Dead Over Heels

  Sinclair, who had seen theater all over the world, begged to differ. And he did. Repeatedly. We had plenty of time, too, because even though it was full dark, traffic was horrendous.

  And the noise. It sounded just as busy at ten o’clock at night as it would have during rush hour. And everything was open! Restaurants, convenience stores, shoe stores. It was unbelievable. New York City: the perfect tourist trap for vampires.

  The limo driver pulled us right up to the front of the hotel, a forbidding stone building that looked like a transplanted castle. Sinclair helped me out (not that I needed it) while the driver shoved our luggage onto three bellboys.

  Hand in hand, we swept into the lobby, me trying not to stare like I had cow shit on my heels, Sinclair looking perfectly at ease. He even yawned and, as we’d snacked on each other during the flight, didn’t have to worry about showing fangs.

  Finally, I thought, tightening my grip on his hand, a squeeze that would have broken the metacarpals of most people, I get him to myself, and the Big Apple belongs to us. Oh, thank you, thank you Jesus.

  The month leading up to the wedding had been a frightening, lonely time for me and I was very glad to be reunited with my husband. Shit, I was glad he’d made the wedding at all. And now we were here, and I was going to make the most of it. Bet your ass.

  Sinclair slammed to a stop so suddenly, and so gracelessly, that I plowed right into his back. “What’s wrong?” I said into the cloth of his suit.

  He muttered something, and I peeked around him.

  Lounging across from the registration desk, taking up a small table in the bar area, was my best friend Jessica, and her boyfriend, Minneapolis Detective Nick Berry. They were both grinning at us with great big toothy smiles, at least one of which was fake.

  “’Bout time you got here,” Jessica said, and raised her Cosmo to me in a toast.

  “Oh, fuck me,” I groaned, surprised—but not in a good way.

  “I don’t see how we can fit that into the schedule now,” my husband replied, looking as distressed as I’ve ever seen him.

  Chapter 2

  Wow, great. This is great. Seriously. So great to see you. And what a great surprise ! Now get out. Seriously.”

  “Awww, you know I’m your hero.”

  Sinclair was overseeing our luggage (as an alternative to strangling Jessica), Detective Nick was still in the lobby, and Jessica and I were arguing in the hallway outside our hotel room. It was a nice hallway . . . crimson carpet, gold wallpaper, gorgeous wall fixtures, dim lighting. Too bad I was so pissed it was totally wasted on me.

  “You’re not a tiny bit glad to see me?” Jessica was continuing.

  I snapped my attention away from the wall fixtures. “Irrelevant! Now will you get lost already?”

  “Don’t you want to go shopping at Macy’s with me?” Jessica had the nerve to sound wounded.

  “We have one in the Mall of America,” I said coldly. Also a Bloomingdale’s and an Orange Julius. “And we’ve been a thousand times.”

  “Listen, Betsy . . .” Jessica was trying to look earnest, but as usual, her black hair was skinned back so tightly her eyebrows couldn’t move. She could barely blink. Even in the low hallway lighting, her ebony skin shone, but not in a run-for-the-blotting-papers way. She was, as usual, ridiculously beautiful, although still far too thin from the cancer. “I had to come.”

  “You had to crash my honeymoon?”

  “You make it sound so mean.”

  I put my hands behind my back, because they wanted to fly up and fasten around my best friend’s throat. “It is mean, you nimrod! I finally haul Sinclair’s protesting ass to the altar—after rescuing him from certain death, and attending a double funeral, and taking on responsibility for BabyJon, and curing your cancer—and now here I am in New York City for the first time ever, ready to enjoy my honeymoon and you two idiots show up! No offense.”

  “Listen . . .” Wary of superior vampire hearing, Jessica tugged me by the elbow about ten feet further down the hallway. I didn’t bother telling her Sinclair could still hear her from inside the room if he put his mind to it. Ears. Whatever. “I know it seems like a rotten trick—”

  “‘Oh, sure, Betsy, you guys can borrow my plane, but not until tomorrow . . .’ Giving you plenty of time to beat us here.” Now my hands wanted to fly into my hair and yank, hard. “And dumbass that I am, I actually left our contact information with you.”

  “Well, yes, but there was a method to my madness. You see, Nick hates you and Sinclair.”

  I blinked. “Yeah. So?”

  “So?” Jessica threw her bony arms up in the air. “So? So I finally find a guy who doesn’t give a shit that I gave away more money last year than the Target Corporation. So I finally find a guy who isn’t so busy crushing on my best friend he doesn’t even notice me. So I—”

  “Hey, hey!”

  “Oh, shut up, you know it’s true. I finally find a guy who likes me for me, and it turns out he hates my best friend and her husband. Not ‘God, they’re boring, I hate going over there’ hate, or ‘I hate how all she talks about is shoes’ hate. Hate hate. ‘I hate war’ hate. ‘I hate plague’ hate.”

  I blew out a breath, which wasn’t necessary, but I’d only been dead a couple of years, and old habits died hard. Jessica wasn’t lying, or even exaggerating. Her boyfriend did hate me, and it was a problem.

  See, when I was a newborn vampire, out of my mind with the thirst, I’d feasted on Nick. And it . . . sort of drove him crazy. Crying, slobbering crazy. Sinclair had to step in and fix it by erasing Nick’s memory of all events leading from my death.

  We’d assumed it worked.

  It hadn’t.

  It had actually worn off several months ago but, like all cops, Nick could lie like a sociopath. Instead he’d waited and watched. When Jessica had gotten sick, he’d explained in terrifying detail all the things he and his Sig Sauer would do to me if I didn’t cure her. But I’d had plenty of other things on my mind at the time, and as upsetting as it was to find out how he really felt, there hadn’t been much I could do about it.

  Frankly, what with one thing and another (the aforementioned rescue, the wedding, Jessica’s miracle cancer cure) I’d managed to put Nick’s simmering hatred out of my mind.

  “I can’t have the man I love hating my best friend.”

  “So you figure we’ll hang out on my honeymoon and get to be friends again?”

  Jessica opened her mouth to reply, but our hotel door popped open and a bellboy (bellman, actually) trotted down the hallway toward us, dressed in the crimson uniform of the hotel staff. He was a wide-eyed redhead with a goatee. Goatees irritated me. Either shave it all off, or grow a proper, Grizzly Adams beard, that was my motto. “Mrs. Sinclair, did you want your shoes kept in the tissue paper, or—”

  “It’s not Sinclair and go away,” I snapped, a little too forcefully, as all the expression fell out of his eyes and he spun jerkily around, hit the Exit door, and disappeared.

  “Great, he’s probably going to swan into the Hudson,” Jessica said disapprovingly.

  “The least of my problems,” I snarled back, pretending I didn’t feel hugely guilty. “Are you saying Nick thought coming to New York was a fine plan?”

  “Well . . .”

  I got it. “Ah. ‘Hey, Nick, I’ve got a great idea for a way to mess with your archenemies . . . how about we beat them to their hotel and tag along on their honeymoon?’”

  Jessica spread her hands and grinned the grin I could never resist. I ground my teeth in a vain attempt to resist. “He did smile. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile when you or Sinclair’s names have come up. What could I do?”

  The door opened again and Sinclair’s head popped out, which was as startling as it sounds. “Where did the bellboy go?”

  “Bellman,” I said helpfully.

  “I’ve got twenty pairs of shoes in here and I don’t know what you”—his eyes narrowed as he took in Jessica’s grin—??
?I know that look. You’re giving in, aren’t you?”

  “It’s not like they’re going to be sharing the room,” I began, but my husband cut me off by shutting our door.

  Great.

  Jessica coughed. “Sorry,” she almost whispered.

  Chapter 3

  Dinner was, um, an awkward affair. Nick was morbidly cheerful because he knew he was fucking with us, Jessica was trying to play peacemaker, I was as tense as a boiled cat, and Sinclair was icier than usual.

  “Can I tempt you with the dessert specials?” our waiter asked, gliding by for the fiftieth time. He seemed to find us fascinating, and no wonder—we were giving off enough tension to light up the entire island of Manhattan.

  “Sure,” Nick said, grinning. He and Jessica had been the only ones to eat, of course, while Sinclair drank glass after glass of Cabernet and I worked my way through four peach daiquiris. “Run ’em by us.”

  “Well, we have a lovely crème brûlée—”

  As opposed to a disgusting crème brûlée.

  “—a flourless chocolate cake with mint hazelnut filling, a vanilla bean gelato, a peach tartin, and a miniature root beer float served in an espresso cup.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “Careful, Minnesota,” Jessica murmured, looking down at her napkin. “The straw in your hair is showing.”

  “I’ll have the crème brûlée,” Nick announced. “Money is no object—he’s paying.” Jerking a thumb in my husband’s direction.

  “Can I have the gelato except served as a milk shake?” I asked, when steel pincers clamped down on my forearm and I yelped.

  “We are not lingering over this table.”

  “O-kay, can I have my arm back?”

  “Mrs. Sinclair, do you want to press charges for spousal abuse?”

  “Don’t call me that, Nick, you rotten bastard, and I do not. I’ll take that gelato to go,” I added to the waiter, who was unabashedly goggling. And I’d always heard nothing fazed New York waiters.

  “We’ll take it in our room,” Sinclair said shortly, standing. “Along with another bottle of the Cabernet. Charge the dinner to our room as well. Jessica. Detective Berry. Good evening.”

  And with that, I was unceremoniously hauled out of one of the toniest dining rooms in Manhattan. I would have given Sinclair a kick to the shins, except I caught a glimpse of Nick’s nasty grin and decided I was more pissed at him than my husband.

  Chapter 4

  Our door had barely snicked shut when Sinclair started in. “This is intolerable and I will not—”

  I decided to distract him the best way I knew how. I jumped on him, wrapping my arms around his neck and my ankles around his back. I pressed my mouth to his and licked his teeth. The alternative was engaging him in a lively discussion about that day’s Wall Street Journal.

  “Do not think,” my husband gasped, as we staggered around the room together, knocking over lamps and pictures and such, “I am unaware of your motivation.”

  “Shut up and fuck me.”

  “Oh, I will. I just wanted you to understand I know what you’re up to.”

  “Who cares? It’s our honeymoon. Now boink!”

  He snickered into my mouth. It always slew him when I used the B word.

  “And stop laughing at me!”

  “At once, my wife.”

  “You liar,” I said, swallowing a giggle of my own.

  He tugged at my clothes, and I tugged at his, and we got about two thirds naked and decided that was plenty. Then he was lowering me to the floor.

  I couldn’t stop kissing him; his mouth was original sin, and the wine had made his breath sweet and spicy, like the peach tartin I hadn’t ordered. I couldn’t blame him for rushing us out of there but I sure wish I’d been able to order dessert—argh, focus, Betsy!

  Let’s see, what’s he doing? Oh, yes! We were more or less naked and I could feel his hands on my inner thighs, spreading my legs apart, could feel his sharp teeth on my tongue.

  He entered me and I rose to meet him, pulling his shoulders, pulling him as close as I could. His hands were buried in my hair, pulling, stroking

  O Elizabeth my Elizabeth I love I love I love as we thrust against each other And I love you Eric my husband my very own husband and kissed and licked and bit. love I love I love I love

  I scrabbled to get even closer, bracing my legs against the wall

  Oh Eric that feels so good don’t stop don’t stop don’t WHAT THE HELL?

  He stopped. And I was so surprised I barely noticed. “What’s wrong?”

  “I—” I was looking right at it and I still couldn’t believe it. “I stuck my shoe in the wall!”

  Carefully, he looked over his shoulder. My left leg was in the air (as was my right), but when I’d shifted to get better leverage, my super vampire strength had plunged the heel of my sandal right through the wall, where it stuck fast.

  Sinclair looked back at me.

  I tried to think of what to say. Stupid vampire strength! “I-I—”

  Sinclair burst out laughing. I started to laugh, too, though I was slapping his shoulders and saying, “Stop it! Stop it! It’s not funny! I can’t get down! Help me, you asshat!” and in the end we left the shoe where it was, stuck about four feet up in the wall.

  Chapter 5

  We slept until sundown, and woke to a message from Jessica inviting us to the joint around the corner for dinner—her treat. Of course, since we couldn’t eat solid food, we were cheap dates, but still. The offer was out there.

  We debated it. “This is our honeymoon. It is time for you and I to spend alone.”

  “In a city of fifty million people?”

  “Eighteen million,” he said dryly. “All of whom are strangers.”

  I couldn’t believe I was in the position of defending Jessica and Nick tagging along on our honeymoon. “Yeah, but think of Jessica’s problem.”

  “I’m thinking,” he said, “of my own.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but come on. Nick hates us, and she sees this as a chance for him to get over that.”

  “So we can all be one big happy family.”

  “Well. Yeah.” We sort of were, usually . . . when we weren’t in New York, a bunch of us lived in the same house in St. Paul. More or less happily. So it was really bugging me that Nick wasn’t going along with the “come on, get happy” plan. I mean, it was bugging me now that Jessica had reminded me of the problem. “Exactly. Think of the position Jessica’s in . . . if we don’t fix this, she’ll have to pick between me—I mean, us—and him.”

  “So?”

  “Heartless bastard!” I cried, pounding on his (bare, yum!) chest with my fist.

  “Jessica is a beautiful, intelligent, wealthy woman. She will have no trouble finding another boyfriend.”

  This just went to show how fucking little Sinclair knew about women in general and my friend in particular.

  “She doesn’t want another boyfriend, she wants Nick.”

  Sinclair sniffed.

  “And you have to admit, this is sort of all our fault.”

  “We did what was necessary,” he said with the cool arrogance of someone who’d been walking around on the planet for more than sixty years, “and would do it again. That doesn’t mean we have to share every meal with them while we’re honeymooning.”

  “Not every meal,” I compromised.

  He rolled his eyes and slipped on a shirt. I fought the urge to slip it back off. “As you wish,” he said. “Not every meal.”

  “Yay! I mean, thanks.”

  He grunted.

  “I’ll call Jess.”

  He didn’t bother with a grunt this time. I whipped out my phone and texted, “Dinner OK! See you at 8?”

  A few seconds later my phone chirped at me. “8, OK!”

  “We’re on.”

  “Oh, splendid.”

  “Come on, it’ll be—” Fun, I had been about to say, which would only have been the biggest lie since “This won’t hurt a
bit.” “Incredibly awkward and weird, but we can skip dessert again.”

  “Ah.” He smiled at last and stepped into his boxer shorts . . . unfortunately. “A heroic sacrifice on your part, so I will say no more.”

  “Nobody loves a wiseass.”

  “Not true at all, my wife.”

  Chapter 6

  It was, if possible, even worse than the evening before. Jessica was strained and smiled too widely, Sinclair had nothing at all to say, and Nick kept making needling remarks about our Revolting Army of the Undead.

  I kept ordering daiquiris.

  At least the waiter was nice, though he picked up on the tension and came over only when one of us obviously needed a refill or, in Jessica’s case, more fries. I watched enviously as she plowed through a burger and fries and Nick chewed up a steak and a twice-baked potato. God, I missed solid food.

  Finally, Nick pushed it too far with, “What’s the matter, Vampire King? Am I raining on your parade? Tough to slip off and snack on civilians with a cop on your trail?” There was a muffled thump, and I knew Jessica had smashed her giant size-nine foot onto Nick’s boot. Yee-ouch.

  “So, anyway,” I said, “no dessert for us, but thanks anyway.”

  “Once again you misunderstand my motivation, Detective Berry. If I seem terse it’s not because you are intruding where you are obviously not welcome.”

  Oh, ouch, here we go.

  “It’s because at least half the staff of our hotel, and at least a third of the guests, are vampires.”

  I froze. Jessica froze. Nick froze. Sinclair drained his Merlot.

  “Oh, fuck me,” Nick said in a watery voice I’d never heard before. And I had a flash—most of Nick’s fury was really fear.

  “We’re not in any danger,” Jessica said firmly, and I could have hugged her. She had about nine yards of guts, and it had nothing to do with being rich. She was just brave. Brave and ballsy and loyal and if she wanted to tag along on my honeymoon to clear up some personal shit, was I going to get in her way? After she hugged me when I came back from the dead?