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  “I'm going to take a shower,” he sighed, and trudged into the bathroom.

  “Thanks for nothing,” I told my brother, who stuck his tongue out.

  Chapter 9

  “Aw,” Laura the Devil's Daughter was saying, chucking BabyJon under the chin. “Ooo's a wittle it-​tie cutie-​pie? Is it ooo? Is it?”

  “Stop that,” Sinclair ordered from his breakfast nook bar stool, “or I will kill you right now.”

  Laura ignored him. “It is ooo! So key-​yute!” She shifted him to her left hip and looked at me. “I ran into Mrs. Taylor on the way in. She invited me to a fund-​raiser she's chairing.”

  “She did?” She didn't inviteme . Not that I would have gone. But still. She wasn't dumping BabyJon on Laura every two days, but who got the invite? Hmmm? That's right, the devil's daughter. “I don't know why she even bothered to stop by. I mean, she had him at her house for, what? Six hours?”

  “And now,” Tina said, “he's baaaaaack.” She snickered at Sinclair, who ignored her.

  “Laura, it is quite remarkable.” It was the next evening, and he was paging through theWall Street Journal . “You appear to have the capacity to melt the iciest, most unfeeling exteriors.”

  “You shouldn't be so hard on yourself,” I teased.

  “I was referring to Mrs. Taylor.”

  “Did you work things out with Sophie?” Laura hastily interjected. She slung BabyJon over a shoulder and patted him. The smell of burped-​up baby formula mingled with the aroma of fresh-​squeezed orange juice—Laura's favorite drink.

  “Uh, no. No word from Sophie.”

  “I'm sure it's just a matter of time,” she said unhelpfully.

  “Right. Actually, it's super tricky because the guy she's so pissed at, he's a big European mucky-​muck and super-​charming, too. I mean, he's sorry. He says he'll apologize. What am I supposed to be, be alloff with his head !”

  “Technically, you're allowed,” Tina pointed out.

  “Well, the new boss isnot the same as the old boss. Which is my whole new, you know. What's the word?”

  “Platform,” Sinclair said.

  “Right. Sympathetic understanding, in. Beheadings, out.”

  “I'm glad it's your problem and not mine,” my sister said cheerfully, because she'd taken Unhelpful Pills this week.

  “Actually, Laura, I am glad you stopped by,” Sinclair said, glancing at his watch. “We need to have an important, private meeting among the household. I was hoping you could take the infant for an hour or so.”

  “His name's BabyJon,” I said, “not 'the infant.' And what are you talking about? What meeting?”

  I heard a car door slam outside and, annoyingly, Tina and Sinclair looked completely unsurprised.

  “Of course,” Laura was saying. Anybody else so unceremoniously getting the boot would be a little offended, but you had to do a lot worse than that to Laura to irk her. “Glad to help out.” She scooped up the diaper bag and left with BabyJon, just as Jessica walked into the kitchen, still in her coat and rubber boots.

  “Good evening,” Sinclair said.

  “Hey,” I said, as Jessica dropped her purse on the table and went immediately to the teakettle on the stove.

  “Hey,” she replied.

  “Jessica, we're glad you're here.” Tina glanced at me, then continued. “We've been wanting to talk to you. For some time.”

  We had? Right. We had . I'd been meaning to get her alone and ask why she'd been so bitchy lately. Looked like Tina and Sinclair had noticed, too.

  “Super,” she replied with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

  “Dear, is there anything you want to tell us?” Sinclair asked, folding his paper and then folding his hands in front of him.

  “Your rent's due?” she suggested, adding a hefty dollop of cream to her tea.

  “The check is on your desk. Something else.”

  “What is this,” she joked, “an intervention?”

  I didn't knowwhat it was. But I could see the white Walgreens prescription bag peeking out of her purse. All of a sudden, I didn't want to be in this meeting.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Sinclair replied, “yes.”

  “Jess, you've been a little, uh, touchy lately.” I coughed. “Is anything up?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps,” Sinclair said gently, “we can tell you.”

  She sat. Shrugged out of her coat. Looked at him. For the first time, I noticed the dark circles under her eyes. She hadn't been sleeping well.

  What else hadn't I noticed?

  “Why don't you?” she replied. “Tell me, I mean.”

  “As you wish. At first, the change in your scent appeared to be the product of stress. But after consulting with each other, Tina and I quickly recalled the last time we sensed this—condition—in a living human.”

  “You quickly recalled?” Jessica teased, except she didn't sound much like she was teasing. “Or did you slowly recall?”

  He ignored her and continued. “It was shortly after we arrived upon the West Coast, and found temporary shelter in the basement of a nursing home. There was a woman there who suffered for a long time—”

  “Can we get to the point?” I hissed, squashing the urge to pull all the hair out of my head. There was no way this story was going to end well.

  Jessica shifted on her bar stool and looked at me. I could tell she really, really wanted to say it. But she couldn't.

  Sinclair let his hand slide across the marble counter and rest on top of hers. “You have myeloma.”

  “What?” I said.

  Jessica didn't take her eyes off me. “Blood cancer.”

  “What?” I screamed.

  Chapter 10

  “I knew you'd be like this,” Jessica insisted.

  “Oh my God. Oh my God!” I was lying on the cool kitchen tiles, a cold cloth on my forehead. “I can't believe this!”

  “Darling,” Sinclair said, kneeling beside me, “you are my soul and my life, but this is not even remotely about you.”

  “How can yousay that?” I cried. “My best friend isdying —”

  “I'm not dying,” Jessica said sharply. Far above me, perched upon her bar stool, she looked more than ever like an impatient Egyptian goddess. “I knew it, Iknew it. This is how you get. This is why I didn't say anything.”

  “How could you keep this from me?” I screeched upward. “I toldyou whenI died.”

  “I'm not dying,” she said again, louder. “I've been to seven different specialists and they're all pretty optimistic.”

  “Seven? Specialists?” I rolled back and forth on the tile and groaned. “They all knew before I did? I'm like,eighth on your to-​know list?” Tenth, I realized, when you counted Eric and Tina. “This is horrible! What kind of friend can I be? I've been sitting around chatting with Spanish murderers and you've been hauling your buns to cancer doctors?”

  “I wouldn't put it quite like that,” she admitted.

  “How long have you been sick?”

  “I got the diagnosis a month ago.” To Sinclair: “Here we go.”

  “A month ago? Month? As in four weeks, as in thirty days?”

  “Thirty-​one,” Tina pointed out helpfully.

  I ignored her. “You didn't think you couldmention it? You had other things on your mind? Why thehell didn't you say anything?” I felt faint, but I was already lying down. That was something. “How could you do this to me?”

  “I'm sorry.” Jessica sniffed. “I guess I was being selfish.”

  “You're goddamned fucking right you were!”

  “Elizabeth.”

  I turned on them like a rabid hyena. “You guysknew ? Youknew and you didn'tsay anything?”

  Jessica looked thoughtful. “You two haven't been spying on me or anything, have you?”

  “No, of course not,” Tina said. She was patting my hand, kneeling on my other side. Jessica slid off the stool and stood at my feet. Tina looked up at Jess and added, “We didn
't need spies to figure this one out.”

  “Also,” Jessica said, “that'd be a crummy thing to do to your friend.”

  “Yes, yes. As Eric suggested, your scent has been a little anemic lately. There are multiple reasons why this might be, but each reason has its own particular, well, sub-​scent. When Eric and I put our heads together, we matched yours with the woman in that nursing home. She also suffered from myeloma. It's rare to be that close to someone who has had it for so long, but the sub-​scent is distinctive.”

  “And Betsy's the Queen, and you vampires should always tell your Queen everything. So. One way to look at it is thatyou guys should have told me.”

  The corner of Jessica's mouth twisted in a wry smile. “That's right, they're the ones who screwed up, not me. It's all on them.”

  “Nice try,” I yelled from the floor. “You are still in a shitload of trouble, birdbrain. I can't believe this is happening to me!”

  “I know,” she sighed. “What a terrible week you're having.”

  I glared up at her. “When I get off this floor I'm kicking the shit out of you. Then you'llreally need a doctor.”

  She grinned down at me. “Happy birthday.”

  Chapter 11

  The kitchen door swung open before Jessica, Eric, Tina, or I could say another word. “I'm home!” Antonia the werewolf called, Garrett right behind her.

  “Not now, Toni.”

  “How many fucking times I have to tell you? AnTONE-​ee-​uh. Just because your lousy stepmother has the same name doesn't mean I have to change mine.”

  “Notnow .”

  “Oh.” She looked down at me. Garrett did, too. “Jessica finally told you, huh?”

  Eleventh!

  “Duck and cover,” Tina muttered, but I was in no condition to launch myself at our resident psychic werewolf.

  “You saw it in a vision?” Jessica asked.

  “Hell, no. You smell totally bland. What, you guys didn't know?” Toni was looking around at all of us. With her short, Aeon Flux-​like dark hair and big brown eyes, she should have looked more innocent than she sounded. And I didn't know what was up with the old T-​shirt and Daisy Duke shorts (and flip-​flops! In April!) but right now, her grotesque fashion screwup was the least of my problem. “Huh. Guess I should have said something before I left.”

  “Think so?” I snarked from the floor. “As your punishment, you are now and forever known as Toni.”

  “The hell!”

  “Jessica's sick,” Garrett said helpfully. “Also, there's a zombie in the attic.”

  “Shut up. Help me up. Goddammit, I'm kicking some serious ass in a minute.”

  “I'm outta here,” Toni said at once, turning to leave. “Just wanted you to know I'm back from the Cape.”

  “Well,thanks for sharing .” God, she was the most fucking annoying person in the fucking history of fucking people! Ever! Though, to be fair, I may have been feeling overly sensitive at that moment.

  “Come on up to the bedroom and welcome me back,” Toni was saying to Garrett as they left the kitchen.Ugh . I prayed I wouldn't be able to hear them doing it.

  “What are your immediate plans?” Sinclair asked Jessica as he grabbed my elbow and lifted me effortlessly to my feet. Apparently, I was done wallowing.

  “Chemo, probably. We're still figuring out options.”

  “How sick are you?” I asked anxiously.

  “Not sick at all, compared to how I'll feel when they shoot radiation into me,” she said with glum humor. “I'm just tired a lot these days. I actually thought I might be… well…”

  “Pregnant?” Tina suggested quietly.

  Jessica nodded. “Yeah. I'd been tired, and I'd—well, there were other symptoms. And Nick and I—anyway. I was wrong. Definitely not pregnant.”

  “Does Nick know?”

  She looked away. “Nobody knows except you guys.”

  “Oh.” I knew Jess very well, better than anybody (I was pretty sure), and I knew why she hadn't said anything. I didn't like it, but I could figure it out.

  “If you thought you were carrying his child, then perhaps you should tell him you're ill.”

  “I don't want to. I didn't want to tell you guys, remember?”

  “Oh, I remember.” I still had tile marks mashed into my butt, for God's sake.

  “It's like—it's not real if nobody alive knows. Right?” She smiled crookedly, dark eyes filling with tears. “It's not happening to me if the only people who know are dead.”

  I felt like a total toad, watching her cry. “Come on, don't do that.” I hugged her. Had she lost weight? Was she bonier than usual? I was embarrassed that I didn't know. And why hadn'tI smelled anything different? Sure I was still rather new at this, but couldn't I learn stuff like that? Was I that damned selfish? So wrapped up in my own troubles that I didn't care when my best friend caught cancer?

  And hey,could you catch cancer? I didn't know a thing about it. That would change as soon as I could get my ass to a computer. Or my hands on those seven fucking specialists.

  “You're living with the king and queen of the vampires, a werewolf, an actor,and a doctor.”

  “And a Libra,” Tina piped up, a rare joke.

  “Right. We'll help you. We'll fix it.”

  “You're an idiot,” Jessica sobbed in my arms.

  “That's the spirit!”

  “I'm sorry I didn't tell you,” she finally offered.Finally . “It's just all this stuff with Sophie and Liam and Alonzo. And your birthday and your wedding. I didn't want to be the downer, you know?”

  I knew. And that's when I got my idea. My really, ridiculously, atrociously bad idea.

  Chapter 12

  Sinclair and I were walking up Hennepin Avenue. The cops had done a great job lately in cleaning up the neighborhood; but you could still find trouble if you knew where to look. Minneapolis wasn't Cannon Falls, after all. It was still an American city with a nightlife.

  “I know what you're thinking,” he said at last.

  “Prob'ly,” I said, staring at the surprisingly clean gutter. I was profoundly bummed out. Myeloma—technically cancer of the bone marrow, and the blood plasma cells there—was serious. My research had been a total downer.

  It could infect everything, and it carried with it fun symptoms like fatigue, pain, dehydration, constipation, susceptibility to infection, and even—ding, ding, ding!—kidney damage.

  The good news was, Jessica's cancer was slow, which gave her and her doctor—and me—time to figure out options.

  But right now, I could only come up with one.

  “You're thinking of turning her.”

  “I'm still getting over the shock of finding out she's sick. How come you didn't say anything?”

  “It wasn't my secret to tell,” he replied simply.

  “I really hate you sometimes.”

  He didn't say anything.

  “I just—I can't lose her. My best friend! I mean, I always knew, since I'm immortal and she's not, that it was a problem I'd have to face. But notnow . She's only thirty, for God's sake!”

  “Young,” he agreed.

  “I'm not ready to have this happennow . And I don't want her to be sick at all. Maybe—maybe I can fix it.”

  “And maybe you do your friend a disservice,” he said quietly. “Maybe you should let her solve her own problems.”

  “Not knowing what to wear on a date is aproblem , pal. This is a fuckingdisaster .”

  “This week has certainly had its twists and turns.”

  “Oh, boy, don't get me started.” We walked along, headed toward burned-​out streetlights. “How would I even do it?” I asked. “I've never made a vampire before. Hell, I'm trying to get off the whole blood-​drinking thing entirely.”

  “Which is why we're walking down Hennepin at two A.M.,” Sinclair pointed out. “As opposed to being home.”

  To get back at him for not giving me a heads-​up about Jessica'sfucking fatal illness , I'd told him about my zer
o blood diet. He'd taken it pretty well, but I knew why.

  He didn't think I could do it.

  He couldn't do it, which was why we were out prowling in the wee hours.

  The scene when I'd told Sinclair about my new “no blood all the time” slim-​down plan (does OB-​negative running down my chin make me look fat?) had been, like all the dramatic scenes in my life, anticlimactic.

  We'd been necking in the shower and he'd moved in for a bite and I'd avoided him so deftly I nearly went ass over teakettle. He'd had to grab me to keep me from plunging through the shower curtain like Janet Leigh.

  “What in the world… ?”

  “Don't do that.”

  “As you wish.” He'd let go. Then grabbed me again when I slipped again.

  “I think we'd better rinse off before I kill myself.”

  He was standing under the shower, blinking water out of his eyes and staring down at me. “What is the matter, Elizabeth?”

  “Nothing. Nothing! Uh. Nothing.”

  He hummed and looked at the ceiling.

  “We're going to be in the shower until I spill it, aren't you?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  If I'd been alive, I would have taken a deep, steadying breath. Instead, I counted backward from five, but by the time I was down to two, I couldn't wait any longer. Besides, the water was going to get cold any second. “I'm giving up blood drinking for my birthday.”

  “Giving up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “For your birthday.”

  “Yeah.”

  He rubbed his chin and I realized I had never seen Sinclair shave. Did vampires grow beards? I hoped not. Blech.

  “No more victimizing would-​be rapists?” he finally said. I could tell he was hoping that would be the end of it.

  “No more at all. I mean, I'm the queen, right? There's perks, right?”

  “Perks.”

  “Don't say 'perks' like there's a roach crawling around on your gums. Yeah, perks! And I figure, if I'm this all-​powerful kick-​ass queen you and Tina keep babbling about—”