Undead and Unwary (35 page)

The Ant busied herself with her clipboard. The three of us were now walking abreast past the theater, which was playing (with constant interruptions, as the film needed to be spliced again and again)
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
,
Caligula
,
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
,
The Astronaut’s Wife
,
From Justin to Kelly
,
Cutthroat Island
, and
Sahara.
Which was just staggering. Movies so bad, they couldn’t even be hate-watched? Diabolical.

“I said I ran into your husband earlier.”

“Dead,” Cathie muttered under her breath, “not deaf.”

“I’m sure you did,” the Ant replied, not looking up from the clipboard. “I didn’t think you’d leave it alone.”

Awkward silence. I gave Cathie the side-eye, and she gave me the “what? I just work here” look in return. God help me on the inevitable day when I have to give her the “get the hell out of here and, yeah, I hear the pun” look.

“So anyway, Dad’s dead to me now. And, um, so’s your daughter.” It occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one having a shit week. At least I was an active participant in all the awful. The Ant had to hear about it secondhand. “But they’re both okay. I mean, I didn’t hurt them.”

“No, of course not.” She looked surprised, like she’d assumed all along I wouldn’t hurt them. Which was really, really nice. “You gave them what they wanted. That’s much worse.”

Oh. Less nice.

“Did you want to know—”

A noise that might have been a snort, or a bitten-off sob. Please not the latter. Feeling sorry for the Ant flew in the face of everything I believed
.
“I don’t, actually. Let me guess: he faked his death because one of his kids was a vampire, another was the Antichrist, another was going to turn into God-knows-what, he’d found out his mistress made a shitty second wife, and he wanted his old, simpler life back and knew he couldn’t ever have that again. Right?”

“Pretty much.” Yes, that was a succinct and devastating sum-up. What she didn’t say was that she’d known he was alive, and why he was alive, and found it humiliating. And just like that, I didn’t want to talk about it anymore and, better, didn’t
need
to talk about it anymore.

“So what’s next?” I asked, shuddering as we passed a gelato store where the only flavors in stock were rum raisin, black licorice, and bacon. Bacon! They took two of the most wonderful things in the history of terrific things to eat, bacon and ice cream, and merged them into one horrible entity. Maybe I was too soft for this job, because I instantly wanted to stock vanilla at least. Or at least pistachio.

“We were hoping you’d tell us.”

“Oh.”
Oh
. “Great!”
Fuck
. “Well. Let’s round up Father Markus, and anybody you two think could help, and let’s talk about what happens next. Letting Laura off the genetic hook and deciding to run Hell by myself has taught me that I can’t run Hell by myself. I don’t think anyone can.” Well. Satan had, but I was pretty sure that was why she’d been such a huge, historical bitch.

“All right,” the Ant said. “I’ll get started. Father Markus. Hmm.” And she clicked off, efficiency in a bad dye job and worse heels.

“What was that supposed to mean?” I asked, the opposite of surprised when the Ant didn’t turn and answer.

“Oh, nothing.” Yeah, not buying it. Cathie’s tone was way too innocent. “Certainly not that you switched out one father for another, and kinda one sister for another. Not that you ever thought of me as a sister, but Jessica’s alive. She can’t help you with this. Uh, she
is
alive, right?”

“And kicking,” I agreed, thinking of Mowerzilla and swallowing a chortle.

“Right. You can’t have her here, but you can have me—someone who gets you more than the Antijerk ever did.”

“Wow,” I said, my tone pure admiration. Antijerk! How had I never thought of that? “You never did like her, did you?”

“I never did like her. Which was fine; I was never one of those women who has to be pals with everyone. You, though . . .”

“Recovering Miss Congeniality.”

“Oh my God. Just when I thought I didn’t have anything new to mock you with. Thank you. Thank you.” She shook herself out of her euphoric haze and continued, neatly avoiding three men in business suits all having loud conversations on their cell phones, sharing TMI tidbits like, “But you said the rash would clear up by now!” and, “I said embezzle, not decapitate,” while dodging other Mall-goers. Were they the ones being punished? Or was it the people who couldn’t help overhearing? So much to know! “Laura maybe never loved you—and I’m sorry, she’s an idiot. But you couldn’t ever get close to her, either. For all kinds of reasons, and maybe none of them are important now. You couldn’t warm up to each other, but you and I get along. I’ve—I’ve always really liked you. I’m glad now for the chance to help you, after everything you did for me.”

“Mushy,” I said, delighted. I was usually the one getting mocked for that.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“If you cry,” I teased, “then I’m going to cry. Then all of Hell will cry. It’ll be sobfest of the damned.”

“That’s it. Offer retracted. You can wander off and die now. Or something.”

“How’d you guess Laura meant to stick me with the job?” I’d accepted that the people around me had picked up on this faster than I, because I’d always known the people around me were smarter. But I wanted specifics. “I get now that you knew.” I remembered how she’d been so dismissive of Laura from the start. How she’d been so quick to ride my ass for not understanding more about my supernatural abilities than the last time we’d spoken, years earlier.

Cathie laughed, but the sound didn’t have much humor in it.

“Yeah, you got me. I’ll admit it, I couldn’t get over that you hadn’t made much progress. In the time I saw the world twice over, you’d gone from reluctant vampire queen to . . . reluctant vampire queen. I remembered wondering just what the hell you’d been doing
with yourself. Clinging to the decayed remnants of a normal life?”

Yep, she got me. “Pretty much.”

“I figured you needed all the help you could get and I wanted to be there for it.”

“Yes, but why?”

That brought her up short; she stopped so suddenly the mom behind her ran into her heels with her empty (?) stroller. “Watch it!” the mom (?) snapped, wrenching the stroller around us and rushing off. Cathie barely took notice.

“Why? You kidding?”

“I helped you, but it wasn’t a trade. You didn’t have to help me back. You sure didn’t have to wait in the wings to help me with what you know will be a sucky, likely eternal, job.”

Cathie shook off her shock and grinned at me. “You’re kidding. You really don’t know? Why am I surprised you don’t know?”

“I haven’t a clue. I know it wasn’t just because after you were murdered, I was the only one who could see you and talk to you.” Plenty of other ghosts had haunted me, and every one of them hadn’t lingered once I’d solved their problem. “But I don’t know what it is.”

“Uh-huh. Well, it’s like this. You didn’t just offer to find the guy who strangled me with his belt until I shit myself,” she explained in that odd, cheery tone most people used to describe why they thought baby bunnies were cute, “who then stripped me and made fun of my tits and dumped my naked body in a Walmart parking lot. He did those things to me because he was afraid of me, even though we’d never met, and you heard me—though your listening skills were, and still are, for shit. I was alone but you heard me and offered to find him.”

I opened my mouth, but Cathie shook her head. “Shut up now,” she said kindly, and I did. “But you didn’t stick to that. And when you reminded me you had no lawful authority, that the most you could do was stall my killer until the cops showed, you demonstrated your resolve by preparing to let him stab you multiple times. You knew he couldn’t kill you but you also knew it would hurt like a bitch because, hello,
stabbing.
And you didn’t care. You wanted to stop him. You put your body between a killer and someone you didn’t know, and that’s such an integral part of your personality that you don’t even remember making the offer, and you didn’t expect anything from me in return.
That’s
why. Oh my God,” she added, horrified, “are you—you’re not going to cry, are you?”

“No.” I sniffed. “And thanks. That pretty much made my month.”

“If you cry,” she threatened, “I’ll never offer to help you run Hell ever again. You’ll have to screw it up entirely on your own.”

“Noted. Not crying. Or if I am, they are tears of evil.”

“Good,” she replied, relieved.

We stopped at the food court and got in a long line—like there were any other kind—was Cathie thirsty? But when people saw me, they parted. Hmm. Head of the line, a fringe benefit of killing the devil and taking over Hell. It didn’t seem like an even trade.

“Coke, please. Lots of ice.”

“Cathie, you know that won’t—”

“Here you are.”

Whoa. I blinked at the beverage, instantly handed over by the twenty-something working behind the counter. Her hapless food court uniform fit poorly and was the most unflattering shade of orange I had ever seen. The three-inch-wide button on her uniform shirt read, “Low-Quality Food for High-End Bucks!” Yep, that seemed about right.

The drink, now. The drink looked great. The red and white cup with the Coke colors and logo, first half-filled with crushed ice, then filled to the brim with the sparkling chocolate-brown carbonated liquid, looked like an oasis.

“Thanks,” Cathie replied with a heavy sigh and, at my curious expression, added, “I fucking hate Coke. Ever since I had a high fever in seventh grade and that was the only cold drink in the house besides water, which I also hate. Trust me, I’ll always be able to get a Coke or a bottle of Dasani here.”

I didn’t want to laugh; it wasn’t funny. But her doleful expression coupled with her usual no-punches-pulled demeanor made for a funny contrast. “I’ll pull some strings,” I promised. “We’ll have you swimming in iced tea in no time.”

“God, be careful what you
say
. That could literally happen to me here!”

Then I did laugh, and the woman I’d subconsciously
(please, God, please let it be subconsciously)
replaced as my sister laughed, too.

 CHAPTER  

THIRTY-SEVEN

This time I found myself entire yards from the toolshed, ankle deep in puppy shit. Woo-hoo!

Sinclair had fenced off a small area of the side yard for Fur and Burr, which he usually kept clean. But the li’l buggers had made some sort of sinister puppy pact and were quick to fill it up every time the previous week’s poop had been scooped.

Determined to stay positive, I shook some of the real poop from my imaginary shoes and thought that there was a time such an abomination would have sent me into a three-day red rage. This time I would only indulge in a three-hour red rage. Later. I had to bring the gang up to speed, and then I had to indulge in an emotional collapse. And Tina’s birthday party loomed, assuming I hadn’t missed it.
Please, God, I need those things to happen and I need them in that order. I did you a solid this week! Don’t make an enemy out of me! Thank you, Jesus, amen.

I opened the kitchen door and stepped into the mudroom. It was a puppy-free zone, which meant . . .

Welcome back, my own.

Sinclair’s thought had all the warmth of a hot chocolate on an icy day. I toed off the shoes I wasn’t really wearing and popped them in the “Things We Got Dog Poop On by Mistake and Which Need to Be Cleaned, SINCLAIR!” box. Then I opened the mudroom door and found my family clustered in their usual spots around the butcher-block counter we used as a kitchen table. The smell of strawberries and blackberries hit me like a fruit-drenched wave. Jessica’s ire was more like a wave of impassioned bitchery.

“Nobody has it worse than single moms. Don’t bring up my money!” she added sharply before any of us had a chance to. “Hi, Betsy.”

“Hi. I wasn’t gonna bring up your millions and your ability to hire a fleet of nannies.”

“Good! Though with all the goings-on in this joint, can you imagine a regular ordinary human person plunked in the middle of it—”

“—and I definitely won’t bring up the fact that you’re best friends with the vampire queen, who could assign vamp minions to dote on your weird babies.”

“Why?” Marc asked, horrified, while His Name’s Definitely Dick groaned and covered his eyes. “Why would you come back from Hell and immediately pick a fight?”

“Because I just got back from Hell?”

“It’s not only single moms struggling with one income,” Jess added, not to be put off her rave.

Yeah, one
gigantic
income.

“It’s important, sure. It’s a huge factor. But it’s not about money; it’s about societal expectations. If a single dad is out and about with his kids, women melt all over him.”

“Like life-sized giggling butter pats,” I suggested, heading to the counter to see if the greedy bastards had slurped it all or if there was enough smoothie left for me. I didn’t trust the blender full o’ blackberry smoothie. Blackberries were wonderful in theory. Big and fat and sweet and gorgeous, but pop one in your mouth and you realize the thing’s all seed. “Oozing all over the single dads.” Raspberry! Slightly less seedy! Yes!

“It’s true,” Jess continued, again despite the fact that no one was arguing. “We see single dads with kids in a completely different light than we see single moms.”

My chauvinist husband and his sidekick, a recovering Southern belle, listened with carefully polite expressions. I admired Jessica’s determination to break them down and turn them into her version of feminists, even as I had zero interest in helping her. The most I would do to assist was not point out in front of everyone that a single millionaire mom whose babies were only weeks old wasn’t necessarily the expert on either a) motherhood or b) feminism.

So there it is, proof that I belong in Hell.