Undead and Unwary Read online

  Marc ignored me, probably wisely. “This is an ability that many people would be thrilled to have, every single person living in this house included.” His face had lit up and he was waving his arms around in his excited agitation. “Why wouldn’t you be all over that?”

  “Because nothing’s free, Marc.” I crossed the kitchen until I was right in front of him and caught his flailing hands. Held them in my own, made sure he was looking at me and listening, really listening. “And some things—even if you can pay for them, maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “What you’re doing now,” he said gently, shifting my grip—I let him—until he was gripping my wrists, “isn’t working.”

  I stared at him. Yikes, was he bringing the zombie mojo or something? Was that even a thing? I couldn’t look away. “It’s the only thing I’ve got right now,” I finally said, and he let go of my wrists and turned to the sink.

  “Not the only thing. And if you look at it another way, this is nothing new. All you have to do is what you’ve done since you woke up dead. Suck it up and get it done.”

  “Easy for you to say.” I was trudging toward the door.

  “It’s not, actually. You could get out of it if you really wanted, but you’re choosing not to.” He rubbed in more Purell and sort of waved me away, as if I were a six-foot-tall mosquito. “Just tell Laura you only agreed to help her to get her off your back,” was his parting advice, which I ignored, and rightly. It wasn’t my fault there was a crisis around here every ten minutes, a wonderful chaotic weird crisis. I was only one vampire queen, dammit! I was doing the best I could.

  What? I was.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  A flight of stairs and several hallways and doors later, I found Jessica in her room up to no good. Not “are you hiding up here because it’s your turn to change a poopy diaper?” no good but clandestine-research, followed by hurriedly-shoving-papers-under-the-bed-when-she-saw-me no good.

  “Jesus!” She finished shoving papers and glared up at me from her spot on the floor beside her and DadDick’s bed. “Scared the hell out of me.”

  “Uh-huh, and that’s not furtive at all. Jess, what’s going on?”

  “What? I’m just sorting. And thinking. And then more sorting. Yes.” She got to her feet and began prowling around the room. She’d stuck a clipping in her back pocket, but I couldn’t think of a subtle way to grab it other than tripping her, sitting on her, and emptying her pockets. For which I would pay and pay and pay. I was stronger and faster; Jess was smarter. Just the thought of all the terrible things she could do to me was enough to make me feel guilty for even thinking of assault as a way to get to the bottom of this, however careful I would have been. And even though she’d made her view on being turned into a vampire mucho clear before I cured her cancer (long story), I could absolutely see her nagging a vamp into turning her just so she could keep punishing me through the centuries. Also, the tripping and sitting and pocket rifling wasn’t a nice thing to do to a best pal. It’s very wrong that I thought of that one last.

  She looked startled, but that could have been the ’do—she kept her black hair pulled back so tightly her eyebrows were always arched. Her manicure (lime green, urrgghh) was chipping, something pre-twins/not-insane Jess would never have allowed, and her T-shirt had splotches on it that, luckily, were only spit-up formula. (I hadn’t given one thought to enhanced vampire senses + newborns = gross and really, I should have. Ohhhhh, I should have.) Her jeans were so faded they were nearly white, and she was annoyed that skinny jeans were out again. She was so painfully thin (when carrying Thing One and Thing Two, she’d looked like a tent pole someone had hung a bag of volleyballs on), any jeans she pulled on were skinny jeans, even just a few weeks after popping twins.

  “Why are you in here?” she barked.

  “Because I’m lonesome?”

  Jess snorted but didn’t kick me out. “Mm-hm.”

  I sidled closer to the bed but knew I was no match for Jessica’s chaotic pile-everything-into-a-box-beneath-the-bed filing system. For a modern businesswoman, she was a Luddite when it came to paperwork. A big fan of old-fashioned file cabinets and long plastic containers that she stuffed with newspaper and mag clippings, she still shopped at Hallmark, for God’s sake.

  Unless I was willing to sneak in here when she and DadDick were out, or sleeping the sleep of the deeply sleep deprived, rummage endlessly through decades of clippings while trying to figure out which story had grabbed her interest (I wasn’t), or worse, which story was missing and now riding in her back pocket, I’d have to finesse it out of her. Subtlety, that was key.

  “Tell me what’s wrong or I’ll sit on you!”

  “What?”

  Okay, I could see it now. My finesse sucked. Time for a new tactic. “So, how’s my mom?”

  “Huh?” Jess had at least ten IQ points on me, which anyone overhearing this would assume was a testing error. “What?”

  “My mom. Who you went to see.” Wait. Whom? Whom she went to see? Gah, Sinclair was rubbing off on me in all the wrong ways. And now I was thinking of Sinclair rubbing. Must not . . . be distracted . . . by thoughts of . . . hot husband . . . “With the babies you forgot.”

  “Oh. I didn’t . . .” She waved vaguely at me. “You know.”

  “I don’t know, Jess, you postnatal weirdo. What’s going on? You look like someone clipped you with a brick.”

  “Don’t be a dope. Nobody’s been near me with a brick.”

  Sighing at the effort this was taking (vampire queen/best friend’s work was never done), I plunked down on the queen-sized bed she’d had for a decade. Jess was indifferent to her riches (the wealth was impressive, but her shitpoke father had earned it all, making it much less awesome in her eyes) and formed deep emotional attachments to restaurants, pals (we’ve been friends since junior high), and beds. (Also, DadDick and the babies, I assumed. Before you accuse me of vanity, I listed myself second on that list.) So the bed didn’t so much sag as suck me in, like quicksand in a quilt. But I was used to its ways and kept both feet on the floor.

  I really liked Jessica’s room. It was the most modern in terms of setup and decoration, the carpet a deep caramel, the walls tan, the furniture all light wood (blond wood?). The wallpaper was red and tan and there were red accents all over the place, including the quilt and several picture frames.

  And gawd, when would she stop displaying the one of us on my twenty-first birthday? Drunk off my ass was not a good look for me. Jess looked cutely rumpled and was grinning into the camera while hoisting a daiquiri-filled plastic cup, her arm slung around my shoulders in what looked like camaraderie, but in fact she was keeping me from pitching face-first into the floor.

  I was so much more than rumpled; I was sweaty, and my face was so flushed I looked like I’d sworn off sunscreen before napping in a tanning bed. My T-shirt was more stained than a new mom’s, making it difficult to make out the lettering (“Step Aside, Coffee, This Is a Job for Alcohol”), but worst of all was the expression on my face. One eye was half-closed, my mouth was hanging open like a dying trout’s, I was giving Jess the side-eye stink eye (she had just cut me off, which unfortunately did not prevent the vomiting doomed to start an hour later), and basically looked like a crazy cat lady in her youth, pre-cats.

  And it had pride of place on the wall! I could only pray that once the twins were sleeping more, Jess would update their walls with baby pics, a new-parent phase I was actually looking forward to. I wanted to pull an Anne Geddes, draping the sleeping babies over all kinds of strange surfaces and then snapping away until I had enough for a calendar.

  I wriggled on the bed, trying to get more comfortable without actually getting slurped in. Sinclair and I slept on a—wait for it—superking. Yeah. I know. But the thing was doomed; we went through a half dozen a year. Was there such a bed as a super-duper-king?

  “Did somebod
y come up to you and say something? Are—nnf! Stop it, bed, I know all your tricks . . . are you getting audited? Were you meeting a new boyfriend?” The last was completely out of character, but Jess was a sleep-deprived mom now, and they were crazy.

  “Yes. But it’ll be fine.”

  “Wait—yes?” Oh God! In a moment of carelessness one of my feet had left the floor! I shifted my weight until I had them both planted again. Might be time to make a break for it. “Which yes?”

  “I’ve got to go,” she replied, laying off the pacing in favor of darting to the door. Her fingers went to the clipping barely peeking out of her pocket, checking to see if it was still there. “I’ll take the babies to see your mom.”

  I was so startled I shifted my weight and both feet left the floor. “Good God, woman, you are losing it! You’ve got to tell me what’s wrong. Okay? Jess?” Her hand was on the knob . . . her body was through the door. “You get back here, young lady!” Normally I could have crossed the room and blocked the door before she got anywhere near it, but normally I wasn’t being inexorably devoured by Bedzilla. I was reduced to wrenching myself upright with superhuman strength to escape, finally reaching the door only to almost knock the vampire king on his ass.

  “Aw, fuck!”

  Sinclair beamed. His vampire reflexes had saved him from my vampire klutziness. “Darling! You missed me.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  “Missed you? I didn’t know you’d gone out until half an hour ago.”

  “Your loving words soothe my soul.”

  “I know that look, perv.”

  “I adore your affectionate pet names.” He reached for one of my hands and pressed a kiss to my palm, which, I had discovered in the last couple of years, was a sizeable erogenous zone.

  “I have no time for sexual shenanigans right now,” I warned the ridiculously gorgeous man smiling at me even as the tingles started in my palm and radiated . . . um . . . downward. “Something’s wrong with Jessica.”

  “Ah. Laura’s been here, then?”

  “No, of course not. Okay, yeah, but that has nothing to do with this.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Something’s really wrong,” I insisted.

  “Hmm?”

  “And it’s Tina’s birthday, did you know? I didn’t know. She’s, what, a century and a half?”

  He fake sighed. “They grow up so fast.”

  “So we have to celebrate that, too.” I got A Look and defensively added, “What? We do.”

  “For the first time since you’ve known her? Really, my own? You are now compelled to acknowledge a birthday you have not once—”

  “I know, I know, it’s overdue. And see, that proves my case! You are proving my case for me.”

  “I devoutly hope not.”

  “She does so much for us, you know.”

  He nodded. “I do know.” And then, in a teasing mutter, “I was unaware you knew.” All the while we were wasting time with idle yakking, he had a hand on the small of my back and was gently steering me toward our room, where our superking lurked. Meanwhile, Jessica was getting away!

  “Also, and I’m bringing this up again because I’m pretty sure you didn’t catch it last time, I have. No time. For sex. Ual. Shenanigans.” Probably shouldn’t have split “sexual” into two syllables, if my husband’s stifled giggle was any indication.

  (Oh my god I love that giggle he only started with the giggling when he started sunbathing without fear of immolation and every time every damn time I hear it I want to tickle him or something to get him to do it again and how did I not notice I’m now flat on my back in our bed?)

  “Dammit!” He’d literally swept me off my feet and plunked me in the middle of the superking. As I reared up on my elbows in prep to escape, he plunked himself in the middle of the bed, right on top of me. What little air there was in my lungs (I sometimes gasped or yawned or breathed out of force of habit) whooshed out. “Gggnnnn!”

  “Ah, darling, your sexy moan sets my libido aflame.”

  “Ged. Gedduh. Gedduh huck offme.” I groaned and tried to elbow him away as he pressed me further into the mattress. Why the hell was the theme of the week beds devouring me? Was that . . . was that supposed to be a metaphor for something? Like I had time to ponder that. “Gnnn. Dyin’.”

  He was giggling against my neck and marking me with little nibbling kisses and all at once I cared a lot less about Jessica’s mysterious errands and more about getting out of my underpants.

  “What’s got you all sexually charged? Besides being a man and being conscious.”

  “Don’t generalize, darling,” he chided.

  “Yeah, yeah . . . answer the question.”

  “It was so wonderful.” He pulled back until our faces were inches apart, his eyes—a brown so deep they were almost black—gazing into mine. His dark hair was only slightly mussed, thick with a tendency to curl under at the ends, and his skin was utterly pale, not the slightest sign of a flush. So he hadn’t been feeding. It had to be something else.

  Oh.

  Oh God.

  “No.” I shook my head so hard I made myself dizzy. Sinclair jerked back enough so that the ends wouldn’t tickle his face and laughed at my “No-no-no.”

  “The only thing marring its perfection was your absence, my own.”

  “Never. I told you. Never again. I’m not doing it ever again. It’s dumb and it’s cold. Horribly, horribly cold.”

  “It is enchanting,” he corrected me, now mouthing the tender, shivery spot just behind my ear. “Horribly, horribly enchanting. I was enchanted.”

  “Are you drunk?” I asked, staring at the ceiling while the tips of his deep brown hair brushed the side of my jaw. “I know it’s impossible but we’ve done the impossible before and it would explain a lot. I would actually wish you were drunk over what you were really doing. That’s what a bad idea I think that is.”

  “The fairyland spectacle of the St. Paul Winter Carnival enchanted me.”

  “And also, your dick?” Because there was definitely something enchanting pressing against the top of my thigh.

  “It was all so wonderful,” he moaned, pressing a kiss to the hollow of my throat. “How could you resist the sensual allure of the Moon Glow Pedestrian Parade?”

  “Pretty damned easily.”

  “Not to mention the Snow Slide.”

  “Sinclair, it’s a carnival celebrating the fact that Mother Nature tries to kill us every winter. Why the hell would I ever—wait, Snow Slide?”

  “They should rename it the Sublime Slide,” he said and oh God I think he was serious.

  “You went on the Snow Slide?” And why the hell wasn’t I there with a camera? And a video crew? He was right, I should have gone if only to have the means to make a looping video of the vampire king riding down a hundred-foot snow slide over and over and over, maybe shoving various children out of the way as he repeatedly cut in line. Baring his fangs at their avenging mamas. Then up and down and up and down again. My kingdom for that gif. “Okay, you’ve made the impossible happen. Fine. But I still don’t regret not going to the cold weird sleet rodeo, or whatever they’re calling it this year.”

  “I also indulged in the Beer Dabbler. Did you know they have over a hundred and fifty breweries plying their wares?”

  “But you hate beer.”

  “And they have a blood drive.”

  “But you love—aw, nuts.” I groaned. “Tell me you stayed away from the blood drive taking place in the middle of the day at an outdoor carnival celebrating the things water does when it gets below freezing.” In fairness to them, how could they expect a vampire to take over the Snow Slide, sip beer, and then rob their blood drive?

  “Of course I refrained,” he said, pulling back and looking offended. “You know I only drink from you or ruffians we subdue.
”

  “Okay, I know you’re an old man, but really—ruffians?” I yelped as his sharp teeth grazed my neck and his tongue followed, soothing the sting.

  “Ninety is the new thirty,” was his muffled reply.

  I snorted. “What this all boils down to is, ice sculptures make you horny.”

  “Well, yes,” he admitted.

  “I remember when I made you horny.”

  “An ice sculpture of you would satisfy all my sexual needs.”

  I laughed as I shivered; I couldn’t help it. The mental image was just so hilarious and gross and cracked. “I hate you.”

  “In fact,” he replied, lips ghosting over mine, “you adore me.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can do both.”

  “Did you know”—he pulled back and gazed down at me—“ice is much more beautiful in sunshine?” He said this in a low voice, a serious tone, like it was a delicious secret he wanted only me to know. “It’s like light made solid.”

  This. This right here. This is why. This is the answer to everything, every time. “I love you.” I sighed.

  He smiled. “Yes.” Then struck at viper speed, his fangs punching into my jugular. We both groaned, me because being penetrated in any way by Eric Sinclair was my favorite thing on earth, and him because the smell and taste of my blood was his favorite thing on earth.

  It is, oh it is, my darling, my Elizabeth.

  Less thinking. More boning.

  Ever the insatiable romantic.

  Here was a man, a brilliant, ruthless, dead man, who lost everything almost a century ago and spent decades alone as a result. Okay, that’s not fair—Tina had never left his side. But she wasn’t a true partner, more like a beloved aunt. She had been a friend of his family for generations; they had known what she was and gave not one shit. Along came yours truly, bitchy and pissed about being dead, with no interest in being Elizabeth, the One, and not just because the whole thing was just too, too Matrix.

  Dear Vampire Prophecy, every single movie about a Chosen One called, and they want their plot device back.