Undead and Unwary (5 page)

There was a long pause while I tried to read her face, which was just as much a waste of time as it ever was. Tina could outbluff Daniel Negreanu (Sinclair was a World Series of Poker addict). Her fair face, never terribly expressive, now seemed so still it was like she was playing Statues. Which she could also do really well.

“I don’t,” she said at last.

“What?”

“You asked if I like it here.”

Oh. Right. I remember now. And shit. I knew she’d tell me the truth, but I’d hoped it was good news.

“
Like
is woefully inadequate,” she continued. “I love my new life. And not merely for my own sake. I love
his
new life, too. Five years ago things were dangerous and we trusted no one and we depended only on each other, and my dear friend the king, the boy I loved from birth, pursued empty relationships and cared not if he lived or burned. And now . . . he does care. About many things. I love that. I love you. I love this house. I love your friends. I love our new lives, and I love the new lives your friends have brought into our home. It strikes me . . .” Her gaze went vague as she looked through me. “It strikes me that I can live a very long time and still be pleasantly, continually surprised. I love that, too.”

“Oh.” Hmm. She’d just told me this incredible generous thing and I’d better come up with something a little better than “oh.” “That’s great. I’m . . . that’s really great.”

“Do you have any other questions?”

“Nope.”

She nodded and started to turn away from me. “Then I’ll take my leave? Yes?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Well! That was unexpected. And nice. It was almost enough to make me forget why I’d started the conversation in the first place. Which was . . . uh . . .

Jessica! Right. Tina was feeling fluffy and Jessica was up to something. Busy, busy, lots of mysteries to unravel and Hell would wait.

It’s not like it was going anywhere, right?

 CHAPTER 

THREE

I shoved the swinging door that led to the kitchen. So far there hadn’t been a hilarious sitcom-type swinging-door face smash, but the year was young. “Jess? You in here? Listen, I’m a little worried about you and because I’m incredibly intuitive I realize something’s wrong and want you to know that whatever it is, you have my full support and attention and, oh,
what the hell
?”

Marc Spangler, MD, looked up from yet another revolting kitchen experiment. This time he was freezing, dissecting, and refreezing mice. Did you know frozen mice don’t smell like much of anything? They don’t. Probably because they’re so little. Or because of the cold. Was he doing that out of kindness to those of us with enhanced senses in the house, or was the freezing thing specific to his gross kitchen experiment and, dammit,
my kitchen
! Which was also his kitchen since he lived here, too, but still.

At least I didn’t have to ask where he was getting his test subjects. Since every old house on the face of the earth has mice, this solved two problems at once.

“The kitchen? Again? We eat in here! Well, the others eat, and the vampires drink, and Sinclair and I occasionally have sex in here! Aw, dammit, that was out loud.”

“Ha! Knew it. Jess owes me fifty bucks. Besides, you banned me from the basement.” Marc was blinking at me over a tidy row of teeny corpses. “You said it was like living with Igor . . .”

“It was! Is. No offense,” I added, because there was nothing sadder than a touchy zombie whose feelings were hurt. God, the moping. The
angst.
Zombie angst . . . would that be zangst? Will that be a thing now?

“. . . knowing I was skulking around down there doing sinister experiments, creating then destroying abominations, tracking dirt . . . which is stupid, by the way. I don’t skulk.”

Of course, knowing that the zombie you lived with was experimenting on dead rodents created a whole new problem. It almost made me yearn for the days when he was
skulking

(because he
does
he
does so
skulk his denials are big-time bullshit he
skulks
therefore he
is
)

in the attic, all hidden and ashamed and furtive, full of zangst. Like Quasimodo if the attic was the Notre-Dame Cathedral, our puppies were the gargoyles, and Quasimodo was a cute dead gay doctor.

“I can obsess over their brains,” my cute dead gay doctor said, indicating the row of teeny fuzzy dead bodies, “or yours.”

“Yeah, we’ve been over this. Theirs, obviously, but couldn’t you be a little less creepy about it?” I let the door swing shut behind me and edged toward the table. Everything was meticulously laid out; I had to give him that. Instruments neatly lined up, shiny-sharp. The sterile field all set up (guess he didn’t want the dead frozen mice to catch an infection). Marc all scrubbed clean and shiny right down to the latex gloves. It was the neatest, sterilest (is that a word?) operating field I’d ever seen.
In my kitchen.
“I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

“What?” he asked, defensively. He was wearing a pair of scrubs that had been washed so many times, they were like fuzzy barf-green velvet. He’d cut his black hair super short again (“The Caesar,” he called it, “or the George Clooney, circa . . . anytime, I guess. He really got bogged down with one style, didn’t he?”), which pulled attention to his dark green eyes and pale (even before he died) skin. He was about my height—six feet, give or take—and lanky, and his face was made for smiling; grins took years off him. Not that he would age or anything. No. He’d . . . rot. But only if I wasn’t paying attention, apparently? I was still vague on the details. The horrible, horrible details. I made him a zombie, except it wasn’t me. God, I hated time travel. “Betsy? What?”

“Hmm?”

Marc, used to me staring vacantly at him while I pondered, got to his feet, neatly dropped the pile o’ fuzzy corpses into the biohazard bag, snapped off his gloves and dumped them, too, tied the bag off, then went to one of the sinks, rooted around beneath, emerged with Clorox wipes, and proceeded to wipe down the table. (I know, probably shouldn’t have fussed so much about the mouse massacre on the table, but come on! Mouse massacre! On the table!) Finished, he disposed of the wipes and crossed the room to go for the freezer. I definitely wanted out of there before I saw what was up for Revolting Kitchen Experiments, Round Two. “This isn’t anything new, you know,” he reminded me.

“You killed yourself less than two months ago,” I retorted. “It’s incredibly new.”

He laughed and I smiled. Marc had a high, cheerful laugh and I loved hearing it. “Point.”

“What . . .” I stared, then tried not to look so terrified. I wasn’t afraid Marc would go all zombie feral in the night and try to suck my brains out of my head with a curly straw (“Don’t be a dumbass, Betsy, a curly straw would take too much time. I’d definitely use a straight one, one of those big fat ones they give you for bubble tea.”), but he definitely had some new, creepy habits in death. Undeath. “What . . . uh . . . are you going to do . . . uh, now?”

He opened the freezer door. Peered inside. Reached in to the shoulder (damn, that freezer was deep) and emerged holding . . . oh God, the horror . . . holding . . . “Check it out.”

A bottle of vodka.

“Oh. Uh, very nice.” I was inwardly rolling my eyes. Tina’s vodka obsession was contagious. Lovely. Too bad her willingness to overlook most of my bad habits and terrible decision-making wasn’t.

“Stop rolling your eyes,” he said impatiently, crossing toward me. “Look.”

I looked. “Stoli Elit,” I read aloud, “Himalayan Edition.” I squinted. “That font looks expensive.”

“It was!” For some reason, he sounded delighted.

“Three thousand bucks?” Good thing Marc had hung on to the thing; I might have dropped it. “Are you kidding?”

“I hid it behind all the corpses,” he continued gleefully. “Genius!”

“Genius,” I acknowledged with a shudder. When? When would roommates saying things like “I hid it behind all the corpses” become commonplace? Was I rooting for the answer to be “never” or “any minute now”?

But he was right; no one—
no one
—would look for it there. In fact, knowing there was a big weird bottle of incredibly overpriced hooch in there
with
scads of mice Popsicles made me want to poke through the freezer even less. “But Marc, I mean, it’s none of my business, but you can’t afford this.”

My best friend was rich, and I’d married rich, and my father had made an excellent living before engaging in the Midlife Crisis Jaguar vs. Garbage Truck battle and losing, so money had never been that big a deal, but still. Marc wasn’t rich, had never been rich (air force brat, and unless your dad was, I dunno, King of the Generals, that didn’t make for a cushy lifestyle), and was still hip deep in student loans last time I checked.

Hmm. Did he still have to pay those back? Nobody knew he’d been dead, however briefly. Kind of how some people knew I’d been dead and some people assumed it was some sort of nasty practical joke, and the government was years behind on the paperwork anyway so I just sort of plowed ahead and nobody bugged me about it. But Marc was still a person, according to the government. Social security card, birth certificate, lack of death certificate, tax forms—all that was still good.

But: he’d been dead. He was
still
dead. It was something to think about.

“Other than a car—which my dad helped me buy—it’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever gotten.”

“Well, as long as you’re happy with it. MGM was out of Grey Goose?”

“No. It’s a present.”

“Oh. Ohhhhh.” I took another look at the long slender brown and gold bottle—and for that price, the gold font should be actual gold. For that price, they should come to your house on command and pour you a shot, then tuck you into bed and read you a story.

Sure, the bottle was pretty, and the vodka was probably top-notch, but booze was smoothies was milk was Shamrock Shakes was tap water was anything but blood. I was thirsty all the time. Only blood helped; only blood quenched any of that raging permanent thirst. That didn’t stop me from binging on liquids all night. I couldn’t get drunk on booze anymore, though. Odd that Marc would drop so much money on something he knew, to me, might as well be ditch water. “That was really nice of you.” If not well thought out.
Gah, next time just a gift card for DSW, Marc.
“Thanks a lot. I can’t wait to—”

“For Tina, idiot.”

“Oh.” Whew! “Idiot” was a little bitchy, though. Not inaccurate, but still. “Why? What’d she do?”

“Her birthday’s Friday.” He said it without reproach, because he knew me and he knew my Swiss-cheese memory. True friends expect nothing from you. That’s what made them so terrific.

“Get out!” I had to admit, I was intrigued. How
did
a hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire celebrate a birthday? The standards (Sky Zone Indoor Trampoline Park? Water Park of America? Chuck E. Cheese?) were probably out. Midnight bowling, maybe? Midnight golfing? “How old is she?”

He grinned and carefully tucked the bottle away. “I asked, and got the ‘a lady never tells and a gentleman never asks’ speech.”

“And you reminded her you were all the way around the world from being a gentleman?”

“Didn’t have to; she already knew. Anyway, it’s no secret she loves vodka, even if why she loves it
is
.”

I nodded. It was a mystery, because as I said, nothing slaked a vampire’s thirst but blood. Anything else was at best a waste of time and at worst just made the thirst worse. That didn’t stop Tina from hoarding vodka like Smaug hung on to gold and oh my God, I just made a
Hobbit
reference. I had to stop watching TV with Marc. Like, now.
Right
now.

But back to Tina and her vodka hoard . . . I figured it had to be something from her old life, something that reminded her of better, simpler times. Or maybe she just really liked vodka. “It’s a great present, but she’s gonna freak a little. She’ll know how much it costs. And if she doesn’t, she’ll find out pretty quick. She’d want you to save your money.”

“Why?”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out—rare! It took a few seconds but I finally managed. I hadn’t been prepared for Marc not to know why he shouldn’t blow wads of dough on booze for dead Southern belles. “Why? Because . . . because it’s your money. I mean, it’s—you earned it. You should hang on to some of it.” When that didn’t seem to be getting through, I added, “Uh, right?”

He gave me the saddest smile I’d ever seen on his open, friendly face. “What am I going to spend it on?” he asked quietly. “A wife? Children? A mortgage? Retirement savings?”

I opened my mouth again.

Don’t make a stupid joke don’t make a stupid joke do not make fun of this do not make a joke to hide the fact that you suddenly feel guilty and awkward.

I closed my mouth. Took an unnecessary breath. Then added, “You quit your job.”

“Sure.” He was nodding. “I couldn’t risk going back to the ER. Someone was eventually bound to notice I was dead.”

I nodded back. That was definitely the risk you took when you worked with doctors and nurses and EMTs. He hadn’t even gone to give notice in person. Just called up his boss and gave her the “family emergency” line. Which wasn’t a line, come to think of it. Dying was definitely a family emergency. At the least, it should be a get-out-of-jail-free card.

“Okay, so you’re—uh—not earning right now.” It wasn’t as much a problem as it would be for a regular dead person. But Sinclair didn’t charge him rent—didn’t charge any of these freeloaders rent and it was just now occurring to me that I’m technically a freeloader so I’m not going to make a fuss—although Marc regularly contributed to the smoothie fund. When he wasn’t in scrubs he lounged in old jeans and various tattered T-shirts; he was like a gay . . . a gay . . . I couldn’t think of the word that meant the opposite of cliché, but that was what he was. No mincing, no hair products, no reality television. He had a crush on Benedict Cumberbatch, but who didn’t? Shit,
I
had a crush on the Batchman; Marc and I were proud Cumberbimbos. So Marc’s expenses were low, but still. “So that’s maybe a good reason to save your money?”