Undead and Unwary (19 page)

“Yeah, some of these stains are never coming out,” Marc muttered. “How would you even get dead spiders out of scrubs, anyway?”

“—and turned up nothing. Your children’s disappearance must be supernatural in nature. At best, involving the authorities will do nothing save slow our investigation and raise questions among your colleagues you do not
wish to answer. At worst, you risk exposing us.”

“And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, you self-interested son of a bitch?” Jessica hissed. “Covering
your
ass.”

“Covering all our asses, yes,” was the quiet reply.

“Get the
fuck
away from that door. Dick didn’t want to hurt you too much, but I don’t have that problem.”

“I believe you. Please think about what you’re doing.”

“Last chance,” I heard, and I put on a burst of speed because whenever Jess used that tone, something that inevitably led to neighbors putting their house up for sale was about to come down hard.

“All right, thtop it!” I’d managed not to wrench yet another antique door off its hinges while getting inside the room, where the gang was staring at me with wide eyes. “Come on, you guyth. I go to Hell for half an hour and you all loothe your collective thit?” Aw, man. The lisp was back and I should have expected it. I got a good look at Sinclair’s bloody nose and whirled on DadDick. “Not. Cool.”

“Not my finest moment,” he replied, and his sincerity went a long way toward my decision to postpone the plan to drown him in Tina’s vodka. “Betsy, you don’t under—”

“
You
don’t under. I found the babieth.”
No time to preen. But damn! They called me for help and I solved the case in about ten seconds. They are so lucky to have me! I’ll remind them later.
I saw Sinclair catch that one, and his relieved expression gave way to a smirk. I, a paragon of maturity and cool-headed thinking, ignored it. “Tho it’th okay now. Thit! Hate the lithp.”

“You—what?” I hadn’t thought it was possible but DadDick’s eyes went wider, hopefully because of my announcement and not because he couldn’t understand me.

“The babies?” Jess gasped, trembling so visibly DadDick at once pulled her into his arms. “They’re back?”

I don’t think they ever left.
“Right downstairs.” Ah, excellent. The blood was already drying and I could talk, so I showed off a little by throwing another
s
in the mix. “Come see! Heh. ‘See,’ not ‘thee,’ did anybody catch that? I’m definitely getting a handle on this. Thisssssss.”

“Now’s not the time for the narcissism parade,” Marc pointed out. Which was just crazy. There was always time for that particular parade.

Clearly unbelieving (
that can’t be right
) but hopeful (
why would Betsy lie about this?
), DadDick and Jess stampeded into the hall and down the stairs. I scrunched my sleeve down past my palm until I could hold the fabric in my fingers, then reached up and carefully used my sleeve to wipe the blood off Sinclair’s face.

He caught my hand and pressed a kiss to my fingertips. “My thanks.”

“It was good you didn’t hit back.” I paused. “I guess. Come on downstairs. You won’t believe this. Also your theory that it wasn’t a random baby-stealing dude just happening to wander by and snatch them was dead-on.”

His lips twitched into a wry expression. “I will not like what I see, will I?”

“I honestly have no idea,” I replied, because it was the stone truth. “See for yourself. You guys, too.”

We hurried back to the kitchen in time to hear Jessica’s shriek. Yep, she’d found the preschoolers and wasn’t at all pleased, and who could blame her? There was only so much stress a new parent could take before—boom. Meltdown.

I shoved at the swinging door and ducked inside before it could swing back and break my nose. The others, still behind me, were gonna have to fend for their own noses. “Jess, I know, and you’re right to be freaked, but—”

“Look at them!”

“Yep. I get it. But the thing is—huh.”

Jessica was pointing at the preschoolers, who were—when did
that
happen?—babies. Babies lying on the smoothie counter and starting to fuss. Babies who were definitely not preschoolers anymore.

“They could have fallen!” This while she and DadDick were scooping them up and cooing at them. She whirled on me, which made Thing One (?) let out a startled squeak. “You just plunked them on the counter and
left
?”

“They weren’t on the counter when—uh—I’m not actually sure what’s happening here. But whatever I did, I’m very sorry. Unless you’re glad. Then I’m proud of what I’m not sure I did.” I turned to Sinclair. “It’s not my fault! I told them to stay,” I whined.

Although. Technically they had.

 CHAPTER 

NINETEEN

“The important thing is,” Tina began, “the little ones are home and they’re safe.”

They weren’t so little when I saw them last, but I kept that to myself. I wanted to get Sinclair alone and explain what I’d seen so we could decide together what to do about it. Ironic, that I was doing that annoying trope where the female lead keeps an important secret to herself until it’s Almost Too Late, but there was a lot more at stake here than Jessica’s roused maternal instinct. And ugh, I just heard myself. What in the name of all that was (un)holy was I becoming as I approached my midthirties?

Something to obsess over later.

“Yes, thank . . .
God
.” Sinclair really loved being able to break that commandment. I think he and Tina must have come to an arrangement, because though he knew it hurt her, she didn’t glare or complain or give him the “I knew you when you were still in diapers, buster, so quit showing off” look. “That is, of course, the most important thing, quite right.”

“And they’re fine, too. Right, Marc?” Jess asked, kneading and worrying the corner of one baby blanket until it began to fray. Her gaze, wide and anxious, never left Marc’s face. “They’re fine?”

“Completely,” he assured her, putting away his steth and other medical goodies. Tina had bought him an old-fashioned doctor’s bag in which he kept meticulously cleaned instruments and Tic Tacs (he had a horror of rotten zombie breath). The first thing he’d done was give both babies a thorough once-over, then let DadDick and Jessica feed them their 6:25 p.m. bottles (soon to be followed by their 6:45 p.m. bottles, because those li’l buggers were bottomless yawning pits of hunger). “I can’t find a thing wrong with them.”

Then you’re definitely not looking hard enough.
Actually, now that I thought about it, there likely
wasn’t
anything wrong with them, at least on a physical level. Too bad it wasn’t as simple as that.

“Okay. So.” DadDick smiled down at Pepsi, watching with a sort of concentrated raptness as he/she guzzled. “What happened? And could it happen again?”

“And what do we do if it does?” Jessica added, cradling Coke.

V-chip them? Recalling how my Sharpie plan had been received, I decided to keep that thought to myself, too.

The irony was neck deep. I was doing that thing I saw movie characters do all the time: I knew something about the zombies/plague/weird babies/sentient dogs/robot lizards trying to take over the world and rather than helpfully cough it up, I was keeping secrets. I had become the thing I loathed: the useless, dim, hysterical horror movie heroine.

“One thing at a time,” Tina soothed. “I think the best thing for now is to—”

Jess ignored her, locked eyes with Sinclair, and said it straight-out: “So what’s the policy on turning kids into vampires?”

Decades’ worth of cool self-control was probably the only reason Sinclair’s jaw just didn’t unhinge. My jaw, however, was now on vacation and my mouth was so wide a dozen bees could have flown in and had a meeting.

For a long moment no one said anything. Since I’d literally rather die than let a silence hang too long, I was the first to break.

“Where did that come from?” I managed (after three tries, which had sounded like “whuh? muh? derp?”). “The babies being gone? Because they’re back. And they’re fine. Marc just explained how they’re fine. You trusted him to deliver them, so we all know you both trust his medical opinion despite . . . despite stuff happening.” At the casual compliment (except it wasn’t so much a compliment as a statement of fact), Marc dropped his gaze and smiled a little at the floor.

“I’m just curious,” Jess clarified, as though she often wondered about vampires being babies or vice versa when we all knew her thoughts on the subject. Shit, she’d been dying, actually
dying of cancer
, and had made it clear she was not, not,
not
to be turned. By anyone. Under any circumstances. She hadn’t known at the time—no one had known; I hadn’t even known—that I’d accidentally cure her but she still made it plain she expected to die human and remain dead. “Just . . . just wondering. About things. Things I hadn’t ever really wondered about before.”

“Do you think someone stole your infants to bring them to another vampire to turn?” Tina asked, her face twisting with such dark emotion she wasn’t at all pretty for those few moments. “Because that would be unconscionable and we would never,
never
allow—”

“No, I don’t think that. I think Sinclair had it right.” She nodded at him. “I don’t think a regular person could have come in here to take them for
any
reason, never mind fetching them to a vampire for a midnight snack.” DadDick visibly shuddered at her words and clutched Pepsi closer. “But I’m wondering how we can protect them, going forward.”

“That is not the way,” Sinclair said, and thank goodness, because I was about to say the same thing but much, much louder.

“Okay,” she replied steadily, “but why?”

“Why?”
I repeated, much, much louder.

“Is there, uh, is there an official policy?” Jessica looked around at us, clearly prepared to wait all night for an answer. “Or something?”

Sinclair looked at me. Which was unnerving, because, um, like
I’d
know? Oh. Right. Queen. “I have no—” I began, only to be cut off by Tina.

“Jessica, when was the last time you slept?” This in a lovely, gentle tone that didn’t have even a trace of
also, have you lost your fucking mind?

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “What day is it? It’s not because I’m tired. You guys know it’s not because I’m tired.”

“Exhausted,” I corrected. “I get tired explaining why Payless sucks. I get tired when I have to buy ice because there is a ton of ice outside, all the time, through May. You’re not tired. You’re exhausted, and why wouldn’t you be? It’s no wonder sleep deprivation isn’t considered cool even among torturers. It’s true!” I added, like they were getting ready to contradict me. “You know a torture is bad when
guys who torture
are all ‘hey, man, you’d better back off, that’s going too far.’”

Jessica shrugged. “Like I said. It’s because I’m thinking about things I’ve never had to think about before.” I could sympathize, really. I hated when that happened to me.

“You cannot actually want your infants to become vampires,” Sinclair pointed out, sounding all reasonable and not a little aghast, which was good on him because I knew he was horrified. I could feel it, all the horror.

“No, I wouldn’t want them to be like this for all eternity,” she said, looking down at Coke.

I shuddered. Eternity as a newborn! A crying, shitting, nonverbal creature the size of a bag of flour who would only give negative feedback.
Argh, kill it, kill it with fire!
They could make that their new family motto.

“Has it ever been done?” DadDick asked, so suddenly I’d almost forgotten he was there. Jess tended to fill a room when she was wound up. I’d almost forgotten
I
was there.

No answer from Sinclair or Tina. And his thoughts, I couldn’t help notice, were carefully blank. Unlike mine, which were usually blank but not because I was trying.

“So, that would be a big fat Yes,” Jessica guessed, going with that whole “silence signals consent” thing. “It
has
been done before. So what—”

“The creatures were destroyed,” was Sinclair’s deadly quiet reply. “Immediately. Those who made them were also destroyed. Slowly.”

I suppressed a shiver as I watched my husband.
Remember when we used to have pleasant conversations in this kitchen?

Not really, Elizabeth. No.

“Okay!” In my intent to bring this awful chat to a close, I spoke a little too loudly, if everyone jumping (except Coke and Pepsi, glutted and now in milk comas) was any indication. “If there isn’t an official policy, there’s definitely an unofficial one, one that I am behind a hundred percent. No babies turned into li’l fangers. No preschoolers, either. And no elementary-age kids. And middle school sucks; who wants to be twelve forever? For that matter, high school sucks, too, and it’d be beyond evil to condemn anyone to a lifetime of smelling like Clearex and sexual frustration. Except maybe sixteen should be the, what d’you call it, the cutoff?” I looked around the room. “Should someone be writing this down? And speaking of writing things down, I have to go back to Hell. I only left because of the text, but now that the babies got back (heh, get it?), I have to go back, too. I’m sorry.” I was speaking directly to Jessica now. “I’m not running away from this particular weirdness so much as leaving because I have to address a different particular weirdness.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She flapped a hand at me. “You’d better, I guess, although we don’t really feel safer knowing you’re down there doing stuff.”

“It’s not
down there
,” I began to explain for the ninth time, “it’s a whole other dimension.”

“And listen, about your dad—”

“Don’t worry about it,” I cut in, because yikes! How’d we get back on that subject? “I know you haven’t had any time to look into this, I mean—”

“Well, a solid twenty-four hours, which is—”

“—I’ve only been gone, what? Half an hour? But I’ll come back later and we can—”