“My point! Whatever it is—she’s on drugs, she’s exhausted, she’s been mojo’d by a nasty vamp, she found out she’s being audited—you’ll seize on it as an excuse to avoid your responsibilities from Hell.” She smiled a little, and who could blame her? Responsibilities from Hell, heh. Maybe the “I’ve got the [fill in the blank] from Hell!” thing will make a comeback now. “All right, yes, I hear it, but it’s true, and you’re slacking.”
“Look, obviously something’s going on,” I began.
Laura’s beautiful face (the Antichrist has never had a pimple) remained unmoved. “Something always, always is.”
“Someone could have attacked her!” Argh, dial back the excitement, Betsy.
“In broad daylight? Without leaving a mark on her?”
“Okay, someone might be . . .” I cast about for what “someone” might do. “They could be blackmailing her!”
“Who would?” Laura asked, displaying a shocking display of callousness when everyone in the house knew being a callous asshat was my job. Nagging and now poaching on my territory! My torments were endless. “She’s a billionaire who lives with murderously protective vampires.”
“She is not!” I snapped back. “The economy has sucked so hard and so long, she’s only a millionaire now.” The vampire thing was harder to argue.
“Like I said. It doesn’t matter what this is. You’ve got your excuse du jour to avoid keeping your word.”
“Boy, you just don’t care about anything but yourself, do you, Laura? I’m sorry to say it, but it’s shocking to see.”
The Antichrist, usually pale as milk, started to blush. It only made her more dazzling, which was just annoying. Tall, slim, with blue eyes and long blond hair (until she lost her temper, then it went red and her eyes poison green), looking better in faded jeans and a Livestrong T-shirt (“Just because Mr. Armstrong cheated doesn’t mean the charity isn’t a worthwhile endeavor,” she says) than I did in my wedding dress . . . I didn’t like being the ugly sister and the mean one.
So I kept up with the nagging, because artless beauty must be punished. “It’s just me-me-me with you these days. Meanwhile my best friend might have gone insane, or she’s being blackmailed or hypnotized or audited, or some awful combination, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it. Because that’s what a good friend does: she pushes her troubles—nay, her responsibilities!—aside and helps. No matter what the cost.” I swept toward the door and pointed toward the foyer. “Good day, madam!”
“Oh, Jesus jumped-up Christ on a crutch,” she muttered, which, for her, was about the most shocking epithet ever uttered. This was a woman who considered shoot over the line, swearwise. “Fine. Let the record show I tried.” She followed my pointy finger and exited with a huff and a glare. I vowed to make it up to her. Just as soon as I broke my other vow and figured out what was wrong with Jessica.
“Okay, great!” I practically cheered. “Let’s get to the bottom of this! Hoo—”
“Don’t cheer; you can be really obnoxious in victory,” DadDick warned.
“I was going to say ‘whoever did this to her will be sorry,’” I managed with hardly any dignity. I managed to keep myself from jumping up and down in sheer glee. Something was wrong with my best friend and she obviously needed my help! Thank God something was wrong with my best friend and she obviously needed my help!
Like I said: bad person. That’s me all over.
CHAPTER
TWO
“Hey, Jess! Wait up!” Before I could track down wherever she’d wandered to (wandering was also new behavior; Jess did not wander, she favored a “help me or move” stride), I nearly fell over Tina exiting the kitchen. I checked my watch—three o’clock in the afternoon. Sunset was still two hours away (winter, blech), so she was stuck in the mansion for a bit unless she stowed away in Marc’s trunk. But that was a whole other thing, and they only put Operation VampTrunk into action when it was important.
Of course, important—like everything around here—was relative. Important could mean Tina had a five p.m. craving for sorbet-flavored vodka. (Don’t get me started on the vodka. She had her own freezer for the vodka. She didn’t care to share the vodka. I didn’t even like vodka but knowing I couldn’t have it made me crave it like a diabetic craves insulin.) And Marc loved the whole trunk setup; said it made him feel like he was in an action movie. I managed not to point out that, as a zombie, he was definitely in a movie, just not the genre he thought.
So when he got twitchy or cabin-fever-ey, he’d occasionally pretend an errand was more urgent than it was (“We’re down to a half-pint of raspberries, Tina; get in my trunk stat!”—this from a guy who wouldn’t say stat if everyone around him was going into cardiac arrest) so she would climb into the blanket nest he always had ready, then they’d chat or text on their phones while tooling around town doing whatever it was they did . . . and why was I only now realizing that I kind of wanted them to do a buddy movie?
“Majesty,” was how Tina greeted me, which was typical. We’d lived together for years and had saved each other’s lives more than once, and she loved me not for my (symbolic . . . if the queen gig had come with an actual crown I might have been more amenable) crown but for what I had done for Sinclair, the other person she loved more than life (death? undeath?) itself. I know my husband would have been lost without her, not just on a weekly basis but decades before I was born, and I was starting to suspect I’d be lost, too. I’d gone from not knowing what a majordomo was (I’d assumed it had something to do with the military) to wondering how I’d ever gotten along without one.
All that love and devotion and it was still “Majesty” and “My queen” and “O dread majesty” and “Dearest sovereign, if I catch you in my vodka stash just once more, I shall set you on fire, however much it will hurt me to hurt you.”
Very much a stickler for propriety, that was Tina. She was a recovering Southern belle—she’d been turned during the Civil War, or born during the Civil War; I forget which—and maybe that was why. Tact and politeness were as much her style as her habit of dressing up like a dirty old man’s dream. Short plaid miniskirts, crisp white blouses, the occasional demure headband holding back waves of blond hair (which only emphasized her dark-dark eyes), the occasional pair of kitten heels. She usually went for “mouthwatering” and tended to hit the nail without hardly trying. It was my curse in death to be surrounded by women much prettier than I was. If my husband didn’t (almost literally) drool at the sight of me, it could have been awful for my ego. And my ego is the strongest bone in my body. Wait, that isn’t right . . .
“Did Jess come through here?”
She shook her head and, as it was a headband-free day, her pale, pointed face was momentarily obscured by hair. She tossed it back like the Sexiest Cheerleader Ever and replied, “No, but I’m aware she returned just now. Does she require an infant?” I loved how she said that—an infant—as though any random one would do. As though we had a room full of random babies just in case someone needed one. Oh God, what was I saying? That day was probably coming.
“You’d think, because she apparently took the babies to visit my mom but forgot the babies, but no. I don’t know what she requires but I’m going to find out. I swear on my filthy polluted soul that nothing will get in the way of me solving this mystery.” All I needed to do was add a superfluous “Jinkies!” and I’d be Velma in better shoes.
“I also heard Laura Goodman arrive and then depart.” Tina’s expression was carefully neutral in the way only an old vampire could pull off. Here’s a hint: never ever play Statues with an old vamp. “You were, ah, unable to assist her?” The again went unspoken, for which I was grateful.
Because the thing about Tina and also my husband was, their attitude was, “Why wouldn’t you be exploring the hell out of Hell every chance you got? Why wouldn’t you be honing brand-new previously undiscovered power number six?
Why would you go out of your way to do anything but that, you silly bim?” That attitude was also, fortunately for them, largely unspoken.
“Laura’s fine; Hell’s fine,” I replied with an impatient gesture. “Place has been there for a billion years but suddenly things are out of control and just crying out for my steadying hand?” I couldn’t even say that without grinning; the whole idea was beyond dumb. “But something’s up. And where’s Sinclair?”
Tina smiled at me. “Outside.”
Her one-word answer told me everything at once: Outside, he’s outside because he can brave the sun now because of you, he’s outside and he’s the happiest he has ever been because of you, he’s outside and I am so, so grateful because of you and would follow you into death, and would you like tea? A smoothie? Not my vodka, but anything else you desire.
“That,” I replied, “was a dumb question.” And bless her sideways, Tina didn’t agree out loud or even nod. Because of course I should have guessed. Outside could be anything and everything, because my husband was almost a century old and most of that time he’d had to hide from the sun the way Republicans had to hide from talking about rape.
Long story short: the devil granted me a wish, and I wished for that before I killed her. And Sinclair was wallowing in it and took every chance to get out of the house. Bringing one of his five cars in for a tune-up? “Of course.” Swinging by the farmers’ market to grab fresh fruit for one of our designated smoothie blenders? “Of course.” (Even though it was winter, and precious little was in season.) Shovel the driveway? “Do we have a shovel and if so, where do we keep it?”
He volunteered to go to the DMV for Jessica, who gently pointed out that the State of Minnesota frowned upon citizens sending proxies to renew their driver’s license. “Are you quite certain?” had been the disappointed reply. “Perhaps they have changed the rule. I had better check, just in case, don’t you think? You need your rest; I will find this out for you.”
“If you really want to help, you could change the babies’—”
“Nothing will prevent me from aiding you in this,” he’d declared, snatching his keys. “I swear it.”
“Please don’t try to bribe anyone in the DMV,” Jess had replied, not even trying to hide the horror. “It doesn’t work. It makes everything all the more awful. I know.” Not that Jess was speaking from personal experience; her dad was a shit of the highest order and did all sorts of unsavory things. He was in Hell now, which was excellent. That wasn’t a guess on my part, by the way. I saw him there. His stupid wife, too.
Eric Sinclair, vampire king and devoted pet owner, former creature of the night and current creature of the day and night, was also a huge fan of alfresco sex. Me, not so much. Sex, yep; my husband was (almost literally) a demon in the sack. Bedroom sex, counter sex, basement sex, attic sex, bathroom sex, hallway sex, even stair sex (argh, my back! this carpet needs to be thicker). But outdoors? In January? Why?
We lived in a mansion people would pay to bang in. (I think it used to be a B&B, even, so people literally have paid to bang in it.) It was like living in Honolulu and then going to Honolulu for vacation: maybe a little pointless. Also: cold. Very, very cold this time of year in St. Paul. Goose bumps on top of goose bumps wasn’t remotely erotic.
So my husband could be scampering in the snow almost anywhere (car wash, DMV, bake sale, winter carnival), doing anything (washing cars, braving state employees, buying brownies, watching a guy chainsaw a likeness of a Dairy Princess from a block of ice), which meant that I was on my own when it came to solving the mystery of Jessica’s weirdness. Well, on my own besides the cop, the zombie, and the other vampire I lived with.
“I imagine she’ll have gone for a nap,” Tina said with a vague expression. Oh, right. We were having a conversation. Luckily my tuned-out expression was the same as my tuned-in one. “And it’s just as well the king was absent for your sister’s visit.”
“Ah . . . yeah. Good point.”
Things were still tense between my husband and my sister. It had only been a few weeks since she’d kidnapped me, then dumped me in Hell and abandoned me with a “sink or swim” mentality. I swam, but she hadn’t known I would.
My husband was many things; incapable of holding a grudge wasn’t one of them. Sometimes it was like he invented grudge holding, except I know for a fact that my stepmother did.
Still, it made for tense get-togethers, which I loathed. “Guess Sinclair hasn’t forgiven Laura for leaving me in Hell,” I commented, because for some reason I felt like saying the obvious out loud.
Tina did that thing where she glanced at me and then glanced away, so quickly it was like she hadn’t moved. “Mm-mm,” was her typically low-key reply. And a couple of years ago it would have fooled me and I would have dropped the subject.
It wasn’t a couple of years ago. “‘Mm-mm,’ what? ‘Mm-mm, something smells delicious; oh, ham steaks, my fave!’? ‘Mm-mm, damn skippy he hasn’t forgiven her and he’s secretly plotting to eat her’? ‘Mm-mm, how can I prevent Betsy from knowing I wasn’t paying attention and have no idea what we’re talking about’?”
Tina thought it over for a few seconds before coming up with, “I never call you Betsy.”
This was as close as I’d ever get to outsmarting her, so I was gonna take that as a win. “Yeah, okay. Good point.”
“If you do not require my assistance at this time . . . ?”
“No, I’m good.”
“Yes indeed,” she said with a small smile.
“You silver-tongued devil.”
“That, too.”
“Tina, d’you like it here?”
Her big eyes got bigger and I had a “whoa, where’d that come from?” moment. One of those things I had no idea I was going to say until it was out of my mouth.
“I—yes.”
“Oh. Good.”
“May I ask, Majesty . . . ?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s just everybody’s lives have changed in next to no time. Five years ago I didn’t know you. Five years ago I was still alive and you were off doing whatever it was you did before we crossed paths, and I didn’t know Sinclair. Didn’t know I had a half sister, sure as shit didn’t know she was the Antichrist. Didn’t know I was destined to—”
“Take the throne.”
“—kill the devil.” What did it say about me that I thought of that first? Other than still being in denial about the whole queen-of-the-undead gig.
There was a long pause while I tried to read her face, which was just as much a waste of time as it ever was. Tina could outbluff Daniel Negreanu (Sinclair was a World Series of Poker addict). Her fair face, never terribly expressive, now seemed so still it was like she was playing Statues. Which she could also do really well.
“I don’t,” she said at last.
“What?”
“You asked if I like it here.”
Oh. Right. I remember now. And shit. I knew she’d tell me the truth, but I’d hoped it was good news.
“Like is woefully inadequate,” she continued. “I love my new life. And not merely for my own sake. I love his new life, too. Five years ago things were dangerous and we trusted no one and we depended only on each other, and my dear friend the king, the boy I loved from birth, pursued empty relationships and cared not if he lived or burned. And now . . . he does care. About many things. I love that. I love you. I love this house. I love your friends. I love our new lives, and I love the new lives your friends have brought into our home. It strikes me . . .” Her gaze went vague as she looked through me. “It strikes me that I can live a very long time and still be pleasantly, continually surprised. I love that, too.”
“Oh.” Hmm. She’d just told me this incredible generous thing and I’d better come up with something a little better than “oh.” “That’s great. I’m . . . that’s really great.”
“Do you have any other questions?”
“Nope.”
She nodded and started to turn away from me. “Then I’ll take my leave? Yes?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Well! That was unexpected. And nice. It was almost enough to make me forget why I’d started the conversation in the first place. Which was . . . uh . . .
Jessica! Right. Tina was feeling fluffy and Jessica was up to something. Busy, busy, lots of mysteries to unravel and Hell would wait.
It’s not like it was going anywhere, right?
CHAPTER
THREE
I shoved the swinging door that led to the kitchen. So far there hadn’t been a hilarious sitcom-type swinging-door face smash, but the year was young. “Jess? You in here? Listen, I’m a little worried about you and because I’m incredibly intuitive I realize something’s wrong and want you to know that whatever it is, you have my full support and attention and, oh, what the hell?”
Marc Spangler, MD, looked up from yet another revolting kitchen experiment. This time he was freezing, dissecting, and refreezing mice. Did you know frozen mice don’t smell like much of anything? They don’t. Probably because they’re so little. Or because of the cold. Was he doing that out of kindness to those of us with enhanced senses in the house, or was the freezing thing specific to his gross kitchen experiment and, dammit, my kitchen! Which was also his kitchen since he lived here, too, but still.
At least I didn’t have to ask where he was getting his test subjects. Since every old house on the face of the earth has mice, this solved two problems at once.
“The kitchen? Again? We eat in here! Well, the others eat, and the vampires drink, and Sinclair and I occasionally have sex in here! Aw, dammit, that was out loud.”
“Ha! Knew it. Jess owes me fifty bucks. Besides, you banned me from the basement.” Marc was blinking at me over a tidy row of teeny corpses. “You said it was like living with Igor . . .”
Undead and Unwary Page 3
