Accidentally Dead, Again

by Dakota Cassidy

  “But with people? Humans, Nina? Sweet Jesus. It’s horrifying. I feel so helpless. At least with the others we’ve been able to help in that we had something in common. We didn’t know anything about cougars, but we did understand Katie and Shaw’s need to shift. We had a semblance of understanding for their predicaments. But if this is some experiment gone awry, and they’re manufacturing vampires, we can’t even begin to anticipate what else could go wrong.”

  Nina grunted, her eyes fighting to stay open. “How are Doc Katie and those little beasts, anyway?”

  Wanda held up her phone and scrolled through her pictures. “Katie sent me this today. Look at the twins—are they not just to die for?” she cooed.

  Nina’s return grin was filled with affection. “Yeah. Love those little buggers. Aunt Teeny, too. I’m glad she gave those old broads shit and started her own knitting circle.”

  They each fell silent with the memory of Katie, a veterinarian accidentally turned into a cougar, and the strange, fact-finding journey that had led their friend not just to a successful paranormal existence, but love with a man named Shaw, marriage, and subsequent twins boys.

  Wanda let her head fall back on the couch. She poked her friend’s leg. “Hey, Nina?”

  “Now what, Wanda?”

  “Talk to me,” she demanded. “We’ve been so caught up in the chaos of this O-Tech thing and Phoebe and Sam, I haven’t had the chance to really talk to you.”

  “About?”

  “How you feel about all this. Tell me how you feel about Phoebe being your sister.”

  She shrugged, the roll of her hoodie rippling on her shoulders. “I don’t feel anything.”

  Wanda scoffed. “Nina. C’mon. Some woman shows up and has valid proof she’s your sister. That means your father had a long-term affair you knew nothing about, honey. Tell me how that makes you feel and what I can do to help you deal with it. And don’t try to hoodwink me. It’s just you and me all in the circle of safe.”

  Nina’s eyes had begun to slide closed, but they popped open at Wanda’s words. “First, get this shit straight. My dad didn’t have an affair. He didn’t cheat on my mother. She was dead by the time he hooked up with Princess Barbie’s mother. My mom died when I was just a baby of a drug overdose, and I’m four years older than Couture Girl, if that birth certificate frilly boy slapped up in my face is right. Second, I could only feel something if I gave a shit—which I don’t. Just because some DNA test says she’s my blood means squat. I don’t know her. I don’t want to know her, and when we’re through with this bullshit assignment and she’s done all that adjusting we have to teach her, I’m fucking out.”

  Wanda leaned forward, brushing the hair from her dearest friend’s eyes. “Nina. Don’t shut the door on this relationship before you’ve peeked inside to see what the room holds. Lou’s getting older. We both know she’s not going to live forever like us. But Phoebe will, if we can turn this mess around. Why not try to establish some kind of connection to her? She’s family, Nina Statleon, and Lou has a right to know she has two granddaughters.”

  Nina shrugged Wanda’s hands away. “You and Marty and your dumb-ass sister are my family, Wanda. Greg and Arch and Darnell, too. You really think I need more than the three of you loons mucking up my shit? And FYI, one chick that digs designer clothes and all that crap you slather on your faces in this group is enough. Doesn’t it just figure that a sister of mine would end up being so much like Gucci-loving Marty? What the fuck was the universe thinking?”

  Wanda rubbed her best friend’s arm and smiled. “It was thinking if you can love Marty in all her girl-i-tude, you can love Phoebe.”

  Nina’s chin jutted forward, the sharp line stubborn. “I don’t love Marty. I tolerate her.”

  “You’ve tolerated her for four years, Nina. In fact, you’ve tolerated us all, despite your loud, sometimes rude protests otherwise. You’re still here. You still come to OOPS every day. We’re why you come back, because all your bitching aside, we’re framily, as Casey calls us. You know, your friends who’re like family? So why can’t Phoebe be a part of that, too? She has no one but Mark, and it certainly isn’t her fault your father had an affair with her mother, now is it? She reached out, Nina. She reached out because she’s alone. Now, I know you’re not very good at connecting unless it’s your fist against someone’s face, but reach back. Just a little.” Wanda held up her index and thumb and grinned.

  “The only thing I wanna reach is her neck—so I can wring the fuck out of it. And I have to tell Lou. Before Phoebe gets to her. We all know how subtle she is when it comes to surprises.” Nina grunted.

  “Uh-uh-uh, Nina.” Wanda admonished, shaking her finger. “Let’s call it like it was. She tried to get you to go somewhere private with her, but you did what you always do. Go on the defensive. If you’d have just listened to her instead of reacting, things wouldn’t have gotten so heated between you, and she wouldn’t have fallen on poor Sam. But clearly, she has the Nina gene. She’s no coward, that’s for sure.”

  Nina nodded her consent. The brief look of admiration for Phoebe came and went, though. “Whatever. Lou still deserves to know, I guess.”

  Wanda gave her a quick hug, making Nina squirm. “Now that’s the Nina I know and alternately despise and love. The one with the hard outer shell but the big, gooey center. And don’t fret about Lou. I’ll help. We’ll do it on pot roast night. She’s always happy when she can cook food you can’t eat and to this day doesn’t realize you don’t eat. You shove your face full of that glutinous mess she lovingly prepares all day, then spit it into a napkin while you tell her, and I promise to eat your portion when she’s not looking. How’s that?”

  Nina gave her a sleepy snicker. “You’d eat Lou’s pot roast for me?”

  “Because we’re framily. You know, I love you, you love me? Like Barney only with bad language,” Wanda reminded her.

  “I’m not fucking painting your toenails if some long-lost brother of yours shows up, Wanda. No can do, framily.”

  “Damn. I had the color picked out and everything.”

  “Fuck you, Wanda.”

  Wanda laughed, pinching Nina’s cheeks and rising to drop a kiss on her forehead. “I love you, too, sugarplum. Now sleep, vampire. We have a busy day tomorrow.”

  Wanda slipped off into the kitchen, leaving Nina to seek a quiet moment to gather her thoughts before she sought solace in a dreamless sleep, too.

  As Wanda’s eyes scanned Sam’s steel kitchen countertops and his painted black oak cabinets, she slid to a breakfast barstool and closed her eyes, her fear finally catching up with her after the adrenaline of the day.

  For all her soothing words, for all her reassuring glances, for all the confidence she displayed in front of everyone else, she was terrified. Terrified they wouldn’t be able to figure out how to keep Sam and Phoebe from ending up like that woman had. In these past years since she’d been turned, she’d seen things that would leave most in need of lifetime therapy. Yet, she’d summoned the courage and the strength to survive.

  But this. The possibility that someone was using humans for sport until they got the experiment right? It was unspeakable.

  The well of tears that threatened, yet never fell, blurred her vision. She let her head fall to her folded arms on the counter and allowed the silence of Sam’s apartment to seep into her pores while she sent out a prayer to the universe.

  Jesus.

  Dear, sweet baby Jesus.

  This time, OOPS just might have bitten off more than they could chew.

  CHAPTER

  7

  “So like we practiced, right, Sammy?” Nina asked, the harsh, early November wind blowing the last of the fallen leaves around their feet.

  Sam gazed up at the glass and black steel of O-Tech’s building. They’d huddled at the south corner where Sam claimed a cafeteria lay on the other side with no security guards to interfere. It was the safest place for him to make his wall-walking debut. “Which time is tha
t, Nina? Do you mean the time I couldn’t get my entire head through the wall? Or the time I actually managed to make it through the wall and tripped on my own feet, fell, and broke not one, but two standing lamps and a perfectly good bookcase?”

  Phoebe tugged at her black mask, adjusting the hole at her mouth. The fabric was sticking to the peachy lip gloss she’d so carefully put on while she told herself it wasn’t for Sam. She just wanted to be pretty for her first major crime spree. Raising her hand in front of Nina’s face, she jumped up and down.

  “Christ. What, Barbie?”

  “So, just a thought. And I’m merely thinking out loud here, but I feel this shouldn’t go unmentioned.”

  “What’s the fucking problem now, Phoebe? Did you only brush your hair for ninety-nine strokes before we left and you need a redo? Or do you have a chipped nail and we need to go back to Sam’s so you can fix it? Wait. I know. Those black jeans make your ass look too big and you want everything to be just right when you commit your first fucking felony?” she mocked in Valley girl speak.

  “Oh, no. I gave my hair an extra twenty strokes just to be safe, and you know my ass looks cute in these, Nina.” Phoebe gave her backside a light slap. “It just hurts too much for you to say so. Anyway, I’m good to go on those fronts.”

  “You’re funny. So much goddamn funny it hurts,” Nina snarled, lifting her mask from her face in aggravation. Her deep dark eyes glittered in anger. Not an uncommon event where Phoebe was concerned. “So speak. Get to the point.”

  Her hands went to her hips where a walkie-talkie and, of all things, a pocketknife were attached to a belt around her waist. “When I tried to teleport today, and I swear on my unlife, I was thinking about Sam’s bathroom. Swear it. Wouldn’t it be cause for concern that instead of being surrounded by the warm glow of Sam’s clay- and beige-colored porcelain and tile, I ended up in the bath fixtures aisle of Home Depot? I don’t want to sound any alarms or anything, but that’s a problem,” she hissed, her every nerve raw and fragile. This was nuts.

  Last night, it had appeared the only solution.

  Tonight, she was sure it would just be easier to steal the Hope Diamond and turn it into a friendship bracelet.

  Sam yanked his mask off, too, his luscious lips a thin line of grim. “Look, Phoebe, if you don’t think you can pull this off, I’ll do the wall thing and find a way to let you both in. We just thought it would be easier if we both managed to get inside, then let Nina get to a window we can open without having to break it. You know, no alarms, no SWAT team? Less attention drawn to the outside of the building is better.”

  “Not to mention,” Nina groused, “it’ll save me a chiropractic bill not having to haul your big ol’ badonkadonk on my poor back if we end up having to hit a window two stories up because you can’t get this asshattery power you have working.”

  Phoebe clenched her fists at her side, digging her nails into her hands. Do not engage, Phoebe. Be the bigger person, Phoebe. This had been her mantra since they’d awakened and began practicing her pathetically lacking teleportation skills.

  That practice had led them to discover that Sam sucked at teleportation, and she’d done an equally dismal job at walking through a wall. Though, via her magically mystical vampiric wonders, the knot on her head and her blackened eye had healed in seconds.

  Since dusk, like they were in some kind of vampire boot camp, Nina had barked orders and criticized her for having to chase Phoebe all over Manhattan because she just couldn’t get teleportation right. Yet, even when Sam failed just as miserably as she did, Nina did nothing but encourage him with phrases like, “Fucking good try, Gigantor!” and the ever-popular, “Push, dumb ass! You know you can!”

  At this point, after not one but five unsuccessful attempts to land in the right place via her vampire mind-meld, she was, as Marty had dubbed it, ass-fried. Yet, somehow, she’d curbed her temper. But her delicate lifeline was fraying as though it were being rubbed against something sharp with every snarky word her sister shot at her.

  Between clenched teeth, she fought a snarl when addressing Nina. “Look, all I’m saying is, if I end up, say, on the Verrazano Bridge, I’ll be no good to you, and if we hope to cover as much ground as O-Tech has by the plans we virtually stole from the inspector’s office under cover of night, we don’t need me screwing this up. All night long you bitched about how time was of the essence. In and out, Cat Burglar Barbie, you said. I’m just trying to get it right. Jesus. So cut me a break, Vampire Master, okay?”

  Sam let his head bow for a moment, seeking patience, a signal she’d become familiar with when he’d been practicing his wall walking. “Ladies? Why don’t we just give this a whirl and see what’s what? The worst that happens is we don’t get inside and we have to find another way.”

  Nina shook her head. “No. The worst is the two of you end up ashes we have to dump in that fancy fucking chiminea Wanda has in her backyard. That’s the worst. So you’d better get it right.”

  Sam wrapped an arm around Nina’s shoulder and pulled her hard to him. “You’re so much awesome. All supportive and encouraging. I’m aglow with your love.”

  Nina flicked his shoulder, then pointed to the steel on the side of the building. “Wall. Walk. Now.”

  Phoebe’s stomach sank. It was now or never.

  Sam placed his shoulder against the building in preparation, bracing himself.

  “Wait!” Phoebe all but shouted.

  Sam and Nina gave her a pointed look while the wind whistled about them and time ticked away.

  “What’s my handle again?” Jesus. She didn’t want to forget what name she was supposed to use when they corresponded on the walkie-talkies.

  “Little Mouth,” Sam reminded her. “You know, so on the off chance anyone is catching our frequency they won’t have our actual names?”

  Oh, right. Phoebe rolled her eyes. Not only because she’d been dubbed Little Mouth to Nina’s Big, but because Sam had thought of something so detailed like the possibility another entity could listen in on their conversation on a walkie-talkie.

  It was very Alias. Who used walkie-talkies anymore anyway? But he was a scientist. Maybe he’d done all sorts of factoring and statistics and come up with a probability she wasn’t smart enough to consider. “Right. Little Mouth.”

  Dear God in heaven, she sent up a silent prayer. Of all the days to not have a bout with my forgetfulness, now would be the shiniest one. Amen.

  “And I’m Gigantor,” Sam said with an encouraging smile before he pulled his mask back down over his face.

  “And why are we using walkie-talkies again? What if someone inside O-Tech hears us talking?” she fretted, wrapping her arms around her waist in a protective gesture.

  “Because you said you suck at texting, nimrod, and we need a way to communicate when we split up to spread out this search,” Nina grated, planting her hands on her hips.

  Right. She did suck at texting. She always jumbled those crazy acronyms when she was in a rush, and her fingers never seemed to hit the right keys. AutoCorrect was not her friend, and if she was nervous, it would do them no service if she was LOLing when she should be OMGing. Thus, they’d decided on a lesser, if not totally outdated form of technology.

  “The volume’s on low, Phoebe, remember? The human ear won’t be able to hear us. You know, vampire hearing?” Sam said, gentle and calm.

  Phoebe nodded, her throat tight. “And what was it about all those security cameras again?”

  Nina bent at the waist, placing her hands on her thighs before she looked up at Phoebe. “No one can see you on them because, unlike your reflection, the one I know you’re thanking Vidal Sassoon you can still whip all that hair around in, you don’t show up in pictures. Remember, that’s why we took your picture? To check and see? It wasn’t just to fucking see if you really do have supermodel skills, Phoebe. Now, please. For the love of all that’s fucking holy, shut up and let’s get moving. It’s already midnight, and we’ve got a lot of ground
to cover.”

  “So you ready?” Sam asked, ignoring Nina’s urgent demand, his eyes focused on Phoebe.

  Phoebe didn’t trust herself to speak, so instead, she simply nodded.

  Sam nodded curtly, then leaned back against the steel, aesthetically cold and imposing, and gave a tentative nudge to the wall with his shoulder. To everyone’s relief, it disappeared inside the wall.

  Now, if they could just get the rest of him inside without him taking out whatever was behind the wall, it was on.

  Pulling her mask back over her face, Phoebe closed her eyes and thought of the image she’d seen on the plans for O-Tech’s cafeteria. She attempted to imagine the tables that would line the area, where she’d land if she made it inside, how Sam had taught her to tuck her body inward in case she crashed into something.

  Fear made her feet shuffle as her hand went to her neck. She tugged at the constrictive turtleneck and groaned. This would never work, and if they didn’t find out what was happening to them, she and Sam were going to die. And it would be on her because she couldn’t get this being a vampire right. She just needed a little more time. So no one would die.

  Die. Oh, fuck.

  “Listen to me, Phoebe,” Nina whispered inches from her ear, low, seductively comforting. “Just concentrate on Sam. See him in the cafeteria. Picture him in your mind. Do you see Sam?”

  Instantly, she was at ease. How odd when mostly Nina just made her want to spork her eyes out. But, yeah. She saw Sam. All hot ass and rippling muscles.

  And she was seeing him on some sheets in his big king-sized bed. Ohh.

  They were nice sheets, too. Egyptian cotton. Dark, delicious, smooth against your skin. Probably much like Sam would be. Double ohhh.