Honeymoon of the Dead (5 page)

The temperature in the room was a bit on the chilly side and I considered snuggling under the blankets, only they seemed so fancy and nice. I didn’t want to mess them up. I rubbed my shoulders instead.

“I’ve never spent much time here,” Sebastian admitted. “Usually just passed through.”

“You’re a million years old and you’ve never been in the Twin Cities?” I was incredulous. After all, I’d lived here—well, over in the Seward neighborhood in Minneapolis—for nearly four years. I stood up, tossing the pillow back against the headboard.

“I’m only a thousand years old,” Sebastian said a bit grumpily.

I resisted the urge to tell him that at his age it was only a matter of degree. After all, the fact that he kept correcting my exaggerations made me realize just how out of sorts he really felt. Nerds, apparently, have been the same since the dawn of time. As hard as it was to believe, my hottie vampire husband had a bit of geek in him. Back in his day, he had been an alchemist, which is a kind of mystical chemist. In other words, a nerdy science type, and when Sebastian got irritable he was possessed by an overwhelming yet completely unconscious desire to be right about everything no matter how insignificant. Most days I found it charming.

Today, when we were both cranky? Not so much.

“The point is,” I said with a tight smile, “this is a pretty cool town. You should really see it.”

“Maybe we’ll have some time tomorrow. We could take a late flight.” He seemed much less interested in the prospect than I was. “What about Fonn? Do you think she’s still out there?”

“I do. You know what’s odd? No one else could see her.”

Sebastian, who had finished putting his clothes away, sat himself down on the office chair near the desk. He swiveled back and forth as he talked. “She must have been using magic. You can always see through that, thanks to Lilith.” He paused for a moment. He gave me a long, measuring look. I felt like I was under a microscope, and not in a good way. “And our bellhop, what did you say he was?”

“The Monkey King,” I said, trying not to sound too defensive.

Sebastian gave me a slow nod of his head. “Well, there are a lot of similarities between Jackie Chan and the Monkey King.”

“Be serious,” I said, perching myself on the edge of the desk. I folded my arms in front of my chest and gave him a mock serious pout.

“I’m sorry, darling,” he said, gently putting a hand on my knee. “I thought I was.”

I shrugged my knee out from under his touch, suddenly feeling frustrated. Despite my precaution, the protection spell clearly hadn’t worked. In a matter of hours, our lives had spiraled into Bizzaro land. I twisted and untwisted the hems of my sleeves with my fingers. I wished he’d tell me what was on his mind, instead of brooding. “Why aren’t you more grumpy with me? You should freak out more. Tell me I’m acting like a crazy woman. Yell at me for ruining our honeymoon.”

“How about I buy us dinner and drinks downstairs instead?”

Is it any wonder I married this man?

 

 

The dining room, dubbed the Saint Paul Grill, was a
God-free zone at least. It made me feel a little bit better that Aphrodite didn’t introduce herself as our waitress, and Anubis wasn’t lounging near the fireplace.

In fact, the restaurant was mostly deserted, though that wasn’t much of a surprise given the early hour. It was only just after five o’clock.

We took a seat near the window to watch the snow and the downtown rush hour. Despite the overcast and darkening sky, I could see lights of Rice Park across the street. The park was no larger than a couple of city blocks. The trees, bare of their leaves and snow covered, were festooned in bright Christmas bulbs.

Floodlights illuminated the red brick and green copper roof of the castlelike Landmark Center on one end of the park. Just behind it, I could see an eighty-foot pine tree bejeweled in a colorful array of decorations. Despite the slushy snow, people in heavy, Arctic-worthy parkas, hats, scarves, boots, and mittens bustled to cars and city bus stops.

Once we’d ordered drinks and they’d been set on the white linen tablecloth within easy reach, Sebastian smiled. “Better?”

I took a long pull of the wine I’d ordered. “Much.”

A waitress in a crisp white shirt and black tie appeared and asked if we were ready to order. We had to wave her away for the moment.

I glanced up at Sebastian. His eyes focused on something far away, and his jaw worked like he was thinking deeply about something. I wanted to ask him what it was that bothered him, but, in all honesty, I was afraid it might be disappointment about the disaster that was our honeymoon. Even though Dominguez confirmed that there was ice on the wings, I still felt kind of foolish for acting so quickly on my magical vision. Sebastian had been so looking forward to this trip, as had I.

Running my finger along the edge of the glass, I sighed. Sipping wine, I glanced through the menu. I peeped over the top of it at Sebastian, wondering if he was waiting for me to say something. He seemed engrossed making his own meal choice.

My eyes scanned over entrees, but my brain stumbled at the prices. Who pays sixty-eight dollars for anything, much less a hunk of steak?

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“Just how sorry I am that we’re not in Vienna right now.”

“Please stop apologizing. We’ll work it out,” he said. “What is it you Minnesotans love to say? ‘Could be worse.’ ”

“True.” I laughed, imagining us sleeping in the airport waiting on a new plane or, worse, spattered on some highway.

The waitress came by again, so I absentmindedly ordered the walleye. Sebastian went for that sixty-some-dollar porterhouse. I gave him a little “Yikes!” glance as we returned the menus to the waiter. He seemed completely unfazed, however.

I was determined to try to turn this day around somehow, but my mind kept drawing blanks. The only safe subject that came into my mind was the weather, and I so did not want to be
that
married couple—you know the ones—staring at each other over dinner because they ran out of things to talk about twenty years ago. Yet we sat for a long time without a word. I started to fidget. Unrolling my linen napkin, I placed it in my lap expectantly. Then I moved my silverware around and thought about making a lame, joking reference to that scene in
Pretty Woman
when Julia Roberts learns to eat at a fancy restaurant. I decided that was too strained, too desperate to make a funny.

Sebastian, meanwhile, continued to stare out the window, lost in thoughts all his own.

“William is Pictish this week,” I offered finally, referring to my dear friend and co-worker who was infamous among our set for changing the flavor of his religion like some people change clothes.

“Hmm,” Sebastian murmured, seemingly more interested in watching the snowfall. “I thought that was an ethnicity.”

Having gotten any kind of response, I pushed on valiantly. “It’s also a kind of Scottish, nature-focused witchcraft. When we get back, he’s off to some kind of retreat in the Boundary Waters.”

“Cold,” Sebastian said with a gruff smile.

“He’s going with an experienced cold-weather camper. That ambulance driver he . . . I don’t know . . . dates?” That was the other thing William wasn’t entirely sure of. He mostly liked girls, but he lately had been having a sort of fling with a very fine-looking EMT named Jorge.

Our conversation had to be postponed when the waitress interrupted with food. She placed a steaming plate of pan-seared walleye with broccoli and garlic mashed potatoes in front of me. It was supposed to be the house specialty, and it smelled delicious.

Sebastian shrugged as he cut into a very bloody looking steak. “Shit.”

“What?” I peered at his plate. Sebastian, unlike most vampires, could eat whatever and whenever he wanted with no ill effects. He’d been made by magic, not blood. The ultimate self-made man . . . well, vamp. Was there something wrong with his food?

But Sebastian was looking over my shoulder. “You see that guy over there by the window?”

I was almost afraid to look. Would it be Eriskegal or Loki? As casually as possible, I turned to glance in the direction Sebastian had indicated. The guy did look familiar, but not because he was leading some celestial double life. It was the man that I’d noticed leaving the plane the same time we had. He was an athletically trim white guy in his midforties with mouse brown hair, almost memorable for his unremarkableness. He sat alone, watching the snow drift from silver gray skies. “I think he got off the plane with us,” I said. “Who is he?”

“My own personal stalker.”

“Your own personal stalker? Since when? And how come I’ve never heard of him?” I asked through tight lips, trying to stay mindful of the echoing properties of a mostly empty restaurant.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” Sebastian said with a grimace.

Actually, I did.

“How long has this guy been stalking us, er, you? Are we talking days? Months? Why have I never seen him? What does he want? Is he some kind of peeping tom/vampire groupie? What has he seen, you know, between us?” Putting my elbows rather indelicately on the table, I leaned in and whispered, “Anyway, haven’t you just, you know, eaten him?”

Sebastian laughed. “I haven’t, as you say, ‘eaten him,’ because—as you of all people know—bodies rarely stay buried.”

Unfortunately, I did have a bit of experience with skeletons in my closet resurfacing, as it were . . . uh, rather literally. Not terribly far from where we sat, in fact. In a lake inside a Minneapolis cemetery, Parrish and I had tried to hide the bodies of the Vatican assassins that Lilith killed in self-defense. A freak drought exposed them, and that was what had sent Special Agent Dominguez on my trail. I shivered at the memory.

This was really my first time back in the Cities since that night. I’d been so scared that I’d left in the middle of the night, abandoning everything but a few clothes and my cat. I wondered if that old apartment was still there and whatever happened to all my stuff.

With some effort, I shook my head to clear it. “Can we get back to talking about your stalker? What’s he after? Is he dangerous?”

Considering, Sebastian turned back to his plate and sawed off another hunk of meat. “His name is James . . . uh, something. He’s from the Illuminati Watchers; they follow me whenever I leave the country.”

I poked my potatoes with my fork skeptically. “Did you just say, ‘Illuminati’?”

 

 

 

 

 

Sebastian nodded and took a bite of steamed cauli
flower. He frowned at his food for a moment, and then said, “Yes, Illuminati.”

I raised my eyebrows but didn’t say anything. Was Sebastian trying to lighten the mood after bringing up the whole dead-resurfacing thing? He had to be joking, right?

“It’s not all that unreasonable, is it?” he asked, sounding somewhat hurt that I might not believe him. “I fit their profile. I have a ridiculous amount of money, a lot of overseas investments, property, gold, and, shall we say, a family history that extends over several centuries.”

Only, the “family” would be just his—oops,
our
—son, Mátyás, and himself. Yeah, okay, I could kind of see how he ended up on a conspiracy theorist’s list somewhere. “Can I be honest? I don’t really even know what the Illuminati is . . . or are, exactly. They have something to do with world domination, but after that . . . ?” I put my palms up and nearly flung a piece of winter squash on my fork across the room. “I thought they were . . . I don’t know, made up?”

“Well, these days the term
Illuminati
has gotten kind of muddled.” Sebastian returned his attention to cleaning up his plate. “Nowadays it can apply to any number of groups that people are convinced are attempting to control the political scene or establishing a certain world order. But it all started in Bavaria in the seventeen hundreds, the Age of Enlightenment.”

There was something in that faraway look in Sebastian’s eye that made me ask, “And you know this . . . because you read about it in a book?”

“No.” Sebastian sighed, setting his fork down. “I might have been a founding member,” he said almost so quickly I didn’t catch all of it. “Look, at the time, it was the Austro-Bulgarian Empire, okay? I had a vested interest.”

“Wait. Did you just say that the Illuminati started in Austria?”

“Really, it was Ingolstadt in Upper Bulgaria, but, for your purposes, yes, close enough.”

“And you wonder why they’ve been following you? They’ve probably been trailing you since seventeen whatever.” I couldn’t help but laugh a little. Then I wagged my finger at him with mock accusation. “And did you also say you started it?”