Dead End Dating

One For those of you who don't already know me, my name is the Countess Lilliana Arabella Guinevere du Marchette (yeah, I know), but my friends call me Lil. I mean, really, what were my folks thinking? It's hard enough being a single, jobless, five-hundred-year-old female vampire in this day and age without the whole pretentious French royalty thing and an ancient lame-ass name that doesn't even fit in the box on a Visa application. Talk about another cross to bear. (Oops, poor word choice. My bad.) Let's just say life is tough for any woman, and death isn't much better. We're still expected to live up to this whole Night-Feeding Barbie imageperfect figure, perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect incisorsand procreate, hunt for the family, and make sure little Morticia doesn't color on the walls and baby Vlad doesn't eat the eyes off his Count Dracula doll. Talk about stress. For the typical committed female vampire, that is. I, on the other hand, haven't had a decent date in the past one hundred years, much less found Count Right, so my life is a bit simpler. Notice I say "simpler" rather than lonelier. Because I am not, repeat not, lonely. I'm a single, hot, happening vampire with a flair for accessorizing, a handful of super-sweet friendsliterallyand a very expensive therapist. 'Nuff said. Now where was I? Oh, yeahme making my own way in the world. First on my list is finding an apartment. A girl can live with her parents for only so many centuries without having a nervous breakdown. Second is getting a job. Neither of which should pose a problem for someone like me. Pure vampires (those born rather than made) are an ambitious, take-charge-and-make-things-happen race, and so most of us are filthy rich. If I were so inclined, I could easily use my family's green to find a suitable apartment in Manhattan (complete with a live-in maid, which is almost worth being eternally indebted to my folks considering the fact that I hate to clean) and go to work for my father managing his New York University location of Midnight Moe's. What is Midnight Moe's, you say? Think copy machines. Think printing services. Think two hundred locations nationwide (near a university near you). Think bor-ing. While I have nothing against copying or printing, I simply can't see myself standing behind the counter from dusk 'til dawn, wearing a lime green polo shirt with "Midnight Moe's" embroidered across the pocket, and matching Dockers. Lime green is so not my color (I'm a winter, and anything out of my range makes me look, well, dead.) As for the Dockers . . . they're Dockers. (Shudder.) So you can see why the thought of spending eternity gainfully employed in the family business is enough to make me want to stake myself. You've probably guessed by now that I'm not like most other vamps. Except maybe one, that is. My father says I'm the spitting image of my great aunt Sophie, who nuked herself, just last year, in a tanning bed she purchased off the QVC channel. She was a total nonconformist when it came to the whole vamp image, with her blond highlights, pale peach nail polish, and addiction to Hawaiian-print sarongs. Personally, I wouldn't be caught dead in a Hawaiian-print anything. Likewise, why would I crawl into a Sunsation 5000 when Clinique makes the most rockin' sunless tanning spray in the perfect shade of medium gold? Not! I don't care for pale peach, either, but I do have highlights and I'm definitely a nonconformist (aka the daughter that was switched at birth oRaye, Kimberly is the author of 'Dead End Dating ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780345492166 and ISBN 0345492161.