Undead and Unstable (16 page)

“Got a plan already, huh?” she said, sounding impressed. “Good. Um, I don’t know where he is. I’ve kind of been avoiding him, what with how he makes my skin crawl and all.”

“Jessica.” I couldn’t always pull off a reproachful tone, being such a disaster as a human being and a bigger disaster as a vampire queen, but this time I could. “Come on. It’s not his fault. In fact, it’s Ancient Betsy’s fault.”

“Think I don’t know that? I got the whole skinny this morning. I didn’t say it was his fault. But come on. I’m gonna have a baby! A tender, delicious baby no zombie could resist.”

“He’s not that kind of zombie,” I said, exasperated. Not as long as there were dead cats around, anyway. And the
People
“Second Look” page. (“Find the differences in these two pictures!”) And the
NYT
crossword.

“Girly-o, I am taking no chances. None. Now Dickie, his thinking’s different, he
has
been hanging around Marc, but only to find out ways to control him or defeat him in the guise of guy talk … like that. Once a cop, right?”

“Don’t call him Dickie. Gross.”

“It’s his name, shithead.” She said that with total kindness. And she pulled it off every time, too. She was the one person who could always say the worst, most truthful things about me right to my face and I’d almost never get pissed. Maybe it was her superpower. That and being rich. And huge.

“Don’t care, it’s weird, I gotta go find Marc. Thanks again. Oh. Here, you dropped a cucumber slice.” I picked it up and handed it to her, then left so I wouldn’t see what she did with it.

TWENTY-SEVEN

I found our friendly neighborhood zombie in the kitchen,
where he was dismantling our toaster. “Don’t start,” he said without looking up. There were screwdrivers and other shiny things scattered all over the near counter. “It’s not like you eat toast or bagels, anyway.”

“Like I care what you’re doing with an appliance? If you’re looking for more braaaaain stimulation, how about tackling some of my laundry?”

Marc laughed, the first genuine laugh I’d heard from the guy since he went toes up in his bedroom last week. He set down the screwdriver and picked up a water glass filled with clear blue liquid. Half of it went down his throat in a few thirsty gulps, and then he picked up the tool again.

“I think you should lay off the Windex.”

“This is crème de cacao, dope. My seventh. It’s five o’clock somewhere, right?” He checked his watch. “Actually, it’s five right now. What kind of a world am I living in when I can’t get drunk after I’m raised from the dead?”

“Uh, but you’ve kind of had a problem in the past. With the booze.” I could never figure out if he’d been an alcoholic or just a shitty drunk. Months would go by and he wouldn’t touch a drop. Then he’d go on a two-day bender. Sometimes he went to AA meetings, and sometimes he didn’t. I’m embarrassed to say I was always caught up in my own drama to worry about anyone else’s. He was a grown man, I reasoned, and a doctor—much smarter than me! Looking out for him, taking his inventory, well … not my job.

I know. Pretty shitty, right?

“Not that it’s any of my business,” I added somewhat lamely. “Uh … I think. But you did have kind of a problem, right?”

“Yeah. When I was alive. I’m dead now; booze can’t hurt me. Cigarettes: nope. I could inject myself with a pure strain of the AIDS virus and not even catch a head cold. And tell me this, Betsy: What’s wrong with getting drunk after I’ve died? Huh?”

“I think you’d better lay off the Windex a lot.”

“Forget it. What’s up?”

“Where is everyone?”

“Well, Detective Dick, whom I’ve decided you should call DeeDee, made sure I had plenty to occupy my mind this afternoon before he headed off to catch bad guys. Jessica’s been careful to stay the hell away from me. Sinclair’s holed up in the library, and Antonia and Garrett haven’t come down from their bedroom yet.”

“Good. That’s perfect.”

“I dunno about perfect, but you gotta admire their stamina.”

“Not them, idiot! It’s good no one’s around.” I plopped into a chair across from him. He was wearing chocolate brown scrubs today, his hair was clean but messy, and he worked steadily while we talked. “You remember you asked me to kill you?”

“It was less than fifteen hours ago. Of course I remember.”

“Time for you to return the favor.”

“But you never actually got around to killing m—”

“Time to return the favor!”

I told him how it was. I was sort of amazed at how quickly I could run down all the problems of my life that began after my life ended.

“Hmmm.” He paused in his work and set the tool down again. “That’s your plan?”

“It’s all I’ve got so far.”

“We’d better get it right.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re really hard to kill.”

“Yeah.”

“The last thing we want is you crawling back from the grave.”

“Gross.”

“That’d be … just a disaster. So we have to thoroughly kill you. Decapitation or something.”

“Or something,” I agreed. Boy oh boy. God has the
weirdest
sense of humor. The Big Guy had some serious explaining to do. I guess the good news was, I’d be asking Him questions way sooner than I thought.

This. This is what my life was now. Getting decapitated so I could pin God down on a few issues actually sounded like a good plan.

“Funny how things work out.”

“Huh?”

“Well. When you and I met, I was getting ready to jump off a tall building. Then we talked about you killing me just last night, and now you’re asking me to kill you. Full circle.”

“Lovely.”

“What about chopping you up into bits and, I dunno, burning the body?”

“
Burning
me?” I was appalled. Stupid, but there it was. Dammit, I wanted to leave behind a good-looking corpse. One possibly without a head. “Not a chance! Forget it.”

“Okay, okay. It’s your grisly death, I guess.”

“You’re damned right it is! Look, I’ve given my suicide/murder a lot of thought.”

“Well,” he began cheerfully, “there’s a first time for—”

“Shut up. I want to make myself good and dead … with no coming back. So I should sneak onto a construction site and blow myself up with site explosives or be dropped into the middle of the Atlantic wearing only cement boots or fall on purpose into an incinerator. No, wait, then I’m burned again … anyway, overkill is gonna be just right.”

“This is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had,” he said, sounding more than cheery—downright happy, in fact.

“Glad I could bring some sunshine into your zombie existence. And listen, Sinclair can
not
know about this.”

“No shit.”

“Good, we’re on the same page. He won’t approve at all. He’ll be downright tiresome about it … I’m gonna have to try really hard not to even think about it. Argh.” I rubbed my eyes. “This is getting complicated.”

“Complicated is good.”

“Said the zombie,” I replied dryly, and the zombie laughed and agreed with me.

TWENTY-EIGHT

We’d gotten off the subject of my murder, and I was just
telling Marc to keep his screwdriver away from my iPod charger when Ancient Me walked in. I was on my feet in less than a second.

“Why. Are you wearing. My clothes?”

“My clothes, too,” she said.

“Oh,
hell
no!”

She crossed to the cupboard where we kept the tall glasses, grabbed one, then went to the fridge and rummaged for a carton of milk like she owned the place or something. Oh, wait…

Screw it. “Ever hear of asking? Bad enough you’re a foul undead dictator from the World on Ice, but you don’t remember your manners?”

“It’s also my house,” she pointed out so calmly I wanted to rip out her highlights. “I know what you’re thinking, and it’s a good way to get your neck broken.”

“Wow,” Marc said respectfully. “All we need is a tumbleweed blowing through here and it’s High Noon. Or High Late Afternoon.”

“I thought you left.”

“I did leave. Now I’m back.”

“Why?”

She sat down across from Marc, who looked alternately fretful and thrilled. “I’m waiting for you to do something. Or not do something.”

“Well, at least I don’t get cryptic in my decrepitude. Get lost, this is a private meeting.”

“Or I could get lost,” Marc offered. “If this is private vampire queen stuff. I can wreck this toaster anywhere.”

“You can stay because I don’t know you.”

“Uh … what?”

“I don’t know you.” Ancient Betsy sounded almost bored. “You were never a zombie in my timeline. Never. You’re the wild card now, Marc. I don’t know how to play you.”

“He’s not yours to play, he’s
mine
,” I said sharply. Oops! “Um, I’ll rephrase—”

“No need, since I agree a zillion percent,” Marc said, grinning.

“Will you get lost already? This is private roommate meeting stuff. Also, it triggers my vomit reflex just being in the same room with you.”

“Do you think it’s any easier for me?” she asked sharply. She’d pulled her hair back into a low bun on the back of her neck, a dreadful look for us that made us look like we were growing a tumor of hair back there, and was dressed in one of my J.Jill purple sweaters and one of my pairs of black leggings. “Do you think I enjoy being here around people who, in my time, are long dead, or worse?”

“Boo fucking hoo. How about how I feel, knowing what you—we’ll do to Sinclair?”

“You think I like seeing my husband as he once was? Brave and honorable and—”

“Stop!” Marc was holding up one hand like a zombie traffic cop. “You two could take the gold and silver in the Self-absorbed Olympiad, but I’m not sure which of you would walk away with the gold. Let’s agree that it’s hell for both of you, okay?”

At once Ancient Me smiled, and really, it changed her face. Or her eyes. It was hard to describe … she seemed younger and happier all at once. It was almost as unnerving as her ice-sculpture thing. “I’ve missed you, Marc.”

“Well, thanks, I guess. But listen, I hope you don’t want any sympathy from me. I had a long talk with the Marc Thing, so I know some of the baaaaad shit you were up to. Will get up to.”

“And that’s why you killed yourself.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t take.”

“Except you didn’t.”

“What?” we said in unison. “Could you drop the cryptic crap for five seconds?” I added.

“Don’t you understand? That’s why I’m here.
He’s
why I’m here.” She pointed at Marc. “He was never a zombie in my timeline! Not once, not for half a day or half a second. He was a vampire in my timeline, and now, in the new one, he’s a zombie.”

“Well … because of you, though, right?” Marc asked, sounding as tentative and unsure as I felt.

“Yes, but it didn’t happen like that in my memories. Do you truly not understand the significance? Satan’s afraid, Garrett is more cunning than he ever was in my time, shoe designers will never have been born…” Creaky Me paused, and a spasm of pain crossed her face … the first “human” thing I’d seen her do. But she made the expression go away and came back as bitchy and unpleasant as ever. “When Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumbass showed up in their future/my present, things started changing. Now Marc will never be a vampire. And that’s
wrong.
What I did to the other you was wrong.” She had now focused her full attention on Marc, who was staring at her like a deer gazing into the lights of an oncoming semi loaded with hogs. “Very wrong, and the fact that in my time you’d slaughtered indiscriminately, that you were too dangerous to let loose while too valuable to kill—”

“I really don’t want to hear this,” he whispered. “I got enough of it from the other guy.”

“Slaughtered indiscriminately?” Whoa. Had Wrinkly Me kept Marc penned up because of something bad
he’d
done? “You know what? I don’t care. It hasn’t happened yet, and I’m fixing it so it won’t.” Somehow.

“At last we have goals in common. I persuaded the devil to take me back, and I resurrected Marc as atonement for what he had done to me and to others, and for what I had done to him. You changed things, however inadvertently. I’m changing things, too, but on purpose … and only as a reaction to what
you
have changed. And though I loathe telling you something so shameful and personal, I only had the courage to try because you did things when you were in my present/your future that
had not happened.
You said and did things I had no memory of doing or saying when I was”—she flapped a hand casually in my direction—“you.”