“Ah ... thank you, miss.”
I knelt, tucked Erin’s necklace back into Sinclair’s pocket, smoothed his hair back from his dirty cheek, and kissed him. “See you in the future,” I whispered, and it would have been an awesome and touching moment, except Laura grabbed my arm and hauled me off down the gravel road, so the last thing Tina heard was the vampire queen yelping like a stomped pup.
Chapter 53
Oh, come on!” I couldn’t believe it. Back in the waiting room again, and still no way to the front door. Or back door. Or whatever the fuck it was. “I don’t recall your mother mentioning that Time Travel 101 was going to take, I dunno, the best years of my life!”
“It’s true,” Laura said, already standing in front of a new door to try. She didn’t look terribly put out, I was annoyed to see. She seemed to be gaining confidence by the hour. By the door, as it were. “She didn’t. But she keeps them close to the vest, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would say.”
“So, ready?”
“Ugh, no. What’s next? We save Laura Ingalls from being set upon by vampires?”
“Only one way to find out.”
“You know what’s weird?”
She’d been reaching for a new knob but now looked at me and grinned. “I have to pick just one thing?”
I smiled back. Yes, this was dangerous. Yes, it was annoying. But I’d never had the chance to spend so much time with Laura, and I was finding the experience pretty cool.
Okay. To be fair: I’d never made the chance to spend so much time with her.
“Good point. What’s weird is, the past doesn’t stink. It sucks, make no mistake, but it’s not smelly. I figured that with no running water or regular showers and such, and air freshener not having been invented, or antibacterial soap, that everyone would stink. But they didn’t. Things were dusty, you know, but not filthy or gross. Wait’ll I tell my mom.” My mom was a college professor specializing in the Civil War. She’d hang on my every word but would be too polite to say out loud, “If only you’d been exposed to death and danger during the battle of Gettysburg!”
“She wouldn’t say it, but she’d think it,” I muttered.
“Fascinating. So, onward and upward, sister mine. Next stop, who knows? Watch the birdie!”
“What? Dammit!” I clutched my now-throbbing eye, the knob easily turned beneath Laura’s hand, and we were off again like Magellan and Columbus. Or Abbott and Costello.
Chapter 54
Seriously? You still have to beat on me to move through time? I assume this is all because God hates me this month.”
“Yes, Betsy. It’s all about you.”
“Sometimes it is,” I whined.
“And sometimes it isn’t. Anyway, smacking you around for the greater good is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
“Yeah, real willing, don’t think I haven’t noticed.” I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window. Fortunately, I was still awesomely pretty. “Well, what fire do we have to ... put ... out ... ?”
I’d trailed off because we’d materialized beside a house in the suburbs. A modern house in modern suburbs! With electric lights and everything! In fact—
“Isn’t this your old house? The one that had termites—whoof!”
She’d gasped because I’d picked her up and twirled her around and around. “Yes, yes, yes! It is my bug-ridden abode. It’s the house I lived in before Jessica and I moved to the mansion. We’re back! Laura, we’re back!”
“But why are we at your old house? Nothing ever happened here.”
“Hardly, ignorant child.” I set her down, but I could have danced her up and down the block for an hour and a half. “I was living here during the Ferragamo debut. And let’s not forget the hangover of 2000; gah, I thought I was going to yark up my liver. And the pseudo date-rape of 2002, and I say pseudo because I kicked his balls up so high he was strangling on them by the time the cops showed up. Ahhhh ... good times ...”
“But why would we be here? Does this mean we’re back? Maybe we should get a cab back to Summit”
“I s’pose—wait.”
“We don’t need a cab,” Laura observed, watching the car pull into what was once my driveway. “Because here you come now. Do you think you’ll give us a ride?”
“Oh ...”
“Shit,” the Antichrist agreed, and then we both dived out of sight as I got out of my car and headed up the walk to my front door.
Chapter 55
Stupid!” I fumed as we lurked behind my old house. “I saw the damned car and didn’t even think of it!”
“What?” Laura was crouched beside the eight zillion chives I hadn’t tried to grow ... did you know that if you plant, like, two chive seeds, three years later you’ve got an acre full of the buggers? Me neither. “Wow, it really smells like onions back here.”
“Nick Berry’s in there!”
“The cop? Jessica’s ex ...” Laura trailed off, and I didn’t blame her. The thing with Nick was something we all felt bad about. And that I was deeply ashamed of.
“Yeah. Jessica’s ex, who I bit, and when that fucked him up, Sinclair ‘fixed it’ by mind-raping him. Which he never recovered from, and the more he remembered, the more nightmares he had and the more scared he got until he made Jessica choose, which he never would have done if we hadn’t messed with him in the first place, and he lost and they broke up!”
“Shhhh!”
“You shhhh! He’s in there right now!” I said, squashing the urge to shake her until her teeth fell out. “And stupid, newly risen, starving me is gonna fall on him like he was a six-foot Godiva truffle.”
“Oooh, don’t say that. You realize we haven’t eaten in all this time?”
“But not this time, devilish sidekick. This time I’m gonna not let myself have the chance to bite the poor guy.”
“I think you’re my sidekick, actua—”
“We’re gonna fix it,” I said, and Laura must have seen something in my face she didn’t care for (or was having cramps from hunger pains), because at once she began shaking her head.
“Okay. You need to stall me—the younger, dumber me—and while you’re doing that, I’m gonna grab Nick and get him the hell out of the suburban hellhouse.”
“No, Betsy, you can’t!”
“Watch me,” I said with a sort of steely tone, like Ellen Ripley telling an alien queen to get away from her, you bitch, oooh, yeah! That would—“Ow, don’t pinch!” Had Ellen Ripley ever whined? I was pretty sure she hadn’t ... though if anyone had earned the right ...
“Listen, I put up with saving that gal in Salem. And helping Tina help Sinclair. But you’re messing with very serious things! Just because we haven’t noticed a consequence—yet— doesn’t mean there aren’t any! You can’t do this. I won’t help you. I’ll—I’ll try to stop you.” The Antichrist looked frightened but determined. “I just can’t let you keep screwing with the time stream. Who knows the damage we’ve done? It’s my fault, too, for not standing up to you. Maybe that’s what my mother wanted me to learn. But not this time, Betsy.”
“Laura, there’s no time, and you can’t stop me, but think about this while you’re stalling the other me: we’re already the product of a screwed time stream, and once you help me with this? I’ll prove it. Now stall me, or stall the other me, but either way, keep outta the way.”
She might be the Antichrist, but she was still, at the end of the day, a human, and no match for vampire strength.
I think she realized that as well, or was unwilling to get into fisticuffs with me. Because when I went to duck around the side of the house, headed for the backyard, she didn’t try to stop me. In fact, she went the other way. Toward the front of the house.
Toward the other me.
Chapter 56
l raced around to the back, snatched up the dead tomato plant (other than chives and dandelions, nothing ever grew in my old yard), dug through the dirt in the pot, and found the spare key.
I let myself in—you ever noticed how hard it is to be in a hurry and be quiet? Yeah. I had an advantage in that I was much, much stronger and faster than Nick would expect, but still. A lot of shit had to go down if I was going to fix one of my worst postdeath blunders. And an awful lot could go wrong. Must be a Tuesday!
I eased into my old kitchen, and was greatly helped by my sister, who had set a pack of cheetahs on fire. At least, from the racket coming from my garage, that’s what it sounded like.
“What the hell?” Detective Nick came hurrying from the bathroom, where I could hear the toilet running—nice! We had been friendly at this stage, not friends, but still ... ever heard of a warrant, Ponch?
I remembered what he’d said when I asked him that exact thing: “I didn’t need one, seeing as how you’re dead.”
Note to self: once you die, civil rights go right out the window.
“Well, look who it is!”
Nick flinched, went for his gun, then realized the lawful owner of the house he was in, warrantless, was home, and relaxed. “Jesus, Betsy, you scared the shit out of me.”
Dude, you have no idea how much more scary this encounter could be. “Yeah? What’s up?”
“What’s up? You’re dead, Betsy. Except, according to Jessica, you’re walking around.”
“Practical joke?” I suggested.
“Do you know how many laws you’re breaking?”
“I’m a child of divorce. Have pity.” I could hear Laura knocking things over in the garage; presumably Other Me was dealing with the racket. “I’m fine, go away.”
“For your information,” he began, ignoring my groan, “I didn’t believe Jessica, but I promised her I’d check it out. And here you are! You’ve got a lot of nerve walking around dead.”
“Tell me.”
“I know things haven’t been easy since your assault, but Betsy, you just can’t pull this shit.”
Ah, the assault. That would be the Fiends, feral vampires who leaped upon me when I was coming out of Kahn’s Mongolian Barbecue (all you can eat, $14.99). My garlic breath scared them off (I’m not kidding). But what I didn’t know was that, at the time, they’d infected me with the vamp virus. So when I was run over by a Pontiac Aztek, I didn’t stay dead.
I’d reported the assault like a good citizen, and Detective Nick had taken my info. We’d stayed in touch ... friendly, as I said. Not friends.
“I don’t know what happened,” I lied, improvising rapidly. “I think it was some kind of practical joke by my stepmother.”
“Having met her at the funeral home,” he muttered, “I can believe that.”
“But I’m fine, everyone’s fine, go away now.” I seized him by the tie and began dragging him toward my back door. “Thanks for checking on me. So, um, why don’t you ask Jessica out?”
“Huh?” He seemed to be having trouble keeping up, the poor, poor man. I was all choked up thinking what a stressful week this was. For him, “Aw, no way.”
“Why not? You’re not interested in me.” And never was, not until I drank his blood the night I came back. And it hadn’t been me he’d wanted. But my undead mojo had fooled him good. “And she likes you.”
He brightened. He was so cute ... my height, with brutally short blond hair and blue eyes. A swimmer’s build, and those shoulders ... if I wasn’t dead, or married, I’d have made a try for him. But I was. And I was!
“You think so?”
Yeah, she passed me a note in study hall, “Sure. You should definitely ask her out.”
“Aw, no. She’s—”
“Rich?”
“No. I mean, she is, but so am I.”
“You are?” This would explain the really good suits he wore. Also the BMW. I had just assumed he was a dirty cop.
“Yeah, it’s an inheritance ... but she’s dinner at the Oceanaire followed by a night at The Grand, while I’m bowling in Burnsville followed by one a.m. breakfast at Perkins.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I had my hand between his shoulders and was firmly propelling him out the back door. I could hear footsteps on my front porch. This was not a place to linger, for either of us. “Go ask her. Thanks for stopping in. Everything’s super-duper. Good-bye.”
“Do you think I should bring flowers?” he asked before I put a hand on his face and shoved him out the door.
“Tulips,” I hissed, and let myself out. He went right; I locked the door and went left.
Laura came around the far side of the garage, one hand clapped to the side of her neck. “I slowed you down,” she panted, weaving. “But you were ... really ... thirsty.”
I caught her as she went down.
Chapter 57
Oh my God!”
“Didja get ... Nick ... away?”
I clapped a hand onto the side of Laura’s neck, ignoring her muffled yelp. “Jeez, you’re really bleeding!”
“Well ... you were ... really ... hungry.”
I could feel her blood trickling against my palm and, to my shame, felt my fangs slide out. “I’m tho thorry!”
Laura giggled. “It cracks me up when you do that. The other you did that, too!”
“Laura, I don’t know what to thay.” I was almost crying with remorse and mortification. I’d saved Nick ... and arranged for my sister to get assaulted instead. Oh, well done, Vampire Queen! Next: Armageddon.
I hoisted Laura into my arms and carried her around the front of the garage like an undead, rumpled groom. “It’s okay. You’re not out here anymore. You went inside. I think ... to sleep.”
“Good,” I said shortly. It was probably a terrible idea to find myself and then beat the shit out of myself, but hoo boy, was I tempted.
I set her down and rammed my fist through the passenger-side window, popped the lock, and bundled Laura into the front seat. Then I scurried around to the front of the car, belatedly remembered I kept a spare key in a teeny magnetized box under my front left fender, and squashed the urge to smack myself on the forehead. I grabbed it, hopped in the front seat, and started the car. It was April, in Minnesota. So I cranked the heat.
“You can’t steal a car,” Laura said, abruptly sitting up. Then: “Ack! Why didn’t you remember the spare key before you broke my window?”
I instantly cheered up. Even better, my fangs were going down. “You sound a lot better.”
“Yeah, the whole thing was sort of ... hypnotically weird. You really have some whammy in you, Betsy. I mean, I blinked and then I was bleeding and it was almost ten minutes later.”
“I’m soooo sorry.”
“I know.” She patted my knee, which was an improvement over a Hellfire sword through my knee. “And it worked, right? It was worth it?”
I didn’t answer. Switching the victims of my assault hadn’t been the plan.
“Did stupid, greedy me see your face?”
“No. So when you meet me a year or so from now, you won’t have déjà vu, I’m pretty sure.” She stared out the windshield and shook her head disapprovingly. “I can’t believe you stole a car.”
“It’s my car!”
“But what are you going to think when you get up tomorrow night and your car’s gone?”
“I’ll have to worry about that then. Or three years ago. Whatever.”
Laura shook her head disapprovingly. “I’m keeping a list, Betsy. Grand theft auto, breaking and entering—”
“It’s my car!”
“—breaking and entering into a house—”
“It’s my house! And I neither broke, nor entered; I had a key.”
“Assault—wait. Did what the other you did count as assault?” She flapped a hand. “Anyway, we’ve only been here twenty minutes and we’ve racked up about twenty years in Stillwater. If they incarcerated women there. And why are we driving?”
“
What are you talking about? I had to get you away from there.”
“Yes, but why are we driving? You did what you wanted; you saved Nick. So let’s go back to hell.”
I hit the brakes and thought about it. “I can’t believe this is about to come out of my mouth, but going back to hell sounds like a great idea.”
So we went.
Chapter 58
Let me see your neck again.”
“Cluck-cluck,” the Antichrist teased. Then she smiled, and I remembered that when I didn’t want to smack her, I thought she was kind of terrific. She’d sure been pretty awesome on the trip. Trips. A lot of people would be drooling in the corner, not perfecting their right cross. “Really, it’s okay. Come on, stop beating yourself up.”
“That’s my job,” we said in unison. “Ugh, don’t remind me,” I continued. “But is it just me, or did you not have to smack me as hard this time?” I rubbed my nose, which had stopped throbbing almost immediately.
“Oh, I’m definitely getting the hang of it,” she replied cheerfully. “I wouldn’t want to have to guarantee a trip if lives depended on it, but yes, I think I’m catching on.”
“Terrific. Maybe your mother will let us out once she decides you’ve learned what you needed to learn.”
“So you’re assuming we’re not back in our time?”
“Hell, no. Not after the last trip. I’m not believing I’m where we’re supposed to be until I see a copy of the Trib with the right date.”
Laura nodded. “November second. Unless time is passing in our time while we’re running all these errands, in which case it could be the third or even the fourth.”
“It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to skip the entire month of November. I’ve told you how I—”
“Hate November, yes, yes, your weird prejudices are endlessly weird. Which reminds me, you said you’d prove we were already the product of a messed-up time stream.”
I took a quick glance around. I wasn’t quite sure where we were—another spooky damned cemetery, but the electric streetlights reassured me that we were getting ever closer to the right time. I didn’t see any familiar faces—the street on both sides was deserted of people ... though there were dozens and dozens of parked cars.
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