Undead and Unwary (6 page)

Marc shrugged off my nosy concern. “I’m earning. Tina set up a WebMD kind of thing for me. Patients can contact me through the Web page to ask me things, and I diagnose online.”

What a terrific way to get sued.
“Okay.”

“She’s also offered to put my name out there for off-the-books medical care.”

What a terrific way to get arrested.
“Okay.”

“She had a bunch of great ideas, actually,” he added, clearly warming to the subject. When had he and Tina become BFFs? They had a lot of nerve going from roommates to really close friends right in front of my eyes like that. All that time in Marc’s trunk, maybe the fumes were getting to the poor woman. “We’re still figuring stuff out, but there’s time. I mean, none of us are going anywhere.”

“True,” I allowed. It should have been depressing, but I thought it was comforting.

“Plus, Sinclair paid off my student loans.”

“What?” I squawked. I wasn’t annoyed, but I was definitely surprised. Sure, Sinclair had the dough to spare, and he wasn’t miserly, but it’s not like he and Marc were especially close. Even if the answer to “why did he do that?” was “why not?” why wouldn’t he have said something? It wasn’t a secret or anything. Right? “How’d that happen? He just walked up and gave you a check?”
That
could have been an interesting conversation to eavesdrop on.

“Actually I’m not sure it would ever have occurred to him,” Marc explained. “He’s a big-picture guy. Stuff like student loans slips right under his radar. But that’s exactly the kind of thing Tina keeps an eye on. She’s a details girl.”

“She is, even if she hasn’t been a girl in over a century.”

“Yeah, but a lady never tells . . . anyway, I’m pretty sure it was her idea and once she brought it up, Sinclair thought it was a fine plan. He’d never miss the bucks, and it must have appealed to his sense of . . . not justice, exactly. Compensation?”

“You mean like in a ‘sorry my wife made you a zombie in a horrible dystopic future that probably won’t happen now, thanks for being such a nice guy about it, and don’t spend it all in one place’ way?”

“Well . . .” Marc giggled a little. I loved that sound. It was such a cute, breathy noise out of a guy who was one hundred percent masculine. “Pretty much, yeah. So . . .” He pointed to the freezer. “I wanted to do something extra nice for Tina’s birthday.”

“Her birthday!” I cried, mystery solved, and now delighted instead of startled. Sure, I hadn’t had a clue her big day was this week. And sure, that wouldn’t surprise Tina. Or anyone. But I knew when I had done wrong and was adult enough to make amends. Nothing would prevent me from making this slight up to her. Tina did so much for me and I did . . . uh . . . next to nothing for her. We needed a party! We needed a plan! We needed to remind Laura that this was about my making amends and Hell would have to wait just a bit longer until I solved Jessica’s problem and threw Tina a party and my God, this might be the greatest day of my life.

It also answered my “wonder if Marc had to pay off his loans” question.

“Okay. I’ll get back to that in a minute. I’ve still got to track Jessica down—”

“I can’t believe you’re even doing that. It hasn’t been very long since the Incident.”

I shuddered. “Don’t talk about that. Don’t even think about it.”

“I don’t want to,” he admitted, “but it haunts me. I’m pretty sure it’s going to for a while.”

I shook that off. This was no time to get sidetracked by something besides the thing I wanted to sidetrack me. The Incident was days in the past. If people would quit bringing it up, we could all move on.

“
Anyway
, once I get with her, then I’ll get back with you and we’ll plan the centennial of Tina’s eighteenth birthday, or whatever it is. I promise I won’t forget.” I was already headed for the door. “You can count on me!”

Marc was staring after me. “This is as motivated to get to the bottom of mysterious happenings as I’ve ever seen you.”

“Thanks.” In a seizure of generosity, I ignored the implication.

“I mean, being killed didn’t do it. You still sort of stumbled around fucking things up and being all clueless and everything.”

“Thanks.”

“But now you’ve got the focus of a Lasik machine. It’s awe inspiring!” He was leaning against the counter, absently rubbing Purell into his hands. We kept a gallon-sized jug of it by the main sink. “And a little terrifying.”

“All right, time to move on.” Argh, I had been so close to a clean getaway. And now
this
. I turned to face him. “Look, I was never the kid you were.”

“The kid I was?” Marc asked, blinking in surprise. Apparently he’d been expecting a different reaction. “You never knew me as a kid.”

“Yeah, but even without knowing you as a kid I know you were into D&D, and you’d pay extra money to watch
Star Wars
in a theater when you could get it for free pretty much anywhere on the Web, and you gobbled up the
Game of Thrones
books like they were—were—”

“Iced milk and raspberries?” he prompted.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Like that. And it’s cool and it’s one of the things that makes you
you
, but I wasn’t like that. D&D made me long for the peace of a coma or a concussion or anything to get out of figuring charisma points. Not only have I never seen a
Star Wars
movie in a theater, I didn’t think the
Phantom Menace
stuff was so bad and—see? You’re shuddering. You’re making my point that we don’t have much in common.”

“Okay, we’re going to circle back to your
Phantom Menace
blasphemy, but for now, I don’t see how you can judge how I was as a kid based on . . . oh, hell, as much TV as we’ve watched together, and the movies I dragged you to—”

“Those
Riddick
movies are the worst.”

“Shut up, don’t talk about Vin like that; but it’s not about whether you were into sci-fi or fantasy as a teenager. Doesn’t matter if you loved it or hated it, you
know
there’s magic. It’s not even a question of faith; you know magic exists. And you know you can do it.”

“I don’t,” I replied shortly, “and I can’t. Vampires aren’t magical. Neither are werewolves. Something happens to vampires when they ‘die’—their systems slow down and as a result of that, they develop other abilities. Werewolves, they’re another species, it’s not magic. It’s biology that most people don’t know about. Hell isn’t magic, it’s another dimension, one I know fuck-all about. If anything, all this stuff is
science
, which was never my best subject.”

He was nodding along with my terse lecture, but I could tell I wasn’t swaying him. “All that stuff aside, Betsy, you recently discovered you can
teleport
. That you can break a whole bunch of laws of physics for funsies. You were already strong and fast and durable—”

“Please stop making me sound like a four-pack of double-A batteries.”

“Okay, sorry. But you were already in a great position to explore all the cool things that happened to you, and now, presto, change-o, you can teleport.”

“Only the one time,” I mumbled. And yes. I heard the lameness in that comment.

Marc ignored me, probably wisely. “This is an ability that many people would be thrilled to have, every single person living in this house included.” His face had lit up and he was waving his arms around in his excited agitation. “Why wouldn’t you be all over that?”

“Because nothing’s free, Marc.” I crossed the kitchen until I was right in front of him and caught his flailing hands. Held them in my own, made sure he was looking at me and listening, really listening. “And some things—even if you
can
pay for them, maybe you shouldn’t.”

“What you’re doing now,” he said gently, shifting my grip—I let him—until he was gripping my wrists, “isn’t working.”

I stared at him. Yikes, was he bringing the zombie mojo or something? Was that even a thing? I couldn’t look away. “It’s the only thing I’ve got right now,” I finally said, and he let go of my wrists and turned to the sink.

“Not the only thing. And if you look at it another way, this is nothing new. All you have to do is what you’ve done since you woke up dead. Suck it up and get it done.”

“Easy for you to say.” I was trudging toward the door.

“It’s not, actually. You could get out of it if you really wanted, but you’re choosing not to.” He rubbed in more Purell and sort of waved me away, as if I were a six-foot-tall mosquito. “Just tell Laura you only agreed to help her to get her off your back,” was his parting advice, which I ignored, and rightly. It wasn’t
my
fault there was a crisis around here every ten minutes, a wonderful chaotic weird crisis. I was only one vampire queen, dammit! I was doing the best I could.

What? I
was.

 CHAPTER  

FOUR

A flight of stairs and several hallways and doors later, I found Jessica in her room up to no good. Not “are you hiding up here because it’s your turn to change a poopy diaper?” no good but clandestine-research, followed by hurriedly-shoving-papers-under-the-bed-when-she-saw-me no good.

“Jesus!” She finished shoving papers and glared up at me from her spot on the floor beside her and DadDick’s bed. “Scared the hell out of me.”

“Uh-huh, and that’s not furtive at all. Jess, what’s going on?”

“What? I’m just sorting. And thinking. And then more sorting. Yes.” She got to her feet and began prowling around the room. She’d stuck a clipping in her back pocket, but I couldn’t think of a subtle way to grab it other than tripping her, sitting on her, and emptying her pockets. For which I would pay and pay and pay. I was stronger and faster; Jess was smarter. Just the thought of all the terrible things she could do to me was enough to make me feel guilty for even thinking of assault as a way to get to the bottom of this, however careful I would have been. And even though she’d made her view on being turned into a vampire
mucho
clear before I cured her cancer (long story), I could absolutely see her nagging a vamp into turning her just so she could keep punishing me through the centuries. Also, the tripping and sitting and pocket rifling wasn’t a nice thing to do to a best pal. It’s very wrong that I thought of that one last.

She looked startled, but that could have been the ’do—she kept her black hair pulled back so tightly her eyebrows were always arched. Her manicure (lime green, urrgghh) was chipping, something pre-twins/not-insane Jess would never have allowed, and her T-shirt had splotches on it that, luckily, were only spit-up formula. (I hadn’t given one thought to enhanced vampire senses + newborns = gross and really, I should have. Ohhhhh, I should have.) Her jeans were so faded they were nearly white, and she was annoyed that skinny jeans were out again. She was so painfully thin (when carrying Thing One and Thing Two, she’d looked like a tent pole someone had hung a bag of volleyballs on), any jeans she pulled on were skinny jeans, even just a few weeks after popping twins.

“Why are you in here?” she barked.

“Because I’m lonesome?”

Jess snorted but didn’t kick me out. “Mm-hm.”

I sidled closer to the bed but knew I was no match for Jessica’s chaotic pile-everything-into-a-box-beneath-the-bed filing system. For a modern businesswoman, she was a Luddite when it came to paperwork. A big fan of old-fashioned file cabinets and long plastic containers that she stuffed with newspaper and mag clippings, she still shopped at Hallmark, for God’s sake.

Unless I was willing to sneak in here when she and DadDick were out, or sleeping the sleep of the deeply sleep deprived, rummage endlessly through decades of clippings while trying to figure out which story had grabbed her interest (I wasn’t), or worse, which story was missing and now riding in her back pocket, I’d have to finesse it out of her. Subtlety, that was key.

“Tell me what’s wrong or I’ll sit on you!”

“What?”

Okay, I could see it now. My finesse sucked. Time for a new tactic. “So, how’s my mom?”

“Huh?” Jess had at least ten IQ points on me, which anyone overhearing this would assume was a testing error. “What?”

“My mom. Who you went to see.” Wait. Whom? Whom she went to see? Gah, Sinclair was rubbing off on me in all the wrong ways. And now I was thinking of Sinclair rubbing. Must not . . . be distracted . . . by thoughts of . . . hot husband . . . “With the babies you forgot.”

“Oh. I didn’t . . .” She waved vaguely at me. “You know.”

“I
don’t
know, Jess, you postnatal weirdo. What’s going on? You look like someone clipped you with a brick.”

“Don’t be a dope. Nobody’s been near me with a brick.”

Sighing at the effort this was taking (vampire queen/best friend’s work was never done), I plunked down on the queen-sized bed she’d had for a decade. Jess was indifferent to her riches (the wealth was impressive, but her shitpoke father had earned it all, making it much less awesome in her eyes) and formed deep emotional attachments to restaurants, pals (we’ve been friends since junior high), and beds. (Also, DadDick and the babies, I assumed. Before you accuse me of vanity, I listed myself second on that list.) So the bed didn’t so much sag as suck me in, like quicksand in a quilt. But I was used to its ways and kept both feet on the floor.

I really liked Jessica’s room. It was the most modern in terms of setup and decoration, the carpet a deep caramel, the walls tan, the furniture all light wood (blond wood?). The wallpaper was red and tan and there were red accents all over the place, including the quilt and several picture frames.

And gawd,
when
would she stop displaying the one of us on my twenty-first birthday? Drunk off my ass was not
a good look for me. Jess looked cutely rumpled and was grinning into the camera while hoisting a daiquiri-filled plastic cup, her arm slung around my shoulders in what looked like camaraderie, but in fact she was keeping me from pitching face-first into the floor.

I was so much more than rumpled; I was sweaty, and my face was so flushed I looked like I’d sworn off sunscreen before napping in a tanning bed. My T-shirt was more stained than a new mom’s, making it difficult to make out the lettering (“Step Aside, Coffee, This Is a Job for Alcohol”), but worst of all was the expression on my face. One eye was half-closed, my mouth was hanging open like a dying trout’s, I was giving Jess the side-eye stink eye (she had just cut me off, which unfortunately did not prevent the vomiting doomed to start an hour later), and basically looked like a crazy cat lady in her youth, pre-cats.