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Authors: MaryJanice Davidson

BOOK: Undead and Unfinished
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His mouth was slanting over mine, his arms were around me, I needed a shampoo in the worst way, and who cared?
Then it occurred to me: I was helping my husband cheat on me ... with me!
I extricated myself with difficulty—it would have been easier to wrestle free of a vat of Laffy Taffy. Fortunately Sinclair seemed inclined to let me go, or it would have taken much longer.
“So. Off you go.” I flapped my hands at him. “Make with the seduction so we fall in love. Shoo!”
“Yes, that seems sensible,” he said, sounding dazed. “I shall get right on that. You know, there’s something about you. Maybe it’s the strawberry body wash.” Damn. He could smell that under all my layers of grime? What a stud!
Then he wandered off . . . in the right direction, this time.
Chapter 60
l
scampered back toward my sister’s hiding place. “It worked! He’s gonna go make my life a living hell until I fall in love with him!”
“I know. It was disgusting.”
“You were peeking? Perv.”
“I needed to make sure you had everything under control,” she grumped. “What if he’d gone foaming, barking mad and tried to kill you?”
“I would have kicked his ass.”
“Ha!”
“Until he decided to fight back, at which point you would have rescued me.”
“There we go.”
“D’you know what this means?”
“You’re going to be more arrogant than usual?”
“Hell yeah! We’ve done everything! Your next jump will be the one that brings us home! Dammit.”
“What?”
“I’d finally gotten the theme from
Quantum Leap
out of my head. And why are we still cowering back here? Come on.”
I took her by the wrist and pulled her out from behind the big shiny tombstone. “So make with the Hellfire sword and cut us a door back home.”
“You’re certain you’re finished? You don’t want to tamper with your own past some more? When my mother said I’d be drawn to your history, I didn’t realize it meant you’d take the chance to pull a do-over on everything.”
“Yeah, I never thought I’d say this, but I owe Satan a favor. I’ve set things up so they’ll happen the way they’re supposed to. And I undid biting Nick and ruining his love life. But Laura, I didn’t know it’d get switched over on you. I wouldn’t have wanted you to get chomped.”
“That’s okay. I needed to know what it was like.”
Okay, that was odd. “Why the hell would you need to know that?”
She shrugged, reached for her waist . . . and was holding her sword. “Know thy enemy and suchlike.” Then she winked. “Not that you’re my enemy.”
“No, of course not.”
I didn’t like that wink.
Not at all.
“If we undid Nick getting chomped, maybe we can undo Antonia and Garrett dying!”
“No.”
“Yeah, it’ll be—what?”
We’d gone back behind the tombstone; Laura probably didn’t want to risk anyone seeing us when she hacked a doorway out of nothing.
“No, Betsy. That one you can’t undo, and you shouldn’t try. And if you did try,
I’d
try to stop you.”
I almost laughed, then remembered that my religious-prude half sis was, what was the phrase? Oh, yeah.
Demon spawn.
Probably an exceptionally bad idea to laugh. Ever.
“But why? C’mon, Laura, you’re one of the biggest softies I’ve ever met when you aren’t hacking your way through vampires and serial killers.”
She colored. “Thanks.”
“I figured you’d be the first one on board with saving lives.”
“Then you haven’t been paying attention. It’s not that I’m against saving lives, Betsy, you know that. But undoing bad things won’t necessarily guarantee good things.”
“But—”
“I know you feel guilty. I know you wish it hadn’t happened. But if you undo their deaths, you’ll never meet with the werewolves. You’ll never make nice with the Wyndhams. You
won’t
be aligned with seventy-five thousand werewolves. If Antonia and Garrett don’t die, vampires won’t be aligned with werewolves. That’s too important to undo. No matter how crummy you feel.”
I stared at her, appalled. That she could be so cold about it, so logical, was yuck-o enough. That she was right was even worse.
“Why don’t you shut up and get us home already?”
“Don’t get bitchy because you know I’m right”
“I’m not bitchy. I just need a shower, dammit! And to stop traveling all over my past!”
“Bitchy,” the Antichrist mumbled, and obligingly sliced a door out of nothing.
About time, too. I’d had more than enough of this. It was good that we were done. Good that we were heading back. Laura was either learning the wrong things or learning too much. Or both.
Either way: it would be better than good to be back.
Chapter 61
N
o, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no
!”
“Okay, wait. It’s not as bad as you think.”
I started kicking and beating on the door closest to me. Because we were, of course, still stuck in hell’s waiting room. “I hate everything! Satan, you bitch, let us out! Your daughter can’t take over the family business if I strangle her with my disgusting leggings! Which I’m going to do! If you don’t let us out!”
“Betsy, stop screaming and look.”
“Why?” My fists were getting numb. They had good craftsmanship in hell. “Look at what?”
Laura pointed. I looked. “There’s only one door left. All the other ones are gone.”
I stopped in mid-pummel.
She was right. When we’d started this series of timehoppin’ hijinks, the entire room had been wall-to-wall doors, each about two feet apart. The others were gone; there was just the one left.
“This better mean what I hope it means.”
“Sure it does. Otherwise, what would be the point?”
“Yeah. Why would
the devil
want to fuck with people just for the sake of—”
“Okay, okay, you made your point. Really loudly, as usual. Come here so I can hit you in the face so we can time travel some more.”
“I just wish that was as cool as it sounded.” I straightened and faced her. “Sock it to me. Literally, I guess.”
“Nah, watch!” She gave me a gentle shove . . . and the knob turned! “See?”
“You
are
getting the hang of this!” I wouldn’t deny it; I was happy for her and delighted for me. “Damn, Laura! Niiiiice!”
“Yeah, I figured it out after we came back from rescuing Nick.”
“Well, that’s—wait. What?”
“I just wasn’t completely sure I didn’t have to smack you . . .”
“Nice try. Remind me to accidentally kick you in the shins for a couple of hours.” The door swung open, and we stared into the abyss. “Onward and upward.”
Chapter 62
O
kay. This is ... anticlimactic.”
Laura had never spoken truer words. We were in a small cement-lined room, maybe twenty by twenty. No windows. Sizeable double doors . . . metal doors, on either end of the room. There was nothing in this big, boring room except the two of us. No table, no chairs, no carpet. Not even a shoe bench.
We looked at each other. Laura shrugged, and I stepped forward to try the doors closest to us. They opened with identical pneumatic hisses, efficient and chilly, like the back-to-school sale at Kohl’s.
We could see a corridor lined with doors and, at the end of the corridor, another set of doors, these made of some sort of dark wood. Cherry, maybe, or mahogany.
Laura and I looked at each other again, and this time, we both shrugged. I extended an arm to open the wooden door, but that opened on its own, too. The place was crawling with electric eyes.
We stepped into a gorgeous office, and the first thing I saw was the enormous dark wood desk. It took up half the plush office, practically.
The second thing I noticed was the woman sitting behind the desk.
I
was sitting behind the desk.
Chapter 63
O
h, you’re here. Finally,” the other me said with a disapproving tone.
“Uh,” I said, because as God (or Laura’s mom) was my witness, I had no idea what to say. At all.
“I thought I remembered us arriving a day earlier.” The other me sighed. “But you’re here now. I guess:”
Laura was looking at me, and then at me. And I was looking at me, too. I looked the same—same blonde hair, same red lowlights. Same thirty-year-old face. I was wearing a steel gray sheath dress with a sharp, square neckline. No jewelry . . . not Erin’s necklace, nothing.
No engagement ring, no wedding ring.
“You look . . . nice.”
“And you stink,” Other Me said, opening a drawer and rummaging through it. “Ye gods. I can’t believe I didn’t take five minutes in one of those time streams to hose off. The Mississippi River was
right there
in one of them, and I didn’t take so much as a quick dip.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I snapped back, and Laura’s hand flew up to pinch her lips. But her shaking shoulders told the story and restored some of my equilibrium. “So, where are we?”
“Don’t you mean when?”
“Are you going to tell us, or do we have more of your stand-up to listen to?” Yep, I was a real bitch. Times two.
“You’re in Minnesota, of course. I’m entirely too attached to this part of the world,” Other Me muttered. “Though I did try to like Hawaii before things got chilly.” She had taken a sort of computer thingie out of her drawer—it was flat, like a pad, and only about eight inches tall and five inches wide, like a Kindle, but complex. No plugs and no buttons. Now she was sliding her fingers across it, talking to us without looking up.
So
rude. “It’s July third and if memory serves, you’re here to observe, panic, raise a ruckus, be irritating, ask many unnecessary questions, start a couple of fights, judge our way of life without suggesting how we might improve, then depart vowing to save the world. As you can see,” Other Me said, laying her weird electric-pad computer thing aside, “you failed. Because I remember being here, talking to me. I remember you.” She pointed at Laura and finally showed an expression that resembled warmth: she smiled. “I remember being dismayed at what I found here, and I remember swearing to find a way to fix it. As you can see, I didn’t.”
Neither Laura nor I could think of a thing to say.
“Since you now know you can’t fix anything,” Other Me said hopefully, “maybe you can skip all the nonsense and just return to hell. Which reminds me.” Another warm smile for Laura. “Say hello to your mother for me when you get back.”
“Okay,” she replied, wide-eyed.
“I’m kind of in the middle of things right now,” Other Me said, running distracted fingers through her fabulous highlights. “But I’ve arranged for a tour. And for your many pointless annoying questions to be answered.”
“Well, gee whiz, I didn’t get you anything.”
“Yes, very funny.”
The big wooden door opened and a gorgeous guy poked his head in. “Hi, you rang? Oh!”
“Yes, they’re here, finally, could you . . . ?” Other Me was back at work, not looking up from her thing-that-wasn’t-a-Kindle.
“Sure,” Gorgeous Guy replied, and grinned at us. “Come on, I’ll give you the fifty-dollar tour.”
“My mom always called it the nickel tour.”
“Mine, too!” Laura said, brightening. “My adopted mom, I mean.”
“Well, inflation,” he said, and ushered Laura and me back out into the hallway.
Chapter 64
O
kay! So, what can I tell you guys?”
“How about your name?” Laura asked. “I’m Laura, and this is my sis—”
Gorgeous Guy burst out laughing. “Oh, jeez, I know who
you
guys are. Or maybe you didn’t notice that she looks
exactly
like the busy lady in the office.”
“It hadn’t escaped me,” Laura admitted.
He was looking from her to me and me to her, and his grin was so open and sunny I had a terrible time not smiling back. But most of me was still stumbling around in shock, mentally speaking. There was a lot of info to take in, and there hadn’t been much time to do it.
Our tour guide was taller than both of us, a good two inches more than Laura (yeah, my sis: prettier, smarter, thinner, taller . . . bitch!), and slender, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He was wearing khaki pants and a blue T-shirt, practical clothing that didn’t disguise his flat stomach and (I assumed, and would check out the first chance I had) awesome butt.

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