Undead and Unappreciated (3 page)

A
ndrea Mercer and Daniel Harris were waiting for me in one of the parlors, and I was glad to see them. Not just because of the distraction. I really liked them.

Andrea was a vampire, like me, and a young one, also like me. She'd been killed on her twenty-first birthday, about six years ago, and was starting to get a handle on the thirst.

Daniel was her boyfriend, a regular guy and an outrageous flirt, and I got a real kick out of spending time with them. They were total opposites: she was serious and moody, and he was fun and irreverent. But you could tell they really loved each other. I thought that was pretty cool.

“Your Majesty,” Andrea said, standing the minute she saw me. I waved her back down and sat down myself.

Daniel yawned and sprawled on the settee. He was a tall, blue-eyed, good-looking blond with the shoulders of a quarterback…put him in a horned helmet, and he'd be the spitting image of a marauding viking. He didn't stand when I entered, which was refreshing. “Betsy, babe. You guys can't have meetings at a decent hour?”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” I said good-naturedly. “What's up, you guys?”

“Thanks for seeing us,” Andrea said.

“No, thank
you,
” I mumbled. If not for them I'd still be smiling awkwardly at Sinclair and trying to figure out where to stuff the necklace.

“We'll get right to it, ma'am. Daniel asked me to marry him.”

“What? Seriously? That's great! Congratulations!”

“Thanks.” Andrea smiled and looked at the floor, then back up at me. “And the thing is, we'd like you to do it.”

“Do what?” Get married? According to some, I already was married.

But not according to me. As happy as I was for Andrea, I was suddenly so jealous I was ready to spit on her Payless-clad toes. Why, why,
why
couldn't Sinclair have
asked
me to marry him? Why did he have to trick me? Why did he bring me presents instead of apologizing and trying to make things right? If he loved me, he had a crummy way of showing it. And if he didn't, why did he fix it so we were stuck together for the next thousand years?

“To marry us,” Andrea was saying. Oops, better pay attention. “To perform the ceremony.”

“Oh.” This was a new one. As the queen, I could do all sorts of things other vampires couldn't do. Handle crosses, drink holy water, accessorize. But perform vampire wedding ceremonies? “Uh…I'm flattered but…can I do that?”

“Yes,” Sinclair said from two feet behind me. I nearly fell off the couch. The guy couldn't make noise when he walked like anybody else, oh no. Six foot four and as noisy as a cotton ball. “As the sovereign, you can perform any ceremony you wish, including weddings.”

“Oh. Jeez, you guys, I don't know what to say…”

“Say yes,” Daniel said. “Because we can't get a priest. And Andy's got her heart set on you doing it, don't ask me why.”

Andy (not that anybody else could get away with calling her that) nodded. “That's true.”

“Which part?” I teased.

“All of it. Will you help us?”

“But…” But I didn't know how. But I wouldn't know what to say. But it would be really depressing for me to marry another couple, knowing I would never have a proper wedding. But it was ridiculous, having a secretary perform the wedding ceremony. “When's the big day?” I asked, surrendering.

They looked at each other, then back at me. “We figured we'd leave that up to you,” Daniel said. “You know, with your busy queen schedule and all.” Typical guy.

“When do you want to get married?” I asked her. She'd have picked out a date the second he proposed.

She hesitated for a second, glanced at Daniel, then said, “Halloween.”

“Oh, cool!” And it would be.
So
cool. A Halloween wedding ceremony…with vampires! Plus, more than two weeks to figure out exactly what the heck I was supposed to do.

Daniel looked vaguely alarmed. Again, typical guy. “That's kind of quick, don't you think?”

“That's okay,” I said, trying to catch Andrea's eye while she glared daggers at her beloved. “Yeah, okay, that'll work. Do you want to have it here?”

Again she hesitated, and again she glanced at Daniel, who shrugged and relaxed back on the couch. “If that wouldn't be too big an imposition, Your Majesty.”

“It's no trouble. It's not like we don't have the space. Besides, we haven't had a decent party here in…ever.” I started to cheer up a little, picturing myself in a severe black suit and pumps in maybe a dark purple. Or burnt orange, for the holiday? No, purple.

“Thank you so much,” Andrea was saying—oops, they were leaving. All business, that was Andrea. Plus Daniel was still yawning. It couldn't be easy, adjusting to the undead's schedule. I used to waitress at a truck stop during graveyard shift (years before I knew what the graveyard shift
really
was), and no matter how much I slept during the day, I always wanted a nap around four a.m. “We'll be in touch.”

“No problem,” I replied, walking them to one of the house's sixty doors. “Talk to you soon. And congratulations again.”

They said their good-byes, the door shut, and I turned to see Sinclair had followed me. “He asked her to marry him?” he asked, staring after them thoughtfully.

“Yeah,” I replied. “You should try it sometime.” Then I walked past him and marched up the stairs to my bedroom.

W
hich was really stupid, because I had work to do tonight. I had to check on Scratch and the Fiends. So I pushed up my bedroom window, popped the screen, stuck a leg over the windowsill, and jumped.

One of the few nice things about being dead is it's pretty much impossible to die again. So a three-story fall was no problem at all. It didn't hurt; it didn't even knock the breath (what breath?) out of me. It was like jumping off the bed.

I hit the grass, rolled, stood up, shook the dead leaves out of my hair, examined the grass stain on my left knee…then remembered I'd forgotten my keys and my purse, and went to ring the front doorbell.

Finally,
I was in my car, headed to my nightclub, Scratch.

It wasn't really mine. Okay, it was, by vampire law, which was confusing. The way it worked was, if you kill a vampire, all their property becomes yours. Vampires generally don't have kids or families to leave stuff to, and probate only happens during daylight hours anyway. So, I'd killed this rotten vampire, Monique, and she owned, like, eight businesses, and now they were all mine, but the only one I was really interested in was Scratch. I had Jessica's accountant put all the others—the school, the French restaurant, the Swiss spa (that one hurt to let go)—up for sale. Tried to, anyway. It was complicated not least because I couldn't prove I legally owned them. And, like a stubborn ass, I didn't want Sinclair's help. If they sold, I'd worry about what to do with the money later. Meanwhile, I was trying to hang on to Scratch, but it wasn't easy.

I was glad Monique was gone—well, dead. And not because I got her car and her businesses. Not
just
because of that. Monique had been bad, even for a vampire. She'd tried—repeatedly—to kill me, but worse, she'd killed other vampires to get to me. And she'd ruined my shirt. She had to go.

I'd been a secretary and office manager for years before I died, so managing a nightclub—handling the paperwork, anyway—was something I could actually do. Probably. If the other vampires would give me a chance. Trouble was, they hated my guts. I guess employee loyalty was big in the vampire world. They were pretty pissed that I'd offed the boss.

Not that any of them told me that in so many words. No, they kept their gazes averted and didn't speak to me unless spoken to. This made it easy to give orders but tough to strike up a conversation.

So I pulled up outside the club—it looked like an old brownstone, except with valet parking—and went inside. Deader than shit (no pun intended), as usual.

“Okay, well,” I told one of them…I was having the worst time remembering their names. Probably because they never volunteered them. And vampires didn't go for those blue and white
HELLO MY NAME IS
———stickers. “We've got to get customers to start coming here again.”

“Your Majesty knows how to do that,” he replied, staring over my shoulder, which always made me think there was a monster sneaking up on me. Maybe there was. He was about my height, and about my coloring—blond, with light eyes—long slender fingers, and (no joke!) a slight overbite.

“Don't start up with that shit,” I told Slight Overbite. “I mean a way to get customers where eighty people don't die a week.”

See, the way the vampires liked to run things, they could have “sheep,” a detestable word that meant a human slave/partner, and they could drink blood right out on the dance floor, and if a regular person got on their nerves, bye-bye regular person. Forget it! It was morally wrong, and I'd never get OSHA off my ass.

“That was under the old management,” I told him. “We've been over this. Look, we can run a profitable nightclub for vampires without having to be horrible to regular people.”

“We can?” he asked, now looking around at the totally deserted dance floor.

“Oh, shut up. Look: put your thinking cap on your tiny little head, because we're doing it. If you were a dead guy, wouldn't you like to hang out in a place where you won't get hassled?”

“Yes. And where I could drink and have fun.”

“No,
no
. I mean, yeah, drink, have a daiquiri, have three, go crazy. Not…you know.” I made a slashing gesture across my throat.

He shrugged.

“We're
going
to make it work, Slight Overbite,” I reminded him. This had been my mantra for the last three months.

He shrugged again.

 

“Majesty!” Alice cried, running out to greet me. At least somebody was happy to see me tonight. Well, that wasn't fair. Andrea and Daniel had been happy to see me. They'd even
come
to see me. Well, to ask a favor. Still, it was nice to have any kind of company. “Welcome! You should have told me you were coming.”

“How's it going, Alice?” As always, I admired her undead creamy complexion (she'd been turned into a vampire after puberty but before adolescence really got its claws into her, so no zits, ever). “How are the Fiends doing?”

“Really well,” she enthused. “One of them escaped, but I got him back before he killed anyone this time.”

I shuddered. “Good work. Is it the same one, the one who keeps getting out?” Nostro's property—another vampire I killed, and don't go making assumptions, because I'm not that kind of queen—had a high fence around it, but the Fiends were weirdly clever. More animal than human, they were vampires who hadn't been allowed to feed and had gone feral. This happened under previous management, you understand.

Anyway, I didn't feel right about staking them—it wasn't
their
fault they'd gone insane with a supernatural hunger for blood—and resisted heavy pressure from Sinclair and Tina to put an end to them. Alice was my Fiend keeper. She kept them clean, kept them fed, kept an eye on them, kept them from feasting on the local children.

“It's George,” Alice confirmed. “He's a free spirit, I guess.”

He was an insane nutty vampire who forgot how to walk upright, but never mind. “I can't believe you've named them. Sinclair freaked when you told him. Run them by me again.”

“Happy, Skippy, Trippy, Sandy, Benny, Clara, Jane, and George.”

I laughed. “Right, right. Good job.” I tried to sober up. Poor things. It wasn't right to laugh at them. “So, you got George back?”

“Yes. He wasn't out for long this time. If you're looking for him, he's right behind you, Majesty.”

I whirled. I loathed how vampires could sneak up on me, and the Fiends were…well, fiendish. George looked exactly like the others, with raggedy long hair, long filthy nails (Alice did her best, but like all of us, she had her limitations), unkempt and hungry-looking, with filthy clothes.

Though, thanks to Alice, they didn't look quite as wild-eyed as usual. They scuttled like dogs…she was trying to remind them how to walk upright, but they always toppled over, then scampered away. The others stuck around, since they were being fed, but George was a wanderer.

Right now, he was inching toward me and sniffing the air. The Fiends, luckily for me, were weirdly devoted. In fact, they'd devoured Nostro for me. (I tried to delegate when I could.)

“Quit that,” I told him. I never knew how to speak to them. It was wrong to treat them like pets, but they weren't exactly human, either.

“Stop running away. Be good and listen to Alice.”

“I don't exactly talk to them,” she explained. “But I appreciate the support, Majesty.”

“How's the house? Everything running okay?” I was talking about Nostro's sprawling mansion and grounds, which—have I mentioned this?—were all mine since I'd axed his sorry bloodsucking butt this past spring. You couldn't pay me to live in the creepy place, though, so Alice was my caretaker. Unlike
some
unnamed employees of a certain nightclub I could mention, she was helpful and nice. “You'd tell me if you needed a hand, right?”

“Oh, yes, Majesty,” she lied. It was a point of pride with Alice that I relied on her so heavily to take care of the Fiends for me. She'd never admit to needing help. Yes, George got out once in a while, but if not for her, they'd
all
be out, all the time.

Sure, I felt bad about the two guys he'd eaten, but since the guys in question had been devoured while attacking lone women on the street, not
too
bad. “Of course, I would let you know. But everything's fine.” She looked down at George, who was nibbling on his palm and looking up at the moon. “We're all fine.”