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Authors: MaryJanice Davidson

BOOK: Undead and Unfinished
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I crossed the room and put my hands on his shoulders, surprised to find his muscles were thrumming like steel cables. “Yeesh, you’re grumpy tonight. But I have a cure, which will entail you making that sexy-clinkey sound when you unbuckle your belt, and then I will make that oh-God-put-it-in-right-now sound, and—”
“Do not say that!”
“What? What?” I was astonished; he hadn’t shouted it so much as roared it. Then I realized a God had slipped out, which felt to most vampires like a paper cut. On the genitals.
“Oh, jeez, I—oh,
jeez!
I mean, sorry. Uh, sorry. It just slipped out.”
“It continually slips out. You have no interest in modifying your behavior even when it harms those closest to you. You have had years to implement this adjustment and have not troubled yourself. This, while those around you risk their lives. Or lose their lives. I find it ... dishonorable.”
Was it possible I never left Payless Shoes with Laura the other day? Instead of coming here for the Saturday Satanic Movie Fest, perhaps I’d passed out in Payless and everything that had happened since was some sort of crappy-shoe-induced fever dream brought on by lack of sex and impending November.
I guess he got tired of me just standing there with my mouth unsprung, because he put the final spank on his verbal cat o’nine tails with, “I require your absence.”
“Uh. You do?”
“Remove your hands. Then remove the rest of you. Quietly, if you can manage such a feat.”
I yanked my hands back as though he’d gotten lava hot. Then I took a slow step backward. Then another.
Something was seriously screwed up. Had I been that much of a brat the other day? Well, sure. But this was not new behavior. Certainly not new to Sinclair, who ran up against my self-involved brattiness about eight seconds after we met.
“You seem ... um ... upset. D’you want a smoothie?” Or a tranquilizer? I wondered if Marc had made it back from his AA meeting yet; I had the feeling I’d need his shoulder again, and there were only so many burdens I dared put on Jessica this time of year.
Marc had a love-hate relationship with AA. As he described it, AA was like a high school girlfriend who was hot, one you’d known for a long time, but who also cheated on you. So Marc and AA broke up at least once a year but always got back together. And why the hell was I thinking about Marc’s easy-come-easy-go alcoholism now?
I wrenched my thoughts onto a more relevant track. “When did you feed last?”
I was surprised to feel my shoulder blades hit the bedroom door. I’d let him back me all the way across the room. Or, rather, I’d let me back me all the way across the room.
I had seen Sinclair enraged, despondent, joyful, horny, worried, irritated, tender, motivated, goaded, annoyed, terrified, ravenous, and provoked. But the stranger hanging out in my husband’s suit? I’d never met him before. Cold and hateful were sentiments I never dreamed my heart’s love, my only love, would use on me.
Also: he hadn’t bothered to answer my question. For a weird moment I thought maybe this time, I was the ghost.
“Maybe I’ll just ...” What? Kill him? Kill myself? Race for Tina’s vodka collection? Set the house on fire? Smack myself in the face until I woke up? That last was probably not the worst plan in the world ...
“Why are you still here?” He didn’t bother to raise his voice that time. And he sure hadn’t turned around to look at me. He was re-engrossed in his work; I no longer rated strong emotion.
Then, a life preserver was tossed my way when I’d never wanted an escape hatch more: “Living Dead Girl” started blaring from my pants.
My ring tone. My hands shot into the pocket of my cargo pants (hurrah for eighteen pockets of varying sizes even if khaki made me look like I recently escaped basic training!) as I clawed for the Rob Zombie—blaring lifesaver.
“Oh, thank God. I mean, hello?”
“Betsy?” A small, crumpled voice. A tearful voice. “Betsy, are you there?”
Sure, Laura, I just don’t know where here is right now, what with my husband channeling Joey Buttafuoco. “What’s wrong? You sound—”
“I’m naked!”
“Uh, figuratively, or—”
“I just woke up here!” she whisper-screamed. “I don’t know how I got here. All I remember is going to bed last night in my room, and now I’m naked in the spoon!”
As someone born and raised within an hour’s drive of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, I knew at once what the problem was and, even better, where it was.
“I’m coming,” I told her, dropping the phone back in my pocket and all but diving out my bedroom door.
It wasn’t running away. It sure wasn’t a retreat. A family member needed help. I had to go, no matter what just happened with my husband, no matter how much I wanted to stay and thrash this out.
Yup. That was my story. It even had the advantage of sounding almost true.
Chapter 18
H
ennepin Avenue wasn’t too wretched—it was only ten at night—which made me wonder why Laura was waking up at such an odd hour (and naked, no less). She was a student at the U of M; she tended to stick to the typical daytime schedule of a nine-to-fiver. Time enough to pin her down on that one once I rescued her from the spoon.
The spoon was one of the things the Twin Cities were famous for (aside from subzero temperatures that would make a weasel squeal).
It was an enormous sculpture of a spoon with a cherry sitting in the bowl of said spoon, and was the pride and joy of the sculpture garden. The husband-and-wife team who created it were hailed as artistic geniuses, and gobs of people came to look at the thing every year.
Not me, though. Once was enough (ninth-grade field trip, which was made even more exciting when Jessica barfed her Dilly Bar all over my new sweater). Okay, it was a very nice gigantic spoon. And a very vibrant, pretty cherry.
Uh, geniuses? The ones who thought this up were geniuses? The guy—the husband—even admitted that he sketched while he ate. He would get inspired. While he
ate.
No wonder he thought of doing a giant spoon. He was probably wolfing down ice cream at the time. Maybe even an ice cream sundae. With a big red guess what on top? I s’pose we’re lucky he didn’t sculpt a giant pudding cup. Or a giant tuna melt.
Okay, so, as a people, we midwesterners are easily impressed. All anyone has to do is eyeball the sculpture garden to figure that out. Don’t even get me started on the guy who did the sculpture of a bench. He used three kinds of materials for his sculpture. Of a
bench.
Which people keep insisting is art. When it’s a
bench.
This was probably why my major had been Studies in Cinema, as opposed to Art History, before I dropped out. Never mind; I had stuff to do and Antichrists to haul out of giant cherries.
I parked (badly), then beat feet over to the sculpture garden. I was wearing good shoes, of course, but they were Dolce and Gabbana floral print sandals, which meant they were gorgeous, expensive, and flat. I could actually run in them.
For a wonder—at least it was a chilly night—there weren’t any couples trying to sneak over to have sex in the spoon. So I found Laura alone, shivering, and—she hadn’t exaggerated for dramatic effect, though I’d had hopes—naked.
“What happened?” I asked, already shrugging out of my jacket. I handed her a small, crumpled Target bag—no time to shop, or wrap—which held one of a thousand pairs of my leggings. (You know how, a couple years ago, everybody credited Lindsay Lohan with bringing back leggings? A vicious, damnable lie. I brought ‘em back.
Me.)
I didn’t bother to bring shoes—she was two sizes bigger than me. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know! I woke up in here. And I was cold and this thing—this spoon is
so
cold! And—”
“Wait. You woke up like this?
Just
like this?” I watched as she yanked on my leggings—should have remembered to bring underwear—and pulled the jacket closed over her breasts. “How did you call me?”
“There was a guy with a sketchbook—he said he’d quit sketching because it was dark, but was still hanging around—and he gave me his phone. He said I could use it. And then he—” She peeked around the spoon. “I guess he left.”
“I didn’t pass anyone.” And couldn’t smell or hear anyone. Enh ... one worry at a time. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Saying ‘I guess he left’ just now,” the Antichrist snapped. A rare display of temper; I guess waking up in a big chunk of art made her testy.
“Before you woke up, I meant.”
“I told you!” Her teeth were clacking together like ivory castanets. “I went to bed. I wasn’t feeling good again—”
“Again?”
“Can I finish?”
“Don’t bite my head off because you’ve got impulse-control issues.”
“Sorry,” she said, sulking. “I went to bed just before supper-time. I’ve been feeling kind of crummy, but nothing like—”
“Wait. You’ve been sick?”
She nodded, shivering and miserable. “I didn’t tell you—it’s just cramps. And headaches. I guess I should have ...”
I laughed. “What? Predicted you’d wake up as the sculpture garden’s newest exhibit?”
She smiled. It was teeny—no teeth—but it was a smile. “When you put it like that ...”
I reached out and took her hand, which was as chilly as mine—a good trick, since my heart only pumped about four times a minute. “C’mon, let’s get you—” I cocked my head.
“What’s wrong? Does your stomach hurt, too?”
“No, but I think I know what your Good Samaritan’s been up to.” As I spoke, a tall, well-built blond stepped out from behind one of the clumps of trees. He was dressed in dark slacks, loafers, a white dress shirt, and a navy jacket. He was clean shaven, wearing wire rims, and smiling at us.
“Thank you for—” Laura began, then stopped when two other men stepped out behind the first.
“—the attempted gang rape,” I finished. They didn’t look the type—nice clothes, pleasant and open expressions. Recently showered. But then, one thing I’ve figured out: rapists didn’t always lurk in alleys drinking hooch from brown paper bags. And killers weren’t always shuffling around the fringes of things, playing God with handguns and rewriting their manifestos.
“I see your sister came,” the first one said. Yeesh; he even sounded boy-next-door. “First her money. Then the party.”
I snorted, and Laura said, “That’s not nice, you—you cretin.”
“Less talk,” another one said. “More naked.”
“Oh boy,” I said. It was the perfect surreal touch to a late-night visit to the Walker. “You poor dumbass. Did
you
pick the wrong girls.”
The one who had remained silent—a redhead, with the creamy freckled complexion of same—spoke up. “Why are you still dressed?”
I giggled, which was a surprise to everyone but me. I tried to muffle it, but before long it exploded into full-blown guffaws.
Laura went from shivering and almost crying to wide-eyed surprise. “What is it? Other than me being naked in a big spoon.”
I hee-hawed louder. “Oh, that’s—that’s part of it ... but these guys! Oh my God! They have no idea what we’re going to do to them! I m-mean—they’ve been lurking in bushes—ready to jump us—except th-their victims—their v-victims are the queen of the vampires and—and the Antichrist! And I’m ... I’m so hungry!”
While our prom dates from hell exchanged puzzled glances, Laura let that sink in and started to laugh herself.
“Listen, you twats, you—”
“Pipe down, B-positive. I’ll get to you in a minute.”
Hungry was an understatement. I hadn’t fed in three days. Three stressful, weird days. Hungry? Try starving. But, and hooray for the petty criminal thoughts of well-dressed Neanderthals, my entrees were here.
I took them, one by one. Normally Laura would have left or looked away—she didn’t like vampires, and she sure didn’t like watching me chow down. But tonight she just walked around my entrees and me. The other two were too scared to flee, not that they could have gotten past the Antichrist in the dark. So she prowled around and waited for me to finish, occasionally checking her watch.
Afterward, I was full and sleepy. And Laura had been able to slip into the navy jacket—the one that showed the blood the least—on our way to my car.
Chapter 19
H
ow long has this been going on?”
Laura didn’t answer. I couldn’t blame her; it’d been a weird night. We were back at my place, thinking about making smoothies. I say thinking about because I was stuffed, and Laura didn’t feel like hulling strawberries. The kitchen was a place we gravitated to even if we weren’t hungry.
And the house was quiet, which was a mild miracle. Tina was pillaging somewhere—wait ‘til I told her about my three-course meal of white-collar rapists—and Marc was using my half brother to troll for dates.
Yeah, I know. Ugh, right? Which I told him. But he remained unmoved, and unguilty.

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