“Yeah? Wrong again, you loser devil-type fallen angel, because I will f—” Then she blipped right out of existence. There was even a sharp
pop!
which I realized was the sound of air rushing into the space she had been occupying. “I hate when she does that. Right in the middle of a sentence. She’s like Batman that way. Except bitchier.”
Jessica still looked dreadful, but her expression was relaxing a little and her eyes, while shiny, didn’t drip tears. It hadn’t exactly been the worst day of her life when her useless, disgusting parents had died. To paraphrase Stephen King, sometimes an accident can be an unhappy woman’s best friend.
Put it this way: if they hadn’t died, I would have eventually had to kill them. And who needs that on a to-do list?
“Jeez, Betsy.” She eyed the book, the splinters, the book-stand-turned-limbo-pole. “You’re such a badass.”
“Hey. The only person who can belittle you and taunt you with family secrets until you almost cry is me. Besides, those shoes weren’t even in my size,” I lied, knowing exactly how the fox had felt when she couldn’t snatch the grapes.
Chapter 15
T
hen she said mean stuff to Jessica, so I smashed a book stand across the back of her skull. Then she left. Then Jess left. Then I left.” I took another gulp of my Orange Julius. Enduring November, and back at the Mall of America. Pattern? What pattern? “Oh, and I’m not speaking to the king of the vampires right now, but I s’pose I’ll forgive him in a couple more hours.”
I happened to look up and catch a pair of teenage boys openly staring at me. “What? Is there something on my face?” I furtively touched my nose, chin, and eyebrows. Was I dripping Orange Julius from somewhere? “Stop staring,” I told them, and like testosterone-swamped seventeen-year-old robots, they both went back to their Big Macs.
It’s not that I’m a sexpot, or even a Miss America type. I have this undead sex-appeal thing going on. It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with Why Being A Vampire Takes A While To Get Used To. Yes, I occasionally made ruthless use of it to get out of a speeding ticket. But that was the extent of my evil. I swear!
“Aw, give ‘em a break. You did say, in the middle of a public food court, that you made the devil your bitch and that you’re not putting out for the vampire king. I’m surprised only two people noticed.”
My roommate (one of the legions) lounged in his plastic chair at our tiny sticky food-court table. Marc was—I think I mentioned this—an ER doctor, though tonight he was disguised as a shave-needing, sleep-deprived cutie in faded scrubs that smelled like cotton, sweat, dried blood, and Mennen Speed Stick. (Alpine Force ... and how dumb was that? Alpine Force? Who thinks this shit up?)
So, he was in disguise as an ER doctor. I saw Marc in scrubs so often, I didn’t think I’d recognize him in jeans, or gingham.
He was also slammin’ handsome if you liked the sharp-featured, compassionate, green-eyed, warm, hilarious, brunet type.
“I knew I shouldn’t have covered Ren’s shift.” Marc groaned and raked his fingers through his schizophrenic hair. In the couple of years I’d known him he’d tried shoulder length, shaved, crew cut, short and messy, short and short, buzz cut, ponytail, the Caesar, the Beckham, the fauxhawk, the crop, the Keith Urban, the Josh Holloway, and even, during one ten-day period no one in our house ever talked about, the armadillo (complete with white spikes).
Today he was sporting the relatively benign Christian Bale. I was sporting my usual blonde-with-red-lowlights, which I was fated to stick with for five thousand years. Thank God I’d gotten a touch-up a couple weeks before I died. Bad hair ... forever. That’s just mean. And so, so wrong. Nobody deserves that.
“But he was bitching about how his kid did the Heimlich on some other kid in the cafeteria ... I guess the school’s giving him a plaque for making a cheerleader barf up a French fry. Like the world would miss one cheerleader.”
“Too mean,” I commented.
Marc waved away my criticism. “Ren cornered me when I was weak from not having my fifth Coke, and I let him talk me into the switch. So where was I? Huh? Huh? Yeah,” he added as if I’d said something. “Stitching scalps and fending off rash-infested babies, disimpacting a sundowner, getting puke on my shoes and in my shoes, and pretending I’m in a meaningful relationship so Dan-Dan-the-Ambulance-Man quits asking me out”
“It sounds pretty yuck-o,” I acknowledged.
Marc took a swig of Coke. “ER lied to me, Betsy. All the TV shows about doctors lied to me. There’s nothing glamorous about working in an ER. Not one thing. The only reason I even applied to med school was because I had dreams of being in a George Clooney-Eriq La Salle sandwich.”
“Do I want to ask what disimpaction is? Or a sundowner?” About the sandwich, I could fill in the blanks. Frankly, I’d heard worse ideas.
He shook his head. “You know I’ll answer you.”
“Okay. So, not asking.”
I had called his bluff on that once.
Once.
“Anyway,” I continued, “you didn’t really miss all that much.”
He snorted.
“Yeah, okay, you missed tons. It was weird and scary and interesting.”
“Like all of the devil’s visits.”
“up.”
“Or a trial by jury.” He shuddered. “How’s Jess?”
“Oh, you know. Stressed. Missing Nick. And the holidays are starting up. Bad time.”
“So her parents are burning in hell. Literally burning in hell.”
I shrugged.
“Well, what did Jessica say about it?”
I shrugged again. I didn’t blame Marc for loving gossip or being curious. But that didn’t mean I had
Information
written on my forehead in purple Sharpie.
Marc leaned back, slung an arm across the back of the chair next to his, and gave me a long look. I slurped and waited him out. Gone were the days when a long, studied stare would startle me into blurting out my bra size. I was a stone of patience. A stone!
“Y’know, Betsy, there aren’t a lot of dead black guys who lived in Minnesota and had one daughter, married a showgirl, and made a billion dollars before their thirty-fifth birthday.”
Then I, the stone, nearly sicked up Julius all over my friend’s cheese curds.
Chapter 16
D
on’t let my gorgeous face fool you,” Marc said, dabbing Julius out of his eyebrows. “I do occasionally have to resort to detective work. Even research. And that stuff—well, it made all the local papers at the time. The guy was the pride of Minnesota, the state’s biggest philanthropist, proudly raised on a farm (so the yokels liked him, too), and had better press than Tiger Woods, pre-affairs.”
“Yes,” I managed through gritted teeth. I hated even hearing the fuck-o’s name, never mind about his disguise as a dad who wasn’t a perverted narcissistic egomaniac. “He got good press in life.”
“Right up ‘til his daughter made headlines winning her emancipated status. And his fatal car crash with his wife the same day.”
I looked longingly into my empty Julius cup. Another four or five of these would go down great. Also? I felt remorseful and stupid, which I hate. I should have known Marc would have figured out all that stuff, probably about ten minutes after he met Jessica the first time.
He jabbed his finger in my general direction. “You should have known I’d figure that stuff out.”
“I was thinking that very thing.”
“I know why
you
hate November—and there was no need to knock over the entire Fine Cooking display at the Barnes and Noble.”
“I couldn’t take it. Sixty pictures of giant bronzed roasted turkeys. It—it loomed, practically.”
“Still. If you hadn’t mojo’d the manager, we’d be sitting in the security office right now. Anyway, I know you’re anti-Thanksgiving and anti-family—”
“I am not anti-family!” I brought the flat of my hand down on the table, then winced when I heard the sharp crack. Stupid, cheap plastic tables. “I’m pro-family. I’m all for families. But our situation is not a family. It’s a comic book. We’ve got the Antichrist, my eighty-year-old dead husband, my dead stepmother who gets off on popping into my room when I’m exploring the wonderful world of chocolate syrup with Sinclair—”
“Aw, God.” Marc rubbed his eyes. “Do you know how long it’s been since I got laid?”
“—my dead father who
isn’t
haunting me for some reason—”
“Wait. Are you complaining that he’s dead or that he’s not one of the ghosts giving you to-do lists?”
“—my orphaned best friend who recently quit having cancer, my half-brother-slash-son who is immune to any and all paranormal weirdness—”
“Not the worst superpower to have.”
“—a gay ER doc equally obsessed with sex, texting, and Beyoncé—”
“Which makes me completely normal, except with really good taste.”
“—and a roommate-slash-secretary-slash-bodyguard who knows my husband better than I ever will—”
“Don’t forget how awesomely hot she is. I mean, you’re cute, Betsy, but Tina ...” Marc whistled and glanced at the ceiling. “D’you think she’d cut her hair and give it to me?”
I flinched but kept on: “That’s my family, okay? Norman Rockwell never painted this. Because if he did? Everyone would run screaming from the room. Sort of like I’m thinking about doing right now.”
“Boo-hoo. You’re in perfect health—”
“I’m dead, Dr. Doofus!”
“And rich—”
“But it’s not my money.”
“Community-property state, babe. And you’re married to a gorgeous guy who adores you, and you have all kinds of cool Scooby-esque adventures—”
“Which occasionally end with a friend catching bullets with her frontal lobe.”
“I’m just sayin’,” he continued, unmoved by my rising hysteria. “Better find another shoulder to cry on, honey.”
“I will.” I jumped up. Time to get gone before I decided to see how often Marc would bounce if I threw him over the railing and into the amusement park. “I will do exactly that.”
“See ya,” he replied, admirably unconcerned.
I snatched his unopened can of Coke, taking bitchy pleasure in his flinch—he probably hadn’t seen me move.
“And
I’m taking this. Yeah! Reap the whirlwind.”
I stomped toward the escalators, not acknowledging his, “Don’t forget, you said you’d clean Giselle’s litter box tonight!”
As far as parting shots went, it was a pretty good one.
Chapter 17
A
ll is well, beloved stud muffin o’mine. I have decided to forgive you.”
I was smiling at Sinclair from our bedroom doorway. Yep, time to forgive him for whatever it was he did, and get laid. It had been—jeez, was that right? Four days? Four? No wonder I felt so bitchy and out of control.
“Mmm,” the love of my (un)life hummed. His back was to me as he was sitting at the small shaker-style desk in the corner, working on his laptop. We usually had a please-no-paperwork-but-how-about-oral-sex-instead rule in our bedroom, but exceptions were made now and again. I mean, he was a rich powerful king-type guy. When we weren’t putting our footprints on the ceiling, memos had to be read. Or written. Or whatever the hell he did on that thing.
“So, I didn’t see you here last night when I came back.”
Nothing.
“In fact, I haven’t seen much of you in the last day or two. What with our little, uh, you know, and the devil dropping by.”
Tap-tap-tap
of his fingers hitting the keyboard.
“So, the devil. Dropped by. But I took care of it.” Yep, never underestimate the negotiating power of felony assault.
“How fortunate none of your thoughtless actions will come back to haunt us. Or hurt us.”
Tap, Tap-tap,
“Uh ... okay. Are you all right?”
Tap, TAP-TAP-TAP,
I wondered if the tips of his fingers were going to punch through the keyboard. “No,” Sinclair replied. “I am not. I have an inordinate amount of paperwork. I must clean up another of your messes. I have asked you no less than four times to be at my side for a significant social obligation—”
“What, this again? C’mon, Sinclair, teatime with vamps? Barf. And again, I say barf.”
“I. Wasn’t.
Finished.”
Still he wouldn’t look at me. Why wouldn’t he turn around and look at me? More: Why weren’t we having sex right now? “You say you want our people to be more independent, less predatory, and—how did you so charmingly phrase it? Ah. ‘Less sucky in all things, pun intended.’ ”
“Heh.” Good one.
“But you resist any opportunity to give them positive reinforcement. You resist any opportunities to appear at my side as a show of our concentrated, combined ruling authority. You—”
“—are wondering who bit you on the ass.” I knew it wasn’t me, literally or figuratively. Could he have a headache? A fang-ache? Overworked, maybe? Hard to imagine ... Sinclair lived for this shit. Grumpy because he was on the same four-day-sexless streak I was? Bingo.