Chapter 59

Don't try to stop me! Don't you see? Unless I interfere, he'll never come after me. He'll never stick around and trick me into making him king by having sex with me upside down in the deep end of a swimming pool! And if we don't do that, we'll never fall in love and never rule the undead together as good guys not assholes like Nostro! So let me go so I can tell him to be a huge pest!"

"I know. Well, not all of that . . . stuff . . ." I realized Laura, far from trying to stop me, was actually shoving me in the direction Sinclair had left. "So go. Go!"

"Oh." I needed a second to get my balance, physically and mentally. I'd expected her to put up more of a fight, so I was having to rethink my strategy. "Okay! Stay here. I'll come back as quick as I can."

And I scampered off in the direction Sinclair had gone.

It didn't take long to catch up with him; he'd taken the long-cut through the cemetery and was about to do a Six-Million-Dollar-Man leap over the fence and to the street when I seized his shoulder and spun him around.

"Ah, I knew you would not be able to-eh?"

"I'm so, so sorry about Erin and your folks," I cried. My hands had slid down, and I was holding on to the sleeves of his dark wool winter coat while he blinked down at me in astonishment. "She seemed really nice when she was five. I think she was five."

"You are wearing different clothes. Dirty clothes," he observed. "And how did you get all the way around the cemetery?"

"I didn't! So you have to go after me. Listen. You have to follow me to the coffee shop after I stop Marc from killing himself. You have to be as annoying as you can, all the time, until you trick me into having sex with you in Nostro's swimming pool."

"But what if I've made other plans?" he asked pleasantly, still looking me up and down.

"This is no time for your weird sense of humor, Sink Lair," I snapped. "If you want to spend the next five thousand years ruling at my side, you'll listen to me now."

"It would be a pity to let such an opportunity slip through my fingers."

"That's the spirit! Be like that, be like that a lot. So go after me and be all dogged and irritating, and ignore all the times I'm gonna tell you to take a long walk off a short pier and call you an asshat. Oh, and shoes. You'll have to bribe me with shoes. And be a huge pain in my ass until I realize I'm in love with you." I shook his coat sleeves. "Are you paying attention to me?"

"Oh yes."

The words were right, but the tone (mildly patronizing) and expression (mildly interested) were all wrong.

"Goddammit!" I swore, and when he flinched, I remembered. Our fight. Our stupid fight. And the things I could do that he couldn't. That no other vampire could.

"Look!" I said, and ripped open my shirt.

"Really exceptional," he commented.

"Look up, dumbass. That's right, about three inches above the cleavage."

He did, and the barely interested expression left his face as if I'd slapped it away. Which in a way, I had. Because I was, of course, wearing Erin Sinclair's gold cross. It meant everything to me; I only ever took it off when we made love.

"My sister's-but you're a-"

"He sees the light! Hallelujah!"

"How-" He stared at me. "It's . . . all true, then. Everything you babbled in a piercing whine while you were smudging my coat"

"Babbled! You asshole. I mean, right! So you need to beat feet out of this cemetery and go find me in the coffee shop. I've probably saved Marc by now," I mused aloud, "and he and I are headed for a snack."

"This is your usual practice after saving a life? Coffee and pie?"

"I hate coffee, and why shouldn't I treat myself to an ice-choked Coke after I talk a jumper down from a roof the week I came back from the dead? Plus, almost but not quite killing himself gave Marc an appetite. For a muffin, I think. It might have been a bagel; I wasn't really paying attention. So there's time for you to find me. Just"

"But what if I do not wish to be your king?"

"Please." I rolled my eyes. "One, you love power. Two, you love me. Or you will. Because although I might need a shower, even dirty leggings can't disguise my essential hotness."

"Touche, my dear." He laughed, which was jarring in a dark, creepy cemetery, but kind of nice, too. "You seem to know me quite well. And it's good to have assurances about your essential hotness."

"Yeah, lucky you. And lucky me. So go already." I made shooing motions. "Run along. Go seduce me. You know, eventually."

"This is the oddest conversation I have ever had," he commented.

"I wish I could say the same."

"I take it you wish for me to do these things because you enjoy being with me?"

"I love being with you, idiot! I love you. Idiot. Even though you're arrogant. And slow to take direction. And you have to have your way, like, all the time. And you own more farms than any man could ever need. And you have extremely weird ideas about spouses in the workplace. Also, you hang all your clothes on wooden hangers. It's like living with Joan Craw-ford. 'No wire hangers, ever!' And you have another weird thing about buying fruit out of season."

"You simply can't," he said, appalled. "The taste . . . dreadful!"

"My point, Farmer Brown. What I'm saying is, you're a huge pain in my ass and we're in love and dying was worth it because otherwise I never would have met you, so go find me and seduce me already!"

"Not yet married but already nagged," he commented. His long fingers were at my shirt buttons; he was solicitously buttoning me up. I guess he was afraid I'd get a chill. You can take the polite midwestern farm boy off the farm, but you couldn't take the farm out of the boy, or however the old saying went. "Still, the joys of matrimony will likely make up for your shrill sweet nothings."

Then he kissed me. Which is when I, never a candidate for Mensa on my best day, realized he'd been buttoning me up to cover up the cross so he could mack on me without getting a third-degree burn.

I s'pose I should have tried to knee him in his undead gonads, a sort of I'm-not-that-kind-of-vampire message, but who was I kidding? I was horny and I was missing my husband and I was in love and we were married. Sort of. In other words: I was that kind of vampire. Also, of all the things about Sinclair that were right, his kissing was probably the rightest.

So I clung instead of kicked, and kissed him back instead of delivering a stern lecture on, I dunno, abstinence?

His mouth was slanting over mine, his arms were around me, I needed a shampoo in the worst way, and who cared?

Then it occurred to me: I was helping my husband cheat on me ... with me!

I extricated myself with difficulty-it would have been easier to wrestle free of a vat of Laffy Taffy. Fortunately Sinclair seemed inclined to let me go, or it would have taken much longer.

"So. Off you go." I flapped my hands at him. "Make with the seduction so we fall in love. Shoo!"

"Yes, that seems sensible," he said, sounding dazed. "I shall get right on that. You know, there's something about you. Maybe it's the strawberry body wash." Damn. He could smell that under all my layers of grime? What a stud!

Then he wandered off . . . in the right direction, this time.

Chapter 60

l scampered back toward my sister's hiding place. "It worked! He's gonna go make my life a living hell until I fall in love with him!"

"I know. It was disgusting."

"You were peeking? Perv."

"I needed to make sure you had everything under control," she grumped. "What if he'd gone foaming, barking mad and tried to kill you?"

"I would have kicked his ass."

"Ha!"

"Until he decided to fight back, at which point you would have rescued me."

"There we go."

"D'you know what this means?"

"You're going to be more arrogant than usual?"

"Hell yeah! We've done everything! Your next jump will be the one that brings us home! Dammit."

"What?"

"I'd finally gotten the theme from Quantum Leap out of my head. And why are we still cowering back here? Come on."

I took her by the wrist and pulled her out from behind the big shiny tombstone. "So make with the Hellfire sword and cut us a door back home."

"You're certain you're finished? You don't want to tamper with your own past some more? When my mother said I'd be drawn to your history, I didn't realize it meant you'd take the chance to pull a do-over on everything."

"Yeah, I never thought I'd say this, but I owe Satan a favor. I've set things up so they'll happen the way they're supposed to. And I undid biting Nick and ruining his love life. But Laura, I didn't know it'd get switched over on you. I wouldn't have wanted you to get chomped."

"That's okay. I needed to know what it was like."

Okay, that was odd. "Why the hell would you need to know that?"

She shrugged, reached for her waist . . . and was holding her sword. "Know thy enemy and suchlike." Then she winked. "Not that you're my enemy."

"No, of course not."

I didn't like that wink.

Not at all.

"If we undid Nick getting chomped, maybe we can undo Antonia and Garrett dying!"

"No."

"Yeah, it'll be-what?"

We'd gone back behind the tombstone; Laura probably didn't want to risk anyone seeing us when she hacked a doorway out of nothing.

"No, Betsy. That one you can't undo, and you shouldn't try. And if you did try, I'd try to stop you."

I almost laughed, then remembered that my religious-prude half sis was, what was the phrase? Oh, yeah. Demon spawn. Probably an exceptionally bad idea to laugh. Ever.

"But why? C'mon, Laura, you're one of the biggest softies I've ever met when you aren't hacking your way through vampires and serial killers."

She colored. "Thanks."

"I figured you'd be the first one on board with saving lives."

"Then you haven't been paying attention. It's not that I'm against saving lives, Betsy, you know that. But undoing bad things won't necessarily guarantee good things."

"But-"

"I know you feel guilty. I know you wish it hadn't happened. But if you undo their deaths, you'll never meet with the werewolves. You'll never make nice with the Wyndhams. You won't be aligned with seventy-five thousand werewolves. If Antonia and Garrett don't die, vampires won't be aligned with werewolves. That's too important to undo. No matter how crummy you feel."

I stared at her, appalled. That she could be so cold about it, so logical, was yuck-o enough. That she was right was even worse.

"Why don't you shut up and get us home already?"

"Don't get bitchy because you know I'm right"

"I'm not bitchy. I just need a shower, dammit! And to stop traveling all over my past!"

"Bitchy," the Antichrist mumbled, and obligingly sliced a door out of nothing.

About time, too. I'd had more than enough of this. It was good that we were done. Good that we were heading back. Laura was either learning the wrong things or learning too much. Or both.

Either way: it would be better than good to be back.