Chapter 12 The Fixer-Upper Trope
I pulled up to the Valentine Bed-and-Breakfast ten minutes later. Just like in the pictures, an adorable off-kilter, heart-shaped sign marked the spot.
Maple Lane, which was less of a lane and more of a scenic rural highway, separated my new abode from Tyrone’s farm, which boasted rows upon rows of pine trees and a cozy log cabin.
A painted wooden sign the size of a billboard announced it as St. Nicholas farms and Christmas fair.
Tyrone’s truck was already parked in front of the house.
My new home might be a little dilapidated, with peeling paint and signs of rot, but if you squinted it was beautiful. It was situated at the top of a gentle rise at the end of a long driveway with a wide, welcoming porch.
The hearse only made it halfway up the icy drive before the wheels started spinning. I revved the engine, and the wheels spun harder. We’d made it all but the last hundred feet.
There was no delaying; I had to let Heaven out. What should I say? “Congratulations, you’re a vampire!” didn’t seem to cover it.
I unlocked the lid to her casket and braced myself.
The lid creaked open, and she sat bolt upright, gripping the sides of the coffin. “What the—”
She looked around at the snowy, barren landscape. “Tiffenie?” she said, her tone nothing but a question.
“Good evening, sweetie.”
At the word sweetie she gave me a weird look. “What’s going on?”
“Well…we had to leave town in a hurry.”
Heaven looked at me in confusion. “Where’s Gemma?”
“Remember, you broke up.”
She flashed a defiant, I’m-broken-up-when-I-say-I’m-broken-up expression.
“And then you fell asleep on my couch…” I spoke slowly and calmly to help her process the news.
“That doesn’t explain”—she gestured at everything—“any of this!” I could see the panic settling in as she realized we were far, far from LA.
When I woke up as a vampire for the first time, I’d been in a castle. Vlad had been there. “Hello, dumpling,” he’d said. “How do you feel?” He’d had several virgins ready to quench my thirst.
“Where the fuck am I?” Heaven said, wide-eyed, clearly taking in the snow, which was collecting in miniature drifts on her false lashes.
“Before we talk, let me get you something to drink.” I had to crawl all the way into the hearse to get to the coconut water. “Hang on,” I called. “I’m sure you must be thirsty.”
She stared at the proffered coconut water like Cat had just gifted her with a dead mouse. “A Kirkland Organic Coconut Water”—she emphasized the name like it was a curse— “is not going to help this situation.”
“Actually, I think it might…” I trailed off at the look on her face. “You know how I inherited a bed-and-breakfast…”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, ta-da!” I gestured to the hulking home outlined against the night sky. There wasn’t a single light on in the house. “Remember how you wanted to come with me?”
She looked down at her feet. “Why am I not…cold? I’m low-key a little freaked-out right now,” she said, sounding more on the high-key end of the spectrum. She was still in her Funshine Bear shirt and sweatpants, her feet in nothing but slippers.
“Well, you know our arrangement. I drink a little and you get my parking space…”
“Come again?” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Well, I drank a little too much and…” I held up my thumb and forefinger to emphasize how little.
“What?” Her head whipped up, and her mouth dropped open. “You what?”
“It was an accident.”
She squinted at me long and hard. “You mean I’m a—”
“Yes, you’re a vampire. I turned you. You couldn’t stay in LA. It wouldn’t be safe.”
She gave me a does-not-compute look and held her hands out, as if expecting them to look different. “I look the same. I feel…the same.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine,” I said. Then I stooped to give Cat a scratch through the door of her carrier and whispered, “We’re home!”
Heaven looked from the house to me. “You’re out of your damn mind, Tiffenie.”
Hefting up the carrier, I said “Let’s check it out. Shall we?” like a professional tour guide.
Heaven took a deep breath and shut her eyes to calm down. “I need a woosah.” She walked ahead of me toward the house, leaving me to struggle with the bulky cat carrier and slippery footing.
Fallen leaves had piled on the stairs along with a dusting of snow and ice. I said, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The snow is so…white.”
Heaven was looking at the ground like she’d landed on Mars. “We’re in Vermont. Everything is pretty damn white, Tiffenie.”
“We can bring in the luggage tomorrow,” I called after her, as if that was her concern. “Some of my creams might freeze, but it’s probably okay.”
Hopefully the house had a TV hooked up, because the conversation wasn’t flowing.
There was a double front door made of carved wood. From experience I’d say it was old.
“So,” Heaven said as I fiddled with the lock, “just to get this straight, you killed me and kidnapped me.”
“Sure, if you want to look at it that way.”
I pushed open the door to our new home and said, “Immortality is a lot. Just focus on the new home. It’s going to be—” Before I could say beautiful, a light fixture fell from the wall and crashed on the floor, scaring a raccoon that had been hiding in the shadows.
I flipped a light switch but nothing happened. No electricity—that wasn’t great. I didn’t need heat, but I could definitely use a TV and a few lights. “I guess we can watch a show on our phones tonight, but we’ll have to charge them in the car.”
Cat slunk out of the carrier with her belly low to the ground, unsure of her surroundings.
Heaven scanned the room with wide eyes, looking as if she couldn’t process anything. “Ohmygod.” At the word God she winced. I’d have to explain that to her later when she was more capable of absorbing the details of vampirehood.
“I need a minute,” she said, walking around in horrified silence, more like a FEMA employee assessing a disaster than a woman walking into her new home.
Using my phone flashlight, I gave myself a tour of the living room.
What I saw would’ve taken my breath away if I still breathed.
Vaulted ceilings with a chandelier, a grand fireplace, a sweeping staircase.
There were so many HGTV must-haves, but they were all covered in a thick layer of dust. The plaster was missing in spots, revealing the structure of the wall behind.
“Once we get it cleaned up and turn the lights on, it’ll be better. It’s not that bad.”
She held up a hand like she couldn’t even talk about it.
“And don’t worry, you only need to quarantine for maybe a month. Could be less. However long it takes to get your bloodlust under control.”
Heaven turned to stare. “Stay inside this place. For a month. Nuh-uh.”
I patted her arm. “It’ll be over before you know it. Let’s check out the house.”
The main themes of the décor were the Bible and the 1980s.
Framed, embroidered Bible quotes graced almost every wall.
Antique dolls populated the mantel over the living room fireplace and almost every bookshelf.
Several large portraits of Jesus hung in places of honor in the living room and dining room.
Even a non-vampire would sizzle and smoke if they had single thought that wasn’t holy.
Aunt Mildred must not have done a thing to the house in forty years. She definitely hadn’t operated it as a business for a while. Based on personal experience, I’d say this was the result of at least twenty-five years of deferred maintenance, maybe longer.
Upstairs, the bedrooms were filled with teal carpeting and mauve bedspreads.
Every room had big poofy floral curtains that matched the bedspread.
A few years ago, it would have been habitable.
Tonight, though, the wind was howling through the house as if to tell us we weren’t welcome.
In one room, the snow had even piled up inside of the windows facing the road.
Clearly, the carpets and fabric all needed to be replaced thanks to water damage.
It was a poorly preserved ’80s time capsule.
In what I suspected was Aunt Mildred’s room, my skin sizzled and began to burn and smoke from the high concentration of religious paraphernalia.
“This is just not going to work for us,” I said, taking several Bible verses from the wall and piling them up.
Burning vampires with crucifixes wasn’t a myth. Anything holy would do it.
I picked up a big black Bible with some fire tongs and held it as far in front of me as possible.
“Don’t come in here till it’s clear,” I called down the hall to Heaven. “It’s not safe.”
Heaven picked up a cross-stitched quote, Do unto your neighbor as you would have them do unto you. She held it up meaningfully. “I think we should keep this—” she said, but as she brandished the cross-stitchery, her hand began to smoke.
“Sorry,” I said.
“For the burn or for being a shit neighbor?” she asked.
“Both.”
In the attic, I found a smaller room. My phone light cut across the cramped space, illuminating a papasan chair and day bed.
Fairy lights were strung around the wrought-iron bed frame and movie posters tacked to the wall.
Against the wall was a single bookshelf with as many trophies and figurines as books—bingo.
I slipped a high school yearbook under my arm.
It was surreal, stepping into the childhood bedroom of a woman whose life I had claimed but whom I had never met.
I might’ve been named for the Epiphany, but the woman whose life I was inhabiting had clearly been named for Tiffany the redheaded ’80s pop star of mall-dwelling fame.
Was she a one-hit wonder or could I only remember one song?
“I Think We’re Alone Now” came to mind. The beating of our hearts is the only so-ound.
My beating heart was the only one I couldn’t hear.
I sang the song softly to myself as I wandered through the rest of the house, my voice off-key and echoing through the hallways.
The roar of a car’s engine interrupted my singing, and I peeked behind one of the curtains to see the hearse’s headlights cut through the darkness.
Damn it! Heaven was making a break for it.
The engine revved. The road was still as slippery as it had been an hour ago.
After ten feet of sliding backward, Heaven landed right in the ditch, her wheels spinning futilely.
She’d never driven on ice, and the hearse was outfitted for California.
I hurtled down the stairs, out of the house, and slip-slided through the mess of wet leaves and snow to the car. Through the driver’s side window I mouthed, “Just come inside.”
“I don’t—” Heaven began, but then she looked at the snowy night, and all the fight went out of her and she sagged into the seat.
“I am so sorry. I did not want this to happen.”
“You accidentally turned me into a vampire?”
“Well, technically I accidentally killed you. I intentionally turned you into a vampire to save you.” I extended a hand to help her out of the car. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Fine,” Heaven said. She took my hand. “I guess I don’t really want to be in LA right now anyway, not after my fight with Gemma.”
Together we walked back inside and up to one of the bedrooms, the smallest one with the fewest windows. The curtains were moth-eaten, so I tucked one of the ’80s floral bedspreads behind the curtain rod to block out the light.
Before I left the room, she was out. Today had been a lot.
With the sun cresting over the horizon, I didn’t have enough time to jerry-rig any blackout shades for myself.
Instead, I crawled into an old clawfoot tub and wrapped myself in an aggressively floral bedspread.
This wasn’t exactly the self-care, spa-day moment I’d been looking for.
All I wanted to do was watch a movie in a sheet mask.
I’d once read that some of the most stressful events in a person’s life are moving, having children, divorce, and changing jobs. I’d hit all of them but divorce in the last few days, and it felt like it.
The faucet dripped slowly, wetting the bottom of my bedspread. As I tried my best to keep my feet dry, my phone pinged.
Vlad: Did you make it?
Me: yes
Vlad: Where are you? Are you okay?
My fingers hovered over the keys. It would be so nice to have Vlad visit, to explore this house together, to banter about what colors to paint the walls, and when I said “I hate pink,” he would understand it had nothing to do about my feelings about being a woman and everything to do with the relationship I’d gotten into while I was visiting Japan during cherry blossom season.
Naoki wrecked the color pink for me. Our relationship had been all fighting, no rest, not even while we were sleeping.
That was the thing about people. You could never get on the same schedule. It just wasn’t worth it.
Instead of saying all of that, I texted:
Me: im good. how’s Indiana?
Vlad: I live in Utah.
I knew that, but I wasn’t going to let him know I’d been paying attention.
Me: how’s utah?
Vlad: Haha. Sleep tight.