EIGHTEEN

"Sinclair."

More silence. Ye gods. The sexiest coolest most maddening man I'd ever met, a guy I loved more than my own life, and he was sulking. Over Fur and Burr! Yerrggh, I could still smell the little monsters all over him.

"Sinclair, you couldn't just steal those puppies."

Nothing. Argh, he knew I hated the silent treatment. I'd honestly rather be at a poetry reading. Or scrubbing toilets at the airport. The silent treatment was just so ... silent. The only thing it left me with were my thoughts. And that was awful.

"Come on! Count up all the reasons this is a terrible idea: we don't have leashes, we don't have puppy chow, we don't know what shots they've had and if they need more, we're not set up for puppies, what with all the vampires and zombies and werewolves living at the mansion these-"

"Zombie, singular. Werewolf, singular."

"We're not set up for it! Plus we live in a big gorgeous expensive mansion full to the attic with antiques and old wood and also the undead ... can you imagine the havoc two puppies could wreak?"

From the slight smile on his face, he could. Meanwhile, just the thought of what those two could get up to with their puppy shenanigans left me cold(er) all over. Giselle wasn't the, um, cuddliest pet, but she knew where to poop and she stayed the hell out of my way. As a return courtesy, I stayed the hell out of hers. It worked! It was, come to think of it, a perfect relationship...

"Okay, shouldn't have used that last as an example. You should see your eyes, man, they lit up like a pinball machine!"

"My eyes do not light up."

"Oh yes they do. Listen, back to my point-"

"Your interminable point."

"You know how needy dogs are ... someone's always got to walk them or play with them or give them shots or ... you know ... all the dog stuff you've gotta do with dogs all the time, and how's that gonna work? Sinclair, you can't go out during the day without doing an impression of a comet hitting the earth's atmosphere! You can't take care of puppies. And are they really your puppies if someone else is doing all the work?"

The second it was out, I wished I could take it back. Wished I'd never opened my stupid flapping mouth in the first place. I was the only vampire who could bear sunlight. And my husband, my king, the child of farmers and the earth and the sun, missed sunlight almost as much as he missed his long-dead family. If he'd been born during the right decade, he could have been a flower child, that's how into nature the poor schmuck was.

"Point," was all he said.

I still felt shitty, though. And the best way to leave my faux pas in the dust was to barrel on ahead to the next faux pas, to wit: "And-and they aren't our puppies to take, anyway. What's poor Jon Delk gonna think when he gets back from his eleventh huge book tour only to find he's two dogs short? Didn't we do enough to almost ruin his life in the old timeline? Now we've gotta steal dogs in the new one? Hmm ... Delk running to me was actually a good thing ... that's so weird, me being an asset and not the other thing."

"I doubt he would notice ... he left them."

I could almost hear his teeth grinding, which was a scary thought. I tucked my legs beneath me so I could face him. "Now, come on. You heard Laura ... he's got dog sitters or whatever coming over four times a day for feedings and walks and, I dunno, puppy pedicures and stuff. We're lucky we missed them."

"They're lucky."

"Stop that. Jon set all that stuff up before he even left for the first city on his tour." Laura had known all about Jon's book tour and dog-sitting plans. When I asked her how she'd stumbled across all this, I'd gotten a mysterious, "I followed some bread crumbs my mother left," for an answer. Which didn't make me feel any better, or more secure, but I had other things to obsess over.

"Besides," I summed up, "we've got bigger problems. Vampires are trendy now."

"Truly a nightmare vision of a horrifying future."

"Well. Yeah." We really needed to have sex soon. Almost everything he said was pissing me off, and I was sure almost everything I said was pissing him off. More so than usual, even. Terrifying thought. "And we've still got to figure out Marc's deal. And his dad."

"Sorry?" Sinclair stopped glaring through the windshield long enough to look at me. "His father?"

"Well, yeah. Did we even notify him that Marc was dead? I didn't. I didn't have that homophobic idiot's address or anything, and frankly, I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to look. Marc didn't leave a will, just his journal. He forbade a funeral-he wasn't even buried (and now we know why). Only now Marc's ... back. So do we tell his dad, Colonel Homophobia? Or not?"

"Likely we should ask Marc," he said, looking thoughtful. "Interesting that we can ask Marc, but it does not change the fact..."

"We fucked up."

"We were careless," he amended. "But not without cause."

"So with cause. We had tons of cause! But it's another one of the little details that always seem to bite us on the ass. If I were gonna take over the world-and I won't-but if I was-and I'm not-I'd hire a whole team of people whose only job would be taking care of the ass-biting details I always forget about."

"A whole team, beloved?"

"A squadron."

"The ass-biting team?"

"A battalion."

He laughed, and I did, too. So it was a little better.

For a while.

NINETEEN

"You stupid, stupid, stupid woman." It was safe to say the Antichrist was displeased. "After what we saw in the future, and the past? Oh, Betsy! How could you be so stupid?"

"Hey, hey! Two stupids are all you're gonna need to cover my many mental deficiencies. And I didn't do"-I pointed to Marc-"that. In fact, I was wondering if you did it. Look! Look at what you may or may not have done, you bad, bad Antichrist!"

"I have a name," Marc the Zombie said.

"See? He's talking and he has a name! The dead guy is talking and has a name ... somebody has to answer for this grossness."

The zombie looked irked. "Well, I love you, too, Betsy."

I shrugged my shoulders in apology. "I know, sorry, but you know what I mean, Marc-the main reason you let yourself be seen was so you could find out the answers to those exact same questions, so this is a bad time to get picky. Now shush. The grown-ups are talking."

"This is bad." Laura sat down so quickly, I had the feeling it was plop onto the sofa or fall down. Poor kid ... I knew how she felt. "This is..."

"Bad?" Marc asked politely.

"Do the others..." Laura asked in a near whisper, glancing toward the entrance hall. We were in the first parlor off the hall, with almost the whole rest of the house beyond that parlor. "Do they know about this?"

"Oh yeah. No need to lower your voice. Like, at all."

"Oh." She thought about it for a second, then looked alarmed. "Oh."

"Yeah. See, Jessica knows so much she brained me with a kitchen chair, and Nick/Dick's kept her out of the way ever since. I won't say I didn't have it coming, but it was still pretty rude. Antonia knows so much she didn't give a shit, and Garrett knows so much he was politely interested for half a second and then ran off to crochet a grill cover or whatever the heck he's working on now."

"Oh my God." At Sinclair's near-imperceptible flinch (was it me, or was he getting better at handling the G word?), Laura managed a smile. "Sorry, Eric. But this..."

"Let me guess. It's bad?" Marc asked.

"Sorry." The Antichrist was huge with the apologies. And you'd never get a more beautifully written thank-you note than the one Laura popped in the mail on real stationery. "Marc ... please don't misunderstand ... I'm glad for you-I-" She raised her arms, and he slowly crossed the room to her, bent, and gave her a stiff hug. She didn't stand, just sort of halfheartedly raised her arms and hugged-shrugged back. I couldn't tell if the awkward body language was because he had to move his creaky zombie arms, or because he was embarrassed and unsure how hard to hug her back. Or even if he should have hugged at all. I've seen hugs between people suing each other that had more warmth and spontaneity. "Are you glad for you?"

Really good question, one I was instantly embarrassed not to have thought of. So I gave Marc my full attention.

"Glad?" Marc had been the one to let us in; he knew we were meeting Laura and knew the three of us were coming back to the mansion. He knew the plan was to shock Laura with ... well ... him. Exhibit A: Behold and ye shall see before ye a zombie. Now take it back, ye sinner!

And it had worked. Laura had been plenty shocked. But not shocked enough, I guess, or about the right things. We weren't any closer to knowing what had happened than we were before she'd walked into our house. "Glad?"

"Uh," was as far as I got before the zombie blew.

"I am not glad! I am pissed, okay? Okay? I killed myself to avoid all kinds of bullshit! And what did I get after I killed myself? More bullshit! I am very far from glad right now! I am all the way around the world from glad! Okay, Laura? Okay?"

"Yes," she whispered, and looked at the floor.

"Oh, hell," Marc said, and rubbed his eyes. He was dressed in new scrubs-he must have absconded with, like, a dozen pairs, and his hair was military-neat. Knowing how much he loved to change his look-buzz cut to mullet to Caesar haircut to the Hugh Jackman-I felt even more sorry for him. Who cared about a zombie's hair, anyway? And could he even change it anymore?

"Right, Betsy?"

"Huh?"

"I'm so sorry."

"Oh. Well, that's okay." What did Marc have to be sorry for?

"Laura, I just-I can see by your face you can't-I didn't really have a plan for what to do if you weren't the one who did this. And you're clearly not."

Say it twice. The daughter of the Lord of Lies was a laughably bad liar, even by omission. She could barely maintain eye contact if she was trying to cheat at Monopoly (nobody gets that many Get Out of Jail Free cards in one lousy game ... who did the Antichrist think she was dealing with?).

Besides, if she had done it, she wouldn't have covered it up. If she had done it, she wouldn't lie about it. And it was obvious she had no idea what had happened to Marc ... or what to do next.

"Marc, I was very sorry about what happened to you-that other you-"

"The Marc Thing," I prompted.

"Right ... I was sorry about that. And I was sorry you-you hurt yourself." She'd been a little more than sorry. More like distraught at the thought of Marc being in her mother's clutches-burning in hell, in other words-because he'd killed himself. Though after what I'd seen the past few years, I was no longer certain who went to hell and why. I doubted Marc would have burned for eternity, suicide or not. If God isn't around to lend a hand, what was so bad about trying to fix your own life? Or death?

"And I-it's nice to see you," Laura continued, sounding like she was coughing up the words, "but I-I'm not sure-okay, this is going to sound terrible, but you're an abomination now."

"You're right," I told my sister. "It sounds terrible."

"That's not to say I don't still like you as a friend," she added quickly.

"And an abomination!" I added brightly. "I love you as an abomination. Speaking of the A word, Antichrist, what does that make you?"

"You stay out of this!" she snapped.

"Ooooh, did that one sting a little?" Marc shot me a grin and I instantly felt much better. And how lame was that? I had to be mean to my sister to feel better about myself. Where was an After-School Special when I needed one? "Sorry. So ... you, the Antichrist, were talking to Marc, the abomination, about how you felt about him being an abomination. And ... go."

"Shut up," she said helplessly, and covered her face with her hands.

Temper, temper, my queen. But his feelings-smug and amused-didn't match his tone. In my head. Yeah, I know how it sounds.

She's so fucking quick to hit people with the judgment stick! Makes me nuts. She's no angel. She's, um, half angel.

My husband laughed in my head, which had the dual attraction of giving me an idea, and making me feel better.

"So you should come over for Thanksgiving," I blurted out.

Shocked silence. Staring eyes. Horrified expressions.

"No, really. It'll be..." A disaster. A boneheaded idea. A clusterfuck. A Republican back in the White House. "Fun?"

"But you hate-"

"Hate!" Marc added.

"Darling Queen, you loathe Thanksgiving."

"Well, now I don't!" I snapped, annoyed they weren't embracing my brainstorm. I didn't get a lot of them. They could at least get on board when I did.

"Since wh-"

"It's a family holiday, right? Well. We're all family. Even the ones we aren't married to or the ones who have the same dads and we've had a hard time lately and I want us all to have Thanksgiving together as a family because, dammit, we're a family! So we're gonna give thanks for that! On Thanksgiving! Obey me!"

"Because it sounds like you're planning to kill us in our sleep," Marc replied, still looking perplexed. "And I'm okay with that, by the way. In fact, I need to talk to you, Betsy."

"My parents will be doing Meals on Wheels like every Thanksgiving," the Antichrist said, "but I could come over for the dinner. If that's okay." She gave me such a hopeful, pleased smile that I was instantly ashamed I had never thought of it before. All the Antichrist had ever wanted was to belong. And of course, she didn't, and wouldn't ever. Not really.

"So it's settled." Yeesh. What had I done in my moment of reckless madness? Every Native American was turning in their grave right this second. Oh, wait ... only the dead ones were doing that. "It's a done deal. We can't escape now." Hmm. Better rephrase before I spring it on Antonia and Garrett. Dickie/Nickie/Tavvi wouldn't care as long as Jessica didn't. And Jessica, I knew, would be in. Still rightfully pissed at me, The Belly That Ate the World would never turn down a free meal loaded with carbs.

"Ah, Laura," Sinclair said, extending a long-fingered hand in her direction. She looked up, then took his hand and he pulled her smoothly to her feet. "Come, let's have a drink in the kitchen."

"You know I don't drink," she said, but started to follow him as he led her out of the parlor.

"Yes, yes, I know you are a teetotaler until you are of legal age, which I find quite admirable, but that doesn't mean you can't have a glass of chai, or a shake."

"Strawberry?" the Antichrist said brightly while the king of the vampires led her out like a cosseted child.

"Oh yes," he promised, and out the door they went.

"Okay, Marc, I just had an-whoa."

Marc had also gotten up, and swiftly crossed the room until he was looming in front of me. I mean standing. Marc didn't loom. He was a good zombie. Guy! He was a good guy. That's what I meant. That wasn't some sort of psychological slipup.

It wasn't!

"You have to kill me, Betsy, because time is a wheel."

"Um ... what?"

"You have to kill me! I'm no good at it myself, clearly," he snapped. "So you're gonna do it."

"Then I'm gonna need a drink. And I'm sick of hearing about that wheel you're obsessed with."

"What?"

"Forget it."

Where? Where had it all gone wrong? Oh, right. The minute I woke up dead.

God, you sick fuck, we are gonna have such a talk when I catch up to you...