Undead and Unsure (5 page)

Like I said, in this timeline we were pals; I was curious to see how far that went. It probably wasn’t anything that would have occurred to me to do before I died, which would make me sad if I dared spend longer than two seconds thinking about. So natch, I didn’t. There were lots of other sad things I could think about.

The short version: the old timeline Detective Berry went by Nick; this one went by Dick. I disliked change, even when it was for my benefit. Thus the name flogging. My inner asshat must be fed. Constantly.

“Fine, fine. Dick-Not-Nick, why’d you come into my room and dare me to design shoes?”

“Because I came into your room to get your advice on getting Jess to marry me.”

Ah. That was something else that might be fun to chat about, but would never happen in real life. Jess loved Nick-No-Longer Dick more than she’d ever loved anyone, I was almost positive. So she’d never marry him. And not even the queen of the vampires could change that, any more than I could change a Louboutin-less world.

Poor bastard.

CHAPTER

SIX

(It’s wrong that I was flattered he’d come to me with this.
And I knew that. And yet I was taking a couple of seconds to bask in my pride in the wrongness. And now, to business.)

“Prob’ly you should be talking to Jessica about this,” I tried, knowing it was lame and that it wouldn’t work. I was suddenly super interested in the moss green velvet clogs I’d mentally assigned to Goodwill.

“Prob’ly that hasn’t done any good and you damn well know it.”

“Prob’ly that sounds about right.” My! These hideous green shoes certainly were fascinating. “Uh, you know it’s not personal, right?”

Nick-No-More threw up his hands, accidentally tumbling two shoe boxes off my fainting couch. “Right. Of course. Because her refusal to marry me isn’t at all personal.”

“Well.” I crawled over to the tipped boxes, righted them, then crawled back to my corner. “It isn’t.”

Like a lot of us, Jessica spent her adolescence observing marriage: her parents’, and her best friend’s parents’. To say she came away unimpressed is like saying I disliked buying pumps at Payless. Because I really, really dislike it. And the marriages she was ringside for were awful.

I tried a new one: “It’s not you, it’s her?”

He was rubbing the bridge of his nose the way my mom and my husband did when I was accidentally driving them to a migraine. “I know you’re trying to help . . .”

“Oh, I am!” Sorta. I could bend a sympathetic ear, if that was the phrase. I could commiserate. I could get Jessica alone (ambush her on the way to the kitchen, maybe?) and talk Nick-Now-Dick up. He’s a great guy, he’d be a good dad, you know he doesn’t love you for your money, I didn’t rape him in this timeline so his thoughts and impulses are his own, oh my God are you really having another spaghetti squash it’s four a.m. for Christ’s sake. It was all true and it wouldn’t make any difference. Jessica wouldn’t marry Call-Me-Dick-Dammit
because
she loved him, not because she didn’t.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I think I’ve got a way that you can actually help me.”

I glanced up, startled. I’d planned on more
There, there, girls are stupid, you didn’t really want to get married anyway, right?
—not an actual plan. “Yeah? Great! Shoot. Uh, not literally.”

“Talk her into it.”

I blinked. (Which was weird. Like gasping and sighing, I don’t think I had to blink. I didn’t have to pee, or menstruate, or sweat. Was I blinking out of force of habit? Note to self: ask Marc.) “Yeah, I sorta have been. She’s not going for it.”

“No, I mean
talk
her
into
it. Just . . . you know.” He wiggled his fingers at me. “Use your vampire thing and make her want to marry me.”

For a few seconds I didn’t know what to say. So I just sat there in the middle of a litter of shoes, staring at him and blinking on purpose, because I was pretty sure I didn’t have to blink as a biological function. There was a tangle of responses in my brain.

1) You pig! That’s a terrible idea, dumb shit. What the hell is wrong with you? Bad enough to think it, but then cough it up out loud? Are you really asking your girlfriend’s best friend to rape her brain until she marries you? Have you lost your fucking mind? Huh? Have you?

2) Y’know, you don’t remember this, but you
hated
me in the old timeline for using my “vampire thing” on you. So the irony here . . . it’s so huge.

3) You pig! That’s a terrible idea, dumb shit. What the hell is wrong with you? Bad enough to think it, but then cough it up out loud? Are you really asking your girlfriend’s best friend to rape her brain until she marries you? Have you lost your fucking mind? Huh? Have you?

“I’m not going to do that” is what I settled on. He shivered and I wasn’t surprised; I could almost feel the temp in the room drop as I spoke.

He was nodding before I’d gotten
going
out of my mouth. “Yeah, stupid idea.”

“Really stupid.”

“Awful.”

“So, so stupid.”

“Don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I don’t think you
were
thinking. And we’re gonna pretend you weren’t thinking it. And that you didn’t think it and then talk to me about doing it.”

“Doing what?”

I pointed at him and smiled. “Exactly.” Time to ease up. I couldn’t take the good of the changed timeline, like Dick-Not-Nick liking me and wanting to live with us, and then blast him because even though he didn’t remember the bad, I sure did. “Look, I’ll talk to her again, but in—” My phone did the Stewie ringtone from
Family Guy
(“Mom. Mom. Mom. Mommy. Mommy. Mommy. Mama! Mama! Mama! Ma! Ma! Ma! Ma! Mum! Mum! Mum! Mum! Mummy! Mummy!”) and I shoved a shoe box aside and picked it up. Nick had waved and was already heading out the door so I answered. “Hi, Mom. What’s up?”

“Your husband,” she breathed. “He’s here! And it’s daytime!”

“Yeah, uh, I need to bring you up to speed again.” To her credit, my mom didn’t sound terrified. But then, she had no idea how deeply insane my husband now was.

My mother was clever and loving and open-minded beyond belief. She hadn’t given a tin shit that I’d been turned into a vampire, she was just relieved she didn’t have to see me dead and buried. And I tried to keep her in the loop, because one thing the TV and movie vampires do that drives me nuts (more than one, but there isn’t time to go into all of it) is, they kept their loved ones in the dark to “protect” them. And it never works out for them. At all. Not even once. Not ever. Once I realized I was a vampire and likely to be one for centuries, I decided to keep loved ones in the loop. If bad things happened, it wasn’t going to be because of some silly contrived Big Misunderstanding That Caused the Whole Disaster and Could Have Been So Easily Avoided, Oh Well.

Still, there was only so much of the “so anyway, I killed the devil and the Antichrist is sulking and also, Sinclair can bear the light now and that’s pretty much all the news until the next disaster looms” story I could tell her. Open-minded was one thing, but I didn’t want to terrify her. More, I mean.

“You did say so,” she agreed. She was practically giggling into the phone. Mom was not a giggler. A chuckler, a guffawer (when the mood was right), a laugher, a chortler. No giggling. “But hearing it and seeing it . . . he brought your puppies over! To play with BabyJon!”

“They’re not my puppies!”

“You should see them all playing in the yard. Clive’s here, too, and they’re just having the best time. It’s so cute!”

“Okay, that’s
it
. This has gone far enough.” I was on my feet before I realized I’d moved. “I’m on my way, Mom. Just hold on until I get there.”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“Stay alive, no matter what occurs. I will find you!” I hit End and shoved my feet into the nearest shoes.

Time for the madness to end.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

I made it from Summit to Cow Town in forty minutes. It was
a twenty-mile drive, but as usual I had a raging thirst and required a Caribou Coffee mixer (half white chocolate hot chocolate, half milk chocolate hot chocolate, double whipped cream) to suck down so I wouldn’t snap from the pressure to eat Mom’s neighbor(s). So when I hopped out of my hybrid (yeah, I went green when I could, what are you doing for the environment?) SUV (it was a small one, a Ford Escape, so back off and, also, sometimes vampires needed to haul things) I was clutching my keys in one hand and my hot chocolate in the other.

Which was why I almost spilled scalding liquid all over myself, because my mom was right: Sinclair
had
brought Fur and Burr over and they
were
playing with BabyJon and Mom’s boyfriend, Cliiiiiive,
was
joining in the fun and it looked like a beer commercial, except with a baby and two puppies.

Gah.

My mom had seen me hurtle around the corner (any faster and I’d have been up on two wheels, like an undead cast member of
The Dukes of Hazzard
), so she’d gotten out of her lawn chair (lawn chairs, outside, in December: a tremendous idea if you’re actively seeking frostbite) and came to meet me as I tromped down the icy sidewalk. She hugged me, which I half returned, juggling a bit so as not to spill hot milk down her back, then she whispered, “I never thought I’d say this about your forbidding husband, but he’s adorable!”

I groaned.

“What?” She broke the hug and pulled back to look at me. “You don’t like it?”

I made a rage-sigh-grumble noise.

“Well.” Mom glanced at the vampire, the puppies, the toddler, and Clive Lively. “I know you’re not a dog girl, but you must love seeing Eric so—so—” She groped for the word.

“Un-vampire-king-like?”

“Exactly. You and I could never know him in life, but I think perhaps this is how he was. Oh.” She squeezed my arms and gave me a “buck up, li’l buckeroo!” shake. “I admit it’s not what you’re used to, but I think it’s lovely.”

And you will,
I thought but didn’t say,
right up until something awful happens and we’ll need a ruthless badass to fix it and he’ll be at a Puppies ’n’ Me class.

“He should have called before barging—”

“He did, and it isn’t barging. He’s my son-in-law, probably the only one I’ll ever have—”

I raised my eyebrows. “Probably?”

“—and he’s family.” A light breeze kicked up, ruffling my mom’s silvery white curls. She was young—she’d gotten knocked up with me a month after high school—but she’d had white hair since her teens. She and I had occasionally been mistaken for sisters, which she loved and I loathed. Nothing against my cute mom, but hearing “Hey, you two, wanna help me with my sex sandwich?” was enough to put me off sandwiches for six months. The fact that my mom laughed so hard she would have stumbled into traffic if I hadn’t grabbed her arm made it all the more surreal.

Here was another contradiction: my mom had little old lady hair and the smiling, unlined face of a moisturizer model, bright blue eyes, and a soft-spoken manner, and she’d had to kick plenty of men out of her way. She’d wrestled a PhD from academia stiffs while raising me almost on her own (even before my dad left her, he’d been a big fan of long business trips). She’d kept the acrimony out of her divorce for my sake as much as she could, while also refusing to go back to her maiden name. “It’s mine,” she’d sweetly explained to the judge. “Even if the man no longer is, the name still belongs to me and will always belong to me. I decline to return to my maiden name, sir.”

Yep. She’d put it everywhere: Dr. Taylor; Professor Taylor; Ms. Elise Taylor, PhD. Business cards, personal and business correspondence, PowerPoint presentations, articles for
The Civil War Monitor
, lectures, journal articles: Dr. Elise Taylor. Due to the force of her will and my stepmother’s cowardice when it came to face-to-face confrontation, most people referred to my father’s second wife as exactly that: “Antonia Taylor . . . you know, the second Mrs. Taylor.”

Heh.

(Yes, I could be a vindictive jerkass, but I came by it honestly. Also, the Ant had it coming. All of it. And plenty more that she didn’t get. But that’s a piss-and-moan session for another day.)

All that to say my mom was not one to be fucked with. So I chose my next words carefully (for me).

“I like seeing him happy, but it makes me nervous. I don’t know why. It’s not the dogs. I don’t think it’s the dogs.”

“You’re supposed to be the embarrassing partner in need of rescue,” my mother pointed out with terrifying accuracy. “It’s the king’s job to be strong in the face of all calamity, to keep control, to be ruthless when the situation warrants. Not . . .” She pointed at the side yard, where Sinclair was lining up Fur and Burr for some sort of relay race involving rawhide bones for batons. “That.”

I shook my head. “No, that’s not it.”

“No?”

“No, because that makes me the opposite of a feminist and also comes off as needy and insecure.”

“Which is a problem because . . .”

“No one can know how needy and insecure I am.”

“Ah.” Her smile broadened and I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “There, now.” She leaned in and dropped a kiss to my cheek, smelling like fabric softener and Jergens. “There’s my very own girl.”

“Oh, hey! Betsy! Hi!”

Blech. Clive Lively was hailing me. This will sound awful but here it is: my two biggest regrets of the changed timeline were no more Christian Louboutin, and my mom had a boyfriend now. You know how the birds-and-bees talk with your parents can suck for every party involved? Try the “maybe you should dump him since the only reason you have a boyfriend is because I mucked with the timeline and hasn’t enough damage been done?” talk.

“Hi, Mr. Lively.”

“Please.” He huffed a little as he jogged over to us. “It’s Clive. Mr. Lively is my long-dead alcoholic father.”

How could I forget? Cliiiiiive. I managed a chilly smile and faked a cough so I wouldn’t have to shake his hand. Never think I wasn’t aware of my gross pettiness. I was, but I was also aware I had no choice. He couldn’t help being batshit nutball. Same with me.

“The lovely day lacked only your presence, my own.” Sinclair had scooped up Burr and Fur before they could try to climb me. Clive had trotted over with BabyJon in tow, who smiled to see me, which showed his four teeth. (BabyJon’s, not Clive’s. Clive had a full set of choppers as far as I could tell.)

When you saw them together, it was a little hilarious since Clive looked like a giant baby. He had cut his wispy brown hair into a monk’s fringe and had the soft body men in their fifties sometimes grow into. He was puffy, not fat, with pale, watery eyes and the kind of mouth that turned up even when he wasn’t smiling. He looked as threatening as a row of lettuce. Which pissed me off, and I know that doesn’t make sense. I dunno; I could count on one hand how many men Mom had dated since the divorce. She seemed to like Cliiiiiive more than the others put together. That also pissed me off, and I knew that also didn’t make sense.

“It sure was nice meeting your husband,” Cliiiiiive said, handing over BabyJon, who’d begun to reach for me. I took my brother/son/whatever and hugged him, and he honked my nose for my pains, shaking with baby giggles. “We’ve been having a fine old time.”

A fine old time? Sinclair accurately read my mood, as he jumped in with, “Yes, your mother has been a wonderful hostess.” He turned to her. “I must thank you again for not holding my unannounced visit against me.”

Mom waved it away. “I would have been mad if I’d heard you were in the neighborhood and hadn’t stopped by. We’ve worn out the baby so much he’ll sleep for twenty hours.”

Really? I eyed Cliiiiiive, who certainly looked well rested. Maybe he took a lot of naps. Oh—she meant the
little
baby. That was good, too.

“But I thought you couldn’t get him until tomorrow,” Mom continued.

“Yeah, but my schedule cleared up . . .” And my husband went insane. “. . . so I figured I’d surprise you.” You and the giant baby you’re dating. “And here I am.” So like it or lump it, jerks.

BabyJon shrieked in my ear and kicked, his solid little pork-chop-with-toes feet swinging into my belly. Mom had him warmly dressed in a li’l turtleneck, li’l sweatpants, li’l coat, and li’l socks and shoes. His black hair was sticking up all over, looking like wind-mussed feathers, and that, plus his darting movements and cute caw-caw laugh made him look and sound like a crow in diapers. His eyes, a round perfect Gerber Baby blue, met mine and then crinkled as he crowed another giggle.

BabyJon was one of those insidious babies who trick childless couples into having kids. They’d be around him and notice his sunny mood, how he never turned down a bottle or three, and his deep sweet sleeps, and tell themselves,
how hard can it be?

I had a soft spot for him; he was the only child I would ever have. Here’s the pesky thing about biology: if you don’t menstruate, you don’t ovulate; if you don’t ovulate, you don’t get pregnant. I’d gone to my grave the first time thinking I had years to settle down, and accepting the fact that I would never be a natural mother was almost as hard as accepting there would be no more prime rib dinners for me, either.

“You sure can tell you’re his mom,” Cliiiiiive was yakking. “Look at the resemblance.”

A) I’m not his mother. B) But I
am
an inarticulate fatty with messy hair who shits in my pants when I’m not drooling all over myself? (Actually that perfectly describes me at Homecoming my freshman year at the U . . . after that night I was never able to stand ginger ale, vermouth, and chocolate milk.)

“You have the exact same smile!”

Was
I smiling? Revolted, I put my hand over my mouth even as I glowed a little at the compliment. Cliiiiiive was a clever bastard, defeating me with my own vanity. It was a huge weapon! Like, nuclear huge.

“And he sure likes you, huh?”

Why couldn’t he be evil? It was actually pretty selfish of him to not be evil. “Oh, well . . .” I decided to smile and then remembered I was smiling. Oh, he was a clever prick! “We’re sibs. I’m not his mom, except legally kind of.” Long story. The recap is incomprehensible and weird: cursed engagement ring, garbage truck, double funeral,
viola
! It’s a boy. But I didn’t feel like telling Cliiiiiive the whole story. It was none of his business, for one thing. Also, it was none of his business.

“Ah, my boy.” Sinclair reached for his half-brother-in-law/stepson, but BabyJon was having none of it. “Plehhh!” he said, or something like it.

Not at all put out, Sinclair extended his hand and Cliiiiiive shook it. “I have imposed on you long enough. I thank you again for your hospitality. And my apologies for the, er, deposits the puppies made for you.”

Depos—? Oh. Gross.

“Have you heard from Laura?”

“Yeah!” My mood instantly brightened. “She came over to yell.”

Mom closed one eye, thinking. “Singing telegram?”

“Balloon bouquet.”

“Ah. A lucky thing I didn’t bet on the outcome. I’ve seen her. She was here a couple of days ago.”

“Laura comes here? To visit you?” Okay, that was a little odd, but it’s not like I
owned
my mom or anything. (
My
mommy! Laura’s got her own—oh. Right.) Now that I thought about it, it made sense. Laura had a soft spot for moms; she was always looking for one who wasn’t pure evil (Satan) or generally inclined toward evil (the Ant). Still, Mom was . . . well . . . mine, dammit.

Oh, sure. Because this is the perfect time to get possessive about something so silly.

My inner voice was such a bitch sometimes.

Mom’s next words were blowing my theory: “Not to see me. To see BabyJon.” She took in the look on my face and added gently, “He’s her brother, too, Betsy. And she—ah—she’s not quite—”

“She doesn’t want to see him if it means seeing me.”

“That’s right,” she said simply. Not one to try for polish when straight truth suited all parties. “She doesn’t.”

“Fine, but then she should stay away from my mommy!” I heard myself and scrambled for damage control. “Because you’re busy with your own stuff. Journal articles and baby-sitting and of course you’ve got Clive here, you’ve got a demanding social life. It’s pretty selfish of her to barge in on that. Clive is your everything!”

“Good God,” my mom snapped. Then, at once: “I’m sorry, Eric.”

Not even my mom spraying him with verbal acid by saying “God” could put a damper on his day. “Not at all, Dr. Taylor. My Elizabeth does it with terrifying frequency.”

“That’s not the only thing I’ll do to you with terrifying frequency,” I mumbled to the frosted grass. At least Clive wasn’t getting an earful. I don’t know what story Mom told him (maybe that Sinclair was born again—wouldn’t
that
be
hilarious!), but he didn’t blink. Okay, he did, but it wasn’t a meaningful blink. He was just lubricating his eyeballs.

Mom was making her tsk-tsk face. “So when it suits your purpose you embrace Clive.”

“‘Embrace’ might not be the right word.” I eyed Cliiiiiive out of the corner of my eye and was surprised to see he was eyeing me, too. And: eww. “‘Embrace’ is definitely not the right word. But between Mr. Lively and

(his fervid sexual demands on my poor frail mother)

BabyJon, you’re pretty busy. That’s all I was trying to say.”

“Sure it was. Speaking of babies, when are you throwing the baby shower?”

“Huh?” I’d always hated that phrase. It made me think it was actually showering babies.

“Jessica. She’s due any day, right?”

“Oh, heck no.” Just like my mom to start bugging me to plan stuff way ahead of time.

“She has several months to go,” Sinclair agreed.

My mom’s smile faded and she looked from me to Sinclair to me again. “You’re kidding, right? Teasing me? She’s got to be due any day—I was a little surprised you let it go this long.”

“Due any—” I shook my head. “Mom, she’s maybe six weeks along.”

“Or twenty months,” Sinclair added.