The Awesome (20 page)

Lauren nodded and sat back in her seat. “No, but your mom talked about it before you came home yesterday, to me and Jeff. She’s worried. I hope you’re okay.”

I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling and shook my head. “Great. She tells one vampire about another vampire ghouling me. She might as well bring him with her to Boston to talk to the pri...”

My voice dropped like a rock when I realized what I was about to say. Talking about my kidnapping would make me choke like a dog on a chicken bone. Except,
it didn’t
. I’d given a detail or two, yet there was no heave. I didn’t understand it. Had the ghouling lost its effect already? If so, I still had no appetite, nor was I tired, so was it bits and pieces fading away? Or was Max too busy giving himself a Brazilian wax to keep his metaphysical strangle in place? He couldn’t hold my voice captive consciously all the time—that’d take too much effort.

There was only one way to find out, and that was to make another stab at it. I wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect, but what the hell was one more near-puking fit when you’ve already had three or four?

“I was ghouled by a prince named Max.”

The words fell from my mouth all easy and smooth; the question was why? I thought back to what Jeff said to my mom last night in the kitchen after the holy water thing: “Ghouls can’t betray a master’s command.” My master’s command had been not to tell anyone, and I’d betrayed...

No, wait. My master’s command was to not tell a living soul. A
living soul.
Lauren wasn’t a living soul. She was a bona fide dead chick. She didn’t fall into that gray area vampires did where they had pulses. She was animated dead—no heartbeat, no nothing.

Holy crap.

I grabbed her hand, staring at her like she’d become the center of the universe. Hopefully, Dr. Dempsey wasn’t in the other room getting ready to
end
her universe, not only for her sake but for mine, too.

“Okay, listen. I need your help. I need to tell you what happened because I can. You’re not... it doesn’t matter why, but if I tell you, you can tell my mom, and can tell her not to... shit!” My sentences bumbled together, making me sound like a crazy person. I tried to breathe, to collect my thoughts. I needed to tell Lauren what happened with Max so she could relay it to my mother and—in turn—save my butt. Save Mom’s butt. Whatever. I couldn’t do any of it if I rambled.

Lauren peered at me, probably trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with my brain. “Are you okay, Maggie?”

It was the way she asked that took me off guard. It was soft and caring, like she truly gave a crap about my well-being. It snapped me out of my self-indulgent craze. I
was
okay. Her, not so much. Even if the DoPR gave her a pass, she might keep rotting. Dr. Dempsey might decide ‘screw it’ and tell Mom to end it now because the possibility of Lauren becoming a shambling nightmare was too great. He could sequester her in a lab for the rest of her unlife because she was a one-of-a-kind specimen.

This was the person asking
me
if
I
was okay. I should be asking after her, not the other way around.

I took a deep breath and swallowed hard. I would tell her about the Max thing later, after we found out what Dr. Dempsey thought. Until then, I needed to stop being a selfish turd. I slid my hand away from hers and went for the refrigerator, pulling out a big blob of red hamburger meat with my bare hands. I plopped it on a plate and brought it to the table, sliding it between us. Without thinking too much about how cold and icky it was, I grabbed a chunk and popped it in my mouth. It tasted coppery, but under the effects of the ghouling, I was a-okay with that. The meat thing was something I had in common with Lauren, and damn it, I would stop sucking and be supportive. We were going to bond if it killed us. Well, not her because she was already dead, but you get the gist.

Bonding. Over a heaping plate of dead cow.

“You know what, I’m fine. How are you doing?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“I
SEE NO
reason she can’t continue on here, unless you think she’s too dangerous for socialization or you can’t house her any longer.” Dr. Demspey packed up his computer at half past noon, smiling at all of us as he moved towards the door. Lauren waved at him. Lucky for her, he’d deemed her a non-threat, and by the grace of the United States government, she could let her zombie freak flag fly for the foreseeable future.

I hadn’t gotten to tell my hamburger-chowing buddy about the prince thing yet because I was trying to listen more than talk during our kitchen stint. It was a learning experience for me in that whenever conversations got too serious, I tended to say smart-ass things to break the tension. Knowing Lauren awaited a potential death sentence tempered my funny; the more she talked about how sad the whole thing was, the less inclined I was to act out. This shit was kittens-in-the-rain depressing.

“If you want me to make more permanent arrangements, I can find a place for her at one of our facilities, but I’ll need some time for that,” Dr. Dempsey said. “I don’t want to put her in a holding cell. They’re suited for dangerous creatures, and she needs a dormitory, not lock-up.”

Mom glanced at Lauren, then at me, and nodded. “It’s all right that she stays here for now, but I need to talk to my daughter before I make any long-term commitments. To Lauren, too, to be fair. Thank you, Dr. Dempsey.”

“Of course. Lauren, I’ll see you soon, all right?” Until they knew how Lauren’s zombie-ness would progress, she had to endure bi-weekly check-ups. Whether that was here or at some laboratory somewhere was yet to be determined. I worried they’d Roswell her—Mom’s term for when the government made unusual monsters ‘go away’—but I wouldn’t bring that up. Lauren had enough to worry about already.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

He left us with a friendly smile. As soon as the door closed behind him, Mom let out a long sigh of relief, double-timing it to the kitchen to grab herself a beer. “Thank Christ that’s over. Congrats, Lauren. I’m not blowing smoke up your ass when I say I’m glad for you. Dr. Dempsey made the right call.”

Lauren waited for Mom to come back to the living room to hug her. “Thank you, Janice. For everything.” Mom patted her on the shoulder, albeit awkwardly. I think she expected Lauren to blubber and freak out, but Lauren was composed. Of course, I’d take credit for that; she was fine because I’d been supportive. I’d been supportive like a training bra. In fact, training bras were jealous of my support-like qualities.

Boo ya.

Mom gave Lauren another affectionate pat before sliding into the chair in front of her computer. “I think they’re going to be cutting you some kind of stipend for expenses, too, which is nice. Dr. Dempsey will be in touch about that, though.” I almost asked if that meant Lauren was on zombie welfare, but figured that wasn’t very PC so I canned it. “And I’m stoked he didn’t stick around all day. Nice guy and all, but now I might actually make some cash tonight. Lucky for Maggie, too. I was thinking of selling her to the creepy guy at the end of the street with the garden gnome collection.” She shook the mouse to wake the computer screen, wasting no time typing in her MFer password.

“Hold on.” My eyes flitted over to Lauren, then back to Mom, and I licked my lips. “There’s something Lauren has to tell you. But I have to tell her first so she can tell you. Don’t ask.”

“What?”

“Give me five minutes.” I grabbed Lauren’s hand and yanked her toward the kitchen. Had Lauren chosen to stay put, I would have ripped my arm out of the socket, but as she was my new BDFF—Best Dead Female Friend—she followed along, taking a seat at the kitchen table when I asked her to. I rummaged through the junk drawer for a pen and Post-it Notes, dropping my voice to a whisper when I spoke. “Okay, you need to make sure you get this right because if you don’t Mom’s going to run to Boston and get sodomized by, like, four thousand angry vampires. And that’d be sad.”

“Okay? I’ll try.”

“Awesome.” I hopped up onto the kitchen counter, my bare heels kicking against the cabinet fronts. “I can’t tell her what happened with Max because of the ghouling, but you can, so I need you to act as my translator. Don’t include the sodomy comment. She’d get all pissy about that.”

“I didn’t plan on it.”

“Good. So I got pulled out of the house by a vampire prince from Boston. Well, not him, but his huge bitch Russian ghoul and some mute dude named Ahmad.” And the story of my Lubov-napping came to life. I’d told Mom I needed five minutes. It was evident twenty minutes later that I’d underestimated by about forever. I relayed every detail of my meeting with Max, paying particular attention to the death threats looming over Mom’s head if she went aggressive. She had the right to be pissed—I was pissed about it, and I would be for a while—but she had to be careful. Pasting Max’s brains all over the wall could and would go poorly. I didn’t want to have to go into hiding, change my name, or drop contact with Ian because knowing me endangered him.

After thirty minutes of non-stop talking, my voice went husky, but I was pretty sure there was nothing left to say. At one point Mom poked her head into the kitchen to see what the hell we were up to, but I shooed her out before her presence choked me to death. She cast us a suspicious glare before trudging back to the living room.

“So you got it all?” I asked.

Lauren skimmed her notes and nodded. “Yeah. Geeze, Maggie. What a clusterfuck.” The moment the curse came out she cringed and hunched her shoulders, like she’d committed a cardinal sin by daring to swear in my delicate presence. “Sorry! I don’t... sorry.”

“It’s fine. You’re being Janice-ized. Next thing you know your hair will be purple and you’ll be singing ‘Rock You like a Hurricane’ in the shower. To which I’ll tell you to shut up, but hey. All good.”

She stood from her chair, stacking her Post-its one on top of the other. “Okay. Let me go relay. If I say anything wrong, poke me.”

When we returned to the living room, I made Ta-Da arms at Mom before flinging myself onto the couch so hard, it skidded back a couple inches. She gave me one heck of a fuzzy eyeball, though whether that was because I’d abused our furniture or because I’d joined a bitch and stitch club with Lauren and she wasn’t invited, I didn’t know. Lauren took a deep breath, looked at me for encouragement, and then reiterated my sad, ghouly tale. As soon as Mom heard the topic, her face flushed with anger. A few times she stopped Lauren to ask questions like, “why’d he bother ghouling her” and, “so what, I’m supposed to let him
get away with taking her?
” To Lauren’s credit, she gave my arguments for me, saying that though Max’s methods sucked, he did give Mom a head’s up that the Plasma vampire’s relative was on a rampage.

Mom stared at the floor, her fingers stretching and curling over the chair armrest like a kneading cat. “He broke the law, Margaret. He broke the law and it’s not okay to ignore that.”

“I know,” I said, because I understood exactly how she felt. We’d been bullied, and we couldn’t reciprocate. We were powerless—not a feeling Mom or I were very good with. “It sucks.”

“Why didn’t he want you telling me?”

I motioned at Lauren, who picked through her notes to revisit my explanation. “Because he assumed you’d feel obligated to go after him, and then he’d be forced to defend himself.”

“Great, so he figured he’d have to kill me. God, I hate vampires.” I opened my mouth to make the oh-so-obvious comment about Jeff, but she spun and pointed a finger in my face, her eyes narrowing. I shut my mouth and smiled instead, which I think in some ways was worse. It said we both knew what I thought—
Neener neeener, you hump vampires
—but because I didn’t give it voice, she couldn’t bitch at me. A win-win for me.

Mom sputtered and twitched and paced for the better part of a half hour. It was clear she didn’t know how to process the information. At least I was assured she wouldn’t report the Plasma incident and get herself killed, which was victory one. Victory two was me figuring out how to get around Max’s command.

I am such a clever monkey.

“I’m going to head up and take a shower,” Mom announced, her fingers skimming her hair and flattening it to her scalp. She flicked the MF list at me so I could take a look at tonight’s job listings. “There’s nothing less than four stars on there, Kiddo. Sorry. ’Til the ghouling’s gone we’re screwed on the journeyman thing anyway. Soon, though. Jeff seems to think it’ll only take a week to run its course.”

“It’s okay.” For once, I was glad to be left behind. Lauren’s ordeal had been oddly exhausting, like I’d absorbed some of her strain by osmosis. Sitting around on my butt zoning out to the boob tube sounded fantastic. Better than running around chasing rogue werewolves, anyway. That took, like, effort.

And effort sucked.

M
OM LEFT FOR
work at suppertime, geared up like a war machine. Lauren stared at the semi-automatic rifle strapped to her back with huge, saucer-like eyes. I reassured her that, “It’s cool. She only uses that on the douchey ones. Let’s get some Chinese.” Lauren immediately relaxed. No better way to distract a zombie house guest than food; they were bottomless meat receptacles.