“It’s fine,” said Tina. The rest had come in and were glaring en masse at Laura, who should have been less irritated and more afraid. “Understandable.”
“I can’t wait until someone catches you flinching at the Lord’s name on camera,” Laura said.
“You underestimate our resources,” was Sinclair’s cool reply. “And you underestimate our queen, as ever.” In small rooms he always seemed taller than he was, and if Laura wasn’t exactly cowering (she got points for that, if nothing else), she was definitely in his shadow. In all ways. “You think you’re the only person in ten thousand years to try to expose us? This is nothing new. You’re nothing new. There’s not one original thing about you, not a unique thought in your head. Everything about you is a cliché, including this childish resentment you have for your older sister. I’d pity you, Laura, if you warranted it.”
Whoa.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
And just like that, my reverie was over—finally—and I was back in the present in the Peach Parlor. (Hmm, alliteration.) Unfortunately, that meant I now had to talk to this poor bastard. “Hi, Mr. Tinsman. How—” I stopped. I knew exactly how he’d been. Numb and miserable.
“Everything’s fine, Ronald,” Laura assured him, completely oblivious to the fact that she was (a) using him, and (b) adding to his pain in the long run. Hey, vampires were being punished, so it’s all good, right? “I was just leaving.”
“No, we were just kicking you out.” She didn’t get to take the credit for her departure. It was our idea!
“I’m going,” she snapped, “and I won’t be back.”
“You’re leaving, and you won’t be allowed back!” Again: the credit was rightfully ours.
“Is he here?”
I stopped my side of the death glower to look over at him. “Who, Mr. Tinsman?”
“The vampire who murdered my daughter.”
Annnnd just like that, I ceased caring about who got the credit. “Mr. Tinsman, he—”
“You protect him, right? It’s your job? As queen.” Tinsman was looking around with a vacant expression, as though Lawrence was behind the peach curtains, or the peach sofa. “He’s under your protection. They all are.”
Oh. So that’s how it was. I’m helping your sister expose you so vampires will have nowhere to hide. Had to give it to him, it was clever. His motives were understandable, and no one with a conscience could doubt his sincerity. As a recovering Miss Congeniality, it was my fate to hope for the regard and affection of people who loathed me.
I turned so I was facing him. Everyone else was sort of frozen in place, caught in the act of leaving. Marc and Tina were probably off to the monitor room, Sinclair wanted to whip up a new batch of Bacon Cookies for Fur and Burr, and I’d love to get back to reading Smoothie Nation (chapter six: “Melon Mania!”). Laura? Who knew? Probably leafletting our bedroom with “Repent, for the End Is Nigh, You Whorish Moron” brochures.
But none of those things were happening. Instead we were all prisoners of the Peach Parlor, trapped by Ronald Tinsman’s grief.
“Mr. Tinsman, I’m the vampire who killed your daughter,” I said. Never had I been more tempted to use my vampire mojo on someone. Not to get myself out of this mess. To make him forget about his pain.
We cannot, beloved.
I know, I know. Can’t help wishing for it. Vamp mojo, I had learned over the years, was a short-term solution at best, and often backfired. Or worse, you pushed a little too hard, and you drove someone insane. How do you make a man forget he’s mourning his entire family without doing serious brain damage?
You leave him the hell alone. Because some things can’t be screwed with, a lesson I wish my sister would just internalize already.
“Not Lawrence. In fact,” I continued, “Lawrence refused to turn your daughter when she asked. Which, I’m sorry to say, drove her to desperate measures.”
“So it was his fault.” His tonelessness was as sad as it was creepy. He was like a mannequin who had learned to walk and talk and nothing else: no expressions, no humanity. “His inaction drove her to seek her killer.”
Well, hell, anything sounded bad when you said it like that. “No, it’s still my fault. But listen . . .” To what? What could I possibly say to this poor guy? There were only two ways I could think of to comfort a grieving parent: tales of vengeance, or assurance that their child was out of harm’s way. Yes! “You don’t have to worry about her. Cindy’s totally—”
Elizabeth, don’t!
“—fine where she is.”
I caught on half a second too late. I didn’t dare look at Sinclair. At any of them.
Tinsman blinked slowly, like an owl. I could actually see him processing. “She’s totally what? What did you say?”
“Shit,” Marc said under his breath.
“Agreed,” Tina said under hers.
“Totally, um, doing well. In Hell. Where I recently saw her.” How do I get myself into these messes? Pure natural talent: I don’t even have to practice.
“She’s in Hell?” he whispered, and I’d never heard so much anguish crammed into three words. This was—and I didn’t think such a thing was possible—worse than the mannequin.
Okay, salvage it. Somehow. My big, flapping, unhinged, loose-lipped, babbling mouth got me into this; time for it to get me out.
“Yeah, she is, but it’s not like it sounds. She’s got a buddy—we have a system down there now. Not down there because it’s not under us. She’s even helped her friend get paroled. And she’s—” Making friends, I’d been about to say. Lawrence is sticking by her and looking out for her. She’s not alone, she’s with someone she loves, and she’s not being tortured. And she did so great with Jennifer, I’m going to give her more responsibility. Except maybe the thought of her spending eternity with Lawrence, and doing chores for the vampire queen, wouldn’t make Tinsman feel better.
He gulped so hard we heard it. “My daughter went to Hell?”
Marc was making slashing motions across his throat. Tina had simply closed her eyes and was enduring. But I was in it now. Nothing to do but finish.
“The thing is—”
“My daughter went to Hell,” he said again, and for some reason hearing it the second time was worse.
“Yes, but Hell’s a lot like L.A. You only hear awful things about it, and when you get there, parts of it are awful, but some parts are pretty okay. Nice, even.”
“You sent. My daughter. To Hell.”
“No! That’s just—”
Elizabeth, for the love of God. Just stop.
“—where she ended up,” I finished, and it would be so great if this was a nightmare. A nightmare would be good. Let me look down and realize I’m naked and haven’t studied for the history test.
I looked down. Fully clothed. Nuts.
“C’mon, Ronald.” Laura was back from wherever and now she sort of steered Tinsman toward our front door. “Let’s go. You’ve done your part, and they’ll all pay for what they’ve done.”
Well, at least she doesn’t sound like a Bond villain knockoff.
“And you, Laura?” Sinclair asked gently. “When will you pay for your sins?”
She snorted, gave Tinsman a gentle shove out the front door, and said, “You almost sound like you know what you’re talking about. By the way, I let your puppies out of the mudroom. Hope they haven’t gotten into any mischief.”
Ack! Fur and Burr, unsupervised, having the run of the mansion while we were all stuck in the Peach Parlor with Ronald Tinsman as he tried to process the fact that his daughter was in Hell! Did I leave my bedroom door open? Was my closet door open?
I ran, and behind me I could hear Marc bellowing, “And stay out, you passive-aggressive cow!”
My sentiments exactly.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
<
br /> They didn’t speak until they were in the car, ignoring the reporters who asked questions and wouldn’t take “No comment” for an answer. Why were they bugging her? The story they wanted was squatting in that mansion. That’s why Laura hadn’t told the world who she was when she exposed the queen of the vampires. Her status—the Antichrist who’d been demoted—would have just confused the issue.
The media, who were supposed to be the weapon Laura wielded to take down her idiotic sinful vampire whore half sister, weren’t the avenging sword she’d envisioned. They were more like a kid’s toy lightsaber. Flashy and cool in the box, not worth much when you had to actually work with it.
When she’d thought this up and discussed it with her father, he’d kindly written her a sizable check to help with expenses. Waging a one-woman campaign against vampires was surprisingly pricey, and she didn’t have an indulgent rich husband.
They assumed Betsy would deny-deny-deny, be exposed, be humiliated, slink out of town, or, even better, be run out of town. And/or play dumb, something she more or less had a doctorate in. She hadn’t expected Betsy to own the truth. She’d never dreamed the queen of the vampires would go on camera and tell the world: “Yeah, we’re real. So?”
Laura had waited for the uproar.
There was no uproar.
Oh, sure, things had “gone viral” and “blown up.” But those were just words; they didn’t mean change, or progress, or a revolution. There were fewer and fewer reporters at the mansion every week, because social media stories had the shelf life of dairy products. The emerging narrative seemed to be, “Yeah, vampires are real, that was last month. What’s going on now?” Plenty, she’d wanted to scream. Werewolves, too! Ghosts! Hell! Heaven!
Listen to me!
Betsy’s world hadn’t been torn asunder. Her world had barely wobbled. She hadn’t been run out of town; she was making new friends. There hadn’t been a vampire revolt; the vamps were pissed, some of them, but most were taking a wait-and-see attitude. She was too strong to challenge openly just now. Because of her friends.
So no vampire revolt. There hadn’t been any kind of revolt. Laura had showed the world exactly what Betsy Taylor was and the world kept spinning.
Unacceptable.
But her followers had sources. An assembly of vampires was coming to town. The rumor was there would be an election, but animals didn’t hold elections; the idea was laughable. No, they were coming to oust Betsy and her disgusting husband. They certainly weren’t coming in from all over to say, “Hey, great work not heading any of this off and not standing up for us!”
And since they were no better than bloodsucking beasts, it would be bloody and violent and would take place in their seat of power, the beautiful mansion Betsy lived in and didn’t appreciate. And the media would have a front-row seat.
Then she could get on with things. With no Betsy and Sinclair, dead or dethroned (and on nights like tonight, Laura didn’t care which), with vampires exposed as the animals they were, Laura and her followers could get back to proving to the world that Hell was real, and God was real, and vampires were real . . . so who did good people expect to save them but the Lord? Crosses and holy water were their weapons, even better than the hellfire weapons Betsy had taken from her.
(She had no right!)
(But it’s what you wanted . . . You were scared of turning into—)
(SHE HAD NO RIGHT!)
Now here was poor Ronald, a reporter who looked bland and boring but wasn’t, a man in mourning who had been a combat engineer. A sapper, he’d said, like his father, who had accidentally blown himself up in Vietnam. “That’s sweet,” had been all Laura managed say to that heartwarming family tale.
Poor Ronald had taken a clock and something he called mechanical fusing and magnesium powder and a few other odds and ends and built a cunning incendiary device. Laura had gone into the mansion under the guise of rescuing her father
(not a guise—she would have killed him or the wolves would have, but I saved him!)
(he left town, gone forever, Betsy’s fault again)
and planted the bomb in the one room where it wouldn’t be found, while Ronald kept the vampires busy in the parlor. Talk about Cindy, she’d advised him. They’ll all feel too guilty to walk out on you. I just need you to keep everyone in the room for a couple of minutes.
“Oh, excellent idea! Using their empathy and compassion to trick them,” a random follower had added, and she’d frowned and banished him from her sight. Empathy? Compassion? If those were the qualities he thought vampires evinced, she couldn’t have such a fool on her side, someone so easily tricked.
That’s what Betsy did. She kept the monster tucked behind the sweet, silly face she showed the world. It fooled almost everyone. Never Laura, though, not even from the first.
If all else failed, the mansion would burn, and the world would watch.
It was only a last resort.
Really.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
“When did it all go wrong for us, Sinclair?” I asked on my knees while scrubbing puppy pee out of the carpet.
“There’s no denying it has been a stressful month.”
“When I died? When I died again? When I didn’t set Laura’s hair on fire the day we met? If I can pinpoint the exact moment things went to shit, I can . . .”
“Yes?”
“Go back in time and make everything so much worse.” I sighed and wrung out the sponge over the bucket. If you had to sponge up pee, puppy pee wasn’t the worst. Their tiny bladders filled (and, alas, emptied) so quickly, their urine barely had any color or odor. “The good news is, Fur and Burr seem really healthy. And really hydrated. The bad news is, everything else. And why am I down here scrubbing while you watch?”
“You know why.”
It was true. But I was in a stubborn, pissy mood. “Enlighten me.”
“When you wish to punish yourself, you give away shoes to the disadvantaged or take on your least favorite household chores.”
That was also true.
“If I were to get down on the floor with you, it would accomplish nothing.”
“Except to get pee out of the carpet faster.”
“Yes, except for that.”
“Dick.” But there was no heat in it. He was right, the bum. I had earned this punishment by pee. The only thing for it was to scrub.
Technically I didn’t have to do a thing. We could hire a platoon of housekeepers; we could hire a dozen people whose only job was pee patrol. And now and again we did get a housekeeper in here, sometimes human, sometimes a random vampire. But we all liked our privacy, and with so many people living here, and most of us neat by nature (or at least not slobs by nature), the workload wasn’t out of hand. So we divvied up the chores based on individual specialty or preference.
Sinclair loved making homemade dog treats for the li’l monsters, so he was in charge of making sure they had sufficient food and water, kept their mudroom lair as clean as possible under the circumstances, walked them, and took them to the vet for checkups and shots. Oh man, the day the tech slipped with the needle
(“Sorry, I’m new at this.”)
and Burr let out a pained howl . . . let’s just say it was fortunate I’d happened to come along that time. I had to pry Sinclair’s fingers from around the guy’s neck, then use vamp mojo to make the terrified tech forget the whole thing. And that was after I tackled Sinclair to the ground.
Marc was in charge of fixing things: loose hinges, sticky drawers, the occasional boo-boo, maintaining the cars (“If I learn how to do oil changes, I can save us over a thousand—” “Don’t care.”). He needed to keep his zombie brain active or he’d start to deteriorate. As usual, the movies had the concept right (“Braaaaaains!”) but the details all wrong. Marc needed brains, all right: his own. He no longer had to sleep,
so he had to fill that time with thinking and learning and doing. Recently he was a car guy. He’d mastered oil changes and was moving on to . . . I dunno, spark plugs or something.
Tina was in charge of— Actually, I had no idea. At all. I should probably spend a week just following her around: take your vampire queen to work day.
Me? I was in charge of ice and groceries, and the care and maintenance of my shoe collection, which, believe me, was close to being a full-time job.
Also, now and again I got the urge to organize and clean. (What? Just because I didn’t like cleaning didn’t mean I didn’t know how to do it.) Sometimes, and I don’t know why this is, sometimes manual labor just made me feel better.
Which is why I was on my knees on pee patrol.
“I hesitate to add to your burdens—”
“Oh God, what? What?”
“—but our out-of-town guest is nigh. She advises via a rather curt e-mail that she’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Of course she does.” Curt e-mail. Yep. Sounded about right.
“It will be interesting.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely the word. I wasn’t thinking of any other word but interesting.” I scrubbed harder, a beleaguered vampire Cinderella.
“And an assembly of vampires would like a formal meeting with us.”
“Assembly?” That sounded official.
“Yes, as you’ll recall”—I loved when he assumed I remem-bered stuff—“an assembly of vampires consists of several local citizens and out-of-state representatives, usually coming together to discuss matters of policy. Or policy changes.” Gosh, had there been some sort of policy change? About vampires? Jeepers, I had no idea. “There will be about twenty, and they’ll represent anywhere from two hundred to two thousand vampires.”
“So they’re like city councilmen.”
“If that enables you to grasp the concept. Yes.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Asshat. So what you’re saying is a whole bunch of pissed-off vampires want to come over and yell at us.”