“Lao Tzu?”

He shook his head, holding up one of Gigi’s magazines. “Cosmo Girl.”

12

Just because advice comes from an older vampire doesn’t mean it’s good advice. Sometimes ancient vampires survive on pure dumb luck.

—The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires

Sighing heavily and hauling my butt out of the Dorkmobile, even I had to pause and admire Mr. Marchand’s sweeping plantation house. Given that he was additionally immortalized as a Civil War memorial statue downtown, I could only assume that he’d been living there for several hundred years. While Jane’s place, River Oaks, was more English farmhouse than Tara, and Gabriel had taken the time to update his place with all of the modern conveniences of rain gutters and aluminum siding, Mr. Marchand had perfectly preserved his little piece of prewar heaven in the true Georgian style—tall white columns, a porch complete with a cupola, freshly whitewashed walls. Except for the elegant little sedan parked in the pea-gravel drive, it would have looked like a sketch from one of Mr. Jameson’s history books.

I’d never actually seen Mr. Marchand’s house. He usually asked me to drop anything he needed by the Council office. And it was highly unusual for me to visit a vampire’s home after dark, but I needed his signature on a Council form ASAP.

Earlier, at sunset, Ophelia had called to inform me of a paperwork snafu in the Council’s finance department, where there always seemed to be paperwork snafus. Mr. Marchand was head of the finance committee. If I didn’t get his approval on an expenditure form and mail it by the next day’s post, I wouldn’t be able to invoice the office for about six months of work. I’d actually secured his signature a few months before, but the form listed him as head of the budget committee, which—believe it or not—was a pretty important typo. And the World Council just looooooved to find reasons not to pay their bills based on technicalities. It gave them a sense of superiority over us lowly humans.

Since Mr. Marchand wasn’t working at the Council offices, I dropped by his house on the way home from a PTA meeting. Ophelia had said she would have delivered the paperwork herself, but she had plans with Jamie, and this “wasn’t her problem.” I really didn’t mind. I liked Mr. Marchand. He was one of the few vampires I’d ever met who still treated me like a person and not a Happy Meal on legs.

I knocked on the front door but didn’t get any response. There were lights burning in the house. And the car was in the drive; surely, he was home.

“Around back!” a twangy, accented voice called. After rounding the corner of the house, I stopped in my tracks, struck dumb by the scope of Mr. Marchand’s backyard. He’d arranged his flower beds in islands randomly floating on the lawn, so that no matter where you stood, there were arrangements of plants at varying heights, creating layers of color on the horizon.

The yard was surrounded on all sides by ginkgo trees, with their delicate green, fan-shaped leaves. They would turn a beautiful, vibrant gold this fall, and I imagined it could be bright enough to look like a sunrise, even at night.

I found Mr. Marchand on his back porch, stretched out in an old cane rocker, reading a leather-bound copy of The Prince. He stood, smiling warmly at me. “Miss Iris, how are you, my dear?”

“Very well, thank you, Mr. Marchand.”

“What brings you out my way?”

“I’m so sorry to bother you at home, Mr. Marchand. I’m just bringing by the paperwork we talked about.”

He smiled, guiding me by the elbow to an elegant little chair. “You’re never a bother. Can I offer you something to drink?”

“No, thank you.” He sat next to me and used a fancy enameled pen from his pocket to check and initial the numerous lines required for the approval. I had nothing to do but admire the lovely grounds. I rose, examining the line of ground-cover plants that edged his porch.

“I love what you’ve done with your garden, Mr. Marchand.”

He didn’t look up as he crisscrossed and signed. “Oh, thank you, my dear. How kind of you to notice,” he said absently.

“Clever of you to plant night-blooming flowers, so you can enjoy them. Particularly the night-blooming daylilies, which I always thought was sort of oxy-moronic,” I said, bending to press the faintly lemon-scented petals of hardy commuter daylily to my nose.

“I have a clever landscaper,” he said, his tone dismissive enough for me to know that it was time for me to move the conversation along. “I’ve never had luck with plants. Everything I touch dies. If I didn’t have such a talented landscaping staff, there’s no telling what this place would look like.”

I ambled about the yard while he double-checked the paperwork. I stopped in front of an impressive collection of rosebushes ranging in every color from white to peach to red. My mind wandered to my mother, and Mr. Marchand appeared at my elbow, startling me. He gave me an apologetic little smile and handed me the sheaf of papers.

“Flowers are such delicate things,” he said, plucking a full white bloom from a rosebush and examining the perfect petals. “There are so many things that break them, damage them, take the life from them. There are things out there that set out to hurt flowers—disease, pests, and the like. A smart gardener puts barriers, protections, between the blooms and the things that could hurt them.”

Well, that was a random statement. Darn subliminalmessaging vampires.

He pressed the bloom into my hand and held me with a stern, serious gaze. “I enjoy your company, Miss Iris. You’re a nice girl, with pretty manners and a good head on your shoulders. I appreciate what you do for our community. But it’s important that you remember who you’re dealing with.”

I kept my face schooled, still. Was he referring to Cal, or had he somehow heard about my problem with Mr. Dodd? Or was he ignorant of both situations and by some bizarre conversational coincidence had managed to home in on a subject that made me uncomfortable? I gazed at his face, my expression open, as if I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

After a long, silent moment, he gently patted my hand. “I don’t want to see you hurt because of your involvement with us. I know that you’re … I won’t say close, just—familiar, with Ophelia. But if there’s anything you need, call me, please.”

He smiled, a kind, grandfatherly expression, and then lightly pinched my cheek. I nodded, smiling without any real force of feeling. And I barely managed to escape the house with a potted African violet that he claimed needed to go to a good home.

Citing his plant-killing ways, Mr. Marchand persuaded me to consider taking the plant an act of goodwill to another life form. But I managed to avoid taking the geraniums he said were hanging on by a thread. Overall, it was a fulfilling but confusing visit. I got the forms I needed to get paid, which was good. But I’d broken my own rules about vampire visitation to do it, which was bad.

Mr. Marchand was on my side. He was trying to give me helpful advice, but I couldn’t tell if he was telling me to withdraw from the Cal situation or from the vampire world entirely. And he was a plant murderer but still had a nicer garden than mine. So, in addition to everything else going on, I had yard envy.

—

Sick of researching blind, I stopped by Specialty Books on my way home. I loved Jane’s quirky little shop, which had belonged to Gilbert Wainwright, Jane’s deceased employer. Working at the store was Jane’s first job after she was turned, and when Mr. Wainwright willed the shop to her, she’d expanded, remodeled, and turned the chaotic rat trap of an occult bookstore into the little gem of oddball charm that it was today.

The scent of coffee and old paper greeted me at the door. I passed the antique leaded-glass and maple counter with its old-fashioned register and a large display of Jane’s cornerstone product, The Guide for the Newly Undead. The wide coffee bar matched the shiny maple shelving system, Jane’s pride and joy. Any customer could walk into the store and find any book on any subject—from Sasquatch to Santeria—purchase it, and then safely navigate his or her way back out of the store. None of these conveniences was encouraged by the previous system, according to Jane.

The interior was a mix of the mystical and the quirky. I had searched the Home Depot high and low, but I’d never been able to find that same restful shade of midnight blue on the walls. Andrea Byrne-Cheney, Jane’s assistant manager, had mixed several different colors to come up with it, then added a sprinkle of twinkling silver stars to keep the place from being “too serious.”

A handful of customers sat in comfy purple chairs near the back, arguing over John Harwood’s The Ghost Writer. Jolene sat at the bar, sipping a cappuccino and wolfing down a croissant the size of my head. Andrea was mixing synthetic blood in some sort of frozen coffee concoction, which I did not think would work out well. Jane sat at the counter balancing ledgers, exuding that typical newlywed glow, all dewy and bright-eyed and annoying. Her face lit up with a happy grin when she saw me, and she circled around the counter to envelop me in a hug.

Yep, newlywed vampires were huggers.

“What brings you here?” she asked. “Oh, my gosh, did I not pay this month’s invoice?”

“Nope, we put you on automatic withdrawal, remember? After you made up for one missed payment with two payments, duplicated by Gabriel’s payment, because he didn’t think you paid me.”

“We’re still working on the joint-accounts thing,” Jane muttered sheepishly.

I chuckled. “Those sorts of mistakes I can handle.” I pulled out several extra-large sachets stuffed with rosemary and lavender from my garden, combined with bay leaf, cloves, and cedar chips. “I’ve been meaning to bring these by. You said you needed something extra-powerful to cover up the smell of Jamie’s sneakers?”

“I do not understand how someone who technically does not sweat can have swamp feet!” Jane exclaimed, clutching the sachets to her chest like a shield. “It’s starting to permeate the second floor!”

I squeezed her shoulder as she pressed the sachets to her nose like they were an olfactory lifeline. “Welcome to life with a teenager. Dealing with weird smells will occupy a good portion of your time.”

Jane stashed the little cloth parcels behind the bar while Andrea brought the espresso machine roaring to life. “I was afraid you were here to give me more cryptic messages about my food supply and then not follow through with an explanation. You know unanswered questions drive me nuts,” Jane said.

“I’m sorry about that,” I told her.

“Thanks for calling me and including me in your one-woman recall, jerk,” Andrea muttered.

“I told Jane to call you, too!”

“You know she doesn’t remember anything until she’s awake for at least an hour!” she grumbled. “Don’t play with my well-being all willy-nilly.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, are you here to tell me why I tossed out an entire case of Faux Type O, other than that it amused you and Ophelia to jerk me around?” Jane asked.

“No.” I mouthed a quick thanks as Andrea set one of her delicious cappuccinos in front of me.

“Oh, did you try to attend another chamber meetin’?” Jolene snickered. “Because I want to hear about it.”

“I had to try it once!” I insisted. “Despite your many, many … many warnings. I’m a local business owner. I had to at least try to join the Chamber of Commerce.”

Much like Jane, I had been summarily tossed out of the Half-Moon Hollow Chamber of Commerce, a semiproductive civic group infested by perky women named Courtney. But while Jane had lasted several months, I was asked to leave after one meeting. When the Courtneys found out that my business was catering to vampires, they couldn’t get me out of the meeting house fast enough. In fact, after the Head Courtney found out that I was a friend of Jane’s, they’d done everything they could to cause problems for me in town. I’d tolerated their attempts to get my business license pulled. I’d even laughed when they tried to get my suppliers to blacklist me … because they didn’t really know my suppliers well and ended up offending them and rallying them to my side. But when they approached the teachers at Gigi’s school to determine whether my sister was a “disruptive influence” on the other kids, Jane visited the Chamber office … and would not tell me what was said. All I knew was that Head Courtney couldn’t look me in the eye when I saw her at Walmart.