she towed me up the drive, up the steps, and into the front of the house.
When my feet touched down it wasn’t nearly as bad as before. I made a face to show her it was still ick but not unbearable, and she pulled me into the front room and through it, closer to where I could hear Rick talking. I didn’t get a good look at the house except for the orchids. Orchids everywhere, all kinds of varieties. And all in bloom. That wasn’t right. I yanked my arm free, breaking T. Laine’s hold on me long enough to stick my fingers into the coarse wood chips of the orchids nearest.
T. Laine got her fingers back around my arm again and dragged me into what had to be the great room. It was huge, with vaulted space and skylights and a fireplace big enough to roast a whole hog in. The room was decorated in greens. All kinds of greens. And here too were orchids, hundreds of them, lining the shelves of every wall. All blooming. All. Not possible. It simply wasn’t possible to get every variety of orchid to bloom at once. Not possible. Not even for me, and I was real good with plants. I rubbed my fingers and thumb together, evaluating what I had felt when I touched the orchid bark mix.
The vampire woman, Mrs. Clayton, looked up when I entered the living room and now stopped talking. Her head tilted weirdly, and she seemed to be sniffing the air, her nostrils fluttering like a horse’s did when it sniffed new people, when it was deciding if it was gonna let them close or kick them. Or, in this case, bite them.
“And what is she?” Mrs. Clayton asked, tilting her head to me. “She isn’t human.”
My head shot up. “At least I’m not rude enough to ask,” I said, stung by the question. “Kinda like I wasn’t rude enough to say that your floors feel like dead ’possum.”
“Nell!” Rick said.
He sounded shocked, but I didn’t look his way, keeping my eyes on the dead thing, who seemed, oddly enough, to be holding in a small smile now, buried beneath heaps of worry and fear, but there. “What do you think I am?” I asked the vampire.
“I have no idea.” Her head tilted again, this time too far, the not-human too far I’d heard vampires could do, which was creepy. “I haven’t smelled a creature like you before. I’d be honored to taste your blood someday”—she smiled at last—“despite your appalling lack of manners.”
I let my scowl deepen, let her read on my face that drinking my blood was not gonna happen. “Who tends your garden?”
“Nell!” Rick said, a hint of anger in his tone this time.
Again I ignored him. Mrs. Clayton said, “My daughter does.” Her smile disappeared, replaced by the weight of her fear. “My daughter is wonderful with plants. She can grow anything, anywhere, anytime. She is in great demand even now, still in high school, with her university degree not yet acquired, to design and work with landscaping.”
“And the orchids? She tend them too?”
“Yes. She is—”
“Not a human. You’re hiding whatever she is. Maybe to protect her. Maybe for some other reason. And I’m betting she isn’t even your daughter, at least not biologically.”
Mrs. Clayton’s shoulders hunched up and her pupils went black and wide in scarlet sclera. “Hoooow do you know thisss?” she hissed. A real hiss, like a snake. And she leaned forward in the wood chair she was sitting in, her neck stretched out like a lizard’s. Her fangs slowly snapped down on their little hinges, and fell into place with a soft schnick.
I felt the weight of Mrs. Clayton’s whole attention on me, and I nearly flinched, but something told me that if I did, I’d be perceived as breakfast. The chill bumps that been left from the cold tightened again, this time from fear. “The orchids told me. You told me when you said she’s the gardener. Because no gardener ever can make this many orchids bloom at once.”
The vampire blinked. Blinked again. And went back to aping human, just that fast. She looked to her left, from orchid to orchid, and her brow crinkled. “I . . .” She twisted her head the other way, taking in the dozens and dozens of plants. “I never thought . . .”
Rick nodded to T. Laine, who put her fingers into the orchid pot nearest. The earth witch jerked her