Authors: MaryJanice Davidson
"Betsy, jeez! Didn't he try to smack you or something?"
"He visited upon her the worst punishment a vampire can endure...and she laughed at that, as well." Then, "
Betsy
?"
"Yeah, Betsy, wanna make something of it?"
"Indeed, no." Was the asshole actually hiding a smirk? I looked, and he stared back, expressionless. Must have been my imagination.
"So you're here to try to bring Notso my head?"
"Nostro. And no, I am not. You're far too pretty to behead."
"Barf. Is Nostro short for Nostrodamus? Is the tubby twit that unimaginative?"
Sink Lair looked pained. "Yes, and yes."
"Ugh."
"I quite agree."
"So why
are
you here, Sink Lair?"
"It's SIN-clair, and I should think that would be obvious, even to you. You are newly undead and clearly a menace to yourself. You don't know any of the rules, and there is now a bounty on your head not seventy-two hours after you first rose...a neat trick, by the way. I will take you under my protection."
"And in return...?" I didn't mean to sound like there was a bug in my mouth, but I couldn't help it. I didn't trust Sink Lair as far as I could throw him. Hmm...better come up with a new cliché.
"In return, we will discover why you are so different from the rest of us. You should have been in agony when they flung holy water on you. Instead it gave you the hiccups. Once I deduce--"
"No thanks."
"Really. I insist."
"I don't give a shit! You're not my father—although you're probably old enough to be, creep, and—"
"How old are you?" Marc asked breathlessly.
Sinclair spared him a glance. "I was born the year World War II was declared."
I gasped in horror. To think I was attracted to this fossil! Well, it wasn't entirely my fault...Sinclair looked like he was in his early thirties. There wasn't as much as a speck of gray in his inky black hair, no wrinkles bracketing his fathomless dark eyes. "Ewwwww! So you're, like, ninety years old? Yuck! Do you have a truss under that suit?"
"You are the most ignorant, prideful, vainglorious—"
"It's more like he's in his early sixties," Marc interrupted hurriedly. "And both of you, mellow out. I don't want to be in the middle of a vampire fist fight."
"Indeed. Go to sleep."
"But I'm zzzzzzzzzzzz..."
I shoved my hand out, so instead of Marc's head connecting briskly with the table, he snored into my palm instead. I slowly pulled away and gave Sinclair a good glare. "What'd you do that for?" And
how
did you do that? I'd have to try that on the Stepmonster sometime.
He looked back, cool as a baby lying on a pile of ice cubes. "It was inappropriate for him to hear so much about us. Which is another matter I mean to take up with you. Is it true that you have told your family you are still alive?"
"I'm not still alive, it's none of your business, how'd you find out?"
"You must not do such things. You endanger the very ones you would seek to protect."
"Has anyone ever told you, you don't use contractions? Everything is 'you are' and 'I am' and 'you would'."
"Has anyone ever told you that you lack focus?"
"Sure," I said. I drained my tea and set it down, hard. Marc snored on, oblivious. "Now listen up. I don't appreciate being grabbed, I sure as shit didn't care for your digits in my mouth—"
"I'm tempted to put something else in your mouth this minute," he said silkily.
"Shut up! And I don't like you following me and I don't like you putting my friends to sleep."
"He is not your friend. You only met this evening."
"He's a friend I haven't known very long, all right? Now buzz off. I can take care of myself, I don't need you, I don't want you—"
"All lies."
"—and I don't want your stupid vampire tribes, either. Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I can't have a life." Sinclair blinked at that one, and I hurried on before he could interrupt again. "Yeah, I told my family I wasn't dead...why the hell not? They're not going to stake me in the middle of the night—well, my real parents won't. I'm coping as well as I can, thanks for
nothing
, and I don't plan on hooking up with any of you undead losers."
"Finished?"
"Uh..." Let's see...can take care of myself...it's my business who I tell...undead losers... "Yeah."
"We will speak again. There will come a time, Miss Rogue, when you will badly need my help. I hold no grudges, and will gladly give it." He grinned at me. It was terrifying...all white teeth and glowing eyes. "Provided you let me put something in your mouth again. Good night."
Poof! Vanished. Or he moved so quickly I couldn't track him. Either way, he was gone, I was shaking with rage and—oh, no!--lust, and Marc was drooling on the Formica.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A few days passed without incident, which was apparently too much for my old pain in the ass, Jessica, and my new pain, Marc. The excitement of my return from the dead had died down, no vampire baddies had come knocking, my relationship with my stepmother and father remained the same (she ignored me, he sent checks), and that was just too darned staid for my pals.
I introduced them and, after they bristled at each other for an hour, they decided to share me. I stayed the hell out of it. As long as they weren't fighting, I didn't care what the arrangements were.
Jessica is strong-willed, duh, but she's also weirdly protective of me. She's always threatened when I make a new friend. I've tried to explain that, no, I did not love all my friends equally, she was my absolute favorite and would be forever, amen, but it usually fell on deaf ears. And it was strictly a one-way street, at my insistence: Jessica had loads of society friends who wouldn't know me if I slapped them in the face.
Marc, on the other hand, for all his renewed sense of purpose (and proposed conspiracy to assault child abusers), was still fragile and I wanted nothing said or done to him that might send him back up on the roof. He was staying with me while he looked for a new place, an arrangement that suited us nicely: I wanted a roomie who could move around during the day, and he needed a bed.
Before I'd died I never would have done such a thing. Not because I didn't care, but because I wouldn't dare. You just couldn't know about people, what was really in their hearts and what hid behind a smile. But along with an endless thirst for blood, I now had a pretty good radar. I just knew Marc was an all right guy. And frankly, I had never cared for living alone—which is why I had rescued Giselle from the animal shelter. I'd watch too many scary movies and stay awake all night in terror, flinching at every creak. The thing that terrified me the most were zombie movies. After watching
Resident Evil
I had nightmares for a week. It was ironic, because now I was one of the unkillable monsters. Still didn't like living by myself, though.
The three of us were adjusting, but there was a kind of balancing act for me to maintain between Jess and Marc. And so, because I wanted to keep the two neurotics happy, midnight found me in a private exam room at Minneapolis General, instead of checking out the Midnight Madness Shoe Sale at Neiman Marcus. "Only for you," I had said to Jessica. "And I guess you," I'd added to Marc.
There was one thing they both agreed upon: I was not your garden-variety vampire, and the more we knew about my abilities, the better. Marc wanted to get a "baseline," whatever the hell that was, and Jessica was just plain curious, so Marc got us a room at the hospital and the exam began.
"I'm not taking off any of my clothes," I warned him.
Marc rolled his eyes. "Aw, gee, I guess no big thrill for me tonight."
"For any of us," Jessica said dryly. "The girl's the color of a toad's belly and she needs her roots done."
"I do not!" I said, shocked. "I had those done two weeks before I died. My roots are fine."
"I wonder what would happen if you cut your hair?" Marc asked thoughtfully, slipping a thermometer under my tongue. "Would it stay short forever? Would it grow back?
Could
it grow back? Would it magically reappear the next night?" He was staring so thoughtfully at my hair I leaned as far away from him as far as I could.
"So this Sinclair...he wants to take you under his wing?" Jessica asked. She was rocketing around the exam room on the doctor's stool. She'd zoom up to a wall, kick off, and careen to the other side. Marc was obviously used to odd antics during an exam, but it was making me claustrophobic as hell. She had officially given up mourning colors for me, and tonight she was sporting green leggings, a buttercup yellow t-shirt, and a salmon-colored raincoat. "Teach you the vamp ropes?"
"God, he is so
hot
," Marc muttered. By contrast, he was a moving pile of rags in torn jeans and a faded t-shirt with the logo "Come Along Quietly"—an alarming choice for a physician.
He peered at the thermometer, cleared it, then promptly stuck it in my mouth again. "By the way, I tested all the equipment on myself before you guys got here, so we know it works...now what were we talking about? Oh, yeah—Sinclair. You should see this guy, Jessica. He looks like the Prince of Darkness and he moves like a matador. I was sweating just looking at him."
"Yum," Jessica said, impressed.
"Don't forget, he's a hundred years old," I sneered.
"More like sixty-three, so he's got a lifetime of wisdom and street smarts, not to mention years of experience fucking every which way a guy can think up, to go with a nice, hard, powerful, eternally young body. Jesus, I'm gonna have to quit talking about this before I need to sit down."
"Please," I said thinly. I hadn't thought about the experience factor minus the ick factor of a wrinkled, decrepit body. Which was probably hiding under those superbly tailored suits! "Besides, it doesn't matter a purple crap what Sinclair wants. I'm not playing vamp politics. I'm minding my own business, and he sure as shit better mind his."
"Or you'll throw him through a concrete cross again," Jessica added. "I wish I could have seen it!"
"No you don't. The whole thing was alternatively stupid and frightening. If that's what I can expect from being in a vamp tribe, count me out."
Twenty minutes later, Marc was finished. He was looking at me a little strangely, which I pretended not to notice. He had watched me climb a building with little surprise, handled being my dinner well enough, and insinuated himself into my home with no fuss, but the scientist in him was finally facing black-and-white facts, and that was a little daunting.
"Well." He cleared his throat. "Your blood pressure is ten over five, your Babinski reflex is nonexistent, your temperature is eighty—which is why your handshake is so darned clammy--respirations are four, and your pulse is six. All incompatible with life. Which means you have to watch your ass, Bets—if you're found during the day and somebody freaks and calls an ambulance, a doctor is going to pronounce you at the scene, and then it's hello, morgue."
Jessica was staring. "You only take a breath four times a minute?"
"I guess," I said defensively. "I don't think about it. I mean, c'mon...do you think about your breathing, unless you've got a cold or something?"
"And she's not clammy," Jess said loyally. "Touching her is—is like lying in a cool shade."
"Clammy," I said glumly. "Nice save on the shade thing, though."
"
But
. Although your vitals are incompatible with life, you're super strong, inhumanly agile, and on a liquid diet. There's very little activity at a cellular level—so you've stopped aging. Not to mention excreting. You haven't taken a piss since you died—which makes no sense, because you drink liquids all day long—you don't sweat, and you don't cry. Jessica said you can't drink canned blood. So there must be something about fresh—living—blood that keeps you going. Is it the electrolytes? The pure energy found in living cells...? I wonder if you harness the--"