Sinclair, who’d already scooped up our dozing boy, turned to my mother. “He is impervious to paranormal harm.”
“What?”
“Nothing paranormal can hurt—”
“No, I heard what you said, I just— What?” She turned to me. “Since when? I spend more time with him than you two; why wouldn’t you tell me this?”
“When the hell would it have come up? ‘Hey, he’s getting another tooth and by the way, a werewolf tried to bite him and BabyJon thought it was hilarious.’”
My mom stared at BabyJon. “Well, that’s pretty interesting. It must be the link to your father.”
“Let’s leave Dad out of this. And everything else. All the time. Forever.”
Disobeying me yet again, she continued. “He’s had three children—”
“That we know of,” Marc piped up. “What?” In response to my aghast look. “Your dad’s kind of a slut.”
“We’re not going to talk about my dad being a slut, either.”
“—and one of those children was the prophesied vampire queen, one was the Antichrist, and now his youngest can’t be harmed by any means paranormal.” Then: “You still should have told me, and we’re not done discussing this.”
“Of course, Dr. Taylor.”
“I’ll leave, though.”
“As you like, madam.”
“And this explains why almost overnight our boy went from being a pain in your ass to ‘our boy.’”
“You should have seen those other werewolves,” Sinclair said, tenderly patting BabyJon’s back and definitely not bragging. “They were terrified. Of an infant! Think when he’s in his prime.”
“Hmph. See to your guests. We’ll talk later. Jessica, I’ll be glad to stay here with the twins while you pay your respects.”
“Thanks.”
“And I’ll stay with you while you stay here with the twins while Jessica pays her respects,” Will piped up. “If . . . y’know. If you want me to.”
“You don’t have to stay,” Marc pointed out.
“No, no . . . I mean, I want to. I’m not the kind to scuttle off, either. Usually. I’ll, uh, hold my ground. Help you hold your ground, I mean.” He didn’t look like he could hold his own urine, but whatever. But he’d come on the run to warn us. A lot of people would have just kept their heads down and waited for the storm to break.
“It’ll be fine,” I assured him. “We know these guys. They’re probably here to bitch about something, and then they’ll do some posturing, and then we’ll decide everyone’s going to keep being friendly, and then they’ll go back to the Cape and do whatever it is they do when they’re not bugging me. Just give us five minutes with them.”
“Well, you sure sound confident.” Will let out a nervous laugh. “Gotta admit, you guys can be a little unnerving.”
“Well, it’s what we do.”
“It was kind of you to warn us, Mr. Mason.” This from Sinclair, who had nudged the kitchen door with his foot and was now holding it open for us to precede him into the parlor.
“Yeah, well.” A shrug. That bashful smile again. “That’s what I do.”
Adorable!
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
NOT EVEN TWO MINUTES LATER . . .
“Listen up, Windup!”
“That’s Wyndham.”
“Do I go to your mansion and insult you and criticize your process and tell you what to do?” Oh. Wait. That’s actually more or less exactly what I did when we went to Cape Cod. A werewolf had died saving me—Antonia, in fact, the asshat who’d called right after my TV interview—and we’d escorted her body back to Massachusetts.
I got staked. BabyJon scared the shit out of a bunch of werewolves. I figured out how to bring Antonia back to life. Back in Minnesota, Laura led a devil-worshipper-staffed revolt. (Yeah, she’s kind of always been a problem for me, now that I think about it.) Other stuff happened. Then we went home.*
But that was then, dammit, and this was now.
“I know this is overused,” Marc commented, “but that escalated quickly.”
It sure had. Never should have let them into the Peach Parlor. Bad things almost always happen in the Peach Parlor. Starting with the fact that it was called the Peach Parlor. It was hard to take me as an authority figure in there; I was bathed in tones of flattering pastel. I looked terrific, but not especially intimidating.
The first minute was all hey, how are you doing, nice to see you again, are all your cell phones broken because we had no idea you were in town, ha-ha-ha but no big deal, always a pleasure, you guys look great and what the fuck do you mean, I never should have done an interview with Diana Pierce? You don’t even know Diana Pierce! Diana Pierce was a consummate professional and I wasn’t bad, either!
Sinclair was just sitting back and enjoying the show, still giggling to himself at how the werewolves reacted to seeing BabyJon
(“Yeow! What—what is that?”)
in his arms.
Meanwhile, Michael “My shit smells better than yours” Wyndham and I were eyeball to eyeball. Well, eyeball to chin. He was pretty tall. “You told me,” I reminded him, “you said just last month that you thought everything was fine and there were no problems between us.”
“Yes, and then the story went viral, you refused to deny anything, and then you as good as exposed werewolves.”
“None of that is true! Okay, two of those things are true.”
Glaring up at Michael Wyndham was like glaring up at a hawk. He had, I shit you not, golden eyes. Not brown. Not hazel. The color of old gold coins, and those strangely gorgeous peepers brought out the golden glints in his dark brown hair. He was easily a head taller, powerfully built and as fast as he was strong. An alpha in his prime, but as impressive as he was, his wife, Jeannie, was equally intimidating. All the more so because she was human. With naturally curly hair. I mean, come on—who finds cute curly-haired blond women intimidating? She was like a tall Shirley Temple, if Shirley had been terrifying and considered a Beretta M9 an indispensable accessory. (In Jeannie’s defense, that was—literally—a killer accessory.)
Also, I was trying hard not to melt at the sight of the king of the vampires holding BabyJon while answering Lara Wyndham’s many, many, many whispered questions. Lara was next in line to lead the werewolves and was born fearless. She’d sidled up to my husband so she could sniff BabyJon over and pepper Sinclair with questions: “Why’s a baby so intimidating? Is he supposed to smell like that? Are you supposed to not smell like anything? Oh, look, he smiled at me—he likes me!”
“What should I have said?” I asked. We’d all started off the meeting sitting down, but now Michael and I were toe-to-toe while Jeannie and Sinclair sat across from each other, and Tina and Derik sort of prowled the perimeter of the room while Lara’s whispered questions (“But why is everybody scared of your baby? I don’t want to turn my back on him but I can’t figure out why. Ooooh, he needs a diaper change! Yuck!”) went on and on.
“‘Hmm? Oh, werewolves? I’m glad you asked, Diana Pierce, of course they’re real! There’s one living just down the block from my house.’” (This was true, by the way.) “‘And a buttload of them hang out on Cape Cod. I can draw you a map if you want.’”
Michael rubbed the bridge of his nose. I considered the “ugh, here comes the migraine” expression to be the signal of my eventual triumph.
“But I didn’t do any of that, did I? No. I took the high road and reminded her I was there to talk about vampires and that was that.”
He stopped rubbing his nose and looked up. “A more definitive no would have been better.”
“Thanks, Captain Toldja So. That’s very helpful.”
Derik snorted and got a “whose side are you on?” glare from Michael for his trouble. Derik was Michael’s second-in-command; they’d been friends all their l
ives. You hardly ever saw one without the other. They were like Mormons, if Mormons were apex predators.
“So, what, Michael? Huh?” I had to actively restrain the urge to kick him right in the ball of his ankle. I don’t care who you are: that always stings like crazy. “Are you here to critique my interview technique or yell at me or pick a fight or all three or what? What inspired you to hop on a plane and say howdy to the Twin Cities?”
“Yes, Michael,” Sinclair replied in a voice of pure silk. Their gaze met over Lara’s small dark head. Sinclair had let her hold BabyJon. And really, that was Lara right there. BabyJon freaked her out, and instead of being scared, she wanted to spend time with him and figure things out. She was more or less the embodiment of the best qualities of both parents. “What does bring you to my home?”
“My home”? Knock off the caveman crap, I thought to my husband. Don’t even think about undermining me in front of these dickbags.
Check the mortgage paperwork, darling. It is my home.
Oh, very funny.
“What makes you think it’s anything to do with you?” Michael countered.
“Besides the fact that you’re in our house? Right now? Where you came straight from the airport, I’m guessing, since you all still look travel mussed?” And frankly, at least two of them needed to brush their teeth. “I bet if I went outside and checked your rental car, it’d be full of suitcases but no room keys.”
Silence. Derik looked impressed in spite of himself, though he might have been stifling a sneeze. Our mansion was old, and dusty, no matter how often we cleaned. I zeroed in for the kill. (But not really.) “What, you got lost? You just happened to be in the neighborhood? ‘Why, Betsy, I had no idea you were here even though I’ve been here before.’ You meant to go north to Rhode Island but took a right instead? You’re throwing the lamest surprise party ever?”
“Rhode Island is to the south,” Lara—Lara!—pointed out. Geographically shamed by a middle schooler. In the goddamned Peach Parlor.
Michael sighed. “At the risk of alienating you—”
“Too late, bright eyes.”
“—not every werewolf visit revolves around what you’ve been up to.”
Well, that had to be a lie. “Yeah? Why else are you here?”
“To visit with other Pack members.” They all pronounced it like that, so you could hear the capital letter. Ugh. You’d never catch me going on and on about Vampyrs. “I have family scattered all over the Midwest.”
“And you decided the perfect time to visit them was within days of my TV interview? Come on. Do better.”
“I don’t have to ‘do better,’” he snapped. He took a step forward, but I knew this game. You can’t step back from a werewolf. Not even once. “I believe you’re the one who owes me an explanation.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Didn’t you tell me your half sister is causing all this trouble?”
“Yeah, she’s got dad issues, and she decided to cope by trying to get me to help her prove Hell was real so everyone would convert to Christianity, and when I wouldn’t she outed vampires for spite.” Huh. I hadn’t known I could compress the whole mess into one sentence.
“Good God,” Derik said, appalled.
“Right? This is what I’ve been putting up with.”
“No, I mean—why didn’t you destroy her rebellion before it could take root and endanger your people?”
Because I’m not a hairy sociopath? “Look, Laura and my dad are both dead to me, okay? Yes, she’s a pain in my ass, but I’m not about to kill her for it. One way or the other, we’ll straighten this out.” Most likely.
They didn’t have to say anything, but I could feel it: total puzzlement from the werewolves. But—the solution is so simple! Just fight to the death. Problem solved. Yikes. Not for the first time I remembered Jeannie’s warning: werewolves weren’t human; they were an entirely separate species. Expecting them to behave like humans who occasionally turned into wolves was always a mistake.
“Anyway,” I said to break the silence, “Laura and my father are out of my reach now. And it’s our job, mine and Sinclair’s, to deal with the fallout. We’re basically letting the vampire nation be dragged into the twenty-first century. I’ll do my best to keep you guys out of it, like I always have. That’s all I can promise.”
“Your blundering has endangered every one of my Pack members and I expect you to make amends.”
“Reconsider your tone, Michael.”
Whoa. When had Sinclair stood? And crossed the room so he was standing right next to me? Nobody had seen a thing.
“That’s a fair request,” Jeannie said quietly, and hey! How’d she get BabyJon? Oh, right. Because Lara had moved when Sinclair did, and now she was standing next to her dad, staring at my husband. Hopefully Jeannie had taken BabyJon as opposed to Lara pitching him at her like a basketball from half-court. “We’re in their home. Uninvited.”
“Yeah, but in Michael’s defense, Betsy’s really annoying,” Derik drawled. Marc made a really weird sound, and I realized he was trying to turn a laugh into a cough. Tina and Sinclair remained like stones, though. Gorgeous, humorless stones. Lara stood to her dad’s right, small hands curled into claws. Waiting. Whatever he did, she’d back him. She wouldn’t even think about it. She was the scariest, cutest middle schooler in the history of middle schoolers. Well, maybe not the scariest. Madonna was probably pretty intimidating when she was a kid.
“Okay, maybe everybody take a breath,” Marc suggested, which was hilarious coming from a zombie soothing vampires. “Not to be out of line here or anything, Michael, but I think maybe you forgot how unnerving vampires are—you can’t smell them, right? Which makes you nuts?”
“That’s true,” Jeannie replied, amused, “but it’s considered rude to point that out.”
“Well, that’s fair, and I don’t mean to offend, but I think it’s left you short-tempered. And the media zoo has left us short-tempered. Nobody’s having a particularly good week. I think we all need a nap.”
“Not me,” Lara whispered to her father. “I slept on the plane.”
“We’re not too keen on how you smell, either,” Derik Gardner pointed out. “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you?”
“It’s a long story,” Marc hedged.
“And he comes off really dead in it,” I added. So think that over, you hairy chumps. “But he’s fine now.” More than fine, according to Will Mason. Who was probably still cowering in the kitchen with my mom. Jessica, after a quick greeting, hadn’t lingered. She was going to be mega-pissed she’d missed this.
“So how about you guys head on out and find somewhere to sleep and have a good meal and everybody can get some rest and get their heads straight and we can all meet up again tomorrow. Or whenever.”
Michael arched a dark golden eyebrow. “We?”
“If you’re meeting in my home, yes,” Marc replied in a pleasant, even tone. “I’m for Team Betsy. Always have been.”
I made a mental note: get Team Betsy T-shirts made. Like, yesterday. In every color and every size.
“That’s good advice,” Jeannie said. “Don’t you think? Michael?”
He let out a breath. “Yes. It is. I’d like to talk about this later, if—if you can accommodate me.” He almost bit the phrase out; you could see he was practically chewing on the words. I knew what it cost him to stay polite.
“Of course. You’re always welcome here,” I replied, and it was almost the truth. “And it really is nice to see you again, no bullshit. All of you.” To Lara: “What are you, a junior now?”
“No.” She was a vicious werewolf cub, but she loved being mistaken for older like any kid. She smiled and looked down, and I realized with a start she was dropping eye contact for a moment to be courteous, something her grown-ass dad hadn’t been able to do. Have I mentioned I friggin’ l
ove this kid?
“So we’ll see you later?” I asked, and two minutes later they were pulling out of our driveway, heroically resisting the urge to plow over some reporters on the way.
“Okay, well. That wasn’t so bad.” And I was right. Our next meeting was going to be much, much worse. Like, call-an-ambulance-and-then-a-lawyer worse. I’m really glad I didn’t know that then.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Cathie and the Ant were waiting for us in my office in Hell, which was exactly as alarming as it sounded.
“Welcome back!” my stepmother said with a big too-much-lipstick smile, and I thought I’d known fear before? Any fear I’d known in the past faded to mere concern as I watched my stepmother projecting warmth. Bonehomie? Is that the word? She was just spewing bonehomey everywhere.
“Thanks,” I replied, already anticipating the body blow. Something horrible was bound to be coming. Then I real-ized . . .
“So, Marc. How’s your new friend?”
. . . she wasn’t talking to me. Thank you, Jesus. I don’t deserve it, but you did me a solid. Never hesitate to call in that favor. Love, Betsy. (My prayers were mostly like notes between pals. If Jesus came here, we’d hang out. We’d go fishing, after I got him some decent footgear.)
“My new friend?” Marc’s expression didn’t change, though he raised his eyebrows.
“It’s Will, isn’t it?” This from Cathie, whose efforts to squash her natural bitchiness were probably giving her abdominal cramps. “The orphan boy you’re into?”
“He’s in his twenties,” Marc said mildly. “I don’t know that he identifies as an orphan boy.”
“Well, you’re going to reschedule your date, right? You’re not going to let your Hell duties impact your love life. Right? Marc? You deserve a social life.”
“Or you’re a thorough professional and wouldn’t dream of letting your love life impact your Hell duties. Right?”
“Yeah, I’m already sick of this,” was his (wise) reply, and he shooed them away like ill-tempered ducks. In a few seconds we were the only ones in the office.