“I haven’t eaten solid food in three days,” I told her.

“I don’t know if I can watch this,” Jettie said, blanching. “Pot pie is not a finger food.”

“Shhh.” I shoveled the rich, warm pie into my mouth, expecting the pleasant childhood memories I normally associated with the meal to come flooding back to me. Pot pie was one of the few meals Jenny and I could agree on, so Mama made it often. The meals tended to be tension-free because my mouth was full and I couldn’t argue with anybody.

Instead of the homey flavors of my childhood, I tasted dirt. Ash. Dirt. Gym clothes. I spat the casserole out and yelled something along the lines of “Bleh! Blech! Blah!” and ran for the wastebasket. After I’d tossed up whatever was left in my stomach, I wiped my tongue with a blue gingham dishtowel.

“It tastes…Bleh, it tastes like disappointment and feet. It tastes like you cooked it.” I shuddered.

Jettie frowned. “I don’t see why that comment was necessary.”

“The truth hurts.”

“So, no solid food, then?” she asked brightly. “I guess I’ll just empty that box of Hostess Cupcakes into the trash. You can’t eat them after all.”

“Now, see, that’s just mean.”

5

While it’s tempting to try to resume your normal social activities with still-living friends, you must understand that some people will have difficulty adjusting to your new condition. Warning signs that loved ones may be planning to stake you include a sudden interest in carpentry and staring at your chest to gauge where your heart is located.

—From The Guide for the Newly Undead

My visit with Zeb didn’t start out much better than the pot-pie episode.

Unable to determine where my car might be, I walked to the 1970s-era brick ranch house Zeb rented on Jefferson Street. Zeb had moved out of his parents’ home as soon as it was legal. He even lived on Jettie’s couch for two months while he saved enough to land this little piece of shag-carpeted heaven. Zeb’s family? Well, let’s just say that they make the Osbournes look like a bunch of teetotaling Nobel laureates.

Is it any wonder that the one-bedroom-and-semiprivate-bath life appealed to my Zeb? The house was far from what you would consider homey. He had lived there for five years and was still using orange plastic milk crates as a coffee table. The only sign that someone actually lived in the house was the yard gnome smirking next to an overgrown hosta. We stole the gnome from my neighbor, Mrs. Turnbow, our junior year of high school and dubbed him Goobert McWindershins. There were wine coolers involved. Mama found out about it and made us take Goobert back to Mrs. Turnbow. We reclaimed him the week after Zeb moved to Jefferson Street and left twenty five dollars in her mailbox.

I knocked on the door. No response. I walked around the corner of the house and opened the gate. A vaguely canine shape streaked up and stopped just short of me. My pitifully ugly dog, Fitz, whimpered, circled, and sat, staring at me. A low growl sounded from his throat, and my heart broke. My own dog didn’t recognize me. I could handle unemployment, a strict new diet, and Mama’s hissy fits. But this had me teetering on the edge of an undead nervous breakdown.

“Fitz, it’s me,” I said, holding my hand out for him to sniff. He stared at me. This dog freaks out and runs to the door every time a Domino’s commercial comes on TV, so his mental processes are not the swiftest. I agonized as he considered, then finally bounded up to lick my face. I screeched with joy and let him knock me to the ground.

“Ohhhh, how’s my buddy? How’s my Fitz? Did you miss me?” Cooing like an idiot, I rolled him over and scratched his belly.

Fitz was the apparent result of a one-night stand between a Great Dane and a loofah. His coat was the color of that stuff that grows in your shower. He was so big that his paws rested on my shoulders when he stood on his hind legs. Loose folds of skin hung over his eyes, so he viewed most of the world with his head tipped back. Fitz’s one claim to distinction is that I named him after Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.

I have Jane Austen issues.

“I’m so, so sorry I went away without telling you, but I’ll make it up to you, I promise,” I said, scrubbing behind his ears. His eyes lolled back as he leaned into the scratch, which meant I was forgiven.

It was then that Zeb, my best friend, the fric to my frac, the Shaggy to my Velma, fumbled through his screen door, swaying under the weight of dozens of crucifixes. “Back!” he shouted. “Back!”

Fitz and I both cocked our heads as I marveled at the sheer number of chains around Zeb’s skinny neck. Gold plate, silver, rhinestone, Day-Glo orange plastic. Zeb advanced on me, holding an old rosewood cross his grandma McBride used to keep nailed to her wall. “Back, demon! Out of my sight!”

“Oh, for goodness sake.” I rolled my eyes.

Nonplussed, Zeb shook the cross like a shoddy flashlight and waved it at me again. “The power of Christ compels you!”

“Interesting tactics from the guy who hasn’t set foot in a church in fifteen yea—uggh!”

It was embarrassing to be stabbed, especially when one considered my new catlike reflexes. I can only say that I didn’t expect it. Zeb passed out when we dissected frogs in junior high. He won one fight in high school, and that was because Steve McGee tripped and fell onto Zeb’s fist. But still, there I was, mocking Zeb’s overaccessorizing one minute, and the next, the orange plastic hilt of his carving knife was protruding from my gut.

“Ow! It has to be wood, you doorknob. And it has to be in the heart!” I yelled.

My experience with stab wounds was limited, but it was certainly different from being shot. This was a cold sensation, the flimsy steel embedded in my flesh like a splinter. The wound itched as I wiggled the blade out of my stomach, back and forth, a loose wound that annoyed more than pained.

I hissed as I pulled it free, glaring at a thunderstruck Zeb. We watched as my skin knit itself back together, the tendrils of muscle and skin tissue reaching out to restore itself. I smacked Zeb’s shoulder.

“Dumbass!” I cried, tossing the knife away.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” he sputtered. The shock of what he’d done had apparently broken the violent vigilante spell. “I just panicked.”

Fitz loped after the knife to retrieve it. Fascinated, we stared as my idiot dog managed to drag the knife back by its plastic handle and drop it at our feet. Zeb grabbed it and rammed it into my thigh.

“Ow!” I yelped, shoving him hard enough for the weight of the crosses to tip him onto his back. “If you stab me one more time, I’m going to kill you. Not funny ha-ha kill you, literally suck the life out of you. And giving me the chair will obviously do the state no good.”

I pulled the knife out again. Zeb sat up enough to watch the wound close again. My jaw dropped. “Zeb Lavelle, are you stabbing me just to watch me heal up?”

He looked defensive. “No!”

“I’m so going to bite you.” I tossed the knife up onto Zeb’s roof and glared at the cross-a-palooza. “Would you take those stupid things off?”

“So, you are afraid of the crosses?” he said, holding a neon orange plastic monstrosity up in a protective gesture.

“No, I’m afraid of people who look like Mr. T.” I shook my head. “Is there a gumball machine in town left intact?”

“Well, I remembered enough of last night to know I might need some insurance,” he said, taking off the necklaces but keeping the rosewood cross in his lap.

I plopped down next to him, wondering what to say next. Does Hallmark make a “Sorry I tried to drink your blood and touched you in a vaguely inappropriate manner” card? I settled for “How much do you remember?”

“It’s pretty foggy. I remember you having big front teeth and being really strong, me offering to buy you pizza, and then for some reason, me scoring the winning touchdown in a pickup football with the guys, followed by a round of beers at Eddie Mac’s. And I’ve never been to Eddie Mac’s.”

“And you don’t have any guys,” I pointed out, glad that Gabriel had managed to wipe the least flattering portions of the evening.

“So, you’re a vampire,” said Zeb, always eager to fill verbal space.

I shrugged. “Yup. Is that going to be a problem for you?”

“I don’t know yet. I don’t know what you’re capable of, which is scary. The whole blood-drinking thing is weird,” he said, giving me his honesty face. I hated that face. It usually meant I was getting bad news or the truth. Sometimes they were one and the same, which sucked.

“I would never hurt you, Zeb. I was just kidding about sucking the life out of you, really,” I said. I didn’t reach out. I couldn’t stand the possibility that he would shy away from me. Instead, I countered with hurtful sarcasm. “Besides, my drinking blood’s not nearly as weird as that time I caught you shaving your legs.”

“I was curious!” he yelled. I burst out laughing. Being Zeb, he made his “I’m not responding in order to spare our friendship” face, which was more agreeable. He said, “Besides, I did that once. You’re going to be drinking blood for the next thousand years or something. You’ll never die, never eat, never grow old, never have kids.”

“Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that one,” I muttered. Like so many elements of my new nature, the thought of never having children hadn’t occurred to me yet. It was still one of those things far off in Somedayland, after I got married and learned how crock pots worked. Now, children weren’t possible, which was yet another thing my mother could be pissed at me about.

“I was so scared for you, Janie,” he said. “You just disappeared. I thought you were in a car wreck, murdered, or, worse, that you’d finally taken Norman Hughes up on his offer to elope. So you were dead…or married to a guy born without sweat glands. And when I found out that you were dead but you weren’t, well, I didn’t know what to think. I mean, it’s kind of cool. I have a friend who’s got superpowers. But I feel left behind and, well, terrified.”

“It’s still me, just different,” I said lamely.

“How did it happen?” he asked. “Most of the people you read about being turned meet vamps in clubs or over the Internet…Ew, did you…?”

“Yes, I met a vampire on the Internet, went to his evil love den, and let him turn me, because I’m that brainless,” I huffed, slapping his shoulder. “Look, I don’t want to tell the whole long sordid story, OK? Someday, when I’m very drunk, I’ll tell you. The bottom line is, I had no choice. It was either vampirism or lying dead in a ditch. Though over the last day or so, I’ve been wondering whether I should have gone for door number two.”

“Aww, don’t say that,” Zeb said, tentatively wrapping his arm around me. “I’m glad you’re alive. Really, I am. I love you, Jane. Otherwise, I would have sold that ugly mutt to the carnival days ago.”

Fitz growled.

“He’s stupid, not deaf,” I reminded Zeb, who scratched Fitz into a forgiving mood.

“There has to be cool stuff, too,” he said. “From what I remember through the beer and fog, you’re strong. And you heal up pretty quickly. And being newly unemployed, that opens up a lot of new job opportunities for you. Crime fighter. Bulletproof-vest tester. Naomi Campbell’s personal assistant.”

“Funny.” I grimaced. Zeb was looking around, scanning the porch for something. “You want to stab me again, don’t you?”

He didn’t look at all ashamed. “Think of it as testing the limits of your new abilities.”

I groaned. “I’ve created a monster.”