Undead and Unwary Read online

  “C’mon, guys,” I, the powerful, feared vampire queen, begged, trying not to whine. “C’mon, it’s cold! I got your text and here I am! Guys?” And . . . yep. Completing my week of awful, it was starting to snow. “Please? Hello?”

  Then, way too late to take any pride in it, I finally had a good idea.

  Sinclair?

  Beloved! Where are you?

  I’m on the front porch! Dying! Of all the days to wear a short-sleeved shirt! Let me in already!

  Yes, yes. Ah . . . yes. Was incipient hypothermia making me dimmer than usual or did the vampire king sound distracted? Like it was almost too much trouble to pay attention to our pesky bond? Trot around to the back, my own. The kitchen door is unlocked.

  Trot around back? I made zero effort to keep the annoyed outrage out of my brain. You texted me, asshat! And I have never, and will never, trot! I’m giving serious thought to beating you to death for suggesting it!

  I cannot yet come down to let you in, as I have my hands full preventing Detective Berry from calling the—ow.

  Ow?

  He is really quite—ouch. Quite adamant—hmm, that one will ache for a bit—about calling in the authorities. Tina and I are attempting—ouch. To, er, dissuade him. Ow. We would prefer not to—ouch—hurt him. Oh, now, that one will take at least an hour to heal—stop that this instance, Detective Berry!

  For a second all I could do was stand on the porch, frozen (internally and externally). Is DadDick hitting you? Why are you letting him hit you?

  It’s fine, came the soothing thought. He cannot truly hurt me, and I think it may be helping his stress levels.

  Stress levels! He thinks he’s stressed now? He hasn’t felt anything yet! We’ll find his weird babies but that doesn’t mean he should be tooling up on my husband.

  Better a few punches than the alternative, came the sharp retort. Do you not agree, my own?

  I didn’t answer, too busy stomping around the side of the house. Well, trudging—the snow was deep in places. Not trotting, though. Definitely not trotting. And I knew what Sinclair was alluding to, and I didn’t like it. Not at all.

  It’s complicated, and annoying, and it doesn’t help that I still don’t truly understand all of it myself even though I was there for all of it. But here goes.

  A long time ago (except it wasn’t, not really, not in terms of time or anything), Sinclair and I had—had—oh, fuck, there’s just no nice way to say it: we raped DadDick’s brain (except he was Nick then). He’d found out things we’d rather he hadn’t, and we made him forget those things for the greater good. And just because you do something terrible for the greater good doesn’t mean you’re a) right or b) not a dangerous asshole who should be locked up for everyone’s peace of mind. Trouble was, sometimes the vampire mojo doesn’t take. Or it does, but eventually breaks down. Or it does, and eventually breaks you down. Or one too many vampires try to mojo the same poor schmuck (cough) and the forced suggestions kind of fight each other.

  Bottom line: Nick remembered very little, except that he had become terrified of Sinclair and me. Which was a sensible thing to feel, believe me. Before, we’d been almost-friends. I’d gone to the cops for help in my prevampire life,8 met Detective Nick Berry, and through me he met Jessica and they started going out. Since Jessica is wonderful, and Nick is wonderful, and I was peripherally involved at best, they quickly fell in love.

  That’s where it got all kinds of nasty and terrible. Nick couldn’t reconcile his love for Jess with his terror for me. Couldn’t understand how the woman he loved could overlook her best friend’s unsavory bloodthirsty side. No matter what I tried, how hard I tried to rewin him over, he always remembered the brain-rape and how helpless he’d felt. How terrified and alone. And I didn’t dare try another mojo to make him forget any of that.

  Eventually Nick had made Jessica choose: him or me. That time she chose me. I won’t deny being gratified as well as surprised . . . I’d thought she’d probably pick me. But I hadn’t been one hundred percent sure. And “winning” hadn’t felt as good as I thought it would.

  Then I accidentally changed the timeline, and when Laura and I came back from the future, this version of Nick had somehow figured out how to choose us both. Or had never felt the urge to force the choice. He’d never been mind-raped in the new reality, and had no trauma to try to jettison in order to achieve happiness. Old timeline = Jessica was single and ready to mingle. New timeline = Jessica smells like baby barf and looks happy when she doesn’t look exhausted.

  All that to say it was no surprise Sinclair was letting DadDick smack him around, especially if it kept his mind off a) calling the cops and b) being mojo’d. Sinclair and I would willingly eat our own arms off before ever trying that again. It gave DadDick a sizeable advantage, even if he didn’t know it.

  “Hellooooo, the house!” I called and got a big fat nothing for my trouble, possibly because I was still outside. Or because they’d forgotten all about me after commanding me to return. To which I’m compelled to say: oh, Goddammit! I go to all the trouble to escape from Hell (okay, escape wasn’t the right word, fled was the right word)—and that only because of Sinclair’s tersely urgent text—but I was here, and obviously DadDick was too busy playing one-two-punch with my husband to care that I was back, no one cared I was back, so no one was down here to greet me with talk about how prompt I was, or how driven (or frozen) I was. Phooey. Phooey × 1,000. Next time I’m in Hell, I’m turning off my cell.

  I heard unfamiliar voices coming from the kitchen (aha!) and practically yanked the screen door off its hinges in my urgency to get inside. As Sinclair promised, the inner door was unlocked and opened easily into the mudroom. At once I was warm, though still shivering, and bent on ignoring Fur’s and Burr’s delighted slavering and yipping.

  Well. I wasn’t made of stone. I didn’t entirely ignore them, just paused for a few seconds to pat their sleek black heads. The fact that they were penned up in the mudroom, alone, told me how serious things were. Somebody was always willing to watch them or play with them or nap with them or take them outside for walks; those two fuzzy extortionists were hardly ever alone.

  I lunged for the toy box on top of the washing machine and extracted a couple of Sinclair-approved dog toys, making a determined effort not to look at the price tags. We had money, but some things were just too ridiculous, and an “educational” dog toy designed to go into a puppy’s mouth and be slobbered on was at the top of the list of things to be ashamed of because we paid lots of money for them. I stooped, scratched Fur (or Burr) behind her ears and gave her a squeaker, then gave Burr (or Fur) the other one. As they gnawed happily I made my escape into the kitchen.

  “H’lo, Onnie!”

  I stopped so abruptly the mudroom door swung back and almost hit me in the ass. I stepped farther into the kitchen and gaped at the unfamiliar children seated across from each other at the kitchen table—they looked about four or five—and managed to come up with, “My name’s not Annie.”

  “Duh,” the other one snorted.

  The first one—the girl—scooched up in her chair until she could lean across the table and smacked the other one—the boy—on the fleshy part of his upper arm. “Nuh-uh, you can’t! Not s’posed to say that to grown-ups.”

  “It’s Onnie!” the boy protested. “She’s barely a grown-up.”

  “That’s okay,” I said quickly, before things escalated. The tiny boy’s return glare was terrifying. “It’s not the first time someone’s said that to me. It’s not even the first time this month.”

  The boy stopped glaring at his sister (I figured, had to be), then beamed up at me. “Okay, I know, but it wasn’t nice so I’m sorry now, Onnie Bets.”

  “Oh, super splendid. That’s just terrific. Glad we’ve got it all worked out.”

  They beamed at me, showing lots of bright white baby teeth—what Tina calls milk teeth.
Which always sounds equally cute (milk! harmless yummy milk) and scary (teeth! teeth in milk? no one wants teeth in their milk) to me. They were both dressed in some sort of shiny overalls, deep blue for the boy and pastel blue for the girl, and the shirts underneath were also blue. They were shoeless and sporting thick white socks, and they seemed quite comfortable on the kitchen chairs even though their little chubby legs dangled quite a ways from the floor. They had pale skin, with lovely rosy gold undertones, and enormous dark eyes. Their features were nearly identical, with small noses and pointed chins, though the girl’s black, kinky hair had been pulled into braids and the boy’s hair was clipped short.

  I’d seen those features before. Sure, I had.

  No. I hadn’t. I was mistaken. It had been a long day and I was mistaken. These strange children were absolutely not who I thought they were. Because that was impossible.

  With that thought firmly in mind, I again engaged the little charmers. “Um, don’t take this the wrong way, kiddos, but who the hell are you? And what are you doing here?”

  Identical, epic eye rolls. At me. So eye-roll-ey it was like their gaze had weight. Their incredibly familiar gaze with weight-bearing eye rolls. Yep, I’d seen that look before.

  No, I hadn’t.

  “We did this,” the girl said.

  “We did,” the other one said with a nod.

  “Okay, we,” I began, “didn’t do anything. I don’t think. Seriously, who are you? Because . . .” Because there was no way they were who I thought. Except what other explanation was there? Man, these little kids better speak up or I’d press charges for . . . I dunno, trespassing? Being a toddler with extreme prejudice? Insulting my intelligence but being so adorable about it I was charmed instead of enraged? Yes, the police, definitely. They should be called, like, now. Then the overall-wearing cuties could answer some questions downtown, by God! “You look familiar,” was my incredibly weak finish.

  “’Cuz we are.”

  “Familiar,” his sister added. “I’d like a cookie, please.”

  “Me, too,” the other one added, a look on his face like the most brilliant thing ever was happening right now. “And also milk? Please?”

  “We don’t have any—”

  “Mama keeps them up there.” Pointing to the cabinets across the kitchen, the ones above the main stove. Far, far out of reach if you were a shortie in overalls. “The sugar st’sh.”

  “Stash,” the other one corrected. “Staaaash.”

  “I said! St’sh.”

  “And you know about the stash,” I concluded, officially giving up, “because somehow you’re Jessica’s babies.”

  “Not a baby!”

  “We’ll be four in this many months!” the other one added, just as hot under the collar, if they’d had collars instead of T-shirts. She showed me a hand of splayed fingers. “That’s the opposite of being a baby.”

  “Opposite!” the other one cried, equally annoyed.

  “Jeez, sorry, calm down.” Argh, don’t say jeez to little kids! I put my hands on my hips and shook my head at them. “I’m sure there are some parental rules about why you can’t have a cookie out of the super-duper secret sugar stash—”

  “There is.”

  “Are,” her brother corrected.

  “But that’s why we have you, Onnie Bets.”

  “You think cookie rules are dumb,” her brother added. “And they are!”

  That sounded legitimate. Food rules in general had always struck me as dumb, unless you had diabetes or wanted to land a modeling contract. “How d’you know what I think about any rules, never mind rules specific to cookies?”

  “You told us a zillion billion times. You’re always sneaking us yummies. Duh. Hey!” He rubbed his arm and glared at his sister. “I can’t help it! She’s dumb sometimes.”

  “He’s right,” I admitted. “I am. I’m just going to sit down.” What to do? Scream for help? Tell Jess and/or DadDick? Go to any lengths possible to never tell Jess and/or Dick? Maybe I should ask Thing One and Thing Two. They seemed pretty bright.

  (This is how things are now: I seriously consider taking advice from small children who haven’t mastered wiping their own butts but seem to know all about things I can’t grasp.)

  “Okay, you guys? I’ll get you both a cookie. And milk. D’you like smoothies? We can have smoothies.”

  “Banana-strawberry?” Thing One begged.

  “Your shoes are pretty and shiny,” Thing Two observed, earning a place in my heart for all eternity. “Strawberry for me, please.”

  “You can have all the smoothies you want,” I recklessly promised (what did I care? they weren’t my kids so the ensuing sugar rush wasn’t my prob), “but you have to stay here for a minute. Okay? Just . . . stay right here. Do not move from those spots. Stay put and when I come back it’s all cookies, all the time. I have to go—” Terrify the shit out of your poor parents. Uh, no. “I’ll be right back. Just stay put. Okay?”

  “Okay,” they chorused.

  I started for the swinging door that led to the main hall, then stopped and looked them over again. “You guys are—you’re pretty neat. You know?”

  “You say that all the time,” Thing One said. He sounded bored but gave me a lovely smile for my trouble. It almost made up for the shit storm I knew would follow.

  “It’s nice, though,” Thing Two added. “You’re always nice to us, except for that time we spilled paint all over your—” At Thing One’s squeak of distress and frantic head shake, she changed tactics. “Never mind.”

  “Oh boy. It had something to do with my closet, didn’t it? And the shoes therein? Don’t answer! This part of the conversation never happened. I’ll be right back. Stay!” I added, then got the hell out of there.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  I could hear the argument before I was even halfway to the room.

  “—the cops now.”

  “Dick, think on this for merely a moment.”

  “I don’t have time to think! Okay, that came out wrong. You know what I mean. Every minute we don’t call the cops, whoever took the babies is—is—” I hurried as I heard DadDick’s voice break, then steady. “They’re getting farther away. I should have called for help twenty minutes ago.”

  “I think Tina and Sinclair have a point,” Marc cut in tentatively.

  “Of course you think that!” Jessica snapped. “You think your new bestie is pretty damned perfect.”

  “Do you really?” was Tina’s delighted response. “That’s so darling, Marc. You’re so darling!”

  “Ugh, stop.”

  “Think on it for one minute,” Sinclair coaxed. “How could an ordinary person make their way into our home and steal your infants without one of us noticing? Save for my queen, we were all home. We have searched from attic to basement—”

  “Yeah, some of these stains are never coming out,” Marc muttered. “How would you even get dead spiders out of scrubs, anyway?”

  “—and turned up nothing. Your children’s disappearance must be supernatural in nature. At best, involving the authorities will do nothing save slow our investigation and raise questions among your colleagues you do not wish to answer. At worst, you risk exposing us.”

  “And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, you self-interested son of a bitch?” Jessica hissed. “Covering your ass.”

  “Covering all our asses, yes,” was the quiet reply.

  “Get the fuck away from that door. Dick didn’t want to hurt you too much, but I don’t have that problem.”

  “I believe you. Please think about what you’re doing.”

  “Last chance,” I heard, and I put on a burst of speed because whenever Jess used that tone, something that inevitably led to neighbors putting their house up for sale was about to come down hard.

  “All right
, thtop it!” I’d managed not to wrench yet another antique door off its hinges while getting inside the room, where the gang was staring at me with wide eyes. “Come on, you guyth. I go to Hell for half an hour and you all loothe your collective thit?” Aw, man. The lisp was back and I should have expected it. I got a good look at Sinclair’s bloody nose and whirled on DadDick. “Not. Cool.”

  “Not my finest moment,” he replied, and his sincerity went a long way toward my decision to postpone the plan to drown him in Tina’s vodka. “Betsy, you don’t under—”

  “You don’t under. I found the babieth.” No time to preen. But damn! They called me for help and I solved the case in about ten seconds. They are so lucky to have me! I’ll remind them later. I saw Sinclair catch that one, and his relieved expression gave way to a smirk. I, a paragon of maturity and cool-headed thinking, ignored it. “Tho it’th okay now. Thit! Hate the lithp.”

  “You—what?” I hadn’t thought it was possible but DadDick’s eyes went wider, hopefully because of my announcement and not because he couldn’t understand me.

  “The babies?” Jess gasped, trembling so visibly DadDick at once pulled her into his arms. “They’re back?”

  I don’t think they ever left. “Right downstairs.” Ah, excellent. The blood was already drying and I could talk, so I showed off a little by throwing another s in the mix. “Come see! Heh. ‘See,’ not ‘thee,’ did anybody catch that? I’m definitely getting a handle on this. Thisssssss.”

  “Now’s not the time for the narcissism parade,” Marc pointed out. Which was just crazy. There was always time for that particular parade.

  Clearly unbelieving (that can’t be right) but hopeful (why would Betsy lie about this?), DadDick and Jess stampeded into the hall and down the stairs. I scrunched my sleeve down past my palm until I could hold the fabric in my fingers, then reached up and carefully used my sleeve to wipe the blood off Sinclair’s face.