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  “And then you led them straight to the queen.”

  Garrett shivered. “I had not – thought of that. My only thought was to return to safety. One of them followed me. He must have picked up the queen's scent – from my clothes, I think – and – ”

  “Blown past you, beat you to the mansion. You fell for the oldest trick in the book,” Marc said, not unkindly. “Leading the bad guys to the good guys.”

  “I am a coward. I was afraid to be alone, and now I have endangered you all.”

  “Well, now, uh, that's a little harder to defend,” I admitted, “but you didn't set out to do bad.”

  Sinclair made a disgusted sound and threw his hands up in the air. “Elizabeth, really!”

  “If I went around killing everyone who made a mistake, I'd be pretty damned lonely,” I snapped back. I actually patted the trembling Garrett. “Nobody's going to kill you, Garrett.”

  “Well, maybe some of his old friends,” Jessica said helpfully.

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “There's that. Ideas?”

  Chapter 8

  We (Sinclair) decided to go to the farm to check out the scene of the crime. We (Sinclair) figured it was best to see if things were as bad as Garrett intimated. And no one was in a rush to get back to the mansion.

  Nostro had, once upon a time, owned this property, and I had been, once upon a time, a prisoner here. And getting here had taken no time at all... once Tina's cell got a signal, she made a call, Sinclair docked the boat at some teeny marina, and an empty, idling SUV was waiting for us.

  “It's good to be the king,” Marc murmured in my ear, as we all climbed in, making me giggle.

  Under no circumstances would Jessica and Marc allow themselves to be dumped somewhere safe. The argument got so heated that Sinclair pulled over on a quiet corner of Minnetonka (at this hour, every corner in Minnetonka was quiet) so we could disembark onto the sidewalk and discuss (read: shriek) it without endangering nearby traffic.

  It was only when I saw Sinclair gliding behind Jessica when I realized (a) she couldn't hear him, and (b) what his plan was.

  “Don't you dare knock her unconscious!”

  “I wasn't going to!” Marc yelled back, flinching away from me.

  “Or him, either,” I added, noticing Tina sidling up to Marc.

  “It would have been for their own safety,” El Sneako grumbled.

  “We're perfectly safe,” Marc said, but then, he would. He loved all things vampire. Given that he'd been about to hurl himself from a tall building to escape his boring life when I met him, I couldn't entirely blame him. “We've got the king and queen of the vampires with us and, a, um, shell of a vampire to bring up the rear.”

  For Garrett had been no good at all since we got off the boat. He shivered, he shook, he tried to curl up. It was obvious that, since we weren't going to kill him, being outside made him miserable. For the first time I noticed how torn his clothing was, though his injuries had healed. Old, Sinclair had said, and that was certainly true. But not powerful. Never powerful. There had been a time after I brought him home like a stray when we thought... but no.

  Old, but not powerful. Poor guy.

  As we grumpily climbed back into the SUV, I wondered again about power. What, exactly, made a vampire powerful? Not age, certainly (I was two!), or at least, not just age. I had been told that, like me, Sinclair had risen strong. Most vampires went through a ten-​year phase where they'd do anything for blood and couldn't remember their own names.

  Was determination a factor? Anger, hate, vanity? Hmm, that last could explain my meteoric rise to power...

  “We're here,” Sinclair said abruptly, braking hard enough to make my seat belt lock (force of habit; no real reason to wear the thing these days). “And you two will stay here. I mean it, Marc. Jessica. Remain in this vehicle, or I will be cross.”

  “Excuse me, captain my captain,” Marc said, “but do you know how many horror movies start out like this?”

  “We probably shouldn't split up,” Jessica agreed. “Besides, if you really thought the Fiends were still here, you'd never have let us come. You'd have clocked Betsy, too, if it had come to that.”

  Sinclair muttered something that the chime of the “door open” light drowned out; sounded like “wretched woman.” We all solemnly clambered out with him, knowing that even if Marc and Jess had won a victory, it was nothing to celebrate.

  Chapter 9

  We were okay until we found Alice 's body. Sure, there had been an obvious fight, the fence had been torn open in several places, there were splashes of blood on the ground, but... really, I was okay until we found her head.

  While Marc supported Jessica as she threw up in the chokecherry bushes (he was pale, but had seen so much death as a doctor, even this couldn't make him sick) and I swayed dizzily on my feet,

  (don't faint don't faint don't faint QUEENS DON'T FAINT!)

  Tina and Sinclair prowled the area like vampiric bloodhounds, finding arms, legs, both halves of a torso.

  “This is maybe a dumb question,” Marc began, smoothing Jessica's tight black cap of curls and letting her lean on his shoulder.

  (don't faint don't faint don't faint)

  Tina shook her head. “There's no chance of regeneration. Absolutely none. Frankly, I'd be amazed if the queen could handle this kind of punishment. My queen?” Her voice sharpened. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course she's all right,” Sinclair said, squatting to examine another body part. “Queens don't faint.”

  “Damn right! Look, Alice is obviously dead. What are you poking around for?”

  “Oh, this and that,” he said vaguely. “I'm a little puzzled by the condition of the corpse.”

  “I was thinking that exact thing,” Tina added.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, but they were ignoring me and having their own conversation.

  “Did you call – ”

  “Already done, my king.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Ah, and a mysterious van of vampires will show up and dispose of all the evidence,” Jessica managed, wiping her mouth.

  “More or less.”

  “I think we should go back now, can we please go back home now?”

  Sinclair looked at Garrett with obvious distaste. “What makes you think it's safe?”

  “I-I don't think they'd stay. Not if they couldn't find... her.”

  Okay, so Garrett wasn't exactly being the stand-​up guy you read about in romance novels. But I felt sorry for him – it couldn't have been much fun getting the crap stomped out of him by half a dozen pissed off vampires, vampires he'd tried to help, and then come home to tell Sinclair what he'd done.

  Sinclair didn't understand about fear, how it ate your guts, and how nobody came off like they did in the movies. He'd claimed, on occasion, to have feared for my safety, but frankly, I doubted it.

  “Even if they are still there, it's our home, and a bunch of jerkoff vampires aren't keeping me out of it. I mean, you explained that to me once already, Sinclair. How we're not worthy of our crowns if our people can't find us.”

  “Yay, Queen Betsy,” Jessica said.

  “But they're sure as shit keeping you two out of it,” Marc teased.

  “Boo, Queen Betsy.”

  The argument raged all the way back home.

  Chapter 10

  Marc and Jessica's apparent casual attitude toward death was partly my fault. Make that totally. I'd saved their butts so many times (from suicide, murder, cancer) they just naturally felt impervious around me.

  It didn't help that none of us were talking about it in any real detail. See, I'd always been different from other vampires. So different than even Tina (the oldest vampire I hadn't killed; she had made Sinclair way back when) didn't know much about me, or what I could do.

  I had, completely by accident, cured Jessica's cancer and killed an eight-​hundred-​year-​old vampire librarian. And I'd done it without laying a finger on the librar
ian. I just sort of – pulled her into me. What was left wouldn't have filled an urn.

  That didn't bother Sinclair or Tina especially, since I'd saved Sinclair at the time. What did bother them was that I had no idea how I'd done it and had been unable to do so again. Not that I'd tried. God, no. I figured somebody would have to die for me to try out my nifty new power. Pass.

  Sinclair had been spending some time in the library perusing the Book of the Dead. He thought I didn't know. But I understood his puzzlement, and I knew he was being careful.

  Read that thing too long – written on human skin with blood by a centuries-​dead insane vampire – and you went crazy. Upside was, it was always right. Downside, there was no index or table of contents. You just opened it and took your chances that you'd actually read something, y'know, useful.

  Worst of all, it always came back to me. It had been set on fire and thrown into the Mississippi River (on two separate occasions!). It always showed up wherever I was. Fucking creepy thing that I didn't dare read and couldn't get rid of.

  Or tell Sinclair I knew he was reading it. How could I bring that up without mentioning Jessica's cure, or what I did to Marjorie?

  And don't even get me started on what I did to the Ant and my dad. I'd wished for a baby, and I got one – because they had been killed. It wasn't my fault, it was a Monkey's Paw situation. I'd been wearing a cursed engagement ring at the time. One gruesome car accident later, and I was the sole guardian of my half brother, BabyJon.

  Thank God he'd been spending the weekend with the devil's daughter and didn't get ripped to pieces by the Fiends!

  (I can't believe I just said that. This, this is what my life had become.)

  What was worse, that my distant dad and bitchy stepmother were dead, or that I didn't feel too broken up about it? Let's face it, he'd never been there for me, and she was a stiff-​haired nightmare.

  Who, last I checked, had been haunting me. Maybe I'd get lucky – maybe instead of an actual ghost, that vision of her was just a hallucination, the onset of permanent brain damage.

  I sighed as we pulled into the driveway. I should be so lucky, I told myself.

  Chapter 11

  “This is an inopportune time,” my husband pointed out as I knocked on the door at 1001 Tyler Street , a small, neatly kept gray and white house.

  “No shit,” I muttered. The mansion had been trashed; it was the next evening, and Jessica had called in an army of fixer-​uppers. Even now, after sunset, they were still working on the house. No sign of the Fiends, and Tina had promised to get Marc and Jess into the tunnel at the first sign of trouble. She even thoughtfully provided flashlights by the entrance to the mansion basement. Even better: Marc's ankle was much better. No break, thank God.

  “Then why are we here?” Sinclair asked, looking around the tidy suburban neighborhood. Inver Grove Heights was famous for their tidy suburban neighborhoods.

  “Because he's been incarcerated for months, and this is the first time I've seen him since I got married.”

  “And... ?”

  “I want my bigoted, angry, dying grandfather to meet my dead husband. Now slap on a smile and feel the family joy!”

  Sinclair managed a friendly grimace, as the lady who ran the hospice ushered us in. It wasn't really a hospice; she was a registered nurse who owned the house, and she had three patients, including my grandpa. She could give meds and change dressings, and knew when to haul in an MD.

  In return she made a reasonable living and managed not to smother my grandpa with a pillow. For their part, they were living in an actual home and not dying in an impersonal hospital ward.

  “Get lost,” my beloved maternal relative said warmly.

  “Hi, Grandpa. Just dropped by – ”

  “Did you bring me a Bud?”

  “ – to say hi and tell you I got married.”

  He squinted at me with watery blue eyes. His hair was lush and entirely white – it thrived on Budweiser. His eyebrows looked like angry albino caterpillars. He was in his wheelchair by the window, dressed in sweatpants and a blue checked flannel shirt, feet sock-​less in the heel-​less slippers.

  He didn't need a wheelchair, but Mr. Mueller in the next room had one, and my grandpa broke every plate he could find until Nurse Jenkins relented and ordered one for him. Mueller also had a colostomy bag, but my grandpa graciously decided not to go after that as well.

  Next to the Ant, and maybe the devil, he was the most evil person I'd ever known. Come to think of it, most of the male influences I'd had growing up had either been –

  “Your mom still fat?”

  “She's at the perfect weight for her height and age, you bony smelly man!” I snapped. Great, a new record. I'd been in the same room with him for eight seconds, and already I was screaming. “It's a miracle she isn't a sociopath, raised by a rotten old man like you!”

  “Hello,” Sinclair said. “I'm Eric Sinclair, Elizabeth's husband.”

  Gramps scowled at the vampire king. “You look part Indian. You got any Injun in you, boy?”

  “It's possible,” Sinclair said mildly, as I moaned and chewed on a throw pillow. “I never knew my biological father.”

  I spit out some feathers and stared at him. “You never knew your father?”

  “He could be part black!” my darling, dying relative howled. “He could be – he could be Catholic!”

  “I believe I may be Californian,” Sinclair added helpfully.

  “Anyway, I got married, this is the guy, nice to see you again, don't drop dead anytime soon, because I couldn't handle another funeral this year, good-​bye.”

  “Yup,” Grandpa said, smacking his teeth (he still had them all... a chronic drinker and smoker with gorgeous hair and perfect teeth). “Hope that witch is having a good time screwing the devil in Hell.”

  “I don't think the devil swings that way,” I said truthfully. I had finally remembered the one reason I hadn't wrung the old buzzard's neck twenty years ago.

  Sinclair cleared his throat. I prayed he wasn't eyeing my grandpa and trying to figure out which one of the two of them was older. “Oh, you knew the, ah, late Mrs. Taylor?”

  “Knew her? Beat the shit out of her.”

  “How sweet.”

  “Twat stole my girl's husband.” A cat wandered near, and Grandpa kicked it away, sending his slipper flying. Sinclair snatched it out of the air and courteously handed it back. “She had to go down.”

  “Go... down?”

  “Fistfight. The Halloween I was fifteen. The cops came,” I sighed reminiscently, “and everything.”

  “Bitch went to her grave with fewer teeth than I have,” my warm, friendly grandfather cackled.

  “You engaged in a physical fight with a woman?”

  “Slut should have kept her legs closed round a married man. 'Course,” he added, looking at me, “your father always was a worthless bastard.”

  “As I recall, he got a fist in the face that night as well.”

  “And woulda got a boot in the ass! If the cops hadn't cuffed me by then.”

  “The arresting officer gave me a Charms Blo-​Pop,” I reminisced, “and took me over to stay with my mom. She got to read the police report.” I stooped and kissed his wrinkled forehead. And handed him the Cub grocery bag, which was full of cans of Bud.

  Chapter 12

  “Who's here?” I asked, yawning as I strolled into the kitchen. Sinclair, once done laughing, had been in a rush to get back to the manse, for which I could not blame him. He'd snuck into the library to read the Book of the Dead, and I'd come to the kitchen to pretend I didn't know, and also for a smoothie.

  “Here, what? Here here?” Marc was yawning, too, and scratching his ribs; he smelled like cotton balls, antiseptic, and was wearing last night's scrubs. His hair, shaved nearly bald when I met him, was now shoulder length, dark, and fell into his eyes a lot. It was a wonder how he examined anyone at the hospital. “I hate your creepy vampire superpowers.”

  �
��Liar.”

  “It's Nick,” Jessica announced, shutting the fridge and turning around, a pomegranate (a pomegranate! She ate 'em like oranges, I swear to God) in her left hand.

  “Oh.”

  I'd probably better leave. I had recently discovered that Detective Nick Berry, who was in love with my best friend, hated me. And not “hate” like “I hate boogers.” Hated me like plague. Hated me like famine. The fact that I deserved it didn't make things any easier. “You guys have a date?”

  “No,” she said cryptically, which made me want to strangle her. When Jess didn't want to cough up, you could stick a gun in her ear, and she'd laugh at you. Must be from growing up rich. Sinclair was the same way. Stick a gun in my ear, and I'd talk until your pants fell down.

  Then: “How's your grandpa?”

  “Still worried that your blackness will infect me.”

  “That's the plan. First you, then all the other blondes, and then on to brunettes and redheads. Once we have the womenfolk, all the babies will come out black, too. We all voted on the plan at the last Black Conspirators meeting.” Ignoring Marc's choking, she added, “Bet Sinclair had a good laugh.”

  “To put it mildly. He was all soft and nostalgic at first, talking about how it was nice to have live in-​laws, but my grandpa wiped the smile off his face soon enough. But never mind that. What's Nick doing here?”

  “Meh,” the Cryptic One replied.

  “He's a carpenter by night? Not that we need one anymore; that gang you hired did a pretty good job.” And they did. Except for the smell of sawned wood and fresh paint, you'd think nothing had happened.

  “Yeah, thanks, Jessica. What do we owe you?” Now that I was married to a rich guy, I could say something like that and not have Jessica burst into derisive laughter. But as usual she just waved a hand: don't worry about it. I was so used to her money I hardly noticed it was there. Shit, she hardly knew it was there. But she was never obnoxious about it, seeing it as something permanent and unchangeable, like her skin color and taste in music.