Undead and Unstable (4 page)

So among other things, she wouldn’t go near a salon (or sushi, of all things … like eighty-zillion Japanese women didn’t eat sushi when they were knocked up?), which was a personal disaster for me. She was using all-natural deodorant (the kind that didn’t work) and natural hair product (the kind that made her look like a pissed-off Rastafarian), and when I gently suggested a fetal-friendly salon massage, she slammed the door in my face (so to speak). All of this to say: this sucks. Who goes to a salon alone? Big-time boring. If Marc were still here, he’d love—

Never mind.

I followed her up the stairs, lugging my dead cat. If I was smarter, or nicer, I’d think something like,
It’s sad that the cat keeled over, but Jessica’s baby will be born soon and out of death comes life, a full circle of life, hakuna matata and suchlike.

But I’m not smart, or nice, so what I thought was:
And the hits, they keep on coming. Nobody ever considers my feelings when they decide to keel over and die on the basement stairs. And the second I’m confronted with an evil poopie diaper, I’m going to go right out of my teeny tiny mind.

Still: if our situations were reversed, I’d want Giselle to bury me. Wait. I absolutely wouldn’t, since half the time I had no idea if I was dead-for-real and could wake up screaming on an autopsy table or, worse, sleep through Macy’s annual shoe sale, so I wouldn’t trust a cat to know, either. Shit,
coroners
sometimes couldn’t tell. I actually knew that for a fact; it was a horrible thing to know for a fact: at least two certified medical examiners hadn’t been able to tell if I was dead.

Besides, our situations weren’t reversed. And I could whine and bitch until the sun rose and set and rose again, and it’d still be my responsibility.

So after Jessica got me a yellowed pillowcase, I stuffed Giselle into it and out I went, into the deep November cold, searching for some meaning in all the crazy shit that had been happening since Giselle got me killed a few years ago. And I was also searching for a shovel. And after this yuck-o errand, I would be searching for a booze smoothie.

Ah, the glamorous life of a vampire queen.

THREE

All sheds smell the same. Even though I hadn’t been in all
sheds, I had confidence making that claim. Dirt and paint, and grass cuttings and mouse poop. Once out in the getting-deep-in-a-hurry twilight typical of late fall in Minnesota, I circled around to the backyard and into the shed, then set my bag o’ cat on the dirt floor to begin poking around.

The shed was as creaky and old as the mansion, which had been built in 1860 or 1720 or 1410 or something like that. And I figured the last time the shed had been cleaned was while Lincoln was still walking around on the planet.

Also, like all sheds, it was magical in that once you got inside the thing, it seemed much, much bigger.
It’s like a ballroom in here!
A filthy ballroom that smelled like mouse poop and had a dirt floor. I couldn’t tell if this chore was more annoying due to enhanced vampiric senses, or because I was an indifferent homeowner. There was probably another reason it was annoying, too … right! My cat was dead.

I found a shovel-sized piece of rust, grabbed the pillowcase, and went to the far backyard. Though I had zero interest in doing my chores, I couldn’t fault the mansion for its size and beauty, and I liked that the yard was huge, not one of the postage-stamp ones … a good trick in a city the size of St. Paul.

I walked toward a couple of the big old oak trees in the left corner … they were naked now, but in the summer and fall they were pretty great. If Giselle had ever expressed a desire to be buried (by me), I liked to think she’d have asked for this corner.

It had been a mild fall, and there were only a couple of inches of snow, but the ground was frozen. Normally it’d be a bitch to dig, but I had confidence in my weird undead strength. There were a few upsides to being the queen of all vampires.

(I was almost getting to the point where I could think of myself with that title and not go into gales of amazed laughter. Give me another seventy or eighty years, and I might be able to pull it off with my puh-puh-puh-poker face.)

Me being me, I tended to focus more on the downside.
Stupid strength of the damned
was on the list along with
stupid superhearing
and
stupid keen sense of smell.
Also me being me, the downside list was much, much longer. And as the shovel slid through frozen dirt like a smoothie blade through a raspberry, another one came to me. One I’d stupidly discounted when I took on my duties as the undertaker of the dead cat who’d gotten me killed and then inconveniently died on our stairs. The dogs. They were a
huuuuge
downside.

And here they came, thundering toward me in a slobbering charge.

FOUR

Several neighborhood dogs (I’d guess maybe eight thousand)
were sprinting and yowling in my direction. It could have been a terrifying sight and, for many poor dumb stupid slobs, would have been. But I, Elizabeth Taylor, courageous vampire queen, knew they were no match for my awesomeness, and thus I showed no fear and no hesitation. Firmly grasping the handle of the shovel-sized piece of rust, I bravely faced the oncoming charge of my fur-covered drooling nemeses…

Well, no. Dropped the shovel and ran like hell for the back door is what I did, with the hounds of heck slobbering at my heels. I was not a dog person. I wasn’t a cat person, either. I was a Betsy person. And believe me: taking care of myself—feeding and clothing myself and putting a roof over my head, and keeping myself from being killed (again) and out of divorce court—was enough of a challenge without throwing domestic animals into the mix. Or wild ones, even.

Stupid
Book of the Dead
, with its stupid predictions and the way it stupidly drives people who read it insane which is so stupid, and warning me that stupid dogs will constantly want to drool on me ’cuz I’m soooo speshul.

How fast could dumb drooley dogs run, anyway? I was superhuman, dammit, I shouldn’t even be worried about how this race would end. Let’s see, like the movie said, “The fugitive has been on the run for ninety minutes … average foot speed over uneven ground barring injuries is four miles an hour. That gives us a radius of six miles.” Just when I forgot what a radius was and how to calculate it, movies saved me again.

“What I want from each and every one of you…” Am I the only one who thought Deputy Gerard must be the biggest pain-in-the-ass boss ever? Come on: think me up a donut with sprinkles? Really? Bet he gooses the office staff at the U.S. Marshall’s office, too. “… is a hard target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, and dog—”

Right, dogs,
that’s
what I should be focused on. Bleah, I could smell them. I didn’t dare risk a glance, but my nose risked a glance, and it was awful. Horrible, horrible enhanced vampire senses! Wet fur and dog spit and—was that…? It was! Poop!

I lunged for the front porch (didn’t bother with the back door, which was small and always locked; it’d slow me down before saving me), made a clutch for the big heavy door knocker, then skidded right past the front door, slamming into the three-foot-high wooden post partition. And I did it so hard, my feet shot through the wood and I found myself up to my shins in splinters. Ow! Ow! God
damn
it! I wrestled free of the porch’s hungry grip, creating a shower of wood splinters that pattered all around me.
This wasn’t over, porch! Time for round two! See you in hell, porch!

“Open up! Dog emergency! Level nine!” Wait. There were a lot of them. It might be a level ten.

I managed to scramble to my feet and lurch toward the door, but falling ass over teakettle had cost me seconds, thus I was engulfed.

“Nnnnnnn! Geh! Geh off! Off! Gehhh!” I howled and pounded on the door, which was the size of a walk-in freezer door and about as strong. And why was I pounding on it? Who’d locked it behind me, anyway? We let bad guys walk in with guns every second Wednesday, we printed our address in national newsletters, werewolves routinely dropped by and tried to kill us, psychos routinely dropped by and tried to kill us, the friggin’ Antichrist had her own set of keys to our home (and she always apologized from outside before she used them, because the Antichrist routinely channeled Miss Manners), but now,
now
my roomies were all security-conscious? I bet it was Jessica, that gestating bitch. “Let me in! You guys! C’mon, open up! I was just burying the stupid cat, I didn’t think I needed my keys!”

A deeply amused, laugh-choked voice drifted from the dog-free side: “What … is … the password?”

“You fucker, open this door!”

“That,” the king of the vampires replied, “was last week’s password.”

“Sinclair!”

“Also incorrect.”

“You shit! You think there won’t be giant payback for this? There will be major giant payback, asshat! Enjoy sleeping on the couch for the next
five decades
.” I risked a glance over my shoulder, not letting up the hammering. They were everywhere! They were going to get drool and fur all over my shoes! Then they would poop, which also would get all over my shoes! I was living one of my worst nightmares, though usually in that dream I was naked, except for shoes I knew were goners, like how you know terrible things in your dreams. Things that are all the more horrifying because you also know, in your dream, that you can’t stop it. Nothing can stop it. Poop everywhere. Poop-smeared Prada. Everywhere.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

“You realize you’re not in any actual danger, darling.”

“Sez you, butt monkey! Open! This! Door! That’s a royal command, buddy, from your queen. Who is allowed to give royal commands and also allowed to kill you and
eat
you if you disobey, and I don’t mean that in a sexy way, either!”

The door opened so quickly I fell into our entryway, shrieking all the way down. “Die! Die! Die! D—oh. I’m inside now.”

Sinclair shut the door, and I heard the thud-thud of a couple of the dogs not being able to stop in time and running into the door. Heh. Stupid dogs. “Why didn’t I try the royal-command thing first?” I groaned from my splayed position on the floor.

My ferociously handsome, smart, hot, evil husband was looking down at me from his six-foot-plus height, faultlessly dressed in a navy blue Hugo Boss suit, a crisp pale blue dress shirt, and the tie Marc

(
O God. Marc.)

had given him as a gag gift: it had a navy background and the standard physician’s eye chart in white. “Read the second line from the bottom” … like that. “Because, my heart, you so rarely think of yourself as our queen.”

“Huh?” The tie had surprised me; I wasn’t the only one missing Marc, and should try harder to keep that in mind. “Oh, right, why I should’ve tried the command thing first.”

“Yes indeed, my own. You should have.”

“Really, Sink Lair?” I rolled over and glared at him. “Are you really gonna compound your gross evil errors by lecturing me into a boredom coma and then not helping me up?”

“Oh, never.” He smiled and stuck out his hand. “As your subject and your husband and your cosovereign—”

“How can you be my subject and my cosovereign?”

“—lecturing you is my prerogative, and only mine. Unless, of course, you count your dear mother. Or Jessica. Or—”

“Please make it stop,” I begged no one in particular. I grabbed his outstretched hand and used it to haul myself to my feet. It might have been how Jack felt climbing the beanstalk. Sinclair was really tall. Climbing him to the top took forever. “And in case you didn’t hear all my yelling—”

“All of St. Paul heard it, darling.”

“I hate you, you treacherous jerk.”

“Ah, but I love you, my dearest queen.”

“You should save time,” I threatened, “and make up one of the sofas now as opposed to waiting until dawn.”

“How is it outside?” he asked, a rare look on his face. It took me a second to place it. Nostalgic? No. Wistful. Yeah, that was it. Sinclair had grown up on a farm some fifteen decades ago (or however long ago he’d lived before he’d died, I could never remember), and missed sunshine like I missed a new spring collection the autumn before. “Is it very cold?”