Dead If I Do (20 page)

Sebastian shook his head, but he said, “I’ll admit the thought crossed my mind, so I kissed her to see if there was anything there. But my experience after her death—I’m serious, Garnet—it broke something in me.” He glanced at the cellar door. “It broke her too, though. She’s not the woman I tried to save. Not anymore. Not after everything. And I’m no longer the man who tried to save her.”

I could feel him resisting being held by me. It seemed he was uncomfortable being this close to me while admitting his shameful past. But, for me, it was important to keep touching him, if only to let him know that I still loved him no matter what. “Won’t it always gnaw at you? I know you, Sebastian, you’re a decent soul. Won’t you always wonder if you could have fixed things?”

“Some things are beyond fixing,” he said. “But, like I said, that’s what I was testing out when I kissed her. I wanted . . . ”

Finally, he couldn’t take it and broke free of my embrace. Though I could have used Lilith to keep him close, I let him go. “All I’ve ever wanted was to make it right. But the two of them, they’re delusional when they talk about us as one big happy family.” It took me a second to realize he must mean Mátyás as well. “That was never us. I never wanted any of it.”

I don’t quite know why, maybe I was just caught up in the moment in Teréza ’s story, but I continued to be devil’s advocate.

“Why not? Why couldn’t you be one big, happy vampire family?” I had to admit the moment it was out of my mouth I got visions of
The Addams Family
. I couldn’t suppress a little vaguely hysterical giggle, as I added, “A family who drinks blood together stays together!”

“Exactly,” Sebastian muttered. He’d turned his back to me again, and stood staring out the window. “Do I smell marijuana?”

The second after he said it, I caught the heavy, sweet, grassy scent of pot. I rolled my eyes. “My folks are probably puffing on a joint somewhere.”

Sebastian looked at me for confirmation, like he didn’t quite believe what I’d just said.

“Did I neglect to mention that my parents are potheads?”

“Yes, somehow you never brought that up,” Sebastian said with a small twist of a smile. I shrugged. “It’s true. They’re Mr. and Mrs. Cheech and Chong.”

“How hilarious.”

“I’m glad you think so,” I said a little petulantly. “Try growing up with that.”

Sebastian grunted noncommittally. Then, turning all the way around to face me again, he said, “I want you to understand that Teréza and I will never be. There is no future for her and me. I’ve spent too many years trying to bury my past, literally. I don’t want her in my life, not like that. I want you.”

“Good answer,” I said, striding over to take his hand into mine. “Come on,” I said. “I’m frozen solid.”

“Does that mean I get an opportunity to try to warm you up?”

The lascivious purr in his voice brought heat to my cheeks. “Warm? Honey, you always get me hot,” I teased.

Sebastian and I had just snuggled into a warm spot
near the roaring fire and started the kiss-and-make-up process when my parents stumbled in, giggling like teenagers.

“Oopsie, didn’t mean to interrupt,” said my mother in that singsong voice she always had when she was high.

“Looks like you two worked things out,” my dad said with a sloppy grin. Then he got a faraway look in his eye. “Although I don’t know how you could have. There’s a dead girl in the root cellar.”

This set my mother giggling. She was stepping out of her boots somewhat clumsily, with her hand on the wall to steady herself.

“That sounds like a horror novel,” she said. “
Dead Girl in the Cellar
.”

“Yeah, like,
The People Under the Stairs
,” my dad added. “Didn’t we see that one?”

Sebastian stood up with a sigh. “I’ll go put on coffee.”

“That only works with alcohol,” I muttered. Sebastian gave me a what-else-can-I-do shrug, and headed for the kitchen.

“It was
Tarantula
at the drive-in,” my mother said. She’d managed to get out of her boots and was now working on her coat.

“No, no,
Snakes on a Plane
,” my dad countered.

Closing my eyes, I laid my head on the back of the couch. They’d be at this all night. Barney, who was snoozing on the leather chair near the fire, lifted her nose from where it was buried in a fluffy gray tail and meowed. I opened my eyes a crack, and the moment of eye contact was all the encouragement she needed. She bounded over and settled in my lap with a happy purring chirp. I scratched her behind the ears.

Benjamin picked up a stack of books and dropped them on the floor.

My mother squeaked.

My dad, who still hadn’t taken off his boots or his parka, looked around with half -lidded eyes and said, “Is this place haunted?”

The lamp next to couch flicked off and on.

“Whoa,” my dad said. “The house just talked to me.”

“Settle down, Benjamin,” Sebastian shouted from the kitchen. I could smell French roast percolating. “Glen and Estelle are just a little tipsy. They’re not a threat.”

The kitchen door swung open and then slammed shut as if someone had just left the room in a huff. It seemed Benjamin and I had the same opinion of my parents when they were high.

My mother slumped down on the couch kitty-corner to me. “Honey,” she asked, “who’s Benjamin?”

“The house ghost.”

“See, Glen,” my mother said to my father, who hadn’t moved from where he stood by the door. “They have a house guest.”

“Besides that snarky teenager? This house is crowded.”

I had to agree.

I didn’t bother correcting my mother. When she was stoned she heard exactly what she wanted, no matter how many times you explained otherwise.

“Dad, you should take your coat off, stay awhile,” I said. I really wanted to send them back to their hotel, but one of us would have to drive them, given the state they were in.

My dad looked down at his clothes, like he was surprised to find himself still wearing his coat. “Oh, yeah.”

“This house has a great aura, don’t you think?” My mother asked dreamily. “Sebastian’s energy is so calming.”

The only time my parents acted like hippy boomers was when they were high. Otherwise, their default personalities were Norwegian farmers. Even though I’d seen the transformation several times before, it always took me a minute to catch up to speed. Plus I was a little cranky with them for interrupting my make-out session. “People have auras. Places have energy.”

My mother nodded sagely, as though I had just given her the answer to life, the universe, and everything. “People have auras, like angels have nimbuses. Like, wow, man.”

My mother just said, “. . . like, wow, man.” Could this night be over yet? I nestled deeper into the comforter, wishing Sebastian would come out of hiding.

As if in answer to my prayers, Sebastian swept into the room holding a silver platter with chips, Oreo cookies, and a couple of homemade blueberry flaxseed muffins left over from breakfast. As he placed the tray on the end table, Sebastian gave me a wink as if to remind me he’d lived through the 1960s too.

“Munchies!” My dad smiled happily, reaching for the muffins. My mother grabbed the chips and cradled them in her lap. Barney hopped off to investigate the possibilities of something a cat might find edible. Sebastian reclaimed his spot next to me and put an arm around my shoulder. For what seemed like interminable minutes, no one spoke. Oblivious, my parents snacked greedily. I stared at them like I had so many times when I was growing up, wishing they were more like normal people. Sebastian stroked my hair, but that made things worse. I was embarrassed that he had to witness this. I looked over at Sebastian, but he just observed the spectacle with an amused smile playing on his lips.

“I still don’t think it’s legal to marry someone who is already dead,” my dad said after polishing off a second muffin.

“I’m not dead,” Sebastian said. “Undead. It’s an important distinction.”

“Yeah, but nobody knows about vampires, right?” My dad leaned on his elbows. He loved a good political debate. “It’s not like there’s laws about this sort of thing. Isn’t it considered fraud?”

Barney rubbed against Dad’s legs, and he reached down and gave her a rub across the back.

“Only if Garnet didn’t know,” Sebastian said. “If we’re going to get into legal technicalities, when I marry Garnet, I ’ll be a bigamist.”

“I told you he was married to that woman in the cellar, ” my mother said. She looked asleep with her head back against the couch, but her hand kept methodically putting chips in her mouth.

“No, I never married Teréza,” Sebastian said. “But Garnet is really two people in one.”

“Far out,” my mother said.

“How’s that?” asked my dad.

Barney jumped up onto the space on the couch between my parents. Daintily, she placed her two front paws on my mother’s thigh and stuck her head in the bag of chips.

“Lilith,” I said. I mean, what the hell, it wasn’t like they’d really remember this conversation in the morning. “I share my body with the Queen of Hell.”

“That’s freaky,” my mother said, putting her hand down and finding a cat’s back. As if forgetting the chip she’d been reaching for, Mom started petting Barney. Barney, meanwhile, was no doubt licking the cheese flavoring off each chip.

“I hope she’s paying rent,” my dad said with a shake of his head. He leaned back on the couch and threw an arm around my mom. “There’re too damn many lodgers in this place as it is.”

That reminded me. “What are we going to do about Mátyás?”

“I left a message on his voice mail,” Sebastian said.

“Saying what, exactly? ‘Hello, son, we’ve imprisoned your mom; don’t let her out, love Dad’?”

My mother chuckled, and my dad gave a little derisive snort.

“No, I lied,” Sebastian said. “I told him that I needed some space tonight because I was working things out with Teréza. I suggested it would be a good night to stay over at Izzy’s.”

“Well, it’s not entirely false. You
are
working things out,” my mother said. “Just not pleasantly.”

“Do you think he’ll believe you?” I asked, ignoring my mother’s comment. My dad, meanwhile, had started to snore. Sebastian lifted his hand off the back of the couch in a kind of shrug. “I don’t know, but the boy
is
desperate for Teréza and me to reconnect.”

Leaning over, I snagged an Oreo cookie. “Did I tell you that Jane canceled?” I asked Sebastian. “I guess the flights are booked because of the holidays.”

“Jane?” My mother perked up, “Jane Yorgleson from Central High?”

I nodded around a mouthful of crumbed cookie. “I guess it’s Jane Rathmussen now, but yeah. She got my astral invite.”

“You mean the dream?” my mother asked.

“What dream?” asked Sebastian.

Meanwhile, Barney snagged a large triangular chip in her teeth and marched off with it proudly, like she ’d caught a fat mouse. She quickly escaped to the privacy of underneath the table. My father snorted himself awake and then resettled.

“It was the clearest dream I’ve ever had,” my mother explained. “It was like a TV ad. There was a picture of Garnet in a white dress and a man I now recognize as you in a black tuxedo. A voice-over told me how to get in contact with Garnet if I wanted to attend her wedding. At the end there was like this screen with the wedding date and a phone number. I think I dreamed it more than once.”

“You sent out an astral commercial for our wedding?”

“I didn’t know how else to contact my old friends. I mean, some of them thought I was dead.”

Sebastian scrubbed his face with his hands. “No wonder Parrish is back. You put a filter on this, of course, so it would only go to your friends, right?”

“Uh . . .” I had, hadn’t I? I couldn’t quite remember. I’d gotten kind of caught up in the moment.

“We wouldn’t want the Vatican to get the message that we’re alive and well, would we?”

My mother, finding her bag empty of cat, started munching on chips again. “Why not? Does this have something to do with your being Catholic?”

“More the fact of my being a witch, Mom. There’s a group of paramilitary witch hunters called the Order of Eustace that may or may not be officially aligned with the Vatican,” I said, polishing off my cookie. I eyed another one but decided against it. “Who are very anti-witch. To the point of murder.”

“ ‘May or may not’?” Sebastian broke in. “Are you kidding me? Most of the Order’s members are ordained priests and nuns.”

We’d had this argument many times before. Ironically, it was Sebastian, the Catholic, who tended to be certain that the Vatican funded the Order. “Of course they’re under the Vatican’s aegis.”

“Just because they’re priests doesn’t mean they’re not part of a rogue organization. We don’t have any proof the Vatican approves.”

“Except that Mátyás claims his friends in the Order arranged for the pope to perform an exorcism.”

My mother snorted in disbelief. “I find that hard to believe. Exorcists are specialists. I think we’d have heard if this pope was an exorcist. CNN would have uncovered information like that.”

“Like how there are vampires and zombies running around,” my dad piped up. His eyes were still closed, but he must have been listening in.

“Oh.” My mother chewed another handful of chips, considering. “Yeah, why is it we haven’t noticed all this sort of stuff before?” She looked at Sebastian quizzically. “You don’t really seem to be hiding who you are. Not that you need to, mind you. I mean, I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice vampire and everything. And so good-looking. My, such broad shoulders and trim waist. I love your arms. I noticed when your sleeves are rolled up you’ve got lovely muscles.”

I was afraid she might go on, so I interrupted. “Mom,” I said reproachfully, “stop.”

“I understand your concern, Mrs. Lacey,” Sebastian said, ignoring all the weird flirting from my mom. “You don’t have to worry. I don’t usually go around broadcasting my vampirism.”

“And I don’t usually blurt out the whole vampire thing either,” I said. When Sebastian shot me an “are you sure about that?”

glance, I returned with a “let me finish” glare. “See, the thing is, I, well, I guess I just wanted you to love him for all that he is—like I do.”