I held up the ice-blue satin number I’d worn in Emily’s wedding, not too bad as far as bridesmaid dresses went. It had been modern at the time, the height of feminism. It was a pantsuit with linebacker-esque shoulder pads. It said,watch out, men, we can wear pants too!
I set the pantsuit down. “I’ve been meaning to call Emily again.”
Heaven squinted at the shoulder pads. “From the looks of it, you might be forty years too late.”
“Emily and I were supposed to go to the mall…”
Heaven raised her eyebrows. “Girl, you might have missed that.”
“There’s always time for the mall,” I said, wandering off to wash the dye out of my hair and finish my transformation.
An hour later, blond, blown out, in a satin pantsuit, I was ready for my grand debut as Tiffany Amanda Blair.
“You’re just going to get supplies, right?” Heaven asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Watch out, Valentine! Tiffany Amanda Blair is in town.” I struck a pose at the top of the grand staircase.
“Why do you keep talking about yourself in the third person?” she said. “Is that a vampire thing?”
“I guess I never mentioned it before.” To be fair, we’d had bigger problems. “I can’t use my real identity because no one is going to give a three-hundred-year-old Romanian woman with no birth certificate a passport and a visa. If you want to participate in society, you need a modern identity. The last identity I bought was Tiffany Amanda Blair of Valentine, Vermont. I had to dye my hair blond because we just moved back to her hometown.”
Heaven’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”
I nodded.
“When you say the ID youbought, do you really meanstole?”
“No!” I protested. “I bought it on the black market. It’s fine.” I waved my hand in dismissal.
As I walked down the grand staircase, the lights came on and there was a discordant, synchronized beep of all the appliances in the house,as if every instrument in the orchestra had picked a random note to play to announce my arrival.
Heaven’s jaw was still hanging open, but at least the power was on.
The universe had spoken. Lights, camera, action. I was ready to roll.
I rolled onto Main Street a little after 6 p.m., sure that I would find a bustling village: children playing tag in the square, beautiful couples heading to the tavern, shopkeepers selling bottles of wine and wheels of cheese to townsfolk about to enjoy dinner with their neighbors.
Just like last time, the town square was empty. Shoveled sidewalks, tire tracks, and trampled snow were the only evidence that someone had been there.
I parked the hearse in front of the Valentine General Store. The sign was flipped toClosedand the hours were posted as 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. The diner closed at four in the afternoon, long before dinner. A sense of panic began to build as I walked to the next store. The bakery closed at 2 p.m., the bookstore at 6 p.m. sharp. Who were these people who only went out in the daylight? Were they scared of the dark?
Frustrated, I stood on the sidewalk closed out of the world I’d just moved to. It seemed like I wouldn’t be able to buy any supplies in Valentine—tonight or ever. The windows were decorated for pumpkin-spice season. The bookstore window was frosted and filled with twinkling lights. I stopped in front of the dress shop and sighed wistfully. A red-velvet dress called to me, sumptuous fabric, a deep V neckline that would work well with my physique. Every fiber of my being wanted to walk into the shop and buy it, along with some new chandelier earrings and vintageVictorian boots. This dress was only for wholesome women, peasants who smelled of garlic and walked in the light, someone who could do a full twirl in a three-way mirror to admire their reflection.
A light across the square twinkled, taking my attention from the dress. The tavern, of course, was open. Eagerly, I walked through the empty street to the Valentine Tavern. It was an old German-style building, white stucco crisscrossed with wood, hobbit-y and quaint. The faint sounds of music filtered out.
Inside, I found an oasis of humanity. Clinking glasses and silverware mingled with the folk tunes of a flannel-clad band.
When I paused next to thePlease seat yourselfsign, the tavern fell silent and all eyes turned to me. Everyone else was straight out of the L.L. Bean catalogue. Here was I, spotlit by a hanging stained-glass Budweiser lamp, the only one in the tavern dressed as a bridesmaid circa 1981. Apparently, I needed a pair of Wellingtons and a zip-up polar fleece to fit in. Heaven was right. I was overdressed.
“Evening,” I said cheerfully with a wave.
The hostess wore a T-shirt with the Valentine Tavern logo stretched across her ample chest. A fellow bar wench—I smiled in greeting.
She paused on her way to a rowdy table of lumberjack types. “Hey, it’s a little busy, but grab a seat anywhere and I’ll be by with a menu.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Go get yourself a drink at the bar, then. Gary’s offering some kind of pumpkin-spice whiskey concoction tonight.”
