So, fully dressed . . . my mom’s version, anyway. In the wee, wee hours of the morning. So she’d been up all night with Cliiiiiiiive, or they’d both recently gotten up and gotten dressed. Curse you, logical brain, stop sniffing out clues that this was indeed a booty call! Go back to sleep, brain.
Don’t let the white curly hair fool you—my mom’s hair started going white in high school, and she still only had about three wrinkles. Instead of making her look old, her hair made her striking; I can remember being a kid and wishing I had white curly hair instead of stupid flowing blond waves. Mom got knocked up with me a month after graduation. She was fifty years old now—barely—and took care of herself.
I was not unaware that my mom was near Cougartown. The curly hair and the blue eyes masked her intellect and her formidable will. This was a woman who lost her husband to his secretary (cliché!), and spent the rest of their lives punishing them in a thousand small, aggravating ways.
“Wow,” stupid Clive was saying. Mom had helped him up, which was great, because no matter how much she clenched at me, I wasn’t gonna. Nope. He looked a little shaky, which was too bad. I wanted him a little comatose. “You’re quick! You must work out. You must be Betsy.”
I gave him a bright, white smile. “And
you
must be—”
“Elizabeth!”
“—Clive.” What? That’s what I was going to say all along. I swear on the soul of Clive, even if it means he had to burn in hell forever and ever if I had lied to myself just then.
“It’s funny we haven’t met before now.” He extended his hand.
“Hilarious.”
I stared down at his soft pink hand. He was the least dangerous-looking male I’d seen; in fact he looked like a giant baby. A giant baby who wanted to make out with my mom.
His rosy cheeks got pinker while I looked at his hand and thought the thoughts of an evil undead vampire queen.
Bad idea. One squeeze—not even a hard one for me—and you’ll have toothpicks for bones. One twist, and you could be the one-armed man from
The Fugitive
. Maybe two. You can’t molest my mother with two dislocated shoulders, right?
“I’m sure your manners will quickly return,” my mom said. The finished sentiment:
They’d better.
I could actually hear her teeth grinding together:
krrrk-krrrk-krrrk
.
“Your reputation precedes you . . .” He turned to my mother and didn’t smile with his mouth. But his watery blue eyes crinkled in a friendly way. He had a soft round face, and was plump the way men in their fifties had softened. Not fat, just . . . puffy. He was trying to be nice, but he was also nervous (yay!); when he swallowed, his prominent Adam’s apple dipped up and down a little. He looked like he’d swallowed a cork. Why couldn’t I have been the one to jam that cork down his throat?
The little hair he had was brown and wispy. He was wearing grass-stained black slacks, a grass-stained black dress shirt, and a grass-free white tie. Jeez, was he in the Mafia? “She’s charming!”
And you’re suicidal.
I decided there was a possibility she’d grind herself into a stroke, so I shook his hand . . . barely. You know those lame, clammy, limp-fingered handshakes that are just sad? That’s what Clive got.
“Dr. Lively was on his way out. But you’re on your way
in,
young lady.”
“Yeah, Mom, I know, I’m the one who came
here
—wait. His name is Clive Lively?” Now I
really
wished I’d dislocated his shoulder. Or his face. “Oh, boy. The hits just keep on coming. Clive Lively. Nice to meet you, Lively, I’m going into my house to kill myself, hope you don’t get run over six or seven times by a truck in our driveway.”
So I did. At least the first part of that sentence, for sure.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
When my mom came back from what I prayed wasn’t a
passionate, sloppy, sizzling, wet good-bye embrace with my new mortal enemy, Clive Lively, I was pawing through her fridge.
“Well! That was . . . where do I start?”
Diet Pepsi? Ugh. Milk? She was down to less than a quarter gallon. Bottles of water? My mom had never been one to buy and tote her own clear fluids. Diet root beer? Maybe if someone stuck a gun in my ear.
“I know you’ve always had a flair for the dramatic, you terrible, terrible child, but that was bordering on felony assault.” She stopped and frowned. “Mmmm. No, you didn’t use a weapon. So just assault. Mmmm . . . no, it varies by state . . . What
is
Minnesota’s stance on assault with intent but no weapon? I’ll have to look it up.”
Apple juice? Sure, if I wanted to drink something that looked like urine. Chai? No, I’ve never liked drinking something that tastes like Glade air freshener, no matter how much milk you dump in it.
“So, while I’m relieved you didn’t produce a weapon, your behavior was still inappropriate and you will explain yourself.”
Egg Beaters? What was I, stuck in a
Rocky
remake? I wasn’t drinking raw eggs and running up and down a million steps for anybody. Ranch dressing? Oh, come on! This was getting sad.
“Nothing!” I slammed the fridge shut, then was startled when the thing rocked over a couple of inches. Stupid inhuman vamp strength brought on by the stress of watching my mom get pawed. If I could have gnashed my teeth without biting through my lip, I would have. “You’ve got a fridge full of nothing. The perfect end to a perfect day.”
“Also, I’m fresh out of O negative,” she replied, not in the least startled, tense, or afraid. If I’d picked up the fridge and threw it through the front door, I’d get a lecture on disturbing the neighbors. Vampires didn’t scare my mom (she looooooved Sinclair, which, before I decided I loved him, too, was beyond irritating).
She stepped to the fridge, opened the freezer portion, then pulled out a gallon bucket covered with several layers of Saran wrap. She shoved it at me like she was passing a basketball in the final five seconds, then pulled open the nearest drawer, extracted a soup spoon, and handed that to me. “There. Before you go foaming, barking mad and chase Clive down like a dog after a car wheel.”
“Clive is a stupid name,” I managed, because my mouth was already crammed with Mom’s booze-free strawberry daiquiri slush. The Saran wrap was still drifting to the floor. I dug harder into the bucket. “And that’s just for starters.”
“I’ll tell you what’s for starters.” She jabbed a finger in my direction. “Your explanation. Speak!”
She herded me over to the blond wood table I’d eaten at since I’d grown out of my high chair. Her kitchen was sun-filled (during daylight hours), bright, and sparkling clean. I’d never had her knack for, or interest in, house cleaning. All the appliances beamed at me like chrome gnomes. I could smell fresh vegetables, Windex, and my mom’s Jergens. Familiar smells; I could feel myself start to relax and calm down.
I swallowed, took another bite, swallowed again. “Okay. You know how you offered to take BabyJon for a few days?”
“Yes, and you’re lucky your nonsense didn’t wake him.”
“He is, too. He’s had enough trauma in his life without running into Clive. God knows how long it is going to take
me
to get over it. Anyway, right after that, I had to go to hell, literally hell, with Laura. She needed help learning how to use her powers, and I needed help figuring out how to read the Book of the Dead without going nuts.”
Mom was nodding. I knew that, as a historian, there was only one thing she loved more than talking to Tina about the bad old days, 1861–1865, beginning with Confederate dumbasses firing on Fort Sumter on April 12 and ending April 14, 1865, when Lincoln was shot. Not April 9, when Lee and the rest of the Confederate dumbasses surrendered. Mom considered Lincoln’s double tap at Ford’s Theater to be the last of the bad old days.
Before you freak out and decide I’m a Civil War Rainman, I got all this stuff practically with mother’s milk. Literally with mother’s milk, now that I think about it, because she was working on her doctorate when I was in preschool, so the ABCs I learned were a little different from most four-year-olds’. A is for Antietam. B is for Buchanan (James). C is for Confederate States of America. D is for Davis (Jefferson). Like that. I should have realized the funny looks I got in preschool were just the beginning.
Anyway, the only thing my mom liked more than grilling Tina (“What was General Lee
really
like?”) was trying to figure out how to get the BOD (Book of the Dead) analyzed and read. It took me forever to talk her out of wanting to borrow the disgusting thing. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to use my tried-and-true tactics of shrill hysteria and on-my-knees begging for such an extended period of time. Finally, more to shut me up than anything else, Mom gave in and abandoned the idea of borrowing it.
But she wondered about it a lot. When she found out I threw it into the Mississippi River, I thought she was going to hit me in the mouth. (Stupid thing came back, though, and dry as a bone. It always comes back. It’s like a student loan officer. They just find you.)
“Risky . . . deals with the devil, don’t you know. I don’t recall a single instant when the devil was outsmarted.”
“Sure you can. ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia.’ ” Greatest country song ever.
“All right. One instance, probably because the man in question was a musical prodigy. But I can understand why you risked it.” Mom had grabbed a spoon of her own and sampled a bit of the daiquiri. “It tells you what will happen—or it could, if anyone could read it for a sustained amount of time. You might have been able to save Antonia.”
Still might,
I thought but didn’t say. It was best to keep that to myself for now. Telling Mom about my hellish road trip after the fact was one thing. Telling her I was going again was something else.
“A thousand years old!” She looked as jazzed as I’d ever seen her. “My God, the things we could . . .”
“Quit it. Anyway, what happened was, we ended up in hell, like I said, and we also ended up in the past. Specifically, Tina’s great-great-great-grandma’s past, and then Sinclair’s past, and then mine, and then . . .” I paused. Mom took my new (un)life pretty well. Amazingly well, all things considered. But I thought it’d be safer and nicer to leave out the future. I was either going to destroy the world (or help my sister destroy it), or not. Either way, I wanted to keep Mom out of it. “Anyway, when I got back, it turned out some things are different here now. I’m kind of stumbling around an alternate timeline.”
Mom frowned, sucking on her spoon. “You mean . . . a parallel universe?”
“No, it’s the same universe, I just remember it differently.” Maybe. “Anyway, when I left, you weren’t seeing anyone.”
“Oh. Oh!” She actually rocked back in her chair as she grasped what I’d said. “So you’ve never heard me—oh, heavens, no wonder you committed assault or felony assault—I have to look it up—on my lawn. Oh, poor Clive!” She laughed, the heartless tart. “Poor Betsy!”
“Yeah, poor me.” I tried to pull the bucket o’ daiquiri away when she reached for more, and got a sharp rap on my knuckles with her spoon. “Ow! You know, I
am
the queen of the vampires. Some people are afraid of me.”
“Then you should set an example for your toothy brethren by playing nicely. Well! Clive and I have been seeing each other for three months. You’ve heard all about him, but have never met him—the odd hours you keep, child. Yes? Yes. In fact, the four of us—your brother and Clive and you and I—were supposed to have dinner tomorrow night.”
“Pass.”
“What?”
She was gripping her spoon in an unfriendly way, so I clarified: “I have to find out what Laura’s up to and also take Garrett to hell to find his dead girlfriend. And save Marc.”
“Save
Marc
?” Mom’s eyes went big. She’d met all my roommates. “Why?”
Dammit! This,
this
was how rattled I still was after meeting Clive. I’d planned on her not finding out about the future . . . which was a fine plan unless I forgot and
mentioned the future.
Jesus! I pitied, I really pitied the poor vampires who looked up to me as a role model, leader, and someone who can stick to a plan longer than sixty seconds.
“He becomes a seriously . . .” I paused, then used language I knew would get her attention, would prove how serious I was, language I never uttered lightly in this house. Believe it or not, I had been raised better than I turned out. “He’s a fucked-up vampire in . . .”
The future. My future.
“What I mean is, the new timeline . . . there are things wrong with it.” Oh boy, were there ever. “Look, it’s a long story and I come off really bitchy in it. I’m trying to fix things . . . that’s pretty much what it boils down to.”
By the way, Betsy, you didn’t run into Mom in the future, did you? Nice of you to finally realize.
I shoved that away. Mom not being in the middle of that winter wasteland a thousand years from now didn’t mean shit, and now was not the time to freak out. About
that,
anyway. “Listen, just . . . if Marc ever comes here alone, don’t let him in and keep your cross on.” Mom had several. She had been collecting and wearing them as accessories long before Madonna made it trendy in the 1980s. “At all times have a cross on, okay? And don’t let him in unless he’s with Sinclair or me or . . . Sinclair or me. Unless we’ve talked to you.”