CHAPTER 10
In what I can only describe as a halfhearted attempt to keep my spirits up during this whole ordeal, I’m happy to report I’ve discovered that at least one of the Hollywood vampire rules applies—by the time I woke up again, my finger was completely healed.
From a scientific standpoint, that was fascinating. From a “gee, your life sucks” standpoint, one regenerative finger was hardly going to alter my overall mood.
And what exactly was that mood? Confused. Angry. Uncertain.
And terrified.
And, frankly, starting to get a little claustrophobic. I was a teensy bit hesitant about sticking my hand out of the ground again, so I checked my watch first. Well past six. The sun would have set almost an hour ago. So I sucked in my breath (figuratively only, because who wants to swallow dirt?) and shoved my fist straight up.
I waited a second, just in case my now-dead-and-undoubtedly-slower brain hadn’t yet registered pain. But my fingers felt fine. I wiggled them, and as far as I could tell without actually looking, they were moving like they were supposed to.
I started shoving the dirt away, sitting up at the same time. It didn’t take long. Apparently, they hadn’t bothered to bury me too deeply or pack the dirt too tightly. I stood up, pausing a second to get my bearings. The vacant lot behind the school, the site of a now-demolished warehouse, the partial cinder block walls of which were now shielding me from traffic.
That, at least, was a good thing, as I really didn’t want to be seen. I mean, I was covered in dirt. And while that might have been an okay look for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill: Volume 2, I didn’t think it worked for me.
I stood still for only a second, then took off running. Stephen and the gang would be back for me—I was certain of that much. But I needed time to think, and I’d already learned the hard way that with Stephen around, my brain didn’t fire on all thrusters.
The vacant lot was south of the school, and I circled around it, aiming toward the hike and bike trail that runs along the river. There’s some cover there, what with all the trees and shrubs. And, fortunately, most of the joggers disappear once the sun goes down. Because who wants to run into a mugger on a dark jogging path?
Considering my new undead status, I wasn’t too worried about being mugged. Or murdered, for that matter.
That gave me a nice little boost of confidence, but mostly, I just wanted to get home. So I raced down the path toward the pedestrian overpass, sprinted past the new Whole Foods and made a left onto Sixth Street, raced a few more blocks, then turned right at Blanco. This is not exactly a short distance, but I wasn’t even winded. Chalk one up for vampirism. I never had to do Pilates again!
Our house is on a street with lots of old, refurbished houses. I’ve always thought the neighborhood was cool. Now it looked eerily ’Salem’s Lot-ish. My parents bought it when I was ten and they were happy. At the time, the place was a complete dump. A two-bedroom, one-bath bungalow that cost, as my dad said, “more money than God has.”
About three years ago they started remodeling. That was fun (not). The dust that hung in the air wasn’t nearly as thick as the tension between them.
When the remodel was finally finished earlier this year, we celebrated by going to Jeffries and having this really fabulous dinner. My parents actually talked and laughed and for the first time I didn’t feel like someone was standing on my chest. I remember falling asleep thinking about my very own bathroom, my much bigger bedroom, and my newly amicable mom and dad.
Life was good.
For about one week. Then the fighting started again. Or, at least, it started when they were home together, which was pretty close to never. And the ice-cold tension. And the mean looks and the slamming doors and, honestly, you would have thought that I was the grown-up!
Even so, I never expected the D word. It came, though. About one month after the remodel was finished, they called me into the living room and told me that my dad was moving out. By the next morning he was gone.
“Don’t worry,” they both said to me. “We both still love you very much. Nothing’s going to change that.”
And you know what? They were right. I hardly saw either of them before the divorce, and when I did, they were grumpy and stressed. Now I still hardly see them. When I do, they’re grumpy and stressed.
I had a feeling I was coming home to a major grump session. I mean, I’ve never once stayed out all night. So I was certain that today my mom would be sitting at the kitchen table, editing a legal brief, chewing out some underling on her cell phone, and waiting to lay into me.
The thing is, I didn’t want Mom to see me like this. Looking like I crawled out of a grave, I mean. So I planned to sneak in, scrub down in my bathroom, then come in through the kitchen like usual.
Fortunately, luck was on my side, because my bedroom window was open just a crack. I’m supposed to keep a nail in the window so that it can’t be opened from the outside. But I’m always forgetting to do that. Mom says I’m risking our lives; that anyone can break in. At the moment, that was good news for me.
I pulled the screen off and tossed it aside. Then I pushed the sash all the way up. The window is only about waist high, so all I really needed to do was lean in, then scootch until my hips and legs were inside, too. If I was lucky, I’d manage all that quietly. If I was unlucky, my mom would hear the thud as I landed on the hardwood floor.
What I hadn’t counted on was being really, really, really unlucky. As in, the second I pulled myself up and over, I hit a solid wall of electrified nothing. I yelped in surprise and pain as a jolt of something ripped through me, and I found myself flying backward through the air.
What the heck?
For just an instant, I wondered if Mom had installed some sort of alarm system. Except that unless someone had invented a Star Trek-type force field for, you know, home security, I was thinking that wasn’t really too likely.
As I sat there on my rump, I finally figured out the real reason—I didn’t have an invitation.
Ha! you’re probably saying. That’s stupid. You live there. You don’t need an invitation. Yeah, well, that’s only sort of true. Since I was dead, I no longer lived there. And that meant I could only go in if I was invited. And that meant only one thing—
I was going to have to knock on the door and show my filthy, dirt-covered self to my mom.
Great.
I spent a few seconds thinking up a plausible excuse (I decided on a half-truth: my jerk of a date took me out, slipped me a roofie, and I woke up in a pile of dirt), then marched to the front porch. A couple of deep breaths for the sake of courage, and then I knocked.
No answer.
Okay. Fine. I rang the doorbell. Waited. No answer.
I frowned and pounded. You guessed it—no answer. My mother wasn’t home. I was missing, and she wasn’t home. What was wrong with that picture?
Unless she’d gone to my dad’s so that they could commiserate together? But since my cell phone (and my purse for that matter) was missing, I couldn’t call, and I didn’t want to talk to the neighbors looking like I did. If Mom was with Daddy, he’d tell her to come back here and wait for me. And if she’d gone to the police, they’d tell her the same thing.
So I just needed to wait. A plan that I wasn’t terribly crazy about, but what choice did I have?
Since our garage is detached and in the back of the house, I moved to the backyard, parked myself on the porch, and waited.
Two hours later—two freaking hours!—she pulled into the garage, apparently not noticing me standing and waving from the porch. She came out the side door a second later, her heels clicking on the flagstone path.
When she reached the first step up to the porch, she finally noticed me. “Beth! Darling, what are you doing outside?” Her nose wrinkled and she looked me up and down. “And what on earth have you been up to?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but couldn’t quite find the words. This really wasn’t the reception I’d been expecting. I’d been missing here, folks. Face-on-the-milk-carton territory. Hello? Why wasn’t she throwing her arms around me and crying in relief?
I squinted at her, trying to see even a hint of tears in her eyes, but she was already past me and had her key in the door. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t home last night. I can’t believe I had to fly to Dallas for that damn deposition.” She turned and smiled at me. “But I totally discredited their witness. It was a beautiful thing.”
I blinked, realizing that she hadn’t even realized I’d been gone. Then I stood there on the stoop, unable to follow her inside. She dropped her briefcase in a kitchen chair, then turned and gestured impatiently in my direction. “Well, don’t just stand there. Come inside so that we’re not inviting every bug in to join us.”
Not every bug, I thought. Just me.
And then I accepted the invitation and went inside.