“Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less Destructive Relationships. ” I read the title aloud. My eyes narrowed at her. “You read this crap?”

“We sell this crap, you hypocrite,” she said, her lips pinched into an expression that would have made Jenny proud. “Besides, there aren’t a lot of books out there for mortal women dating vampires. I think the psychiatric world at large believes that if you’re dating a vampire, you have other issues that need to be addressed before your relationship problems. But this was really helpful. It’s written for women who have recently been turned and are having a hard time adjusting to dating their undead peers. There’s lots of stuff about healthy expectations and boundaries and violent tendencies. So, do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Andrea walked to the coffee bar. A few seconds later, the espresso machine roared to life. “Right, because what would I know about being in a relationship with a much older vampire you may or may not be able to trust?”

“Dang you and your logic.” I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and took a deep, unnecessary breath. Andrea was the first human I’d ever fed from. It tends to bond gals for life. Andrea helped me bridge the gap from semi-social-phobic closet vampire to respectable undead citizen. Thrilled finally to have someone to take classes with after years of an empty social calendar, she enrolled us in yoga classes, ceramics classes, jewelry-making classes, even cake decorating, which we agreed later was a mistake. She’d basically become the girlfriend I’d always tried to make Zeb into. If I couldn’t talk to her about this, whom could I talk to?

I sighed. “He’s probably cheating on me. And I think he might have broken up with me … but without saying the actual words.”

Andrea chewed her plump bottom lip. “Gabriel is a pretty direct person. I’m sure he would have—”

“He said, ‘If you have to go, you have to go.’ And then he said, ‘This is for the best. This trip didn’t exactly work out as we’d hoped. I’ll call you.’” I caught the flash of horror cross her features. “See? You flinched! I knew it!”

“Let’s go back to the beginning. Why did you think Gabriel might be cheating on you? Not impressions or feelings, actual facts.”

I ticked the offenses off with my fingers. “Weird phone calls that he refused to take around me, manic behavior, constant changes in our hotel plans, notes at our hotels that he wouldn’t let me read. And what I could read wasn’t good. Lots of present-tense words. But I’m just being paranoid, right? I mean, there’s probably a rational explanation for all this, right? Like he’s an undead secret agent? That’s plausible, right?”

Andrea winced as she poured me an espresso in a tiny white demitasse. “Well … probably not. That’s all pretty suspicious stuff. When Mattias cheated on me, he had a lot of late ‘faculty meetings.’ He took calls from his ‘teaching assistant’ in another room.”

“Please stop using the quotation marks, I need this life lesson to be unvarnished and without ironic subtext.” Andrea pushed the fancy cup at me again. I considered claiming some sort of vampire aversion to the high-octane concoction, but Andrea was well aware that while we lack the digestive enzymes to digest solid food, we have no problems with most liquids. Sometimes it’s a pain that Andrea is so well informed.

I was not a big coffee drinker in life. Iced frappuccinos from Dairy Queen were about as adventurous as I got. But Andrea insisted that if I was going to sell coffee, I had to know what I was talking about. And now that the machinery was up and running, she was my self-appointed caffeine pusher.

“Do I have to?” Andrea shoved the cup at me with more force. I took a sip. “Gah! That’s awful! My cousin Muriel isn’t that bitter, and she has two gay ex-husbands … who now live together. Is that how it’s supposed to taste?”

“Sadly, yes. It’s an acquired taste,” Andrea admitted as she sipped her own coffee without making Edward G. Robinson faces. “So, invisible quotation marks aside, when Mattias cheated on me, he stopped taking me to familiar restaurants, because he’d started taking her to our places. It was new restaurants all the time. He was on edge. He accused me of being paranoid when I asked legitimate questions like ‘Why did you change your e-mail password?’ or ‘Where did you sleep yesterday?’”

I groaned. “I’m going to be miserable and alone for the rest of my long, long life.”

She shrugged. “Oh, it’s not so bad. We still have yoga on Thursday nights.”

“Oh, yeah, that will make up for the loss of companionship and sexual gratification.”

Andrea grinned salaciously. “Well, you never know what you might learn in yoga.”

“Perv.” I chucked a coffee filter at her.

Andrea finally gave me the full report on the break-in. She’d arrived early a few evenings back, expecting a delivery of comfy chairs for the reading nook, and found the front window bashed in. She called the cops, who were sadly familiar with the neighborhood, and they chalked it up to drug addicts, teenagers, or drug-addicted teenagers. Proving precisely why I hired her in the first place, Andrea had already filed the insurance paperwork, arranged for an antiques appraiser from Louisville to come by to estimate the damage to the books, and contacted a glass repairman to replace the front window the following afternoon.

“So, really, there was no reason for me to come home,” I said, awkwardly stuffing my hands into my pockets.

Andrea arched an eyebrow at me. “Yeah, I wish someone had thought to tell you that.”

3

In an undead relationship, it’s best not to focus on the “nots.” Not being able to have children. Not being able to legally marry. Instead, focus on what you can have, true long-term commitment.

—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to

Less Destructive Relationships

I could smell that Jolene was pregnant, a new, soft, green sort of scent that hit me the moment she opened the creaking trailer door.

I put on my “ignoring my surroundings” smile, the one that said, “I do not see the huge streaks of rust lapping down the pink wall panels or the carpeting that may be Astroturf.” Zeb was overseeing a PTA meeting that night and had asked me to check in on his bride. She’d missed me, he said, and was a little put out that it had taken me three days to make it over to their place. Fortunately, I was carrying two recently reheated pot pies to win my way back into her good graces.

“Hey!” She beamed until she saw what I was holding. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Jolene loved Mama’s pot pies. For the last year, they were the only thing that kept her enormous appetite at bay when she visited my house. Since she and Zeb became my neighbors, I brought them over regularly for Jolene to snack on. And now, the mere presence of my foil-wrapped gift seemed to be turning Jolene a delightful shade of “bleh.”

“I’ll be fine,” she whimpered. “I’m just a little sensitive to smells right now. Hormones combined with werewolf nose make it so much worse. Zeb was brownin’ hamburger the other night, and I had to run out of the room to throw up twice. And I can’t eat the foods I usually love. I couldn’t get enough of your mama’s pot pies a few months ago, and now, just the thought of breakin’ the crust—” Jolene took a deep breath and pursed her lips.

“I’ll leave it outside,” I said. “You sit down.”

I went to the kitchen and managed to smack myself in the face with a half-attached cupboard door while I poured Jolene a glass of water. The trailer was snug, to say the least. The kitchen was what Jolene’s mother, Mimi, called a “two-butt model,” meaning no more than two butts could fit side by side between the stained faux-wood-grain counters at any one time.

“You’re out of Saltines, so I grabbed some Ritz crackers,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said, the color of her cheeks returning ever so slightly as she opened the wax-paper tube. “So, how was your trip?”

I launched into what was now the standard, heavily edited description. Lovely hotels, rude people, beautiful museums. Jolene paused mid-chew and clapped a hand over her mouth. With an “Oh, God,” she ran for the bathroom door and retched pitifully.

Like a doofus, I followed her into the tiny bathroom. “Are you OK?”

I pressed my hand over my nose as Jolene’s sick smell smacked me in the face.

“This is as close to pregnancy as I ever want to get.” I handed her the water glass. “I thought morning sickness was just supposed to be, well, in the morning.”

“My ass. It’s around-the clock- ‘no-warnin’ sickness,’” she wheezed. “One minute, I’m a perfectly fine, functioning human being, and the next, I’m tossin’ up everything I’ve ever eaten.”

“And that’s saying something,” I marveled. She glared at me. “Not helping, sorry.”

“I threw up in the parkin’ lot at the Piggly Wiggly the other day. I had to tell Bitty Tate I was pregnant, because I didn’t want her telling everybody I’ve got a drinkin’ problem. Everything makes me sick. I ate a salad the other day, a salad, without any meat at all. I’m gonna waste away to nothin’.”

I eyed her belly paunch, which made her look about four months along in human terms. “I wouldn’t worry about that.”

She glared up at me. “I’m gonna hit you, just as soon as I can stand up.”

“Fair warning.”

“I’m so miserable,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “And I should be grateful that we made a baby so easily. Some mixed couples can’t, you know. And I can’t complain to my mama, because she’ll camp out here in the living room and refuse to leave until the baby is in college. And I can’t complain to Zeb, because he gets this weird, frightened-rabbit look in his eyes if I imply that I’m anythin’ but one-hundred-percent awesome. I’m just—I’m glad you’re here, Jane.”

“Well, you look great,” I told her, pushing her hair back from her sweaty forehead. And it was true in an infuriating way. Even the sweaty glow and water retention of early pregnancy only bumped Jolene down to what would be considered gorgeous for most humans. It just wasn’t fair to the four billion or so other women on the planet. My only consolation was that eating a Ritz cracker had just made her throw up.

“So, how’s your family?” I asked, helping her back into her chair.

“Well, Mama’s overjoyed. Calls me six or seven times a day. She says hi, by the way. Daddy’s sort of torn between pride and the horror of knowin’ what his little girl’s been up to. I think up until now, he’d been tellin’ himself that Zeb and I were sleepin’ in bunk beds. My cousins are sort of holdin’ their breath, I think, because they know my aunts are gonna make a huge fuss because it’s my first baby. And my cousin Vance has run away with a carnival.”

I shuddered, picturing the none-too-bright cousin with unnatural feelings for Jolene operating a Tilt-A-Whirl. “Is this one of those things where I hope that you’re kidding but assume that you’re not?” She nodded. I tried to use a nonchalant tone as I asked, “How are you and Zeb doing?”

She sighed again. “Weird. He’s so quiet. He’s never quiet, except for when, you know, under a whammy. Oh, man, you don’t think Mama Ginger scrambled his brain again, do you?”

“No. You know what I think?”

“Obviously not, or we wouldn’t be havin’ this conversation,” she muttered.

“I think Zeb’s just scared. Scared of growing up. Scared of not being able to take care of you and the … litter.” Jolene got it together enough to smack my arm. I winced, glad that bruises didn’t last long on me. “OK, think about what happens to married people with children in Zeb’s family. They end up drunk and angry and living in matching trailers in their relatives’ backyards. He’s terrified of ending up like Mama Ginger and Floyd. I think he convinced himself that he could handle the transition to husband pretty well, but what I will only refer to as his spontaneity and your superabsorbent eggs came back to bite both of you on the butt.”