“Come on,” she said, striding through the house, stopping in the kitchen to snatch two Miller Lites out of a cooler by the door before stepping onto the concrete slab that served as a deck in the backyard.
Luther was occupied with a plate of cheese, summer sausage, and olives. I hoped there was some left when the other guests arrived.
I sat in the lawn chair next to Megan’s. “Where are the kids?”
“A friend took them for the morning so I could get things ready for the party.”
Megan had another friend besides me? That was new. Her hours at the bar weren’t conducive to a social life, not that she’d wanted one. In the years since Max died I could count on one hand the times Megan had hired a sitter to do anything other than work.
“Enough about me,” she said. “Why is the prince of the jungle hearing Ruthie and you’re not?”
“I’ve got—” I couldn’t finish.
“A cold?” Megan asked. “The flu?”
“A demon.”
CHAPTER 4
Megan, who’d been leaning closer, reared back. Faith gave a ho of surprise. I waited for her to start screaming; instead she peered up at Megan then went back to chowing on my friend’s hand. Lucky the kid didn’t have any teeth yet.
“Let me—”
Megan scrambled to her feet, putting the chair between us.
“—explain,” I finished.
“D-don’t touch me. I’ll . . . Luther!” she shouted.
The kid came to the door, mouth greasy with chips. “Mmm?”
“You know how to kill her?”
His eyes widened and met mine. “Liz?”
“Megan, calm down,” I said.
“Oh, you’d like that wouldn’t you? Calm down so you can . . . whatever it is you do to people before you kill them.”
I sighed. “I’m not evil.” Or at least I wasn’t right this minute. I lifted my hand to the jeweled dog collar around my neck. “Didn’t you notice this?”
“Of course. I figured you’d gone Goth.”
Considering the collar looked like something you’d find on a poodle, that made no sense at all.
“She went vamp.” Luther let the door bang behind him as he came outside.
I shot him a glare. “Don’t help me.”
Luther shrugged.
“You’re a vampire?” Megan shrieked. The baby started to mew. She sounded more like a kitten now than when she’d been one.
“Keep it down,” I said. “You’re going to freak out the kitty-cat, and believe me, you don’t want to. The lungs on that kid will puncture your eardrums.”
“I don’t care,” Megan snapped, although she did lower her voice. “Just tell me what happened before I cut off your head and stuff your mouth with garlic.”
I lifted my eyebrows. She’d been studying ways to kill a vampire. Good for her.
“It’s a lot harder than you think to cut off someone’s head.” Without the proper tools it was damn near impossible. Right now the only thing nearby was a butter knife.
Megan scowled at Luther. “Why haven’t you killed her?”
He popped half a cupcake into his mouth, chewed three times, and swallowed. “Because she isn’t evil, as long as she’s wearing the collar.”
“And if she isn’t wearing the collar?”
“Hide,” Luther said.
Megan gnawed on her lip, contemplating first me, then Luther, then me again. The baby began to fuss in earnest, and Megan automatically bounced her, which for some unknown reason seemed to work. If I were cranky, bouncing would really piss me off.
“How did you become a vampire?” she asked.
“I told you how I absorb powers.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You slept with a vampire?”
“Yes and no.”
“That’s a yes or no question. Pick one.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Never is with you.” She sat in the lawn chair, glanced at Luther. “Go play on the Internet. Computer’s in the living room.”
“Sweet.” Luther headed for the house.
“No porn!” Megan called. “I have munchkins.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The door banged behind him.
Megan faced me again. “Spill.”
“It all started with the woman of smoke.”
Megan paled. She’d met the Naye’i, or woman of smoke, a Navajo evil spirit witch and former leader of the darkness. She was also Sawyer’s mother, which had explained a lot about Sawyer.
The Naye’i had been jockeying for the position of Antichrist. She would have gotten it, too, if I hadn’t killed her. As it was, she opened the gates of hell and all the fallen angels that had become demons flew free. They’d had a field day repopulating the earth with Nephilim before I’d managed to put them back again. Now we were seriously outnumbered.
“I thought you killed that bitch,” Megan said.
“I did. But in order to be strong enough, I had to—” I took a breath. “—become as evil as she was.”
“Hence the banging of the vampire.”
“Yes and no,” I repeated. I had slept with a vampire, but that wasn’t how I’d gained an inner demon. “Jimmy is a dhampir.”
“Part vampire, part human,” Megan said. I couldn’t remember if I’d told her that or if she’d found it out for herself. It didn’t really matter. “Stronger. Faster. Better.”