Michael Ford: Jane Vows Vengeance

“Miriam, what kind of dress do you think Jane should wear?” Lucy asked.

Miriam waved a hand at her. “Oh, you know I don’t care. I’m sure whatever she wants is fine.”

Jane felt her fangs click into place. She closed her eyes and concentrated on forcing them to retract. You can’t bite her , she reminded herself.

Miriam raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a headache, Jane?” she asked. “You look tense.”

“I’m fine,” Jane snapped. She opened her eyes. “I’m fine,” she repeated, giving Miriam a tight smile.

She heard the front door open and close. “Jane?” Walter called out. “Where are you?”

“In here,” Jane replied. “With Lucy and your mother.”

Walter came into the kitchen, brushing snow from his navy blue peacoat. “I have great news,” he said as he bent to kiss first his mother and then Jane.

“You got the Thorne-Waxe house job!” Jane said. A restorer of historic houses, Walter had recently been asked to submit a proposal for restoring a run-down Victorian house that had been cut up into four apartments. The new owners wanted to bring it back to its original glory.

“Oh, yes, I did,” said Walter. “But that’s not the big news.” His blue eyes, always sparkling, had an extra twinkle to them.

The three women looked at him. “Well?” Jane said after a long pause.

“I’ve solved our wedding problem,” Walter said, beaming. “Well, not so much the wedding problem, but the honeymoon problem.”

“What do you mean, the honeymoon problem?” Miriam asked.

“Jane and I have been trying to decide where to go on our honeymoon,” Walter explained.

“What honeymoon?” said Miriam. “You haven’t even set a date for the wedding!”

“We’ll figure that out,” Walter said. “The important thing is, I know where we’re going afterward.”

“Tahiti?” said Lucy hopefully.

“Europe,” said Walter.

“Europe is a big place,” Jane reminded him. “Can you narrow it down a bit?”

“That’s the best part,” said Walter. “We don’t have to narrow it down. I’ve been invited to go on a tour of historic houses with the International Association of Historic Preservationists. They’re spending two weeks looking at homes in Ireland, France, Switzerland, Italy, and England. Oh, and Scotland or somewhere. I can’t remember the exact details. Doesn’t it sound fun?”

“How many other people will be going on our honeymoon with us?” Jane inquired.

“I don’t know—two dozen or so, I guess,” said Walter. “But we don’t have to do everything with the group. There’s a lot of free time built into the itinerary. And it’s not really our honeymoon. We can add another week on at the end for just the two of us. Anywhere you want to go.” He looked at the three women, who sat there saying nothing. “Well?”

“When is this trip?” Jane asked.

“March,” said Walter.

“March!” Jane, Lucy, and Miriam shrieked in unison.

“March what?” asked Lucy.

“We leave on the ninth,” Walter answered.

“The ninth!” the three women chorused.

“Walter, that’s …” Jane counted on her fingers.

“Seventeen days from now,” said Miriam. “We can’t possibly plan a wedding in that short a time.”

“Why not?” Walter asked. “You’re my only family, and Jane has none.”

“Hey!” Lucy exclaimed.

“You know what I mean,” said Walter, patting her shoulder kindly. “No parents or cousins or other people who would need to make travel plans. Everyone we want to invite already lives here. All we have to do is get married.”

Lucy looked at Jane. “It sounds so simple when he puts it like that,” she said.

“It does rather, doesn’t it?” Jane agreed.

“See?” said Walter, sounding very pleased with himself. “It’s all settled.”

Jane looked at Miriam. Her mouth was set in a grim line, and she scowled at Jane with undisguised dislike. She’s been hoping all along that the wedding would never happen , Jane realized. She wants me to run out of time. Well, we’ll just see about that .

“I think it’s a splendid idea,” she said. “Don’t you, Miriam?”

Miriam narrowed her eyes. “Just peachy,” she said through gritted teeth.

Walter put one arm around Jane’s shoulders and the other around his mother’s. “I knew you would be thrilled,” he said. “Hey, I just thought of something. Once Jane and I are married you’ll both be Mrs. Fletcher.”

Miriam let out a little yelp, which she covered by pretending to cough. “You know I don’t go by that name any—”

“You should take care of that cough, Mom,” Walter said, grinning and ignoring her. “You don’t want it to turn into something worse.”

“I don’t think it’s possible for it to get worse,” said Miriam, reaching for her coffee.

“Well, maybe you should go home and rest,” Walter told her. “We want you in fighting shape for the big day. Right, Jane?”

“By all means,” Jane said, flashing her teeth at Miriam. “I know I will be.”

New York City, New York

“Explain to me again how you’ve lived this long without a passport,” Byron said to Jane as they walked down a narrow street on New York’s Lower East Side. Surprised by a snowstorm that had begun just after midnight, the city was in a state of disarray. The normally bustling thoroughfares were largely empty as cars huddled beneath blankets of white, and the few people out walking did so with hats pulled down over their ears and hands jammed into the pockets of their coats.

Jane and Byron, having arrived on the first train of the morning from Brakeston, took little notice of the cold. They wore coats and scarves not for warmth but to blend in, although Byron wasn’t doing a particularly good job of that. The black wool ulster he was wearing gave him the appearance of someone from another era. This impression was intensified by the cane he used to compensate for his limp. Made of cherry wood, it was topped with the head of a rabbit cast in bronze. The ensemble, coupled with Byron’s pale skin and dark hair, created an aura of otherworldliness. The fact that he was extraordinarily handsome only made him more noticeable.

“I’ve never needed one,” Jane said, answering Byron’s question. “I don’t go anywhere.”

“Still,” said Byron, running his hand across the top of a car as they passed by it and scooping up a handful of snow, “I would think you would want one just in case .”

He packed the snow into a tight ball. Then, with a casualness that belied the speed at which the snowball traveled, he hurled it across the street, where it struck the back of a man who was standing and watching his dog, a French bulldog wearing a red-and-white striped sweater, relieve itself on a lamppost. The man whirled around, exclaiming loudly, but saw only the retreating figures of a well-dressed couple walking arm in arm through the snow.

“That was for making that poor dog wear a sweater,” Byron explained to Jane. “Oh, and here we are.”

They had stopped in front of a narrow brownstone remarkably like all the other brownstones on the block, although the ground floor of this particular building was taken up by a small watch repair shop. The front window was crowded with timepieces, and the faded gold lettering on the glass read TIME OUT OF MIND. Underneath that in smaller black lettering was S. GRUNDY, HOROLOGIST. Bits of paint had long ago fallen off or been chipped away, giving the letters a moth-eaten appearance, and the dust that was gathered in the corners of the window provided additional reason to suppose that the establishment had long ago ceased to do business. Only the faint glow of a light hidden in the recesses of the shop suggested otherwise.