Brain tangle or not, stressed and sleep-deprived or not, Nick had said the one thing guaranteed to make me come along meekly to jail.
So off to jail I went, arrested by one of my roommates. A fine argument for kicking everyone out of the mansion except Sinclair. Maybe.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“Listen, Nick—”
“Jeez. Betsy. My name is Richard, Dick for short, Dickie to Jessica and people I really, really like, so knock yourself out. Do I have to paint it on my forehead?”
“I would actually find that very helpful,” I admitted. “I don’t have the longest attention span.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed,” he managed through teeth that were grinding like … like things that grind together. (I should probably be getting more sleep, too.)
“Also I’d like a map for all the rooms in the mansion, because I think at least two bathrooms are missing. Where did they go? Are they lost in time? Are they in hell? Did they never exist because this is the timeline we’re supposed to be in? Did they once exist but no longer since whoever built the mansion in this timeline used different blueprints?”
“I’ve really got no idea. And I can’t believe, with all the stuff you’ve got on your plate, I can’t believe you’re worried about bathrooms.”
“And were they redone before they vanished into a parallel dimension of extra bathrooms? Or are they still kind of gross? Because that tile, it was just getting sad. Booger Green, what were they thinking? Nick? Are you listening? You should be paying attention to me.”
“Can’t think why. And it’s Dick, okay?”
“Like it matters! I’ve got more important things to worry about than you changing your name every time I accidentally change the timeline.”
He almost stood on the brakes. “What? You—I’m not the one changing anything, you’re the one—wait, did you say every time? Oh my God, what have you done that you haven’t told me about?”
Told him about? Hmm. Apparently N/Dick and I were gossip buddies in the new-if-not-necessarily-improved timeline. “Do we have a lot of intimate chats, Dee-Nick?”
“Do not, nope, I mostly get your goings-on from Jess. Pillow talk, you know?”
“Don’t do that!”
“What?” He looked around wildly. “You see Antonia? I wouldn’t run over her. On purpose, anyway … prob’ly…”
“No, not that, don’t talk like that. I don’t want to have to picture you and my best friend banging away.”
“Her inner thighs are like velvet,” he said dreamily.
“Please.” I moaned and clutched my bangs amid the clanking of my cuffs—at least he’d cuffed me with my hands in front. “Please don’t put that in my head. Please don’t put that in my head. Please. Anything. I’ll do anything not to think about Jessica’s velvety inner thighs. I’ll come quietly, I swear.”
“Ha! Never in your life. Listen, I’m sorry about what just happened, but—”
“Too late, fascist! Assuming you’re velvety right, then Jessica’s thighs might be the velvety way to velvety thighs. Right? Oh my God!” I threw my head back and screamed at the car roof. “You put it in my head! No one’s hurt me worse than you, and I’m telling you that knowing you know I have met Satan herself, you velvety inner thigh bastard! Oh, God damn it!” What could I do? Kill myself? To what effect? Kill him? Satisfying, but no guarantee. Kill Sinclair? Illogical, but it would be pretty satisfying. And it did have weird logic. If I killed him and skinned him, I wouldn’t have to worry about killing and skinning him in a couple of hundred years, right?
Meanwhile, Nick-Dick was laughing so hard he nearly drove into a streetlight. Oh, sure, Sinclair, I’m loads safer in the long bony arms of the law. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“Shut up, Nicki-Ticki-Tavvi.”
“Don’t call me that. How about you just call me Berry?”
“How about I just call you asshat?”
“Richard?” he asked hopefully.
“You’re hauling me off to jail! After making me visualize things I never wanted in my head! Why are we arguing about your name when you’re hauling me off to jail? Will I even show up in your system, being legally dead and all? Oh, this is gonna be a disaster. A new disaster, I mean. Because we’ve got plenty of other disasters. If we were a corporation and we had meetings, they’d be called old business. But it’s still business.”
He waited until my lips had closed for half a second … hmm, he was used to arguing with me … then jumped back in with, “You’re not legally dead. Everyone thought the funeral was a really bad joke pulled by your stepmother.”
“That bitch.”
He glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Uh, Betsy … she didn’t actually do that, remember? That was your cover story. Can you, uh, try to keep the truth and the lie separate? I guess it’s a little tricky, what with two timelines in your head.”
“You think? Besides, I wouldn’t put anything past that pineapple-colored, hair-spray-shellacked bitch.”
“It was the story we put out rather than telling the world you got run over like a gopher and came back as the queen of the undead.”
“Great, thanks for the trip down memory lane, and you must really be sleep-deprived because you just missed the exit for the Cop Shop.”
“Yeah? That was careless. Or maybe I’m calming down a little and realizing arresting you was a little on the stupid side.”
“It was stupid.”
“Or maybe I just wanted to get you away from the mansion and the crowds of people hanging out there these days, get you where vamps or weres can’t overhear us talking, to see if you’ve got a plan yet. Because what you tell me is gonna help me figure out what I’ve gotta do, too.” He met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “Betsy, I’ve gotta think about Jessica first. All the time. I’m sorry. That’s just how it is. Even if it inconveniences or embarrasses you. Look, I don’t know how it was with us—me and Jess—there. But that’s how it is with us here.”
“You prick. Don’t you dare make me like you for doing this stupid inconvenient illogical weird annoying thing.”
He laughed. “Has anybody ever made you do anything?”
“I’ve got bad news, pal. I don’t have a clue what to do, okay? The only thing I’ve figured out is that I can’t half-ass it anymore. I’ve got to embrace the queen thing. I’ve got to get as much power as I can, however I can—”
“Uh, Betsy—”
“—so that when the time’s right I’m powerful enough to save Sinclair. And myself! And maybe my mom! But not BabyJon because he apparently comes out of all this pretty okay.”
“You, uh, don’t see the inherent flaw in your … uh…”
“Awesome plan?”
He blinked rapidly, either because he had a lot of crap in his eye, or didn’t want to cry. Or stare. Naw, he just needed another nap. “So your plan to avoid becoming a ruthless dictator with absolute power is to gain as much power as you can at all costs?”
“Well.” I had to think about that. “Okay, it sounds bad when you put it like that. So I’m fucked.”
“Could be,” he agreed.
“Too bad if I am. I can’t keep passing the royal buck. I’ve gotta embrace my role, right?” I absently twisted the small chain holding my handcuffs together while I thought. “So I become ruthless and powerful to help Sinclair, but I destroy Sinclair for some reason when I’m the Queen Bee on top of the frozen world.” I twisted faster while my thoughts ran like dazed mice. “Oh, Christ, are things really trashed either way? Is that the big life lesson here? Because—ah, shit.”
“What?”
“I owe you a new pair of cuffs.” I held up my hands two feet apart, demonstrating the broken chain.
Dickie groaned and banged his head on the steering wheel hard enough to wring a quick “Hnnk!” from his horn. “Do you know how much paperwork I have to fill out to get another pair?”
“Sor-ree, Detective I’m Gonna Arrest My Landlady.”
“Look, I’ll release
you from my custody. Like you couldn’t break out of holding in half a second.”
“Wouldn’t have to break,” I told him with no small amount of smug. “Just mojo the nearest guy with a key. Plan B.”
“I don’t want to know what Plan A was, do I?”
“Nope.”
“Fine, so I’m gonna let you go, but you have to promise not to kill me in my sleep.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“Kill me? Or promise?”
I grinned at him in the mirror. “You pick … Richard.”
“Sexy and creepy. The original one-two punch.”
“You can’t get back on my good side by saying nice things like that. This isn’t over,” I threatened. “By which I mean, it’s over.” I mean, really. Who had the energy?
“Just please remember to call me Richard from here on out, okay? That’s not so much to ask, right?”
“Says the stoolie cop—”
“‘Stoolie cop’?”
“—who arrested me without cause! Shut up and get me out of here already.”
“I’m glad you hosed the timeline,” he said cheerfully. “I like liking you.”
“I’m not talking to you.”
I didn’t mean it, though.
I liked it, too.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Here’s the thing about Minnesota, and it’s nothing to do with the cold (which wasn’t that big a deal) or the Minnesota Nice thing (more Midwestern Nice, I’d found). Minnesota was new. That’s why I liked it.
I mean, it was just the coolest thing. The planet was zillions of years old, but Minnesota had only been around for, what? Less than two hundred years! Isn’t that something?
I don’t think it’s a failing in all Minnesotans, just this one: we don’t really have a sense of history, of age. Stephen King said Rome was a sprat (or maybe it was Greece?), and at the time I assumed it was the drugs talking. But I get it now. Compared to the planet, Rome (or was it Greece?) was a sprat. But compared to Rome, Minnesota was a preemie.
* * *
“Oh Father, please help your wayward child.”
I looked up, annoyed. “Dammit, Lena Olin, ever heard of knocking? Don’t you have a netherworld to lord it over? And don’t pray for me. It creeps me out.”
“Is that a blog? Are you … are you blogging?” Hmm. Normally I’d be pleased to see the devil look so horrified about any of my antics, but mostly I was annoyed at the interruption.
It wasn’t completely asinine. Royalty wrote stuff down, right? Stuff for the ages, right? So I’d try to get in the habit. Because if I wrote about things I liked, maybe I wouldn’t write the Book of the Dead, which was full of things I didn’t.
I know, I know, but … it was the only thing I’d come up with so far. And sitting around doing nothing just wasn’t acceptable anymore.
“None of your business, that’s what it is. Don’t you have some of the damned to bug?”
“Don’t you have a shoe sale to crash?”
I gasped at the snide insult. “I never crash shoe sales! That’s like spitting on … on … on something you would never spit on. Watch your step, Snidely McDevil.”
“Yes, I’m quite terrified.”
“You get how lame it is that you’re sort of hanging around like the creepy aunt who doesn’t have any friends her own age, so she likes to hang with your friends, who are too polite to tell the geezer that her wanting to hang around them all the time is not only sad but creepy? Right?”
“You know I’m a fan of free will. My own, too. Why shouldn’t I want to ‘hang’ wherever I like?”
“Because it’s so so so lame? And don’t make me laugh. Free will! Ha! You’re so full of shit.”
“To borrow a page from your own book, some people are afraid of me, you know. And wouldn’t dare talk to me like that.”
Afraid? Why did that tickle something in my brain? Somebody else had mentioned fear and the devil. Too much had happened in too short a time. And also, I wasn’t that bright.
So: onward. “You love to yak and yak about free will, while the whole time you’re encouraging people to be bad.”
“Yes! Free will. I’m not making them do a thing. Not one thing.”
“Please! Someone wouldn’t have killed someone else if the devil hadn’t encouraged it. Then you sit there on your throne of fire and preach—”
“I never ‘preach,’ and I don’t have a throne of fire. You’re confusing me with my father.”
“—about free will like it’s not your secret plan to dominate, oh hell no, it’s God’s. It’s a cheat, isn’t it? Sure, we’ve all got free will … and you’re always there trying to talk us out of it. Always. You never stop.”
“That’s right,” she said, startling me with her quick agreement. “I never do.” She glanced at my laptop and made a tiny curl of a smile at me. “Really, Betsy. Blogging?”
“Not that I don’t love our little chats, but Laura’s not here.”
“Yes, I know. She’s sitting in.”
“And Elderly Me isn’t … what?”
“Hmm?” Lena Olin examined her beautifully polished, pearly nails.
“Laura’s what?”
“Sitting. In. She is my … how did you put it? ‘Temp worker of the damned’?”
“So.”
“Yes.”
God, I hated when she was smug. And she was smug a lot. I was thoroughly out of my league with her—duh, she was the devil—and I hated every second of it. The few, the very few, times I could one-up her were never enough to make things even close to even.
One of these days, I seethed to myself, one of these days I’d have so much power that cunning bitch will never be able to—
Whoa.
Okay, that was not the way to handle this. That was no way to think. Ever.
I yawned. “So you got my little sis to sit in for you, and you’re spending your first day off in a zillion—”
“Five billion.”
“—years telling me you got my sister to sit in? Really? That’s how you wanted to spend your day off? Pathetic, thy name is Lucifer.” I forced a chuckle and made myself stare into my laptop like I was still interested in my queen journaling.
“She’s got quite the aptitude for it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“In fact, she reminds me of you.”
“Mmmm. There’s just one t in pathetic, right?”
“The other you, I mean. The one who’s done something. The one worth talking to.”
“She said, talking to me, anyway. Go away, Lena Olin. Go take God out for a late Father’s Day brunch. There’s an Old Country Buffet around here somewhere.”
I could actually feel the room getting warmer around me as she struggled to hold her temper. It made the shock and fear I’d felt about hearing what Laura was doing almost not very bad news.
Because why was she hanging around? It was like she wanted something. Wanted something from me … not Laura. But what?
As bad: Ancient Me lurking in her own past. She wanted something, too, but she’d at least been a little more open. She was waiting for me to do something. Or waiting for me not to do something. Ah yes. So helpful.
It stank. There was no logical reason for them to be just … hovering in my life. So something big and bad was coming, was on the way, or worse … was here.
“You’re kind of a voyeur, aren’t you? You like watching us.”
“I’m a fan of man,” she said, swiping Al Pacino’s line from The Devil’s Advocate.
“You really like to watch. Most of the time I see you, you’re not actually doing anything. You’re just hanging around until something happens. It’s kind of gross,” I told her in my most pleasant tone.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, idiot child.”
“And here with the superiority thing again. Yes, you’re so far ahead of us poor mortals we can never ever ever understand all your layers of awesomeness.” I laughed. “Wow, I could hardly get that out
with a straight face.”
“I like you more when you don’t think so much.”
I’ll bet you do. Also, no one has ever told me that, ever.
“He thought too much, too, except at the end, when He simply refused to think for Himself.” Satan was staring over my shoulder, lost in thought. I’d seen her like this once or twice before, and it never failed to unsettle me, and make me feel a little sorry for her.
Which I hated.
“Are you aware you’re talking out loud?”
“Stupid boy, oh that stupid, stupid boy,” the devil muttered.
“Aww … not Jesus again.” You know how some people talk to themselves? She talked to Him. The kid she couldn’t save. The one thing the devil admitted regretting. Not the whole turning-against-God thing. Not getting half of heaven to turn on Him with her. Not talking all sorts of people through the ages into indulging their worst fears/lusts/rages/murders/hatreds. All that? Just a day at the office.
Him, though. The boy. She felt bad about Him.
I sighed and shifted in my chair so I could face her. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to you, but you should ease up on yourself. Free will, right? He had it, too. He knew what was coming. Knew since He was a kid, or at least, that’s the way I heard it. And you gave it the old college try, tempting Him…”
“Warning Him!”
“Okay, okay, don’t get your asbestos panties in a twist. You tried to warn or tempt or whatever, and you couldn’t, and they—”
“They killed Him. Like some half-dead alley cat … you see grimy little kids poking it and prodding it and after three days of that kind of handling the poor thing just gives up. That’s what He did for all you unworthy idiots. And His reward was … nothing.” She was actually giving off heat now. Being in the room with her was like standing in front of an oven full of roasting beef. I thought about all the old wood my house was made of and got, um, perturbed.
She was pacing now. The oven was pacing, and the heat waned and grew strong and waned, depending on where she was in the room. “You’re all still unworthy. Mankind isn’t even potty trained. A six-week-old puppy bitch knows not to shit where she eats. You guys can’t figure out what a puppy knows.”
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