Dad was still mumbling excuses. “You know she only had the baby to get me to marry her. And she had the other one to make sure I wouldn’t leave. For a while I thought it wasn’t even mine.”
“You—what? You—okay, first, it has a name. It’s . . .” Jon something. John something? I called him BabyJon but that probably wasn’t the name on his birth certificate. Shit! “And he’s more than the bait in a trap. Okay, Antonia shouldn’t have tricked you, but don’t blame your son for her choices, or yours. Nobody stuck a gun in your ear and forced you to marry her.”
“I’m too old to start over.”
“Do you hear yourse—?” I cut myself off. He didn’t, any more than I ever did. “You’re the one who chose to bang the Ant sans birth control.”
“She said she’d had a hysterectomy,” he whined.
“Dad, she still got her period! Or did you think the Tampax was for making Molotov cocktails?” I clutched at my hair and managed—just—not to rip out whole chunks and then start on my scalp. “This is not the time for a lecture on how much you don’t know about wives despite being married most of your adult life. You chose to marry her and to raise a kid together. What, you never planned on sticking around? Were you looking for an escape hatch before the ink dried on your marriage certificate?”
“No.”
Silence. A bubble was coming up from somewhere, one I didn’t want to surface. Because if he hadn’t planned to ditch the Ant, and later the son, because of them, that meant the straw shattering the camel’s back, the tipping point, was me.
“Were you even a little glad I didn’t die for real?” The bubble had popped and it was as dreadful as I feared. And who was talking in such a small pitiful voice? Whoever they were, they should speak up; they sounded pathetic. “That even though I’d been run down like a skunk on a back road, I came back from that? I wasn’t hurt or—or anything. I was—”
“A monster.”
Hmm. Was he talking from a rapidly darkening tunnel? Or was the rage eclipsing everything but the need to pull his spine out through his ass and strangle him with it?
“It’s nothing personal,” he explained as I started to laugh. I think it was laughter. I was making weird noises, anyway. “I needed a fresh start. I deserved one, don’t you think?”
Bite him. Mojo him. Make him forget what he did, make him into the father BabyJon deserves. Or mojo him into taking a walk off the top of the IDS Tower.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll give you what you deserve.”
Bite him. Turn him. He’ll be your slave forever, until you or someone else kills him; he’d never do it himself. Be his nightmare.
My family was so silent I’d almost forgotten they were there. But I could feel their shock and outrage, and Sinclair was carefully staying out of my brain. Probably didn’t want to shock me with what he was picturing doing to his father-in-law. Sweet, but unnecessary. There was no way whatever he was thinking was worse than what I was thinking.
“Y’know, I’m curious, Dad. What’s your plan for when you grow old? With one wife divorced and the other dead? No friends—not that you had many—because of the whole faked-death thing? You removed yourself from your children’s lives pretty thoroughly. It’ll just be you out there.”
A one-shoulder shrug. “I’ll hire people.”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded; that was the response I expected. It would never occur to him to view a lack of friends and family as a crippling disadvantage. Thank God, thank God in that one respect he and I are not alike. “So you’ll never have an accident? Never endure some unseen calamity? You can foresee every single bad thing that could happen to you and meticulously plan for each and every one?”
“Well, I . . . um . . .”
“That’s what I thought. If you get clipped by a bus and pitched into a coma, anywhere in the world, the hospital will know exactly what to do, who to call? You won’t spend your golden years rotting away in a state-funded nursing home? What if you end up with a cancer diagnosis? You’ll foresee every single thing that could come of that and make all the provisions? Anything that might possibly go wrong in your life is one hundred percent foreseeable, if not preventable?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Nope. I’d put the brake on his brain.
I had him, and it should have been a triumph. “Because the thing about being a monster, Dad, is that I would outlive you by centuries, but would always have been in a position to keep you safe. I’m doomed—I mean destined—to be the top dog around here for quite a long time. If you lost all your money tomorrow, or ten years from now, I’d still be living with millionaires who would be able to handle any expense. Who would be happy to help you if only out of love for me.
“But that’s gone now. You wanted a fresh start? You wanted to put the new family behind you the way you put the old one behind you? Congrats. Wish granted.” I didn’t crowd him. Didn’t go near him. I would never touch him again. “Don’t come back here. Don’t reach out. Don’t call. Don’t write. If I see you again, or I find out BabyJon or Laura has seen you, I’ll see you dead at my feet. I won’t bother to do it myself, that’s how much of a nothing you’ll be to me. I’ll delegate your murder like it was sorting recyclables: something so boring I couldn’t be bothered to do it myself.”
Pale (even for him), Dad rose, straightened his crease, and crossed the parlor to leave. He didn’t speak to me. He didn’t look at me. That was fine.
“One more thing. I want you out of town within the week.”
He turned, eyes narrowed, a scornful smile riding his mouth. “What, you’re the landlord for the city of St. Paul?”
My hands had snapped into fists at some point. I had to make an effort to loosen them so I didn’t punch my nails through my palms the way they’d punctured Sinclair’s shirt. “As far as you’re concerned, yeah. You’ve got the whole rest of the planet to get old and die in. St. Paul is mine. Get the fuck out.”
He walked out of the parlor without another word. I listened to him cross the entryway, open the door, step outside. Then I used Tina’s trick. I pretended I was in the airport and he was a passenger who was a stranger to me, someone I didn’t have to listen to, someone whose proper place was background noise. And I let him fade.
And I vowed to never hear him again, not even if I lived to be a thousand, which I very well could.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
Peach. Peach everywhere, so much peach it wasn’t just all around me (we should repaint that ceiling), it was under me. I blinked and thought about that for a second.
Ah.
Somehow I’d gone from forbidding vampire queen ordering a dead-to-me father out of my city on pain of death to crumpled pitiful daughter shivering on the carpet and wanting Mommy.
A circle of concerned faces were looking down at me. This should have been creepy, or at least startling, but I was pretty numb. All I could muster was a kind of tired, faint curiosity as I stared up at them.
Elizabeth? My own?
“Easy,” Marc said, pressing his hand against my shoulder as if I’d tried to rise, when I had no intention of ever leaving my new womb, the Peach Parlor. “Rest a second.” A second? I planned to rest for a century at least. I wouldn’t even need a bed. The thick, dusty peach carpet would be dandy. The mice would creep out at night and befriend me. I would be their queen.
“D’you want something?” Dick asked anxiously. His face kept appearing and disappearing over me as he paced and fretted. “A smoothie? D’you need blood?”
“I would like my mommy, please.”
“Er . . .” He and Marc traded glances.
“I could call her, hon,” Marc said, waving a finger at me. “Follow the tip, please.”
“I don’t have a concussion, Marc. I didn’t hit my head.” Did I? I was still a little fuzzy on how I got down here.
He ig
nored me and took my pulse, which was so laughable I didn’t know where to start. “Oh, don’t give me that look. Think I haven’t memorized your undead RHR? You want me to call your mom?”
I shivered. No, best keep the awful truth(s) to myself for a bit longer. Mom would be upset and infuriated on my behalf before I got to the end of the tale, the part where I threatened to stomp her ex like a roach. Note to self: do not tell Mom the end of the tale.
“Perhaps some sugar-cookie-flavored vodka?” Tina suggested, which was quite the offer as it was her current favorite and they were discontinuing the flavor (despite her impassioned letter-writing campaign). Thank goodness. Bakery products and booze sounded good on paper, but the reality tended to be a disaster, and nobody wanted a repeat of New Year’s Eve. “My queen? What do you need?”
Well, let’s see. I needed a new dad. I needed to get out of running Hell. I needed to turn the Peach Parlor into my permanent lair. Most important: I needed to get my thumb out of my ass.
“I’m fine.” Nobody said anything. “Really. I’m okay. I just wanted to rest. Very suddenly. I’m perfectly fine. Apropos of nothing, don’t be alarmed if I never leave this room.”
Sinclair smiled at me, dark gaze intent on my face, and it was almost enough to make me feel better. “If this is our room now, then it shall be so.”
“Oh, Eric.” Would not would not would not cry. “And you hate peach.”
“I do. I cannot understand why we have not yet had this room redone.” He glanced around with a frown, then returned his gaze to me. “Also I may murder your father if, for no other reason, than because he upset you so much you called me Eric.”
What? It’s your name, isn’t it? I call you that. Sometimes. I could count those times on the fingers of one hand, but that didn’t make his point, except for how it did. And wanting to kill my dad is so sweet! I can almost feel myself melting into this horrible carpet.
I am quite serious.
I gave him a warning look. If I held back, you’d better, too.
“I hate when you flaunt your supernatural mystic Vulcan telepathic link thing,” Marc griped. “Could you please talk out loud now?”
Eric—sorry, Sinclair—obliged. “Apropos of nothing, when I have recovered from my worry, I shall tell you how proud I am, my dread queen. And . . . and . . .”
I groaned. “Go on. You know you can’t help yourself.”
“The s in apropos is silent.”
“It was burning you up inside, wasn’t it?”
He inclined his head in a slight bow. “I thank you for this indulgence, darling queen. Now perhaps if you—”
He cut himself off, and he and Tina both cocked their heads to the side, the motion almost doglike. I almost felt like smiling, it was so cute. They were like undead bipedal versions of Petey the Dog!
“Did you hear . . . ?” Tina murmured to Sinclair.
Sinclair had taken my wrist and was running his thumb back and forth across my sluggish pulse point. As he listened, he brought my wrist to his mouth and pressed a cool kiss to the vein. “Hmm,” was all he said, which was just mysterious enough to be annoying.
“What are you guys talking about now?” Marc said, apparently satisfied that I wasn’t going to expire on the spot. He had settled on the carpet beside me. “There’s a lot of super secret vampire stuff going on in this room and I won’t have it! What do you hear?”
“Nothing! Not one goddamned thing.” I clawed for some self-control and lowered my voice. “I can’t hear anything that man is doing. I’ll never hear anything he does ever again. It’s the airport trick, remember, Tina? Oh, stop it,” I snapped as Marc started groping for my pulse again. “It’s a vampire trick Tina taught me; I’m not out of my mind. At least no more than usual. So nope. I don’t hear anything. And neither do any of you.”
Tina wasn’t paying attention, which was all kinds of aggravating. “It almost sounds like—”
Breaking glass and groaning metal. And was that shouting? Yep. Screaming, too, as different voices howled at each other. But that only made sense if . . .
I sat bolt upright, like Frankenstein coming to life on the table. “Where’s Jessica?”
And then we were all scrambling to get outside and, not for the first time, I was glad the Peach Parlor was so close to the front door. Otherwise I would have missed the whole terrible, wonderful thing.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
“Get away from there, you cow!”
“Who are you calling a cow, chubbo?”
Distressing enough to overhear, but the follow-up crash, which sounded like a bag of bricks glancing off a window before grinding into metal, was also alarming.
As we got closer I was amazed to see my guess was close. Jessica had apparently woken from her nap, spotted or heard my dad, then rushed out of the house, hauled the lawn mower out of the shed, dragged it through the snow to our driveway, then somehow heaved it high enough to toss it into the car. In her struggles she’d broken a window. Since the thing was at least a third of her weight, I was hoping she hadn’t also broken a bone. The whole endeavor wasn’t as tough as it might have been, though, because my father is an asshole and his choice of car reflected that.
“Get that thing out of my Mustang!” Dad pointed, in case Jessica forgot a) there was a Craftsman lawn mower in his car and b) she’d been the one to put it there.
“After all the trouble to get it in there? Why would I do that?”
I was used to gaping as a way to showcase my ignorance, so this was nothing new to me. But to see identical slack-jawed expressions on the others was gratifying. We probably looked like an illustration for duh. Dick in particular looked like he wasn’t sure if he should rush to her side or applaud. (My vote: both!)
“Fine, you can explain it to the police, and then my lawyer.” Dad let out a self-important huff and fished for his phone, lips pressed together so tightly they almost disappeared. “Let them deal with you.”
“And you,” she pointed out, panting slightly from her exertion. Cripes, the woman squeezed multiple human beings out of her love canal not even two months ago; I was impressed she was just panting slightly. Jessica smash! “Don’t forget that.”
“I’m telling you one more time, if you don’t get that out right now I’ll sue you for seven figures and—”
“What, Mr. Taylor? Sue me and what?” Jess was standing on the hood, hands on hips, glaring down at him. I knew she had no idea we were there. I was pretty sure she had no idea what city she was in. My friend was like Cate Blanchett in that Hobbit movie: beautiful and terrible as the dawn, treacherous as the sea. All shall love Jessica Watson and despair! (No, wait. That was The Lord of the Rings. Or am I thinking of Elizabeth? Cate Blanchett is the greatest, no matter what queen she’s playing.) “Call the cops, excellent idea, don’t forget to mention that you faked your death. And probably indulged in a little insurance fraud while you were at it. Be sure to bring that up, too.”
While Dad stood there, stumped, Jess busied herself fussing with the lawn mower and at first I thought she was trying to shove it out of the way, not so much to obey my dad but so she could hop off the car. Then I saw she was up to something else, but couldn’t quite . . . that was not what she . . . wait. Was she . . . ?
She was! She was starting the lawn mower! I couldn’t figure it out right away because the context was all wrong. I’d seen Jess in a car lots of times. I’d seen lawn mowers lots of times. I had never seen Jess trying to start the mower she flung into my father’s Mustang. Not once.
I knew Marc kept the thing in good working order, but it was also winter and the thing hadn’t been started in months. Still, it was new and Jess had the unholy strength of the pissed-off, so the thing was giving it the old college try with every yank of the starter cord: Nnnn-mmmm! Nnnn-mmmm!
“You’re mixing up my white-collar crimes wit
h your pervert father,” Dad finally snapped back. “Apples and oranges, young lady. Say what you will—”
Nnnn-mmmm!
“Okay. You’re a self-absorbed dick; you didn’t deserve your wife or your daughter or your son. The Ant you might have deserved.” Jess was moving back and forth as she struggled with the mower. She couldn’t make much progress, so the effect was that of a pissed-off windup toy. “And this car is a joke. Why not just paint ‘Ask Me about My Midlife Crisis’ on the side?” Nnnn-mmmm! “A friggin’ Ford convertible in Minnesota in winter? With the top down, you silly fucker? Let’s see, what else?”
“Say what you will about me, I never laid a hand on either of my children.” Dad was looking up at her with one hand shading his eyes (not sure why—it was almost dark, gloomy enough that Tina could stay on the porch without getting burned), the other hand clenched in a fist he jammed into his pocket. “Your father, meanwhile, was the disgrace of the neighborhood and your mother wasn’t any better.”
“First off, he was the disgrace of the whole state.” Nnnn-mmmm! “Second, damned right. Third, don’t pat yourself on the back because you couldn’t be bothered to be around your kids.” Nnnn-mmmm! “You faked your death and were dumb enough to hang around afterward. You look stupid trying to pull off morally indignant.”
“Why aren’t we helping her?” Marc asked in a low voice, though he needn’t have bothered. Neither of them had a clue we were there.
“Because you don’t help Van Gogh paint or Thomas Edison invent or Kristen Stewart scowl for the cameras,” Dick said with an admiring sigh. “Adding another person is superfluous.”
“Awww.” Marc rested his head on Dick’s shoulder. “That’s beautiful.” Dick grinned and reached up to ruffle Marc’s short hair. Tried to, anyway; sometime in the last day or two Marc had chopped it brutally short.