Coffin Fit (The Grateful Undead series Book 4)

by Stec, Susan

  SUSAN STEC

  Coffin fit

  The Grateful Undead series #4

  OTHER BOOKS BY SUSAN STEC

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  ADULT PARANORMAL ROMANCE

  THE GRATEFUL UNDEAD SERIES

  They're So Vein

  Gator Baitin'

  Blood, Sweat, and Demon Tears

  COMING SOON

  Witchy

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  DARK AND DEADLY SERIES

  Mirror, Mirror

  Day-Tripper

  When the Bough Breaks

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  YOUNG ADULT

  Dead Girls Never Shut Up

  The Other F Word

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  NEW ADULT

  PURGATORY a place Down Under

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  Acknowledgements:

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  For the very special women in my family.

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  Thanks go to my fellow writers at Artworks and

  my online family at The Next Big Writer

  *

  A special thanks goes out to Apryl Baker for

  bailing me out during last minute editing issues.

  Love ya!

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  There is a little piece of all of you in everything I write.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and places are products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance of the characters to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

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  Published 2015 by Susan Stec, the author

  COFFIN FIT Copyrighted © 2015 by Susan Stec

  Cover illustration copyrighted © 2014 Susan Stec

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  One

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  "Go to Hell, JoAnn!" My fangs slid from my gums and hung over my lower lip.

  My vampire(ish) sister glared at me, mouth open, and eyes big. "You know I can't go anywhere near Raphael. Satan still has that restraining order against me."

  I tossed up an eyebrow.

  "I spent two days in the pits last time I challenged Raphael," JoAnn shrieked. "I can't break the restraining order, Susan. I will not live in the bowels of an inferno! The heat makes my head sweat and my hair frizz!"

  We'd been arguing since I popped out of my coffin that evening. Raphael was my sister's ex-husband. He was also a demon, and he's put a curse on the women in my family.

  I snapped, "Get your hPhone and call him."

  I strutted into the great room of our tri-level home. Hands on hips, I squinted at the last wink of sunlight sliding behind the horizon on the other side of Lake Harris. Nothing like living in the sunshine state and being a vampire. I'd give my eye-teeth to be able to sunbathe on Daytona Beach again.

  I was not in my happy place. I couldn't wear my new skinny jeans. I had to stuff myself into baggy worn-and-torn cutoffs, and an over-sized gray Army tee covered with paint splatters from previous decorating attempts. That was why I wanted to shave my sister bald and shove her face into the toilet until the bubbles stopped.

  The clothes were the last of my pre-immortal wardrobe. I was wearing them because nothing else fit. The friggin aging curse was thickening my waistline. My tits hung to my navel and flesh was drooping all over my body. If Raphael weren't already in Hell, I'd pull out Grandmother's spell book and send him there. Although my witchy spells never worked as well as Grandma's did.

  My sister leaned against the kitchen counter and pulled her mouth into a tight pucker.

  "Damn it, JoAnn. There's not one undead vampire over the age of twenty-five. It's embarrassingly shameful."

  "Ralphie did not do this." JoAnn pointed at an empty cup near the sink. "You're only on your pity pot because you threw up a cup of coffee."

  That was another thing. Before the curse, even though I was undead and didn't need sustenance, I could still eat or drink human food without puking. Having coffee—even if it made me pee—was a luxury I had enjoyed. I swallowed hard. Coffee doesn't taste as good the second time around.

  The only thing that kept me from grabbing my sister by the neck and squeezing was she'd started to look her age too.

  "JoAnn, can you make that Earth-to-Abyss call? At least ask Raphael if he cursed us." I asked nicely. "Then you can start the kissing up process to get him to remove it."

  "No." JoAnn bounced off the counter and headed for the refrigerator.

  I threw my arm in the air. "Jesus! Resi spends half the day in front of the bathroom mirror measuring boob droppage, and Mom spends the other half counting wrinkles."

  Resi was my youngest daughter. She and Zaire moved back in with me when they were human after some minor experimentation with methamphetamine production. A smallish explosion they attributed to a microwave malfunction got them evicted from their apartment.

  The same year a hurricane trashed Dora Pines Mobile Home Park where my sister and eighty-three-year-old mother lived. They came to the door dragging Tootles, JoAnn's poodle, and soggy cardboard boxes with what remained of their belongings. I had led a quiet life with Jeni, my oldest daughter before they all showed up.

  "Call your goddamned ex-husband!" I told the back of my sister's head. I wanted her to turn around and see my angry eyes.

  JoAnn whipped a blood bag out of the refrigerator, hammered a bendy straw through the plastic, and sucked in a long draft. Slurping the remainder of the blood as she ambled over to the trashcan at the end of the breakfast bar; she glared at me and tossed the empty bag.

  "I'm not talking to someone who takes the Lord's name in vain." Knuckles on hips, my sister set her lips tight.

  "JoAnn, Dorius is getting pissed with our daily numbers." I hoped the threat would send her to the hPhone. "Everyone's obsessed with the stupid aging thing, and no one wants to get off their sagging butts to help with vamp-critter disposal."

  Dorius was our boss in the Critter Control Department of BAMVC. His top priority had always been to make sure we captured and killed the fanged creatures. Crap, it sucked to have the only immortal in the world, my sister, who could turn a raccoon into a vampoon.

  "I hate those shorts you're wearing." JoAnn tried to wiggle away from the subject. "You look trailer-park-trashy. Do you know you can see your white cotton underwear through the holes in those jeans? How can you wear cotton? Don't your shorts stick to them?"

  "Ugh!" I growled, lifted my shirt and exposed a wad of flesh hanging over the half zipped Levis. "Nothing fits me anymore! It's all your fault! Get the damn curse removed!" I was pissy.

  JoAnn was wearing a pink tee with a button up collar, tucked into perfectly pressed white shorts cuffed above her knees. Her tummy rolled underneath a belt, and her itty-bitty boobs didn't fill a training bra. Streamers of blond hair had escaped a ponytail and fell in front of each ear. White, three-year-old tennis shoes appeared brand new on her size five feet. She had boney knees, skinny lower legs, chunky thighs and a big ass. That made me smile.

  "I'm not going to Hell! I hate when my socks get all sweaty, and my feet swish inside my tennis shoes," JoAnn said. "Ralphie did not curse us. He still loves me."

  I wanted to remind my sister she was divorced; it had been nasty, and through it all, Raphael was a self-serving, lying, scheming, untrustworthy demon.

  "Are you
listening to me?" she asked from behind a bitchy face.

  "Yes. I mean, no. Well, kind of." Erring on the side of caution, I tiptoed into left field. "Sorry, I was listening to you and running travel arrangements in my head. Time passes so quickly in the abyss."

  I wanted her to go straight to Hell and plead our case to Raphael's boss. JoAnn's ex couldn't go around willy-nilly cursing vampires, damn it.

  "Right?" JoAnn said. "I hate math! I downloaded a calculator on my Earth-to-Abyss hPhone." She rested her palm on the counter, hip out, head lolling as she nattered on. "Anyway, I Googled how far the pits are from the surface of the Earth." She faced me with anticipation through mud-colored eyes shaded by long black lashes.

  I stood there waiting, brow furrowed.

  Her shoulders bounced a sigh real sassy-like. "In case you want to know, it's 3958 miles to the pits."

  An infernal triviality.

  She picked up two white, plastic bottles sitting on the breakfast bar and used them like dueling batons to exaggerate and enhance her words. "The earth's not a perfect circle." Around swung the bottle in her left hand. "I bet you didn't know that." JoAnn pointed at me with the bottle in her right hand. "The pits are farther from the equator—whatever that is—3963 miles, and 3950 from the poles." Both arms rose. "I had no idea where the poles were either, and it's not like I have all day to Google, so I rounded it up."

  In conclusion, both bottles fell to JoAnn's sides.

  Now I was dizzy. "Stand inside my pentagram and you'd only be a chant and an eye blink away."

  "Susan, don't confuse me."

  "Can we get back on the subject?"

  I had an unfamiliar urge to take a nap, and it wasn't even midnight.

  "What subject?" JoAnn asked.

  The wheel was spinning, but the hamster was dead.

  "Ugh, contacting your ex?" I couldn't hold back a yawn, and we didn't even breathe.

  "Will you please stop telling me to call my husband?" Now JoAnn was standing with both bottles against her hips. "You know why?" Eyes squinted, she rolled her lips into a smirk.

  Of course, I knew why. I was sick of hearing why. "Because you think your ex-husband didn't curse us."

  "My husband would never—"

  "Ex-husband!" I corrected rather loudly.

  "JoAnn!" Mom shouted from the downstairs hall. "You're a blood bubble the size of your father's left testicle on the outside of my asshole!" A few colorful Italian words floated up to the kitchen before Mom did. Being immortal, Mom had extraordinary hearing. She walked over to the large oak picnic table in our dining room and sat down facing the kitchen. "Your father only had one testicle, you know. The right ball retracted somewhere close to his last brain cell. If only my hemorrhoids would shrivel up with the rest of my body."

  "You don't have hemorrhoids," JoAnn said real smart like. "You're a vampire, remember? You keep reminding me. How does it feel?"

  Mom had lived eighty-six human years before Zaire turned her and clocked her back to a sassy twenty-five-year-old. But she was aging from the curse like the rest of us. Looking sixtyish, Mom had a compact and curvy figure, platinum curls, full lips and tawny eyes. She was wearing her fabric of choice—spandex. Today it was a fluorescent pink tank top with a black band cupping her breasts. Black running shorts cut above her knees and tennis shoes that matched her top perfectly.

  At four-feet, ten-inches, weighing in at about one-o-eight, Mom visually posed no threat. When she dropped her fangs and raised an arm, I ducked and dive. My mother was telekinetic. She could toss a man three times her weight a good fifty feet with the wave of her hand. She'd tossed me the length of a football field before.

  "Call your demon gruzzolo," Mom said. "Before my face starts to look like a peach pit, my tits hit my waist, and my ass hangs over this bench."

  "Y'all are crazy! I'm not calling Raphael. Anyway, my hPhone is on charge. I was up texting for hours after y'all went to bed."

  "Texting who?" I asked.

  "None of your business."

  "You better not get yourself knocked up by another demon," Mom said.

  JoAnn walked into the dining room and set the two plastic bottles on the oak table. She twisted them so the labels faced Mom and slid them closer. "Read these, and then I better hear some serious apologizing from both y'all."

  Mom's eyes and fangs dropped toward the bottles. "This is shampoo and conditioner." She double thumbed her fangs past perfectly glossed lips and back into her gums. "Your ex put a body rot curse on us, not a split-ends curse. Call him. On the way, put those back in the shower." She pointed at the bottles.

  "Read the labels, Mother."

  JoAnn slid onto the picnic table bench across from Mom and crossed one leg over her knee; the toe of her other foot tapped the oak floor three-quarter time.

  The annoying beat rushed a childhood memory; a metronome, a piano lesson, and Mr. Alfred's damn pointer stick. I rubbed my knuckles, and my mouth salivated with a need to bite something. I made a mental note to do a Google search on Mr. Alfred.

  "Ah, bischero!" Mom hissed. "The demon cursed us!" With both hands, she hammered the two bottles on the table in front of JoAnn. They were a little squished. JoAnn pouted as she tried to squeeze them back into shape.

  I sauntered around the breakfast bar and over to the picnic table, just in case fangs started flying.

  My sister pulled a one-sided lip pucker and shook her head. "Y'all are gonna see the light one day, and when you do, I'll act like a decent human being and accept your apologies without saying I told you so."

  "You're dead," I said.

  "What?" She gave me a hateful scowl.

  "You said 'like a decent human being.' We're not human," I corrected. "We're vampires, and you're not a very good one. Your suckage attempts suck."

  JoAnn was the reason we have vamp animals running wild in Central Florida.

  "JoAnn!" Mom shook her head. "If I didn't see the doctor drag you out of my womb and slap you on your ass I'd think you were switched at birth."

  JoAnn made the sign of the cross, closed her eyes, put her palms together and raised them to her lips. "God, they all don't mean to be cruel. I'm gonna pretend they didn't say those awful things about my husband. I pray to your forgiving soul for the strength I need to—"

  Mom slapped the table and jerked JoAnn right out of prayer time. "God damn it! What is with the frigging shampoo and conditioner?"

  My sister gasped. "Don't you dare use the Lord's name in vain in front of me!"

  A few brain cells short of comprehending a devout hypocrisy.

  "Really, JoAnn?" I guffawed. "You're a vampire who married a demon, lived in Hell up until a week ago, and spawned said demon's seed."

  Mom's fingers strummed the oak table. "Yeah, and I don't know why we try to talk sense with a vampire who prays to heaven and sleeps with Hell. Go ahead; tell us why personal hygiene is the key to your body rot."

  "We do not choose who we fall in love with," my sister said.

  My younger daughter, Resi, walked through the front door and into the living room. Her mate, Zaire, clomped in behind her. They both flopped on the loveseat across from a huge stone fireplace in the living room, eyes on us and mouths shut. Resi leaned over the glass top coffee table, checked her teeth in the reflection, and fingered a lipstick smudge from the corner of her red-lined mouth. Zaire toed off her black biker boots. She rested bare feet against the alligator mounted under the coffee table and leaned back, arms behind her neck.

  JoAnn nosed her head up a good three inches and slowly swung her eyes from mine to Mom. "I saw a post on Facebook and something clicked in my brain."

  I spit a laugh.

  Mom pulled on the black spandex cupping her breasts and readjusted the girls. "You should check WebMD(dot)com. Sounds like a stroke symptom."

  "It is volumizing shampoo, y'all. The stupid shampoo cursed us, not Ralphie. We're all getting fat because the shampoo is running all over our bodies. Why would someone invent something with this k
ind of a side effect?" She picked up the shampoo, and turned the back label toward my mother. "And see, there is not a warning on this bottle." She shook it at us. "I'm going to sue the hell out of the company that makes this stuff."

  Body by Vampire. Mind by Mattel.

  While everyone stared at JoAnn, senseless logic tossing a wrench in the cogwheels, I pondered my sister's biggest vampiric faux pas'; she'd single-fangedly turned a raccoon into a vampoon on her first immortal food run. The critter immediately began a randy fang fornication that propagated the human realm with their kind—vampire critters.

  Zaire ginned.

  Resi pushed her face into a throw pillow. Her squeaky voice asked, "Is volumizing a word?"

  "JoAnn," I said, but Resi's comment made me swallow a laugh before I could spit out, "Your husband is a bastard."

  Everything on my sister's face got bigger. "Just because he's a demon, does not mean he doesn't have a father! As God is my witness, Raphael didn't do it. He loves me!"

  Raphael hated our family. Because of us, Lily was no longer in the running for Gatekeeper-Of-The-Abyss; a post that would have made her daddy proud. That was one of the reasons he put a blanket curse on the immortal women in our family. It was dramatic—thunder, lightning, and everything.

  "You're an idiot! First you married a demon. Then you popped out his kid, pissed him off, and we got older!"

  Mom was quickly slipping out of the tad-bit-upset mode and into the majorly-pissed-off mode. When Italians got pissed, they got loud and broke things. With Mom's telekinetic powers, we may have been looking for an open-all-night home improvement store.

  Our mother leaned forward and gave JoAnn the Italian evil eye. Her first two fingers made a V over her nose pointing at each eye. Then she pointed her fingers at my sister.

  I snapped, "Mom! No throwing in the house!"

  Mom's head swiveled in my direction and she hiked an eyebrow at me.

  "I've had the glass top over the gator replaced twice this year," I said meekly.

  My mother puckered her lips, sucked on an eyetooth, and finally lowered her hand. "Then I suggest you call her frigging ex, Susan."