Cassie Alexander: Moonshifted

“You’re welcome.” I squeezed her hand back. Gideon wove through us to open up the door. They left, and Grandfather muttered something I was sure was unkind.

I’d just pledged my help to a teenage-looking but hundred-year-old vampire whom I knew had a temper and a half. There was no way this could end badly, right?

The next morning I woke up at eight. I got up, peed, brushed my teeth, and took an Ambien, because I had to work that night. I didn’t like drugging myself to flip my sleep schedule back and forth, but it was better than being bleary all night. Or lying in bed, trying to sleep, and not managing to get any. My bed was warm, Minnie was nearby, and I already had food in the fridge for dinner and late dinner.

It was Christmas Eve day, not that you would know from looking at my house. It wasn’t that I didn’t celebrate holidays—although when you’re working most of them, it’s hard to get into a celebratory mood—I’d just been busy recently. There was a small fake tree at the top of my closet that I could have pulled out—but I’d missed my window right after Thanksgiving, and I’d been busy every day since then, mostly just trying to survive.

As I lay there, I could feel the sleep I’d just woke up from coming back for me. It was like the Ambien was lifting up the sheep-gate. Then my phone rang. I fumbled for it in the dark. “Hello?”

“Edie!”

Only my mother could sound that happy to talk to me. “Hey Momma.”

“We’ve had a change of plans.”

“Uh-huh.” I nuzzled my head back into the pillow.

“I know you’ve had a bit of a rough time recently, so instead of you driving all the way out here on Christmas Day, Peter and I are going to drive in to your place.”

I blinked into my mattress, then bit the inside of my lip to rouse myself. “What?”

“We’re having Christmas in town. It’ll make life so much easier for you.”

“No, it won’t. I’m working tonight, Mom. I was going to drive out to your place after my shift—”

“But see, this way you only have to come home—”

“And cook, and—” I rolled over in bed, now fighting to stay alert. “Mom, I don’t even have a table.”

“Jake told me about that. Said the glass on the old one had broken.”

“Oh really?” I asked archly. What’d happened was that my heroin-addict brother had pawned it for cash to get high—but even in my slightly drugged state, I had the wisdom to keep that to myself.

“So we’ll bring the card table in. There’s only the four of us. We’ll bring in everything we need. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

Except for my mother and stepdad and junkie brother visiting my house, which had a ghost-possessed CD player and was a way stop for visiting vampires.

“Mom, really, it’s easier—”

“Tell her we’ll be there at eleven,” I heard a male voice shout from the background.

“We’ll be there at eleven A.M. I think that way we’ll miss the traffic,” my mother passed along.

“Mom, I not even going to remember this conversation when I get up.”

“Then write it down, dear. Love you!” she said, and then hung up before I could protest further.

I stayed conscious and disappointedly aware of my situation for another crucial alarm-setting thirty seconds. Then I drifted back to sleep.

When my alarm went off at five P.M., I had a few confused moments. Usually I set my alarm for six or seven. What time had I gone to bed the night before? I remembered Anna visiting, vaguely, and I could see the knife’s dark box on my dresser like a pirate’s treasure chest.

But there’d been something else. Something urgent.

“Oh, no.”

Christmas.

I didn’t care how trivial Mom pretended it would be. There was no way I would get off that easy.

I lurched upright in bed, shoving Minnie off the edge with my foot. “If I’m up, you’re up, cat.” I was still clean from the previous night’s shower. I had work tonight—but before going there, I had other work to do.

First thing, I cleaned my bathroom. I wasn’t usually very messy, but it’d been a long time since I’d cleaned like I cared. Second up—the bedroom. You could see right into it. And here, I had been lax. Clothing was strewn across my floor—the only clothes in the hamper were things that desperately needed to be cleaned. Like, say, my werewolf blood–stained coat from the day before. Fuck.

I pulled my clothing bag out of my hamper, shoved everything on the floor into it, grabbed the trash bag with my coat, and braced myself for an extreme investment of quarters as I lugged everything down to the laundry mat down the hall.

Returning, I went through the kitchen first. It wasn’t like I had much to do in the fridge—I could organize approximately one package each of turkey slices and grape jelly just fine. I set a kettle to brewing for tea, so at least I’d have something to offer guests, and cleaned the inside of an old pitcher.

Last but not least, was my living room. Once upon a time I’d had a dining room set, which’d been nice. But the set was gone now, when the couch ought to be.

I inspected the bloodstained side of my couch, a souvenir of the time Anna had spent here. I’d tried to clean things up with hydrogen peroxide, but that’d ruined the ornamental floral pattern something fierce. So I’d turned the cushions over, but there was still a stain on part of the side, and a bleached spot to boot. Neither stain was blatant, but my mother had a way of seeing through things—with the exception of my brother, Jake. I knew I couldn’t come up with a good-enough lie on the spot.

So that meant … shopping for a couch cover. With my last forty dollars from this paycheck. On Christmas Eve.

Dismayed, I set out for Target.

On my way out the door, I stopped and grabbed Anna’s knife. My brother had a lifelong penchant for going through my things. New couch covers could be explained away, but fancy cutlery could not. I decided to toss it in my locker at work for a few nights. It was three times as secure there as anything in my house would be on Christmas Day. I left the fancy box behind on my dresser, settling the knife into the bottom of my purse, wrapped in a hand towel, and had a few crazy thoughts about how exactly I’d explain it away if I got pulled over on my drive in.

Only no one was out ticketing people on Christmas Eve night. They—and by they, I meant everyone —were at Target, desperately shopping.

Packed to the gills did not begin to describe it. I parked my Cavalier out in a satellite parking location, and then hiked into the store.

Throngs of shoppers milled around, none of them looking any happier than me. I was lucky, I supposed—I wasn’t going to the toy aisle. I wove my way to homewares and stood in front of the couch cover zone, in do-it-yourself home-decorating land.

It would take a lot more than forty dollars to make my entire apartment look nice. But there were only so many extra shifts I could take and still maintain a life, by which I meant feeling like I left the hospital often enough to see the sky.

Out of habit, I diagnosed people around me. Flat affect and slumped shoulders? Seasonal affective disorder. Red eyes and sneezing? The flu. I wondered what disorder people could read on my face, given both knowledge and half a chance.

“Hello, Edith.”

No one had called me Edith since my grandmother’d died. No one except for—I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I turned around.

A tall man was standing there—strike that, a vampire, one that I knew. “Dren.” A Husker, in service to the Rose Throne. The last time I’d seen him was at the end of my trial when he’d tried to kill me. I’d cut off his hand in self-defense.