And Jeannie was pissed. “There was no excuse for that. At all.” She turned to Sinclair. “You should have torn his damned head off.”
“Maybe next time,” my husband replied.
“Again, I apologize.” Michael nodded at the still-snoring werewolf. “He will be dealt with; you have my word.”
“No, don’t.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Just forget it.”
“Elizabeth,” my husband began warningly.
“Let’s not make things any worse than they already are. Look! No harm, no foul. I’m fine. He can buy me a new suit and we’ll call it even.”
“Unacceptable,” Sinclair said flatly and, wonder of wonders, Michael was nodding in agreement. Finally, they had a goal in common: ignoring my express wishes.
But for a change I had the chance to be the better man—so to speak—and moved to take advantage of it. Maybe I was beginning to think more politically in my old age. “I mean it, you guys. Let it go. It was a bad situation for all of us. It’s not like I didn’t provoke him. Come on, let’s forget about it and move on. This Council thing—when are we supposed to talk to them?”
“Tomorrow,” Michael said, giving me a look I’d never seen on his face before. Grudging admiration? Disbelief in my sanity? Maybe he just had to use the bathroom. “Midnight.”
Ah, yes. Midnight. Not too big of a cliché. But I kept that to myself—I’d shot my mouth off enough for one night.
“So, we’ll be there. But let’s call it a night for now. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve had about all the excitement I can take for one day. Night. Whatever.”
Sara laughed; she was the only one who did. But at least the others seemed to tacitly agree, because they fell back and let Sinclair, BabyJon, and me get back to our suite.
“Are you okay?” I muttered out of the side of my mouth, patting BabyJon on the rump. Hoo! The boy needed a diaper change in the worst way.
“I am deeply, deeply regretting not putting my fist through your attacker’s skull,” Sinclair replied neutrally.
“Don’t worry. There’s always tomorrow.”
Sinclair snorted, but seemed to lighten up. That was a good, good thing. I’m sure the werewolves were all badass and everything, but none of them had a thing on my husband, who wasn’t only a) the king of the vampires and b) old and wily, but c) wouldn’t tolerate people messing with me.
If they hadn’t learned that after tonight, there was no hope for them, and no hope for reconciliation. And then what?
War, maybe. A vampire/werewolf war.
Swell.
Chapter 28
My king,
Things here are as well as can be expected. I have reviewed the quarterly report from your holdings in Los Angeles and it seems the new security system for the company’s web server is doing the job.
Laura seems to be entertaining quite a bit in your absence; it seems there are always strangers in the house. Neither Marc nor Laura has said anything to me about them, so I am respecting their privacy and assuming they are trying to fill the void left by the absence of you and the queen.
I trust this finds you and Her Majesty well. If you require anything of me, do not hesitate to contact me at once. In the meantime, I have FedExed copies of the contracts for your most recently acquired properties. Please review them at your leisure, sign them if they are satisfactory, and return them to me. I will then take the next step.
My love and fealty to you both.
—Tina
“See?” I whined. “Why can’t I get e-mails like that? Not only is it clear and understandable, it’s in English!”
“My love, what in the world are you talking about?”
“Look!” I stabbed a finger at the printout of Marc’s latest rambling.
hey , grrrrl, miss you bad. things out here are BTW, but I’ve got a handle on it. Laura says howdy and wants you to GBH ASAP. tell your magically delicious hubby to answer tina’s e-mails; the grrl is FRO! later, marc.
“I have no idea what he’s talking about,” I muttered. “This might as well be in French.”
“What is a FRO?” Sinclair asked, studying the printout.
“My point! How should I know? When I send an e-mail, I actually spell words out. And use punctuation.”
“Light of my life, while I enjoy tirelessly listening to your never-ending litany of complaints, I believe we have slightly more pressing matters to discuss. For example, your attempted murder. And our appearance before the Council.”
“Yeah, yeah. But we’re getting back to this e-mail thing.”
We’d been back in our suite for about twenty minutes. The first thing Sinclair did was strip me out of my ruined suit and blouse and examine me from head to toe. It was a waste of time—I was fine. But sometimes there was no talking to the stubborn cuss I had married.
“So, dish.” I had put BabyJon down for a midnight nap and was lying on our bed, covertly feeling my chest now and again. Nope, no gaping holes. “What happened after I got stabbed?”
“Oh, the usual. Pandemonium. Violence. Threats. More violence.”
“You suck at narratives.”
He bowed his head modestly. I knew I was wasting my breath (so to speak). Sinclair wasn’t about to confess that he’d been scared out of his mind yet again. He liked to play it cool, even with me.
“Logically, your attempted murder can only help us.”
“Gee, thanks. So glad to be of service.” I sat up and swung my right leg out to kick him in the shin, which he neatly avoided.
“Elizabeth, you know exactly what I mean.”
“Michael’s humiliated and mortified, which the Council will pick up on? Like that?”
“Yes. Like that.”
“They must have been pretty surprised when I got up off the floor.”
He grinned. “Yes, indeed. Once I was able to remove the chair leg from your sternum, you woke up almost instantly—and healed as quickly.”
“Glad to be of help. That Sara girl was nice. She was about the only one who was nice.”
He shrugged and eased out of his jacket. “Give them time. Your warped charm will eventually win them over.”
“Hypocrites. Is it just me, or did Antonia never get a call or a visit from these guys the whole time she was living with us?”
“It is not just you. But take comfort in the fact that in the last year of her life Antonia found love and happiness with us. Something she apparently could not get out here.”
That was sad. These yo-yos were supposed to be her family. But nobody had much cared until she was killed. Hell, they hadn’t even known she was in a committed relationship with another vampire—Garrett, who had killed himself about four seconds after he’d realized the love of his life was dead.
It was all too awful to contemplate and for a moment I envied Jessica, lying in a dark bedroom and sleeping through this entire rotten mess.
But that was no way to be; it certainly didn’t solve anything. We had to move forward—even if it meant leaving some people behind.
Chapter 29
Dude,
It’s really hard to write this. I’m embarrassed and mad at myself. But I’d better get it off my chest, so listen up.
I can pinpoint the exact moment I realized the shit was hitting the fan. It was the next morning, long after Tina had retired for the day. I was minding my own business, wolfing down a bowl of Special K and reading the latest John Sandford novel, when Laura bopped in.
She seemed more cheerful than usual, which was nice, because she’d been awfully stressed since Betsy and Sinclair left. And she looked even prettier than usual—and Laura was a beautiful girl—with her buttercup yellow sweater and faded jeans, her blond hair pulled back in its perpetual pony-tail, big eyes bright and sparkling.
“Morning!” she chirped, sitting across from me. “Did I get any calls?”
“Uh, no. Are you expecting one?”
“Sure. I had thi
s great idea and I have you to thank for it. I’ll hopefully find out today if it worked.”
Dude, I should have followed up right then. But I didn’t. I figured she was involved with some church thing, or was working on a project for school. I’m an ER resident, not a shrink. How was I supposed to know she’d lost her mind?
Yeah, I know. It’s all just a bunch of crap justification now. I should have been paying closer attention, and I wasn’t. That’s the long and short of it.
“It’s going to solve a lot of problems,” Laura continued, and I admit I was barely listening to her. “I’ve just been so worried about Betsy ever since she almost died (again) when Antonia got shot.”
“Betsy’s always almost dying again.” I was a little more sanguine about the vampire queen’s resilience; I had seen many, many strange things since Betsy stopped me from killing myself a couple years back. “She’s like our own personal Kenny.”
“Kenny?”
“From South Park . Pop culture reference; sorry.” Laura tended to stick to network news and the Food Network. A single episode of South Park would horrify and disgust her. Sometimes the show horrified me, too, but I was still addicted to it. Nobody’s perfect.
“Where’s Tina?”
“Conked out in her room—you know how it is with her. She won’t be going anywhere until the sun’s down.”
“I have something for her,” Laura said vaguely. “And some people want to see her.”
“Great.” I yawned. New vampires were always stopping by the mansion to pay their respects. “Thank God it’s my day off. I need a break from sick people.”
Laura giggled. “That’s an odd thing for a doctor to say.”
“Honey, all doctors say it. Just not around patients.”
“I’m sure that’s—”
The phone rang and Laura leaped to her feet, practically sprinting to get it before it rang again. I rolled my eyes; probably some church wanted her to run a fund-raiser or some such thing. Or maybe PBS was running another pledge drive.
“Yes? Hello?” She paused, listening. “Okay, great! That’s just great . . . uh-huh . . . really? Oh, you didn’t!” She laughed, then paused again. “Uh-huh . . . you are? Terrific. Then I’ll see you in a bit. Thanks very much.” She hung up.
“Good news?” I yawned.
“The best news. Okay, well, I’ve got to go. See you.”
“Bye,” I said vaguely, and I was back into my book before she got to the front door.
So, so careless. Not to mention stupid. It’s all fine and good to say now “How was I supposed to know?” except I had seen the effect the devil worshippers had on Laura. I should have been suspicious of her 180, instead of focusing on my own problems.
But I wasn’t.
And, though I didn’t know it, it was already too late.
Chapter 30
You mean someone killed you again? And I missed it?” Jessica groaned and covered her face. “Damn! I was washing puke from my clothes while you were getting murdered . . . Dammit!”
“You didn’t miss much,” I soothed. “Just me picking a fight with a bunch of werewolves, getting stabbed, Sinclair kicking the crap out of my stabber, me waking up, and then everybody taking off.”
“Oh, sure. Sounds like a real snooze-fest. So what happens next?”
“We’re supposed to meet the Council tonight.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. I was still a little vague on that myself.
Jessica and I were having a late-afternoon drink in the sitting room of my suite. Because it was barely five o’clock, BabyJon was still asleep, and so was Sinclair.
I had my own thoughts about that, but kept them to myself. See, Sinclair could move around during the day, he just couldn’t go outside. The fact that he was choosing to stay under told me he was storing up his strength for whatever ordeal lay ahead. And, typical of Sinclair, he wasn’t telling me any of the things he was worrying about.
“So, what?” Jess was saying, blowing on her hot chocolate. “You tell them what happened, and they do what?”
“I have no idea.”
“You shouldn’t even be talking to them.”
“What?”
Jessica sipped. Blew. Sipped again. “You did what you had to do. Just like Antonia. So why should you have to explain yourself to a bunch of strangers who apparently never gave that poor girl a thought once she blew town?”
“It’s why we came out here,” I said. “We knew we’d have to face the music one way or another.”
“I don’t like it. I never liked it. You shouldn’t take the defensive.”
I shrugged. “Let’s see how it plays out. A few hundred people noticed last night that I’m pretty tough to kill. And—holy crap, I forgot to tell you about what happened with the baby!”
I summed it up for Jess, who was amazed. “Come on. Michael really forgot you brought a baby out here?”
“He totally, completely did.”
“Weird.”
“Tell me! And Derik freaked out again.”
“Here all this time we thought werewolves were vulnerable to silver bullets, when it’s dirty diapers that they fear.”
I snorted with laughter, nearly spilling my own cup of cocoa. “Oh, and I met this really nice woman—”
“Let me guess: not a werewolf.”
“No, but she’s married to one. She was really nice, for a crazy lady.”
“That’s what they said about Lorena Bobbitt.”
I shook my head at her. Jess could always cheer me up. She could always put things in perspective for me. I hadn’t wanted her to come on this trip, but now I was glad she had.
“This whole thing has me thinking.”
“I’ll call the newspapers,” she replied. “Maybe even take a picture of you thinking and post it on a website somewhere. Dammit again! My phone’s on the plane with Cooper.”
“I’m sure they have phones here if you need to make a call.”
“Not this time. You’re the one I always call—God knows why—and you’re just across the hallway. By the way, these walls aren’t soundproofed. You think you can keep it down while you’re making the beast with two backs?”
“Knock it off, you bitch. I’ve been thinking that Michael and I are very different kinds of leaders.”
“Well, you don’t like to lead anybody. You’ve been saying since day one that vampires should police themselves.”
“Right. But see, Michael knows how many werewolves are in the Pack. He knows where they live and who they are. But me, not so much. I have no idea how many vampires are running around. And even if I did, I’d have no idea how to get in touch with them. Say, God forbid, there’s a war between vamps and weres. We’d be fucked, because the werewolves are a species. They’re born werewolves and they know who they are and where they’re going. But vampires are made. Violently made. So why should they feel any loyalty to other vampires? I sure don’t. I mean, I’m loyal to Tina and Sinclair, but they’re family. None of the other vamps are.”
“So there you are.”
“What?”
“Now you know what you’ve got to do.”
“Terrific. Care to share with the rest of the class?”
“Prevent a war. At all costs, prevent a war. Because it sounds to me like you’d lose, and lose big.” For once, Jessica wasn’t teasing. She looked very sober and she was gripping her cup so hard her hands shook. “You can’t afford it, Betsy. None of us can.”
“They don’t know I’ve got the devil’s daughter on my side.”
“You really want to put Laura through that? That girl’s already walking a fine line between too good and really nuts.”
“You’re right. It’d be a rotten thing to do.” But I made a mental note to keep it in mind. If worse came to worst, we’d fight. And if worse came to terrible, I had the devil’s daughter as my secret weapon.
I guess that’s what being a leader meant. Using people for your own ends, even i
f you knew it was a bad idea.
Great.
Chapter 31
Jess had gone back to her room to get dressed for the Council, and Sinclair was working away at his laptop, when I decided to get some fresh air. I was taking a stroll down the beach when I saw the ghost. She waved at me tentatively, and I waved back.
This had been one of the hardest things for me to get used to, almost as difficult to accept as the fact that I had to drink blood to survive. Like the kid from The Sixth Sense, I saw dead people. Also like that kid, they tended to scare the crap out of me. Given how scared I was of ghosts and zombies, I wasn’t unaware of the irony that I was now one of the monsters. Didn’t like it, but understood the grisly joke life (or death) had played on me.
Unfortunately, ignoring the ghosts just made it worse . . . When they saw I wasn’t hopping to obey their edicts from beyond the grave, they got more aggressive. Hung around all the time. Popped out of nowhere when you were, say, having sex with your husband.
My favorite ghost—Cathie, victim of the serial killer Laura had killed—and my least favorite—the Ant—both came and went without warning. In fact, I hadn’t seen Cathie in almost a year. This bummed me out a bit, and when I thought of her I always hoped she’d gone on to better things.
As for the Ant, I was just grateful she’d disappeared and hadn’t come back. Yet.
So, though I didn’t much want to, I walked up to the ghost and said howdy.
“Excuse me,” she said politely, interrupting me mid introduction. “But how in the world can you see me?”
“Vampire.”
“But there are no vampires. And it’s still light out.”
“There are, and it is, but it’s a long story, so why don’t you just tell me why you’re haunting the beach so we can get on with our lives? Or deaths. What-ever.”
The ghost, a pale brunette with her hair pulled back in a bun, appeared to think that over for a bit. She was wearing clothes that were clearly from the 1960s, poor thing (of all the decades to be trapped in, fashion-wise!), and was wearing cat’s-eye glasses. We were far enough down the beach that my feet were getting wet as the waves slopped over them, but they just went right through the ghost’s shoes without doing any damage. Luckily, I was wearing last year’s sandals.
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