Sounds from the upstairs quieted again, for just a moment, then Darryl rumbled something that was nicely calculated to be just barely too quiet for me to pick out. Adam laughed, and they went back to talking about interest rates. They had abandoned me to face my doom alone. The rats.

“I don’t take vitamins,” I told her.

“You haven’t tried our vitamins,” she continued, blithely unconcerned. “They’ve been clinically proven to—”

“They make my hair fall out,” I lied, but she wasn’t listening to me.

As she chirruped on enthusiastically, I could hear Izzy’s voice drifting down from Jesse’s room. “Mercy is going to hate me forever. Mom’s gone through all of her friends, all of her acquaintances, all of the people at her gym, and now she’s going after my friends’ parents.”

“Don’t worry about Mercy,” said Jesse soothingly. “She can take care of herself.” Jesse’s door closed. I knew that with the door shut, the kids were too human to hear anything that went on in the kitchen short of screams and gunfire. And I wasn’t quite desperate enough yet for either of those sounds to be an issue.

“I know there are other vitamins out there,” Izzy’s mother continued, “but of the twelve most common brands, only ours is certified by two independent laboratories as toxin- and allergen-free.”

If she hadn’t been Jesse’s best friend’s mom, I’d have gently but firmly (or at least firmly) sent her on her way. But Jesse didn’t have that many friends—the werewolf thing drove away some people, and the ones it didn’t weren’t always the kind of people she wanted as friends.

So I sat and listened and made “mmm” sounds occasionally as seemed appropriate. Eventually, we moved from vitamins to makeup. Despite rumors to the contrary, I do wear makeup. Mostly when my husband’s ex-wife is going to be around.

“We also have a product that is very useful at covering up scars,” she told me, looking pointedly at the white scar that slid across my cheek.

I almost said, “What scar? Who has a scar?” But I restrained myself. She probably wouldn’t get the Young Frankenstein reference anyway.

“I don’t usually wear makeup,” I told her instead. I had an almost-irresistible need to add “my husband doesn’t want me attracting other men” or “my husband says makeup is the work of the devil” but decided that any woman whose name I couldn’t remember probably didn’t know me well enough to tell when I was kidding.

“But, honey,” she said, “with your coloring, you would be stunning with the right makeup.” And, with that backhanded compliment, she was off and running, again.