on their investments. It wasn’t an arrangement I’d ever agree to, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t my decision. Sure, I’d put on big-girl panties and deal with it, but it still made my heart hurt.
Snapping myself out of the gloomy thoughts, I dialed my mother’s house. Heather picked up on the first ring.
“Hey, sis,” she answered with no prelude.
“Hi, Heather. Listen. I got your message. Lunch doesn’t work for me, but how about an early dinner? Like around five?”
On the other end of the phone, she chortled. “Sure, we could hit the early-bird dinner at the senior center.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Naw, five is fine. How about we meet at Muse , you know, down on Society Street?”
I rolled my eyes. I’d been hoping for beer and hot dogs. She wanted an upscale French wine bar. Figured.
“Sure. Muse it is. See you at five,” I said and hung up.
Much as I was loathe to admit it, Heather seemed like a different person than the bratty little sister I’d grown up with. As crazy as she sounded, she had a stillness to her, like she was finally comfortable in her own skin. It couldn’t have been easy being the baby in a family like ours. By the time Heather was a teenager, Mom was busy with the bakery, Dad worked all the time, and the rest of us were too busy getting our own lives started to take any real notice of her. I pinched the bridge of my nose, squeezing my eyes closed. We were pretty lucky she turned out as well as she did, all things considered. Although it’d almost killed Mom when she took off, maybe she really did find herself out there in the world. The jury was still out on that one. But now that she was home, I just couldn’t help wondering why.
Something in the pit of my stomach told me that my baby sister was going to make me pay for this dinner, in more ways than one.
In the chaos of the night before, I’d nearly forgotten the accusation Heather had made about Phoebe’s new boyfriend. I’d done a preliminary background check on the guy at Mom’s insistence, but there hadn’t been anything to suggest he was a were . I decided, on the off chance that Heather was right somehow, to dig just a little deeper.
It wasn’t like the weres were obvious about what they were. They were the most secretive of all supernatural beings. Hell, who could blame them? When the vamps first debuted to the world, they’d been all but branded and sent to prison camps. According to Dad’s files, dozens of vamps were rounded up and put in camps all over the country. But something amazing happened. The vampires let people do it. They didn’t retaliate or fight back, and on the rare occasion when one did go postal, he or she was dealt with quickly and decisively by the others. It was that more than anything that made people start to see them less as monsters and more as people.
It was a brilliant strategy, very Gandhi. Almost overnight, they went from dangerous predators to a piteous, oppressed, misunderstood minority group.
However, there were limitations to people’s generosity. It was illegal for vampires to work in certain professions, such as teaching, medicine, things like that, which was why Shane had been canned from his job as a middle school teacher after the change. Vampires were required to register with the state like sex offenders, and they weren’t allowed to vote. It was like, welcome to the 1800s. Err, I guessed for some of them, it would be ‘welcome back’.
Still, they had at least won a few key battles. They were guaranteed basic protection under the law, which meant that you couldn’t just kill them on sight. And the laws were constantly in flux. Elected officials argued weekly about whatever new scrap of legislation was on the table, everything from inheritance taxes and property restrictions to basic human rights and equal opportunity issues. Currently, vampires had the right to an attorney, trial, etc. Unless they were seen killing a human. For a vampire, murder was
Snapping myself out of the gloomy thoughts, I dialed my mother’s house. Heather picked up on the first ring.
“Hey, sis,” she answered with no prelude.
“Hi, Heather. Listen. I got your message. Lunch doesn’t work for me, but how about an early dinner? Like around five?”
On the other end of the phone, she chortled. “Sure, we could hit the early-bird dinner at the senior center.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Naw, five is fine. How about we meet at Muse , you know, down on Society Street?”
I rolled my eyes. I’d been hoping for beer and hot dogs. She wanted an upscale French wine bar. Figured.
“Sure. Muse it is. See you at five,” I said and hung up.
Much as I was loathe to admit it, Heather seemed like a different person than the bratty little sister I’d grown up with. As crazy as she sounded, she had a stillness to her, like she was finally comfortable in her own skin. It couldn’t have been easy being the baby in a family like ours. By the time Heather was a teenager, Mom was busy with the bakery, Dad worked all the time, and the rest of us were too busy getting our own lives started to take any real notice of her. I pinched the bridge of my nose, squeezing my eyes closed. We were pretty lucky she turned out as well as she did, all things considered. Although it’d almost killed Mom when she took off, maybe she really did find herself out there in the world. The jury was still out on that one. But now that she was home, I just couldn’t help wondering why.
Something in the pit of my stomach told me that my baby sister was going to make me pay for this dinner, in more ways than one.
In the chaos of the night before, I’d nearly forgotten the accusation Heather had made about Phoebe’s new boyfriend. I’d done a preliminary background check on the guy at Mom’s insistence, but there hadn’t been anything to suggest he was a were . I decided, on the off chance that Heather was right somehow, to dig just a little deeper.
It wasn’t like the weres were obvious about what they were. They were the most secretive of all supernatural beings. Hell, who could blame them? When the vamps first debuted to the world, they’d been all but branded and sent to prison camps. According to Dad’s files, dozens of vamps were rounded up and put in camps all over the country. But something amazing happened. The vampires let people do it. They didn’t retaliate or fight back, and on the rare occasion when one did go postal, he or she was dealt with quickly and decisively by the others. It was that more than anything that made people start to see them less as monsters and more as people.
It was a brilliant strategy, very Gandhi. Almost overnight, they went from dangerous predators to a piteous, oppressed, misunderstood minority group.
However, there were limitations to people’s generosity. It was illegal for vampires to work in certain professions, such as teaching, medicine, things like that, which was why Shane had been canned from his job as a middle school teacher after the change. Vampires were required to register with the state like sex offenders, and they weren’t allowed to vote. It was like, welcome to the 1800s. Err, I guessed for some of them, it would be ‘welcome back’.
Still, they had at least won a few key battles. They were guaranteed basic protection under the law, which meant that you couldn’t just kill them on sight. And the laws were constantly in flux. Elected officials argued weekly about whatever new scrap of legislation was on the table, everything from inheritance taxes and property restrictions to basic human rights and equal opportunity issues. Currently, vampires had the right to an attorney, trial, etc. Unless they were seen killing a human. For a vampire, murder was
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