“I can have it back rightnow , honey.”
Marc put his hands over his eyes. “Don't fight, you guys. No more. I'm sincere here.”
She slapped my hand when I reached for it. “No! Bad vampire!”
I glared. “You know, most sensible people would be scared of me.”
She laughed at me. “Most sensible people haven't seen you dancing the Pancake Dance in your granny underpants on New Year's Eve.”
“Hey! Your fangs are gone.” Marc digested what she'd just said. “Granny underpants? You?” Apparently me doing the Pancake Dance wasn't so hard to believe.
“It was just that one time,” I grumbled, the last of my mad-on vanishing as quickly as it had come upon me. “All my thongs were in the wash.” What had I even been so mad about, anyway? I couldn't remember. Jessica and Marc were the greatest. I was lucky to have friends like them. They were—
The kitchen door swung open, framing the former head of the Blood Warriors. “I don't understand,” Jon Delk said. “You're saying I published a book?”
—sunk. We all were.
Chapter 19
“Thanks for coming so quickly.”
Delk hadn't taken off his coat, and had tracked mud all the way (groan) to the kitchen. His full name was Jonathon Michael Delk, but too many people in his life called him Jonny. So he was going all tough guy now and insisting on the moniker Delk. I couldn't blame him: I had a silly first name, too.
“She said you were in trouble,” J—er, Delk was saying. “But it sounds like that was just another vampire trick to get me to—”
“I said the Queen needed you,” Tina corrected him with more than a little sharpness. Tina didn't care for Delk, given his vampire-slaying past. No doubt the car ride up from the farm had been a carnival. Not least because she and Eric thought it was perfectly fine to leave Jon out of it. But I just couldn't do it. He had written the book. It was being published. How could I keep my mouth shut about it?
“Delk, sit down.”
“What's going on?” He shook the catalog at me, dropped it on the table, and rubbed his hands together; they were red with cold. “One minute I'm home, the next I'm in the car with Tina—”
“Do you want something to warm up with?”
He gave me a look I supposed he thought was subtle. I was feeling sicker and sicker by the moment, and it wasn't all the failed rainbows. Delk had a bit of a crush on me, and if he had come charging up to the Cities because he thought I was in trouble—well, that was just too damned sweet.
In fact, he'd shown up here a few months ago when he heard about my impending unholy nuptials. The gist of our conversation:
DELK: You can't marry Eric Sinclair.
ME: Just watch.
DELK: He's a bad man.
ME: You don't know from bad.
DELK: You're making a mistake.
ME: Shut your head.
Not exactly Tristan and Isolde, but it passed the time around here.
Then, inexplicably (except I was pretty sure I knew why) he hung around the mansion. Started interviewing me for a class project. Eventually produced a book. But then Sinclair—
“Tina, would you leave us alone for a minute?”
“I'll go see if the king is available,” she said, backing out of the kitchen, looking at Delk the way a cat looked at a really big rat.I can take you. I might get hurt, but that's all right .
We were alone. Except for Marc and Jessica, shamelessly eavesdropping outside the kitchen door. I couldn't do anything about that, so I addressed the problem at hand. “You wrote the book. It's coming out this fall as a paperback everyone thinks is funny fiction.”
“You're saying someone used my name on their book?”
Oh, boy. He was standing there, so earnest and flushed and blond andyoung , I almost couldn't bear it. He was a nice kid. I liked him a lot. There never would have been anything between us, and not just because of Sinclair, but I still liked him and sure didn't want to upset him.
I could almost hear Sinclair in my head:Then don't .
Too bad.
“I'm saying you wrote this book, thisUndead and Unwed . Someone—probably you—turned it in to a publisher, and now it's going to be on bookshelves this fall.”
“But—I mean, I did a paper for class before holiday break—”
“You turned the paper into a book. You followed me around for days, transcribing my life story, putting your own spin on it. You had, like, three hundred pages.”
He was blinking so fast, for a second I thought he had something in both eyes. “But I don't remember that! I'd remember if I wrote a book, right?”
“Yeah, normally. Except Sinclair made you forget you'd written it. And since you didn't remember writing it, you didn't think to warn us that you'd sent it in to get published.”
“Warn you? I—” He walked dazedly back and forth by the table for a moment, not quite pacing. He looked like he didn't know what to do with his hands. “Sinclair made me forget?”
“Well.” Tell the truth and shame my sister's mother, wasn't that how the saying went? Sure, we could be done now, but I didn't want any part of this conversation left undead. Whoops—Freudian slip.Unsaid . Another surprise down the road I didn't need. “Tina found the electronic version of your manuscript—she was looking for it, or something like it—and told Sinclair. He mojoed you into forgetting all about it, and then they deleted your work. They thought all of your work.”
“Did you call me down here,” he whispered, “because you just found out and you want my help to stop them?”
“Ah, no. See, after they did all that, they told me. This was around Christmas. And at first I told Sinclair to undo his undoing, if you get what I mean. But then I remembered.”
“What?”
“I remembered I'm the queen and I'm responsible for all the vampires,” I said simply. “So I let it all stand. It was shitty for you, but I thought if the book got out that would be shitty for all vampires.”
He was clutching the back of one of the kitchen chairs and I saw all the knuckles had gone from pink to dead white. All the color had fallen out of his face, except for two patches of red way up on each cheek.
“Are you okay?” I asked, dumbest question of the year, no doubt. “Maybe you better sit down.”
“You—youlet —him—dothat? To me?”
“Well, I didn't know about it until afterward,” I began lamely, “but—”
He actually swayed a little while he hung on to the chair. I edged a little closer, figuring I could catch him if he fainted. Helooked like he was going to faint. After he threw up. “Youlet him do that—let him into my fuckingmind —and then you had the chance tohelp me and you tooktheir side?”
“I—yeah. That's more or less it.”
“You didn't help me—you let him—and you didn't—”
“Delk, I think you should sit down before you—”
“Shut! Up!” he screamed at me, the cords standing out on his neck. “You aren'teven sorry! Because if you did it, if you fucked me over to help all of goddamn vampire-kind, youcan't be sorry.”
“I'm sorry you got stuck in the middle. I'm sorry there's a book out there that you don't remember writing. A funny book the critics like,” I added, trying to find a speckle of good in this whole awful nightmare. Oooh, and there was something else! “You kind of got the last laugh, because the book is coming out anyway, and the vampires who know about it are pretty annoyed, so—”
“So everything you let himdo to me was for nothing.”
“Okay, that's another way to look at it.”
He wiped his nose with the back of the hand not holding the chair. “I can't believe this,” he whispered.
“I'm really sor—”
“I can believe that bitch snuck around in my files, and I can believe that prick jumped into my mind, but you! You're supposed to be the good one! I-I thought you—you aren't supposed to be a bad guy! You're supposed to look out for me,and for vampires�
�they're all the same to you, right?”
I stammered, trying to say five things at once.
“Right?”
“Delk, I—”
He wheeled around and almost slipped in one of the little puddles he'd made.
“Please don't leave! Please, let's talk some more.”
He barked an incredulous laugh, staggered for the door, and shoved against it, hard.
Unfortunately, it only moved about a foot before it thudded into something.
“Aagghh!” I heard Jessica say from the other side, then another thud as she fell down. I rushed over, held the door open, and saw her rolling back and forth on the floor, hands cupped around her nose. The blood, it was—it wassheeting down her throat and onto her shirt; the blouse was already wrecked.
Marc was crouched beside her, doing the doctor/mom chant: “No, I won't touch it, just let me look, no, I'm not going to touch, just get your hands down so I can see, let me see.”
That was no ordinary nosebleed. It was just—it was everywhere. I whirled upon Delk. “She's sick! And you practically broke her nose—she didn't doanything . And she'ssick , you asshole!”
Before I knew what was happening, I had seized him by the shirt and was holding him right up to my nose. “You thouhd have kept your handth to yourthelf.”
“Betsy, don't! It was an accident, come on, it's—” Jessica choked a little from her spot on the floor and spat blood. “It's a swinging door, for heaven's sake. I'm surprised this doesn't happen every week. Come on, put him down.”
I threw him away from me. He bounced off the wall (and I'd be lying if I didn't admit it felt good to watch him fly like a paper airplane, and where had all my sympathy for him gone?) and crumpled to the floor in a heap.
I knelt by my friends. “Jeth, are you all ri—”
“Look out!” she screamed, and I turned just in time to get shot.
I'll bet Marc is sorry he skipped work today , I thought, toppling into Jessica's bloody face and knocking her down again.
Chapter 20
I woke up just in time to hear Jon's bellow of pain and the instantaneous dull “snap” that came with it.
Get up
I tried to move.
Get up or they'll kill each other. Really kill each other.
My entire chest felt like it had been drenched in kerosene and then lit. And not in a good way, either. I tried to sit up.
“Better not,” Marc said, and I realized he and Jessica were both kneeling over me. “I think your heart's busy growing back.”
“Help me up,” I groaned.
“Bad idea,” he said, but he carefully pulled me to my feet. It seemed to take a long time.
“Jess, you okay?”
“I'm fine. Nothing's broken.” She looked awful—blood all over her clothes, blood drying across her face—but at least it wasn't fresh blood. “I know this isn't the time or place, but that really squicks me out.”
“What?”
“You're licking blood off the back of your hand,” Marc murmured.
Yeesh! “Sorry.” I made myself stop. Just as well; it hurt to move. Luckily I didn't need to breathe, because I bet that would have hurt like crazy, too. Now where was I? Something important. Like, life or death important. Oh, yeah… “Stop, you guys! Cut it out. Sinclair, let him go.”
Not that I could see what was going on, but it wasn't hard to guess.
I limped toward the kitchen door (which had started all the trouble, come to think of it) and pushed it open. Sinclair was just leaning down to pick Jon up off the tiles, ignoring the loaded gun pointed at his nose.
“Ah, you're up and around,” Sinclair said, looking over at me. “Splendid.”
“Just… stop. Okay? Come on. I got shot, you broke Delk's arm, Jess got a nosebleed. We'll sprain Marc's ankle and make Tina have a haircut and then everybody's even, okay? Please don't,” I pleaded, as Sinclair reached for his prey again. “It's so awful right now; please let's not make it worse. Besides, aren't you dying to rush over here and make sure for yourself that I'm all right?”
I could see him think about it. The gun might have been made of candy for all he noticed it, but I knew Jon's bullets were hollow points stuffed with holy water. One probably would have killed Sinclair. As usual (happy sigh), when I was concerned, he didn't give much of a shit about his personal safety.
And yup, he was actually wrestling with his lovely desire to check on me. And his strong male urge to pull Delk's head off his shoulders and use it as a soccer ball.
“Please,” I said again, and abruptly Sinclair straightened up, leaving the other man flat on his back and waving his gun at nothing. He crossed the room and grabbed my hands, then held them out so he could stare at my chest. Marc had ripped my shirt open while I was out; luckily, it was a bra day. I looked down; no hole. Just a few trickles of dried blood.
“Areyou all right?”
My Ipex bra would never be the same, but… “Sore as hell.”
He shook his head. “You are miraculous. The bullet should have killed you. At the least, you should not be healing so quickly, especially as you haven't had any blood in—four days?”
I made a face. “Don't remind me.”
He kissed me. “I am thankful for all your peculiarities.” He said it with a fervor that made me smile, but a cold part of me wondered what Delk must think of all this cooing vampire affection. Not much, I imagined.
“I'll see the boy out,” Tina offered. She'd come in, unnoticed as usual, and was standing by the back stairs. “The boy,” heh. No more of “your friend” or “the young gentleman” or “Jon” or even “Mr. Delk.” Nope, the gloves were off.
“No, you won't,” I wheezed, because she looked positively drooley at the thought of getting Jon alone for a moment. “I'll see him out.” I was pretty sure I could make the walk from here to the front door without falling down.
Pretty sure.
“Well,I'm not going to,” Jessica said. “Marc, you help her.”
“I've got patients here.”
At some point, Jon had climbed to his feet. The gun was still out, was swinging wildly as he tried to point at all of us at once. His other arm was bent at a nauseating angle; I wondered how he was able to get to his feet, never mind stand and keep the gun up. His face had gone the color of oatmeal. Sweat was standing out on his forehead in big drops. “Nobody sees me out! None of youfreaks come near me. I'll see myself out.”
“Well, all right, don't make a big thing of it,” I said crossly. “You know, Ishould be yelling at you for shooting me, but I'm going to let the whole thing go. Now we're even for everything, right?”
“Fuck you,” he replied, sounding cool and tough, and we all pretended not to see the tears rimming his lower lashes. “You're only alive because I—because I didn't want you dead just yet.”
“Whatever sustains your fragile young male ego. But I think you'd be better off coming back here with an improved attitude.”
“You'll see me again,” he promised. “With attitude and more.” Then he let the gun sort of drift to his side—it was probably way too painful to put it, one-handed, back into a shoulder holster—and simply walked away. On his way through the foyer, he steadied himself once on the banister—and drew his hand away in disgust, shaking stale gum off his fingers.
“And you wanted to evict me,” I gently chided Jessica.
Delk stumbled up against the giant front doors, wrestled with the nineteenth-century knob, swore at the latch, got the door open, swore some more at us… and was gone.
“He's got a lot of personal growth ahead of him,” I observed. My chest felt a lot better; had the bullet gone through me? It must have. I hoped so; I didn't want Marc or anyone else digging around in there to find it again.
“The infant is lucky he chose to leave.”
“We did some pretty shitty things to the infant, in case you forgot. Or don't you care about that?”
Sinclair was eyeing the ruins of my ripped shirt,
the bloodstains. “No,” he said flatly. “I don't care about that.”
Chapter 21
“We can't let him live,” Tina said.
“Sure we can.”
“Majesty, be reasonable. I know you are—were—fond of the child, but he is adangerous child.”
“I still consider him a friend, okay? Friends have falling-outs. Or would that be fallings-out? Anyway, we don't always get along a hundred percent of the time. Look at me and Jessica!”
“Duhnot ,” Little Miss Myeloma said, her voice muffled through the ice pack Marc had slapped over her face, “drag meh entoh this.”
We were in the (first) parlor. We'd picked it because there were two couches, and Jessica and I both needed one. Shit, I needed a hospital ward. But a couch that smelled like dust was the best I could do, right now.
“Surely after what happened today you do not still consider him an ally?”
“Eric, try to see his point of view! If someone's keeping score, we're ahead of him on points, okay? So, seriously: don't go after him, you guys. Don't order another vampire to do it, either. Jon's out of bounds as far as the vampires are concerned.”
“Foolish sentimentality.”
“Hey, I'm mad at him, too, okay? He shot me. In the chest. With holy water. But I'm not going to kill him.”
Everybody looked at my chest.
“No, seriously. He didn't mean to do that. Or he meant to, but he knew it wouldn't kill me—he was scared, okay? Scared and humiliated, which is just the worst combo ever. At least the worst part's over.”
“Worst part?” Jessica mumbled around her ice pack.
“I was really dreading telling him. I didnot want to do that, boy oh boy. But at least it's out.”
“What I'd like to know,” Marc said from his chair by the fire, “is what he was doing here with a gun in the first place.”
“Are you kidding? That kid's always got about nine guns and knives on him. Those farm boys are tough.”
“Right,” Marc allowed, “but a former Blood Warrior shows up, and you guys don't even frisk him? Make him walk through a metal detector? Something?”
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