Accidentally Dead Read online

  Nina squeezed her eyes shut and bit the inside of her mouth. The cool of Greg’s fingers wrapped around hers helping the tremors subside. Mind over matter, mind over matter, she repeated mentally.

  Lou went to the coffee table and grabbed her dentures, placing them into her mouth. She turned to look at them with another smile. “Hey, girlie, let that man of yours go for two seconds and go check an old woman’s pot roast. My knees ache today from the bloody cold,” Lou said in her husky, ex-smoker’s voice, running her weathered hands along the arms of the thermal shirt she wore beneath her housecoat. “You can let her out of your sight for a few minutes, can’t you, young man? I want you to sit down and talk to old Lou. I want to hear your intentions for my Nina.” Lou plopped down on the couch and patted the space beside her, shooing Nina toward the swinging door that led to the kitchen.

  Fuck. His intentions. I intend to teach your granddaughter the fine art of blood drinking 101, and when we’ve mastered that, maybe we’ll hit the friendly skies and see if we can’t practice flying. Oh, and I’m going to brainwash her so she’ll turn into a right fine vampire. If Lou only knew…

  When Greg pulled away, Nina found herself almost clinging to his waist, but as Lou arranged herself on the couch, he tilted his neck back and whispered, “Head straight for the kitchen and don’t look back. Find something else to think about and keep thinking about it.” He unwound her arms from his waist and squeezed her wrist one last time before giving her a shove in the direction of the kitchen.

  Over her shoulder, Nina caught him sitting his tall, yummy self right by Lou and heard her comment about how pale Greg was.

  She stumbled toward the worn kitchen doors, chipped from so much use, and pushed her way through to be confronted by the gurgling of the pot roast atop Lou’s antiquated gas stove.

  Her stomach shifted with a violent swerve. On Lou’s best day, her pot roast wasn’t exactly like dining with Emeril, but it wasn’t so bad Nina couldn’t pick at it, then grab a cheeseburger on the way home to wash down the glutinous, lumpy gravy. Today her pot roast smelled like a Jersey dump.

  As she began to give the roast a good stir with the wooden spoon Lou’d had since she could remember, she pinched her nose with two fingers. Greg’s voice hummed in her ears with a buzz, before it adjusted itself like a radio tuner, and Nina could hear every word he spoke.

  “My Nina, she’s got some mouth on her, huh?” Lou’s question crackled in the air.

  “Yes, ma’am. That she does,” Greg agreed. Nina could almost visualize the smug smile he wore so well, breaking out across his lips.

  Tard.

  “But she’s a good girl, and you must have seen past that mouth of hers, eh?”

  Gawd.

  Greg’s answer was very PC—very evasive. “I saw right past it to her lungs, I think.”

  Lou cackled, the rustle of her crisp housecoat vibrating against Nina’s eardrums. “Has she been yelling at you? She yells a lot, too.”

  “She has, but I get the feeling her bark is far worse than her bite. Besides, I can yell back.”

  “That’s good to know. She needs someone who won’t take her crock of crap. You have to understand where Nina comes from to understand why she’s such a toughie, but I suppose she told you already, right?”

  Oh.

  Hell.

  Lou was going to unfurl her business like a flag. Jabbing the pot roast with the spoon, Nina cringed, closing her eyes to fend off what was going to come, whether she wanted it to or not. She was too weak to protest, and who gave a flip anyway? So what if Greg knew her shit?

  “I’d love to hear your take on it, Lou.” Greg’s voice bubbled from his throat, all low and satiny, with a smidge of subtle interest.

  God, Nina wished he wouldn’t do that. Like he was sensitive or something. He was anything but sensitive. He was a malicious vampire-maker. But she found herself stilling so she could hear Lou anyway.

  “She never had it easy, my Nina. My son was a good boy, you know. He worked hard. He was a trucker—which explains her bad language. But he was gone a lot on the road, trying to make a living, and that mother of hers,” Lou paused for a moment, and Nina could literally see her grandmother fight not to make “the face” where the mention of her mother was concerned, “her mother was what all you younger people call diseased these days. Yeah, that’s it, she had a disease, but I don’t care what you kids call it. My generation calls it a druggie.” Lou’s vehemence where Nina’s mother was concerned was well warranted, but it hadn’t stopped her from foolishly wishing for things to be different nearly all of her childhood…

  “Janine just couldn’t give up the smack for anyone. Not even Nina. I could never understand how she could leave such a pretty, pretty baby. I remember there was a day when Joe was off on the road, and I’d called and called their house because I promised Joe I’d watch ’em, but nobody answered. I just knew in my gut something was wrong. So I took my lunch break early, and I went to check on them. Sure enough, Nina was in her playpen, soaking wet diaper, balling her eyes out, and Janine was nowhere to be found.” The hitch in Lou’s voice made Nina’s throat thicken, and she gripped the handle of the spoon harder.

  “Anyway, she’d taken off again, but she always came back round, begging Joe to take her in. She’d promise to get off the drugs, and she’d do it for a while. Joe’d hold his breath, and when another week passed and she was still clean, he’d call and say, ‘See, Ma? I think she’s gonna do it this time. And don’t think—even if I thought Janine was a crummy mother—that I didn’t hope he was right, because he loved her so. Just once I’d have given my eyeteeth for him to be right. But he never was. Janine would always end up right back in the gutter, doin’ those drugs she loved more than she loved anything else. I can only thank the Lord Nina was okay, because by some crazy miracle, Nina was unaffected by Janine’s drugs.”

  Lou’s sigh was a hiss in Nina’s ears, filled with disgust, pity, and the frustration Nina remembered well. “Anyway, I helped Joe take care of Nina when he had to be away. I think the hardest thing for me to watch was how much Nina loved her mother no matter what that woman did to her.”

  Nina remembered well the hundreds of broken promises to play in the park, go see a movie, go to Macy’s makeup counter and get one of those makeovers. Just the two of them, Janine would say. She’d just never followed through.

  “Janine’d come around and play at being mommy, after promising Nina they’d do all the things she promised they’d do the last time she dragged herself home, then disappear for a few months, leaving Nina with me while her father worked his tail off. Boy, Joe sure loved her—Janine, I mean. He loved Nina, too, but he was a man, and men aren’t any good at raising little girls. Nina didn’t have the kind of upbringing she should have, you know? Ballet classes, Girl Scouts, stuff like that.”

  Nina could hear the rustle of Greg’s hair, figuring he’d nodded, yet he remained silent.

  “I tried to talk Joe into moving when that neighborhood of his turned bad, but he always said, ‘What would Janine do if she came back here and we were gone? How would she find us?’ But one day she didn’t come back. Not for almost a year, and then the cops called, and well, they’d found Janine’s body in some alleyway all poked up with holes and track marks. She’d overdosed, and she’d done it with the good sense to leave her ID in her pocket. And when the cops called, Joe said, ‘See, Ma? If we’da left the neighborhood, I woulda never known what happened to Janine.’ After that, Joe was broken. Just broken. He worked more, stayed away more, and I moved Nina in here with me. I tried to convince him Nina needed him, but he always said she needed a mother more. He was never the same, and neither was Nina. She got harder and more determined to let everyone know just how tough she was.”

  There was a slight pause, a moment where Nina thought she might be rid of Greg for good. That he’d just up and hit the bricks hearing this very awkward Jerry Springer retelling of her childhood on his first meeting with Lou.

&
nbsp; But he must have only shifted on the couch, repositioning himself, from the sound of his leather jacket crunching. “What happened to Joe?” he asked with absolutely no condemnation in his tone after clearing his throat. It was a tone Nina wouldn’t say reeked of the kind of pity she expected, but genuine interest, tinged with a warmth that spread over her in all its unwillingness.

  “My poor boy. He’d done a run too many and ran his rig off the road one night. Had to be the worst day of my life, except for when I buried Nina’s grandpa. Nina was a rock—she’s a good girl. I know she’s rough around the edges, but with a little understanding, if you can get past that hoodlum front she puts on, you’ll know what I mean.”

  Nina would never forget that call when she was almost seventeen. Lou had sobbed, wailed for a good day, before dusting herself off and putting together the funeral she thought Joe deserved. Though she and her father didn’t see as much of each other as they should have, he’d loved her. She’d loved him, too, for all his faults in loving her stoner mother.

  She had a ton of pencils from every state in the country because of him. They were still tucked away with the box of pictures she had under her bed. Pictures of her and Janine, faded from Nina fingering them night after night before she’d gone to bed. Pictures of when she was a chubby infant, sitting on Janine’s lap, her mother glassy eyed and only vaguely aware someone was snapping a photo of her. Pictures her father had taken, so she’d always have a little piece of Janine, he’d said.

  Janine was where Nina’s love of Barry Manilow had come from. She’d loved Barry, playing his albums over and over and singing to Nina. It was one of the few things about her mother Nina remembered fondly.

  Nina’s shoulders hunched over the stove at the memory, but she gritted her teeth to keep from barging into the living room and shutting Lou up. Lou meant no harm. For her grandmother, it was only natural that she’d share something so personal with Greg. She thought he was her boyfriend, for God’s sake. If her mouth ran too much for Nina’s—or even Greg’s comfort, then so be it.

  She’d been nothing but good to Nina when she was a kid. Her fierce affection for her grandmother might not stem from baking cupcakes and reading fairy tales, but came from the solid strength her grandmother represented to her. The unwavering love she’d had for Joe and as a result, for his only child. Lou loved Joe, despite his weakness of loving a woman who’d had severe deficits, and Nina would take that over cupcakes and Snow White any day of the week.

  Her eyes burned, and she imagined it was because she felt like crying, dredging up all this shit that was far better left buried. Yet she couldn’t squeeze a single tear out.

  Wow, this vampire thing did have its perks. There were a million nights Nina could reflect back on when she’d wished she could stop crying over Janine.

  As she rolled her head on her neck, another of Lou’s crucifixes, sitting on the windowsill caught her eye, making her skin crawl. Jesus, they were everywhere.

  She aimed the dripping spoon at it, preparing to whack it off the sill, when, Adolph, Lou’s beloved parakeet, chirped, flapping his green and yellow wings. Her stomach howled with joy. Blood. Adolph had some zinging through his veins.

  The bad vampire in her told her to snatch his chirpy body right out of the cage and gobble him up like he was a Hershey bar. The leftover human in her knew Lou would suffer for her weakness.

  Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck. “Dude, knock that shit off,” she whispered, directing her gaze to the gold varnished cage, hanging from a hook in the ceiling. “I already want to gnaw on your little wings—quit making all that noise, or I will.”

  “Nina?” Lou poked her head in, raising an eyebrow in question. “You go sit with your young man. I’ll finish up. Ask him to forgive a foolish old woman’s rambling, would ya, and tell him I think we had a nice chat. I like him.”

  Nina handed her the spoon and forced a smile. “That’s peachy, Lou. Where would I be without your approval?” She followed her words with a snicker of laughter and left with great apprehension to go back to the living room.

  Greg sat on Lou’s washed-out plaid couch, wearing an expression Nina couldn’t read. He looked out of place in Lou’s old house, with its floral wallpaper and outdated shag carpeting. Yet, her new senses, tuned into his emotions, didn’t get a snobby vibe from him at all. He looked comfortable against the blue ruffled throw pillows. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t still be pissed at him. Had he stayed the fuck in Castlevania, he’d have never had cause to talk to her grandmother in the first place, and he wouldn’t know every last pathetic detail of her life.

  Ahhh, righteous indignation was back. This was a much more comfortable emotion for her. It beat the piss out of vulnerable and sentimental. “You’re still here,” she said with cutting sarcasm.

  “Yep.”

  “Well, go home.”

  “And miss Lou’s pot roast? Not on your life.”

  “Again, I hate to remind you. I don’t have a life anymore. Remember? You took it, you mortality-napper, and if you’d have gone home when I told you to, there’d be no pot roast for you to yearn for. I can’t even eat the pot roast, damn it.”

  He smiled calmly, and Nina had the distinct impression, because of Lou’s revelation, that he was thinking he had her all figured out now. “I like Lou, and I won’t insult her by leaving after she invited me to stay. If you want to be rude and tell her the truth—I can’t stop you. In fact, no one can stop you. So go right ahead. I’ll just wait here.” Greg stood and made his way to the doily-covered dining room table with the pink ceramic boot in the center that held a spindly fern.

  Nina moved in closer, so Lou wouldn’t hear her. Standing on her toes, she ground the words out in Greg’s ear. His hair tickled her nose. “Ya know, you’re really starting to piss me off. Why won’t you just leave me the fuck alone?”

  Her voice rose several octaves, and Lou’s head immediately shot out between the swinging doors. “Trouble in paradise? Lovers’ spat?” she asked with a flirty smile at Greg.

  “Trouble?” he repeated, flashing a wink and a grin. “No trouble. No trouble at all, Lou. See?” He grinned then, looking down at Nina with a mocking glint in his green, green eyes, just before he hauled her against him, splaying one hand over her spine, and another along the curve of her hip. The rigid width of his hips molded to hers, leaving her to brush the swell of a place she shouldn’t be feeling swelling, or enjoying the swelling of said place.

  And planted his lips solidly on hers.

  And made Nina see rainbows and stars and stupid-assed unicorns.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Fantabulous.

  Fly.

  Dope even.

  So Greg was a good kisser. And?

  Oh. My. God. Wing Man wasn’t just a good kisser, he was like the master of the lip-lock. The Grand Poobah of sucking face.

  He molded his lips to hers, creating heat just by the mere touch of them, skimming them, then deepening the kiss until her lips felt pleasantly bruised—taken.

  His tongue chased, then captured Nina’s, leaving a trail of fire, as she found herself pressing closer to his muscled length, threading her fingers through his hair, melting into him without giving it another thought.

  She wanted to envelope him, absorb him, drag him to the floor of Lou’s dining room and devour him.

  Lou’s…they were at her grandmother’s.

  “Hey, you two, come up for air. Dinner’s ready,” Lou chided with a gravelly chuckle.

  Nina tore her lips from his with the speed of light, immediately backing away. If breathing were still an option, she’d have had a hard time catching her breath.

  Greg smiled like a cat that’d just caught a mouse, the dimples on either side of his mouth deepening, while he arched a dark eyebrow at her, daring her to spew at him now.

  Her legs wobbled, but she managed to grab one of the spindle-back chairs and grip it to keep herself upright. Greg, on the other hand, didn’t look even a littl
e fazed by their tonsil hockey.

  Somewhere between Greg throwing himself at her and that—that kiss, Lou had set a place for Greg. She motioned for him to take the seat with the Corning Ware plate lined with brown flowers.

  For sure she was sunk. Lou used to tell Nina when she was little—after she’d complained her plate didn’t match everyone else’s—that it was the special plate, made just for little girls who were very important. Now Greg had it, and her grandmother was sending her everything short of smoke signals to let Nina know she liked Greg.

  Good, good, good.

  Lou sat at the head of the table and passed the pot roast to Greg first. “Dig in, young man. From the size of you, I’d bet you’re a good eater.”

  Nina plunked down in the chair next to Dracula and forced herself to think of something other than food and Jesus statues. Her head began the familiar throb, and her stomach howled its discontent. The smell of dead cow was driving into her nostrils like a jackhammer.

  Greg took a huge helping of beef and topped it off with a bigger helping of potatoes, passing the plate to Nina. Her hand shook trying to take it from him, causing a precarious wobble of meat and gravy.

  “Let me help you, snooky,” he cooed in a warm, silky tone. He forked a small portion of meat onto her plate, smiling.

  Snooky this, she thought. Yet she gave him a wisp of a grateful smile despite herself.

  How she managed to get through dinner was in and of itself more of a miracle than the Second Coming. As they left Lou’s, Greg promising her he’d come back next week and her grandmother making Nina promise she’d eat better next time, Nina literally ran down the wide steps of Lou’s porch and hurled herself onto the sidewalk with a jerky lurch. A thousand tons of pressure evaporated from her chest in an instant. No doubt leaving behind the squadron of crucifixes added to her relief.