Undead and Unwary Read online

  “It was! Is. No offense,” I added, because there was nothing sadder than a touchy zombie whose feelings were hurt. God, the moping. The angst. Zombie angst . . . would that be zangst? Will that be a thing now?

  “. . . knowing I was skulking around down there doing sinister experiments, creating then destroying abominations, tracking dirt . . . which is stupid, by the way. I don’t skulk.”

  Of course, knowing that the zombie you lived with was experimenting on dead rodents created a whole new problem. It almost made me yearn for the days when he was skulking

  (because he does he does so skulk his denials are big-time bullshit he skulks therefore he is)

  in the attic, all hidden and ashamed and furtive, full of zangst. Like Quasimodo if the attic was the Notre-Dame Cathedral, our puppies were the gargoyles, and Quasimodo was a cute dead gay doctor.

  “I can obsess over their brains,” my cute dead gay doctor said, indicating the row of teeny fuzzy dead bodies, “or yours.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been over this. Theirs, obviously, but couldn’t you be a little less creepy about it?” I let the door swing shut behind me and edged toward the table. Everything was meticulously laid out; I had to give him that. Instruments neatly lined up, shiny-sharp. The sterile field all set up (guess he didn’t want the dead frozen mice to catch an infection). Marc all scrubbed clean and shiny right down to the latex gloves. It was the neatest, sterilest (is that a word?) operating field I’d ever seen. In my kitchen. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

  “What?” he asked, defensively. He was wearing a pair of scrubs that had been washed so many times, they were like fuzzy barf-green velvet. He’d cut his black hair super short again (“The Caesar,” he called it, “or the George Clooney, circa . . . anytime, I guess. He really got bogged down with one style, didn’t he?”), which pulled attention to his dark green eyes and pale (even before he died) skin. He was about my height—six feet, give or take—and lanky, and his face was made for smiling; grins took years off him. Not that he would age or anything. No. He’d . . . rot. But only if I wasn’t paying attention, apparently? I was still vague on the details. The horrible, horrible details. I made him a zombie, except it wasn’t me. God, I hated time travel. “Betsy? What?”

  “Hmm?”

  Marc, used to me staring vacantly at him while I pondered, got to his feet, neatly dropped the pile o’ fuzzy corpses into the biohazard bag, snapped off his gloves and dumped them, too, tied the bag off, then went to one of the sinks, rooted around beneath, emerged with Clorox wipes, and proceeded to wipe down the table. (I know, probably shouldn’t have fussed so much about the mouse massacre on the table, but come on! Mouse massacre! On the table!) Finished, he disposed of the wipes and crossed the room to go for the freezer. I definitely wanted out of there before I saw what was up for Revolting Kitchen Experiments, Round Two. “This isn’t anything new, you know,” he reminded me.

  “You killed yourself less than two months ago,” I retorted. “It’s incredibly new.”

  He laughed and I smiled. Marc had a high, cheerful laugh and I loved hearing it. “Point.”

  “What . . .” I stared, then tried not to look so terrified. I wasn’t afraid Marc would go all zombie feral in the night and try to suck my brains out of my head with a curly straw (“Don’t be a dumbass, Betsy, a curly straw would take too much time. I’d definitely use a straight one, one of those big fat ones they give you for bubble tea.”), but he definitely had some new, creepy habits in death. Undeath. “What . . . uh . . . are you going to do . . . uh, now?”

  He opened the freezer door. Peered inside. Reached in to the shoulder (damn, that freezer was deep) and emerged holding . . . oh God, the horror . . . holding . . . “Check it out.”

  A bottle of vodka.

  “Oh. Uh, very nice.” I was inwardly rolling my eyes. Tina’s vodka obsession was contagious. Lovely. Too bad her willingness to overlook most of my bad habits and terrible decision-making wasn’t.

  “Stop rolling your eyes,” he said impatiently, crossing toward me. “Look.”

  I looked. “Stoli Elit,” I read aloud, “Himalayan Edition.” I squinted. “That font looks expensive.”

  “It was!” For some reason, he sounded delighted.

  “Three thousand bucks?” Good thing Marc had hung on to the thing; I might have dropped it. “Are you kidding?”

  “I hid it behind all the corpses,” he continued gleefully. “Genius!”

  “Genius,” I acknowledged with a shudder. When? When would roommates saying things like “I hid it behind all the corpses” become commonplace? Was I rooting for the answer to be “never” or “any minute now”?

  But he was right; no one—no one—would look for it there. In fact, knowing there was a big weird bottle of incredibly overpriced hooch in there with scads of mice Popsicles made me want to poke through the freezer even less. “But Marc, I mean, it’s none of my business, but you can’t afford this.”

  My best friend was rich, and I’d married rich, and my father had made an excellent living before engaging in the Midlife Crisis Jaguar vs. Garbage Truck battle and losing, so money had never been that big a deal, but still. Marc wasn’t rich, had never been rich (air force brat, and unless your dad was, I dunno, King of the Generals, that didn’t make for a cushy lifestyle), and was still hip deep in student loans last time I checked.

  Hmm. Did he still have to pay those back? Nobody knew he’d been dead, however briefly. Kind of how some people knew I’d been dead and some people assumed it was some sort of nasty practical joke, and the government was years behind on the paperwork anyway so I just sort of plowed ahead and nobody bugged me about it. But Marc was still a person, according to the government. Social security card, birth certificate, lack of death certificate, tax forms—all that was still good.

  But: he’d been dead. He was still dead. It was something to think about.

  “Other than a car—which my dad helped me buy—it’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever gotten.”

  “Well, as long as you’re happy with it. MGM was out of Grey Goose?”

  “No. It’s a present.”

  “Oh. Ohhhhh.” I took another look at the long slender brown and gold bottle—and for that price, the gold font should be actual gold. For that price, they should come to your house on command and pour you a shot, then tuck you into bed and read you a story.

  Sure, the bottle was pretty, and the vodka was probably top-notch, but booze was smoothies was milk was Shamrock Shakes was tap water was anything but blood. I was thirsty all the time. Only blood helped; only blood quenched any of that raging permanent thirst. That didn’t stop me from binging on liquids all night. I couldn’t get drunk on booze anymore, though. Odd that Marc would drop so much money on something he knew, to me, might as well be ditch water. “That was really nice of you.” If not well thought out. Gah, next time just a gift card for DSW, Marc. “Thanks a lot. I can’t wait to—”

  “For Tina, idiot.”

  “Oh.” Whew! “Idiot” was a little bitchy, though. Not inaccurate, but still. “Why? What’d she do?”

  “Her birthday’s Friday.” He said it without reproach, because he knew me and he knew my Swiss-cheese memory. True friends expect nothing from you. That’s what made them so terrific.

  “Get out!” I had to admit, I was intrigued. How did a hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire celebrate a birthday? The standards (Sky Zone Indoor Trampoline Park? Water Park of America? Chuck E. Cheese?) were probably out. Midnight bowling, maybe? Midnight golfing? “How old is she?”

  He grinned and carefully tucked the bottle away. “I asked, and got the ‘a lady never tells and a gentleman never asks’ speech.”

  “And you reminded her you were all the way around the world from being a gentleman?”

  “Didn’t have to; she already knew. Anyway, it’s no secret she loves vodka, even if wh
y she loves it is.”

  I nodded. It was a mystery, because as I said, nothing slaked a vampire’s thirst but blood. Anything else was at best a waste of time and at worst just made the thirst worse. That didn’t stop Tina from hoarding vodka like Smaug hung on to gold and oh my God, I just made a Hobbit reference. I had to stop watching TV with Marc. Like, now. Right now.

  But back to Tina and her vodka hoard . . . I figured it had to be something from her old life, something that reminded her of better, simpler times. Or maybe she just really liked vodka. “It’s a great present, but she’s gonna freak a little. She’ll know how much it costs. And if she doesn’t, she’ll find out pretty quick. She’d want you to save your money.”

  “Why?”

  I opened my mouth but nothing came out—rare! It took a few seconds but I finally managed. I hadn’t been prepared for Marc not to know why he shouldn’t blow wads of dough on booze for dead Southern belles. “Why? Because . . . because it’s your money. I mean, it’s—you earned it. You should hang on to some of it.” When that didn’t seem to be getting through, I added, “Uh, right?”

  He gave me the saddest smile I’d ever seen on his open, friendly face. “What am I going to spend it on?” he asked quietly. “A wife? Children? A mortgage? Retirement savings?”

  I opened my mouth again.

  Don’t make a stupid joke don’t make a stupid joke do not make fun of this do not make a joke to hide the fact that you suddenly feel guilty and awkward.

  I closed my mouth. Took an unnecessary breath. Then added, “You quit your job.”

  “Sure.” He was nodding. “I couldn’t risk going back to the ER. Someone was eventually bound to notice I was dead.”

  I nodded back. That was definitely the risk you took when you worked with doctors and nurses and EMTs. He hadn’t even gone to give notice in person. Just called up his boss and gave her the “family emergency” line. Which wasn’t a line, come to think of it. Dying was definitely a family emergency. At the least, it should be a get-out-of-jail-free card.

  “Okay, so you’re—uh—not earning right now.” It wasn’t as much a problem as it would be for a regular dead person. But Sinclair didn’t charge him rent—didn’t charge any of these freeloaders rent and it was just now occurring to me that I’m technically a freeloader so I’m not going to make a fuss—although Marc regularly contributed to the smoothie fund. When he wasn’t in scrubs he lounged in old jeans and various tattered T-shirts; he was like a gay . . . a gay . . . I couldn’t think of the word that meant the opposite of cliché, but that was what he was. No mincing, no hair products, no reality television. He had a crush on Benedict Cumberbatch, but who didn’t? Shit, I had a crush on the Batchman; Marc and I were proud Cumberbimbos. So Marc’s expenses were low, but still. “So that’s maybe a good reason to save your money?”

  Marc shrugged off my nosy concern. “I’m earning. Tina set up a WebMD kind of thing for me. Patients can contact me through the Web page to ask me things, and I diagnose online.”

  What a terrific way to get sued. “Okay.”

  “She’s also offered to put my name out there for off-the-books medical care.”

  What a terrific way to get arrested. “Okay.”

  “She had a bunch of great ideas, actually,” he added, clearly warming to the subject. When had he and Tina become BFFs? They had a lot of nerve going from roommates to really close friends right in front of my eyes like that. All that time in Marc’s trunk, maybe the fumes were getting to the poor woman. “We’re still figuring stuff out, but there’s time. I mean, none of us are going anywhere.”

  “True,” I allowed. It should have been depressing, but I thought it was comforting.

  “Plus, Sinclair paid off my student loans.”

  “What?” I squawked. I wasn’t annoyed, but I was definitely surprised. Sure, Sinclair had the dough to spare, and he wasn’t miserly, but it’s not like he and Marc were especially close. Even if the answer to “why did he do that?” was “why not?” why wouldn’t he have said something? It wasn’t a secret or anything. Right? “How’d that happen? He just walked up and gave you a check?” That could have been an interesting conversation to eavesdrop on.

  “Actually I’m not sure it would ever have occurred to him,” Marc explained. “He’s a big-picture guy. Stuff like student loans slips right under his radar. But that’s exactly the kind of thing Tina keeps an eye on. She’s a details girl.”

  “She is, even if she hasn’t been a girl in over a century.”

  “Yeah, but a lady never tells . . . anyway, I’m pretty sure it was her idea and once she brought it up, Sinclair thought it was a fine plan. He’d never miss the bucks, and it must have appealed to his sense of . . . not justice, exactly. Compensation?”

  “You mean like in a ‘sorry my wife made you a zombie in a horrible dystopic future that probably won’t happen now, thanks for being such a nice guy about it, and don’t spend it all in one place’ way?”

  “Well . . .” Marc giggled a little. I loved that sound. It was such a cute, breathy noise out of a guy who was one hundred percent masculine. “Pretty much, yeah. So . . .” He pointed to the freezer. “I wanted to do something extra nice for Tina’s birthday.”

  “Her birthday!” I cried, mystery solved, and now delighted instead of startled. Sure, I hadn’t had a clue her big day was this week. And sure, that wouldn’t surprise Tina. Or anyone. But I knew when I had done wrong and was adult enough to make amends. Nothing would prevent me from making this slight up to her. Tina did so much for me and I did . . . uh . . . next to nothing for her. We needed a party! We needed a plan! We needed to remind Laura that this was about my making amends and Hell would have to wait just a bit longer until I solved Jessica’s problem and threw Tina a party and my God, this might be the greatest day of my life.

  It also answered my “wonder if Marc had to pay off his loans” question.

  “Okay. I’ll get back to that in a minute. I’ve still got to track Jessica down—”

  “I can’t believe you’re even doing that. It hasn’t been very long since the Incident.”

  I shuddered. “Don’t talk about that. Don’t even think about it.”

  “I don’t want to,” he admitted, “but it haunts me. I’m pretty sure it’s going to for a while.”

  I shook that off. This was no time to get sidetracked by something besides the thing I wanted to sidetrack me. The Incident was days in the past. If people would quit bringing it up, we could all move on.

  “Anyway, once I get with her, then I’ll get back with you and we’ll plan the centennial of Tina’s eighteenth birthday, or whatever it is. I promise I won’t forget.” I was already headed for the door. “You can count on me!”

  Marc was staring after me. “This is as motivated to get to the bottom of mysterious happenings as I’ve ever seen you.”

  “Thanks.” In a seizure of generosity, I ignored the implication.

  “I mean, being killed didn’t do it. You still sort of stumbled around fucking things up and being all clueless and everything.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But now you’ve got the focus of a Lasik machine. It’s awe inspiring!” He was leaning against the counter, absently rubbing Purell into his hands. We kept a gallon-sized jug of it by the main sink. “And a little terrifying.”

  “All right, time to move on.” Argh, I had been so close to a clean getaway. And now this. I turned to face him. “Look, I was never the kid you were.”

  “The kid I was?” Marc asked, blinking in surprise. Apparently he’d been expecting a different reaction. “You never knew me as a kid.”

  “Yeah, but even without knowing you as a kid I know you were into D&D, and you’d pay extra money to watch Star Wars in a theater when you could get it for free pretty much anywhere on the Web, and you gobbled up the Game of Thrones books like they were—were—” />
  “Iced milk and raspberries?” he prompted.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Like that. And it’s cool and it’s one of the things that makes you you, but I wasn’t like that. D&D made me long for the peace of a coma or a concussion or anything to get out of figuring charisma points. Not only have I never seen a Star Wars movie in a theater, I didn’t think the Phantom Menace stuff was so bad and—see? You’re shuddering. You’re making my point that we don’t have much in common.”

  “Okay, we’re going to circle back to your Phantom Menace blasphemy, but for now, I don’t see how you can judge how I was as a kid based on . . . oh, hell, as much TV as we’ve watched together, and the movies I dragged you to—”

  “Those Riddick movies are the worst.”

  “Shut up, don’t talk about Vin like that; but it’s not about whether you were into sci-fi or fantasy as a teenager. Doesn’t matter if you loved it or hated it, you know there’s magic. It’s not even a question of faith; you know magic exists. And you know you can do it.”

  “I don’t,” I replied shortly, “and I can’t. Vampires aren’t magical. Neither are werewolves. Something happens to vampires when they ‘die’—their systems slow down and as a result of that, they develop other abilities. Werewolves, they’re another species, it’s not magic. It’s biology that most people don’t know about. Hell isn’t magic, it’s another dimension, one I know fuck-all about. If anything, all this stuff is science, which was never my best subject.”

  He was nodding along with my terse lecture, but I could tell I wasn’t swaying him. “All that stuff aside, Betsy, you recently discovered you can teleport. That you can break a whole bunch of laws of physics for funsies. You were already strong and fast and durable—”

  “Please stop making me sound like a four-pack of double-A batteries.”

  “Okay, sorry. But you were already in a great position to explore all the cool things that happened to you, and now, presto, change-o, you can teleport.”

  “Only the one time,” I mumbled. And yes. I heard the lameness in that comment.