this weekend and the smell kind of gets into your hair, your skin. I don’t even notice it anymore.”
“Oh, it’s just butcher shop blood, that’s good…which is a sentence I never thought I’d hear coming out of my mouth. I had this image in my head of trying to explain to Jolene that something was going on with her cousin and then she’d wolf out in the store. The cleanup involved.” He paused and shuddered.
A pretty brunette woman stuck her head out of the office, a confused expression on her face. “What about butcher shop blood?”
“Oh, like that’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard me say,” Dick shot back.
“True enough.” The woman walked out of her office, carrying a box of books on her hip.
“Jane, this is Jolene’s cousin, Ty. Ty, this is—”
I stuck my hand out with what was probably too much enthusiasm. “Jane Jameson-Nightengale. I know. I spend a lot of time at the library. Thank you so much for everything you’ve donated. I get this weird feeling you only did it to mess with Mrs. Stubblefield, but it’s made my life easier.”
Jane grinned. “You’re welcome…and you’re very perceptive.”
“I knew it!” I whispered, holding up my fist in triumph and making Jane giggle.
Behind me, the little cowbell over the door jangled and the shop was filled with what could only be described as “thundering chaos.” Jolene McClaine-Lavelle herded two unnaturally tall eight-year-olds through the door as they chattered and bounced off of each other, the shelves, the stools. Joe, a serious boy with his father’s sandy hair, was wheeling a cello case nearly as tall as he was. He was wearing a t-shirt that read, “They told me I could be anything and I chose ‘kid who plays a musical instrument the size of a car.” Janelyn’s case fit under her arm. Her t-shirt read, “Will trade sibling for a Stradivarius.”
They were beautiful children and just smart enough to be worrisome. And Uncle Lonnie and Aunt Mimi absolutely doted on them, meaning that no one in the pack dared do anything else.
“Hey, Twin Terrors!” Dick crowed as the children launched themselves over the counter with an agility that would have been impossible for entirely human children. They threw themselves at “Uncle Dick,” and only his super-human strength kept him from toppling over into the scary copper espresso machine.
While I wasn’t insecure about my looks, Jolene was widely acknowledged as the family beauty—the McClaine auburn hair, high cheekbones, wide green eyes and a figure only made lusher by bearing two babies. It was probably why my family was so embittered by Jolene’s marriage. The McClaines could have forged a bond with some well-to-do pack with Jolene “on offer.” But instead, they saw her as being wasted on a goofy, affable human.
Secretly, I thought Zeb was a far better partner than any girl in my pack landed. He was funny and kind and didn’t feel the need to prove that he was in charge all of the time. But I would never ever say that to my parents. I didn’t want to know whether they believed they could ground me.
“It’s all right,” Jolene whispered out of the side of her mouth, picking up on my alarm as the kids crawled on the vampire like he was a jungle gym. “I know I don’t bring the vampires around you much, but Dick and Andrea and the rest have spent just as much time with the kids, if not more, than the pack. They just love their Uncle Dick to death. Hell, they have sleepovers at Jane’s every other weekend so Zeb and I can have a date night.”
I suddenly remembered a very loud argument just after the twins were born, where the whole pack spent Thanksgiving unanimously freaking out because Zeb and Jolene asked Jane and Gabriel to babysit the kids. It had seemed very sensible to me, to leave your newborns with someone with super-sensitive hearing who didn’t need to sleep at night. My relatives had not agreed.
Like this charming little nook of supernatural wonder, her relationship with these vampires was a whole piece of Jolene’s life I didn’t know about. And in our family, that was a damn miracle.
“I can’t believe you went on the Internet specifically to get smartass string instrument t-shirts,” Jolene muttered. She turned to Jane. “I told you to delete his Etsy account.”
“Andrea says he keeps finding ways to set up new accounts. He’s surprisingly tech savvy for a senior citizen.”
“There’s no limit to the