Undead and Unreturnable

  He sighed and brought me close to him; warily, I went. "No matter how angry I am with you, I cannot bear to see you hurt, or in trouble, it seems. "

  I felt like jumping up and down. I squashed the impulse. "That's because we're in luurrrrrrrrvvvv. "

  He grimaced. "How enchanting. "

  "Listen, I've been thinking. "

  "How charming!"

  "Shut your face. I really have. Been thinking, I mean. About the fight, and the things you said. Maybe we shouldn't get married," I said uneasily. The training of a lifetime of reading Modern Bride rose within me and screamed in horror, but dammit, this was bigger than what I wanted.

  "Are you sure she didn't hit you on the head with that hellish thing?" he asked, feeling my forehead.

  I slapped his hand away. "I'm serious. This sort of thing is always going to be happening to us. To our friends. There's always going to be some disaster that will threaten to ruin everything. You have to admit, this was minor, as far as this stuff goes. And worse is around the corner, guaranteed. Maybe. . . "

  "No. "

  "I'm just saying. . . "

  "You've said it yourself: you won't feel like you belong to me without this silly human ritual. So we are doing it, damn it all. And I am not going through a tasting menu again, or a flower meeting. No. Absolutely not. "

  "That's. . . so sweet," I said finally. "So you feel like you're not worthy of me, but you're insisting on a wedding, when before you implied that me changing the date means I secretly don't want to marry you. Is that about right?"

  "Secretly or not, this human ritual obviously holds deep meaning for you. So we will do it. Then even you will admit you belong to me. "

  "Uh. . . we're not using 'obey' in the vows. "

  He smiled. "Aren't you in for a surprise, darling. " Chapter 30

 

  "What just happened?" I asked Jon on the way to the front door. "Did we make up? Are we back together again? We were ever not together? Did he change his mind after he saw me get stabbed? Should I hold a grudge because of the whole felony assault thing in my bedroom? Or should we call it even because I smacked the shit out of him right after? And why am I asking you this stuff? Where's Tina? Where's Jess?"

  "So it's true!" Jon cried, fumbling for his Sidekick with one hand and frantically brushing his shaggy bangs out of his eyes with the other. "Betsy, we've got to pick up where we left off. "

  "Shhhhhh!" I could hear Jess and Nick chit-chatting from the next room. "Not while Nick is here. "

  "Nick would be. . . " He consulted his tiny notes. "Detective Nick Berry. Ooh, yuck, that's inconvenient. "

  "To say the least. We're not sure what he knows, so for Christ's sake don't be babbling about vampires and swords and shit while he's around. "

  "Don't worry. You can count on me. You know you can. "

  "Well, thanks. " I smiled at him. Then I frowned. "You know, I was excited about Jessica dating this guy, but now I'm starting to wonder. . . "

  "But when can we get together again?" he whined.

  "Come shopping with Laura and me. She knows most of my dirty little secrets. You wouldn't have to keep your mouth shut around her. " And I had a feeling that what happened in the basement was going to be off-limits, conversation-wise, for a long, long time.

  "Okay!" he said, and actually pumped his fist in the air. I cried dry tears over what a geek loser he was and went to get my coat.

  Dear Betsy,

  I died about ten years ago, and as you know, basically all I've cared about since is the thirst. But things are different now. I've been keeping up with my hometown newspaper, and I've read that my dad is going to retire. He was only 39 when I became a vampire. He's never seen me since, and neither has anyone else in my family. What should I do? I know I'm supposed to keep a low profile, but I really miss my folks and would like to see what they've been up to.

  Sign me,

  Family Friendly in Fridley

  Dear Fridley,

  For crying out loud, go see your dad. If you don't want them to know you're a vampire, make shit up. . . you've been recruited by a secret government agency and that's why you went missing for so long. So secret you can't talk about it, or even stay very long, but they should be super-proud of you because you're out saving the world.

  Something like that. Thrust me, they'll be thrilled you're not dead. They won't even think of awkward questions until you're long gone.

  Your queen,

  Betsy Chapter 31

 

  We had rolled past the third group of carolers when Jon made the comment, "This time of year must be hell on vampires. Literally hell. "

  I giggled. "Some carolers came to the house, and Tina and Sinclair ran down to the basement with their hands over their ears. And they don't go shopping with me, needless to say. A simple 'Merry Christmas' from a stranger gives them indigestion for the rest of the day. "

  At last, Laura laughed. She'd been driving like a robot: no speaking, no engaging, just stiff turns and shifts.

  "But it doesn't bother you. "

  "Heck, no, I love this time of year. "

  "You're crazy to go to the mall the week before Christmas," Jon observed.

  "Oh, shut up. What do you know about it?"

  "I know I finished my Christmas shopping in October. "

  I shuddered. One of those freaks. More unnatural than the vampires, if you asked me.

  "Is George going to be all right?" Laura asked timidly.

  "Ah, George. Yes, let's get to it, shall we? Sinclair came up with a super punishment for you. "

  "Asshole," Jon muttered, almost too quietly for me to catch.

  I decided not to be distracted. Focus on the devil's daughter almost killing you and a helpless psycho vampire. "He needs fresh blood-like, from a living vein-or he'll backtrack, forget how to walk, all that stuff. I've been feeding him, but guess what!"

  "Oh no," she moaned.

  "Can I watch?" Jon asked.

  "That's right, for beating the shit out of a guest with no provocation, and trying to poof the vampire queen into tiny piles of ash, your grand prize is. . . letting George leech off you until all his wounds are healed! Thanks for playing. "

  She shuddered. "It's disgusting. "

  "Should have thought of that before you whaled on him. " Ohhhh, Sinclair was a dark genius. This was great. She looked as appalled as I'd ever seen her.

  "What if I won't do it?"

  I shrugged. "Then have a nice life, and don't ever come back. "

  "You wouldn't! Over one of those-those things?"

  "Laura. "

  "I'm sorry. I just don't see him the way you do. He's not a man, you know. "

  "Neither is the kid in the backseat-"

  "Hey!"

  "-but we let him hang around. Bottom line, Laura, I know I bitch about the queen gig, but the thing is, you can't just come into my house and beat the shit out of one of my vampires. You just can't. And don't pretend like you don't get it, because I know you do. "

  She didn't say anything. The silence got long, so Jon piped up with, "What happened after you realized you couldn't kill yourself?" and we picked up my life back in April. Chapter 32

 

  Sinclair was waiting in my room when we got back from shopping. I greeted him with a screeched, "Don't look, don't look!" as I hustled my bulging bags over to my closet, threw them in, and leaned on the door.

  "Dare I guess you bought me a gift after my dreadful trespass last night?"

  "If you're admitting you were an asshole, I'm not going to argue, but I felt better about you after you throttled my sister into semiconsciousness. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the old-fashioned stuff. " I realized I hadn't exactly answered his question, because I added, "The thing I had on layaway was finally paid off, that's all. Don't go reading anything into it. "

  "You've been with Jon, then?"

  I groaned miserably
and sat down on the bed to pull off my shoes. "Come on, Eric! Don't start up with that tired shit again, willya? I was also with Laura, but that doesn't mean I was the menage in their trots. "

  "I think you mean you were not the trois," he corrected. "And I was not starting up that tired shit again. My irritation with Jon now extends far beyond his romantic intentions. "

  "Oh yeah? God, the mind reels. What's he done now, start up with his tired old shit? The Bees active again?"

  "No. But his current activities are almost as dangerous to you. Your life story is not appropriate for publication, in any forum. "

  "But it's a joke! He's passing it off as fiction, a cute idea for a classroom project. The gag is that it's supposed to be about a real person, and some of us know it is, but everybody else thinks-"

  "I'm aware of the purpose of the 'gag. ' Which is what he makes me want to do, by the way. "

  "Why, Sinclair! That was. . . dare I think the word. . . a joke? A yarn, a tale, a comical story? Are you feverish, nauseous, cramping?"

  "Furthermore, I suspect he has engineered this entire thing as an excuse to stay close to you. "

  I sighed and stuck my shoes in my closet, fast, so Sinclair wouldn't see inside the bags.

  "Elizabeth? I breathlessly await your commentary. "

  "What can I say? Maybe it is. Maybe it's a little weird that out of all the projects he could have thunk up, the one he picked is the one that lets him follow me around and ask questions. "

  "Ah. " He looked at me approvingly.

  "Jeez, Sinclair, I'm not a genius, but I'm not in a coma, either! I've had guys like me before; I can recognize the symptoms, poor bastards. "

  "Yes," he said. "We are poor bastards. "

  I didn't know what to say to that, so I just continued my train of thought. "I don't know. Maybe I feel sorry for him. Maybe I thought I owed him a break. He came all this way and basically got his heart stomped. And the whole reason he quit staking vampires was because he liked me. I felt like I had to be. . . I dunno. . . "

  "Magnanimous in victory?"

  I shuddered. "Of course that just came tripping off the end of your tongue, Sink Lair, what a surprise. "

  I noticed he was in his usual spot when we chatted: arms crossed, leaning against my door (people did have a tendency to run in after just a brief knock or worse, no knock), head tipped to one side as he listened to every word that came out of my mouth. I pulled my frog socks off and tossed them in the hamper, but at least he didn't try to move farther away when I did it. I didn't think I could take that again.

  "I would almost prefer that you disliked him," he commented. "Men have been able to cajole women into bed using nothing more than their pity. "

  "Oh, right!" I snapped. "Like there was ever a woman in the universe who fucked you because she felt sorry for you. "

  "I am hoping," he said, pushing away from the door and coming toward me, "there will be at least one. I behaved abominably. "

  "Yeah, you were a real dick. " I was watching him warily. This was too good to be true! Not to mention a) nothing had changed, and b) I wasn't a faucet. "I'm glad you're sorry, but I can't just get over being upset"-I snapped my fingers-"just like that. I can't turn it on and off. "

  "I must beg your forgiveness," he said soberly. I realized for the first time that his hair-his hair-was messy, like he hadn't combed it in hours. It was as startling as if he'd gone outside without pants. "I know during love-making-it's the nature of vampires, I think-we have been. . . rough. . . at times, but that was no excuse for assaulting you. "

  "Damn right!"

  "My only excuse-"

  "Hey, I thought you said there was no excuse. "

  "-is that I was driven by fear, which is a new experience for me. " He frowned. "An unpleasant one. "

  "Well. " I sulked and allowed him to hug me. He did it carefully, like he was hugging a barrel of snakes. One open at both ends. "I did surprise you. And not in a good way. I really didn't mean to keep it a secret for so long, and I didn't mean to blurt it out that way. "

  "And you apologized, repeatedly, for that. "

  "Yeah, I did! What, so, you're not worried about that anymore?"

  " 'That' being the frightening and unmanning way you can get into my head during our most intimate moments, while you yourself remain a locked door to me?"

  "Well," I grumped, "when you have that attitude, anything's going to sound bad. " Then I loosened up and kissed him on the chin. "Aw, come on. I wasn't a virgin when I met you, and I kind of liked that this was a 'first' with you. It helped me-it helped me decide a lot of things. A big thing, this October. I mean, you were aware I was going to stay with you forever, or leave forever, right?"

  "Ummmm," he said, because he was nuzzling my throat. I flinched back a little, and he kissed me reassuringly in the same spot he had chomped me the night before. It had, of course, healed perfectly, but I couldn't help being twitchy.

  "And part of the reason I decided to stay was because, in my head at least, you weren't sneaky and weird. "

  "It will take me some time," he said, working his way into my cleavage, which was as wonderful as it sounded.

  "Time?" I laughed and clutched his head. "Sweetie, you're so quick to check the Book for every little thing, you forgot we're stuck with each for a thousand years. "

  "Anything's going to sound bad," he said, picking me up and tossing me on the bed, "when you put it like that. " Chapter 33

 

  He had come up for a kiss after spending an inhuman amount of time between my legs, and I was trying to figure out if you could actually die, yes die, by orgasm. It seemed likely. It also seemed like a great way to go.

  Can you hear me now?

  "Sinclair, we are not doing a cell phone commercial right now," I growled. "Now take that thing and stick it in me and let's worry about something else! Anything else!"

  But you can . . . pausing for the thrust. I moaned when it went home, when he buried himself in me, when I could feel him everywhere. . . hear me.

  "Yes," I groaned. "I hear you. "

  And when I think about how precious you are to me and how I nearly broke your sister's back when I saw her sword between your breasts, you can hear that, too?

  Thrusting back now. It was weird, having a conversation like this. About this. But I was nothing if not adaptable.

  "Yes, I hear you. "

  All right, then. I can live with this.

  "It's nothing," I grumbled, "compared to what I have to put up with. "

  "I read your columns," he said, after.

  I groaned and hid myself in the blankets. After a few seconds of digging, he found me and pulled me out. "Aha! I've been saying that in my head for over a minute, to no avail. So it really is only during-"

  "I told you. Must we relive every fight, all the time? And I don't want to hear the editorial report on my columns. "

  "I liked them," he continued, ignoring my queenlike command. And was it my imagination, or was proof that I wasn't a constant telepath really cheering him up? "I thought they made much sense. They will, of course, cause a bit of a scandal among the older crowds-"

  "They're not for the old guys. Those guys have already figured out all the rules. I gotta admit, I kind of get a kick out of writing them. "

  "Perhaps seeing the lighter side of the queen will appease some of the more, ah, some of the vampires who are more set in their ways. Particularly the European faction. "

  "I don't have any other side," I admitted. Then: "European faction?"

  "Yes, that group of older vampires who was giving serious consideration to overthrowing you. "

  I sat up. "What?"

  "Did you never wonder why I suddenly went to France last fall?"

  "Well-yeah, but-at the time we were-I made it a point not to show too much interest in your activities because I was still mad at you for being a sneaky freak, and this is the sort of thing I've been
talking about!"

  "But I persuaded them not to revolt," he said, looking totally puzzled. "I fixed the problem for you. "

  "First of all, why can't they just mind their own business? They can worry about them, and I can worry about me. Jesus!"

  "Because you killed two major vampires in three months, one of them the sitting power," he explained. "It was cause for concern. "

  "And second, whyyyyyyyy did you secretly go over there and then not say a word about why you were going and what happened when you got back? Instead it was all 'I miss you, Betsy, why won't you sleep with me?' "

  "I did miss you," he pointed out. "And I was wondering why you wouldn't share my bed. Or vice versa," he added, looking down at my green flannel sheets.

  "But this is the stuff I'm talking about!" I thrashed between my sheets like a landed bass. "You can't keep this shit from me!"

  "But I fixed it," he said. Honest to God, he was completely bewildered. No doubt wondering why I wasn't on my knees fellating him out of pure gratitude. Men! "I fixed the problem. There was no need to bother you with any of it. "

  I fought not to choke the living shit out of him. "But it was my problem?"

  "But when you didn't tell me about your sometime-telepathy-"

  "That was a totally different thing! That was something I couldn't help, that I meant all along to tell you about, and eventually did, and understood why it was wrong to keep it from you, and we moved on!" I was stomping back and forth, wrapped in my comforter. "This was not sneaking off to Europe-"

  "I never sneak," he said coolly.

  "Oh, dude, you invented sneaking!"

  "You knew where I was going. And you knew when I returned. "

  "Semantics! And here's a question, ladies and gentlemen-"

  "Who are you talking to when you do that?"

  "Why not bring me with? Huh? They were going to overthrow me, why not let me come over and plead my case?"

  He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. I had either cornered him with my cementlike logic, or he didn't want to tell me he thought I'd fuck up the whole thing. Either way. . .

  "Get out!"

  "All right," he said mildly, climbing out of bed, "but you did state in your terms that I must move all the way in, or all the way-"

  "I know what I said!" I kicked the duvet in a rage. "I don't care about that now! If I look at you another second I'll-I'll kick you in the gonads! Now get lost!"