“And you want to be friends?” he asked, scratching his head. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been friends with someone with breasts, particularly breasts like yours. Can I still make inappropriate remarks about you and your person?”
Suddenly self-conscious, I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t think I could stop you if I tried.”
The Friends and Family of the Undead met at the Traveler’s Bowl, a restaurant featuring healthy cuisine. It was known locally as
“that place where they sell hippie food.” Zeb said the FFOTU meetings were the only thing keeping the restaurant going, besides the “glass sculptures” they sold at the gift shop. (I hadn’t spent a lot of time in head shops, but I recognized a bong when I saw one.)
I bought a large mineral water and some hummus, even though I wouldn’t be able to eat it. Most chick-pea consumption is based on misplaced politeness. But I wanted to do my part for the proprietors, a nice-looking artsy couple who had sunk their life savings into overestimating Half-Moon Hollow’s palate. It was hard to get local residents to eat anything involving wheatgrass, sprouts, or lentils. If you mashed all those things together into balls and deep-fried them, you might have something going.
The FFOTU, which, given the surroundings, I kept calling TOFU, consisted of twenty or so people of all races, ages, and socioeconomic classes. They were individuals who never would have spoken in “real life” but seemed to share a strong bond within the walls of the Traveler’s Bowl. There was Carol, a cook at the Coffee Spot, whose brother, Junior, had been turned by an angry ex-girlfriend. The family had no idea what had happened until Junior flipped out in the middle of a Sunday dinner and tried to bite their uncle. Daisy’s banker husband turned in the midst of a midlife crisis. Instead of buying a sports car and nailing his receptionist to avoid thinking about death, Daisy’s husband chose to stop the aging the process altogether. Daisy was pretty angry at first, but now she was confused about whether she should let him turn her, too. She felt pressured to make a decision soon, as she aged a little every day, but he was forever forty-seven. George’s daughter was turned on a bad date, and now she refused to speak to anyone in the family. He couldn’t understand why she just cut off contact with them. He and his wife were left mourning someone they still occasionally saw at Wal-Mart.
Each of them hurt. Each of them offered understanding and sympathy to the other members. Each tried to keep a sense of humor. Carol pointed out that had she been thinking clearly, she would have aimed her brother’s fangs at her aunt Cecile, whom no one liked.
Every meeting started with the Pledge, a collection of five truths the group promised to remember:
“I will remember that a newly turned vampire is the same person with new needs.
“I will remember that a loved one’s being turned into a vampire does not reflect on me.
“I will remember to offer my vampire loved ones acceptance and love, while maintaining healthy boundaries.
“I will remember that vampirism is not contagious unless blood is exchanged.
“I will remember that I am not alone.”
Seeing my vampirism from my parents’ or even from Zeb’s perspective was sobering. A loved one had died, but there was no funeral, no chance to grieve, no chance to adjust to their complete change in lifestyle. Plus, there was the embarrassment of telling friends and family that your son/sister/friend had become “infected” with vampirism. And worrying that the new vampire would go all evil and hurt you, as in the case of Carol’s brother. It all convinced me that I was not ready to come out to my parents yet, if for nothing else than to spare them those feelings as long as possible.
Fine, it was a rationalization, but that didn’t make it any less binding.
I didn’t know if anyone in the group could tell I was a vampire. No one asked, which I found refreshing. I was the only one in the room that night, but Zeb said they had a few local vamps who attended off and on. Based on the group ’s commitment to confidentiality, he refused to tell me who they were.
After discussing changes in vampire legislation, the members traded stories and tips. For instance, I learned about a company in Colorado that made SPF 500 window tinting for cars, allowing vampires to drive in full sunlight. Carol announced that she ’d come up with several recipes to help make vampires feel more welcome at family meals. Even as a vampire, I had to say that Plasma Pop Jell-O Molds sounded gross. Eventually, the group broke up to socialize, which was obviously their favorite part of the meeting.
With Zeb distracted by a funny story from Carol involving her brother, a silver platter, and a confused pawn broker, Zeb ’s new girlfriend bounded up to me and almost knocked me flat. Jolene was just as I had pictured her in my visions, gorgeous in an exotic way that added up to strike one against me liking her. A perfectly oval face with high cheekbones and a lush pink mouth that tilted at the corners. Extremely long, even white teeth that glinted in the low light of the restaurant. Wild curls that shifted from auburn to fiery red to strawberry blond depending on how she tilted her magnificent head. Longlidded emerald eyes fringed with sable lashes. There was something not quite right, a fierceness to the features that unsettled as much as it staggered. I imagined that males of any species would be willing to overlook that.
I consoled myself with the fact that the nasal backwoods twang that fell from those bee-stung lips strangled dead any sort of Tomb Raider fantasies Zeb might harbor. The twang was the second thing I noticed, after the weird body odor. It wasn ’t an unpleasant smell, just an organic punch to the system, like fresh-cut grass and apple skins. Maybe beautiful people smelled different from most?
“It’s so nice to meet you!” she squealed. She swiped at my shirt, which was now covered in crumbs from the bran muffin she’d been eating. “Zeb’s told me all about you! We’re so glad you could join us.”
“Well, Zeb said the group has been really helpful, and everyone seems so nice,” I said. “He said you’ve been coming here for a while?”
She shrugged those smooth, tanned shoulders. “Well, my best friend since high school was turned a few years back. It took her a year to come out to me. I felt like an idiot for not seeing the signs. It was hard. My family …well, they just don’t trust vampires. Never have. And it took me a while to adjust to her being undead. I’m havin’ to overcome a lot of built-in prejudice.”
“Good for you, though, for trying,” I said. “So, do you and your friend still hang out?”
Jolene’s lip trembled. Her eyes flashed, an electric glow under the green. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed, but they were too involved in their kale rolls. “No. Tessie—that was her name, Tessie—um, she got dusted about six months ago.
Her family said it was an accident. But she was always so careful. She wouldn’t have gone out so early, with the sun still up. I miss her.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, squeezing her arm.
She tilted her head and smiled. “Well, the group’s been really sweet with me. I’m sort of dealin’ with a whole ’nother round of grief. My family doesn’t really understand what I’m going through.”
“I’m glad,” I said, meaning it. I hated to think of how Zeb would feel if I’d died and he had no one to turn to for support.
“Good!” She nuzzled and kissed my cheek and bounded away to snatch some of Daisy’s pita crisps. Seriously, the woman never stopped eating. She’d gone through an entire one-pound bag of peanut butter M&M’s during the meeting and was now trying to sweet-talk a kale roll out of George. The burly trucker was happy to hand over the high-fiber treat.
Zeb wrapped an arm around me. “What do you think?”
“She’s gorgeous,” I assured him. “Charming. Very affectionate. But, um, did she just quit smoking or something?”
“No, why?” he asked.
“Well, she hasn’t stopped eating the whole time we’ve been here. And she’s not exactly a stocky gal.”
“OK, you have to promise that you’re not going to freak out,” Zeb said, pulling me away from the rest of the group.
“You’ve pretty much guaranteed that I’m going to now, but go ahead.”
“The thing is that…well, Jolene’s a werewolf,” Zeb said, his voice lowered.
“Oh, ha ha, Zeb. Halloween’s not for a few more weeks.” I laughed, mugging spookily. “Ooh, Jolene’s a werewolf. You brought me to a vampire-support-group meeting to introduce me to a werewolf. I guess that explains the long teeth and the flashing green eyes and the nuzzling…Oh, crap, you’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yep.” Zeb nodded. “Her whole family is made up of hereditary werewolves. It’s not a curse or anything. She was born like this. I was sort of surprised you didn ’t guess, to be honest. I thought you creatures of the night could sense each other or something.”
“How would I possibly guess werewolf? Swimsuit model, maybe. But it makes sense. If vampires are real, then I guess werewolves, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the rest of the Universal horror-movie standards must be real, too. Wait, does that mean she already knows I’m a vampire?” I whispered.
Jolene came up behind me, tapping my back and making me jump. “Zeb told me on our first date.”
It took me a few seconds to register the different emotions I was experiencing: hurt, a little betrayal, the sting of being excluded. I finally landed on the ability to produce sarcasm, which was far more useful.
“Well, thanks for telling me,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’ve faked eating hummus all night for nothing!”
Jolene squeezed my shoulder. Ouch. She had some very strong hands. “I wasn’t lying when I said my family is antivampire.
But it’s because they’re werewolves, not rednecks. Actually, they’re a little bit of both.
“I came to the FFOTU meetings to try to get a better grip on how to deal with Tessie ’s being a vampire. I wanted to stay friends with her, and I knew my family, my clan, wouldn’t be happy about it. And after she died, the group members were the only people I knew who were nice about it, who could understand why I was so upset. So I kept comin ’ because I wanted to help other people who were going through the same thing.”