Undead and Unreturnable (4 page)
"There just hasn't been time to get all the details taken care of. I
have
been solving murders and dodging bloody coups," I bitched. "That's why I keep moving the date. There aren't enough hours in the day. Night."
Jessica didn't say anything. Thank God.
"Look!" I pointed. George was crocheting the new stitch she'd just showed him. "Wow, he's catching on."
"Next: the knit stitch."
"Can't you ever rest on your laurels? Let the guy make a blanket or something."
"And after that," she said confidentially, "we're going to start with reading and math."
"Oh, boy."
"He already knows how. He must. It's just a matter of reminding him."
"Yeah, that's what it's a matter of."
She ignored that. "So what else? Flowers? And then what? You've got the gown picked out."
"Yup. Picked it up last week. The nice thing about being dead is one fitting pretty much did the trick."
"Well, there you go. What else?"
"The tasting menu."
"How are you going to pull
that
off?"
"It's wine for them, juice and stuff for the rest of us." I heard myself say that and wondered:
Who did I think "us" was
?
"Oh. Good work. And?"
"The cake. Not for us." There was that word again! "But there will be some regular guys there. You, Marc, my folks."
"The Ant?"
"I'm inviting her."
"You are? Well, maybe she'll have a face-lift scheduled that day."
I perked up. "Maybe. You think? Anyway. I'm leaning toward chocolate with raspberry
ganache
filling, topped with chocolate-covered strawberries. And, you know, ivory basket-weave fondant icing."
"Stop, you're making me hungry."
"And I've been trying to get Sinclair to go tux shopping."
"Why? He's got a million of them."
"Yeah, but this is
the
tux. The mother of all tuxes. The wedding day tux. He needs something special."
"Maybe in a nice powder blue," she suggested.
I laughed. "Or canary yellow. Can you imagine? Wouldn't he just die?"
"Again. Actually, he seems pretty close to it. He, uh, doesn't seem all that interested in the details. I mean, more than most guys. Which is weird, given his cool
metrosexualness
."
I hadn't heard that exact term (which had been
sooo
trendy the year before but was now woefully overused) applied to Sinclair, but I only had to mull it over for half a second before I realized she was right. He had a big dick, adored women, didn't mind kicking the shit out of bad guys, insisted on redecorating all the parlors, was a
foodie
and a tea snob. Ah, the love of my life. Great in bed and would only drink tea from leaves, not bags.
Whodathunkit
.
I sat down on one of the chairs and watched George busily crochet. Speaking of
metrosexuals
. He'd already done four inches across.
"You know how it is. Sinclair's like a tick, he gets so stubborn. 'We're married by vampire law, a ceremony is redundant,' blah-blah."
"That's tough," she said sympathetically. She was digging around in her craft bag and tossing more skeins of yarn to George. A wool rainbow flew through the air: red, blue, yellow, purple. "But you know it's not a question of love. You know that, right?"
"I guess…"
"Come on, Bets. You guys got that cleared up at
Halloweentime
. He worships you. He'd do anything for you. He's
done
anything for you. It's not his fault he's considered you guys to be married for the last eight months."
"
Mmm
. Did you know, our wedding is going to be the first vampire monarch wedding in the history of dead people?"
"Something for the diary. Vampire
monarch
wedding?"
"Umm. Because vampires get married now and again. And a vampire/human couple will get married—like Andrea and Daniel. But I guess since the Book of the Dead claims we're already married, it's never actually been done."
"So?"
"Exactly," I said firmly. "Exactly! Who gives a damn if it's never been done? No reason not to do it. But I'm not taking his name."
Jessica burst out laughing. "I just realized. If you did, you'd be Sink Lair."
"Don't even tell me."
"Better not tell
him
. He's kind of a traditionalist."
Exactly what had been worrying me lately.
One of the ghosts came to bug me while I was updating my diary. I don't know why I bothered. I'd write full steam for about a week and then totally lose interest. My closet was full of ninety journals that were only used through the first fifteen pages.
Marc had just left after begging me, once again, to have a carrot cake instead of chocolate. The maniac. We exchanged cross words and then he huffed out. Jessica was asleep. (It was two A.M.) Tina was out on the town, probably feeding. (I was careful not to ask.) Sinclair was somewhere in the house.
And the ghost was standing in front of my closet with her back to me, bent forward like a butler bowing from the waist, her head stuck through the door. I don't even know why I turned around. She'd been as noisy as a dead battery. I just did. And there she was.
I sat there for a moment and took a steadying breath, ignoring the instant dizziness. This happened occasionally. Part of the queen thing. The first time I'd been scared shitless. Ironically, I was terrified of dead things.
I wasn't used to it, exactly, but at least these days I didn't go tearing out of the room to cringe in the driveway.
"Um," I said.
She pulled her head out and looked at me, amazed. "You have a
lot
of shoes."
"Thanks."
"More than Payless."
I concealed a shudder. "Thanks." We stared at each other. She was a small strawberry blonde, about five foot nothing, with her hair pulled up in an I-Dream-of-Jeannie ponytail. She was blue-eyed and had lots of caramel-colored freckles all over her face and hands. She was wearing beat-up blue jeans and a booger-colored turtleneck. Battered black flats; no socks. Freckles on the tops of her feet, too.
"I'm, ah, sorry to bother you. But I think I—I think I might be dead."
"I'm really sorry to have to tell you this," I replied, "but you are."
She sat down on my floor and cried for about ten minutes. I didn't know what to say or do. I couldn't leave, though that was my first impulse—to give her some privacy. But I was afraid she'd take it the wrong way.
I couldn't touch her—my hands went right through ghosts, and it was horrible. Like plunging your limbs into an ice bath. So a supportive pat or hug was out of the question. "There, there" seemed unbelievably lame. So did going back to my journal. So I just stayed in my desk chair and watched her and waited.
After a while, she said, "Sorry."
"You're totally entitled."
"I knew, you know. I just—hoped I was wrong. But nobody—you're the only one—nobody can see me. The
EMTs
couldn't see me, and the guys in the morgue, and my boyfriend."
"How did you know to come here?"
"I—I don't know."
"Okay."
Dammit
! If the ghosts knew, nobody was telling. I didn't know if there was a sign outside my house ("She sees dead people") that only the dead could see, or what. Not that it made much difference. But I was curious.
She sighed. "I was hoping you could do me a favor."
"Sure," I said at once. I knew from experience that it was just easier (and quicker) to give them what they wanted. Otherwise, they hung around and talked to me at the most awkward moments. Ever been interrupted by a ghost while you're washing your hair? Or going down on your fiancé? Awkward. "What can I do for you?"
"Well, the last thing I remember—the last time anybody else could see me—I had just run out of our apartment building. Mine and my boyfriend's. We had this big wicked fight because he thought I was cheating on him, but I swear I wasn't!"
"Okay."
"And if you could just—go see him? And tell him? I only had dinner with the guy twice. I wasn't going to do anything. It's Denny I love. I'm so mad I didn't realize that before running out in front of the—anyway. I hate the thought—I
hate
the thought—of Denny thinking to the end of his days that the last thing I did was cheat on him. I mean, I can't sleep for worrying about it." She paused. "Not that I could anyway. I think. But it's really bothering me. It—it really is."
"I'll be glad to go see him. I'll do it first thing tomorrow night."
"I live in
"No problem at all. It's done."
"Thank you so m—" Then she looked extremely surprised and popped out of sight. This was also expected. It was like whenever they got whatever-it-was off their chests, they could go to… wherever.
Poor thing. I was getting all kinds. At least she didn't feel bad about stealing or a dead mom or criminal assault or something awful like that.
I went back to my journal and realized she'd never told me her name—and I'd never bothered to ask. This bothered me a lot… was I getting jaded? Well, obviously I was, but how bad?
Dammit
.
The next night, I pulled back into my driveway after going about my little errand. The boyfriend—Denny—had been tearfully receptive to my news. That was the weirdest part of all the ghost stuff… not only did the ghosts feel better after they told me what they wanted, but whomever I told also felt better. Believed me, unquestioningly. None of that
Whoopi
Goldberg skepticism in
Ghost
. No, it was always, "Thank you so much, thank God you told me, now I can get on with my life, are you sure you don't want any coffee?" Very strange. But better than the alternative, I figured.
There was a shiny red Dodge Ram pickup in the driveway, parked crookedly, one tire actually in the grass. I had no idea who the hell it was—no one I knew drove a red truck—and wondered if I wanted to go in.
See, things started out innocently enough—a visitor, a comment, finding out a new vampire rule—and the next thing I know, I'm up to my tits in undead politics, or attempted revolutions, or dead bodies.