Ten, page 13
“Oh, that’s just wrong,” Steve muttered.
Kyle, meanwhile, picked up the needle and made his way over to Paige. With newly steadied hands, he peeled away the paper and started calmly finishing what Dr. Wilson had started. As he used a talon to cut through the thread, both vampires raised a brow.
“Is that even sanitary, Kyle?” Lorcan asked.
“Please get the human and his fluids out of this operating room,”
Kyle growled. “Go!”
“Come on, Mr. Wilson,” Lorcan sighed as he dragged him from the room. Both werewolves could hear a faint, “That’s doctor,” as the door closed.
“Yeouch!” Paige snapped as Kyle dug the needle back into her skin.
“Your turn to sit down and shut up,” he snarled. Even though he growled and bared his rather impressive canines, his hands worked smoothly and quickly. He then swabbed with antiseptic and barked when his patient tried to complain again.
“Werewolf bedside manner sucks,” Paige muttered as he taped on her bandages.
“Werewolf patients suck,” he muttered without skipping a beat.
She watched him instinctively grab bottles and tools and patch her up without batting an eye. He then swept up all the evidence and began cleaning the crime scene.
“Does this mean we have the old Kyle back?” Paige asked.
He moved so fast she couldn’t dodge the needle going into her arm. “Trust me, you’ll thank me for the painkillers,” he muttered.
“Once that shock wears off, you are gonna be miserable for a few hours and stiff for a couple of days, but you’ll live.”
“Not quite the old Kyle,” Paige sighed. She stripped off the bloody gown, and they both stared at her bra and shook their heads in dismay, as she got into as many of her clothes as she could.
“I don’t think the old Kyle is ever coming back,” he sighed. “But I hope this one can at least be useful.”
She squeezed his arm. “I know you will be.”
He eyed the lumps on the tray. “I need to be if the alternative is being stuck with butchers like this guy. You’re really lucky that you’re a werewolf, Paige. Now help me find the disinfectant spray, and let’s see if we can clean up the rogue fluids.”
The pair of werewolves emerged a few minutes later smelling of bleach. They gave the room one more look-over before heading to the X-ray room to check for any final incriminating evidence. Once satisfied that all traces of their afterhours visit were gone, they ran to the door to find Paige’s great-grandfather in an uncomfortable-looking lip-lock with the crying doctor.
“Oh—” Paige started.
“—My,” Kyle finished.
“You had a really bad batch of shrimp tacos and too many margaritas,” Steve whispered in the doctor’s ear. “You came here because that’s how far your bladder let you go. Sorry, you didn’t make it. Good luck at home.”
“Will that really work?” Lorcan muttered.
“The poor bastard will have psychosomatic food poisoning,”
Steve said with a pathetic laugh. “But that’s what he gets for calling us monsters. So, now is that special family moment where you all tell me what the hell is going on and why I’m the only non-werewolf getting into this car? It’s also at this special time that I should note that werewolves aren’t real.”
Lorcan, Kyle and Paige responded by popping out thirty nasty looking claws and making their corneas disappear in the light of the moon. Steve just raised a brow.
“My Paige-boo has a tail,” Steve said. “Tell me, Lord Pendragon, do you have a tail too?”
8
“NINETY-SEVEN-POINT-FIVE,” Georgia read off her digital thermometer. Her patient smiled and stretched in bed.
“I do run a little cold,” Ren said with a little wink. “Come on, with a nurse like you, I simply had to get better.”
Georgia felt his forehead again. Once satisfied that his fever was a thing of the past, she curled up next to him and toyed with his messy long hair. “I would kiss you, but you have post-sinus infection breath,” she said before giving him a nuzzle on the neck.
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”
Georgia watched as he curled out of bed and reached for the top of the bed frame. She kept a close eye on the bruising mixed in with his tattooed arms and just how tightly he needed to tie his pajama pants around his diminishing waistline.
A few minutes later, he reappeared with minty fresh breath and a neat ponytail. “So, is this a formal type of family thing?” he asked.
Georgia raised a brow. “These are the people who raised me, Ren. We have dress jeans for special occasions.”
“Point taken.”
“Do you think. . . you know we’re ready for this?” she asked. “Mr.
Lambley—”
“He’ll be fine. We’ll be fine, and if it gets too bad, I can practically vomit on command to get us out of there,” Ren sighed. “Have a little faith in us. Mr. Lambley has come a long way since you started him on his road to recovery.”
“Georgia! I seem to have gotten caught in my zipper again,” the vampire called from across the hall.
“I’ve got this one,” Ren said with an exaggerated grimace. “You just get ready.”
“Yeah,” she said quickly as she darted for her bathroom. As she was flushing the toilet, something small and white caught her eye.
She picked up the horse pill off the floor and quickly compared it to containers lined up neatly on the counter. “Damn it, Ren, be more careful,” she muttered before tossing the antibiotic into the toilet.
Instinctively, she locked the vampire-dangerous meds into the cabinet behind the mirror. She took a quick count of just how few were left in each. Once she had washed her hands and made herself as presentable as possible, she found her own dress jeans and a sweater with a turkey knitted into the front. A few puffs of hair spray and a few minutes with a curling iron turned her growing out hair into a pleasantly retro Nineties flip.
“Meg Ryan, eat your heart out,” she cooed to her reflection.
Her smile warped into an expression of surprise as she found a scene straight out of a slightly homoerotic gladiator film. Mr. Lambley sat on the edge of his bed in little more than a towel as Ren slowly rubbed lotion across his chest and arms. She sighed and grabbed a second tube of sunscreen so that she could work on his quite spectacularly pale back.
“This smell is atrocious,” the vampire complained.
“It’s the same sunscreen that Lord Pendragon uses,” Ren said blandly.
“Hey Ren, he’s got a mole with a hair in it on his back. Can vampires get skin cancer?” Georgia said as she squeezed another blob on her fingers. Mr. Lambley gasped.
“I’m messing with you, Mr. Lambley. I doubt that thing has changed in a century,” Georgia teased.
“Vampires can’t get cancer,” Ren reassured. “Now this needs to dry before we put your clothes on again.”
“Are you certain that this will be enough?” Geoffrey said nervously as he looked at the window. “I haven’t tried anything like this in over a quarter of a century—”
“Sunblock is way better now than it was in the Eighties,” Georgia reassured. “Plus, you’re going to a Thanksgiving full of pasty New England folks. We love to stay inside all year, and I’ll make sure you’re at the card table with me in the den. The only light that’s gonna blind you is from the big screen showing football. By the way, you’re a Patriots fan for a day.”
“What?” both Ren and Geoffrey asked at once.
“I cannot possibly support a team that so blatantly mocks my family’s history. Also, I’ve heard that this team simply does not handle its balls properly, so just like the bloody rebels, they are cheats and scoundrels—”
Ren just threw up his hands and said, “Hey, the Rams are back in L.A., baby.”
“Mr. Lambley, you’ve lived in New England longer than football has even been around, and, Ren, the Rams suck, so play nice before my stepfather eats you both for breakfast.”
“I am a vampire! I will not kowtow to—”
“He will stake you with the remote. There is no vampire I fear more than the men in my family on game day. Now, let’s get you into your clothes, Mr. Lambley.”
Once her boss was safely tucked into a cheery wool sweater and some khakis, she double-checked the SPF 100 full spectrum label.
She made sure her vampire friend had a hat, gloves, and a lovely new silk scarf ready for the potential twenty-foot walk from the street to her parent’s house.
“He’ll be fine,” Ren whispered in her ear. “Come on, let’s get the rest of the preparations done.”
She stopped him as soon as they made it to the landing. He eyed her bright sweater. “Am I supposed to be wearing a festive side dish to go with you?” he asked.
“Are your hands shaking again?”
“Off and on, why?”
“You dropped one of your pills,” she said. “I mean, I don’t think that Mr. Lambley is one to eat things off the floor anymore, but when it comes to really powerful antibiotics and a vampire, you can’t be too
careful. Maybe we should try to work a deal with one of the bondsmen doctors that Nicolette knows—”
“No, I’ll be more careful,” he said quickly. “I won’t let it happen again, I swear.”
“Ren—”
“Come on, this is a day where we said we’d try to forget all the crap that’s happening to me,” Ren said as he squeezed her hands.
“I have to worry about you though. I love you.”
Ren tipped up her chin and gave her a kiss. “Then I’ll give you your Christmas present early. My uncle, err father, is taking me to a clinic in L.A. in December.”
“That’s the best present you could ever get me,” Georgia said with a bit of an eye wobble. “Unless you can manage a real deep-dish pizza for me while you’re out there as well.”
“Cheese with peppers, mushrooms, and onions?” He asked.
“Black olives too,” she whispered before kissing him again. As she pulled away, she eyed him suspiciously. “Mr. Lambley was in a towel when I found you.”
“Yeah, I’m traumatized for life,” Ren said.
“Welcome to my world,” she laughed before leading him to the kitchen. “Did you ever have to, um, liberate Steve from the evils of modern zippers?”
“No, but I did have to strip him naked and dump him in a Jacuzzi once after an incident with Phil Collins, a pig, and a chain saw. . .”
He trailed off as he saw the utter horror on Georgia’s face. “Oh, it wasn’t really Phil Collins. My master had been drinking highly intoxicated starlets and he decided to reenact American Psycho with
—”
“I’m good with you leaving it at that,” she said with a quick round of nods. “Now, why don’t you help me pack up?”
They spent the next half hour filling carafes with smoothies and plasma while Georgia filled a glass container with a mountain of kale, roasted squash, and quinoa. “Trust me, if I don’t bring something, I’ll be living off mashed potatoes and dessert. I really hope mom isn’t doing the whole low-fat kick where she sneaks
chicken broth into absolutely everything. I must be the only American that loses weight around the holidays.”
“Well this looks amazing and loaded with calories,” Ren said as he pulled a beautiful orange pie topped with a delicate lattice of crust and little dollops of toasted marshmallow crème.
“Took me a few years, but I learned that you can whip chick pea juice just like egg whites. Oh, don’t give me that face. You can’t tell me that the liquid from a can of beans is ickier that boiling down animal feet to make a confection,” she said as she read the horror in her boyfriend’s eyes.
“Bean juice marshmallows on a perfectly good pumpkin pie,” he said shaking his head.
“Sweet potato,” she corrected. “And don’t worry, there is enough bourbon in there to make even my Great Aunt Millie happy. Try it before you judge.”
He plopped the sweetened mashed potato and bean fluff pie into a reused pastry box and shook his head again. Georgia rolled her eyes. Before they could start the argument back up, their token vampire shuffled into the kitchen in matching socks and freshly shined shoes. She beamed with pride as he handed her a comb without prompting or complaint.
“I’ll get that part straight, Mr. Lambley,” she said as she tugged through a now bushy head of red hair. “We might actually have to use some product today.”
He smiled wide to show off all four tiny shiny fangs. “Don’t worry, I’ll remember to remain close-mouthed for the humans,” he reassured them.
They packed up the car, and Georgia double-checked the tinting film as well as the directions on her phone. Mr. Lambley slid into the back, bouncing like a kid. Ren took the wheel and steeled himself for maneuvering through Brookline in a vehicle more suited for being a land barge rather than a city car.
“I will warn you, the turkey is usually cooked to the point of sawdust,” Georgia noted as the finally got on the highway. “And there is always something congealed.”
“There is gravy, right?” Ren asked hopefully.
“And nice lumpy mashed potatoes, oh, and copious amounts of wine.”
“And for me?” Mr. Lambley chimed in.
“Nutmeg, cinnamon, and rat smoothies!”
“Yum,” Ren said.
“Wait, that gets a yum, but you won’t try chick-pea marshmallow?” Georgia sniffed. “Fine, you have them with Mr.
Lambley—”
“I’m not sharing,” the vampire said with a little pout. The effect was so comical that they nearly missed their turn off Route Nine.
Away from the city proper, little patches of white snow still mixed in with piles of brown leaves. Both Ren and Mr. Lambley stared at the rows of cape houses, many stuffed with cars.
“Fascinating,” Mr. Lambley said. “People choose to live out here?”
“None of us did,” Georgia sighed. “We’re that white house at the corner, Ren.”
“Who drives the Porsche?”
“Did you just say a—” Georgia caught her breath. “Oh, this explains why mom insisted on Thanksgiving this year. It’s not too late to drive home, is it?”
“Just how complicated is your family? Wait this isn’t some old boyfriend. . . fiancée—?”
“Do I detect a note of jealousy, Ren?”
“My uncle killed my grandfather, and my mother is having an affair with Dracula if it makes you feel better, Miss Sutherland.”
“My uncle turned out to be my dad, and my family disowned me and left me to die,” Ren added.
“Well, if I was in regular company, I’d be rather tragic,” Georgia sighed. “I guess it’s time to sit back and enjoy the show. If anyone asks, Mr. Lambley—”
“Do I get to play your lover?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
His sparkle waned slightly as he saw just how many car lengths they would have to walk to make it to the front door.
“You’re my boss, Mr. Lambley. It’s better to stay as close to the truth as we can.”
“And who am I, exactly?” Ren asked as they eased in behind the Porsche.
“You are my long overdue nice boyfriend for my whole family to judge me for. My Great Aunt Millie and my stepdad will be crushed though, since they were completely convinced I was a lesbian.”
“So, I’m meeting the family,” Ren said, as it was his turn to twitch.
“Well it’s a little bit easier for you to meet mine since your family formally disowned you, while my family just chooses to generally ignore the fact that I exist.”
“It’s too bright,” Mr. Lambley whined. “I can’t possibly make it to the door. I’ll burn up—”
“You have on a mountain of sunscreen. We’ve got you all covered up and it’s a short, short walk,” Georgia reassured.
“Even with your allergies, at worst it will be a little sunburn. I’ve got burn cream at the ready, Mr. Lambley.”
Ren opened the door and all three of them held their breath as the first rays poured into the car. The vampire shied from the light and hissed, but at least for the moment, there was no terrible bubbling or burning.
Georgia tucked Mr. Lambley’s sleeve around his gloves and popped on his hat. “Just imagine how much you can lord this over, Steve,” she whispered. “You are going to not only walk out during the day, but you’re going to survive an entire meal with my family. If you’re really lucky, I’ll let you see my old room.”
Slowly, carefully, the trio wandered up a peaceful suburban street with a bag of food, a box of pie, and one reluctant vampire. Staring in wonder at just how bright autumn morning sun could be, Mr.
Lambley shuffled between the two humans.
“I’m really glad it’s partly cloudy,” Ren muttered.
“Ren, I would like to formally apologize in advance for any and all inadvertent racism,” Georgia muttered back. She didn’t even get a chance to knock when the front door whipped open.
“Georgia Lee!” a bleached blonde in jeans and a Pats jersey cried as she grabbed Georgia and all but swept her off her feet.
“Maggie! Georgia is here!”
“Does she have a hearing problem?” Mr. Lambley whispered.
“Oh, and who do we have here?” the bleached blonde asked. Her eyes all but popped out of her head as she had to look up to see the face of an Asian man with a ponytail and bright green eyes.
Georgia made sure to get her vampire boss safely tucked into the foyer before she deigned to answer any more questions. She planted on her least sarcastic smile as a familiar middle-aged woman came hustling from the kitchen in a Kiss the Cook apron.
“Georgie?” she gasped. “You actually came?”
“Mom, I texted you when we were in Wellesley,” Georgia sighed.
“Well, you’ve found a way to not show up before, especially lately,” her mom sighed.
“Maggie!” the bleached blonde interjected with her normal exuberance.
“Margaret Sutherland-Borden. This is my sister, Kate,” Georgia’s mom said. She sized up the two very different men in her front hall.
