Undead and Uneasy Read online

  "We have been over this before," he said with barely concealed distaste.

  We had. Or I had. Don't get me wrong; I wasn't one of those whiny women (on the subject of drooling infants, anyway), but it was like once I knew I could never have one (and once my rotten stepmother, the Ant, did have one), it was all I could think about.

  No baby for Betsy and Sinclair. Not ever. I'd even tried to adopt a ghost once, but once I fixed her problem, she vanished, and that was that. I had no plans to put my heart on the chopping block again.

  I sat up in bed much too fast, slipped, and hit the floor with a thud. "Don't you want a baby, Sinclair?"

  "We have been over this before," he repeated, still not looking at me. "The Book of the Dead says the Queen can have a child with a living man. "

  "Fuck the Book of the Dead! I want our baby, Sinclair, yours and mine!"

  "I cannot give you one," he said quietly, and left me to go back to his desk. He sat down, squinted at some paperwork, and was immediately engrossed.

  Right. He couldn't. He was dead. We could never be real parents. Which is why I wanted (stop me if you've heard this before) a real wedding. With flowers and booze and cake and dresses and tuxes.

  And my family and friends looking at us and thinking, now there's a couple that will make it, there's a couple that was meant to be. And Marc having a date, and Jessica not being sick anymore. And my baby brother not crying once, and my stepmother getting along with everybody and not looking tacky.

  And our other roommate werewolf, Antonia, not having a million bitchy remarks about "monkey rituals" and George the Fiend-I mean Garrett-not showing us how he can eat with his feet. And Cathie not whispering in my ear and making me giggle at inappropriate moments.

  And my folks not fighting, and peace being declared in the Middle East just before the fireworks (and doves) went up in the backyard, and someone discovering that chocolate cured cancer.

  Was that so much to ask? Chapter 2

 

  "Take that rag off," my best friend rasped. "It makes you look like a dead crack whore. "

  "Not a dead one," my roommate, Marc, mock-gasped. "How positively blech-o. "

  "It's not that bad," I said doubtfully, twirling before the mirror. But Jess was right. Nordic pale when alive, I was positively ghastly when dead, and a pure white gown made me look like-it must be said-a corpse bride.

  "I think it looks very pretty," Laura, my half sister, said loyally. Of course, Laura thought everything was very pretty. Laura was very pretty. She was also the devil's daughter, but that was a story for another time.

  The five of us-Marc, Jessica, Laura, Cathie, and I-were at Rush's Bridal, an uberexclusive bridal shop that had been around for years, that you could only get in by appointment, that had provided Mrs. Hubert Humphrey and her bridesmaids with their gowns. (The thank you note was framed in the shop. )

  Thanks to Jessica's pull, I hadn't needed an appointment. But I didn't like stores like this. It wasn't like a Macy's. . . you couldn't go back in the racks and browse. You told the attendant what you wanted, and they fetched (arf!) various costly gowns for you to try on.

  I found this frustrating, because I didn't know what I wanted. Sure, I'd been flipping through Minnesota Bride since seventh grade, but that was when I had a rosy complexion. And a pulse. And no money. But all that had changed.

  "I'm sure we'll find something just perfect for you," the attendant, whose name I kept forgetting, purred, as she had me strip to my paisley panties. I didn't care. Jessica had seen me naked about a zillion times (once, naked and crying in a closet), Laura was family, and Marc was gay. Oh, and Cathie was dead. Deader than me, even. A ghost.

  "So how's the blushing bridegroom?" Marc asked, surreptitiously trying to take Jessica's pulse. She slapped him away like she would an annoying wasp.

  "Grumpy," I said, as more attendants with armfuls of tulle appeared. "I swear. I was completely prepared to become Bridezilla-"

  "We were, too," Cathie muttered.

  "-but nobody warned me Sinclair would get all bitchy. "

  "Not pure white," Jessica said tiredly. "It washes her out. How about an Alexia with black trim?"

  "No black," I said firmly. "At a vampire wedding? Are you low on your meds?"

  Marc frowned. "Actually, yes. "

  "Never mind," I sighed. "There's lots of shades of white. Cream, latte, ecru, ivory, magnolia, seashell-"

  "You don't have to wear white," Laura piped up, curled up like a cat in a velvet armchair. Her sunny blond hair was pulled back in a severe bun. She was dressed in a sloppy blue T-shirt and cutoffs. Bare legs, flip-flops. She still looked better than I was going to look on The Day, and it was taking all my willpower not to locate a shotgun from somewhere in that bridal shop's secret back room and shoot her in the head. Not to kill her, of course. Just to make her face slightly less symmetrical. "In fact, it's inappropriate for you to wear white. "

  "Virgin," I sneered.

  "Vampire," Laura retorted. "You could wear blue. Or red! Red would bring out your eyes. "

  "Stop! You're all killing me with your weirdness. "

  "What's the budget on this thing, anyway?" Cathie asked, drifting close to the ceiling, inspecting the chandeliers, the gorgeous accessories, the beautifully dressed yet understated attendants (who were ignoring all the vampire talk, as good attendants did), the utter lack of a price tag on anything.

  "Mmmm mmmm," I muttered.

  "What?" Cathie and Jessica asked in unison.

  "Cathie was just asking about the budget. " One of the yuckier perks of being queen of the dead? I alone could see and hear ghosts. And they could see and hear me. And bug me. Any time. Day or night. Naked or fully clothed.

  But even for a ghost, Cathie was special. As we all know, most ghosts hang around because they have unfinished business. Once they finished their business, poof! Off into the wild blue whatever. (God knows I'd never had that privilege. ) And who could blame them? If it were me, I'd beat feet off this mortal plane the minute I could.

  But even after I'd fixed Cathie's little serial killer problem, she hung around. She even ran defense between the ghosts and me. Sort of like a celestial executive assistant.

  "So?" Marc asked.

  "Don't look at. . . me," Jessica gasped. Marc's lips thinned, and we all looked away. "Gravy train's. . . over. "

  "Would your friend like some water?" a new attendant said, swooping in out of nowhere. "Got any chemo?" Jess asked tiredly. "It's, um, three million," I said, desperate to change the subject. I couldn't look at Jessica, so I looked at my feet instead. My toenails were in dire need of filing and polishing. As they always were-no matter what I did to them, they always returned to the same state they'd been in the night I died.

  " Three million?" Cathie screamed in my ear, making me flinch. The attendants probably thought I was epileptic. "What, rubles? Pesos? Yen?"

  "Three million dollars?" Marc goggled. "For a party?"

  All the women glared at him. Men! A wedding wasn't 'just a party. ' A party was just a party. This would be the most important day of my-our-lives.

  Still. I was sort of amazed to find Sinclair had dumped three mill into my checking account. I didn't even bother asking him how he'd pulled it off.

  "What the hell will you spend three million on?" Cathie shrieked.

  "Cake, of course. "

  "Talking to Cathie?" Laura asked.

  "Yeah. Cake-" I continued.

  "Cathie, you should go to your king," Laura suggested.

  "King?" Cathie asked in my head.

  "She means Jesus," I said.

  "This haunting isn't very becoming," my sister continued doggedly.

  "Tell your goody-goody sister to cram it," Cathie said.

  "She says thanks for the advice," I said.

  "Just think of all the charitable contributions you could make with that money," Laura gently chide
d me, "and still have a perfectly lovely ceremony. " (Have I mentioned that the devil's daughter was raised by ministers?)

  "There's the cake," I continued.

  "What, a cake the size of a Lamborghini?" Cathie . asked.

  "Gown, bridesmaids' gowns, reception, food-"

  "That you can't eat!" Marc groaned.

  "Honeymoon expenses, liquor for the open bar, caterers, waiters, waitresses-"

  "A church to buy from the Catholics. "

  The others were used to my one-sided conversations with Cathie, but Marc was still shaking his head in that 'women are fucknuts' way that all males mastered by age three.

  "None of these are working," I told the attendants. I wasn't referring to the dresses, either. "And my friend is tired. I think we'll have to try another time. "

  "I'm fine," Jessica rasped.

  "Shut up," Marc said.

  "You don't look exactly well," Laura fretted.

  "Aren't you supposed to go back to the hospital soon?

  "Shut up, white girl. "

  "If I ever said 'shut up, black girl,' you would land on me like the wrath of the devil herself" Laura paused. "And I ought to know. "

  "Stay out of my shit, white girl. "

  "If you're ill, you should be in the hospital. "

  "Cancer isn't contagious, white girl. "

  "It's very selfish of you to give Betsy something else to worry about right now. "

  "Who's talking to you, white girl? Not her. Not me. Don't you have a soup kitchen to toil in? Or a planet to take over?"

  Laura gasped. I groaned. Jessica was in an ugly mood, but that was no reason to bring up The Thing We Didn't Talk About: namely, that the devil's daughter was fated to take over the world.

  Before the debate could rage further, the attendant cut in. "But your wedding is only a few months away. That doesn't leave us much-"

  "Cram it," I snapped, noticing the gray pallor under Jessica's normally shining skin. "Laura, you're right. We're out of here. " Chapter 3

 

  But all that stuff at the bridal shop happened months ago, and I was only thinking of my friends because I was all alone. Worse: all alone at a double funeral.

  My father and his wife were dead.

  I had no idea how to feel about that. I'd never liked the Ant-my stepmother-a brassy, gauche woman who lied like fish sucked water, a woman who had shoved my mother out of her marriage and shattered my conception of happily ever after at age thirteen.

  And my father had never had a clue what to do with me. Caught between the daily wars waged between the Ant and me, and my mom and the Ant, and the Ant and him ("Send her away, dear, and do it right now"), he stayed out of it altogether. He loved me, but he was weak. He'd always been weak. And my coming back from the dead horrified him.

  And she had never loved me, or even liked me.

  But that was all right, because I had never liked her, either. My return from the dead hadn't improved our relationship one bit. In fact, the only thing that had accomplished that trick was the birth of my half brother, Babyjon, who was mercifully absent from the funeral.

  Everybody was absent. Jessica was in the hospital undergoing chemo, and her boyfriend, Detective Nick Berry, only left her side to eat and occasionally arrest a bad guy.

  In a horrifying coincidence, the funeral was taking place where my own funeral had been. Would have, except I'd come back from the dead and gotten the hell out of there. I was not at all pleased to find myself back, either.

  When I'd died, more than a year ago, I'd gotten a look at the embalming room but hadn't exactly lingered to sightsee. Thus, I-we-were sitting in a room I'd never seen. Sober dark walls, lots of plush folding chairs, my dad and the Ant's pictures blown up to poster size at the front of the room. There weren't coffins, of course. Nothing that might open. The bodies had been burned beyond recognition.

  "-a pillar of the community, and Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were active in several charitable causes-"

  Yeah, sure. The Ant (short for Antonia) was about as charitably minded as that little nutty guy in charge of North Korea. She threw my dad's money at various causes so she could run the fund-raising parties and pretend she was the prom queen again. One of those women who peaked in high school. It had always amazed me that my father hadn't seen that.

  I looked around the room of mostly strangers (and not many of them, either, despite the two of them being "pillars of the community") and swallowed hard. Nobody was sitting on either side of me. How could they? I was here by myself.

  Tina, Sinclair's major domo, had gone on a diplomatic trip to Europe, to make sure everybody over there was still planning to play nice with everybody over here. The European faction of vampires had finally come to visit a few months ago, murder and mayhem ensued, and then they got the hell out of town. Me? I thought that was fine. Out of sight, out of mind. . . that was practically the Taylor family motto. Sinclair the worrywart? Not so much.

  Since Sinclair and I were wrapping up wedding arrangements, Tina had agreed to go. Since Tina was never very far from Sinclair, a solo trip for her was sort of unheard of. But her exact last words as she left the house were, "What could possibly go wrong in two weeks?"

  Famous friggin' last words. Chapter 4

 

  I stared at the poster-sized picture of Antonia Taylor, the Ant, which was grinning at me. Right at me. I swear, the eyes in her picture followed me whenever I moved. It was on an easel, beside my dad's picture.

  I recognized my dad's pic-it had been taken by the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce when he and the Ant won some useless award that he bought her. The Ant's photo was from Glamour Shots. You know the kind: smokey-eyed, with long fingernails and teased hair.

  "-truly found happiness in their later years-" Barf I didn't know whether to just roll my eyes or to laugh. Given the circumstances, I did neither.

  Sinclair had disappeared a day after Tina left the country. I assumed he was still sulking about our constant bickering and had decided to avoid the thing that was Bridezilla. And in truth, I was a little glad to get a break myself. I wanted to love the bum, not fantasize about staking him. And I missed our lovemaking. Our. . . everything. I was just as sorry he was gone as I was relieved.

  Not to mention, I was too proud to call his cell and tell him what had happened to my dad and his wife. That would be like asking him for help. He'd be back on his own, without me calling him, the fuckhead. Any day now. Any minute.

  There weren't any windows in the room, which was a shame as it was a gorgeous summer day in Minnesota, the kind of day that makes you forget all about winter. Big, fluffy marshmallow clouds and a beautiful blue sky, more suited to picnicking than funerals.

  It was kind of weird. If the occasion called for a double funeral, wouldn't it also call for thunderstorms? The day I died was cloudy and spitting snow.

  Plus I'd gotten fired. And my birthday party had been canceled. It had all been properly disastrous.

  "-truly a tragedy we mortals cannot comprehend-"

  At last, the minister had gotten something right. Not only could I not comprehend it, I couldn't shake the feeling it was a sick practical joke. That the Ant was using her fake funeral as an excuse to break into my house and steal my shoes. Again. That Dad was on the links, chortling over the good one he'd put over on us. Not dead in a stupid, senseless car accident. Dad had stomped on the accelerator instead of the brake and plowed into the back of a parked garbage truck. Immovable force meets crunchable object. Finis for Dad and the Ant.

  The other Antonia I knew, a pseudo-werewolf, had vanished with her mate, George-er, Garrett, the day after Sinclair had left. That didn't surprise me. Although Antonia couldn't turn into a wolf during the full moon (causing ridicule among her pack, and eventually driving her to us), she was still a werewolf bred and born, and had a werewolf's natural need to roam.

  She'd been complaining of splitting headaches righ
t before she left (rather than change, she could see the future, but it wasn't always clear, and the visions weren't always welcome). She'd been, if possible, bitchier than usual, while entirely close-mouthed about what might really be bothering her. Garrett was the only one who could stand her when she was like this.

  A word about Garrett. Nostro, the old vampire king-the one Sinclair and I had killed-had liked to starve newly risen vampires. And when that happened, they turned feral. Worse than feral. . . animals- scrambling about on all fours and never showering or anything. They were like rabid, flesh-eating pit bulls. Two-hundred-pound, rabid, flesh-eating pit bulls.

  Laura and Sinclair and Tina had insisted I stake the lot of them. I'd refused-they were victims and couldn't help their unholy craving for human flesh. And I'd been vindicated, I think. By drinking my blood (yurrgh!), or my sister's blood (better, but still yucky), Garrett (known back then as George) had recovered his humanity. Even better, he had become capable of love with Antonia.

  So Garrett seemed fine now. But I didn't know enough about Fiends, or vampires (shit, I'd only been one for little more than a year) to try another experiment, and so a cute loyal vamp named Alice cared for the other Fiends, and Antonia and Garrett kept each other out of my hair.

  Maybe someday soon, I'd ask Laura if she'd let another Fiend suck her blood, but now was definitely not the time.

  All the cars driving by outside (stupid Vamp hearing!) were distracting me from the insipid service preached by a man who clearly had never met my dad or his second wife.

  Once again I was struck by the fact that, no matter what rotten thing happened, no matter how earth-shaking events became, life (and undeath) went on. People still drove to and from work. Drove to the movies. Drove to doctors, airports, schools. Hopefully none of them were getting the accelerator mixed up with the brake.

  I stifled a sneeze against the overwhelming scent of too many flowers (Chrysanthemums, ugh! Not to mention, the Ant hated 'em), embalming fluid (from one of the back rooms, not Dad and the Ant), and too much aftershave.

  If nobody else was going to say it, I would: being a vampire was not all it was cracked up to be. Even though it was 7:00 p. m. , I had sunglasses on for multiple reasons. One, because the lights, dim as they were, made me squint. Two, if I caught the gaze of an unmarried man, or an unhappily married man, he'd more than likely slobber all over me until I coldcocked him. Stupid vampire mojo.