Bitten & Smitten

  On a more positive note, thanks to a rogue digital camera at the wedding rehearsal, I learned I did show up just fine and dandy in photographs. I just didn’t photograph very well. No big surprise there.

  “Sarah!” Missy wailed for me from the back of the church. I jumped and put my current glass of champagne down on the powder room counter before making my way over to the dressing room.

  “What’s wrong?” I tried to force myself to sound concerned. This was not the first time my cousin had been in tears since I’d arrived. She was either very emotional or very needy. Probably both.

  Join the club.

  She let out a long, shaky sigh. “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”

  I glanced over my shoulder to see if I could pass the proverbial baton to someone else. But we were all alone in the dressing room. Well, except for the two hundred people currently seated in the church next to us. Which included the decidedly creepy Reverend Micholby. Last night at the rehearsal dinner all he did was give me the evil eye. Or maybe it was the holy eye, since he was a reverend. Whatever.

  “Come on.” I plucked a tissue out of a nearby box and handed it to her. “It’ll be fine.”

  “Will it? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m ready.”

  “Richard’s a great guy. You two are going to have a fabulous life together.”

  She sniffed. “We’re very different, you know. So different, it’s kind of scary.”

  “Hey, vive la différence. Opposites attract, and all that.”

  “But what if he gets bored with me in fifty years? When I’m old?”

  “He won’t. You two are meant to be together. It’ll be fine. You want some champagne?” I poured her a glass. She took it from me and downed it in one gulp. I took a swig myself, right out of the bottle. The free booze was helping, although not as much as it used to.

  “He is great, isn’t he?” she asked.

  I wiped my mouth, trying not to smear my lip gloss. “Yeah, really great.”

  Truth be told, I’d only spoken to Richard, the groom, for five minutes at the rehearsal dinner. He was a balding, forty-something accountant who drove a blue Volvo. He seemed fine, but I wasn’t the one who was marrying him.

  Missy was in her early thirties. She’d been married once, twelve years before, but it hadn’t worked out due to her husband’s other two wives. She’d spent the interim yo-yo dieting and collecting cats. She met Richard when he did her taxes last year. Yup, romance didn’t get much more intense than that in Abottsville.

  The first notes of Canon in D started up outside the dressing room in the church. That was the cue for yours truly. Time to show off this bitchin‘ dress.

  “Saved by the Pachelbel,” I said. “Get it? Pachel-bell?” Missy looked at me blankly. “Oh, never mind. They’re playing our song.”

  Missy smiled and stood up.

  “Thanks for being there for me, Sarah. I sure wish you could come to town more often.” She hugged me lightly enough not to affect our makeup.

  “Yeah, me too,” I lied, and forced a big smile as I leaned back from her.

  She frowned at me. “Your teeth look a little funny.”

  “They do?” I ran my tongue along them and felt pain shoot through my mouth. My heart sank. There they were. They’d finally sprouted, like tiny little needles, ahead of schedule because of Thierry’s superstrength blood.

  My fangs. Terrific.

  “Um”—I tried to talk without opening my mouth very wide—“I used those Whitestrips things, that’s all. I guess they’re just whiter than normal. Anyhow, showtime. See you up at the front.”

  I scrambled away from her just as my uncle appeared in the doorway to accompany Missy down the aisle. I walked out to my fellow eggplant-clad bridesmaids. They were pulling at the hems of their dresses, but the more they pulled at the bottoms, the more cleavage popped out at the top.

  “This sucks,” a girl named Lana said before she began her walk down the aisle. She was first. I was second. The maid of honor, who looked ready to break out in hives, came behind me. Then it was Missy all the way.

  “Breathe,” I told Susan, the maid of honor. “You’ll be fine.”

  “I feel like a big, fat whore,” she said.

  I didn’t have a response for that, so I started down the aisle, tightly clutching my little bouquet of pink and white carnations.

  Okay, I finally had my vampire fangs. Just another little thing to deal with. No problem at all. Nada problème!

  Who was I kidding? This sucked. The Whitestrips tooth excuse was weak at best. Maybe no one would notice. I’d have to spend the rest of the day smiling as little as possible.

  I glanced over to where my parents were sitting. I had to talk to them. Explain that I would be parting ways and wouldn’t be around much in the future. That I was moving to Australia on business. They’d accept that without asking too many questions, wouldn’t they?

  They both beamed back at me from their pew, looking very happy. I frowned slightly. Almost too happy. What would make them look that damn happy today?

  As I moved into a better angle to see them, I stopped walking right there in the middle of the aisle. My bouquet fell to the floor. Seated in between my parents, wearing dark sunglasses and a bored expression, was George.

  “Holy shit!” I said aloud, and heard a gasp go through the congregation. I bent over and snatched up the bouquet, then practically ran the rest of the way up the aisle to the front of the church.

  Most of the people gathered were now recovering from the shock of hearing me use the S-word in a house of God. I was recovering from the shock of seeing a gay, table-waiting vampire sitting thigh to thigh with my mother. My mother, however, didn’t appear to mind at all.

  The three-piece orchestra of high-school band students started up their mostly unrehearsed version of “Here Comes the Bride,” and Missy made her way down the aisle. I couldn’t take my eyes off George.

  I mouthed to him, “What are you doing here?”

  He seemed to be quite busy, intently staring at a tapestry of JESUS LOVES ME and trying as hard as possible to ignore me.

  A million things raced through my mind. Had something gone horribly wrong? Did Midnight Eclipse get torched? Did Thierry kill Quinn while I was gone? Did Barry find a personality? I couldn’t wait for the service to be over. In fact, I wanted to say “hurry the hell up” while Missy and Richard stumbled through their vows, but I managed to restrain myself. Just barely.

  As soon as the service was over, the wedding party was swept off for some photos in the painfully bright and chilly outdoors before the reception. I didn’t want to be there. All I wanted was to get to George and find out what was going on. The only thing I remember about the photos was that the photographer and I got into a fight about removing my sunglasses. He lost.

  The reception was held in a banquet room at the Abottsville Golf Course. I stood uncomfortably in the receiving line, shaking a multitude of sweaty hands and trying to smile without showing off my new fangs to two hundred tired and hungry people. My father finally made his way down the line to me. He looked quite dashing, if I do say so myself. His gray suit and teal tie were impeccable, although I was pretty sure the flower he wore on his lapel was bought at the nearest joke store. One of those plastic flowers that squirted water as a funny gag. I eyed it warily.

  “Sweetheart,” he said and gave me a big hug. “You look fantastic. If anyone could manage to wear that dress properly, it would be you.”

  I gave him a closed-mouth smile. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “I think your mother has a new boyfriend.” He winked at me. “Should I be jealous?” With that, he moved on to the next bridesmaid.

  My mother had George’s arm clutched in her own as they shifted along the line toward me. He looked as if he would have preferred to be anywhere else. Him and me both.

  “Look who I found,” my mother said with a chipper smile firmly on her face. “George.”

  I gave George
a quizzical yet dirty look. “And how do you know George?” I asked her.

  “I don’t, silly.” She patted his arm affectionately. “At least I didn’t until today. I guess this explains your odd behavior and sour mood since you got here.”

  “Sour mood?”

  “You two lovebirds must have had a fight, and he came all the way out here to apologize. I think it’s terribly romantic. We found him lurking around outside the church. You didn’t even tell me you had a new boyfriend.”

  Lovebirds, huh? “Mom, you’ve always been so perceptive.”

  “It’s a gift, dear. Don’t worry, your father and I will find a place for him at our table.”

  She moved on to chat with Susan, who stood uncomfortably next to me.

  I glared at George. “Well?”

  “Well, what?” He smiled as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to be standing in front of me at my cousin’s wedding. “May I say that you look fabulous! That dress is simply to die for.”

  “You might just die for it if you don’t tell me what you’re doing here.”

  He glanced around. “Just here to apologize to my love muffin for our nasty argument earlier. That’s all. Darling, please forgive me for what I said.”

  I took his hand and dug my fingernails into it until he flinched. “We’ll talk more later, honey. And you’d better come up with something a little better than that.”

  He bared his fangs in a half smile, half grimace, and moved on.

  Oh, we’d talk all right. Thierry was behind this. I just knew it. He’d sent George to spy on me. There was no other explanation.

  I couldn’t take it. Both of my lives, my normal one and my vampire one, were falling apart. Neither made sense anymore. I couldn’t live like this, on edge and worried all the time that something horrible was going to happen.

  When dinner was served, the smell of my untouched chicken Cordon Bleu was making me feel physically ill. I pushed the plate as far away from me as possible and scanned the room for George. There was an empty chair at my parents’ table, where he should have been.

  I needed some fresh air. Some time to myself where I wasn’t surrounded by normal people who, just by their presence, reminded me that I was horribly different now.

  Outside, I leaned against the wall of the reception hall and tried to breathe. I sniffed the air, frowned, and turned to my left.

  The maid of honor, Susan, had sparked up a cigarette nearby, next to the kitchen entrance.

  “You want?” She indicated the pack of smokes.

  “You do realize those things are bad for you, right?”

  “No way.” She inhaled deeply and then blew a few smoke rings into the chilly night air. “I’ve never heard that before. Well, nobody lives forever, right?”

  I bit my bottom lip. “I used to think that.”

  “Your boyfriend’s hot.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but then closed it. “Thanks. He thinks so.”

  “Can you believe these dresses?” Susan shook her head. “Immortalized forever in those damn pictures. I’m going to have to get really drunk to get over this.”

  “The night is young. And the bar is open.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “Don’t say amen. You might lure Reverend Micholby out here with us. What’s his deal, anyhow?”

  She took another long drag off her cigarette. “He’s been away for a while. There’s a rumor he had a nervous breakdown, or something. This is the first wedding he’s done since he got back. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. Maybe he’s acting weird because of the dresses. He’s morally offended by them.”

  I nodded. “That’s probably it. I mean, if I’m morally offended by them, why shouldn’t he be?”

  We laughed for a moment, and I started to feel a bit better. At least until she started choking on her last inhale. I patted her on her back just as a van screeched to a halt next to us. A harried-looking guy jumped out of the driver’s seat and scurried around to the back, opened the doors, and wrestled out a medium-size silver keg. He began rolling it toward the kitchen door.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said to us. “I didn’t realize this town was so far outside the city. I should have been here hours ago.”

  “Hey, I don’t mind,” I said. “What is that, anyhow? Beer?”

  “Yeah.” He laughed a little. “It’s beer. Cute. Can you do me a favor and sign for this? I’m in a major hurry.”

  I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

  He finished rolling the keg toward the door, then came back to me and pushed a clipboard into my hands. There was a cheap pen attached to it by a piece of black string. He pointed at the last line for me to sign, and I put pen to paper.

  Then I froze.

  Why was I having the weirdest déjà vu? I looked up at the guy. He did look awfully familiar to me. I glanced down at the logo at the top of the delivery form.

  THE BLOOD DELIVERY GUYS. YOU NEED BLOOD? WE DELIVER.

  “Something wrong?” Susan asked. “You don’t look so good.”

  I scratched my signature onto the form and pushed it back at him. He smiled at me, the moonlight reflecting off his fangs. He said thanks, then got into his van and drove away.

  I felt weak. “I think I’m going back inside now.”

  “Yeah, me too.” She flicked her cigarette butt against a nearby tree. “Now I feel like a beer.”

  I took my place again at the head table, feeling major stress, and downed a glass of red wine, but it didn’t make me feel any better. What was going on? Why were the Blood Delivery Guys out here? Was it George? Did he send them?

  Was it somebody’s idea of a joke? If it was, I wasn’t finding it very funny. Not even slightly.

  I eyed my parents’ table. Still no sign of George. Where the hell was he?

  Dinner was over and dessert was served, a nice-looking chocolate torte—I loved chocolate, but I didn’t want a repeat of last night, so I didn’t bother touching it.

  I had another glass of wine instead. By the amount I’d had, I should be feeling no pain. Instead, I felt like I hadn’t been drinking anything more than tap water the entire evening.

  After the speeches were given, the deejay started up the music and Missy and Richard had their first dance. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw George enter the reception hall and go to my parents’ table to sit down. I beelined toward him and he raised his hands as if he expected me to hit him. I grabbed his wrist and pulled him out of his seat. Reverend Micholby was also seated at my parents’ table, and he gave me a cool stare.

  “Sarah!” My mother frowned at me. “Perhaps that kind of aggressive behavior is what drove him off in the first place.”

  I ignored her and directed George out to the lounge area and as far away from the loud music as I could get. After the first song they’d launched into “The Chicken Dance.” Normally not something I’d miss, but I’d have to make an exception this one time.

  “Where have you been all night?” I poked him in his chest.

  “Ow. I’ve been around. Just checking out the town. Looking for something interesting to do.” He shrugged. “Came up empty.”

  “Okay, George. Talk.”

  He smiled. “Have I mentioned that you look fabulous?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Is it wrong that I want to support Missy and Richard in their new lives together?” He squinted at me. A wide smile spread across his face. “Do you have your fangs now? Congratulations.”

  I ignored that. It didn’t seem polite to notice a woman’s fangs in public. “Did Thierry send you?”

  He sat down on a rustic-looking sofa and sighed heavily. “Do you honestly think I’d be in this place if he hadn’t?”

  “He told me he never wants to see me again.”

  “He’s a hard man to understand. But you know what they say—a hard man is good to find.” He grinned.

  I was trying to be patient. I really was. “But he didn’t come. He sent
you to spy on me instead.”

  “He’s super busy. Another club was hit.”

  “The hunters?” I raised my eyebrows.

  George nodded grimly. “Normally, they only pick off the vamps in the open, but this year they’re finding our hiding spots, too. I don’t know how.”

  “Thierry sent you to keep an eye on me,” I said suspiciously. “To make sure I was okay?”

  “Yeah, he likes you.”

  “So everyone keeps telling me. He sure has a funny way of showing it.” I took a deep, slightly shuddery breath and looked at him. “It’s been bad, really bad being here, George. I feel like my entire life is falling apart. Don’t tell Thierry, but I think he was right. I can’t pretend to be normal. Well, not as normal as I used to be, anyhow.”

  “Why be normal? Normal is boring.”

  I glanced up as one of Richard’s groomsmen emerged from the reception hall. He smiled at me and headed off toward the kitchen.

  “He’s cute,” George said.

  “Hello? Focus, George.” I frowned at him. “You didn’t happen to have a keg of blood sent here, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Seriously. You can tell me if you did. I just signed for it out back.”

  He shook his head. “Seriously, no, I didn’t.”

  I leaned back in the sofa. “Then I don’t get it. Why would they make a delivery all the way out here?”

  “Probably for the groom,” George said.

  I sat bolt upright. “Excusez-moi?”

  “The groom. He’s one of us. Didn’t you notice his fangs?”

  “I don’t inspect the mouth of every person I come across, you know. Besides, fangs are small, hardly noticeable unless you’re right up close and personal.” I shook my head so hard I felt dizzy. “No way. He’s from Abottsville, for Christ’s sake. He’s a bloody accountant.”

  “And?”

  “And…” I sputtered. “He’s not a vampire. No way. Not a chance.”

  Just then, the groomsman reappeared dragging the silver keg behind him. He disappeared into the reception area after giving me another grin. Staring after him, I had my mouth so wide open that small children might have been tempted to throw things into it. I turned to George.