“Not today; actually, not any day. You’re not to cause me harm no matter what. Do you understand me? But today I have a job for you to do. Somehow Amber has been blocked from going into Victoria’s house. I want you to see if you can get in.” She asked him why her. “Because, my dear sister, you owe me.”
He’d been telling her that since she’d died and found him here still moving about as if he was still living. What she owed him and why was still a mystery to her. And when she asked, and she had several times, he only blew her off and told her there were too many things for him to remember. She had an idea there had never been anything she’d done that would have her owing him, but nodded to him all the same.
“Why are you still trying to get that house? It’s not like it can keep you safe, you dumbass. You’re already as safe as you can get. You’re dead.” He only glared at her. Something else she was enjoying about being dead, her brother could no longer hurt her. He could insult her, even make her cry, but he could no longer touch her. “This is all that stupid bitch’s idea, isn’t it? Amber has you trying to get her the house that you said no to all those decades ago. Why? Do you think you can keep it from the creditors? I don’t. Just let it go, Horrie, and move on. Please.”
“We neither one wanted it back then, but I find that we want it now. And why not? It’s not like Victoria needs it.” Sure, Millicent thought. And she was the next beauty queen of the undead. “Now, however, after we’ve found out about the tunnels, we want it. Plus, and Amber doesn’t know this, there is a treasure in those walls.”
“What sort of treasure? And what do you think you’re going to do with a treasure even if there is one?” He told her. “Spend it on what, Horrie? You do know that money and jewels aren’t going to help you, don’t you? You’re fucking dead. Why is it that you have to be reminded of that every day? I got it the first time I was told it. I don’t like it, but that’s neither here nor there. We’re dead. And your daughter killed you because you were too stupid to do what you were told when they told you. I’m dead because I was arrogant enough to think that living forever came without a price. I paid that when someone decided that vampires were bad news. And I blame that on you too.”
“No. Victoria killed me because she begged the council to let her do it for no reason whatsoever. She covered her ass and killed me. You were killed because you were and are stupid. That man didn’t even know me when he went looking for a vampire. Not my name anyway. I don’t care what he said to you about me killing his wife. I might have, but why did he blame me for her being dead? I was hungry and she was there. It’s the way things are. But you can see now why I have to get that house.” No, she didn’t, and told him that. “She has to die. And when she’s dead and gone, I’ll be able to live in her home, using her things while I look for the treasure. If you’re nice to me, more than you have been of late, I’ll let you come and help me.”
Millicent wasn’t even going to point out, once again, that the money was useless to them. Not only that, but the house was as well. They could live anywhere they wanted, do anything they wanted at any part of the day, and who gave a shit? They were dead. But it did hurt her that he thought her death had been her own fault. The man told her as he held her with the stake at her heart that a vampire had killed his wife, and he was going to rid the world of all of them. Millie didn’t have to hear her brother’s name to know he’d done it. He was forever killing women for the pure joy of it. She looked at him now and wondered for the first time in her life why she had ever looked up to him.
“Why do you think this house is blocked to your wife? And I’m assuming you as well?” Millie didn’t care and thought it was pretty smart of Vinnie to have blocked them all out of her life and home. The girl would certainly be safer this way. “And why do you think I’d have any better luck than she does getting in it?”
“We neither one can get past her barrier. But I think you can get in because you’re not her.” Millicent barely controlled the urge to hit Horrie and to roll her eyes at him. The more time she spent with her brother on this plane, the more she realized it was a miracle he had lived as long as he had. The man was dumb. And he rarely, if ever, thought things through other than he wanted it and by God, it had better be in his hands or else. More and more of late, she was thinking her niece had been right in staking him out in the sun. Millicent wanted to get as far from him as she could. “I want you to go there right now and try. You get in and then I’ll have you do some things to make it so we can get in. It’s a piece of cake.”