Fifty
“Is your husband
still—”
“On Sofa Sentry? He
told me your Edward called it that. I love it. It’s perfect. And
yeah, bet your ass he is.”
Your Edward. Rachael liked the sound of that. Lots.
She lifted a hand to wave at Call Me Jim, who had just now come
onto the porch. Edward was stretched out on the sofa, his head in
her lap, reading the few clippings that covered the murders, which,
to the public, had stopped as mysteriously and seemingly
motive-free as they had begun. Given that Cain had been walking and
talking (and lying, and killing) just a couple hours ago made this
peaceful scene sort of reek unreality. But she wasn’t going to
question it.
“Listen, Betsy, I
just have to know—”
“It couldn’t wait for
two hours from now?”
“If I have to suck
down one more smoothie I’m going to vomit raspberries for the
better part of the week. Enough with the smoothies. You will not
see me during Smoothie Time tonight. What I’ve been wondering about
is that damned newsletter.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. This all
started because you put your address in a newsletter, which you
then mailed to strangers all over the country.”
The queen laughed.
“You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“I’d hoped I was
making it sound like a thing I didn’t understand.”
“Yeah, I get that.
You know I haven’t been the queen very long, right?”
“I might have heard a
few things.”
“Mmmm. The
CliffsNotes version is, I had to indirectly kill the last idiot who
thought he was royalty of the undead. Which sent up a huge red flag to pretty much anyone worried about a
vitamin D deficiency. There’s a new queen in town, watch out! Holy
shit, what are we gonna do? Like that, right?
“My husband wanted to
hide in plain sight, behind a . . . what weirdo way did he
describe—oh! Hide behind a shield of fear and intimidation. Like
when Walmart brings out the lawyers. That’s what he wanted to do,
and I came to see the sense of it.
“Because let’s face
it . . . once I created a vacancy and immediately (yet reluctantly)
filled it, someone was always going to be coming after me. Fucking
always. It was totally inevitable. We
could have bet our lives on it. We did
bet our lives on it, come to think of it. So, knowing that,
accepting that, we put our contact info right out there. There was
nothing we could have done to prevent someone from gunning for us.
But we could do plenty about how the regime change was perceived.
So! A newsletter. Hi, I’m Betsy, glad to be part of the team,
looking forward to meeting you, come on by anytime,
blahblah-blah.”
“Sending the message
that you in your new role are so powerful, you don’t care if other
vampires can find you.” Rachael had to admire the audacity. If
someone killed her cousin to run the Pack, and made a point of
being extremely findable afterward, she knew she would instantly
rethink strategy. She would assume the new guy wanted to be found, was making a point of it, which
made the whole thing smell like a trap. “In fact, you want other vampires to find you. To pay homage or
just acknowledge your sovereignty and . . . and . . . what do they
do?”
“Drop off bags of
blood oranges.” The queen sighed. “Regular oranges symbolize the
death of Christ. Blood oranges symbolize the rise of the new ruler,
the one who rules after Christ and will for thousands of years.
Which, um, is me.”
“Okay.”
“I know how it
sounds.”
“Okay.”
“Because first of
all, gross, blood oranges? What
scary-ass universe did those come from?
And second, lame. And third, lame. But! That’s the newsletter
story. And hey! I never did get those shoes back from
you.”
“Sorry, I was busy
with my first-ever kill.”
“Oh, jeez,
Roberta!”
“Rachael.”
It’s uncanny how the woman is so bad at
names.
“Yeah, I know, I was
just testing you. How long are you gonna flog that as an excuse?
‘Boo-hoo, I had to shed Pack blood in defense of my den,
yadda-yadda.’ You’re lucky you broke her neck, because if she’d
bled on those shoes, you and I would be having a very different
conversation right now. You know, I got those at a sample sale? And
normally I don’t like sample sales, because I think it sets up an
unfair advantage . . .”
This woman is either brilliant or deranged. And either
way, she’s got good people, which for a leader is more than half
the battle.
Brilliant.
“—like anyone could
just pop into the store and buy them straight off the rack like
that! ‘No way,’ I said. You can’t—”
No. Deranged.
“—get outta town with
that shit! Of course, he got all kinds of pissy when I knocked him
off the roof. He only fell six stories and the parking ramp broke
his fall, so I don’t—”
No. Brilliant.