“The reason I’m here—” he began.
“I know, I appreciate the support.”
“Uh. Yeah, that. I’m definitely all about the support. And also, you can find anyone in Hell, right?”
“If I know their name.” One of the many dumb arbitrary rules. I careened from godlike powers (teleporting in and out when I liked) to rodeo clown (I tried to make it rain marshmallows, and it rained maple syrup instead and, oh my God, the screams). The only person who would have been any real help was banished after I beat the ever-lovin’ crap out of her. “Who’d you have in mind?”
“David Bowie.”
“The guy who invented hunting knives?”
Marc’s mouth popped open. “Okay, even for you, that—”
“Mmph.”
“Oh, you bitch, don’t tease.”
“Can’t help it.” I giggled. “Your face! Like you wanted to hug me, then hit me. Or hit me, then hug me.”
“Those two options are always on the table. So: is he here?”
“I want David Bowie.” I should start keeping a list: “Demands I Never Thought I’d Make in Hell.”
We waited.
Nothing.
“Okay, great. Great! I think that’s great.” His smile faded. “Okay, I’m now a little bummed I won’t get to meet him, but it is good knowing he’s not burning in a lake of fire somewhere. Thanks for checking.”
“Sure. Should have thought of it myself. But it’s just one more arbitrary rule that makes no sense around here.”
He sighed at the ceiling. “Oh, here we go.”
“I mean—take Antonia, for example.”
Marc made a noise like he was chomping on lemon rind. “Uggghhhyecchhh, why?”
“Not my stepmother. The other Antonia, the werewolf.”
“I stand by my question.”
“Well, that’s fair.” I slumped back in my chair—the only chair in Hell that was comfortable, because why the Hell should I have to suffer along with everyone else? “So, she died saving me. Took bullets for me.”
“Yep. It was gross. Her brains were everywhere.”
“You’re a doctor; you can’t use words like gross to describe medical conditions.”
“She presented with multiple GSWs resulting in penetrating brain injuries including but not limited to brain parenchyma seepage from her skull and multiple intracranial fragments—”
“Never mind, stick with gross. Anyway, we escorted her body to Massachusetts and they had a funeral and buried her.”
Marc plopped down in the chair opposite my desk, winced, tried to get comfortable, gave up. “Yeah, just because I didn’t go to the Cape with you guys doesn’t mean you didn’t tell me all about it when you got home. I know all this.”
“Shut up, this is my process.” I swiveled in my chair and swung my legs up on my desk, and reminded myself that it would be sandal season soon enough. See ya next winter, red leather midheel Gucci loafers. Your time is almost up. “So fast-forward a few months, I’m in Hell by accident.” Ah, the golden days when I thought just visiting Hell was the worst thing to happen to me. “And there she is: Antonia. And what with one thing and another, I bring her back to the real world. And so she’s alive again.”
“Right. Which is troubling you.”
“Yes.”
“Because it’s weird.”
“So very, very weird. I mean, she’s alive now. She’s got a body, a physical body, and she can die again. And if we went to Massachusetts and bought shovels and found her grave and dug it up—”
“If you’re angling for company during this ghastly-sounding field trip, I’m busy. For years and years.”
“—her dead body would be in there! So what the fuck?”
“It’s confusing.”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t make much sense from any scientific standpoint you’d care to name.”
“Right.” I knew talking to a scientist about this was the right move. Hooray, physicians!*
Marc leaned forward. “Want to know why?”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t science.”
“Argh!” I kicked out, frustrated, and there was a quick paper blizzard.
“You just booted over a ton of manila folders,” Marc observed. “Do you even know what they’re all for?”
“Of course not.” Yes, Hell had manila folders. And not a single one of them was ever the right size for whatever project required the use of manila folders. Diabolical, really. “I’m so sick of that nonanswer.”
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
“And I’m not too fond of that one, either.”
“Arthur C. Clarke said that.”
“I know,” I lied. Was he the guy who wrote about the Knights of the Round Table?
Marc’s smirk told me he knew I was talking out of my butt. “It’s from Profiles of the Future. And it means exactly what you’d think it means: no matter how smart you are, some things are so far beyond our grasp we’ll never understand them.” This from a guy who held two jobs all through undergrad and medical school, never missed a party, usually showed up only on test days, and still graduated with a GPA of 3.6. Sure, Marc. Tell me about the things that are beyond your grasp. I guarantee I’ve got more of them. “If you were to go back in time with a flashlight—”
“Oooh, oooh, I know this one! I’ve done that!”*
“—and showed it to a bunch of people at, say, the court of Henry VIII, and tried to explain batteries, they wouldn’t get it. Does that make them stupid, or you a genius?”
“No,” I said slowly. “And no.” Unfortunately.
“I think it’s like that with paranormal science.”
“That’s not a thing.” Or at least it shouldn’t be.
“Of course it’s a thing; you come face-to-face with it pretty much every day. I mean, there are actual, scientific reasons why the Wyndhams change form once a month. It should be impossible, right? Well, for hundreds of thousands, it’s not. It’s obviously a perfectly normal function of their biology . . . that sounds impossible to anyone who isn’t a werewolf. Can we explain it? Nope. Is it magic? Nope.”
“So . . . what?” I swung my legs down so both feet were on the floor and swiveled in my chair. It was hard to sit still and have this conversation at the same time. I wanted to pace. And throw things. And kick the things I threw. Then pace more. “Keep blindly plunging ahead and hope for the best?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s your family motto.”
I laughed. “No, that’s not it. Would you believe it’s ‘Salvation from the Cross’?”
“Wow.” His green eyes went wide. “Whatever you do, don’t read anything into that, O Chosen One of the Vampyrs.”
“Ugh, don’t pronounce it like that. There’s no y in vampires.”
“Mmm.” I got a long stare, and then he said, “You’re nervous about sending Jennifer back today.”
“Guilty.” Cindy had fulfilled her sworn buddy duties and talked Jennifer Palmer into agreeing to go back to the real world and make amends. Or just wore her out with every cheer she could think of until Jennifer begged her to stop. Either way: today was the day!
“You’re doing the right thing,” he added.
“You hope.”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But it’s worth trying. Hell’s still in the business of punishing sinners. We’ve just also instituted a parole program.”
“A mere trifle of a change!” I cried in a plummy British accent.
“Raw-ther. Hardly noticeable, dah-ling.”
“And also, worth doing just because the original Satan hated the idea so much.”*
“Like you needed another excuse?” He squirmed in his seat. “Dammit! Change thi
s seat into something that doesn’t make my lower back feel like it’s on fire!”
I pointed. Smirked. “Be more comfortable.” And the resulting bright purple beanbag chair, a good five feet in diameter, almost swallowed him on the spot.
“Jesus! I—c’mon, help me—don’t just sit there and laugh—oof!—help me out of this thing! Oh, you awful bitch, I hate you so much right now!”
Ever laugh so hard your face hurts for five minutes afterward? Yep.
“Fine, fine, you big baby.” I gestured and the beanbag chair sort of barfed Marc out. He wasn’t free, exactly, but he wasn’t being swallowed so much. The thrashing went on, though. “Let’s get it over with. I want Jennifer Palmer.”
“—don’t even know how I’d do it.” Jennifer cut herself off, glanced around the office, gave us both a tentative smile. “Hi, uh, Betsy. Hi, Marc. Are you okay?”
“Hi, Jennifer.”
“I’m very fucking far from okay.” Marc managed to wrench himself free, then offered his hand to Jennifer. She blinked at it, then tentatively shook it. “Never tell anyone what just happened here. And good luck. Hopefully we’ll never meet again.”
“Thanks.”
I looked up at her. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Going anyway?”
“Yeah.”
I was on my feet by then, too. “Why?”
“Well.” She spoke slowly, clearly choosing her words with care, a trick I should get around to mastering. “If it’s a test of my obedience, to show I can obey. If it’s a trick, to show I’m a good sport. If it’s real, I owe them. The ones I left holding the bag.”
“Good enough. C’mere, give me your hand.” She tentatively stepped forward, and I took her small hand, which she offered with all the enthusiasm she’d offer a grizzly. “We’re gonna take a trip. And hopefully, never meet again.”
She licked her lips. “Okay. But if I screw this up, if I can’t make it right, please remember that I didn’t fight you. That I was willing to go. For when you see me again, and have to figure out my new punishment.”
“That’s the spirit.” And away we went.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
“I’m not complaining—”
“Every time you say that, it’s a lie,” Marc said. “Every. Time.”
“—but what’s happening?”
It was two o’clock in the morning and for some reason, we were in our basement. The creepy, gigantic, horrible, right-out-of-every-horror-movie-ever basement. It wasn’t so much the hour as the fact that, again: basement. I’d been living here for years and could count on both hands how often I’d been down here. And frankly, I was annoyed I needed both.
Sinclair had strolled to the far end while Tina, Marc, and I tripped along in his wake. His dark suit was impeccable and, even more annoying, didn’t look out of place. Sinclair could wear a suit anywhere. Anywhere. Sometimes I forgot he started out as a farm boy who never wore shoes once the snow was gone for the year.
“The Wyndhams have requested a follow-up, Elizabeth.”
“Basement.”
“And then, in what I cannot imagine is a coincidence—”
“Basement?”
“The sensors tripped.”
“But why are we in the basement?”
“The ones at the dock.”
“So maybe we should be at the dock? And not the basement? Also, what dock? The biggest river in the universe is, what? Two miles from here? That same river comes with a zillion docks.”
“The Mississippi isn’t even the biggest river on this planet.”
“It’s still a bigass river, Marc! Why aren’t we out freezing our asses on it, instead of freezing our asses down here?” A measure of my consuming basement hatred: I’d rather be on the Mississippi River in early spring in total darkness for who knew how long, doing who knew what, than be in our basement.
DARLING.
“Ow!” I rubbed my temple. Sinclair’s exasperated thought had ripped through my brain like a fishhook.
“And obviously,” he continued out loud, “the Wyndhams are coming through the tunnel, the entrance and exit of which, you’ll recall, is in our basement.”
“None of that sounds right.”
The basement. The tunnel. Because there weren’t enough clichés in life, ours was a basement the psycho from Silence of the Lambs would envy and it came with a secret tunnel leading to a moonlit dock on the river. Because of course it did.
We’d had to use it only once, thank God, because at the time we were running to keep ahead of the angry vampires on their way to kill me.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
ELIZABETH!
“What?”
“Stop doing exposition in your head,” Sinclair ordered out loud.
“I wasn’t!” When Marc snickered and Tina bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh, I corrected myself. “Well, maybe a little. Mostly I was reminding myself why I hate our basement.”
“You hate our basement?” Marc asked, wide-eyed. “Really? Gosh, I had no idea. I don’t think you ever mentioned it.”
“Marc.”
“Not once.”
“Marc.”
“Not even one time.”
“Fine, I get it, I’ll try to bitch less about the basement, okay?” I snapped. “I can’t help hating it down here.”
“Given the many times it has saved our lives, that is idiotic,” my husband snapped back. Touch-y. I decided to let it go. Stressful week for everyone, and marriage to me isn’t all sunshine all the time. Marriage to me was, in fact, occasionally typhoonesque, with a side order of shrill. Besides, I’d much rather passively-aggressively punish him for the next several days. Those were the ways of my love.
“My king, I am sure the Wyndhams won’t—”
“Hush.”
Tina hushed. Marc gave her a ‘you gonna just let that one go?’ look and she shrugged. I, in a moment of rare wisdom (or laziness), decided to keep my mouth shut.
He had his head down and every line in his body was tense as he listened. “They’re coming,” he said quietly. “Four at l— No. Five. That’s . . . odd.”
“How’d they even know about this tunnel?” I whispered. Then, duh, it hit me. “Dumb question. Antonia the Werewolf would have told him.” She’d lived with us for a bit.* And I couldn’t even get mad at her for it. Her link to Michael was through blood and family; of course she would tell him everything. I was just her landlord for a few months. A landlord who didn’t charge rent. A landlord plagued with werewolf freeloaders. A landlord with the best shoe collection you’ve ever seen. “Though why they’d want to . . .” I stopped myself.
Duh, again. They didn’t want to. They didn’t want to drive through the media and knock on our front door in front of God and everybody. They wanted to come to us in a way where no one would see them. And maybe in a way they hoped we wouldn’t see them, because the sensors had gone up after Antonia had been killed. She couldn’t have told Michael about them, so maybe the werewolves didn’t know they’d activated them.
That didn’t bode well.
“At least they tripped ’em so we got a little warning,” Marc murmured.
“Well, that and the phone call.” It had been a weird call, though. Lara, of all people. I’m not one to tell people how to raise their werewolf cubs, but what’s a kid doing up at that hour? After a three-hour flight halfway across the country? Tsk, tsk. You’d never catch BabyJon running around in the dead of night calling vampires and sneaking into tunnels. He’d have to get a lot better at walking first. And maybe grow more teeth. And learn how to use a potty.
And of course we had sensors, and cameras, and bugs tripped by movement, and more cameras. The best money could buy, in fact, so sleek and high-tech I forgot about them most of the time, and you’d bet
ter believe they were tough to spot. They’d been in place before my sister blabbed about vampires but after we started putting our address in the vampire newsletter.
Sure, Sinclair and I had a basic “You got a beef? Come and tell us to our faces, jerkweeds” philosophy, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t take precautions. There were sensors all over, and one of the parlors had recently been converted to a security room; it was positively stuffed with monitors. Tina and Marc spent a weird amount of time in there. I suspected strong voyeuristic streaks in both of them, the pervs.
We could all hear the footsteps approaching—well, maybe not Marc. Zombies didn’t have enhanced senses. He was just really good at healing from horrific injuries now. He’d broken his leg hauling Will Mason’s narrow ass out of the path of a truck a few weeks ago, and he was fine by the weekend. It’s why Will had such a crush, I think. Marc was gorgeous and smart and funny and loyal and brave and he was now an unkillable paranormal doctor who hung out with vampires and werewolves and served on a committee in Hell. Who wouldn’t have a crush? Poor Will: he never had a chance. Put it this way: I saw someone getting hurt in all this, and it wasn’t Marc.
But Marc had tipped his head, listening, so we could all hear the steps now, and murmured voices, one high, two low. There was a click, and then the wall that looked like unmovable cement slid back. Not like the movies, either, all rumbly and slow. The cement wall that wasn’t slid back without a sound, in just a couple of seconds.
So what now? A pissed-off werewolf? A vampire who felt betrayed? Both? Ugh, I really didn’t want the werewolves teaming up with all the vampires who were super pissed at me right now. That could get messy. And inconvenient. And it would definitely cut into my Hell time. So, it wasn’t all bad.
Or worse: an enterprising reporter. Yeah, don’t worry, media, the paranormals lurking in the basement definitely aren’t up to anything sinister. Oh, this? This is our secret tunnel leading to the river, which we use in darkest night— What, you don’t have one?
Someone stumbled through the passage like they’d been given a shove from behind, and I caught the scent for the first time and nearly shrieked.