“Yes, the antitrust laws were put in place for a reason,” the Ant replied. “Monopolies aren’t good. Unless you’re running Hell,” she added quickly in response to my dumbfounded expression. “Then they’re fine.”
“No, I just—I had no idea you knew what antitrust laws were.” I myself was a little vague on the subject. Something about making companies play fair, right? Hell didn’t need antitrust anything. Hell didn’t have to compete with any other entity.
“I had an existence outside of this,” she snapped back, gesturing vaguely at all the nothing.
“Yeah, I know the words to that song,” I muttered in reply. “I pretty much wrote that song.” But back to more important things: what to text back. A smiley face? A winking smiley face? Emoticons were a bit lacking when you factored Hell into the equation. I settled for All’s well so far. I would not abbreviate. I would not OMG or LOL, no matter how TSTL I was. You was never u. Are was never r. Nevernevernever. “Okaaaaay. That’s done. Also, how the hell was that even possible?”
Identical shrugs. Great. The so-called experts didn’t know, either. Was it how Hell interpreted my bond with Sinclair? Was it like the shoes that didn’t exist—it was a tool that helped me figure out the un-figure-out-able? Or did it simply mean that Hell had AT&T towers? Oh, my, yes, we were the perfect bunch to move in and take over. Nothing could go wrong. It made me think of a lost friend, Cathie, who’d had that same thought shortly before being murdered in her driveway and, the minute she figured out what had happened to her, haunted me until I found her killer.
“Never mind,” I said, trying for comforting and managing to be just dismissive. “We’ll figure it out later. Or we never will.”
Laura was nodding. “Yes. I agree. It’s probably that one.”
“Um. Which one?”
“I’m not saying,” she replied with a stubborn shake of her head. “You’ll get even more irritated.”
The Ant made a rude noise and, much as it pained me, she was corrected in her snorting. “I’d love to take offense and debate that, but when you’re right you’re right.” I sighed. “So. Now what?”
“Now you give me a hug, you silly bitch,” said the dead woman behind me. I turned, surprised, and saw a ghost I’d thought was gone forever. Unlike every other surprise in Hell, this one was welcome.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
“Cathie!” I couldn’t hide my delight, and my kind-of pal grinned back. She looked different than the last time I’d seen her, well over a year before. In life she’d been a sallow, occasionally depressed blonde who had never done anything and never been anywhere (her own admission). Later, she was the second-to-last victim of the Driveway Killer.5 (Yeah, I know, lame name. The peach parlor was the Peach Parlor and the serial killer who snatched blondes out of their driveways was the Driveway Killer. Sometimes Minnesotans are not creative.)
She’d announced her presence one random day by slipping into the backseat of my car and scaring the living shit out of me when I checked the rearview. Helpful tip: screaming at someone no one else can see is no way to convince people you don’t need meds. That was also the day I learned never again to check my blind spot.
When I’d last seen Cathie, she was wearing the outfit she’d been murdered in, a faded green SeaWorld sweatshirt with the overstretched sleeves pushed to her elbows, black stretch pants, and athletic socks. No shoes or coat, which wasn’t a big deal, she’d explained, since she no longer felt the cold, but still left her feeling not quite put together. Sock-footed for eternity; welcome to my worst nightmare. Cathie had a much better attitude, though. “On the other hand,” she’d added, cheering up a little when she realized I could see and hear her, “I never have to shovel my driveway again. So who cares if I’m in yesterday’s socks for eternity?”
After our awkward first meeting (I had so many of those it was almost boring), Cathie had nagged me until I helped find her killer. This was completely terrifying but ended up pretty great, since we managed to save the last victim before the killer could tool up on her. Also, Laura had gone all “from Hell’s heart I stab at thee” and killed him. In his own basement! That was my first hint that Miss Let’s Read from the Hymnal had a bit of a dark side. Which I should have seen coming because . . . y’know . . . Anti-Christ.
“You look great!” This wasn’t saying something nice to someone you haven’t seen in a while to prove you noticed their absence; she really did. Khakis, a pressed red button-down, hair pulled back in a neat ponytail (in life her ponytails were disasters trapped in scrunchies), black and tan oxfords. The pants were too long for me to check out her sock situation but I was betting Cathie had that covered, too. Her hands were stuffed in her pants pockets past her wrists as she slouched comfortably in the big bunch of nothing that was Hell right now. “Really great!”
I got an eye roll for my trouble, which was fair. “Ramp down the shocked surprise, will ya? Wasn’t my fault I got murdered on laundry day. Besides, once you guys took care of my little ‘if you wrong us, shall we not revenge’ problem, I sure as shit wasn’t going to haunt the earth in granny panties and a sweatshirt.”
“The world is grateful,” the Ant muttered, then she pulled Laura aside so they could whisper together, which wasn’t alarming at all.
“Yeah, but that’s how you looked the whole time . . .” I trailed off, remembering (if this was a movie, there’d be a flashback complete with memory-jarring soundtrack, a perfect time to go for a snack). One of the things I’d liked about Cathie was that, even after I’d solved her problem, she hung around. The others had all been “good job, thanks, quicker next time” and poof!
But Cathie was in no rush to move on, wasn’t sure what her options were, and was dismayed to discover I had no idea. So she just hung out to chat and occasionally ran interference by dealing with some of the needier ghosts demanding my attention. It was pretty great; Cathie was one of those women who, after you talk to her for about a half hour, you know you’re going to be pretty good friends with. As Heinlein put it, “You’re an old friend we haven’t known very long.” I’m not a sci-fi fan, normally, but Heinlein did manage to write one book that didn’t utterly suck.6
“Hell, no, I don’t still look like that. You know those weren’t actual clothes, right? And this . . .” She glanced down at her business casual attire. “This isn’t a shirt and these aren’t khakis and this—” Turning to show me, she then turned back. “That’s not a clip holding up my hair.”
“Impressive,” I said, because it was. I’ve noticed a lot of dead people never figure that out. Or if they do, they’ve got no interest in taking advantage of it. Cathie could teach the newly dead a thing or two, even more impressive when you consider she was pretty newly dead herself . . . not even five years gone. “How’d you find me? How’d you even know I’d be here?”
Indifferent shrug. “Everybody knows.” Which wasn’t too terrifying. “And what are you asking me for, Betsy? You’re the one who summoned me.”
“Nuh-uh.”
Another eye roll. “Really, vampire queen? ‘Nuh-uh’? You don’t think Hell’s bad enough without you talking like you never escaped the trauma of middle school?”
“It was traumatic.” I managed not to whine. Barely. “Besides, what’s so bad about nothing?” I bitched, gesturing to all the nothing.
“Not having a clue what comes next,” she replied so quickly and firmly it was obvious she’d been thinking about it. “And like I said—you summoned me.”
“But I—” Then I realized, which must have shown all over my face, because . . .
“The light dawns! It’s dim and flickering and will probably burn out any second, but it’s definitely dawning for now. Better think fast before it blows.”
I ignored the on-the-nose cattiness. And the fact that, once again, someone I might have wanted to scare at some point (just a little!) had absolutely no fear of
me. It was as thrilling as it was aggravating.
“Aw, nuts,” I said glumly. “I get it.”
Cathie leaned forward and fluttered her eyelashes while clasping her hands together. “Is it possible? Can it be true?”
“Oh, shut up. I was thinking about you, and there you were.” Fuck and double fuck! Don’t think about Jessica’s parents don’t think about any of the many vampires I’ve killed don’t think don’t think don’t don’t don’t
I groaned. “It’s like that exercise where they tell you not to think about a white bear and all you can think about is white bears. Your brain starts crawling with white bears.”
“Yeah. Ironic process theory and the Game.” At my expression of surprise she added, “What? I was studying for my psychology degree when I got gakked.”
“The Game?”
“Yeah, it’s basically the white bear exercise, except it’s a game.”
“Helpfully called the Game?”
She grinned. “Yeah, I know. Anyway, the Game is the white bear exercise except instead of trying not to think about white bears you’re trying not to think about the Game even as you’re playing the Game.”
“Oh, cripes.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Please stop.”
“And the presumption is that everyone in the world is playing the Game all the time.”
“What?”
“Yeah, and you’ll love this—it’s impossible to not play, and consent isn’t necessary at all.” Cathie sounded positively gleeful. “And of course everyone loses. The best you can do with the Game is be the last one to lose it. There’s no winning it.”
“Pure and utter hell,” I said, appalled.
“Yep.” Cathie glanced around. “Seems fitting, right? But never mind the Game—which we’ve both just lost, by the way—let’s get back to you summoning me without the vaguest clue how you did it or even if you could do it.”
“Hey! I’m doing the best I can.”
“No. You aren’t.”
Well. That shut me up, but only because she was right. I settled for prepouting, in which I was preparing to pout but would hold off to see if a full-blown Defcon 3 pout would be required.
Cathie sighed and shoved her hands even deeper into her pockets, which I hadn’t thought was possible. If those things were cut any deeper she’d be grabbing her kneecaps. “So, let’s see. Once again, you had no idea what you were doing, and while blundering around in your fog of ignorance—”
“Oh, come on!”
“—you did something inexplicably supernatural by accident, and then were shocked and amazed at what you hath wrought.” At my puzzled blinking, she elaborated: “Major in psych, minor in English lit.”
“I thought you were a horse trainer.”
“Part-time. Try to stay focused, you adorable moron.”
Adorable? I’ll take it. Too bad the word following it wasn’t quite as flattering. I looked down and scuffed a toe through the nothing. My kingdom for some dirt to kick. Wait, no! No dirt. Don’t think about the white bear and don’t think about dirt. Maybe I can’t summon dirt. Maybe I can only summon people, which is fine because I don’t want dirt. Hell will be dirt free, I think.
“Oh, Betsy, jeez.” Her tone was annoyed, but thank goodness her expression was fond, something along the lines of I can’t believe I like you, as you’re a significant dumbass who will only bring me trouble. “You’ve had the vampire gig how long now?”
“Not long,” I said defensively. “In vamp years I’m a preemie, dammit.”
She ignored my whiny argument. “Still with this? No clue about what you can do and what you should do? You’re doing what you did when we first met, stumbling around and eventually succeeding in spite of yourself.”
“I think ‘succeeding’ is the key word in that sentence.”
“No, ‘stumbling’ is. Come on, what have you been doing for the last couple of years? Besides accidentally—you’ll never convince me it was on purpose—ending up helping your whacko sis run Hell?”
“Plenty!” the Antichrist snapped back, rushing to my side and leaving the Ant standing with her mouth hanging open in mid-bitch. “You don’t know what we’ve been going through. It’s inappropriate for you to take her to task. And I am not a whacko!”
“Oh, goody, you’re here, too.” Cathie eyed the Antichrist, unimpressed, and I had to swallow a giggle when I recalled how Laura kept insisting Cathie stop haunting me and go to her King (it never occurred to her it wasn’t cool to push Jesus on the horse-training atheist daughter of Jews). “And I meant whacko in a nice way. You did kill my killer. I’m not ungrateful. It’s just—”
“What?” Laura snapped.
“I think there’s something wrong with you,” Cathie said bluntly. “Something really, really wrong. And before you jump to conclusions, it’s not an across-the-board phobia of all things supernatural. I like your sister the vampire, and I liked the werewolves—” She cut herself off and turned to me. “How are they, by the way?”
“Gone,” I replied, “but in a good way.”
Boy, that was for sure. In the old timeline, Antonia-the-werewolf died taking a bullet for me. Werewolves were tough, better believe it, but the movies lied—if you blitz through their brain with a nonsilver hollow-point, they can’t heal from that. Antonia had been a colossal pain in my ass, but I never wanted to see her brains spray across the wallpaper. I wouldn’t have wished that on the Ant, never mind someone named Antonia who didn’t have it coming.
And her lover, Garrett, did not handle grief well: he killed himself about a minute later. That was the shit cherry on the poop sundae that was my month.
Cue a clueless vampire queen tripping through the centuries in both directions and I returned to a timeline where Antonia was dead, and in Hell, but rescue-able. (Yeah. That’s a thing now: people can be snatched out of Hell. I . . . don’t understand.) And a very much alive Garrett determined to ride me (so to speak) until she was back with him.7
I settled for the Wiki version: “They wanted to see a bit of the world, get away from the nuttiness. Garrett’s old-fashioned, so they send postcards.” It had been so long since I’d gotten a handwritten communiqué on paper, at first I thought they had been kidnapped and I was reading a ransom note.
Cathie laughed. “Yeah, can’t blame them for that one. It’s concentrated nuttiness in your mansion, that’s for sure. Can’t tell if you’re the source or you just exacerbate everything.”
“Excuse me,” Laura interrupted, so much ice in her tone I wanted to dump it in a glass of Coke and fix myself a refreshing beverage, “but you were telling us there’s something wrong with me.”
“No,” she replied shortly. “I said I think there’s something really, really wrong with you.”
“But why?”
Cathie stared. “Seriously? You’ve got no idea why I might be a little edgy around you? None at all? You’re drawing a great big blank?” She glanced at me. “Huh. You guys look a bit alike—same coloring—but you’ve got more in common than I thought.”
“Yeah! Shows what you—wait.”
Before I could work out the insult tucked into the compliment, Laura was on top of it. She managed a self-deprecating shrug and a smile ninety-five percent of the planet would find irresistible. “It’s the Antichrist thing, isn’t it?”
“No,” Cathie snapped. “It’s the murderous temper coupled with magic and no-actual-checks-on-power thing. Or do you not remember why the Driveway Killer is in Hell, where he spends eternity being choked out with belts when he’s not balancing Louis XIV’s books?” She sighed and anticipated the inevitable blank looks. “One of the most expensive and corrupt courts in the history of human events. Half the expenditures weren’t even written down, much less tracked, so Pryce can never get the books right. He’s a murdering accountant being tortured by women who look like his victims wh
ile knowing he can never balance the books he’s charged with.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not . . .” Laura shrugged again. “Who?”
“Yeah. That? That’s why I think there’s something really, really wrong with you.”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
BACK IN THE DAY, KINDA . . .
“Down here!” Cathie called, and darted into a closed wooden door.
I was starting to get used to the smell of the refinery—we’d been driving around the neighborhood a good twenty minutes, after all. But Cathie was right, it blotted out everything else. If he was killing women in his basement, I couldn’t smell it from the kitchen. I couldn’t even smell the kitchen from the kitchen.
Laura and I hurried down the stairs, which were predictably dark and spooky until Laura found the light switch. Banks of fluorescents winked on, and in the far corner we could see a woman with messy, short blond hair, tied up and gagged with electrician’s tape. Her outfit was, needless to say, a mess.
“Ha!” Cathie screeched, phasing through the wood-burning furnace and zooming around in a tight circle like Casper on Mountain Dew. “Told you, told you!”
“It’s all right,” Laura said, going to the terrified victim. “You’re safe now. Er, this might sting a bit.” And she ripped the tape off the woman’s mouth. “It’s like a Band-Aid,” she told her apologetically. “You can’t do it little by little.”
“He’s coming back—to kill me—” Mrs. Scoman (I assumed it was Mrs. Scoman, the lady gone missing from her driveway three days before) gasped. “He said he—was going to use his special friend—and kill me—” Then she leaned over and barfed all over Laura’s shoes.
“That’s all right,” Laura said, rubbing the terrified woman’s back. “You’ve had a hard night.”
“If those were my shoes,” I muttered to Cathie, “I wouldn’t be able to be so nice about it. Thank God she wasn’t wearing flip-flops.”
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