Without a word, he turned on his heel and stormed toward the door. I used my superhuman speed to step around him and throw myself across the doorway. “No, no. No. Just leave it alone. Trust that I took care of it. Take a leap of faith that I managed to handle a situation on my own without completely screwing it up. Besides, if anyone should be asking the pointed questions around here, it’s me. You’re the one disappearing every time I turn around, not answering your phone, not staying where you say you’re going to be.”
Oh. That was one of those things I didn’t plan on saying out loud.
Gabriel’s mouth was set in a tight line as his face turned an ashy gray. “Don’t stray from the point, Jane.”
But the door was open. And damn it, I needed answers. Even Elinor has her limits. So I took a deep breath and chose my words carefully. “Gabriel, please tell me the truth. Where have you been going the last few months? Who’s Jeanine?”
“This isn’t something I can talk about right now.”
“Then when?” I asked. “Why can’t you tell me? Why don’t you call me when you’re out of town? What’s the big secret?”
“There is no big secret, Jane.”
“Look, when we started this, you were cryptic, but you didn’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying!” he growled.
I threw up my hands. “Fine, editing the full truth to spare my feelings. The point is, you’re keeping things from me. I don’t want to be this girl, OK? I hate that I’ve gone here. I’m just trying to figure out why the person who says he loves me is lying to me.”
“Don’t,” he said, clasping my shoulders. “Trust me, it’s not as bad as whatever scenario you’ve come up with.”
“Then just tell me what’s going on so I can stop worrying about it!”
“I—I can’t,” he said finally.
“Damn it, Gabriel!” I shouted, stamping my foot. Unfortunately, the impact of my shoe on the floorboards shook a heavy porcelain vase from its shelf overhead, bringing it crashing down on Gabriel’s head.
Well, everyone has a little bit of Marianne in them.
“That was an accident,” I assured him, dodging just before he stomped down on the floorboards and sent a cuckoo clock crashing down on my head. “Ow!”
I shoved him hard, sending him sprawling into the living room and over the couch. He popped up and used his inhuman speed to jump across the room and throw me to the floor. I kicked down, crushing his toes with my heel. He yowled, hopping on one foot and toppling over next to me. I rolled over him, pulling at his shirt as I called him filthy, unrepeatable names.
He caught my wrists, rolling and pinning me to the floor. He panted and broke into a wide grin. I gasped, slapping at his shoulders. I pulled my shirt back into place and struggled to untangle myself from his legs. “You’re turned on right now, aren’t you?”
“No!” he insisted, looking all offended and righteous for a moment, until his poker face broke and he was forced to say, “Yes, yes, I am.”
I threw my head back and growled, shaking various bric-a-brac with the sound of my frustration.
Gabriel looked only slightly ashamed. “I can’t help it. You know I love it when you’re all spluttery and defensive and aggressive.”
“This is sick. Gabriel, we can’t keep doing this. We cannot resolve all of our problems with violent, dirty sex.”
Gabriel groaned, leaning his forehead against my shoulder. “Oh, we’re not going to go through this again, are we? Violent and dirty works for us, Jane.”
“Well, it’s not a healthy way to work things out. We need to learn to use our words. I’ll start us off. Who the hell is Jeanine?”
“It’s not what you think, Jane, I promise you. When the time is right, I’ll explain everything—”
Zeb burst through the door, his head swathed in white gauze. He looked as if he’d just escaped from a scene in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
I moaned and made use of several words. Obscene words, but at least I was using some.
Zeb was clearly disturbed by the sight of the two of us all wrapped up in each other, but he didn’t take a hint to turn around and leave. “Hey, Jolene wanted me to drop these bridal-party itineraries off, so you’ll be sure to be aware of your duties every minute of our wedding day.”
“Zeb, this isn’t a good time,” I told him.
Gabriel seemed grateful for an interruption, but he didn’t bother getting up or pulling his shirt back on. “Can we talk about the headgear?” He nodded to the gauze, which I now noticed was spotted with blood around his left ear.
“Everything’s fine,” he assured me as Gabriel and I disengaged and got to our feet. “It was just an accident.”
“Zeb, you’re wearing a sling around your head,” I said, inspecting the dandy bandaging work and earning a slap on the hand from the testy groom. “You just got out of the eye patch!”
He sighed. “I was fishing with Jolene’s family, and uncle Burt cast back—”
“You got a hook in the ear?” I cringed. “Oh, gross! Was the worm still on it?”
Zeb made a face. “No, but thanks for the silver lining. And news flash: the emergency room uses Super Glue instead of stitches now.”
“He knew you were standing right behind him, and he cast back anyway?”
“Yeah, in fact, before he did it, he leaned over to Luke and said, ‘Watch this,’ “ Zeb muttered. “I’m getting pretty sick of this crap. Jolene’s not doing anything about it. I’m starting to wonder … well, I just wish they would stop going for my head.”
“Out of all of this, that’s what you find disturbing?”
Zeb rolled his eyes at me. “No, I find it disturbing that Timothy Dalton ranks highest on your ‘Which James Bond Would You Do?’ list.”
“The Living Daylights is highly underrated.” I sulked when Gabriel gave me a surprised look.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Zeb said. “I don’t know if I can put up with her family. It’s never going to stop, and she’s never going to want to move away from them. I just don’t get why she wants to stay close to them.”
He looked up at me, and a film of unshed tears seemed to be obscuring his normally clear brown eyes. “Jane, isn’t there anything you want to tell me?”
“I’m sort of out of my element here, Zeb.” I looked up to Gabriel. “Will you please talk to him? Have some sort of man-to-man exchange?”
Gabriel cleared his throat and placed a fatherly hand on Zeb’s shoulder. “Loving family members do not aim for each other’s soft tissues.”
I made my angry-girlfriend face at him. He sighed and dug deeper into the wisdom well. “Zeb, you’re dealing with a lot of dominant alpha-male personalities here. You’re going to have to do something to show them that you’re not a beta. You have to establish dominance. The next time the cousins are gathered, walk up to the biggest, strongest one and stare him right in the eye. And tell him to go fetch something for you. Use those exact words. ‘Fetch me a soda’ or ‘Fetch me that chair.’ And if he hesitates, keep staring at him until he folds … or he’ll beat you severely. Either way, it will improve the pack’s respect for you.”
“I thought that was what you were supposed to do the first day you go to prison,” I muttered.
“Jolene loves you,” Gabriel said. “No matter what happens with her family, you just have to focus on that.” He glanced up at me. “And remember that if she does things that don’t make any sense to you, she might be trying to do what’s best for you both.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. He shrugged.
Zeb was placated with more generic relationship advice and the promise that Gabriel would serve as his personal vampire bodyguard during the wedding festivities. We finally shoved him out the door, and I turned on Gabriel.
“I’m not done with you,” I told him.
He gave an easy grin. “Well, that’s nice to hear.”
I glared at him, and it was if he suddenly remembered that we were in the middle of a disagreement when Zeb burst in. “Oh.”
I threaded my fingers through his and locked eyes with him. “Do you want to be in a relationship with me?”
“I love you, Jane. More than I’ve loved anyone, I love you.”
I smiled at the warm feeling that spread through my chest at those words. It was like having a heartbeat again. “Then don’t keep things from me.”
“Just give me a little more time,” he begged. “I’ll explain everything when the time is right. Just wait a little while longer.”
I took a deep breath, looking deep into Gabriel’s eyes. If anyone had proven his devotion to me, it was Gabriel. Even if that devotion was destructive, it had a single focus, and that was me. I held his interest even when I was just my “annoying” human self. He didn’t consider my brain or personality something to overcome. He’d saved me. He’d killed for me. He’d loved me. And for all of that, I owed him a little bit of trust.
“I love you, too,” I said, cupping his face in my hands. I locked eyes with him, leveling him with my gaze. “So I’ll wait. I want you to tell me what’s causing you so much stress. Maybe I can help. But I want you to do it in your own time. However, you should know that if that time doesn’t come soon—”
He nodded. “You will threaten any number of my orifices. I understand.”
“Is it orifices or orifici?” I asked.
“I’m rather shocked that you don’t know,” he admitted.
The countdown to the wedding was two weeks. It was a slow night in the shop, and I had just given up on sorting through any old boxes after a traumatic incident in which Dick had to kill a rather large spider for me. I swear that thing chased me onto that chair.
When Dick returned, I had put the spider’s box in the alley and opened up my file of notes for what Zeb had termed “Operation Undead Gigolo.”
“What are you doing?” Dick asked, peering over my shoulder. “Oh, honey, this is worse than I thought. Normal, well-adjusted girls do not spend Friday nights looking through autopsy reports.”
“When have you ever known me to be well adjusted or normal?” I asked.
“I concede.”
“I’m looking into the guy my grandma is marrying. He seems sketchy. He drinks pig’s blood. According to this, he’s dead.” I showed him the death certificate. “And he’s been married several times to women who don’t quite make it past their first anniversary. He’s not registered on any of the official undead databases, but according to the chapel that handled his burial, he went to his grave intact, so it’s possible he’s a vampire.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to ask him whether he’s one of us?” Dick asked, looking over Wilbur’s coroner’s report.
“I would, but my grandma Ruthie seems to be actively avoiding me. She doesn’t come to Mama’s house if she knows I’m going to be there. She screens my calls. She won’t let me near Wilbur, but I don’t know if it’s because he’s trying to hide something or she’s afraid of me embarrassing her. There’s no legitimate address listed for this guy, and the last three homes he shared with the corpse brides have been sold. I went to his grave to see if there was anything abnormal about it. It seemed fine. I wasn’t about to try to dig him up and see if the coffin was empty, because that’s how horror movies start. Dick, are you even listening to me?”
“Huh,” Dick said, looking over Wilbur’s death report. “Sorry, no. This is weird.”
“Weird ha-ha? Or weird our territory weird?”
Dick turned the paperwork to get a better look. “Well, the nurse who did the CPR on him, Jay Lemuels, I know him. He’s one of us.”
“Where can we find Jay?” I asked.
Dick checked the grandfather clock on the wall. “This time of night, probably Club Rainn. It’s a vampire bar. Good blood, bad sound system.”
Dick jangled the keys out of his pocket.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“We’re going,” he told me. “The night is young, and we’re immortal, and there are unanswered questions afoot. If that doesn’t make a case for a couple of beers and a ridiculously high cover charge, Stretch, I don’t know what does.”
“The last time I went out on the town with you, I ended up a suspect in Walter’s murder.”
“I’ll be there to keep an eye on you.”
“I don’t know if that will keep me out of trouble or just get me into it more efficiently.”
“Come on,” he said. “It’s Karaoke Night.”
“OK, but you have to sing one Kenny Rogers song in a falsetto,” I said, poking him in the chest.
“I will sing,” he said, tossing me my jacket. “But only because my version of ‘The Gambler’ is both inspirational and erotic.”
“Gross.”
We climbed into Dick’s beat-up transportation, which smelled suspiciously of burnt rope. There were dozens of empty blood bottles on the floor and what might have been counterfeit Gap jeans. I turned back to him. “If we get pulled over, am I going to have to tell the nice policeman that I’ve never met you before and I have no idea how those stolen car stereos got into the trunk?”