Undead and Unforgiven

  “I could be dead in ten years!”

  “If we let Lawrence turn you, you’ll be dead by morning,” I warned. “This isn’t Twilight, get it? It’s not even a little bit romantic. Or fun. It’s not a chaste kiss and then off to la-la land followed by a leisurely return from the grave where nothing’s changed and everyone’s happy to see you. It’s not any of that. It’s terrifying and it’ll sweep you up and there won’t be a damned thing you can do. About any of it. I’m sorry, the answer is no.”

  “Well, you . . .” Her eyes squinched up as she fought to say something that would change my mind, or at least make me as mad and disappointed as she was. “You’re just a bitch. You don’t care about anyone and . . . and you’re mean. You’re a mean fucking bitch, and what kind of a name is Betsy for a queen?”

  “Ouch,” I replied, flicking a calm down glance at Tina, who’d gotten to her feet at bitch and looked ready to rumble. “You realize you’re just making my case stronger with the name-calling, right?”

  “This is my fault,” Lawrence muttered.

  Yep.

  Well. Yes.

  “Filling your head with all that nonsense from the cradle.” He sighed. “But your mama and grandmama never seemed to mind those stories . . .”

  “Besides, do you really want to be stuck with that look for the next several centuries? I mean, the color’s cute—I love the blue—but you don’t really see Miley Cyrus as an icon of classical beauty, do you?”

  “I’m not copying that dumbass,” she snapped back. “I’m copying Rihanna!”

  “Again: you’re kind of making my argument for me. Look.” I pointed to myself, showed her my hands. “I was lucky enough to die when my haircut and color were only a couple of weeks old and my manicure was only one day old. How often does that happen? I mean, what are the odds? You don’t want to spend eternity hating your trendy hairstyle, which is doomed to fall out of fashion, right? It’d be like—like always having to do the thong whale-tail thing for centuries: uncomfortable and unnecessary.”

  “You think that’s a good look on you?” From the size of Cindy’s sneer, I guessed she disagreed. “Your bangs are too short and nobody does red lowlights anymore.”

  “Wrong on both counts. People will do—or want, at least—red lowlights until the planet cracks. Now, I’m sorry we had to turn you down, but our word on this is final. You and Lawrence are welcome to stay,” I lied, “but for all intents and purposes—”

  “And your shoes are ugly.”

  I had a brief Homer Simpson moment

  (“Why, you little—” Cue strangling noises.)

  and by the time I shook it off Tina was hustling them out the door.

  “Wait! It’s okay, let go of her.” With deepest reluctance—I don’t think I had ever seen her so reluctant—she did. “I want to talk to her for a minute. Sinclair, maybe take Lawrence and get him a cognac or something?”

  Marc smiled. “The g is silent.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Listen, Tina and Cindy and I need a minute of girl talk. You guys head out.”

  I trust you’re up to something, beloved. I expect to be regaled.

  We’ll find out. Might be nothing.

  Never discount feminine intuition.

  Ugh. Fogey.

  “Hellooo? Are you in there?” Marc asked as the other men walked out. “You’ve got that blank look you get when you’re telepathing.”

  “That’s a verb now?” I asked, amused. “Scram, I said this is girl talk.”

  “But I’m your gay BFF! Or I would be, if anyone used ‘BFF’ anymore. And whatever it is you’re gonna talk about, I bet it’ll be good.”

  “I can’t believe I’m telling a doctor this, but gay men don’t have vaginas and thus don’t qualify for girl talk. Go away.”

  Grumbling, he (finally) left. When he did, I turned to Cindy, who had sunk into the love seat once Tina let go of her.

  “What? D’you want me to apologize? Fine. Sorry you’re a bitch.”

  “Gosh, thanks! Appreciate it! That’s the most heartfelt apology ever! Everything’s fixed and now we’ll be super-good friends!” I rolled my eyes; did this teen twit think she could outsarcasm me? Me? Easier to outswim or outdrink Michael Phelps. “What’s really going on, Cindy?”

  I got a shrug for an answer, which wasn’t surprising. But I was undeterred. I had a shit memory for names. I was in over my head in Hell. Jessica had been doing my taxes for me since I was eighteen (and now Tina did). I insisted on wearing purple even though I was a summer. I was a bitchy wife and a selfish friend. But I knew what a girl with a crush looked like. Hell, I’d had a Ryan Reynolds poster in my bedroom. When I was twenty-nine.

  “Knock it off. You’re not fooling us. Is it him?” I jerked my head toward the door Lawrence had just used. “That’s the reason behind the reason. Isn’t it?”

  Cindy’s head came up, startled, and her wide eyes were answer enough. “It’s not like that,” she mumbled, except I remembered how he’d mentioned she used to call him “Uncle” Lawrence when she was small. And how she didn’t do that anymore. She’d corrected him when he called her his little girl, too. And not in a fond “come on, obviously I’m not a little girl anymore, you sentimental old softie, you” way. More like, “Don’t think of me that way. I love you. I love you. Please see me as a woman.”

  “Sure it is. Look, I get it. I’m married to a guy who, if he lived in Iowa, would have to renew his driver’s license every two years and take a vision exam each time, that’s how old he is. He could be king of the AARP and the vampires. You think I can’t relate to—” I started to say “crushing on,” but nothing turned off a teen in love faster than that stupid, insignificant word. “Crush,” like it was some silly, immature thing, a passing fancy. Best way to get a teenager to close off? Imply that what they’re feeling isn’t real because they’re younger than Google.12 “You think I don’t know what it’s like to love an older man?”

  She took that in and sort of unscrunched herself from the miserable ball she’d curled herself into, then leaned forward. “His wife’s been dead forever, he’s been alone forever, it’s why he spent so much time with our family because he was so lonesome and I know he loves me I mean he loved my mom and grandma but he wasn’t in love with them and besides they never loved him back like I do and you have to turn me into a vampire because I need to stay young I can’t get old and cut off my tits and expect him to love me please don’t you understand?”

  Aw, jeez. I waited a few seconds, sort of hoping Tina might have something wonderfully insightful and wise to say to somehow fix how much messier the situation had just gotten, but she just looked at Cindy, her face creased in an expression of profound pity.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I’d rarely meant anything more. “Love sucks. And I still can’t help you.”

  “Won’t,” she said, animation leaking away, scrunching back into a dejected lump.

  “Well. Yeah. I won’t help you. I know you think I’m a stupid, uncaring bitch, and I am, but in this one thing my method of handling it is for the best.”

  “I hate you. All of you. And him the most.”

  No, she didn’t. Which, of course, was the problem. Tina and I looked at each other and she lifted one of her shoulders in a slight, apologetic shrug. My sentiments exactly; never had a shrug

  (the whole situation is so unfortunate but there’s really nothing we can do; perhaps best to let time be the great teacher)

  been more elegant.

  So that was that.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  Except not. Because the next time I saw Cindy, she was trying to rip Marc to shreds. And not doing too bad a job, either.

  I’d suspected nothing; I’d been working on the new and improved Ten Commandments because kindly, encouraging Father Markus was a fucking slave driver. Sinclair was off with
his rediscovered bestie, Lawrence; Jessica and Dick were both home and awake and playing with their weird babies; Tina was somewhere in the house doing whatever it was she did; ditto Marc. Only I had the self-discipline and work ethic to be hard at it this time of night.

  So when the crash came just after nine p.m., I was on board to check it out. Overzealous paperboy? Marc throwing another Rubik’s Cube out the window in a fit of zombie? An overenthusiastic neighbor returning a cup of sugar?

  Man, if only. It wasn’t any of those things, it was

  (Lawrence is dead the wretched child nowhere to be found take all precautions I am coming)

  a lot worse. I barely had time to register who our uninvited guest had to be when Marc started screaming.

  God knows how she managed to corner him without anyone in the house knowing about it until she’d drawn blood, though later Sinclair pointed out that ordinary human insane people were capable of great stealth and cunning, insane vampires even more so. However she’d pulled it off, there was a locked door between Marc and (relative) safety, but not for long. I had just enough time to hear Dick’s shout, also from behind a locked door—it sounded like he’d

  (“We’re all fine, go!”)

  barricaded himself and Jess and the babies in their reinforced closet—and then I was there.

  Here’s the thing no one tells you about kicking in a door: even if you have supernatural strength, you can’t just kick it anywhere as depicted by every movie ever. You have to kick the weak spot, usually the frame or the lock. If you don’t, your momentum will simply propel your leg through the middle of the door and you’ll be stuck

  “Ow-ow-ow! Fuck!”

  like a trout on a hook. An angry, flailing, blond trout hung up on an oak hook.

  Tina, who’d been right behind me as we’d roared down the hall, simply seized me by the elbows and yanked back. I howled as my (previously shapely) leg was dragged out, gathering about a million toothpick-sized splinters on the way. Then she kicked the door (hitting the right spot on the first try, the insufferable show-off) and it fairly flew off its hinges before hitting the carpet

  (phwump!)

  hard enough to raise dust. Which was pretty hard, since Marc vacuumed every other day (like all doctors, he was constantly waging a war on germs).

  Cindy had looked much better alive, but who didn’t, present company excluded? I didn’t think she’d been buried and clawed her way free of the grave, but only because I’d seen people who’d done that and they were much muddier and stinkier.

  Not that Cindy didn’t stink; she reeked of old and new blood, of fury and fear, of dried piss and garbage. Blood streaked her face, her hands; her hair had more red in it than blue. It had dripped and dried all over her clothes: black miniskirt and tights in a nod to the freezing weather (Minnesota girls wore tights when everyone else wore snow pants), white and black leopard-print shirt, short white (well, not anymore) denim jacket. Hair that probably started out sprayed and smoothed and was now wild and streaked with gore. No shoes—they’d been torn off. Or kicked off when she . . . came back.

  Clubbing clothes.

  Trolling-for-vampire clothes.

  Marc was kicking up an admirable fuss

  (“Stop with the biting! You don’t even like how I taste, ow, Goddammit!”)

  and I saw defensive marks on his hands and forearms. His neck was slashed and bitten, but the sluggish black trickle couldn’t really be defined as bleeding. I reached out, got a handful of Cindy’s matted, snarled hair, and yanked.

  The dead cheerleader flew away from him like she’d been shot out of a cannon. I’d whipped my arm, hard, like I was back-tossing a Frisbee; Tina’s reflexes were excellent and she hopped out of the way. Cindy smacked into the wall and slowly slid down

  (“We just sponge-painted that wall, aw, come on!”

  “Yes, but you needed a change, Marc, dear, and we can fix it.”)

  and I was on her before she could get up.

  Now what? I could indulge my earlier urge to Homer Simpson her, but strangling didn’t bother a vampire too much. Stupid me, I’d run straight to Marc but hadn’t thought to grab a weapon.

  “I need—”

  Tina slapped something in my hand; the heft was excellent and, as I discovered when I tightened my grip and swung hard, the blade was nice and sharp. Cindy had time to start a shriek—of hunger? rage? despair? general pissed-offedness?—that was cut off pretty much immediately. Just like her head, which flew a good six feet before thudding to the floor and (nightmare fuel) rolling under Marc’s bed.

  “I am not,” he announced, straightening from his defensive crouch, “fetching that.”

  “Christ!” I exclaimed, immediately followed by, “Sorry, Tina, but holy crap! I mean, it’s great that you had the presence of mind to grab a knife—”

  “I was in the kitchen checking on the puppies.”

  “—but I had no idea that thing was so sharp.” We had a buttload of Cutco knives for one reason only: Sinclair could stand sunlight. He’d been walking Fur and Burr, his puppies (not our puppies; never, ever our puppies), in the neighborhood and had run across a college kid selling knives door-to-door. Sinclair bought everything in the kid’s catalog on the spot, which made it doubly funny when he came home with the puppies and a buttload of knives. (“The rest are on back order,” he’d hastened to inform me, like I was going to be annoyed he didn’t come home with the entire set.)

  “Gotta give it to them,” Marc said, staring at Cindy’s headless corpse. “They make a good product.”

  “I didn’t even know what you grabbed— I’m not sure I would have tried to behead her on the spot like that.” Maybe we could have, I dunno, subdued her and locked her up somewhere? We used to keep the Fiends out at a compound, but they’d either recovered or died for good and the place was empty now. If I’d had time to sit down and think about it, I don’t think I would have advocated immediate execution.

  Too late now.

  “Never mind, Tina, it’s not your fault. Everything was so fast! It’s been less than a minute since Marc first screamed.”

  “Yelled,” he corrected. “Hollered. Shouted.”

  “Screamed,” I teased, “like a whiney little girly-girl.”

  “Come over here so I can bleed icky black zombie blood all over you.”

  “Pass.”

  “You didn’t know what I gave you?” Tina had walked over to the corpse and carefully nudged it onto its back, then bent to examine it, but took a moment to glance up at me, a curious expression on her face. “Why did you swing at all?”

  “I knew you had it covered, figured whatever you’d handed me would do the trick.”

  Only Tina could look up from examining a corpse she’d helped me decapitate with such a touched expression and say warmly, “That may be the greatest compliment I’ve ever been paid.”

  “Yeah, well, your hair is stupid. Pigtails? Really?”

  “I’m going hunting tonight,” was the absent reply. Would-be rapists and muggers beware! Tina literally ate them for lunch. Then: “Yes, as I suspected—as we all did. She’s newly risen. Killed by one of us a few days ago.”

  “Lawrence is dead,” I said suddenly, remembering Sinclair’s urgent mental holler. I took a second

  (we’re all fine Cindy’s dead so don’t crash your car in a reckless headlong rush to get back here we’re fine everything’s fine)

  (I’m coming I’m coming)

  to soothe my husband. For all the good it did. Fine, ignore my strict instruction not to crash his dumb electric-shaver car, see if I care. Oh, who was I kidding? I did care, the big stupid vampire lug.

  (Seriously, be careful!)

  Tina was shaking her head. “Dreadful. The king will take this hard.”

  “Well, yeah.” Marc had squatted beside Tina and was also looking over the corpse. “
Lawrence was his pal.”

  “Yes, a good man and a responsible vampire. We need more like him, frankly. Too many of us think being among the ranks of the undead is a signal to jettison all signs of humanity: empathy, remorse, sentiment.”

  “You don’t think he turned her, do you?”

  An emphatic shake of the head. “Absolutely not.”

  “I think Tina’s right: look how she’s dressed. She went looking to get jumped. Took matters into her own hands and now she’s deader than shit.” I resisted the urge to berate the corpse. “What a waste. So now what?”

  Marc cleared his throat. “Um, this is pretty awful, and I totally get why you’d say no—”

  “You want to examine her.”

  “Well, yeah.” He shrugged. “It’ll keep my brain occupied, and, frankly, living with you guys? I need to know everything I can about vamp physiology. And since you won’t let me examine you anymore—”

  “We waited three hours for my knee reflex to kick in,” I practically shouted. “Who has time for that?”

  “Majesty, I think you should allow this. The body is rather ideal for that purpose,” Tina pointed out. “No one alive will know to come here looking for her. Her family may not even know she’s dead yet. If she wasn’t spotted breaking into the mansion, we likely have a few days before we must dispose of her.”

  “Just once. Just once I’d like to have a quiet Friday night at home and not have to worry about where we’ll dispose of a body.”

  I heard the front door being thrown open and the thunder of feet on the stairs. “Honey, I’m home,” I murmured, stepping away from the doorway so Sinclair wouldn’t run me over in his rush to get into the room and save me. Even with the precaution, it was a near thing.

  “You’re all safe.” It wasn’t a question, but Sinclair liked to make obvious statements when under stress. No, wait. That was me . . . “Thank God. I beg your pardon, Tina.”

  “Under the circumstances,” she said and waved away his apology.