CHAPTER
NINE
“Following me back was a bad idea,” I told the Marc
Thing as I manfully cradled my cracked ribs. “The sort of
idea that will get you staked a zillion times in the
balls.”
“Don’t tease,” it
said.
I glanced at Marc.
His color was high; he had a look of avid curiosity on his face. He
smelled like—it’s hard to explain; he smelled like hot wiring. You
know how you sometimes taste metal when you get an adrenaline rush?
He smelled like how that tastes. Excited. A little afraid. But not
enough afraid, and was that a good thing or a bad
thing?
How to explain this
to him? Say, Marc, in the future I turned into
Supremo Bitch-o of North America and tortured you for decades—after
not saving you from being killed, oopsie!—until you went batshit
nuts and now the you from the future is here to do all sorts of
disgusting things to all of us, which is all my fault. Sorry. I owe
you one, okay?
“My queen is quite
correct . . . you will be staked. Only not in the balls.” We all
jumped; I jumped and groaned . . . reeeally wish the cracked ribs
would heal already. Tina, one of the awesomest vampires I knew (I
didn’t know very many awesome vampires;
shame it was such a short list) had snuck up on the Marc Thing and
stuck the barrel of her 9mm Beretta in his ear.
“Wonderful,” the Marc
Thing and Marc said in unison, which was just creepy.
It always surprised
me to see Tina wielding firearms; she was an expert with all sorts
of guns and had been ever since I’d known her.
Because she’d been
born, or died, or whatever, during the Civil War, I was always
amazed to see her handling modern weaponry. Which was dumb . . . it
wasn’t like I expected to see her running around in hoopskirts
brandishing mint juleps. Such a capricious nature has man. Or
something.
Tina always looked
good, but tonight she looked like an angel. And could have passed
for one—she’d been killed in her late teens, or early twenties . .
. something like that. Who can keep track of when everybody died?
Anyway, she was mega-gorgeous, with a gorgeous fall of shiny blond
hair and the biggest, prettiest brown eyes I’d ever seen. Pansy
eyes, my mom called them.
“Have I mentioned,”
Sinclair began, smiling for the first time since the Marc Thing
made his presence known, “that I adore having you
around?”
“Oh yes, my king. You
are good enough to make frequent mention of it.”
“You’re not really
theeeeeere,” the Marc Thing sang. He acted like standing in a
hostile house surrounded by enemies, and with an earful of gun, was
all in a day’s work. Which it prob’ly was.
“On your knees.
Slowly, if you please. And . . . yes.” Tina kept the barrel of the
gun socked tightly in his ear as she bent at the knees to
accommodate the Marc Thing getting on his. “Now on your stomach.
Yes.” Sinclair shifted so his foot was resting lightly on the Marc
Thing’s wrist. My husband smiled pleasantly at the Marc Thing, who
leered back, and everyone in the hall knew that if the Marc Thing
even twitched, Sinclair would grind his wrist into splintered bone.
Which made it safe for Tina to pull back and step back. Still:
maybe next time Sinclair should rest his foot on its neck. Call me
hospitable.
For the first time I
realized Garrett had also come out of the kitchen, which was
something of a shock. In my timeline, Garrett had been a wreck, a
shell, a disaster of a man. A coward, but not without reason. He’d
been murdered, then driven insane, then murdered some more . . .
and in my timeline, it drove him to suicide.
“Uh, maybe you should
go back in the kitchen and keep an eye on Dee-Nick and Jessica.
Back in the kitchen. And not in here.”
“Dee-Nick sent me out
here.” Garrett correctly read my look of surprise, because he
lifted his left shoulder in a slight shrug and added, “Antonia died
right in front of me. There’s nothing to be scared of
now.”
He was wrong, of
course. But I didn’t have the heart to disabuse him of that
sorry-ass notion. He was almost a hundred years old, but I’d always
felt older than him in both timelines.