Mama’s (s) mothering instinct could not be denied. “Do you want me to bring anything? I could make a pot pie.”
“No food. After dinner. Bring Daddy.” I hung up before she could answer.
How was I going to explain this to my parents? I foresaw a good deal of blaming and wailing in my immediate future. I pulled the pillow over my face in a lame attempt to suffocate myself. And then I remembered I didn’t need to breathe. Dang it.
“Don’t worry, pumpkin, I locked the doors. No one, meaning your mama, is going to barge in,” Jettie said, materializing at the foot of my bed. I shrieked, launching the pillow through her.
“Can you knock or put a bell around your neck or something?” I grumped. “Maybe rattle some chains before you walk into a room?”
“It’s good to see you’re still a morning person,” Jettie teased, tossing the pillow back at me. “Don’t worry, honey, if your Mama comes over, I’ll just give her the usual. Cold chills, goose bumps, a vague feeling of unease, as if she ’s left the iron on.
Nobody sticks around with that stuff going on.”
“Thanks, Aunt Jettie,” I said, falling asleep before the blankets settled over me.
As the sun set, my eyes snapped open. I felt great. Energized. Refreshed. All of the things those fancy mattresses are supposed to do for you. I bounded out of bed and threw the curtains back to bring in the moonlight. I wondered where I could get some of those fancy blackout shades that hotels use. I made a mental note to look up vampire redecorating Web sites.
I heard a knock at my front door, and my good mood dissipated. Mama was early. Knowing there was no time to get dressed, I trotted down the stairs and prepared for the parental pajama critique.
“Yoo-hoo?”
I skidded to a stop. Mama never said “yoo-hoo.”
I opened the front door. There was a pair of shapely legs sticking out from under a ridiculously large pink -wrapped gift basket. My world just kept getting weirder and weirder.
“Hello?”
“Hi!” the legs said. “I’m Missy Houston of the Newly Undead Welcoming Committee, Kentucky division.”
My uneasiness at letting a strange vampire into my home battled the manners Mama had pounded into my marrow. Manners, marrow, and Mama won out. “Would you like to put that down?”
“Thanks. Inhuman strength or not, this thang’s heavy,” she huffed, putting the mega-basket on my foyer table. Missy was wearing a perky petal-pink Chanel knockoff suit with a matching faux-Coach purse and heels. Even the headband in her perfectly flipped champagne-colored hair was pink. It was comforting to know that I didn’t have to give up pastels in my afterlife. I looked washed-out in black.
“It’s so nice to meet a newcomer,” Missy trilled in her melted-sugar twang, more Texas than Kentucky. (We tend to abuse our long I sounds as opposed to…all the sounds.) Missy shook my hand in a digit-crushing grip. Unsure of whether this was some sort of test, I resisted wincing and squeezed right back.
“Jane Jameson,” I said, keeping a bland smile plastered across my face. “How did you know I’ve been…”
“Turned? Vayamped out? Recruited to the legion of soulless bloodsuckers?” She trilled again at my perplexed expression.
“Oh, shug, you’ve got to keep your sense of humor about being undead. Otherwise, you ’ll just go toppling over the abyss into madness.”
Yet another throw-pillow saying to be stitched.
“I can sense the location of other vampires, their energy, ” Missy explained. “Newbies tend to give off mega-waves when they rise. That’s why I’m in charge of the welcome wagon.”
“Makes sense.” I nodded. “Haven’t I seen you before?”
“On my billboards, most likely. Up until two years ago, I was one of the top-selling real estate agents in the tricounty area. I went to a convention in Boca Raton. I had one too many margaritas, met a tall, pale, and handsome man in the bar, and woke up a vampire.”
“I was mistaken for a deer and got shot,” I offered.
“Oh.” Finally, she was speechless. It didn’t last long. “I have always loved this house. Great upkeep, considering the age.
They just don’t make them like this anymore. High ceilings. Huge kitchen. Wonderful windows. Great natural light, even though you can’t really appreciate that now. Original hardwood floors?”
I nodded, watching Aunt Jettie materialize at her writing desk. I glanced over to Missy, who was still appraising my floors as her needle-thin heels clicked on the polished wood. She didn’t notice the dearly departed Wildcats fan scowling in the corner.
“Well, this is just a little welcome gift from the local branch of the council, ” Missy was saying. “Sort of an orientation in a basket. SPF 500 sunblock, iron supplements, floss, a six -pack of Faux Type O, a bottle of plasma-protein powder, and the numbers of every vamp-friendly blood bank in the tristate area. There’s also a copy of The Guide for the Newly Undead.”
“There’s a handbook?” I asked, plucking it from the pink-wrapped cornucopia. “Thank God.”
Aunt Jettie cleared her throat and rolled her eyes toward Missy.
“Well, this is very sweet,” I said. “I really appreciate it. I’m sure I’ll see you at the next pot luck or something.”
Missy laughed, swinging her tiny pink bag onto her arm. “You’re gonna be a hoot at the meetings, I can tell.”
Meetings? I was just kidding.
A few more minutes of polite chitchat, and Missy was firmly ensconced in her black Cadillac. After watching her taillights depart through the window, I turned to Aunt Jettie. “What was with the facial charades?”
“I just can’t stand Little Miss Matching Everything.” Jettie sneered as I toted the basket into my cheerful yellow kitchen with blue gingham curtains and set it on the white tile counter next to the cookie jar shaped like a cheeky raccoon. Jettie perched next to the sink. “Back when she was living, she tried to talk me into listing this place with her. Said that maybe I needed to go into one of those nice assisted-living places. The little snot.”
“Why couldn’t she see you? I thought seeing ghosts is one of the benefits of being undead.”
“I didn’t want her to see me,” Jettie said.
“Well, she brought treats, so she’s not half bad in my book,” I told her, removing the ginormous pink bow. As my stomach rumbled, I read over the label of Faux Type O. From what I had heard, it was the Rolling Rock of artificial bloods. Light and palatable, with a smooth finish and 120 percent of your recommended daily allowance of hemoglobin.
“A stranger drops fake blood on your doorstep, and you’re going to drink it?” Jettie asked. “I thought we had a nice long talk about stranger danger when you were seven.”
“There’s a safety seal.” I held it up for her inspection. “It’s either this or I go hunting for hitchhikers to feed on.”
Jettie covered her eyes, but she was able to see through her hands. I was not exactly thrilled at the prospect of snacking on the blood equivalent of Cheez Whiz, but I needed to get used to it. There was no way I was feeding on live victims on a regular basis. I couldn’t stand the thought of hunting when I was living. Obviously, that was some sort of cruelly ambiguous psychic foreshadowing.
What the hell. If it was gross, I had a package of fudge Pop Tarts that I could rub on the raw hamburger in my fridge.
Faux Type O came in little plastic jugs that reminded me of milk bottles. I popped the top and sniffed. It wasn’t bad, vaguely yeasty and salty. Jettie came in for a closer look.
“Do you mind?” I asked as she picked up a pencil and poked at my right upper fang. I brought the bottle to my lips, pinched my nose, and swallowed. It rolled past my lips, thick and smooth. I didn’t gag, which I took as a good sign.
“How is it?” Jettie asked.
“Not bad,” I said, rolling the remnants off my tongue. “It has a kind of Diet Coke aftertaste, artificial and beefy.”
“You make it sound just delightful,” Jettie snorted as I drained the bottle. I wiped my mouth and tossed the bottle into the recycling bin.
“So, you’re dead,” I said. “I wasn’t together enough last night to ask, what exactly do you do all day? Besides hide my keys.”
“I listen to your phone calls. Make you feel like you ’re being watched. Move things around. Create cold spots.” At this point, I glared at her. Unmoved, she levitated my dish of Hershey Kisses just to show she could. “Sometimes I visit other spirits around town. You wouldn’t believe how haunted the Hollow is.”
“Oh, I think my mind is opening up to the possibility,” I said dryly. “Give me a for instance?”
“Well, the golf course. If people realized how many dead men in ugly pants are wandering around there, they wouldn’t go near it,” she said, smirking like the proverbial cat with a canary and/or cream. “Including your grandpa Fred.”
“Aw, I loved Grandpa Fred,” I said, pouting, which was difficult considering the fangs. “I hate to think of him wandering the earth for eternity in plaid polyester.”
“Oh, he’s fine, honey.” She waved a hand. “Happy as a clam. And even happier now that we’ve been seeing each other.”
“You mean you’re seeing him as in dating him? I honestly don’t know what to say to that.” I shook my head.
“I can’t help it if your grandma married all of the good -looking men in town. We were bound to cross paths sometime,”
Jettie said, shrugging.
She had a point. To recall childhood memories of my grandmother, I didn’t need the scent of oatmeal cookies or Ivory soap, just Designer Imposter Chanel No. 5 and hearing the phrase, “Darling, I’ve met the most wonderful man.” My grandma Ruthie, Jettie’s sister, had been married four times, so many times that I started calling every old man I saw at the grocery store Grandpa.