I kicked irritably at an errant tuft of grass, then looked up at the unmistakable sound of a child bursting into tears. A little girl—three? four?—was sprawled in the gravel, sobbing, and a bigger boy—nine, ten?—was standing over her.
“I said your turn was over,” the brat said, sounding remarkably unrepentant. I knew a few vampires like that.
The thing about being childless (as I still thought of myself, BabyJon being a relatively late arrival in my life) is you sort of freeze up when kids are acting badly. On the one hand, you know the kid’s in the wrong and you want to help. On the other hand, it’s not your kid, so perhaps it was none of your business.
The little girl was still crying. The bigger boy was now on her recently vacated swing.
I glanced over at the moms sitting on the bench and saw one stop in mid-gossip and say in that fake “I’m trying to sound stern but I’m really proud of my big boy!” tone that I absolutely hated, “Jaaaaason! You know you’re supposed to wait your turn, honey.”
“I’m telling!” the tiny girl in the gravel sobbed. “I’m telling! Mom! Mommy, Jason pushed me off the—”
“You be nice to your little sister, Jason Dunheim?” the mom asked. Asked. Not told. Oh, God save me from overindulgent nitwits who insist on procreating but not parenting. “Jason? Okay?”
Why is she asking? I hate when parents ask. What happens if the kid says no? Then what are you supposed to do? Slink away? Have a tantrum? What?
“Mommy!”
“Shut up, bawl baby.”
“Jason? You know we don’t use that phrase in our house, Jason? Honey?”
Sigh. Well, the little one didn’t appear to be hurt (I couldn’t smell any blood on her), and if I didn’t exactly approve of a mother who so clearly favored one child over the other, there wasn’t much I—
“Say you’re sorry.”
I turned my head so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash. Not only was Lara in it (groan), she was hoisting Jason by bunching his T-shirt in her fist.
Chapter 19
Lara lifted his big butt right off the swing, and was holding him a foot over her head with one arm. I’d never even heard her move, and the monkey bars were all the way across the playground from the swings.
“Let go of me!” Jason’s legs swung and kicked.
Lara gave him a brisk shake. It looked about as difficult for her as salting pasta would be for me. “Say you’re sorry.”
“Hey!” Miracle of miracles, The Thing That Spawned Jason was on her feet and running for the swings. “Leave my son alone! Put him down right now!”
I started to run, too. But my motives were in no way altruistic . . . I sure wasn’t at all interested in saving Jason’s spoiled little white-bread butt.
No, all I could think as I raced toward them was, First I get Antonia killed, and now I’m going to get Lara beat up . . . Oh, the werewolves are gonna throw us a party, they’ll be so pleased. Nice, Betsy. And it’s not even five o’clock.
I made myself slow down. A lot. Because about the only way this could get worse was if I outed myself as a vampire. Humans could not run at forty miles an hour. Slow down. A lot. Get Lara away from there before she—
“She’s littler than you.” Another shake. “And not as strong.” Another shake—sort of like when a terrier kills a rat.
Jason had both his hands locked around her wrist and, from his strained, reddening complexion, was trying as hard as he could to pry her hand off him. “You’re supposed to watch out for her,” Lara the Terrifying was saying. “She’s your ’sponsibility and you hurt her on purpose! You don’t ever do that!”
“Put me down!”
“ ’kay.” I didn’t even have time to groan and cover my eyes; Lara pulled Jason toward her, sidestepped, and threw him about six feet. He skidded nose-first into the gravel, sat up, and started howling. His nose was bleeding and the rich, heady scent went straight to my head.
Well, this was just swell. On top of everything else, I’d popped my fangs. Way to stay off the radar, Vampire Queen.
I reached Lara, veering around the mother who had instantly rushed to her son’s side when things stopped going his way.
“Argh, Lara, thith ith awful! Why’d you do that? You can’t be throwing bullieth around like that. Are you trying to get me eaten alive? Your father—”
Lara was ignoring me. I had, in fact, stopped existing for her at all. She had gone to the girl, helped her out of the dirt, and brushed her off. “Are you okay? We have Band-Aids at my house. Do you need one?”
“Nuh-uh.” The girl rubbed her cheeks with grubby fists, mixing dirt with tears. “How’d you do that? That was really cool. I want to do that. Can you throw him again?”
“I better not,” Lara muttered, giving me a wary look. Not like she was scared of me; more like she was calculating how much of a threat I was to her at that moment.
I had a flashback to what her mother—her human mother—had told me earlier.
A werewolf cub is not a human child. And what else had she said? She’d looked so strange when she said it. That look on her face—a mixture of pride and sorrow. It wasn’t an expression I’d ever seen before.
They’re faster. Stronger . . . crueler.
Jeannie had known her shit; Lara was no more human than I was. She hadn’t responded to Jason like a little girl who wanted to play on the monkey bars; she’d responded like an alpha who saw weakness and pain and instantly acted to put an end to it. She’d seen someone who needed protecting and she hadn’t hesitated—never mind the consequences to her, or me.
Which was a lot more than I had done.
Great. Shown up by someone who didn’t weigh more than a bag of dog chow. Who was already more of a leader than I could ever be.
“—because we could go up to my house and—”
“You!” Oh, terrific. The Thing That Birthed Bullies had marched over to us, dragging her bawling son behind her. “You think I didn’t see what you did? I saw what you did, and you’re going to—”
Okay, that was just about enough. I locked gazes with her and said, “Go thit down.”
The anger—all animation, in fact—left her face and she turned and walked like a robot over to the bench. Good old vampire mojo; there were times when I was more than pleased to use it.
“What’s wrong with your voice?” Lara asked.
“You jutht never mind my voith. Letth get out of here.”
“Hey, your teeth are all pointy! I don’t think you should bite him, though.” She looked at Jason, who was so bewildered by the events of the last twenty seconds he had stopped crying. Then she smiled at him, the flat, fake smile of a store mannequin. “He wouldn’t taste good at all.”
Jason was now backing away from her, wiping the blood from his nose with a swipe of his sleeve. I couldn’t say I blamed him. And the farther away he got, the less crazy the smell of his O-positive goodness made me.
“Your mom underplayed it, if anything,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Never mind. Let’s get out of here.”
“Okay. I’ve got what I wanted, anyway.”
We started heading out of the playground, back toward Lara’s house. “What, you wanted to throw a bully fifteen feet?”
“It wasn’t even close to fifteen feet. Boy, you really like to exaggerate, don’t you?”
“It’s one of my weaknesses,” I admitted.
“Besides, I just wanted to get another look at you.”
I stopped so suddenly she took a couple more steps before she realized she was walking alone. “You wanted to what?”
“To get another look at you. If you and my daddy become enemies, you’ll be my enemy. I might have to kill you someday, to protect the Pack. Why wouldn’t I come see you?”
“But you and I met already.”
“Yes,” Lara explained patiently, “but now you’re in my lands. I’m not in yours.”
I stared, struck speechless—which is not a normal thing f
or me, better believe it. “So, if I’ve got this right, you didn’t want me to take you to play. You wanted to—to—”
A werewolf cub is not a human child.
“—to size me up?”
“Uh-huh.” She brightened as the mansion came into sight. “D’you want some ice cream? I’d love a dish of chocolate.”
Okay. Now I was getting a genuine case of the creeps. Because I could see that, for her, the situation was over, done, resolved. She could move on to other things now, and would.
In other words, she was behaving exactly like she was taught and bred to behave: to worry only about the Now. Tomorrow was a thousand years away. Yesterday was even further away.
I sighed and surrendered. “Yeah. Let’s go get some ice cream.”
“Hey! You’re not talking funny anymore.”
“Let’s thank God for small favors, okay? Also, if you could not mention this little fracas to your folks, that would be peachy.”
Lara laughed. “You’re funny.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I followed her up the drive to the mansion. “I’m a barrel of freakin’ monkeys.”
Chapter 20
Dude,
Well, I definitely picked the right time to keep a journal. Because it has been an interesting couple of days. Who knows? I might actually keep writing the thing.
When Laura called me away during my last entry, I had followed her into the kitchen. But not as her friend . . . I was more than a little alarmed at the symptoms of intense stress she was exhibiting. Since unpleasant things had a way of happening when she was angry or frightened, I had a more than passing interest in her state of mind.
I was able to sit her down at the kitchen table and get her to drink a Snapple. The act of doing something nice and mundane seemed to calm her. That’s when I realized she was more humiliated than angry.
“Marc, I am so sorry you had to see that. I just don’t know what to say.”
“Laura, it’s not your fault. Hey,” I joked, “how do you think I’d feel if my old man showed up? You shouldn’t feel bad about something beyond your control.”
“Maybe it isn’t beyond my control.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “It’s fine, Laura, I don’t mind. Satanists showing up in the foyer certainly add some spice to my day. Nobody likes the pop-in. And like I said, it’s not your fault.”
“No. It’s my mother’s.” That last was practically spit out. “I was going to ask you something and now I can’t, because of her.”
“Ask me what? Drink your tea. So. Ask.”
“Um.” Laura gazed into her bottle of Snapple, which I doubt held any answers. “It’s just, I told Betsy I’d look after you and Tina while she was gone. So instead of coming over when I can, I was hoping I could move in. Just for a little while,” she added, misreading my expression. “I won’t get in the way, I promise.”
“How could you get in the way? There are twenty bedrooms in this thing. But come on, Laura. Cut the bullshit.”
“I don’t—”
“Betsy asked you to look over Tina, too?”
“Well.” Laura looked down for a moment. “Mostly you, I guess. I think she felt bad about leaving you behind.”
I shrugged. “It’s moot. I didn’t have the vacation time, anyway. Tina had to stay, too—somebody’s got to stay in Vampire Central and handle any undead-related stuff that comes up while they’re gone. Which leaves thee and me. And of course you can move in. Heck, pick an entire wing to live in.”
“No, I can’t, now.” Her knuckles whitened on the bottle. “Not with these—these people tracking me down all the time and asking—”
“Wait. This has happened before?”
Laura didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. The Snapple bottle shattered in her hand, spraying tea and glass all over the place.
“Oh my God! I’m sorry, Marc, I didn’t mean to be so clumsy, I’ll get a towel and—”
I was instantly on my feet, hauled her to hers, and hustled her over to the sink. “Laura, if you don’t mellow out, I’m going to slip some Valium into your next Frappuccino. Now hold still and let me look.”
I carefully examined her hand, rinsed it, and examined it again. She had a couple of minor cuts on the pads of her left ring and middle fingers, and that was all. Nothing arterial, no damage to the tendons that I could see.
“No more Snapple for you,” I said, handing her a dish towel and stepping around the broken glass. “From now on it’s strictly sippy cups.”
The only reason I was letting her clean up was because it was the only thing that would make her feel better. Laura was nice—a little too nice. She always made me wonder when she was going to blow. Looked like this might be the week.
“You said this has happened before?”
“Yes.” She wiped up glass and tea, being careful to get even the smallest pieces. “Those people. They always find me. Always.”
“So they show up at your apartment, too?”
“My apartment. My parents’ house.”
“I’ll bet the minister loved that,” I said dryly, earning a ghost of a smile. “What do they want with you?”
“To serve me,” she replied shortly, wringing the now-wet towel over the sink (after she’d shaken the glass into the garbage).
“Serve you, what? With toast?”
A real smile this time. “No, silly. To do my bidding.”
“So what have you done in the past?”
“I just tell them to go away.”
“No, no, no.”
Laura blinked. “No?”
“You’re going about it all wrong.”
“I am?”
“It’s going to happen anyway, right? Because of that star or whatever heralding you like—I dunno—like January heralds weight-loss resolutions.”
“Yes, I suppose.” Laura was looking increasingly mystified, which was a big improvement over mortified. “But what else could I do?”
“Lots of things.”
Then I told her. And got another smile, this one even better than the last one. This was a smile of absolute delight.
Chapter 21
I got back in time to change into a black suit, black panty hose, and Carolina Herrera black pumps. Sinclair was up and working at the desk in our suite; he was also dressed for the service.
Yes, indeed, my first werewolf funeral.
I watched my husband work for a minute until he felt my gaze and turned. “Something on your mind, dear one?”
“Several things,” I replied, thinking of Lara, future psycho werewolf leader. “Mostly about how awkward this is going to be. I mean, everyone there will know. They’ll know Antonia died saving me.”
“I imagine they will, yes.” He watched me with his dark eyes, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Like I don’t hate funerals enough.”
“Yes, of course,” he soothed. “Everyone should realize how difficult this will be for you.”
“Yeah, that’s—you jerk. I hate you.”
“No, you worship the hallowed ground I trod upon, which is what any good wife should—” He ducked, and my left shoe went flying over his head. Fortunately, it missed the window. I couldn’t stand the thought of my new pump being torn by flying glass. “My sweet, I was only seeking to give comfort in your time of—”
“Do you know how many pairs of shoes I packed?”
“Ah . . . no. Perhaps a change of subject would be prudent. Where is Jessica?”
“Watching BabyJon in her suite. You know, I didn’t want her to come, but now I’m awfully glad she did. I don’t trust the werewolves with him. There’s something weird going on there.”
“Mmmmm. What were you up to until the sun set?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
His eyes narrowed. “No one bothered you, did they?”
“It’s not like that, Sinclair.” I sighed and sat down across from him. “This is a weird place. I’m not sure I like
it. And this whole Council thing is making me nervous. I miss our house. I miss Tina and Laura and Marc. I just want to go home.”
“At last,” he said, “we are of one mind. Perhaps it will help you to think of the funeral as part of the cost of returning to Minnesota.”
“Or perhaps I’ll think of it as the werewolf version of Tailhook.”
“Either way,” he said, glancing at his watch, “we had best get moving. Soonest done, soonest home.”
“Dammit. No time for a quickie?”
He smiled at me and shook his head, but I could tell he hated to do it.
“Not even a quickie quickie?”
“Stop that, vile temptress. Now let’s be off; people are waiting for us.”
Hmph. I’d always thought that whole “jump in and get it over with” thing wasn’t always the way to go.
But damned if I was going to cower in a room that wasn’t mine, in a house where nobody knew me and nobody cared to. No, I’d go to Antonia’s funeral and hold my head up, and if the fuzzy lollipop brigade didn’t like it, nuts to them.
Chapter 22
I knocked, then poked my head into Jessica’s room to see how BabyJon was doing. Jessica, resigned, was walking back and forth with him while he alternated crying with spitting up on her shoulder.
“And once again, I can’t thank you enough.”
“And once again, I need to buy a new shirt.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the baby. “Have fun at the funeral, anyway. Should be a piece of cake, right?”
“It’s a joke, that’s what it is.” I held out my arms and she gladly surrendered him to me. BabyJon hushed at once, except for the occasional hiccup.
“I wouldn’t say that around here if I were you,” she warned, scraping at the fusty left shoulder of her blouse.
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