Undead and Unwary (21 page)

“Sorry. I’m not up on current slang.”

“And that’s what you’re apologizing for, which sums you up perfectly. But shut up already, I’ve got bigger problems than you and isn’t
that
a crying goddamned shame. Jessica’s babies turned into toddlers and then turned back. Except everybody else thought they left the house, then
came
back. I’ve got no idea what to do about that.”

She beckoned my petty concerns forward in a “hurry up, out with it” gesture.

“And . . . that’s it.” I thought about it. Yep, that was the sitch in a nasty little nutshell. “There’s no more to tell. Isn’t that enough? Any ideas?”

“Several.”

“About Hellman’s and Miracle Whip?”

“Who?”

“The
babies
.”

“Yes, kick them out of your lives. All of them.”

I was surprised I was surprised. I’ve never been what you would call a fast learner. Or even a medium-speed learner. “Okay, now can I have a suggestion that doesn’t reek of sociopathy?”

Another shrug, one that barely concealed her impatience and boredom. “Don’t do anything. They’ll adjust, the way they’ve had to since you didn’t have the common decency to stay dead.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “that was ill-mannered of me.” Ill-mannered? Sinclair was rubbing off on me, and not in a sexytimes way.

“They’re fine. You’re fine. You know what the problem is. Just explain it to their parents.”

“Right, because it’s just that easy.” Wait, was it? Naw. That was not how life worked. How my life worked. “And where is everybody? Not that I want a crowd, but it’s so odd to be standing around in nothing having awful conversations with you.” I gestured to the nil of perdition. “There should be billions milling around.”

“They’re here. You’ll see them when you wish to see them. That’s all.”

I gritted my teeth at how she said “that’s all” like it was the entire explanation and there was no need for further discussion.
That’s all.
Cripes.

My stepmother rubbed her temples and looked like the Before picture in a Pepto-Bismol ad. “Think of it like a chest of drawers. You know exactly where your socks are even though you can’t see the socks. And before you squawk about how it can’t be that simple, you’re wrong. Because I have to break it down
so
far in order for you to get it, it
is
that simple.”

I had to give it to her; when she explained Hell that way, it was a concept I could grasp. “Then why are you here? I wasn’t thinking about you; I didn’t accidentally summon you.” In fact, it was probably time to get back to the Game.
White bear, white bear.
Except I was thinking
DadDadDadDadDad
. The whole time she’d been reading me the race riot act:
DadDadDadDadDad.

She looked away. “Where else would I be?”

“Uh . . .” Oh God, no. Please. No more empathy for the Ant. It went against everything I believed in. And everything she believed in. “Okay.”

“I was always going to end up here.”

“You were?” The way she said it made me a little sad. Like she was stuck and there was nothing to be done. Which exactly described my father’s second marriage. (Yeah, I know, very meow. I literally cannot help myself.)

But was that even correct? She had been the devil’s right hand. Satan had been fond of the Ant as undivine vessel for the Antichrist, and they both cared about Laura, which made the Ant one of the few souls (?) Satan could absolutely count on to keep the Antichrist’s interests front and center. Satan was gone or dead or whatever, off to Heaven or another Hell or a dimension we didn’t know about or just total nothingness, but that still put Laura (and me to a
much
lesser extent) in charge. So was the Ant really stuck here? Was she staying by choice? Did she just hang around in all the nothing, waiting patiently for Laura or me to turn up?

Wow, any more parallels to her marriage to my father and I wasn’t going to be able to shake the feeling that Everything Happens for a Reason. Also, ugh.

“Of course I ended up in Hell,” she said with a sigh, in response to my polite “You were?” “I led a married man into adultery.” At my uncomprehending look, she elaborated. “It’s a sin.” Then she snorted, “Presbyterians.”

First off, I knew it was a sin, I just didn’t think many people these days truly thought they would go to Hell for treating their marriage vows as marriage suggestions. Second, my religion was none of her business. Third, I had no idea
she
was religious. Or moral. “It, um.” What the hell to say to that? Any of that? “You know the saying. I mean, it wasn’t all you.” This would kill me. I would literally nice myself to death, and for the Ant, of all people. Death was coming. “It takes two to, uh, adult. Be adulterous, or adulterate. Whatever. You weren’t in it by yourself. In fact, you weren’t even married, he
was. So he was the actual adulterator. Right?”

A sullen shrug, but the way she peeked at me out of the corner of her eye while refusing to look straight at me was almost cute. “We made mistakes,” she finally allowed.

I accepted the olive branch (which was more like an olive twig, or maybe the pit) and went back to what I really wanted to know. High time, even if I didn’t have a hidden agenda. Because being stuck in Hades talking about my father’s marriage with my stepmother . . . if I’d had any doubt we were in Hell, that would have cleared it right up.

And again, because this was starting to bug me, I was here . . . without Laura! Unfortunately I didn’t have a leg to stand on in the “how come you punked out on that thing we agreed to do together?” department, due to my avoidance shenanigans. Still, it was annoying. Laura was supposed to be the better (wo)man, dammit. Never in my life, not once, had
I
been the better (wo)man. Why would anyone expect me to start now? Frankly, their unreasonable expectations were kind of a burden.

Because it’s your responsibility? You’re not just a queen, you’re the
older
sister.

I shoved those thoughts away so I could get back to what I needed to discuss. “Yeah, speaking of adulterating and all that came with it . . .” I made a show of looking around. “Where’s my father?”

A silence that could, at best, be referred to as uncomfortably awkward was my only answer. It took me several seconds to realize she wasn’t going to say anything. That this might not be a conversation, but a monologue. An uncomfortably awkward monologue.

I cleared my throat and tried again. “Did you understand the question? About Dad?”

“I’ve got no time for this. Neither do you.”

And she turned her back on me.

 CHAPTER  

TWENTY-ONE

Okay, this. This, um. This was not how I’d expected the discussion to go. I’d expected her to tell me right off where she thought Dad was or that she had no idea and her husband’s whereabouts were none of my business. Not avoidance, which—I had to give the Ant credit—wasn’t ever her style. In fact, she went out of her way to avoid avoidance, always delighting in being blunt and confrontational, whereas in any confrontation you’d find my dad in the other room, and sometimes the other state. She was the yin to his yang, the Demi Moore to his Ashton Kutcher. Wait. Never mind.

The “conversation” we were having was like prepping to tangle with an arsonist, only to realize you were tangling with a burglar instead. You had to think up entirely new rules to deal. You had to understand that what you thought would get burned would instead get stolen. I’m giving way too much thought to this metaphor, possibly because the conversation was
freaking
me
out.

“Neither do I? Neither do I?” Repetition worked pretty well with the Ant; she was like a parrot that way. “Is that what you think? Not your call.” I made a determined effort to ignore how my stomach plunged and kept at her. “And you’re not the one who gets to tell me what I do and don’t have time for. In case you missed a recent shift in power dynamics, I outrank you. Which means you’re going to make time.”

She snorted. “That’s convenient. You spend weeks wiggling on the hook like a whiny worm—”

“Gross. Don’t make fishing metaphors if you don’t know dick about fishing. And could you turn around? It’s so unsettling to argue with your shoulders.”

“—and telling everyone who would listen that you’re not suited for this job, right up until you want to use the perks to pull rank.”

Damn. “Good for you,” I said with grudging,
painful
approval. “You’re still going to have to make time.”

“Why would you think I know?”

I nearly fell down, for a couple of reasons. In her capacity as the Executive Assistant from Hell, the Ant had answered questions I’d had on other trips here I hadn’t been able to get out of. But even putting that aside, the Ant, in life, had always known my dad’s whereabouts pretty much all the time. She was always aware of the karmic retribution that is when you marry your mistress, you create a job opening. (My mom had pointed that out to her with gleeful fury.) I couldn’t imagine she would be much different in death. So far no one I’d met was different in death. The fact that she even asked me that question showed the size of the wall she’d just slammed between us.

“You must know,” I replied, shocked. “You’re the expert on Hell since Satan quit/got her ass killed. And even if you weren’t, you died with him. And—and if you ‘woke up’ here or whatever by yourself, you could have found out. You and Satan were practically besties. She could have done the Hell equivalent of making one phone call and finding out for you.”

“She did say I was her favorite unholy vessel,” the Ant mused. Even while stonewalling me, she managed a secondhand compliment.

I could learn from this woman.

Naturally I banished that thought the instant, the
second
, it surfaced in my mind like a fart bubble in a bathtub.

“Billions of souls,” the Ant was saying, because it might have started as a monologue but had eventually turned into a conversation. “Needle in a haystack. And it’s none of your business, anyway.”

This was the—what? The sixth or seventh time this week I was so staggered it took me a minute to remember how to talk. Some people found shock upon shock to be exciting, a ticket to an adrenaline high. I . . . did not. I liked my adrenaline highs to come from sample sales and banging the vampire king. And maybe smoothies.

“None of my business? Oh God, anything but that!” I cried, horror-struck. “You mean there’s actually something
to
this? No! No, you’re doing it wrong, it’s all wrong, how can you not know how this goes after all these years?”

She twitched a little, alarmed. “I don’t—”

“This is how it goes! This is how it’s
always
supposed to go! You’re supposed to mock my black friend’s sleep-deprivation-fueled conspiracy theories and say something faux-supportive yet racist, like how it’s not her fault but the more babies she has, the more welfare checks she’ll get or something just as terrible and then I’ll lose my temper and you’ll remind me what a burden I was on your husband.”

“But she’s rich. Why would she need to go on wel—”

“I don’t know!”
Really? That was the part of the expected response she was going to focus on? “Racism isn’t logical, for Christ’s sake! But you’ve gone all squirrelly and that is freaking me right out!”

“I’m right here,” she pointed out. “No need to scream.”

“Dammit dammit dammit!”

“You were right.”

Well. Those were the magic words that took the wind out of my sails, so I forced myself to get a grip before my rant could gain momentum and become sentient. “Okay. Thanks for that.” Had I ever heard those words from her? Maybe, if one of her charity-bim pals dared her. Or if she had a fever. A really high fever. Like, boiling-point high. “Which part was I right about?”

“Your time is
your business and it was inappropriate for me to tell you otherwise. But my time is
my
business, and I don’t have any for this.”

“Again: this is not how this conversation goes. You’re supposed to—to—” Wait, why was she smaller? Was she—? She was! The pineapple-haired bitch was walking away! “Antonia, where do you suppose you’re going? Antonia? Ant?” Farther and farther away, the nothing was swallowing her even as I watched. “You get back here this instant, missy! This isn’t over and we aren’t even close to done. Don’t make me hunt you down! You think I won’t? I’ll hunt you like Khan hunted Kirk!” Oh, jeez, did I just yell a
Star Trek
reference at my dead stepmother? That was it. Marc’s biweekly sci-fi movie marathons were hereby canceled. “There’s no point in running, you know. You’ll never escape me so you should just suck it up and accept the fact that—annnnnd you’re gone.”

I was standing by myself. Entirely by myself. In a Hell dimension populated by billions, I’d managed the trick of being alone. I had no idea how to feel about that. I had no idea how to feel about the fact that I had no idea how to feel about
that
, either.

The worst part was, the entire confrontation had settled exactly nothing. I’d forced myself to ask the question, something unthinkable only a few hours before. By asking, I was forced to acknowledge (to myself if no one else) the fact that his death was not, perhaps, what it seemed. So I’d sacrificed my complacency for next to no gain.

Shit, maybe my dad
was
in Hell and just didn’t come when I wanted him, knew I was playing (and losing) the Game but keeping well out of sight. No question at all, that would have been one hundred percent in character.

He’d been a lousy father. It was hard even to admit that and had taken years for me to acknowledge, never mind face. It didn’t help that I felt guilty complaining when so many people had it worse, endured fathers who beat them or sexually abused them or stole from them or killed them. Jessica’s father had been much worse; I couldn’t imagine enduring a tenth of what she’d been subjected to. I tried to count my blessings but I always fetched up against an undeniable fact: all my father’s sins against me hadn’t been out of anger. They’d been born of indifference, which somehow hurt the worst.