“I get that you haven’t had sex in, what? Eight years?”
“Jonas,” she warned grimly.
“But you two are going to hurt each other if you keep trying to make up for lost time.”
“Jonas, I’m five seconds away from hanging you by your cummerbund. I’ll get the electric chair, of course, but it’s a small price to pay.”
“Wait!” Jonas cocked his head as the tempo of the music changed. “That’s your cue. Go, go!”
“Why are you even back here?” she demanded. “The bridesmaids are supposed to be back here.” The other two had already gone, and hallelujah.
“To make sure you don’t head for the hills.” He gave her a rude shove in the middle of her back. “Now get going! I’ll duck around the side and pop out in front.”
“Great. It’s not a wedding, it’s a fucked-up magic show.”
“Sparkle, Fred, sparkle!” Then, before she could pummel him, he had darted away.
She stomped down the aisle, recognizing several guests: Artur, Tennian, Mekkam. Her mother and Sam. Colleagues from the New England Aquarium, including (oh, God) Madison.
The captain, in full dress uniform, sitting beside Thomas. They both smiled at her as she passed them and Fred marveled at the change in her fiancé’s father. The man had seriously mellowed after his wife’s death. He’d certainly been nice enough to her, even going so far as to give Thomas his late mother’s wedding and engagement rings to present to Fred. Fred had been proud to accept the engagement ring and, in another month, would be wearing the wedding ring as well.
Even though she’d been wearing it for over a month, she couldn’t help being distracted by it now and again. It was a nice piece of jewelry, a platinum band with a half-carat diamond setting, but that’s not why she caught herself staring at it during inopportune moments.
She loved what it represented, that was all. Almost as much as she loved the man who had given it to her.
She tipped him a wink, and prayed Jonas wouldn’t notice she had refused to wear the silver heels he’d picked out for her.
Barefoot, she padded up the aisle to take her place beside Dr. Barb, who was looking dazzling in a cream-colored dress Jonas had selected. Dr. Barb looked exhilarated and intimidated and thrilled, all at once.
As the music reached its crescendo, she leaned in and whispered to the bride, “By the way, I’m withdrawing my resignation.”
“What resignation?” the bride whispered back. “And you’d better not be late next Monday.”
Real romantic, that’s what it was.
Fred buried her face in her bouquet and snorted laughter into the white roses.
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“So, if I’m reading this correctly, you’re a vampire now. Not a secretary.”
“Administrative assistant,” I corrected automatically. I mean, jeez! I knew Cooper was old and creaky, but what century does he think this is?
“The important thing that’s emphasized here,” Cooper went on patiently, “is the bit about the vampires.”
“Well, yeah.”
“And how you’re the queen of them.”
“I guess some people would consider that an important point.”
“It’s bulleted. Also, the date of your death is bulleted, along with how you don’t have to pee anymore.”
“Give me that thing.” I snatched the memo away from Cooper so quickly, he didn’t see my hand move until his wrinkly fingers were clutching air. This startled him into a gasp, which we then both pretended I hadn’t heard. That, I was learning, was vampire etiquette. Or, that is, vampire etiquette when dealing with humans. There should be a class, you know. Vampire Etiquette When Dealing with Humans 101. In another fifty years, I could teach the stupid thing.
I scanned the memo, my eyes bulging so much they felt like they were trying to leap from my skull. My God! Cooper hadn’t been kidding. Jessica had sent him a memo about me. Two pages!
To: Samuel Cooper. From: The Boss. Re: Betsy, Vampirism, and Cargo.
Cargo?
And the part about me being the vampire queen was bulleted.
“I can’t believe she sent you a memo.”
“She always does. To keep me in the loop, don’t you know. Seems that one’s a little late, though,” he muttered.
“‘Creepy speed and unnaturally grotesque super strength’?” Aghast, I kept reading as other blechy phrases leaped out at me. “ ‘Still obsessed with shoes but married rich and can now actually afford the stupid things’? Oh, my God! That scrawny traitor, I’m going to—agh! ‘Immortality hasn’t given her any interest in any subject not directly involving her life.’ Why, that—Okay, I can’t really argue with that last one, but she didn’t have to highlight it. Look! It’s highlighted.”
“So I’m to fly you to Cape Cod,” Cooper continued relentlessly, a dog with a bone. My God, the dumb stuff this guy was obsessing about . . . “So you can meet with the king of the werewolves and to make sure he doesn’t sic his pack on you.”
“I think it’s pronounced Pack.”
Cooper heard the capital P (I know how it sounds, but you really could hear it if you pronounced it the right way) and nodded. “Right. This Pack, they’re pretty ticked? Because of that little gal Antonia?”
I nibbled on the inside of my lip, distressed, as always, by any mention of Antonia. It had only been three days, so the sting was still fresh. Sting! More like a lateral slice through the liver.
See, poor Antonia was making the trip with us. Via the cargo area, I was sorry to say. In a plain wooden coffin, the lethal bullet holes all over her body still not covered by an undertaker. My husband, Sinclair, and I had no idea what werewolf funeral customs entailed, so we’d given orders that her body simply be placed in a coffin and loaded onto Jessica’s private plane.
We didn’t even wash her face. Her beautiful, dear face.
But that was nothing compared to what we did with Garrett’s body.
“Look, Cooper, the important thing is now you know what you’re getting into. So if you can’t fly us out there, or if you think you—”
“Bite your tongue, miss. Or missus, I suppose. I’ve been flying for Jessica Wilson since she was seven years old, don’t you know, and we’ve had hair days and we’ve had hairy days. I’ve seen and heard things—Never mind, that’s private family business.”
“Oh, come on, Jessica and I are best friends. There’s no way you know stuff that I don’t—”
Cooper ruthlessly interrupted my shameless wheedling for gossip. “This doesn’t scare me.” He nodded at the memo, inadvertently crumpled in my fist. “But I surely wish Miss Jessica had told me earlier.”
He meant, but wouldn’t say, “Like, how about before I flew you and the vampire king to New York City for your honeymoon, dumbass?” Or maybe I would say that but he would think it. Anyway, the good news was that Cooper was neither (a) freaked out, or (b) quitting. And thank God, because finding another private pilot at this hour would have been a true bitch.
“You got a problem with the boss?” I asked. “Take it up with the boss. What I want to know is, are we still leaving at eight o’clock?”
“Memos don’t slow down my flight check,” Cooper semi-scolded in his luscious Irish accent. Oooh, European accents; I could listen to Europeans talk all day. We all sounded like illiterate bumpkins by comparison. “Gunshots don’t slow down my flight check. I could tell you stories—but I can’t, the government made me promise.”
Cooper had first worked for Jessica’s dad and, when her folks died (an ugly yet fitting death, and one I’ll get into another time) and their assets transferred to her (she’d been an emancipated minor), he kept right on flying for her.
And, as he’d said, Cooper had heard things. Chances were he’d already known I was walking around dead. He was just miffed that Jessic
a hadn’t told him a year ago.
And you know, for a decrepit fellow, he wasn’t bad looking. Tall—my height—with eyes the color of new denim and a shock of pure white hair that he wore down over his shoulders, he was like an ancient hippie, one who had never touched drugs or alcohol (unnatural creature!).
He was wearing what Jessica laughingly called his uniform: khaki shorts, sandals, and a T-shirt that read “Jesus saves. He passes to Noah. Noah scores!” He had tons of weird shirts about Jesus. People picked fights. It was unreal, yet cool . . . sort of like Cooper himself.
“Okay, then.” I stood, forgetting I had been sitting on the plane, and banged my head on the ceiling. “Ow! All right, so I’ll see you in another hour or so. They’re, um, they’re done loading Antonia and my husband’s pulling together some paperwork . . .” (For what, I had no idea—Sinclair had his fingers in a lot of pies, and I wasn’t interested enough to ask. He might answer, and then I’d have to listen. Or look like I was listening, which was harder than it sounded.) “Anyway, we’ll be back a little later.”
“I’ll be ready, mum.”
“And for the zillionth time: Betsy. It’s Betsy.”
“Whatever you say, mum.”
Polite as always, he didn’t turn his back on me while I scuttled out of the plane and down the stairs.
There! One unpleasant chore out of the way. Cooper knew the scoop and, even better, hadn’t tried to offer me a washcloth soaked in holy water.
But I was going to have a word with my alleged best friend about her irritating memo.
I mean, jeez. Immortality didn’t give me any interest in any subject not directly involving my life? Didn’t she stop to think how I would feel if Cooper read that about me?
Not to mention I wasn’t even cc’d on the thing!
I swear, I didn’t know what had gotten into that girl since I cured her cancer and she had to dump her boyfriend because he hated my guts. Frankly, I’d been having a terrible time this week.
And now rogue memos! It was too much for anyone to expect me to handle, which I would be pointing out to her the minute I saw her . . .
Self-centered? Me? Sometimes that girl didn’t know me at all.
MaryJanice Davidson, Fish Out of Water
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