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.