“Ten says he uses his bare fangs,” Gabriel countered.

I separated their shaking hands. “Uh-uh, you two are just now talking again. No betting. Besides, shouldn’t we go after Zeb?”

After the dust (and potato salad) had been cleared, Jolene was left sitting on a broken picnic table in an empty clearing. And she was naked again. That could not be sanitary.

“Oh, honey.” I clutched her close to me (after I’d wrapped her in a stray tablecloth).

“I don’t understand what happened.” Jolene sniffled. “Everythin’ was so perfect.”

“Do you think Zeb could be usin’ drugs?” I asked. Jolene stared at me. “OK, it’s not exactly within the realm of his character, but I would guess ‘hard-core crack smoker’ way before ‘idiot who dumped the love of his life at the altar.’”

“You think I’m the love of his life?”

“Of course I do. Who else would it be? It sure the hell isn’t me. What do you think made Zeb … just what the heck happened?”

“Zeb hasn’t been right in months. It’s little things. But I never thought—I never thought he would do somethin’ like this.”

“You know all that stuff Zeb was saying, that was just crazy talk, right? Zeb doesn’t really love me. It was as if he had some sort of dissociative episode or started channeling Mama Ginger or something. Maybe he just got cold feet.”

“The Zeb I love would not have cold feet. He was excited about getting married. How could someone just change like that? Maybe I should have married my cousin Vance, like Uncle Luke said.” Jolene paled. “I’ve got to call everythin’ off. I’m goin’ to have to call two hundred of my relatives and tell them the weddin’s off. And all that food! And the little mints. And the iceberg! What am I goin’ to do with a thirty-foot Styrofoam iceberg?”

“What were you going to do with it after the wedding?” I asked. She glared at me through her tears. “Look, let’s just hold off on canceling anything. All of the food, the drinks, everything will keep for two days, right? You just sit tight for the rest of the weekend. Don’t make any decisions or announcements. Give me two days. If by Sunday I do not have a willing and groveling groom kneeling at your feet, then I will help you sink that dang Styrofoam iceberg.”

Jolene chewed her lip.

“He loves you, Jolene. He’s never loved anybody in his whole life the way he loves you.”

“Two days,” she agreed. “Now I just have to keep my family from killin’ him.”

“That would help, yes.”

21

One who objects at a werewolf wedding risks serious injuries.

—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were

After talking a half-dozen very angry werewolf males out of hunting down my best friend like a rabid raccoon, I drove to the Lavelles’ house and sat out in the driveway. I had to talk to Mama Ginger. Emboldened by her meddling success, she would be impossible to deal with. I would be lucky if I didn’t end up shot with a tranquilizer dart and carted off to a Vegas wedding chapel.

I found her sitting on her sun porch, on an old musty couch, chewing her nails. Mama Ginger never chewed her nails. She said the hands were the front window of a girl’s “shop,” and you couldn’t attract a man with a messy front window. “Mama Ginger?”

She turned, and I saw actual tear tracks on her cheek. She seemed so small and deflated, with her clean, bare face and her hair tucked into a ponytail. “Oh, Janie, are you here to see Zeb?”

“No, actually, Mama Ginger, I’m here to see you.”

“Well, whatever for? Honey, my boy already said everything he needed to say.” She sniffed and gave me a weary smile. “You two need to talk all this over, get your heads together. We have a wedding to plan.”

“No, Mama Ginger, we need to talk about why Zeb said those things in the first place. Things that sounded an awful lot like the things you’ve been saying. I don’t know what you did to Zeb to make him do that, but you need to tell me. Because whatever you did ruined Zeb’s and Jolene’s lives.”

“That’s not true!” Mama Ginger cried, her voice cracking. I grabbed her chin and forced her to meet my gaze. I didn’t want to have to use the persuasion voice on her, but I would. Finally, tears welled at the corners of her eyes, and she whispered, “Zeb’s curled up in bed, practically in a damn coma. He refuses to say a word.”

“His brain’s probably gone into shock, Mama Ginger. You can’t mess around with someone’s subconscious, make them do something that is fundamentally opposed to their heart’s desire, and not expect there to be side effects.”

She wailed, “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wasn’t supposed to be so—a mother knows when her child is hurting, Jane. And he’s just so miserable. And I did that.”

In the years I’d known her, Mama Ginger had never expressed remorse. A change in heart this dramatic must have been killing her. I found small comfort in that.

“I never meant any harm,” she whimpered. “I was just trying to make sure Zeb was happy.”

“But he was happy, with Jolene. She made him very happy. And you can fix this. You just have to tell me what you did to make Zeb say all those things.”

“But he wants you, Jane. You heard him. He wants to be with you.”

“No, he doesn’t. I know that you want him to want me. We both know what he really wants.”

“But I’ve spent so much time—”

“You’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to fulfill the vision you had of our future. But the future you want, marriage and babies, it’s not possible. I can’t have babies, Mama Ginger. I’m a vampire.”

Blanching a lovely shade of ecru, Mama Ginger gasped and clapped a hand over her throat. “But you’re so, so—”

“Normal? Yes, but I’m also a bloodsucking creature of the night.”

“I can’t believe this. You’re just saying this to keep me from wanting you to marry Zeb!” she cried, stumbling back and tripping over a lawn chair.

“Well, you’re not wrong, but it’s still true.” I reached for her hand to help her up. “I’m a vampire. I have been for almost a year now. And you didn’t notice, because you tend not to pay attention when people evolve or change. Zeb and I are no longer the six-year-olds who played house. I’m not dangerous. Not to Zeb and not to you. But the bright side is that while I can never, ever bear you grandchildren, Jolene can have all the kids she and Zeb want. In fact, there’s every chance that they’re going to have a huge family.”

“Grandbabies?” She sighed.

“Yeah, grandbabies—beautiful, strong, most likely very athletic grandbabies. But first we have to fix Zeb so he can apologize to Jolene, profusely, and they can get married.”

Mama Ginger sighed, twisting a Kleenex into complex tornado shapes. “I took Zeb to Madame Zelda and told him it was for his headaches. It was stress relief, I told him. Madame Zelda could use hypnosis and suggestive imagery to put him in a better state of mind. Every time he told Jolene he was coming over here to do chores, I was taking him to Zelda. She’s spent weeks planting thoughts in his head. Bad stuff about Jolene. Good stuff about you. I made her tell him that you were the only girl he could possibly marry, that you were the only one who could make him happy. That he should be more aggressive with you and let you know how he feels. Zelda fixed it so every time Zeb heard you say the word ‘wedding,’ he would do something to hurt Jolene’s feelings or make a pass at you. And he wouldn’t remember doing it later.”

In my head, I ran over the conversations that had preceded Zeb’s bizarre behavior. In all of them, we’d been talking about the wedding in some capacity. Considering that we’d been planning Zeb’s wedding, that was natural, inevitable. Mama Ginger had set out a minefield for us. “What makes you think you have the right to do this stuff, Mama Ginger? Do you have any idea how crazy this is?”

“I just wanted everyone to be happy!” she yelled. “We weren’t even sure it was working because Zeb was being so resistant. But he kept coming back. Zelda fixed it so he wouldn’t remember anything except the thoughts she put in the back of his brain. We just couldn’t get him to dump her.”

“Because in his heart and his head, he loves Jolene,” I told her. “He was rude to her a few times, said some really hurtful things. He slapped me on the butt in front of my vampire boyfriend, which put him in serious peril—oh, yeah, Gabriel and Dick are vampires, too. But Jolene loves him so much, she forgave him for all of that. So you had to do something bigger.”

Mama Ginger blushed and wiped the mascara streaks from her cheeks. “Zelda fixed it so as soon he heard someone say ‘peas in a pod,’ he would tell Jolene he didn’t want to marry her. He’d repeat all the things that we’d been planting in his head.”

“Well, if there’s a trigger keyword, there has to be a release keyword, right? What is it?”

Mama Ginger flushed. “She didn’t tell me. I only paid half up front. She wouldn’t give me the release word until I paid the rest.” I stared at her. She shrugged. “I wanted to make sure it worked.”

“Well, pay her the rest!”

“I tried. Earlier tonight, I called her and told her I wanted to call it off, that my son was miserable and she had to take everything back. I may have used some words she didn’t like.”

“Such as?”

Mama Ginger sniffled. “Crackpot … crazy old coot … buck-toothed hag.”

“Did you stop to think maybe it wasn’t a great idea to use your special brand of phone manners on the person who has access to your son’s subconscious?”

Mama Ginger was sobbing in earnest now, which meant she would be no further help.

“So I need to track down a psychic who specializes in hypnosis and mind-control techniques to try to wrestle information out of her?”

Mama Ginger nodded pitifully.

“Great.”

After persuading Mama Ginger not to move Zeb or further scramble his brain, I followed her soggy directions to Madame Zelda’s “parlor front” shop on Gaines Street. Madame Zelda lived in a one-story “shotgun”-style house with peeling green paint and a giant plywood hand advertising five-dollar palm readings.

I rang the doorbell, and after some audible shuffling inside, I was greeted by a little old wrinkled lady wearing a fringed purple shawl, a long Indian-print skirt, and a smoky topaz ring the size of a door knocker. Her eyes were heavily kohled. And suddenly, my weird encounter with Esther Barnes made sense.

“Hi, Ms. Barnes,” I said, smiling sweetly.

“I am Madame Zelda,” Esther said in a deep, obviously fake Transylvanian accent while she waved me into the parlor. Her house smelled of yesterday’s fried chicken and overbrewed coffee. Her “office” looked exactly how you would expect a five-dollar psychic to decorate: beaded curtains, stinky candles, busy fabrics, and creepy angel figurines. “I do not know this Ms. Barnes of whom you speak.”

She gestured for me to sit at a tiny tea table covered in a sari, with a laughably large crystal ball in the middle. “That’s funny. You look so much like a lady who came into the bookshop where I work. I must be mistaken.”

“Indeed,” she intoned. “How may I be of service?”

“Well, you’ve been helping a friend of mine with some ‘headaches.’”

“I help many people,” she said, her lips tightening so that I could see the carmine-colored lipstick feathering even further into the tiny lines around her mouth.