Underdead (27 page)

Gavin was prevented a reply by the sound of someone pounding on the front door. In between pounds, a voice could be heard shouting, “Jo? Jo, honey, open this door! I mean it, right now!”

“Oh, no.” I got up and ran to open the door before it was pounded in. Gavin was right behind me.

He reached forward and put a hand over mine as I would have unlocked the door. “Wait! Do you know who it is?”

I looked at him scornfully and opened the door to reveal a redheaded fury.

“Josephine Delilah Gartner! How dare you get shot at and not tell your mother!”

As my mother pushed past us into the room, I heard Gavin murmur, “Delilah?”

“I thought you and Dad were in New York for a conference,” I said.

“We were. He’s still there. I came back when I learned my only daughter had been shot at by some maniac. Not that you bothered to tell us.”

Gavin discreetly tried to leave, but I grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him back inside. “Oh, no,” I hissed. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re supposed to protect me from getting killed, remember?”

I prodded him into the living room, where he sat gingerly on the edge of the man-eating club chair. My mother had appropriated the couch and sat smoothing her cream colored suit skirt in rapid, jabbing motions. She looked up and a slight frown puckered her brow as she noticed Gavin for the first time.

Gavin jumped back up and offered his hand. “I’m Detective Gavin Raines, Mrs. Gartner. Pleased to meet you.”

She shook it firmly and introduced herself, automatically flashing me a look of disappointment that I hadn’t displayed manners enough to have introduced them properly, no matter that she hadn’t given me the chance.

I sat down on the couch next to my mother and put my arm around her shoulders. “I’m fine, Mom, really. I didn’t call because I didn’t want to worry you guys. I know how important that conference is to Dad, and the whole incident sounds much worse than it was. It was just a silly accident, right Gavin?—I mean Detective Raines.” I didn’t wait for his response but continued on, “I didn’t mean for you to find out from someone else—er, how did you find out, anyway?”

She sniffed. “Rafael.”

“Him again? Does he have you on speed dial or something? I swear that man’s had it in for me ever since I refused to let him give me highlights and an updo for the senior prom,” I said irritably. “Didn’t it occur to you that he might be overstating things a bit? The last thing he told you was that I was pregnant…”

Gavin looked up, startled.

“Which was pure crap. Why would you assume he was right about this?”

She blinked furiously. “I thought you might have needed me,” she replied in a low voice.

“Oh, Mom, of course I do.”

Gavin politely went back to examining the carpet is if it were the most fascinating thing he’d seen in a long time while we had a mother-daughter moment.

My mother dabbed away tears that somehow hadn’t marred her impeccable makeup and then turned to Gavin and without preamble began to give him the third degree. He looked a little frazzled. After a while, I took pity on him.

“Mom, it’s late, and I know you’re on East Coast time. Why don’t we have brunch on Saturday?”

By some miracle that probably had more to do with jet lag than anything I had said, as she is not even remotely a night person, my mother let herself be herded to the door. Gavin insisted on walking her to her car.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Gartner,” he told her as she got into her Lexus.

“And you, Detective Raines. I’m glad to know my daughter is in such capable hands. I’m sure I can rely on you to keep her safe.” She said it graciously, but there was no doubt it was an order.

Gavin nodded once briskly and moved back several feet to give us some privacy. Mom gave me a kiss and an affectionate hug that lingered rather longer than normal. As I was about to step away from the car, she touched her fingers lightly to my face. “Oh, honey, your skin is looking
so
much better. What did you do?”

“Um, just followed the doctor’s orders.” I spoke in a low voice, mindful I had told Gavin she had bought me a miracle cream in Europe. To my relief, she didn’t pursue it and drove off with a cheery honk.

“So that’s your mother,” Gavin said. He sounded a bit faint. “We’re both still alive so I guess that went okay. Can I go now?”

“Went okay? Are you kidding me? If you don’t figure out who’s behind all this, I’m going to have to start going to Rafael’s for rumor control, though I’d almost rather be killed than spend time there. And when he turns my hair fuchsia because it’s the new red, I’m coming after you.”

He didn’t respond until we were nearly at my door. “Speaking of Rafael, want to tell me about this pregnancy rumor?”

“No.” But I let out a deep sigh and told him anyway.

He listened without interruption. “I see.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Nothing. Make sure you lock up.” He turned away and managed to get almost all the way down the stairs before he burst out laughing.

For once, Roger started off our department meeting with something that concerned me. I was so surprised my hand stopped in midair over the cookie plate and Becky swiped the last of Mary Mudget’s coveted brownies out from under my nose.

Roger was saying, in a rather self-congratulatory way, “And so it should come as no surprise to any of you that the Olympiad is now on the headmaster’s radar.”

“I’m surprised the Olympiad’s on
anyone’s
radar,” whispered Becky through a mouthful of brownie.

“Shhh! Brownie thief. No one wants to hear your views.”

Thanks to popular little Chucky Farryll, a lot of kids were involved in the Olympiad this year. Apparently enough of their parents had mentioned the Olympiad to the headmaster during the last soccer game that his High Mucky Muck had announced his intention to come watch.

That, of course, had sent Roger into a tizzy, and the rest of us were caught up in its vortex. No longer were Kendra and I to divvy up events and train whoever showed up to the meetings. Roger wanted the
entire
department involved. Each of us would pick one or two events and relentlessly train the delegates up until the Olympiad.

Amid the groans and protests, Kendra raised a hand to object. “I don’t think that will quite work, Roger. We haven’t picked the delegates yet. A ton of kids signed up this year. We didn’t want to turn any of them away—discourage their interest in science…” There was a murmur of agreement around the table. “Right now, all the categories are open to whoever is interested in participating. We’ve got about ten teams building contraptions for the egg drop, and nearly as many working on Rube Goldberg apparatuses.”

Mary Mudget nodded approvingly over her knitting, something in soft baby blue yarn this week. “That’s nicely in keeping with the middle school spirit that events are more about participation than winning.”

Roger didn’t seem to have gotten that memo. For a moment I thought he was going to bang on the table to snap us all out of our callow idealism—and general laziness. “We’re doing it differently this year,” he all but shouted over the hubbub. His small, hard eyes raked over us, defying anyone to contradict him. We quieted down and he went on in a calmer voice. “The Olympiad is in six weeks. I’d like Kendra and Jo to arrange a practice Olympiad a week from now. The winners and runners-up in each event will practice one-on-one with their assigned teacher up until the Olympiad.”

I opened my mouth to object, but Kendra caught my eye and discreetly shook her head, though I could tell she was just as annoyed as I was. She was right to stop me. Trying to make Roger change his mind when he was like this was a waste of time. She flipped open her daily planner with obvious annoyance. “How does next Monday work for everyone?”

Thanks to Roger’s self-interested glory seeking, I spent a ridiculous amount of time after the meeting organizing the stupid, unnecessary practice-Olympiad, just so the headmaster could see how good an administrator Roger was. By eight o’clock, I was tired and hungry and cranky—and had barely made a dent in all the work. I left the top floor of the science wing and pounded down the stairs with as much venom as if they were Roger’s head.
There just wasn’t enough time
, I thought furiously. Not unless I stayed late every night this week.
Like I didn’t have enough to do already!
I rounded the corner and took out some more of my aggressions on the hedge that ran alongside the science building. “Damn!” I kicked the hedge. “That stinking!” Kick. “Roger!” Kick! Kick! Kick!

“Something upsetting you?” A blast of musky perfume assailed my nostrils and the blood in my veins turned cold.
Oh, God.
I’d forgotten about
Natasha.

I turned around to face her. She stood a few yards away near the small copse of trees outside the science building that the students like to sit under on warm days. As usual, she looked like a million bucks, in a lookin’-for-Sugar-Daddy sort of way, with a short tight skirt, a skimpy low-cut shirt and four-inch heels. I opened my mouth to reply, but instead of answering, I ran full tilt in the other direction toward the parking lot.

For once, luck was on my side. I got my car unlocked on the first try and was squealing out the gate before she’d made it even halfway across the quad in her tippy little heels. If I’d ever deserved a speeding ticket, it was that night.

A little way down the street from my apartment, I saw a blue Jetta parked in front of a hydrant and pulled up alongside. I honked, flicked on my hazard lights and got out. Gavin came around the car to intercept me.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“Na-Natasha.” My teeth were chattering so badly I could barely get the words out. “Sh-she was waiting for me a-at school. I d-didn’t even see her.”

Gavin plucked the keys out of my fingers, locked my car door, and steered me up to my apartment. “I’m going to park your car. I’ll be back in a second,” he told me. I nodded and sat on the couch, turning on the TV for comfort.

By the time he returned, I had mellowed out a bit and could form coherent sentences.

He listened patiently. “So…nothing happened.”

“Because I got away!”

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean it that way—”

“I don’t know why you don’t take her seriously. She scares the crap out of
me
.” I stood back up and took a step closer to him. “I’m damned lucky I got away. You know, you spend all these resources watching my apartment, and half the time I’m not even here. How does that help me? Jeez, Gavin, do you want to help me or not? Don’t you care if something happens to me? Don’t you care if another person goes missing, if another person is found dead?”

His eyes blazed like molten silver. “That’s a stupid question,” he bit out.

“Is it?” All at once, my anger deflated. “Never mind. Go back to your car. I’m inside for the night. You don’t have to worry.” I headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To get my phone out of my purse,” I said tiredly. “I want to call my mother. Is that okay with you?”

He didn’t reply, just fished his wallet out of his back pocket, pulled out a card and wrote a couple numbers on the back. “This is my private cell. And my home phone. From now on, I want you to call me every night by six and tell me where you are. I’d prefer it if you were home by dark, but I understand you have a life to live. Make sure you use it.”

He turn and left, waiting long enough for me to lock the door behind him before heading back down the stairs to his car.

Because of Roger’s stupid practice Olympiad, I stayed at worked until nearly dark every night that week and still had to go back again over the weekend to get things ready. Roger dropped by Sunday night as it was getting down to the wire. Not to help, to make sure I wasn’t screwing up. After a little teeth gnashing, we came to an understanding—he would hover officiously over my shoulder giving advice on how I could organize things more to his liking and I would try very hard not to kill him.

As I stood there gratuitously rearranging supplies under Roger’s micromanaging eye, I began to have trouble remembering just what my problem was with becoming one of the Undead. Vampires didn’t have to work thankless jobs, or go home to tiny apartments. They wouldn’t have to take it as Roger instructed them to move a box of paper six inches to the right. A
vampire
would have hauled off and killed Roger back when he complained how the paper clips were being laid out.

Unless he had some secret death wish, I didn’t even know why Roger was here. Surely the whole point of dumping the prep work on me was to free him up. Did he have nothing better to do on a Sunday night than hang out on campus?
Silly question.
Of course he didn’t. The real question was,
Why was
I
there
?
I
didn’t have to be.
I
had options, one in particular that was pretty damn appealing right about now. Will was gorgeous and intelligent and his kisses turned me to jelly. How bad could an eternity spent with him be?

Luckily for Roger’s continued existence—and my karma—Kendra popped by on her way to check her events, and Roger followed her out. I took a much-needed break. I felt wrung out like a dishrag and it was only seven o’clock.

I knew exactly what time it was because my cell phone rang with my daily phone call from Gavin. He had gone from being annoyingly hard to reach to annoyingly punctual. I didn’t kid myself that his sudden attentiveness had anything to do with
me
. He was scared my mother would come after him if anything happened to me—and believe me, you don’t want to be on her bad side.

He called to make sure I was safe at home. Obviously I wasn’t, and after some mild abuse when I refused to go home immediately, Gavin informed me he’d call again at eight and slammed the phone with as much force as one can muster with a cell.