Undead and Undermined

Chapter FORTY-SEVEN



“I’m sorry about how I was in the basement. It’s your vampire kingdom, too. I just really wanted to take care of it myself.”

“I was not offended, my queen, only worried.” We were in the wreck of our bedroom . . . seeing all the shattered evidence of Garrett and Antonia’s reunion was the first thing that made me smile in hours. “Also, I cannot live like this.”

“We’re outta here.” I zipped closed the bag I’d been packing. “I don’t want to see this place for a couple of days. Jessica’s already called contractors. I told her we’d be at the downtown Marriott.” And Jessica would tell the others. And we’d all take a couple of days to recover from our shattered sense of How Things Should Be. And then we’d sit at the smoothie table and try not to notice how Marc wasn’t there. And then we would make a plan. And then we would save the day.

Which would be tricky, given everyone’s new identities. The timeline wasn’t the only thing that had changed.

Garrett, who barely opened his mouth to ask for a new skein of yarn, or whatever they called the units of measurement yarn came in, had learned to lie. Satan, who practically invented lying, had taken to sprinkling some truth in with her usual doses of fibs. Laura, who almost never lied, was learning to leave out important chunks of stories. And I, I’d learned that if I could keep my damned mouth shut once in a while, people would do things or tell me things they hadn’t planned on.

Because, although I was thrilled Antonia (the good one) was alive and back with us, I would never forget that I hadn’t asked for her. I’d asked for something else . . . something that didn’t have a soul and a pulse. Instead of asking for the life of a friend, I’d asked for a thing that couldn’t love me back. And that meant . . .

That meant I was not the hero of the story. In fact, it was looking more and more like Laura was the hero.

So what did that make me?

Exactly.

“I was so happy when we got back from hell. I felt like I’d fixed everything, how f*cking dumb could I be?” I was telling this to Sinclair’s chest, because he’d folded me back into his arms. Luckily my nose had healed.

“Shhh, do not do this to yourself.”

“If not me, then who?” I thought that was a better-than-fair question. Who was gonna call the vampire queen on her shit, when even the vampire king deferred to her if she was bitchy enough?

Exactly.

“It will seem so strange here without Marc,” Sinclair mused. “And even stranger to have Antonia back. Once I thought I had seen so much, life could teach me no more. How f*cking dumb could that be?”

I had to laugh; I knew how he felt. And he had a good point about Antonia.

Was it always going to be like this? Would I have to give up something wonderful to get something wonderful back? Because I did not sign on for this shit.

No. Because I knew things I hadn’t known before this awful, awful hooray-Thanksgiving-will-soon-be-here, awful month of November.

I knew dead didn’t mean dead.

I knew you could come back. Or the devil could give you back.

Oh, and one more thing. The devil badly, badly needed to stay on my good side.

“Marc’s dead, but he won’t be for long,” I vowed, shaking in Sinclair’s arms. From anguish or fright or rage, I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was all three, a new emotion, one so novel to me I couldn’t identify it. “I’m gonna get Marc back. He didn’t leave a gorgeous corpse behind for no reason . . . he knows I’ll get him back.”

“Elizabeth—”

“I’ll get him back, Sinclair, no matter what I have to do. And no matter who gets in my way.”

“I believe you, my queen, and will help you any way I can.”

“Yes, I know. We’ll get him back and then we’ll all have smoothies and laugh about how worried we were the day he died.”

And the devil help anyone who got in my way. It would have to be the devil.

God, it was clear, was on my side.