“It’s okay, Alice. It’s not your fault. They’re not animals, they’re people. It’s stupid to pretend they don’t have human brains. I should have figured that out a long time before now.”
“It’s not your fault, Majesty. The fault lies with me. It’s—”
“They should be recaptured and staked,” Sinclair said, sounding bored.
“We’ve been over this,” I snapped back.
“I suppose we have.”
I didn’t agree with his kill-all-Fiends mind-set, but his boredom with the subject wasn’t much fun, either.
“It’s not ‘they,’” Alice supplied helpfully. “It’s just one.”
“Let me guess: George?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Swell.” The perfect end to a perfect night. The devil’s daughter turned out to be sweet as cream, Sinclair gave off the distinct impression that he’d like to sample some of that cream, I was in hell, and George had gone on the lam again. “Just great.”
“We’ll find him again, ma’am.”
“Okay, well, call me if he turns up.”
“At once, Majesty.”
“We’ll keep our eyes peeled, not literally. Meanwhile, let’s think of a better system to keep him. The others don’t seem to want to get out, but George does, so let’s figure out why and fix it so he can have what he wants here on the property. It’s not the best plan in the world, but it’s what we’ll start with.”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“Swell,” Sinclair said, and gave me a thin smile.
“What the hell are you doing following me around?” I griped. We’d driven back to the mansion in our cars, and I was bitching Eric out on the front lawn. “Like dealing with the spawn of Satan isn’t touchy enough without you popping up like a jack-in-the-box with fangs.”
“I wasn’t following you,” he pointed out coolly. “I was following her.”
Nuts. I’d been afraid of that. “Why?”
“She is a fascinating creature. I had no sense of deceit from her, did you?”
“N—”
“All that potential power, that world-building power, wrapped up in a lovely package. A genuinely nice girl with no clue of the unholy power she could wield.” He was practically rubbing his hands together. “To harness that power…if I could just—”
“We,” I said. “If we could just.”
“Yes, yes. Really, an engaging dilemma.”
“That’s just super,” I said, managing to keep the acid bitterness out of my tone. Pretty much. “Look, one thing at a time. We’ve got to make nice with Jessica and find George.”
“As you have made clear in the past,” he reminded me, “those are your problems, not mine.”
For a second I couldn’t say anything; it felt like cold dread just—just grabbed my heart. Six months of pushing him away, and when I succeeded, I was sick about it. Which was sick.
And as upset as I was, I was also mad. Okay, I’d screwed up. He was an eighty-year-old dead guy. Like he’d never made a mistake in all that time?
When I finally found my voice, I went on the attack. Anything was better than feeling like the biggest loser in the world.
“Listen, jackass. Do you think you can stop sulking for five fucking minutes and help me? Is that too fucking much to ask? If you won’t admit you’re mad, then you’d better be on board with the dark evil stuff like usual. You can’t have it both ways.”
He looked down at me, totally unmoved. “You…would…be…amazed at what I can have.” Then he turned away.
I grabbed his sleeve and tried to pull him back. “Don’t walk away from me, you—”
“Did you hear something?” he asked, shaking free of me with no trouble at all. “There’s—” Then he was gone, knocked a good six feet sideways by something.
“Eric!” I called, like every useless movie heroine in the history of cinema. I charged over to grab whatever had tackled him. “Let go!” And thanks!
I leaned forward to seize whatever by the back of the neck—assuming it had a back of a neck—when suddenly it got off Sinclair and stood.
And stood. And stood. It was tall, even slumped over. Long dirty clots of hair hung in its face, and its clothing—filthy jeans and a T-shirt of no definable color—was in rags. Bare feet. Filthy toes.
“George!” I gasped.
“How completely fabulous,” Sinclair said, getting up off the ground and brushing himself off. There were leaves in his hair, but I wasn’t going to tell him. “I assume he followed us. Or tracked you.”
“Tracked me?”
“They are uncommonly attached to you, in case you’ve forgotten their devotion when they killed Nostro,” he snorted, as if I could forget.
“Aw, shaddup. George, you were very very bad to run away from Alice.” I shook my finger under his nose. It was a little disconcerting the way he followed my finger with his muddy gaze. “Very bad! But you were very good to stomp Sinclair when he was being a dick, so I think we’ll call this a wash.”
“What?” Sinclair scowled. “How can you say—”
“Pipe down, ass hat. You know what, George? Let’s call Alice and have her come get you. Good, good Fiend!”
“No, no, no,” Sinclair began. At least he was evincing some interest again—interest that didn’t threaten the hell out of me.
“And while we’re waiting, you can have a shower.”
“Elizabeth, I must protest.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Hate the idea, do you?”
“Completely.”
“Good enough.” I took George’s cold, grimy hand, and he followed me.
Chapter 21
I didn’t dare bring him into the main part of the house—Jessica and Marc were probably around, and I didn’t quite trust George enough to just let him go like that movie Born Free. So I brought him through one of the basement doors, helped him strip, and stuck him under the shower we had down there.
He seemed to like it, creepy darkened basement notwithstanding, first standing like a hairy lump and then stretching a bit under the beating warm water. I dared leave him for just a moment, superspeeding my way through the house to grab some of Marc’s clothes. Marc, shaving, didn’t hear me or see me, and I’d explain later.
George was shaking his head under the spray so his long strands flew when I got back to the basement, and I let him enjoy the shower for another ten minutes. I almost couldn’t bear to turn it off; seeing him clean and almost happy gave me a glimpse of the man he once had been.
Not a bad-looking one, either, under all the mud. Tall and thin, with long arms and legs that were sleekly muscled, and a broad back and a great, tight butt. Very pale, of course, but a clean, open-looking face with thin lips. He looked like a swimmer, in fact, all gangly limbs and big feet. And big, uh, other things, but I was trying to stay clinical.
“So, why’d you come after me?” I asked.
No answer, big surprise.
“It’s creepy,” I added, “but kind of cute. You must have thought I was in danger from Sinclair.” I snickered, remembering seeing Sinclair practically knocked out of his loafers on the front lawn. “Well, Alice is on her way, so you’ll be back home soon.”
When the water started to get chilly, I shut it off and draped George in a humungous beach towel. Impersonal as a nurse, I briskly dried him off, helped him get dressed in a set of Marc’s scrubs, then combed out his long hair. Under the light, it was past his shoulders—which was weird, vampires couldn’t grow their hair—and brown with gold highlights. It must have been long when he’d died. What had he been? Rock drummer? Motorcycle racer?
“There now!” I said, stepping back to admire him. “You look great. If you can just resist rolling around in the mud, you could almost pass for an ordinary creature of the night.”
“Majesty?” I could hear Alice calling me—I must not have heard her car over the sound of the shower. “The king said you were down here.”
“Yeah, come on down, Alice.” She tentatively crept down the stairs, obviously ready to be yelled at. It was tough work reminding some of these guys that I wasn’t Nostro with red highlights. “Look who I found! Doesn’t he look great?”
She stared. “George?”
“In the undead flesh.” I reached up—way up—and tousled his hair. “He must have followed me home. Or picked up my scent and followed that. You should have seen him tackle Sinclair. It was great! Disrespectful,” I added with mock severity, “but great.”
“Again, Majesty, I’m so s—”
“Alice, for crying out loud. You’ve got your hands full, I know that. In fact, I should get you some help.” What other vampire could I trust with such a tedious but important, job? Maybe I’d find one at Scratch.
“He looks”—she was circling around him, a good trick since she had to actually go through the shower to do it—“different. It’s not just being clean. He’s been clean before.”
“It’s the scrubs,” I decided. “They make him look smarter.”
“Nooooo, with all respect, I don’t think that’s it.” She looked at George, then me, then George. I waited to hear her theory. Alice looked like a demure fifteen-year-old in her plaid skirts and headbands, but she was really, like, fifty years old. And no dummy, either. “Ah, well.”
That was her big theory?
“We’ve taken up quite enough of your evening, Majesty. Come on, George.” Alice put her hand out and clutched his forearm, which he yanked back so quickly she almost fell into the shower. He didn’t growl at her, but he showed his teeth.
“Uh-oh,” she murmured.
“Maybe he wants to stay here with me,” I said, a little surprised.
“I don’t think it’s a maybe. Perhaps if you helped me get him out to the car…”
“You know what? Let him stay.”
“Majesty, you live in the city. I’m not sure that’s wise. He might—”
“He’s had plenty of chances to pounce—heck, he didn’t do anything to Sinclair except knock him out of the way. I know! I’ll let him feed on me and then he can just stay in the basement for a couple of nights.”
“You’ll let him feed?”
I didn’t take offense at Alice’s reaction. It was well-known that I wasn’t the biggest pro–blood giver among vampires. Except with Sinclair, the whole thing kind of squicked me out.
Well, Sinclair was over! The past! I was going forward, not back. And while I was at it, the hell with Jessica, too. I had two new friends: the devil’s daughter and George the Fiend.
It sounded so ridiculous I didn’t dare dwell on it; instead I chomped on my own wrist until my sluggish blood started to flow, and held my arm out to George.
“Thish thould do it,” I slurred. My life isn’t horrible and weird. My life isn’t horrible and weird. My life—
“I must admit,” Alice commented, her red hair seeming to glow against the gloomy basement bricks, “when I rose this evening, I hadn’t foreseen any of tonight’s events.”
“Thtick with me, bay-bee.” George had grasped my wrist, lapped up the blood, and was now sucking like a kid with a Tootsie Pop. “Ith a new thrill every minute.”
Alice reluctantly left, I managed to get my arm back, and then I made George a nest in one of the empty basement rooms—one of the inner windowless ones—with a bunch of clean towels. I went upstairs to find a pillow, saw the usual unrelieved darkness outside was now a dark gray, and hurried back down, hauling a wool blanket out of one of the linen closets on the way. George was already stretched out on the towels, sound asleep.
I left him the pillow, locked the door—compassion was one thing, carelessness something else—and went up to my room.
It had been an unnatural night, that was for sure. Good in some ways—bad in others, and, ultimately, challenging.
Chapter 22
“…So that’s the really bizarro thing,” I told the baby monitor. “She’s not this incredibly evil creature out to rule the world. She’s a perfectly nice college kid. An education major, for God’s sake! She wants to teach kindergarten when she grows up. If you cut her, she’d probably bleed maple syrup.
“So anyway, on the one hand that’s a relief, but on the other, I can’t just let her run around being unconsciously evil. I guess I better tell her. One of these days. And how do you tell someone that their mom is the devil? It would have been hard enough to tell her the Ant was her mom.
“And let’s not forget what the Book told me. The devil’s supposed to show up. She’s—I guess it’s a she—she’s supposed to show up to Laura, poor thing, and to me. ‘In all the raiments of the dark,’ whatever that means. So I can’t dick around with warning Laura. Right?”
Silence. Was Jess even listening to her baby monitor? I had no way of knowing. Her car was in the garage, but who really knew?
“Right,” I finished. “Well, so that’s what’s been going on. That and there’s a Fiend living in the basement, so don’t go down there during the day. In fact, don’t go down there altogether. Listen, if you want to meet Laura, just let me know. She’s really a sweetheart. She’s having me over for supper pretty soon. And Sinclair, unfortunately, but I’ll worry about that later. Well, ’bye.”
I snapped the monitor off and just sat at the kitchen counter for a minute, thinking. Tina came in and nodded respectfully; I sort of waved at her and kept with the pondering.
Jessica was still mad…and worse, scared. She’d been mad before, plenty of times, but she’d never hidden herself away for days (nights) at a time. Her method was normally to tell me at length, loudly, how and where I’d fucked up, repeat as needed.
My sister was running around the campus of the University of Minnesota, totally unaware she was going to try to take over the world one of these days. Sinclair was still giving me frostbite every time he looked at me. The Ant was still pregnant. Only Marc seemed unchanged by it all and, frankly, with his work schedule, he had never been around all that much to begin with.
My cat Giselle walked into the kitchen, ignored both of us, and headed to her bowl. I didn’t bother trying to pet or cuddle her. Giselle and I had a strict working relationship. I worked to feed her, and she worked on ignoring me. Plus, in a house this big, days would go by when I didn’t see her. I made sure she had food and fresh water, and she ate and drank and did her own thing.
Well, at least someone else’s life was unchanged.
“Everything sucks,” I announced. “Again.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Your Majesty.” Tina glanced up from Outdoor Life. She was a gun nut, that one. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it all right again.”
“All right again? Tina, when has it ever been all right?”
“A poor choice of words,” she admitted, turning a page. Reading upside down, I could see the title of the article: “Tracking Antelope in Big Sky Country.”
“And as nutty as everything is, I’ve got the nagging feeling I’m forgetting something.” I thought and thought. “What the hell is it?” Monique? Dead. Sister? Friend. Scratch? Still in the red. But that reminded me—Monique had hired a bunch of pimply faced vampire killers last summer. To be honest, once they’d stopped trying to cut my head off, I’d sort of forgotten about them. “What are the Blade Warriors up to these days?”
“Jon is still at his parents’ farm, Wild Bill is out of town at the SciFiConBiTriCon, and I have no idea what the others are doing. Frankly,” she admitted, “once they stopped trying to stake us, I instantly lost interest in their activities.”
I could relate. “Except for Ani,” I said slyly.
Tina smiled. “Well. We had to go our separate ways, but she was a very charming girl.”
“Right. Charming. We are talking about the girl who has more knives than shirts, right? Don’t answer. Okay, so it’s not that. What is it?”
“Well, you were planning to shop for new shoes for Andrea and Daniel’s wedding,” she pointed out. “With all the goin
gs on, perhaps you haven’t had—”
“Andrea and Daniel’s wedding!” I nearly shouted, then rested my forehead on the cool marble counter. “Aw, fuck a duck.”
“I take it you’ve remembered what you had forgotten?”
“When is it?” I asked hollowly.
“Halloween. A week from tomorrow.”
“Swell.” Jessica was supposed to help me shop. Maybe I’d turn on the baby monitor and remind her. No, she knew. Unlike me, she had a great memory. She was just ignoring it. Not that I could blame her, but the cold shoulder was getting old.
“Aha!”
“I tremble to ask.”
“I’ll ask my sister to go shopping! You know, one of the few people on the planet who don’t think I’m scum.”
“Majesty—”
“Don’t bother, Tina. And don’t mind me. I’m sort of neck deep in self-pity right now.”
She smiled sympathetically. “I’m sure you’ll work everything out. Who could resist you for long, my queen?”
“Thanks. That’s a little creepy, but thanks. I—”
Suddenly, so fast I could barely follow it, Tina’s hand dropped to the knife block, she pulled out a wicked long butcher knife, and whipped it underhand toward me in one smooth motion. I squeaked and got ready to duck (to try to duck), when I realized she hadn’t been aiming at me.
George the Fiend blinked at us from the kitchen doorway, a knife sticking out of his chest.
“Damn,” she swore, getting up. “Majesty, get back. I’ll—”
“You’ll stop throwing sharp things at his heart, that’s what you’ll do!” I leapt up and went to George, who didn’t seem especially fazed. “He’s okay, Tina, he’s not here to hurt us. Jeez, good thing it’s not a wooden stake.”
“I never even heard him approach, blast it.” Tina wasn’t this upset when she called Sinclair on keeping secrets about my sis. “I was trying to buy time for you to get away. I would have found something suitable in another few seconds.”
“That’s comforting.” Okay, it wasn’t, but what else was I supposed to say? “Good work. Except don’t throw knives at him anymore.”