Undead and Unappreciated (6 page)

“W
ow!” Jessica said, shaking her head. “I heard it with my own ears, and I still don't believe she did it. Man, that's cold. Even for her.”

“Most disagreeable,” Sinclair agreed.

“Well…” Marc hesitated, then dunked his cookie into his tea until half of it dropped into the cup with a small plunk. Yech! I could never understand why he drank his cookies instead of eating them. “I'm not the biggest fan of Betsy's dad and stepmom, but if Antonia had a family history of that sort of thing—fugues or whatever—think how she must have felt. One minute she's pregnant, the next she's lost almost an entire year.” He shook his head. “She must have been scared shitless.”

“Anybody would have been,” I added, “but her especially because of her family history.” I noticed everyone was staring at me. “What? I can put myself in her shoes. Her tacky, plastic shoes. I don't like her, and I definitely don't think she should have dumped my kid sister off in a hospital lobby, but I still feel kind of bad for her.”

“Humph,” Jessica said. She wasn't eating or drinking anything, just sitting at the table with the rest of us, her bony arms folded over her chest. “Listen, Tina, you were saying you thought you knew what happened the nine months the Ant was non compos mentis?”

Tina didn't say anything. After a moment, it got awkward.

“Uh, Tina? Hello?”

Sinclair sighed.

“Uh-oh,” Marc said to his tea.

“Elizabeth,” he began. “There is something I must tell you.”

I carefully set down my cup. This never,
ever
boded well. It was never ‘I bought you six dozen flowers and forgot you don't like yellow.' It was always stuff like ‘By the way, now you're the queen' or ‘Hey, I'm moving in.'

“Hit me,” I said. I would have taken a deep breath to brace myself, but that would have just made me dizzy.

“This is…a private matter.”

“Right,” Marc said, standing and pulling Jessica out of her chair. “We'll just go.”

“Right,” Jessica said, catching on. “We'll, uh, be dusting something. In one of the rooms.” They hurried out, and I heard her whisper, “She'll tell us later anyway.”

“Possibly not,” Tina said.

“I had an ulterior motive when we went to your stepmother's house.”

“You
did
?
You
did? An ulterior motive?
You?
No way!”

“The Book of the Dead talks about your sibling.”

“How do you know? I thought if you read that thing too long, you lost your mind.”

“I have been reading bits and pieces of it over the last several decades.”

I digested that one. “Okayyyyyy. So the Book knew I had a sister roaming around the wilds of wherever.” Then it hit me, what he was saying. “
You
knew I had a sister.”

“Yes.”

“You knew I had a sister.” I guess I felt like if I said it out loud enough, it would be less painful? “You
knew
I had a
sister.
”

“Yes. Until today, I had thought the sibling in question was the baby your stepmother is carrying now.” Then he added, totally calmly, “I was working my way up to telling you.”

“Eric!” Jessica shouted from the hallway. “Work
with
me!” She raced in, Marc on her heels. “What is the
matter
with you? I fix it so you can move in, but this is the sort of thing that makes her nuts. Crazy,
in
sane!”

“I think it's safe to say,” I said through numb lips, “that I'm feeling a little insane right now.”

“It's just that you had so many other things to worry about,” Tina said quickly, trying to cover Sinclair's ass as usual. “Being sovereign and solving the murders from this summer and the—the house situation and the other vampires not respecting your position and all of that. That's why he had to go to Eur—never mind. He—we felt you had enough on your plate without worrying about your sister being the daughter of the devil and taking over the world.”

I had been holding my teacup in both hands and accidentally squashed it like a bug. Jessica winced. Marc just stared at all of us.
“What?”

Tina bit her lip. “Oh dear.”

“Thank you for your assistance,” Sinclair replied dryly.

Jessica dumped the cookies and crackers off the silver tray, walked around the table, and cracked Sinclair over the head with it. With a hollow
bonnnng!
, the silver dented. Sinclair didn't turn, just kept his steady, dark gaze on me.

“Lower,” I said.

“You're so evicted,” she told him.

I
t was going to be sunrise soon enough, so I figured I should change into shorts and a T-shirt. What I really wanted to do was talk to Jessica about all that had happened that night, but she'd disappeared after assaulting Sinclair. There was still time to track her down…

I decided to cheer myself up by wearing my bargains, a $180 pair of white-and-black loafers. I'd be the best-dressed dead girl in the house. Then when I rose tomorrow night, I'd be ready for action. What kind of action, I had no idea. I'd worry about that then.

Meanwhile, I paired the bargains with black anklets, a black and white skirt, my cashmere mock turtleneck (a gift from Jess…the thing was practically indestructible in the hands of a good dry cleaner), and my black wool blazer. I checked myself out in the mirror and thought: adorable. I immediately felt better.

I guess this sounds kind of shallow, but it's harder to be depressed when you put yourself together as best you can. To put it another way, my life might be in the toilet again, but with my hair combed, my eye shadow coordinated, and my bra matching my underpants, I was ready for whatever the world threw at me.

I walked out of my room, down the stairs, down about six hallways, and into the kitchen, where Marc was eating Cheerios. I could hear Jess rummaging around on the other side of the room.

Without looking up from his cereal he said, “Nope.”

I trudged back to my room, but not so quickly I couldn't hear Jessica talking to Marc.

“What was that? Where'd she go? I was looking for her.”

“She's too tall to pull off the schoolgirl thing.”

“I thought she looked cute.”

“She looked like a blond zebra. Look, I'm her friend; it's my job to tell her this stuff.”

“It's your job to pay rent. It's
my
job to tell her that stuff. You're a picky bitch,” Jessica replied.

“Now who's spouting clichés? I'm gay so I'm bitchy?”

“No, you're gay
and
you're bitchy. I think she's had a tough enough week. And it's only Tuesday!”

“Right, so the last thing she needs is a fashion clashin'…” He trailed off (or I got far enough away) and I shut my bedroom door.

Nuts. Well, switch to leggings, stick with the mock and the blazer, and change into sandals. No, it was thirty degrees outside. Not that I was going outside. But you weren't really dressed until your toes had something under them. Penny loafers, I guessed.

I was just putting my bargains back into the closet when there was a knock at my door.

“Come in, Jess.”

“Well, I thought you looked cute,” she said by way of greeting.

“I think he's right. I'm too tall. You'd look good in that outfit. You want it?”

“No thanks. I want to talk about what happened earlier—” She glanced out the window. “You got time?”

“Yeah, half an hour, at least.” I never saw the sun, though it couldn't hurt me. One of the perks of being the vampire queen. “Ugh, how awful was that whole thing?”

“No wonder Sinclair was so interested in tagging along tonight,” she added, sitting next to me on the bed. “He knew, and he didn't tell you. Didn't warn you or anything.”

“I
know
! See, see? Everyone's all ‘Oh, give Sinclair a chance, he's not so bad' because they don't see the evil, dark, yukky, nutty side of him. He is the Almond Joy of my life.”

“Honey, I'm convinced. That was pretty sneaky, even for him. Are you okay? It must have been a shock. You want another cup of tea or something?”

“No.” I wanted not to be dead, but of course that wasn't happening anytime soon. No point bitching about it right that minute. But knowing me, I'd get back to it later. “I'm so full of tea I'm seeping. Thanks for smacking him for me.”

“It was either bonk him on the head or stab him with his own butter knife.”

“That could have been fun. And thanks for evicting him.”

“I don't think it'll work.” She frowned. “He won't leave.”

“Vampires and cockroaches. They're impossible to get out of the ducts.”

“So, what? What does this mean?”

“I have no idea. I was starting to get used to the Ant being knocked up.”

“Lie.”

“Okay, you're right, I was still kind of freaked. But now I'm sort of getting used to the idea that I've got another sibling, never mind that she's the daughter of the devil. Not the Ant. The
devil
. But—and stop me if you've heard this before—what am I supposed to do about it?”

Jessica shrugged.

“There's gotta be more to it than that. I suppose I'll have to go to him and get the rest of the story.”

“Screw that.”

“Amen.” I flopped down onto my bedspread. “I knew it was too quiet around here,” I mumbled into my pillow. “Something was bound to happen. I was expecting zombies to come out of the walls or something.”

“Bets, I think it's time.”

“No.”

“Yes, it is. You need it, and you're ready.”

“It's too soon.”

“I know it's scary,” she said, rubbing my back, “but you'll feel better. You know it's the right thing to do.”

“I'm not ready,” I replied, scared.

“Yes. You are. It's okay, I'll be there with you.”

I shook my head, but she wouldn't be dissuaded.

 

The next evening…

 

“Oh my
Gawd,
” the pedicurist said. “
What
have you been
doing
with your
feet
?”

“She's been dead for the last six months,” Jessica said helpfully from the opposite chair.

“I don't
care,
that's no
excuse
. Gawd, they're like
hooves
. You've got to take better care of them. What about that cucumber cream I gave you last spring? It doesn't apply
itself,
y'know.”

“I've been busy,” I said defensively. “You know, with stuff.” Solving murders. Trying to run Scratch. Restraining myself from jumping Sinclair's bones. Not that I wanted to do that anymore. I think it would be fair to say my desire for him had been thoroughly squashed. I didn't want those big hands on me or those firm lips on me or that big—anyway, squashed, thoroughly squashed.

“
Everybody's
got stuff, you've
got
to take care of your
feet
.”

“And they'll take care of you,” Jessica and I chorused obediently.

The pedicurist was sawing at my heels with a pumice stone. “Right! See, girls, you listen to me. Never mind about
stuff
. Foot care
has
to come first.”

“Uh-huh.” Maybe I could take her a little more seriously if she'd been out of high school more than twenty minutes. “I'll keep it in mind.”

“Okeydokey then.”

Jessica rolled her eyes at me, and I grinned back. “For a rich girl, you've got tough feet.”

“Off my case, blondie. Yours aren't better.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Didn't we just establish that there's nothing—not a single thing—more important than foot care?”

“Give me a break,” I muttered.

The pedicurist dipped my feet back in the swirling water, then shook the bottle of nail polish. “Good choice,” she told me.

“I like the classics,” I replied. Revlon's Cherries in the Snow. A great, dark red. I didn't like dark colors on my fingernails, but I liked them on my toes all right.

“There, now,” Jessica sighed as her pedicurist rubbed her toes. “Told you. You needed this.”

“I'm not arguing. Heck, for a couple of minutes I forgot about the whole my sister is a child of Satan thing.”

“How are
her
feet?”

“Not as good as yours,” I told the girl, which was probably the truth.

 

When I rose the next night, my feet were bare and unpolished. Unpumiced. They looked exactly the way they had the day I died.

I cried for five minutes—not over my stupid toes but for what it meant—and then I went downstairs and locked myself in the library with the Book of the Dead.

I
picked up the wing chair from beside the fireplace (carefully…the thing was probably ten times older than me) and jammed it under the doorknob. It wasn't likely anyone was going to come looking for me—Tina and Sinclair were avoiding me entirely, and Marc and Jessica were probably asleep—but I wasn't taking any chances.

I was pretty damned sick of, “Oh, did I forget to tell you? That was in the Book of the Dead, too.” I was going to sit down with the awful fucking thing and read it cover to cover. No more surprises. No more worrying about Sinclair holding out on me.

No having to go to Sinclair to get the whole story.

I picked the thing up off the stand, already grossed out. It was bound in human skin, how perfectly yuck-o, and felt warm to the touch, though that was probably because it was only a few feet away from the fireplace.

The Book. If the Bible was the Good Book, then this thing was the Terrible Bad Book. It supposedly had all sorts of vampire factoids within its nasty binding, and Sinclair had rescued it from his blazing mansion and stuck it in my house. We all avoided it like nobody's business. At least, I used to think so. But apparently Sinclair had been coming in the library and reading bits of it now and then. And keeping the good parts to himself, the treacherous prick.

I sat down, looking at the cover for a moment.
Tabla Morto
. The Book of the Extremely Creepy. Was that Latin? I didn't know from Latin. I peeked in the back…Was there an index? Could I look up “Betsy's sister” and save a lot of time? Nope, just a bunch of really disturbing pictographs back there. Never mind; I wasn't here to save time, I was here to save aggravation.

Chapter one, page one, here I come.

I wasn't scared. It was just a book. It couldn't hurt me. Nothing could hurt me. Except stupid Sinclair. No, that wasn't true. I was mad because he was keeping secrets, that was all. My king shouldn't keep secrets.
The
king shouldn't keep secrets, is what I meant.

The king. Sure. Some king. Fat lot of help he was to me, or anybody. Okay, there was that whole fighting for my crown and almost dying incident, but he wanted power, not me. He knew stuff, private stuff about me, but instead of sitting down for a helpful chin-wag
with me,
he kept secrets and was all, “Don't read the Book too long in one sitting or you'll go insane.” If that didn't work when I was a freshman in bio, it wasn't going to work now.

Right, right, I was following. That was Nostro and all the other little tin-pot dictators making Fiends and generally being disgusting. There really weren't any bosses until Sinclair and I came along. Which was weird, if you sat down and thought about it. Human beings had always had bosses…kings, queens, presidents, loan officers. Vampires managed to avoid them, by accident or design, until I came along.

See, what happened was, one vampire would intimidate and torture a bunch of others until he or she was ostensibly in charge, until another, jerkier one came along, and the whole thing started all over again.

Maybe they weren't so different from humans after all.

Hmm, how 'bout that? I shallll overrrrrcommme…

Yeah, yeah, I knew all this. Tina and Sinclair had told me this around the time Nostro bit true dust. And what they didn't tell me I found out on my own—apparently I could see ghosts. Unlike Haley Joel Osment's claims, they
did
know they were dead.

As for keeping secrets, the Book of the Yukky was wrong, wrong, wrong. That's all the dead did these days.

Beloved of the morning star? I figured that was fancy talk for the devil. Take the world? Take it where? Take it over? Ack! So not only did I have a secret evil sister, but she was fated to take over the world, just like I was fated to rule the vampires with Sinclair?

Damn. Quite the family tree. What was up with my dad's genetics?

And what was the big deal? Why not tell me? Okay, it sounded bad when you just blurted it out: “You're the queen; if you have sex with me, I'm the king; your sister is the devil's daughter and might or might not take over the world. Cream and sugar?” But was that really so fucking hard to say?

I was starting to get a headache, which wasn't uncommon since I had been reading for…what? I looked at my watch. Jesus, I'd been locked in here for three hours! And I'd read maybe ten pages. I didn't have this much trouble with an Umberto Eco novel.

It was the text. It was almost impossible to read this archaic crap which, I might add, had never been spell checked.

And the headache. How could I concentrate when my head was throbbing like a fucking rotten tooth?

But you don't get headaches anymore.

It was so fucking hard to concentrate.

You haven't had a headache since you became a vampire.

The light in here was bad, too. In fact, the light was fucking terrible.

A Vampyre.

Queen this and Vampyre that and secret sisters; it was all such a payn in the ass.

The Queen of the Vampyres.

Well, back to it. This nice warm book—at least my hands weren't cold for a change—wasn't going to memorize itself.

But it is nothing to worry about. In fact, you need not worry about a thing. Not one thing. The devil won't be as bad as you think; mostly that whole Lord of Lies thing is all hype.

And your sister might be a problem, but nothing you can't handle. What you should really handle is Eric Sinclair, because while he's a pain in the ass, he's also going to come in pretty handy, so you should stay on his good side.

Also, why are you wasting your time with all the sheep? For crying out loud. This is your damn house, and the sooner the lice crawling around on top of it figure it out, the better.

Hmm. For an evil book written by an insane vampire who could see the future…

How did I know that?

…written in blood and bound in human skin, this thing was making a lot of sense.

So just do your job…be the boss, run things your way, and rip the throat out of anyone who forgets who's in charge.

You know, I
had
been letting things slide a little.

I couldn't believe I'd been worried about reading the Book of Good Sense! Finally, I was seeing things clearly. It was all so obvious. The first thing I had to do was go down to Scratch and tell Slight Overbite that he'd been 100 percent right about the best way to run a vampire watering hole. Then I'd—

“Betsy! Are you in there? What are you doing?”
Wham Wham Wham!
“There's something wrong with the door!”

—clean up my house. That was so fucking typical. Nothing going on in this room was any of Jessica's damned business, but she was nosing around banging on doors and demanding answers. I'd been putting up with it for too long, and I was done now.

I got up from the small couch, slapped the book closed, laid it tenderly on the stand, and walked over to the door.

“Bets! What's going on? Are you okay? You're not doing anything weird and vampirey in there, are you?”

I grabbed the chair blocking the door and tossed it so hard it crashed into the far side of the room. I noticed I'd yanked it so roughly it had bent the knob. Oh well. Plenty more where those came from.

I jerked the door open.

“Is everything—” Her eyes widened. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said, then slapped her so hard her head banged against the doorframe and bounced off. She staggered and almost lost her feet, grabbed for my shoulder to steady herself, thought better of it, and leaned against the door. One hand flew to her cheek, and the other flew to the side of her head. I smelled the blood before I saw it start to trickle through her fingers.

“Betsy, wh—why—wh—”

“Don't bother me when I'm working again, or you'll get another one.”

“But—b—b—”

“And I wouldn't advithe interrupting me, either,” I told her sweetly. Her eyes were so big, her fear was so big. It was awesome. And ohhhhh, the blood. Just going to waste running through those annoying veins. I smacked her again, and it was kind of funny to see she couldn't dodge it in time, didn't even know my hand had moved until her other cheek started to throb. “I have to thay, I thould have done thith yearth ago.”

“Betsy, what's
wrong
?” she cried, and I decided not to kill her. She was irritating, and I'd probably get her money when I pulled her head off—she didn't have any family—but even though she was scared shitless, she was wondering what was wrong with me.

What
is
wrong with you?

I decided I would keep her around; it'd be good to have a sheep who worried about my well-being no matter what I did to her.

And ohhhh, the blood. Did I mention the blood just going to waste?

“Nothing'th wrong,” I told her, almost laughing at her terrified expression. “Not one thingle thing.” Then I seized her shoulders, jerked her toward me, and took a big yummy chomp out of the side of her neck.

She screamed, and her hands came up, too late—way too late. It almost took the fun out of it; she was so slow. Her hands beat against me while I drank, but I didn't even feel it; instead I was thinking,
Blood taken by force tastes better.
It was weird, but there it was. I didn't make the rules.

I let her go when I was done, and she hit the carpet so hard she raised a cloud of dust. She crawled away from me, sobbing, and curled up under one of the end tables. I licked her blood from my fangs and felt them retract…one of these days I was going to get the hang of this, by God. Sinclair could make his come and go whenever he wanted.

Ummm…Sinclair.

“So, let's recap,” I told her, bending down so I could see her under the table. “Don't interrupt me when I'm working, don't cut me off…really, just leave me alone unless I need you. In fact, it's probably better not to speak until spoken to. I'm glad we had this little chat,” I finished cheerfully. It was good to get the new ground rules out into the open. “I'll see you later. Oh, and I'll need a check for three thousand dollars. There's a sale at Marshall Field's.”

I left, carefully shutting the library door behind me. Oh, goody, the doorknob worked, even if it was bent on the inside. I should reward myself for not wrecking it.

Make it four thousand dollars.