Romancing The Dead (5 page)

“Morning,” Sebastian murmured. He detoured slightly from his trajectory to give me a peck on the cheek. The sunlight did nice things to his half-naked body, highlighting lines and angles. He looked like a rumpled Adonis in need of a shave. Yummy. I let my hands, which had automatically reached around to encircle his waist, slowly caress his rib cage and flat, hard stomach. As my hand rested against his taut belly, I flashed to what William had said. How weird would sex be when I was all wrinkles and gray and he was still hard and lean? How impotent would I feel when he went off to feed on his twentysomething ghouls then?

Sebastian’s fingertips brushed my hair. “What are you thinking?”

Just then Barney sneezed wetly on Sebastian’s bare feet. She started to hack dryly as if she planned to toss a hairball onto his toes. I gently nudged her with my foot until she got the hint and padded off to sun herself in the tower room. Barney especially disliked Sebastian because, unlike other vampires, he had been made by alchemical sorcery. She rather liked my ex, Parrish, and I always figured that, because he was dead, he smelled like something a cat would drag in. Sebastian ’s magic flowed continually through his veins, and, well, it apparently made Barney gag.

“She’s not going to like living at my house, is she?”

His house? I hadn’t really considered it, but I supposed it didn’t make sense for Sebastian to move into my tiny little apartment. No, no, of course I’d move into his place, I practically lived there now.

Before I could reply, a soft munching sound came from the tower room where I kept all my plants. “Barney,” I yelled, grabbing the squirt bottle from its place next to the bread maker. “Stop eating the lucky bamboo!”

“Maybe she could live in the barn,” Sebastian murmured, leaning against the counter, cup of coffee cradled in both hands. I aimed the nozzle at Barney. Her face was buried in my tattered bamboo. Seeing the bottle armed and ready in my hands, she bolted. The force of her leap set the plant stand rocking, but I was able to grab it before it toppled.

“Barney is an indoor cat,” I yelled over my shoulder as I straightened the pot and checked on the violas and pansies. The tower room had windows on all sides, and they were all open to let in the morning air. The heat had broken and I could hear seagulls crying in the distance.

Sebastian shook his head with apparent bewilderment. “A barn would be perfect for her. Cats should live where they can catch mice and rats. It’s their job. It’s what they do.”

“You still think dogs should be used only for hunting,” I said with a fond smile as I came back into the kitchen. I reached around him to refill my own cup. What would I do with the coffeemaker? I’d bought it at an estate sale because it was teal. I’d never seen such a hideous plastic monstrosity in my life; it was love at first sight. I’d brought it home and lovingly decorated it with purple stickon rhinestones. In his kitchen Sebastian had one of those fancy espresso machines that I’d never learned how to operate. He made cold press for his “everyday” coffee. Damn good coffee; weird machine. I’d have to learn how to use it if I was going to live there every day for the rest of my life.

The rest of my life.

Sebastian smiled at me. “You still have that curious dread on your face. What’s on your mind?”

I shrugged and looked around my tiny kitchen. Chipped cheap veneer covered the cabinets. Maroon and black carpeting speckled with a multitude of stains shrouded the floor. I never quite understood why my landlord had carpeting in the kitchen. The rest of the place had gorgeous, polished hardwood—except the one room in the house where food was most likely to be dropped.

“It’s going to be weird to leave here,” I said.

Sebastian leaned against me so our arms touched. I let my head rest against his shoulder. “I know,” he said, stroking my hair. “We could always buy a house in town. Something that would be ours.”

Tilt.

I knew the whole buying -a-house-together thing was what was expected, and that was the problem. This whole domestic discussion felt very Ward and June Cleaver, and I’d never wanted to be those people. What was next? Me in an apron, while Sebastian complained about how hard it was to find a good AB-negative ghoul? “Um, I need to get cat food,” I announced, putting my full cup of coffee in the sink with the other dirty dishes. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

Then, I fled.

Summer was in full bloom. Deep violet clematis climbed over fences, monarch and viceroy butterflies sipped from pink milkweed flowers, and every time I paused for even a second for a stoplight, mosquitoes buzzed in my ears and nipped at my exposed skin. Despite the bugs, I was considering going for a ride around the lake before heading home when I heard a strange, tiny, distorted version of the 1812 Overture. A distant car stereo? A radio station coming in on my fillings? An especially complicated squeaky wheel? D’oh! My cell phone!

I fumbled at the pack at my waist until I found the phone. Then I randomly jabbed at buttons until the ringing stopped. Jamming it under my helmet in the vicinity of my right ear, I said a cautious, “Hello?”

I was what could be considered a late adopter when it came to cell phones. They went against my attempts to be Zen. Plus, even though I was embarrassed to admit it, I was a bit of a fuddy-duddy when it came to technology. I knew how to use a computer well enough for work, but I didn’t have a laptop or an iPod or a BlackBerry or even a thumb drive. I wouldn’t even know what those things were, except Sebastian loved gadgets. After a run-in with some killer zombies a few months ago, Sebastian insisted I carry a cell phone.
Garnet,
I could hear him saying,
next time you’re surroundedby the powers of Darkness, dial 911.

“Hello?” I said again into the phone, wondering if the ringing had stopped because I’d hung up or if Sebastian was just being coy.

“Are you coming back or did I scare you off for good?” It
was
Sebastian. He sounded grumpy.

“There was a long line at the pet store,” I lied.

“I’m not sure I’ll be here when you get back,” he said. “I have things to do.”

I shifted the phone to the other ear. It was hard to keep my balance on my bike while talking on the cell phone. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“This whole marriage thing is going to take some getting used to.”

“ ‘Marriage thing’? If I didn’t know any better, Garnet, I’d say you were afraid to commit.”

“You only proposed the day before yesterday. Give me a chance.”

There was a long pause. I shifted the phone again so I could make a wobbly right turn. If this conversation was going to go on any longer, I’d have to stop, only I wasn’t sure if I could brake with just one hand. “All right,” Sebastian said at last. “But I’m going in to Jensen’s. Hal told me they got a 1966 Mustang convertible I need to look at.”

Sebastian would probably do more than look. Jensen’s was the garage he sort-of-mostly worked at. Somehow Sebastian had convinced his boss, Hal, to let him work only when he wanted to and only on the cars he liked. I chalked it up to vampire glamour.

“Okay,” I said. “No hard feelings?”

“Don’t forget I’m at the Horticultural Society tonight.”

Sebastian was an herbalist and he’d been invited to lecture on the occult properties of certain common weeds.

“I’ll be there with bells on,” I said trying to sound peppy. I wasn’t convinced we’d smoothed over our rough patch yet. “I love you,” I said.

“I love you too.” I could hear the “even though you vex me” in the sigh Sebastian uttered before disconnecting. At that moment a big dog dashed out from between two parked cars, and I fumbled for my brakes. Still clutching my cell in one hand, I instinctively squeezed the other hard. The bike flipped.

I slammed into the asphalt, going head over teakettle. The bike came over next and tangled me in wheels and frame. I scraped on my palms and bruised my knees. Thank Goddess I always wore a helmet, I thought as I picked myself up. As I righted the bike and inspected myself and the cat food bag for serious damage, I saw something in the corner of my eye. On the opposite side of the street sat the dog, only it wasn’t a dog at all. Its eyes were too yellow and its nose too thin. A husky? No, more like a wolf or a coyote? In town? Then, just a second after I registered what it was, it trotted off. It disappeared into overgrown hedges separating two houses.

I hauled my battered body back onto the bike and shakily started up the street only to stop ten feet later in front of the remains of my cell phone. Picking it up, I discovered that the hinge had snapped and the battery pack was missing. I looked everywhere for the battery. My best guess was that it bounced along the curb until it slid into the open grate of the sewer. Great. I’d probably just contributed to the pollution of the lakes. Dumping the bits and pieces into my fanny pack, I headed home. I limped up to my apartment with bloody knees and scraped palms, grateful there wasn ’t an unsatisfied vampire waiting for me. After filling Barney’s food bowl and changing her water, I belly flopped onto my bed. Facedown, I tried to relax, tried not to focus on the throbbing of scrapes and bruises or the fact that it was terribly, terribly convenient that Jensen’s needed Sebastian when he hadn’t taken blood from me last night.

Stop it, Garnet. Just because he was gone, it didn’t automatically mean Sebastian was out biting some other girl’s neck. It was, after all, very likely that Sebastian needed to run away from our complicated relationship the same way I had this morning. I shut my eyes and attempted to center. Flipping myself over onto my back, I rolled my shoulders to try to relax. Instead I was distracted by the feel of sweat sliding underneath my breasts. The bike ride had been a workout, and the temperature—and worse, the humidity—was on the rise again.

I wondered, what was up with all the dogs? Maybe I should meditate on it and see if the Goddess would send me a sign. I closed my eyes and slowly began relaxing my body, starting at my toes. But before I got to my head, I was asleep. Apparently, the Goddess wanted me to date Orlando Bloom because that was the only dream I had during my three -hour nap. I woke up with that hot, exhausted feeling of having overslept. Making my way to the bathroom, I brushed the slime off my teeth and drew myself a cold bath.

Cold baths are a treat in the heat of summer. Once my body got over the initial shock of settling into the water, I found it as refreshing as dipping into a lake. It took a little courage to splash my head all the way under, but when I did I could feel my body temperature dropping pleasantly. In less than ten minutes the water stopped feeling freakishly chilled and now seemed almost warmish.

I washed my hair and then relaxed in the tub for a few more minutes. I kept an ear cocked for the sounds of Sebastian coming back. Thinking I heard a footstep on the stair, I rushed out of the tub. I shrugged into my robe, shouting, “I’m in here, Sebastian!”

When I didn’t hear a reply, I went out to investigate. A quick glance revealed no one there. All I ’d heard was the old house creaking and settling.

I stared at the door for a moment, still hopeful. Then, with a frustrated sigh, I gave up and wandered into the kitchen to hunt up lunch. I heated up a bowl of tofu stir-fry from a Vietnamese take-out container. The veggies were wilted and the rice gummy, but it passed for sustenance. By the time I was finished, it was time to get dressed to meet Sebastian at the Horticultural Society. Since I was the girlfriend—oops, strike that, fiancée—of the lecturer, I thought I should try to look respectable. From somewhere in the very back of my closet I found a brown tea -length skirt. In my chest of drawers I discovered a white button-down shirt, which I think I’d actually borrowed from Sebastian some time ago. Still, they went together reasonably well, and the shirt, miraculously, didn’t need ironing. Much.

Shoes were a bigger problem. Even my most conservative pair had bat-wing buckles. Similarly, most of my hosiery involved glitter and/or spiderwebs.

Given the temperature and the state of my tan (which was dark for me, that is, not so pasty as to stand out), I decided I could go without nylons—besides, if my knees started bleeding again . . . well, pulling mesh from a scab was ugly, ugly business. Luckily, the skirt covered the scrapes.

I gelled my hair into its usual spikes, because flat hair just made me look like Eddie Munster. I noticed that there was a faint line of blond beginning to show at the roots. I was going to have to dye my hair again soon or I’d end up looking like a skunk. Pulling at a bit of my hair, I looked at the blond. I didn’t really need the Goth-girl disguise anymore. Not only had the Vatican witch hunters decided I was dead, but the FBI had closed their case on me as well. I wasn’t running anymore. Hell, I was contemplating the big settle—marriage. Maybe I should go down the aisle as a blonde.

I swallowed hard. I watched my throat bob in the mirror in the classic image of fear. My eyes showed it too. No wonder Sebastian was cranky with me.

Well, when I saw him tonight I’d let him know how much I wanted to be with him. I’d missed him terribly all day; I couldn’t wait to see him again.

I called Jensen’s to see if Sebastian was planning on picking me up or if I should phone for a taxi.

“Haven’t seen him all day,” Hal said in his usual, disinterested way. Where other guys might have offered to take a message at this point, Hal simply let silence sit on the line almost like a challenge.

“What about the Mustang?” I asked.

“What about it?”

“There is a ’66 convertible there, right?”

A moment of silence, and I held my breath. “It isn’t yours, is it?”

“No,” I said.

“Good. ’Cause I’m still waiting on parts.”

After an exchange of awkward good-byes, I hung up.

I wanted to be more surprised that Hal hadn’t seen Sebastian all day, but I wasn’t. I called for a taxi and reminded myself that a vampire’s wife was going to have to make peace with the idea of his ghouls.

My stiff upper lip lasted all the way to the University Club, but then I found myself surrounded by Volvo -driving baby boomers so into their gardens that they tended to sneer at me when I mispronounced the Latin name or, worse, called my plants by their common designation.