Undead and Unstable

by Davidson, MaryJanice

  No. This was a fair trade.

  “The wish! It worked!” Damn! She’d pulled it off. I was impressed. And terrified. God, she’d had so much power, what would I have done if she hadn’t wanted to finally die? “Okay. I can explain. The thing is, Satan owed me a favor, and this is what I came up with.” Good-bye forever, Christian Louboutin Volpi Leather Knotted Peep-Toes. Sinclair must never know what I had to give up. Some things were too terrible to tell. “Okay, but wait … how did you know you could run out here in the snow and the sun? Did you—aw, man.” I shook my head. My husband disliked being on fire. But he disliked worrying about me even more. It wasn’t the first time he’d charged, heedless, into sunshine to save me. To think he needed to charge into sunlight to save me. “Say it with me, Sinclair: don’t go into the light. Do not. Except now you can. Okay, but that doesn’t mean those times you did and got fricasseed were a good idea.” Wait. Fricasseed was when chunks of meat were cut up and cooked in gravy. (Thank you, Food Network!) “Roasted. It doesn’t mean those times you got roasted were a good idea, is what I meant.” Like Jim Gaffigan, the Food Network was now my porn. My wonderful fricassee-filled porn. In life I had never once been sexually aroused watching Ina Garten whip up turkey lasagna.

  With an effort, I tried to focus on the here and now. Sinclair wasn’t on fire. That was huge! And all I had to do was not wish for Louboutin’s parents to conceive him. All I had to do was say so long to his Rodarte shoes, his peep-toe pumps, his signature red soles … oh, Christian … forgive me…

  But still and all: more than fair. A bargain, I figured.

  “A favor? From the devil?” He sobered instantly. “And what will it cost, my queen?”

  I smiled at him. I was ankle-deep in snow, and only a couple of inches away from yellow snow (stupid roaming neighborhood dogs who don’t respect my territory!). My sister was either going to kill me or … no, she was probably going to try to kill me. My good friend was a zombie. My best friend was growing another person to love. The devil was dead; long live the devil.

  All those things … and I couldn’t stop grinning like a chimp. That was something else I was truly stupid about, I figured … I tended to ignore the big problems in favor of individual victories.

  “Oh, Elizabeth.” He was shaking his head, and a small breeze kicked up and ruffled his dark hair, and some of it fell into his eyes. I reached out to straighten it, when he grasped my wrist and planted a kiss in the middle of my palm. “What did you give up to bring this about? What might you still have to do to repay?”

  I shrugged, still smiling. “This is the part where you ask me if I give a tin shit.”

  “Elizabeth. Tell me truly: What have you done?”

  “Exactly what I had to. Every step of the way.”

  Sinclair narrowed his eyes at me. No, wait, he was squinting in the late sunshine. No … he was definitely narrowing his eyes at me. “That wouldn’t be another quote from that awful Sin City movie, would it?”

  “Frank Miller is a living god! It isn’t awful!” I tried to calm myself. We were never going to see eye to eye on the purely awesome graphic novels of Frank “Living God” Miller. “Okay, well, I killed the devil. But it’s okay; she was pretty sick of still being alive and always in charge of hell. Oh, and Decrepit Me helped by keeping Laura out of it until it was too late. Also, Laura’s mega-pissed at me now. That could be a problem for us later.”

  Sinclair shook his head, not in denial, I knew, but because it was a lot to take in. “I do not—all right, beloved, you can take me through it—and that explains what happened to the Book of the Dead.”

  “Oh, man.” It had started talking? It had started walking? It had applied for several credit cards in my name to wreck my credit rating? The horror. “Tell me.”

  “Nothing bad,” he was quick to assure, “only mysterious. I went to the library to look at it. I was willing to risk a little insanity if it meant I could help you—”

  I restrained myself from punching him in the nose. “Are you insane, Sink Lair? Oh. Wait…”

  “It was gone,” he finished, which startled me into shutting up. “I assumed your sister … except if you have slain the devil … which I will insist you elaborate on some time later…”

  “Right, Satan’s dead now.” I was figuring this out even as I said it. My vague plan formed in the eleventh hour in a panicked moment of extreme stress was sounding more and more … what? Why couldn’t I put my finger on the right word? What was the opposite of disaster? “So she won’t ever help Ancient Me in a hundred little ways over the next few hundred years. So the BoD won’t ever be. Right? That’s probably right.” Although…

  Laura would be the new and improved Satan. I was pretty sure God wasn’t going to like that job slot staying open, and she was the only person on the planet qualified to take over. But no matter how pissed the Antichrist was, I couldn’t see her grabbing Sinclair, keeping him in hell for decades and ultimately skinning him so I could write my frigging memoirs on him. “But why do you remember it? Right? That’s right, isn’t it … that you shouldn’t remember there even was the BoD because the timeline changed again.” Ow. Thinking this hard made my frontal lobe throb.

  “Future Elizabeth’s timeline changed,” he pointed out. “We are in our present, remember. It makes sense that we would remember something that no longer exists.”

  “You hear yourself, right? ‘It makes sense’? ‘No longer exists’?”

  He tilted his head to the side in acknowledgment. “A good point. As much as any of this insanity makes sense, I should say. But your older self, she will return—has returned?—to an entirely different future, I suspect. I imagine that is why she lingered here at all.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that withered skank. And also, I don’t get it,” I admitted. “Not any of it.” Hate time travel. Hate it. “But the BoD being gone, that’s the best news I’ve heard in days.” Now if only America would cancel Thanksgiving, my life would be perfect. As perfect a life without Louboutin shoes could be.

  “Then I heard you in the yard and—and—” Bemused, he shook his head. “I just ran for the door. I did not consider the fact that it was still daylight.”

  “Awww. That was so stupid. Sweet! I meant to say ‘sweet’.”

  He arched an eyebrow at me as the corners of his mouth turned up in a wry smile. “Yes, perhaps. It would not be the first time I acted before thought where you were involved, and as long as you are running around in the universe, it will not be the last.”

  “Don’t blame me for your poor impulse control.”

  “I was worried you had done something more destructive than usual. And then I…” He tilted his head back to look at the sky. He spread his arms like a dark angel in a slick black suit. “… and then I did not burn. And here you were. And Lucifer is dead by your hand.” He smiled at me, which warmed me (good thing, too; we were having this long long conversation in a snow bank), but his face had an expression I was beginning to see more and more. A big helping of pride, mixed with astonishment and a dash of fear. Bake in the fires of hell until done. “I am relieved you are safe. And astonished that you have done all this and lived to walk away from it.”

  “Is this the part where you talk a long time about how awesome I am?”

  “No. This is the part where we make love in a snowbank.”

  Yeesh … one of those things that sounded good on paper but was hideous in actual execution (like communism). I couldn’t get frostbite or slowly freeze to death (like poor Kurt Russell in The Thing), but I could get cold(er) and my clothes could get clammy and damp and my hair could get a ton of (yellow) snow in it and I could wreck my boots, my awesome leather pointy boots that had gouged chunks of flesh out of Satan’s shins before she let me kill her.

  “Can’t we just make a couple of snow angels and then find a hot tub to bang in and call it a day?”

  “Your powers of persuasion are as potent as ever,” he replied, straight-faced, and then let lo
ose with another one of those long deep laughs I loved loved loved. “I shall accede to your demands.”

  “Have I told you, you’ve really got a way with the syrupy love talk. My knees went weak the moment you said ‘accede to your demands.’ You had me at ‘accede’! ‘Accede to your demands,’ cripes, what are you, a strike negotiator?”

  From experience he knew to ignore my shrill bitching, and hugged me hard enough to make my ribs groan (no, wait—that was me groaning), while he lifted me a good half foot off the snow. “My love. My love. My love.” His mouth covered mine, his teeth gently nibbled at my lower lip, and then I wasn’t cold anymore. If anything, it felt like I was coming down with a fever. A sex fever!

  Note to me: never say “sex fever” out loud, because it will sound even lamer than it did in my head just now.

  “Er … what was that? I didn’t quite catch that one.”

  “Never mind.”

  “Oh, Elizabeth. I love you and I’m frightened for you and awed by you and I cannot believe you let a tactical advantage like that go by, that you squandered a favor, a wish, as if the devil were a genie you conjured, wasted it on—”

  “Unless you want to spend the day finding a divorce lawyer, never finish that sentence. Sink Lair, get it through your head already: I’d do anything for you. I’d squander anything for you. And again with the seductive wordplay: squander.”

  “Darling?”

  “Don’t set me down unless you move me half a foot to my right! I don’t want to go in the yellow snow.”

  “Darling, shut the fuck up and kiss me back.”

  So I did. I knew I shouldn’t reward his ordering me around by giving him kisses and probably a blowjob (if we went inside … there are some things a girl shouldn’t do on her front lawn), but I did, anyway.

  It’s not my fault! When I wasn’t squashing the urge to kick him in the shins, I thought he was irresistible. Sometimes I wanted to kick him and I found him irresistible; how was that for a mixed signal?

  It was amazing to me; it had always been amazing that he thought I was, too. I prayed I never got so jaded that I could shrug off the depth of his feeling, the astonishing scope of his fierce devotion.

  It seemed to me that if I ever started taking the love of a king for granted, it would be like losing my grip on basic humanity. If I couldn’t be surprised and touched and overwhelmed by love, what was the point of any of this?

  He scooped me up in his arms and tramped through the snow toward our front door. “What? No snow angels? Right to the hot-tub banging, huh?”

  “Oh, there are angels, all right,” he replied soberly. “And I am fortunate to be married to one.”

  “Oh, boy! Comments like that will not get you laid, they will get you laughed at. Except for today, when they get you both. Let that be a lesson to you.”

  That made him laugh again, and that got me laughing, and then he was staggering through the snow and I was clinging to his neck and we didn’t see the porch railing until he’d run into it hard enough to rattle my teeth and send us both sprawling like a couple of bowling pins.

  We were still rolling around on the porch and roaring and holding our stomachs when Jessica opened the door and stared down at us. From our vantage, all we could see was the curving bulge of her enormous stomach and then, far, far above the curve, her small face, creased with surprise. (Marc, I assume, had figured I was fine and limped back inside. Mental note: Apologize on Sinclair’s behalf. Explain everything. Beg pregnant/zombie friends for forgiveness. Rinse. Repeat.) She didn’t say a thing for a few seconds, which we found even more hilarious.

  “Hi, guys. Marc’s sulking with a huge bump on his forehead and says you can both get frostbite on your ‘nethers’ for all he cares. So … do you want me to let you back in when you’re finished?”

  FORTY-SIX

  No we did not. Which is to say, we were stumbling and staggering through the house (Jessica had left the door wide open for us, proving again that we had either too much security or not enough, and never any sort of happy medium) while our mouths and hands were busy.

  Awesomely busy. Thoroughly busy. Big-time all-the-time busy … we were kissing each other hard enough to leave bruises (theoretically) and tugging at each other’s clothes (literally). My outfit suddenly seemed to be made of buckles and rubber—stuff really hard to get out of, and Sinclair’s suit was proving just as intractable.

  I stumbled and he tried to catch me and went over himself. We might have had more luck if we stopped kissing long enough to take in our surroundings, and clothing, but nothing doing. So we both went down in front of the sweeping staircase that led (eventually) to our bedroom.

  (my love my love my Elizabeth my own)

  I rolled to my side while Sinclair yanked at my sweater. A button went flying (I was wearing a sexy old-lady wool cardigan, complete with faux pearl buttons and a Kleenex tucked up the sleeve … okay, I’m kidding about the Kleenex) but the rest of the wool was resisting him. Stupid Merino wool! What’d I ever do to those sheep that their wool should resist me now, at the moment I was most horny?

  (my love my love I love my love I love you my Elizabeth)

  His Caraceni suit jacket was cooperating, or so I assumed when I heard the purring “ri-i-i-p!” of a seam getting yanked. Now I only had the super-sturdy pants to tear through, the tie to shred, and the Egyptian cotton shirt to tear into strips. The stairs were going to look like they were awash in crepe party streamers. Streamers made of Egyptian cotton. Dammit! Why’d Sinclair have to be rich? Why couldn’t he just shop at Wal-Mart with most of the rest of us, where any clothing he bought would rip itself to shreds after the first trip through the wash?

  As we tore at each other’s clothing with our mouths sealed together in the fiery sharp kisses of vampires

  (my love my love dammit what is this she’s wearing?)

  our frustration only mounted. Frustration with the high-quality clothing we’d stupidly worn. And okay, sexual frustration, too. It had been days! Almost a whole week! I thought of the movie Zoolander, when the models find out the heroine hasn’t had sex in years and are horrified: “How do you live? How do you live?” Now that I think of it, there are many wise messages hidden in Zoolander, and if we as a society could only see the genius hiding beneath Ben Stiller’s ridiculous hair, we—ow!

  “Friction burn,” I yelped.

  “I am so—nnnf!—sorry—unff—beloved!” He was now wrestling with the tank top which I wore beneath the long sleeved shirt beneath the cardigan he’d gotten through.

  Of all the days to layer! Chalk it up to a hazard of living in Minnesota.

  By now we’d sort of lurched to our feet and had made it up a few more of the many many many many stairs, and I felt a flash of pain zip through my mouth as he broke the skin in his urgency.

  “Ow!”

  “—so sorry—darling—nnf—”

  I bit him back, lightly, which was a tactical if yummy error, if his increased urgency was any indication. We both fell to the carpet again, but I finally had his pants open. There is no sexier sound than the clink of a man’s belt hitting the floor, even if his wife then falls on the buckle and spends a few seconds yelping and grabbing her knee. We really should separate, stand, and then carefully sprint to our bedroom, where most of the breakable furniture was already broken and thus there were less things to hurt ourselves on. Or hurt ourselves with.

  I forgot all about the plan once I had my hand on my husband’s dick. Yep, that plan went right out the … the thing that plans go out when … when I can’t think of them … was there ever a plan? A plan for what?

  I’m confused. And also very horny.

  (Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh do not do not stop oh oh)

  Thank goodness Sinclair wasn’t confused. He’d keep us on the straight and narrow. If there had been a plan, he’d know what it was. But he didn’t need to remember because he wasn’t confused. In fact, he seemed more single-minded than

  (oh your your
your fingers are are you have the face of an angel and the touch of a sorceress you you more do more harder harder oh oh)

  usual.

  “Seriously? You guys? Right there on the stairs, huh?” Someone was talking at us. I had no idea who. I didn’t remember anyone else except Sinclair. Did Sinclair and I live alone? Had we ever done anything or known anyone before each other? Cannot remember. There’s nothing before his mouth and his hands and his great big—

  “Hey! You realize you’re leaving a trail of what appears to be cotton, Merino wool, and cashmere?” Someone else we didn’t know was talking at us. This was weird because the only other person in my world was my love, my own, my king, Sinclair. Probably I was just hearing voices. Probably it was only psychosis. Probably we didn’t have roommates. “You know that saying, ‘get a room’? Well, get a room!”

  We’d stumbled to our feet, made it up a few more stairs, and then Sinclair tripped on his shoelaces

  (shoes first! Dammit! I never think of that)

  (nor I, my love)

  and down we went again. But now there were a mere seven thousand steps between us and our bedroom. He fell almost full-length on top of me, which would have sent air whooshing out of my lungs if I’d had any. As it was, I could feel my ribs flexing and creaking from the impact. But I never once let go of his dick. Because when Betsy Taylor starts something, she by-God finishes it!

  “Aaaggghh, Elizabeth!”

  “Sorry.”

  But victory would be ours because at last—at last—my panties were exposed and I was tugging them aside and the whole never-letting-go thing

  (heh, that reminds me of Titanic when Rose is all “I’ll never let go, Jack, I’ll never let go” and then SHE LETS GO!)

  (darling please stop nattering in my head before I take you right here on these stairs)

  (oh no you don’t! I’m taking YOU right here on these stairs)

  (I surrender you win have your way with me I shall offer no resistance)

  (now what was I—oh, yeah, since I never let go of your dick I still have your dick and will now ruthlessly)