Usually, the giving of knitted garments went the other way around. I had a closet and drawers full of the most exquisite dresses, scarves, hats, and lately Sylvia had been making me these cashmere lounging trousers. I now had them in black, red, midnight blue, and a sort of dark gray shot with silver. Until you have worn cashmere lounging pants, well, you just haven’t lived. Sylvia presented me with yet another bag. I wondered what color these pants would be. The bag contained a long, black, cashmere sweater in the same wool as my black cashmere lounging pants. Luckily I was wearing them, so I simply slipped off the chunky gray cardigan I was wearing and put the new cardigan over top. She stepped back and looked rather pleased with herself. “What you need is a nice silk shell and some long beads.” She looked me up and down critically. “I have exactly the thing. I’ll be right back.”
I was thrilled with the sweater. It was exactly my size and both warm and silky to the touch. The gray T-shirt I had on wasn’t working, and I wondered what Sylvia would come up with. It wasn’t that I needed to dress up for the vampires, but it was kind of fun to play dress-up, especially when I was in Sylvia’s jewelry box. That woman had some seriously nice jewelry.
While she was gone, Gran and I had a few minutes to ourselves. We sat down side by side, and she took my hand. I was so used to her cool touch now that it didn’t bother me anymore. Instead I sort of found it soothing. “How are things going, my dear?”
“Okay, really. I don’t want you to worry about Cardinal Woolsey’s. We’re really doing quite well.”
I didn’t want to boast, and maybe it was small-minded of me to feel sort of competitive with my own grandmother, but I liked to keep an eye on how my sales were doing and compare them with how she’d been doing the last few years she’d run the business. At first, after she “died,” business had dropped off. Customers had known her for so long, and I was both brand new and didn’t know what I was doing or even if I’d stay. But as I’d become more confident and learned more about running a knitting shop, and as her customers had become used to me being in the shop instead of her, business had picked up again. I’d added some innovations. I did a lot more with social media and the website than Gran had ever done and added a few extra classes. I was pretty pleased with how I was doing. I knew that Gran and Sylvia were on the lookout for a franchise opportunity in another city, and that would add to our bottom line. I’d stay put, though. Oxford was my home now.
I turned the question back to her. “How are you?”
She gave me her sweet smile. “I’m adjusting. I think the first year was the most difficult. It’s very hard to get used to not being able to say hello when you recognize people. Not even being allowed to go out in the streets of a city you love in the daylight. Being dead but not dead. It’s impossible to describe but very peculiar. However, there are advantages. I’ve got good friends, no aches and pains anymore. My eyesight’s better than it was when I was young. I’ve got so much energy, Lucy. The diet’s a little bland, but you get used to it.”
“I’m glad.” At first I’d been horrified that my poor grandmother had been turned into a vampire. But now that I’d gotten to know them, they were really quite good company. If you wanted a history lesson, you pretty much only had to throw out a question and one of them had been there. I never had to go far to get help with my knitting, and they were very generous with all the garments they made. I think they appreciated that I kept their secrets and didn’t mind that their super-secret clubhouse was beneath my shop.
One by one and in twos and threes, the rest of them either came up through the trapdoor into the tunnels that ran under Oxford or, more mundanely, walked in the front door of the shop. By about twenty after ten, all the vampires were settled in their seats, and most of them were already knitting. I shut and locked the front door and pulled down the blinds so that the light didn’t appear on the street, and then I walked into the back room. My black cat and familiar, Nyx, came in with me. Nyx was funny about the vampires. She loved some of them, like Rafe, and shied away from others. I wasn’t sure if she sensed that they were different or if it was like humans: Some were cat people, and some weren’t.
In any case, she liked Gran, and as soon as my grandmother was settled, her needles clacking rapidly away, Nyx jumped up and settled on her lap. It was a lovely, domestic picture. I was so glad that my grandmother was still with me.
The last two to come up from downstairs were Hester, a perennially hormonally challenged teenager, and Carlos, a young Spanish vampire who’d only recently moved to Oxford. I had never seen Hester look so eager. Normally she had a sullen look on her face and such a huge chip on her shoulder, it was amazing she could stand up. I did feel for her, though. It was bad luck getting turned right in the middle of those awful teenage years, but she was a champion whiner. However, she’d recently met Carlos, who was a student at St. Mary’s College.
