I forced a calming breath (focus!), and decided to go with the least complicated objection first.
“Never mind where I was or for how long or why I had to be there in the first place; I’m here now, right? And the thing is, about your Great Idea, our word isn’t proof.” I said it as nicely as I could, and not just because showing the world our trials and tribulations had zero appeal. In a future that will never come to pass, I ruled the world. And it was a huuuge downer. What little I’d seen of the other, ancient, grumpy, zombie-raising, Sinclair-killing me had been more than enough. I wouldn’t revisit it. And since I could time travel from Hell, I meant that figuratively and literally. There was no way to prove the good (Heaven a real possibility!) without dredging up the bad (vampires take over the world!). “People don’t know who we are, and they shouldn’t, Laura.”
She ignored this, so the bright-eyed enthusiasm continued unabated. “There are enough of us who know the truth; if we combine forces we can reach millions!”
Sure, but so could Taylor Swift, and any Kardashian. In this day and age, reaching millions wasn’t unheard-of . . . and oh boy, I hoped that wasn’t her point. That if ordinary mortals
(sometimes I miss being an ordinary mortal)
could make their presence known with just a video or a silly trick on YouTube, if the “Leave Britney Alone!” guy and the ice bucket challenge could go global, the Antichrist and the queen of the vampires could, too. “Once we convince the rest of the world, things would change overnight! No more wars; no more murders.”
Oh boy. She was less than a decade younger than me and I felt every day of that decade now. “People not knowing if there’s a God is not what causes murders and wars,” I said carefully, because she was glowing like a zealot turned light bulb. “At least, not all the time. Anymore. General dickishness causes wars. Money causes wars.” I had a flashback to one of my favorite lines from Gone with the Wind: “All wars are in reality money squabbles.” “I promise you, Laura. I promise. There will always be war and murder because there will always be assholes. They are not an endangered species. Even if every single person on the planet converted to Christianity, there’d still be crime.”
She waved away war and murder and crime with a small long-fingered hand. “We can quibble about the details later. Say you’ll help me with this.”
“You mean in addition to being the queen of the vampires—”
“Sinclair is perfectly capable of overseeing the vampire nation.”
“—and running Hell—”
“You’ve made a committee, and even if you hadn’t, Hell will run itself if you leave it alone.”
I— Wow. Okay. Wow.
“What’s the pitch, exactly? Assuming you could prove God’s existence? We somehow prove it and hey presto, everyone in the world becomes a Christian?”
“Sure.”
When I was little I’d wait for the bus with a bunch of neighborhood kids. And after the first big frost, we’d kill time by easing across puddles that looked frozen but weren’t—or at least, not all the way through. We’d inch across, freezing and giggling at every crack! Best case, you made it across and the kids gave you props. Worst case, you broke the ice and soaked your shoes, which was unpleasant but not fatal.
Well, I felt like I was inching across a puddle that was bottomless. Like if I put a foot wrong I’d fall down so deep no one would ever find me. It looked safe enough . . . but probably wasn’t . . . and if I put one foot wrong . . .
“Hell being a thing doesn’t mean every other religion is wrong.”
Laura just looked at me.
I sighed. “I get it. You’ve decided Hell being a thing does mean every other religion is wrong.”
“We know the devil is real, ergo God is real, ergo Jesus is real.” At my expression, she plowed ahead with, “It’s not arrogance. I’m not saying it’s what I think. It’s what we know.”
“But that doesn’t mean other things aren’t real. You’re like someone who’s red-green color-blind: just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean red and green don’t exist.”
“Your analogies are starting to suck less,” she said grudgingly.
“Thank you!” Ugh, I was always so pleased when she complimented me. It was the dark side of being Miss Congeniality, the thing they don’t tell you at the pageant rehearsals. “Listen, Hell and the devil being real doesn’t disprove Allah and Buddha and—uh—Mohammed and Zeus—and—” Why hadn’t I taken a single religious studies course before I flunked out of the U of M?
She shrugged off Buddha and Mohammed and Zeus. “They can’t prove their religious icons are real. That’s the difference.”
“But what’s the point of— Oh.” I saw it. Finally. “Aw, jeez. This is about you bringing gobs of unfaithful into the flock. So if you get to Heaven—”
“When.”
Oh Christ. “Fine, when you get there, you can tell your pal Jesus that you heroically avoided running Hell—through lies and trickery, but who cares about the details, right?—and that you disapproved of your sinful vampire sister but managed to recruit her into helping you bring millions into the fold so where’s your Christian gold star already?”
Her pretty mouth (how does she not have chapped lips in a Minnesota winter?) went thin. “It’s a far better use of your time than lolling around your mansion slurping smoothies and accepting blood orange offerings.”
“First off, I don’t loll.” I was pretty sure. That means lying around, right? Lolling around? I rubbed my temples. Don’t beat the Antichrist to death with a hymnal. That would be deeply uncool. “Second, if vampires want to stop by and bring me fruit and promise not to be assholes, what’s the problem? It’s a lot more than the previous vampire monarch did. His big contribution was starving newborn vamps until they went insane and making older vamps do all his murder-ey dirty work.” Ugh, I hadn’t thought of Nostril in years. Nobody talked about the undead-and-now-dead-forever wretch; he wasn’t missed by anyone. New as we were to the monarch thing, Sinclair and I were still loads better at it on our worst day than Nostril was on his best. Was it weird when vampires showed up at the mansion to hand me a bag of citrus and pledge eternal blood-sucking devotion and to seem relieved when all I made them do was promise to not be asshats? Yes. Was it a bad thing? Hell no! (Or just no.)
I scooted back a bit on the pew, away from her, and I wasn’t aware I was doing it until I noticed I’d put another foot between us. “Y’know the difference between you and me, Laura? Other than the fact that you’ve never had a pimple? I never sat in judgment on you. You and our father like to bitch about the embarrassment of having a vampire in the family; how d’you think I felt when I found out my long-lost sister wasn’t just prettier and smarter than me, but was the Antichrist? And what did I do? Huh? Whine? Yes. Feel incredibly insecure? Of course. Show you the door? No. Tell you that you were bound to turn evil because that’s what happens in every single book or movie about the Antichrist? No.”
“That’s not—”
“Now let’s talk about what I did do. Did I welcome you into my home? Yes. After you tried to kill me? Yes! You tried to commit fratricide, and I could have killed you for it but didn’t, but I’m the Hell-bound bitch?”
“Sororicide. Fratricide is killing your brother. And we’re not discussing your nature,” she added, but she had the grace to look uncomfortable. “This is about the great thing we can do together.”
“Ohhh.” I saw it then. Her actual plan, and the plan beneath, the thing driving her to recruit zillions for the Lord’s force, the thing she might not be consciously aware of. “So your life’s purpose wasn’t to take over for Satan. And me giving you the boot from Hell—and by extension taking away all your supernatural abilities—that’s all fine, because really, your purpose was always to bring peace on earth, goodwill toward men by proving the existence of God. It’s not you flailing around fo
r something meaningful to do because you didn’t think past getting out of your birthright.”
“I hated my powers,” she said to the pew in front of us. “They were proof of my sin, my dark nature. But . . . I liked them, too. And now I miss them.”
“Tough shit.” I couldn’t muster even a shred of sympathy. She’d been able to teleport to and from Hell, and she could focus her will—which was considerable—and make weapons of hellfire, swords and knives and on one memorable occasion, arrows, that had no effect on “normal” people but were devastating to the supernatural. They made her remarkably skilled at killing vampires. “Like a hot knife through butter” didn’t begin to cover it. “If you’re waiting for me to go all ‘there, there’ for you, I hope you packed a lunch, because we’ll be here for a while.”
“You owe me!” she cried, and the hell of it was, she really believed that. I was the big bad vampire queen who’d cheated her out of what she wanted to give away.
“I don’t owe you a goddamned thing,” I snapped back. Her mouth popped open and I kept on. “I know we’re in church! I think God would give me a pass on this one!” I was on my feet without remembering standing. “We’re done. So sorry to keep you waiting while I was learning your job. I’m going now.”
She sniffed. (I’d have snorted; did she have to be more graceful in everything she did?) Mumbled something that sounded like, “Typical,” but I wasn’t going to rise to the bait. (This time. Probably.) I heard her stand and follow me down the aisle like we were the Taylor sisters hanging out after church, just a couple of sisters disagreeing over matters that weren’t life and death, instead of the Antichrist and the vampire queen arguing about the best way to prove God was real, or not, in order to demand the conversion of millions, or not.
The worst part? I still wanted her to like me. She was the only sister I was ever going to have, and I admired her when I wasn’t thinking about puncturing her eyeballs with my stilettos. She was sneaky but brave, judgmental but unwavering, beautiful but bitchy when crossed. I’d been impressed and jealous since the moment we met. She was her mother’s dreadful daughter in every way . . . and our father’s . . .
. . . and I still wanted her to like me.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
I yanked myself back to the present and reminded myself that Jessica was right—we had no idea how the mess du jour was going to shake out, and it was too soon to contemplate. I was opening my mouth to cough up the equivalent of “there, there, don’t fret, want a booze smoothie?” when the kitchen door swung inward and Marc galloped in, hauling Will Mason in his wake like a kid dragging a blankie. It didn’t help that the guy was wearing a pastel blue shirt and smelled like laundry detergent.
“Jeez, there you are!”
“Uh, I wasn’t hiding, Marc. Remember when we both popped into the kitchen at the same time? And then you scampered off? Remember? Happened less than five minutes ago?”
“No jokes,” he barked, “this is serious!”
“Actually, I usually joke because things are serious—”
“And now where’s Sinclair run off to?” Tell you what, Marc could really hit high notes when he was upset. He usually saved the shrieks for whatever Game of Thrones nonsense he was enduring at the hands of the heartless boob-obsessed bums at HBO. “Where is he?”
“Dude, you’re the one who keeps yelling and then leaving. And keep it down.” I shifted the warm little football that smelled like milk and was named Elizabeth or Eric from one arm to the other. “You’ll wake the babies. Theoretically.” They didn’t nap so much as hibernate for hours at a time. I was amazed at the things they slept through. I took another sniff (someone seriously needed to bottle eau de bébé), then laid Elizabeth or Eric down beside Elizabeth or Eric. “Hi, Will. Nice to see you again. Thanks for not breaking in this time.”
“I didn’t break in last time,” he protested. He looked frazzled and wispy as usual, like he wasn’t all there. Pastel shirts and jeans were his uniform of choice, and he smelled like Dreft and Suave. His hair was longish, over his ears, baby fine, and always messy. His eyes, behind wire rims, always seemed a little too wide and starey—you could see the whites all around. He was always like a horse about to bolt. “I just . . . y’know. Came in. You guys need locks.”
“Yeah, because you walking in uninvited means we’re the problem.” I was needling him more for sport than out of any real ire. Look: if he was going to be anything more than a one-night stand for Marc, he needed to toughen up. So far his life had been smooth sailing. Except for being orphaned at a young age. And being terrified when he realized he could see ghosts. And struggling for his place in a world where the dead bugged him and the living didn’t notice him. And referring to himself in all seriousness as the Freak. And being a huge John Cusack fan. And being gay on top of all of that. Or bi. I wasn’t really paying attention to that part of it.
I couldn’t imagine the hell of his lonely, terrifying childhood. No parents. Lots of ghosts. Cripes. I saw ghosts, too, but not until I was thirty. And they weren’t bugging me so much lately. Probably because they knew plenty of souls in Hell were busy bugging me.
“Listen,” Will was saying, all earnest and cute, “my sources—” And I laughed. I couldn’t help it; he was downright adorable. Sources was how he referred to the dead people who pestered him. “Yeah, yeah, I’m aware you think that’s hilarious—”
“You’re adorable!”
“—but you’ve got a real problem.” He was trying to stay stern, but a shy smile escaped anyway; he was like a little kid sometimes. Honestly, the mansion, our lives, the danger, the profanity—it was all no place for him.
“You had Sinclair haul me from Hell to tell me that? I’ve got about nineteen real problems.”
“Darling.” Speak of the devil, and there I was. Oh, and my husband, too, who’d just walked in holding my most precious, most treasured book. “How did you get the author of Smoothie Nation to sign this with that immature nickname you persist in using?”
“Isn’t it nifty?” I cried. I rushed over to him, nearly knocking Will over. “Did you check out page sixty-three? Banana split smoothies!”
“I think that particular smoothie ventures into milk-shake territory.”
“Never question Smoothie Nation, you ignorant bastard. Plus, pictures! I love cookbooks with photos.” Truth! I liked knowing what the thing I was consuming was supposed to look like if a competent person had followed the recipe.*
“You guys.” From Will, and it got our attention, because that guy never raised his voice. Probably because he was always running around whispering to ghosts so people wouldn’t think he was insane. “My sources told me the Wyndham werewolves—”
“Oh, damn,” I sighed. “You’re right, that’s a problem.”
“Yeah, well, they’re not pleased; that’s for sure. I heard rumors so I canceled my meeting with Marc—”
“Meeting?” As opposed to date? Hmm. That might mean the Ant was going to win the bet. Did I care? Too early to tell.
“—and followed up and it’s true. It’s happening.”
“A pack of werewolves is on their way to see us?” Jessica sounded as tense as I felt. She’d met several of them. Werewolves on their worst, weakest days were still nothing to mess with.
“No, I mean a pack of werewolves is here.”
Which is, of course, when the doorbell rang. And when our puppies set up a clamor like I’d never heard. If puppies could scream, they’d have sounded like Fur and Burr just then.
Dammit.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
“Jessica, come on. I’ll help you with the babies and we’ll—”
“Mom, leave BabyJon where he is.”
“—get out of— What?” She wasn’t used to a calm tone from me, shrieking and bitching being my go-to emotions for pop-ins. It was the age of social media,
for God’s sake. You could call or text or e-mail or poke; there was no excuse for a pop-in these days!
“BabyJon stays here, Mom. But yeah, help Jess with her babies.”
My mom started to reply, but Jessica cut her off. “I’ll say hello to them. I’ve met Michael before. Then we’ll go.”
“But—”
“Dr. Taylor.” Whoa. Jessica almost never called my mom that. Heck, sometimes she pretended to slip and called my mom Mom. “We moved out because of the people we don’t know, like eight dozen reporters hanging out in front of the house doing God knows what. And nobody knows where Laura’s devil-worshipping minions are—they could be on the block right now, planning to get in here and start some shit. So yeah, we moved out.”
“Then why—”
“But I know Michael Wyndham. I’ve met him and his wife and his kids. I’ve been a guest in their home. So I’m going to say hello like a civilized person and welcome them to town and then I’ll take my babies and leave. But I’m not scuttling off like some pathetic loser.”
“Can I scuttle off like some pathetic loser?” Will asked, and whether he meant to or not, that broke the tension.
We heard measured footsteps—Sinclair and I did; the others probably couldn’t hear anything—and knew Tina was calmly going to the door to let them in. Because Jess was right: we didn’t hide. And we didn’t scuttle. And also, Smoothie Nation was waiting for us to settle this and make smoothies. We’ll never let you down, Smoothie Nation.
“I’ll go through the mudroom and calm the puppies down,” Mom said. “But, Betsy, I really think I should take BabyJon.” She paused, then added wistfully, “Though it’d be fun to meet more werewolves.”
Fun? Wasn’t my mom adorable? “Trust me—that baby’s in no danger from werewolves.” Or vamps. Or witches. Or ghouls. Or mermaids.
“I don’t see how—”