Undead and Unpopular (20 page)

I closed the big front door and leaned on it. Right. BabyJon given the bootie: check. Sinclair off with Tina somewhere: check. No pop-ins that I knew of: check. Marc at work: check. Toni and Garrett prowling around outside, him to eat and her for kicks: check (I made a mental note to make sure those two were only fucking with bad guys). Cathie-the-ghost nowhere in evidence: check.

Jessica knitting in her room: check.

She had a largish room on the second floor, the one with the blue and gold wallpaper and all the trim and old furniture in blond wood, as if the Scandinavian carpenters who built this mansion so long ago were thinking of their wives' hair when they designed and built it.

I rapped on the half-closed door and went in at her, "C'mon in."

Crocheting in bed was a new thing. Usually she brought her yarn bag into the kitchen with us, or went into the basement with Garrett, or took it to a craft class. But Marc had explained that she got tired earlier, and took longer to get going when she got up.

"Got a minute?" I asked.

"Uh-huh."

"I can't tell where the one on the bed is, and the one you're working on starts," I joked. It was true, though: she was lying on a navy crocheted coverlet, and crocheting another one, this one red.

"Yeah, well, you're an idiot." She grinned.

"Uh-huh." I barely heard the insult. I started to sit on the bed, then got up and sort of prowled around the foot of it for a moment. "Listen, Jess, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. I mean, a
lot
."

"Do you need some Advil?"

"This is serious!" I almost shouted at her. "Listen—I can't believe I'm even talking to you about this—"

"No," she said.

"What?"

"No. You can't bite me. You can't turn me into a vampire. I won't allow it."

My oft-rehearsed speech disappeared in a whirl of relief and indignation. "What? How did you know? Oh, those big-mouthed idiots!"

"Yes, that's how I'd describe Tina and Sinclair. Come on, Betsy. Nobody had to tell me. It was so obvious—not only are you having private conversations with experienced vampires, but frankly, every time you look at me it's like a dog looking at a raw steak."

"Huh."

"Yeah."

"Listen, I'm sorry about the looks, but I've done some research, and the risks—"

"Are a lot higher if you bite me, than if I treat my cancer."

I opened my mouth.

"Because pretty it up how you want, you're still killing me, right?"

I closed my mouth and she went on, in a nice but totally firm way. "Even if I come back after. And if I
do
come back after, there's no guarantee I'll be me, right? In fact, it sounds like for at least the first few years, I'll be a mindless blood-sucking automaton. No thank you."

"Anything sounds bad when you put 'mindless' and 'sucking' in front of it." I flopped down on the end of her bed. "Jeez, days I've been working up to this, grilling everybody, screwing up the courage to talk to you about it, and you're all, 'yeah, I knew what you were going to say, and by the way, no.' "

"It's not my fault it's pathetically easy to read your minuscule mind."

I gave her a look. "I guess this is the part where I'm all 'you
will
be mine, O yes' and you're all 'eeeek, unhand me, I'd rather die than join in your unholy crusade.'"

"No, that was last winter when you wanted me to go Christmas shopping in early October."

"Christmas shopping in October is just efficient."

"Trust you"—she sneered—"to get
grotesque
and
efficient
mixed up."

"Why do I want to save you and keep you around for eternity again?"

She shrugged. "Beats me."

I looked at the ceiling, because I didn't want to look at her. I didn't want to try to figure out if her color was off, if she'd lost weight. "Jessica, this thing might kill you."

"So your response is… to kill me?"

"It's a chance for some kind of life. A life where your best friend is the queen. That's got to be worth something."

She nudged my shoulder with a toe. "You're glossing over all the things that could go wrong."

"Well, so are you!"

"There's time. Time to fight this. I'm sorry—I can see it's been a little on the agonizing side for you. But typical Betsy—you assumed this was something
you
had to decide. It's my life, and my death, and I'm choosing to stand and fight." She smiled. "Besides, if you turn me into a vampire, I don't think we can hide that from Nick. And then he'll know for sure!"

"The least of my problems," I said glumly. Then I said, "You haven't told him yet?"

"I'm saving it," she said, suddenly glum, too, "for our two-month-aversary."

What a phenomenally bad idea. Also, none of my business. "If that's how you feel…"

"That's entirely, exactly how I feel. So no sneaking around and leaping out at me from the shadows to try and turn me, okay?" She picked up her afghan, and got back to work.

Good example for all of us.

"Okay," I said, getting up and walking toward the door, "but if you change your mind and decide you want to be foully murdered—"

"I'll run up to your room first thing," she promised.

Mollified, I left.

I didn't get far.

"Hey," Cathie said, walking through the wall at the top of the stairs.

"Hey."

"I wasn't eavesdropping," she began defensively.

I groaned.

"Well, I wasn't. I was coming to get you."

"Why?"

She shrugged. "No ghosts around to talk to right now. Which leaves you. Hey, I'm not happy about it, either."

"So when you weren't eavesdropping, what didn't you overhear?"

"That you aren't going to turn Jessica in to a vampire. Good call, by the way. Which reminds me, are you ever going to do anything about the zombie in the attic?"

"Are you ever going to drop the joke? I mean, I know you guys all know I'm scared of zombies, but this is just—"

"Betsy, I'm serious. There's a zombie in the attic."

I swallowed my irritation. Cathie had had a hard life. Or death, rather. She was lonely. She was bitchy. I was the only person she could bug. Talk to, rather.

"It's not funny anymore," I said, as nicely as I could. "And it never really was. So can you please drop it now?"

"Come up to the attic and see."

Aha! The surprise party. It was on me at last, like a starving wolf in the moonlight. Fine, I'd play along.

"Okayyyyy, I'll just pop up into the attic to check on the zombie." I looked around. We were at the top of the stairs; there were closed doors on both sides of the hall. "Uh, where
is
the attic?"

"Come on." She floated off.

"Gee, I hope nobody jumps out at me or anything. Certainly not with the new Prada strappy sandals in ice blue…"

Cathie shook her head. "Oh, honey. If I wasn't so bored I'd never do this to you. But I am. And so I am."

She gestured to the door at the end of the south hall. I opened it and beheld a large, spiderwebby staircase. The stairs were painted white, and in serious need of a touch-up.

"Okayyyyy… I'm coming up the stairs… here I come… suspecting nothing…"

There were light switches at the top of the stairs, which was good, because even though I could see in the dark pretty well, the unrelieved gloom of the attic was a little unnerving. I couldn't even hear anybody breathing. Maybe they were all holding their breath. My live friends, that is.

Like any attic, it was filled with generations of accumulated crap. Dust covered everything: broken pictures, beat-up desks, sofas with the stuffing popping out of the cushions. It appeared to run the length of the house, which meant it was ginormous.

Out of force of habit, I put my hand up to my nose and mouth, then remembered I never sneezed—unless something threw holy water in my face, anyway.

I took a few steps forward and heard a scuttling from behind a scratched wardrobe missing a door. Ugh! Mice. Please not rats. Just little harmless field mice who had decided to stay in the mansion for the winter. I didn't mind mice at all, but rats…

And what was that other smell? A layer of rot above the dust. Had someone, ugh, left their lunch up here or something? Fine place for a turkey sandwich.

Cathie pointed. "He's right over there."

"Oh he is, eh?" What a crummy place for a birthday party. But I had to admit, I would never have snooped up here for presents. "Well, he'd better watch out, because here I come."

I marched a good fifteen feet and shoved the wardrobe—which was huge, much taller than I was—out of the way. "Surpri—what the… ?"

At first I was genuinely puzzled. It was like my brain couldn't process what it was seeing. I'd expected: banners, presents, a group of my friends and family huddled, ready to leap up and yell "Surprise."

What I got: a hunched figure, wearing rotted clothes—everything was the color of mud. Slumped shoulders; hair the same color as the clothes. And that
smell
. God, how could the others stand it? Surely even the live people could smell it.