitz gave a confused bark, nipping at my heels as if to say, “This is not how we do things! You chase me! Not the other way around!”
I jogged up the porch steps, Fitz close at my heels. With long strings of thirsty doggie drool hanging from his jowls, he made a beeline for the water bowl I kept in the corner of the porch. As he did, some organic alarm crawled up my spine. Something smelled weird, which was normal where Fitz was concerned. But this scent was chemical, sweet, familiar. It was a garage smell, something I can remember my dad keeping on the shelf with wiper fluid and car -wash supplies. It seemed to be coming from the end of the porch.
Using all the speed I could muster, I leaped over my dog and slapped the water bowl out of his reach. I landed on my side with a thud. Water splashed across my chest, and the bowl skittered down to the lawn. Fitz cocked his head and stared at me with a “What the hell?” expression—which, frankly, was becoming far too familiar.
I swiped at the water soaking my shirt and sniffed. I remembered the smell. Antifreeze. There was antifreeze in Fitz ’s water dish. If he drank it, he would have died a miserable, painful death, and I probably wouldn ’t have realized what had happened to him. I wasn’t even sure I had antifreeze in my garage. There was no possible way it had accidentally landed in the bowl. Someone had come onto my property, onto my porch, and put it there. Someone had intentionally tried to hurt my dog.
This was not a stupid teenage prank. This was someone who was serious about hurting me through Fitz. What the hell? Who was angry enough at me to do that?
“It’s OK,” I told Fitz, who was sniffing at my neck. “It’s OK. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
I took the bowl inside and washed it carefully, then threw it away in a fit of compulsive madness, because I knew I ’d never feel it was safe again. I fed Fitz a Milk-Bone and gave him fresh water. With shaking hands, I stroked his fur as he gnawed on his treat, blissfully unaware.
If you want to hurt me, fine. Take my books. Burn down my house. Shave my head while I’m sleeping. But nobody, nobody screws with my dog.
After the water-bowl incident, I was afraid to leave Fitz at home alone while I was at work. I decided the safest place for him would be at Zeb’s. I didn’t elaborate on the reasons, because, frankly, I hadn’t quite absorbed it all yet and didn’t want to have to explain what happened. I just told Zeb that I’d taken a night job and Fitz was having trouble adjusting. I asked Zeb and Jolene to keep an eye on him for a few nights. Jolene was thrilled, as she and Fitz got along famously. And short of a Secret Service detail, I didn’t think I could ask for better canine protection than a werewolf escort.
But when I dropped Fitz off for their first sleepover, Zeb looked, well, weird. Dazed and weird, while Jolene was practically jumping out of her skin. “We have something to tell you,” he said.
It was curious how quickly they’d become a “we.” “We wanted” and “we have.” And I used to be a “we.” Zeb and I were
“the” we. And I was suddenly relegated to being a “you.” I would have sulked further if a loopy, stupid grin hadn’t split Zeb’s face as he said, “We wanted you to be one of the first people to know that—”
“We’re gettin’ married!” Jolene crowed, waving a ringed hand in front me. “We’re engaged!”
“What the hell?”
Jolene’s head snapped toward me as I let loose the first words that came to mind. Damn my nonexistent internal filter.
“Not the reaction I expected,” Zeb said, putting his arm around a paled Jolene. Clearly, it was not the reaction she expected, either.
“I think I’ll just go get a snack,” she mumbled as she walked away.
“What is wrong with you?” Zeb demanded as he pulled me outside onto his back deck.
“Me? What is wrong with you? You’ve known her for two months,” I hissed, jerking my head toward the kitchen, where Jolene stood, nervously gnawing on Fritos.
“Could you be more rude?” Zeb demanded.
“I like Jolene, Zeb. She seems nice and everything, but you can’t spring ‘Hey, my girlfriend’s a werewolf’ and ‘Hey, we’re getting married’ in the same month. It’s just too much. Wolves mate for life. Did you know that? If you want to get a divorce, she could, I don’t know, eat you or something. And what about her family? We’ve already established that they don’t like vampires.
How pleased are they going to be that she’s marrying outside her species?”
He rolled his eyes. “Humans marry werewolves all the time. Sure, there are some old-school packs who pride themselves on their pure old blood and refuse to breed with outsiders. They’re the ones who turn out cross-eyed cubs with extra toes.
“Progressive packs, like Jolene’s, they’re actually grateful to have fresh genes stirred into the pool,” he said. “All right, fine, some of her cousins are kind of pissed about it. But her parents are really nice, much nicer than mine. Our children would be half werewolf, giving them fifty-fifty chance of being able to turn. Personally, I kind of hope they can, because that would be cool.”
I ignored the second abdominal twinge at the thought of Zeb having children. “But what if you’re not safe? What if she hurts you while she’s all, you know, grrr?”
“Funny coming from the girl who tried to make me her first vampire meal,” he said, ignoring the face I made at him. “Look, I didn’t think of you as any less human after you changed.”
“You stabbed me.”
“After my initial shock, I got over it, and I still saw you as the same Janie, ” he said. “You’re the same person you always were, which, of course, means you’re a giant pain in my ass. But you would never let anything happen to me. And neither would Jolene.” He held up his hand to shush me when my mouth popped open to protest. “Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.”
He huffed out a breath. “She could be suspicious of me having a best friend who’s a woman, but she’s not. And trust me when I say that being territorial is her nature. I would hope that you’d show her the same, I don’t know, courtesy.”
Well, that made me feel awful.
“Yeah, but Zeb…” I whispered. “Werewolf.”
“Vampire,” he said, pointing at me.
“Noted,” I muttered.
“I know, I don’t know everything about her, but I want to spend the rest of my life learning.” He sighed. “I love her. This is a woman I look forward to seeing every day, Janie, and I’ve never felt that way about anyone, except maybe you. I always figured, well, that you and I would end up in some nursing home together, fighting over the last pudding. But then you had to screw it up and go all immortal and ageless on me.
“Your change has opened my eyes to a world I never even imagined could be real. I knew vampires were out there, but I never thought I would know one, much less have one for my best friend. And seeing how well you’ve handled things…in your own special ass-backward way…I never would have had the courage to marry into Jolene’s family.”
