Undead and Unpopular (6 page)

I made listless water circles on the table with my glass. "That's the spirit."

"I am not… blind to your position. But you must understand mine. He foully murdered me and must not get away with it."

"Well if you, uh, think about it, if he hadn't killed you, you never would have come to America or met Liam or any of that stuff. Made a new life."

"I had to make a new life," she said as if speaking to a child—a mean, dumb child—"because
he stole
my old one."

"Yup, yup, I hear you."

"I understand your hands may be tied politically." She smiled thinly. "I am, after all, French."

I laughed.

"But understand me: if you cannot act, I will."

"See, uh." I picked up my empty glass, fiddled with it, put it down. "You, uh, can't do that. I mean, I forbid it. Now, I know it—"

I was talking to air. She had gotten up and zoomed to the door so quickly I couldn't track. Vampires sometimes seemed all legs to me—it was like they could take one step and be across the room.

"Hey, you can't do that!" I yelled after her. "I've given you an order! I've decreed! You can't ignore a decree! You'll cause all kinds of trouble! Sophie! I know you can still—what are
you
looking at?"

The vampire at the next table, a skinny blond fellow with a mustache right out of the 1970s, was unabashedly staring. "I like your shoes," he practically stammered.

Mollified, I waved the approaching hostess away.

Guy needed a shave, but he had taste. I was wearing my usual spring outfit of tan capris, a white silk T-shirt, and a wool blazer, but I was shod in truly spectacular tan suede Constança Basto slingbacks. Five hundred forty-nine dollars, retail. An early birthday gift from me to me. Sinclair, that sneak—it
had
to be him—kept tucking hundred-dollar bills into the toes of my pumps, and I had quite the Shoe Fund by now.

I crossed my legs and pointed my toe, an old trick that called attention to my (if I do say so myself—there were
some
advantages to being a six-foot-tall dork) good legs. "Thanks," I said.

"I have something for you," Nineteen Seventies said, reaching under the table, and coming back up with—ugh—a muzzled toy poodle. It was wriggling like a worm on a hot sidewalk and making little burbling noises around the muzzle.

"Get that away from me," I almost yelled. I wasn't a dog person. I especially wasn't a fan of dogs that only weighed as much as a well-fed lab rat.

Nineteen Seventies enfolded the curly, trembling creature into his bony arms. "I thought you liked dogs," he said, sounding wounded.

"They like me," I retorted. Another unholy power—dogs followed me everywhere, slobbering and yelping. Cats ignored me. (Cats ignore everybody, even the undead. There's something Egyptian in all of that.) "I
don't
like them. Will you put that thing back in your pocket?"

"Sorry. I thought—I mean, I came here with a boon because—"

"A boon? Like a present? I don't want any presents. Or boon. Consider me boonless. She Without Boon. And if I
did
want a boon—which I don't—I'd rather have some Jimmy Choos."

He nodded to someone else at the bar, a short brunette with disturbingly rosy cheeks, and she rose, came over, got Sir Yaps a Lot, and discreetly vanished into a back room somewhere.

"Jeepers," Nineteen Seventies said. "I guess I messed it up all the way around."

"Messed
what
up?"

"Well…" He stroked his mustache, a loathsome habit I had no intention of sticking around long enough to break him of. "Everybody says that if I'm in town, this is the place I have to come. And that it's best to, you know, spend a lot of money here and all that."

"Oh." Who was "everybody"? The all-vampire newsletter one of the local undead librarians put out? Street gossip? My mother? What? "Well…"

This was my chance to say, don't sweat it, my good man. I'm just an ordinary gal, not a dictator-for-life asshole like Nostro was. You don't have to do anything—just try to keep your nose clean. You certainly don't have to come to my bar. But thanks anyway.

"Drink up," is what I
did
say, and sure, I felt a little crummy about it, but hey, everybody's got to make a living.

I groaned when I pulled into my driveway. It wasn't even nine o'clock and the whole evening was crumbling apart. I hated how things had gone with Sophie—and what was I going to do if she disobeyed me? "Disobeyed," ha! Even the word was silly. Everybody said I was the queen, but in my head, I was still Betsy Taylor, shoe fashionista and part-time temp worker. It had been almost a year since the Aztek had creamed me, but it still felt like about two days.

Meanwhile, there was a Ford Escort in my driveway, one that smelled like chocolate. Detective Nick Berry, Jessica's new boyfriend.

Marc's beat-up Stratus was parked next to it. Lucky Marc, he'd missed all the excitement the night before, but it looked like he was on days again for a while.

And a rental car—a Cadillac, no less. The Europeans were back.

It took a long moment for me to open the door of my car. I damn near put the engine in reverse and got the hell out of there.

In the end, I got out and trudged into the mansion. Where was I supposed to go, anyway? This was home.

I zeroed in on the conversation—the third parlor, the one that took up a good chunk of the first floor. I could hear Marc squawking like a surprised goose: "Whaaaaa?"

I hurried down the dimly lit hallway.

"You guys
saw
Dorothy Dandridge?" he was saying as I entered the parlor. He was delighted and surprised, jumping up on the couch cushions like Tom Cruise with a boner. "You saw her live, on stage?"

"Yes, on a visit to New York City." Alonzo was watching Marc like an amused cat. He was sleek and cool in a black suit, black shirt, black socks and shoes. I didn't know the brand—men's shoes all look the same to me. His were spotless and polished to a high gloss, the bows in the laces perfectly tied. "She was wonderful—a joy."

"It was the last time I saw you," Sinclair commented, "before last year." He was more casually dressed—an open-throated shirt, dark slacks. Shoeless and sockless. This was a message, I knew, one for Alonzo:
I'm not worried enough about you to dress up
.

"Correct, Majesty," Tina said courteously. "We left for the West Coast right after."

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I had very little clue what Sinclair—my fiancé and current consort—had done in the decades before we'd met. One night I'd have to get his whole life story out of him. It wouldn't be easy. When there wasn't a crisis at hand, he was about as chatty as a brick.

"You
saw
her." Marc couldn't get over it.
Boing, boing
on the couch. "Live and everything. Did you get to meet her?"

"Did you bite her?" I asked. I had no idea who Dorothy Dandridge was.

"That's the tragedy of her," Jessica said. She was on the couch beside Marc, trying not to be pitched onto the floor with all his antics. As usual, her hair was up—skinned back so tightly her eyebrows arched—and her mouth was turned down. She was dressed in her usual "I'm not really a millionaire" style: blue jeans, Oxford shirt, bare feet. In the spring! It made me cold just to look at her and Sinclair. Tina, at least, had wool socks on. Marc hadn't even taken off his tennis shoes. "That you've never heard of her."

"I didn't
say
that," I said.

"Oh, please, it was all over your big blank face." Her broad smile was forced—it was clear the barb was genuine, and not at all a joke.

"What is
with
you these—" I began, forgetting all about Alonzo, Sophie, bare feet, only to be interrupted when Detective Nick came back into the room.

"Thanks," he said cheerfully. "I was in the stakeout van half the day—no time to take a—oh." He slowed down. "Hi, Betsy."

I stifled a groan. Nick was a whole new problem, his own subset, you could say. I'd known him before I died. I'd bitten him right after I'd died, and it had driven him nuts. Literally crazy. Sinclair had had to step in with a bit of vampire mojo to make him all right. The official line was: Nick never knew I died, didn't know we were all vampires.

But we all wondered if he was going along with the party line, or fooling us. Normally I'd think nobody could get past Tina's bullshit radar, but Nick was a cop. They paid him to lie.

And Jessica had decided to
date
him. Because, you know, my life wasn't stressful enough.

He held out his hand, and I clamped on it and escorted him to the parlor door. "Great to see you again." I had no intention of introducing him to Alonzo, the Amazing Spanish Killer Vampire. "Guess you two want to get to your date, huh?"

"Actually…" Jessica began with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

"Well," Nick said as I hustled him out, "the show starts at ten, so we thought we'd stay and visit for a few…"

"Right, don't want to miss it, have some popcorn for me, bye!" I hollered as he practically went sprawling into the hallway. Jessica rolled her eyes at me and followed. "See you later!"

Much later.

"That was—" Tina said, stopped, and put a hand over her mouth so I wouldn't see she was fighting a grin.

"Efficient," Alonzo suggested.

"You hush. You're still on my list, chum."

"Oh, Majesty." He clasped his heart like a player in a bad opera. "I would gladly cross seven raging oceans to be on any list you might have."