Dead Over Heels (3 page)

“It’s
not
Sinclair and go away,” I snapped, a little too forcefully, as all the expression fell out of his eyes and he spun jerkily around, hit the Exit door, and disappeared.

“Great, he’s probably going to swan into the Hudson,” Jessica said disapprovingly.

“The least of my problems,” I snarled back, pretending I didn’t feel hugely guilty. “Are you saying Nick thought coming to New York was a fine plan?”

“Well . . .”

I got it. “Ah. ‘Hey, Nick, I’ve got a great idea for a way to mess with your archenemies . . . how about we beat them to their hotel and tag along on their honeymoon?’”

Jessica spread her hands and grinned the grin I could never resist. I ground my teeth in a vain attempt to resist. “He
did
smile. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile when you or Sinclair’s names have come up. What could I do?”

The door opened again and Sinclair’s head popped out, which was as startling as it sounds. “Where did the bellboy go?”

“Bellman,” I said helpfully.

“I’ve got twenty pairs of shoes in here and I don’t know what you”—his eyes narrowed as he took in Jessica’s grin—“I know that look. You’re giving in, aren’t you?”

“It’s not like they’re going to be sharing the room,” I began, but my husband cut me off by shutting our door.

Great
.

Jessica coughed. “Sorry,” she almost whispered.

D
inner was, um, an awkward affair. Nick was morbidly cheerful because he knew he was fucking with us, Jessica was trying to play peacemaker, I was as tense as a boiled cat, and Sinclair was icier than usual.

“Can I tempt you with the dessert specials?” our waiter asked, gliding by for the fiftieth time. He seemed to find us fascinating, and no wonder—we were giving off enough tension to light up the entire island of Manhattan.

“Sure,” Nick said, grinning. He and Jessica had been the only ones to eat, of course, while Sinclair drank glass after glass of Cabernet and I worked my way through four peach daiquiris. “Run ’em by us.”

“Well, we have a lovely crème brûlée—”

As opposed to a disgusting crème brûlée.

“—a flourless chocolate cake with mint hazelnut filling, a vanilla bean gelato, a peach tartin, and a miniature root beer float served in an espresso cup.”

I burst out laughing.

“Careful, Minnesota,” Jessica murmured, looking down at her napkin. “The straw in your hair is showing.”

“I’ll have the crème brûlée,” Nick announced. “Money is no object—
he’s
paying.” Jerking a thumb in my husband’s direction.

“Can I have the gelato except served as a milk shake?” I asked, when steel pincers clamped down on my forearm and I yelped.

“We are not lingering over this table.”

“O-
kay
, can I have my arm back?”

“Mrs. Sinclair, do you want to press charges for spousal abuse?”

“Don’t call me that, Nick, you rotten bastard, and I do not. I’ll take that gelato to go,” I added to the waiter, who was unabashedly goggling. And I’d always heard nothing fazed New York waiters.

“We’ll take it in our room,” Sinclair said shortly, standing. “Along with another bottle of the Cabernet. Charge the dinner to our room as well. Jessica. Detective Berry. Good evening.”

And with that, I was unceremoniously hauled out of one of the toniest dining rooms in Manhattan. I would have given Sinclair a kick to the shins, except I caught a glimpse of Nick’s nasty grin and decided I was more pissed at him than my husband.

O
ur door had barely snicked shut when Sinclair started in. “This is intolerable and I will not—”

I decided to distract him the best way I knew how. I jumped on him, wrapping my arms around his neck and my ankles around his back. I pressed my mouth to his and licked his teeth. The alternative was engaging him in a lively discussion about that day’s
Wall Street Journal
.

“Do not think,” my husband gasped, as we staggered around the room together, knocking over lamps and pictures and such, “I am unaware of your motivation.”

“Shut up and fuck me.”

“Oh, I will. I just wanted you to understand I know what you’re up to.”

“Who cares? It’s our honeymoon. Now boink!”

He snickered into my mouth. It always slew him when I used the
B
word.

“And stop laughing at me!”

“At once, my wife.”

“You liar,” I said, swallowing a giggle of my own.

He tugged at my clothes, and I tugged at his, and we got about two thirds naked and decided that was plenty. Then he was lowering me to the floor.

I couldn’t stop kissing him; his mouth was original sin, and the wine had made his breath sweet and spicy, like the peach tartin I hadn’t ordered. I couldn’t blame him for rushing us out of there but I sure wish I’d been able to order dessert—
argh, focus, Betsy!

Let’s see, what’s he doing? Oh, yes!
We were more or less naked and I could feel his hands on my inner thighs, spreading my legs apart, could feel his sharp teeth on my tongue.

He entered me and I rose to meet him, pulling his shoulders, pulling him as close as I could. His hands were buried in my hair, pulling, stroking

I scrabbled to get even closer, bracing my legs against the wall

He stopped. And I was so surprised I barely noticed. “What’s wrong?”

“I—” I was looking right at it and I still couldn’t believe it. “I stuck my shoe in the wall!”

Carefully, he looked over his shoulder. My left leg was in the air (as was my right), but when I’d shifted to get better leverage, my super vampire strength had plunged the heel of my sandal right through the wall, where it stuck fast.

Sinclair looked back at me.

I tried to think of what to say. Stupid vampire strength! “I-I—”

Sinclair burst out laughing. I started to laugh, too, though I was slapping his shoulders and saying, “Stop it! Stop it! It’s not funny! I can’t get down! Help me, you asshat!” and in the end we left the shoe where it was, stuck about four feet up in the wall.

W
e slept until sundown, and woke to a message from Jessica inviting us to the joint around the corner for dinner—her treat. Of course, since we couldn’t eat solid food, we were cheap dates, but still. The offer was out there.

We debated it. “This is our honeymoon. It is time for you and I to spend alone.”

“In a city of fifty million people?”

“Eighteen million,” he said dryly. “All of whom are strangers.”

I couldn’t believe I was in the position of defending Jessica and Nick tagging along on our honeymoon. “Yeah, but think of Jessica’s problem.”

“I’m thinking,” he said, “of my own.”

“Yeah, yeah, but come on. Nick hates us, and she sees this as a chance for him to get over that.”

“So we can all be one big happy family.”

“Well. Yeah.” We sort of were, usually . . . when we weren’t in New York, a bunch of us lived in the same house in St. Paul. More or less happily. So it was really bugging me that Nick wasn’t going along with the “come on, get happy” plan. I mean, it was bugging me now that Jessica had reminded me of the problem. “Exactly. Think of the position Jessica’s in . . . if we don’t fix this, she’ll have to pick between me—I mean, us—and him.”

“So?”

“Heartless bastard!” I cried, pounding on his (bare, yum!) chest with my fist.

“Jessica is a beautiful, intelligent, wealthy woman. She will have no trouble finding another boyfriend.”

This just went to show how fucking little Sinclair knew about women in general and my friend in particular.

“She doesn’t want another boyfriend, she wants Nick.”

Sinclair sniffed.

“And you have to admit, this is sort of all our fault.”

“We did what was necessary,” he said with the cool arrogance of someone who’d been walking around on the planet for more than sixty years, “and would do it again. That doesn’t mean we have to share every meal with them while we’re honeymooning.”

“Not every meal,” I compromised.

He rolled his eyes and slipped on a shirt. I fought the urge to slip it back off. “As you wish,” he said. “Not every meal.”

“Yay! I mean, thanks.”

He grunted.

“I’ll call Jess.”

He didn’t bother with a grunt this time. I whipped out my phone and texted, “Dinner OK! See you at 8?”

A few seconds later my phone chirped at me. “8, OK!”

“We’re on.”

“Oh, splendid.”

“Come on, it’ll be—”
Fun
, I had been about to say, which would only have been the biggest lie since “This won’t hurt a bit.” “Incredibly awkward and weird, but we can skip dessert again.”

“Ah.” He smiled at last and stepped into his boxer shorts . . . unfortunately. “A heroic sacrifice on your part, so I will say no more.”

“Nobody loves a wiseass.”

“Not true at all, my wife.”

I
t was, if possible, even worse than the evening before. Jessica was strained and smiled too widely, Sinclair had nothing at all to say, and Nick kept making needling remarks about our Revolting Army of the Undead.

I kept ordering daiquiris.

At least the waiter was nice, though he picked up on the tension and came over only when one of us obviously needed a refill or, in Jessica’s case, more fries. I watched enviously as she plowed through a burger and fries and Nick chewed up a steak and a twice-baked potato. God, I missed solid food.

Finally, Nick pushed it too far with, “What’s the matter, Vampire King? Am I raining on your parade? Tough to slip off and snack on civilians with a cop on your trail?” There was a muffled thump, and I knew Jessica had smashed her giant size-nine foot onto Nick’s boot. Yee-ouch.

“So, anyway,” I said, “no dessert for us, but thanks anyway.”

“Once again you misunderstand my motivation, Detective Berry. If I seem terse it’s not because you are intruding where you are obviously not welcome.”

Oh, ouch, here we go.

“It’s because at least half the staff of our hotel, and at least a third of the guests, are vampires.”

I froze. Jessica froze. Nick froze. Sinclair drained his Merlot.

“Oh, fuck me,” Nick said in a watery voice I’d never heard before. And I had a flash—most of Nick’s fury was really fear.

“We’re not in any danger,” Jessica said firmly, and I could have hugged her. She had about nine yards of guts, and it had nothing to do with being rich. She was just brave. Brave and ballsy and loyal and if she wanted to tag along on my honeymoon to clear up some personal shit, was I going to get in her way? After she
hugged
me when I came back from the dead?

“They’re the king and queen of the vampires,” she was telling Nick, who had turned as cheesy-pale as the beer he wasn’t drinking. “None of them will touch us without their say-so. Although you’re acting like such a prick, they just might sic one or two of them on us for the hell of it.”

I stifled the impulse to cheer. Also, to rip Sinclair a new one for not mentioning that little factoid. “So when you planned our honeymoon, you picked Vampire Central?”

“Of course.” He had the audacity to look surprised. “Where else would I choose? The staff can accommodate anything we wish. The Grange was a natural choice. Of course”—he gave Nick a heavy-lidded look—“I wasn’t expecting company.”

“
How
many of the staff?” Nick asked in a voice that sounded like he was being strangled. “And which ones?”

“That,” my husband replied, “I will not tell you.”

Jessica and I looked at the men, then at each other. It was never much fun to watch a pissing contest, especially when the odds were so firmly stacked in one person’s corner.

After a long, awful moment I said, “Jessica’s right, Nick. We’d never let them hurt you.”

“
You
didn’t even know about them, you stupid bitch!”

“Nick!” Jessica gasped.

Sinclair’s fist slammed on the table, which obligingly cracked. “Do not speak to my wife like that
ever again
.”

“It’s okay, don’t fight, I’ve been called worse,
please
don’t fight,” I begged. “Let’s just get the check and get out of here, okay? Oh, and, um, pay for the table.”

“Go back to Vampire Central?” Nick cried, aghast.

“Well, there’s a Hilton down the block.”

“Hilton,” Sinclair sneered. “Enjoy.”

“What’ve you got against the Hilton corporation?” I cried. “Besides them, you know, spawning Paris and all.”

“Isn’t that more than enough?”

“
I’ve
had more than enough,” Jessica snapped.

“Check, please!”

W
e’d barely gotten down the block when we saw the flashing lights and crowd. “Uh-oh,” Nick said. “Crime scene.”

“The perfect end to a perfect evening,” Sinclair muttered.

“You guys stay here. I’m gonna check it out.”

“You’re a little out of your jurisdiction!” I called after him. “Like, by two thousand miles!”

“Fifteen hundred,” Sinclair and Jessica said in unison.

“You know, now that he’s gone, how much longer are you going to let him torture us?”

“I’m sorry,” Jessica said at once. “I guess this is turning out to be a pretty crummy idea. I just thought—I don’t know what I thought.” She cleared her throat. “You, uh,
will
mention to the staff not to snack on us, right?”