Undead and Undermined

Chapter FOUR



Except it wasn’t. Because I’d never fed on Nick/Dick in this new reality. And for the first time, instead of being weirded out or scared by an out-of-the-blue change, I thought maybe that was a really good thing. How often in life do we get a do-over?

“Are you married? Was I there? What did I wear? Tell me you got married in the spring. Tell me I got to break out the Christian Louboutin Dahlia pointy toe ankle boots. It’s almost too much to hope for!”

“It’s awful that you’re talking about the shoes, and everybody at this table knows you’re talking about the shoes.”

“It’s not such a high heel, is the thing. I could have walked around in them no matter how long the ceremony was, without ever praying for anesthetic.” I turned to Sinclair. “I can recover from bullet wounds but my feet still hurt after a couple of hours in pumps? The hell!”

Jessica frowned. “Wait. Who—?”

“We aren’t married.” Dick-Nick said. “Yet. But nice work making our non-marriage all about you, Bets.”

Well, it is. I decided not to explain that out loud. It really is! A little, anyway. My Christian Louboutin ankle boots were the real victim here.

Jessica tried, and failed, to fold her arms over her titanic gut. “Don’t even start with that ‘not yet’ crap.”

“Yes,” Sinclair hastily put in. “Don’t.”

“Oh, come on.” Marc grinned. “Don’t deprive me of drama. I need it! Like Jenna says, drama is my Gatorade; it replenishes my electrolytes.”

Ah! Something else consistent in this universe: Marc was as devoted to Jenna Maroney’s character from 30 Rock as he was when I left. Weird, the things that made me feel better.

“And the reason the answer is ‘not yet’ instead of ‘six months and going strong’ is because your best friend,” D-Nick was telling me, “has it in her head that because her mom and dad’s marriage was a disaster, she, too, would be bad at it.”

I could feel my eyes widen but didn’t say anything. I thought Jess would make N/Dick a great wife. Hmm, gorgeous and smart and open-minded and cool and rich? Jessica should sink her claws into his hide and grip like an IRS agent looking for a promotion.

But her concerns were real. And I didn’t think they should be brushed aside.

“Come on, don’t be like that,” Marc coaxed in an encouraging tone. “Look at the facts. If Betsy can be good at marriage, anyone can.”

“Die screaming,” I told him. Then snapped my jaw shut so quickly I almost bit off my tongue. I had the awful feeling that he did just that. Or would someday do just that. Goddamned time travel.

“I’m not having this discussion during smoothie time,” Jessica told N/Dick.

“Indeed,” Sinclair tried again, “there are other things we should—”

“That’s it.” D/Nick threw his arms in the air like a football referee (“And . . . it’s gooooood!”). “I’m going to get Marc to dose you with tranqs, then haul you in front of a judge. By the time you—”

“Remember you’ve never been a fan of felony kidnapping or drug abuse,” Marc prompted.

“—realize what’s happened, it’ll be too late. You’ll be Mrs. Detective Nicholas J. Berry.” He’d said all that with a scowl, but it couldn’t hold up to Jessica’s amused exasperation, and when he grinned back, I was again reminded how greatlooking he was.

I had always liked that Nickie/Dickie looked like what he was: a clean-cut, corn-fed midwestern boy. A smokin’ hot midwestern boy, if I may be so uncouth.

Once upon a time his name was Nick, and I’d hoped we’d get naked and make careless reproductive choices together. But when we first met, he saw me as a victim of the crime he hoped to solve (it was a long story involving feral vampires, Kahn’s Mongolian BBQ, and my love of garlic). And after he met Jessica, he’d never thought of me at all.

Hmmm. I wasn’t sure I liked the way my memories bent. Memo to me: you have everything. And you’re still irked that Nick-Dick never ever saw you in the way you were accustomed. Get over it, you greedy cow.

Speaking of greedy, was he super-rich in this timeline or struggling on a cop’s salary? Which was just pitiful, by the way . . . A good executive assistant made more than the average homicide detective, and admin staff were rarely shot at.

I had it in my head that N-Dick was the heir to the John Deere tractor fortune, but he didn’t talk about it much in my old timeline, and frankly, what with my husband being rich and my best friend being rich, I wasn’t all that curious about other people’s money. In any timeline.

I can hear it now: you’re not curious about money because you’ve always had some! Well. Yeah. I mean, my folks weren’t rich or anything—my mom was a teacher, for cripe’s sake—but they never wondered if there’d be money left at the end of the month, either. I’m not gonna apologize for being born into the upper-middle class. There were all sorts of more important things to apologize for.

Besides, there was always the chance I had Nick/Dick mixed up with someone else. That happened a lot. Shit, sometimes I got myself mixed up with someone else.

Well! Time to grasp the D-Nick by the horns. There wasn’t a subtle or classy way to ask, so . . . “Are you rich right now?”

D-Nick gasped. “You remembered! I am im-pressed, oh attentive undead queen with the short-term memory of a tree frog. Half the time you’re telling me to dress better, the other half you’re telling me it’s disgraceful for a trust-fund baby to hog the last of the milk. Time travel has been good for you.”

“That’s a lie and you know it.”

It helped that he was rich, which is why I’d asked; Jess had been screening gold-diggers out of her dating pool since before she graduated high school. In fact, if Nickie/Dickie hadn’t been rich, I wondered if their relationship would have come this far.

I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have guys only want you for your money. Pre-Sinclair, most guys only wanted me for my terrific tits, and that was enough of a dating burden.

“If we could stay focused,” Sinclair suggested, so I quit thinking about Nick’s blue-with-flecks-of-gold eyes, his lean and powerful build (shoulders! yowza), and the way he didn’t hate me.

“Even for us, we’re having trouble staying on track,” Marc agreed. “Jesus! How lame are we?”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in front of my vampire husband.” There was a phrase I couldn’t say enough. Sinclair’s expression was still frozen in midflinch. “You know it bugs him, and then he bugs me.”

“Also,” Jessica prompted with a wicked grin, “it’s a sin.”

“Right! I would have remembered that in a few more minutes. In fact, I—”

The swinging door whooshed open. Which was strange, because most of us were here, and shoving doors open wasn’t Tina’s style. I’d been so busy yakking I hadn’t heard anyone coming down the hall.

“You’re back.”

I looked up and assumed I was experiencing my first-ever seizure. Great milestone, a personal goal for some time, freak-out induced seizures, woo-hoo! Next, probably my first-ever brain hemorrhage. Then I’d probably need my tonsils out.

Oh, it was going to be a wonderful week.

Standing in the kitchen doorway, looking rumpled and pale and not dead, was one of my dead roommates, Garrett.

And the last time I’d seen him, he was in the middle of killing himself.

Did I mentioned he’d succeeded in spectacular fashion?