Dead If I Do (2 page)

It was a noncommittal show of support from Sebastian. I could tell he was still mad at me, but he was willing to put up a united front to the parents for my sake.

“I’m getting the goat cheese-filled ravioli,” I said, a note of cheer creeping into my voice. Maybe if I kept talking about mundane things, everyone would pretend to forget what I’d said earlier, and we could all have a do-over. My father’s menu hit the table with a snap. “So, Sebastian, is it?” My father’s voice was full of judgment. His shoulders squared against the hard back of the bench, and he crossed his arms in front of his chest. “What is it you do for a living, then?”

The
then
implying “since you’re some kind of freak.” I could hear it in my father’s tone. I chewed the edge of my fingernail, my eyes darting to Sebastian anxiously.

Folding his menu, Sebastian very carefully and deliberately tucked it under the bread plate. He laced his fingers on the tabletop in front of him and leaned forward slightly, like a CEO brokering the big deal. “I’m a car mechanic.”

My dad nodded, considering. “That’s a pretty good living.”

Mom was less sure. “Did you go to college, dear? Education is very important in our family.”

Which was a nice little dig at me, of course. I’d gotten a degree in English, but I was in the middle of a long, extended, all-butthesis master’s when the Vatican paramilitaries assassinated my coven and sent me into hiding. I ’d always figured my folks disapproved of my career in bookselling, even though I now owned Mercury Crossing, the premier occult bookstore and herb emporium of Madison.

“Sebastian has a Ph.D. and teaches an extension class at the UW in herbalism,” I offered, hoping my folks would choose to bond with him over the growing of things.

“If you can teach, why work on cars?” My mother again. Despite the fact that she and Dad were farmers, she was a snob when it came to collar colors. She preferred white.

“Magic,” Sebastian said with a nod and a smile. “Alchemy.”

I loved him for that answer, but I could see the confusion in my parents’ eyes. He’d told me the same thing when we first met, and I’d understood instantly that he was talking about elemental magic: fire, air, water, earth. My mom looked to me for a translation. My dad gave a little snort that seemed to say, “Yep, crazy as a loon.”

“No, seriously,” I started. “Carburetors bring in air, see, and spark plugs, fire. Gas and steel are earth—” Thank the Goddess the waitress interrupted my attempt to “clarify” Sebastian’s comment.

My father opened his mouth and, afraid he was going to ask for more time so that he could grill Sebastian about his answer, I yelled out my choice, “Goat cheese-filled ravioli for me!”

“Honestly, Garnet. No need to shout, she’s only right here,” my mother admonished.

“Sorry,” I muttered, my cheeks brightening to crimson. Could I feel any more like a four-year-old?

Somehow we managed to talk about the weather be
fore the food arrived. For my parents, this hardly constituted small talk. The fall had been dry again, so all the Finlayson farmers were hoping for a heavy snowpack now that the winter had started. Even though my folks only raise chickens, the ins and outs of the climate are serious considerations. Until I lived in Wisconsin, I never realized how Minnesotans use the term
weather
. “That was some weather that blew in last night, ” my dad said. “How many inches did you get?”

Enough that my arms still ached from using the snowblower the full length of Sebastian’s driveway, but I’d done my homework. I’d had the news on at breakfast just so I could answer this question authoritatively. “Six inches in some places, they said.”

My mother made a comment about the previous season ’s drought, and Sebastian mentioned how much snowier he remembered winters being generally. We were all getting along nicely for the moment. I should have realized that meant we were doomed.

I noticed the smell first. A combination of rotten meat and sickly sweet flowers, the scent tickled the edges of my nose. I had to hold back a sneeze. Looking around for an open kitchen door or exposed garbage can, I saw nothing. I chalked it up to some odoriferous anomaly and was returning my attention to the riveting discussion of snow, when a figure lurched toward us. A low hiss caused everyone at the table to look up.

“I curse you,” said a woman in a harsh whisper. Still dressed for outside, she had on a knee-length down coat, and snow clung in clumps to her windswept long black hair. She could have been beautiful in a haughty, aristocratic way, except for her too -thin face—plus the dead-bluish lips and wild eyes, which stared possessively at Sebastian. I might have mistaken her for some random, deranged druggie, but that Lilith growled low in the back of my throat. I knew instantly this woman was some kind of creature of magic and a dangerous one at that. Given the smell and the trouble we ’ve had in the past, my first thought was,
Zombie!

“Teréza!” Sebastian said at the same moment.

“Teréza?” I looked at Sebastian for confirmation. Teréza was his . . . what? Betrothed? Fiancée? Only she was supposed to be, well, not quite dead, but definitely not up and moving around.

Well,
this
was certainly awkward.

“Who is this?” my mother asked, clearly miffed that I hadn’t instantly offered introductions.

“Uh . . .” I was really hoping for help from Sebastian here, but he was still gaping, openmouthed, at Teréza. “Well, this is Teréza. She’s Sebastian’s . . . uh. Sebastian and she . . . uh . . . Teréza is Sebastian’s late—really late—uh, almost wife?”

How was I supposed to explain Teréza anyway? Back in eighteen-something she’d been dying of consumption, and Sebastian had tried to turn her into a vampire. Since his vampirism came from alchemy and not from a Sire of the blood, he failed—kind of. She didn’t die. But she didn’t exactly live either.

“She’s mostly dead,” I added. “That is, until recently, she was . . .”

I was stumbling over my words so much that I was actually kind of grateful when Teréza lunged at Sebastian, trying to kill him.
Second Aspect: Trine

KEY WORDS:
Active, Idealistic

Teréza had her hands around Sebastian’s neck. The
bread and the oil spilled all over my father, who’d leaped up to avoid the candle, which now rolled across the table, dripping wax everywhere.

An inhuman snarl escaped my lips. Lilith coursed through my veins like liquid fire. In a flash, I found myself on top of the table, ready to grab Teréza with all of Lilith’s might and toss my rival across the room. Then I caught my mother’s eye. My mother stared at me in horror, like the killer zombie ex -girlfriend was somehow all
my
fault.

Not so long ago, no force on earth could stop Lilith once she ’d awoken. Now the ice in my mother’s eyes cooled Lilith’s reaction. I felt Lilith’s strength deep inside my bones and muscles, but the full force of her fearsomeness retracted at my response to my mother’s well-honed glare. The Queen of Hell had been stopped cold by “the look.”

Just then Sebastian gave a push that sent Teréza crashing into the waitress bringing our food. The two of them toppled into the neighboring table. Plates broke with a crash. Hot food slopped everywhere. People shouted. My dad cursed. The glow of camera phones shone all over the restaurant.

Great. Now this little family disaster would be all over YouTube by morning.

Sebastian stood up. He rubbed his neck with a dark look in his eyes. He talked, and it took me a second to realize that he wasn’t speaking English.

Teréza held her hands up in supplication. Sebastian snapped out another command. Her dead, glassy eyes slid to me. She whispered something in that foreign language, and I felt a chill settle on my shoulders. Lilith flared defensively, ready to strike if Teréza made another move to attack. Instead, she went toward the door, scuttling like a crab in a jerky, too-fast motion. It was unnatural and creepy. My folks and I watched her go with our mouths agape.

My stomach twisted. Even though Teréza had gone, I felt light-headed and a bit nauseous. It might have been the sensation of the adrenaline flushing out of my system or the smell of all the spilled food on my empty stomach, but I couldn’t shake a sickening sensation that something was wrong.

Lilith noticed it too. She hung at the surface of my consciousness like a watchdog ready to strike. I had to take several breaths to convince Lilith to go back into what passed for hiding these days.

Then, Sebastian shrugged, as though he witnessed this sort of thing all the time. No one in the room moved. We were all stunned silent.

“We should go,” he said. His words broke the spell.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, suddenly hyperaware that I was standing on top of the table. I slunk quickly back into my seat. My mother cleared her throat as I was sliding out of the booth. The sound stopped me cold. “I think you have some apologizing to do first,” she said, her eyes flicking in the direction of the waitress and the patrons who were untangling themselves. But Sebastian was already graciously helping the waitress to her feet and making offers to pay for damages. Trying not to glance at my mother for approval, I told anyone who would listen that I was very, very,
very
sorry for everything. Several times. My father watched the whole thing with his hands on his hips and a shake of his head. I felt completely chagrined. My dad took out his billfold and started rummaging through the bills. “We should pay for dinner,” he grumbled, with a glance at where the waitress and I were mopping up bits of ravioli and linguine.

“No, let me,” Sebastian insisted, making a move for his own wallet.

My dad tossed three twenties on the table defiantly. Dad pinned him with a look that dared Sebastian to insult his manhood by not allowing him to pay his own damn way. I prayed to the Goddess that Sebastian would let it go. Sebastian’s lips thinned, but he must have sensed this was not a good time to argue over the bill. “That’s very generous of you,”

he said through clenched teeth.

Satisfied, my father pulled himself upright, took my mother’s hand, and marched out with as much dignity as he could muster, covered in olive oil and candle wax.

I sat back on my heels in a pool of cream sauce. Though the smell made my stomach growl, all I really wanted to do was throw up. Sebastian offered me a hand up. I let him lift me to my feet and propel me toward the door, where he casually left two hundred-dollar bills with the maître d’.

“Men.” I sighed.

Outside, a blast of freezing air made my nostrils stick
together. The restaurant had a small, sheltered courtyard out front. Thick ice clung along the twisted, dry husks of Virginia creeper that lined the walls looking like lace on brick. Tough, blackened stalks of purple coneflower seed heads poked up through the blanket of snow.

“What the hell was that?” my dad asked, his voice tight, controlled.

“I believe that was my dead ex-girlfriend trying to kill me,” Sebastian said drily.

“Oh,” Dad said, as if that explained everything to his satisfaction. Shoving his hands into the pockets of his parka, he added,

“Well, heck. I’m starving.”

We moved carefully along the shoveled path, cautious of slick cobblestones.

“Dad’s right,” I said. “We still need dinner.” I slipped my hand into the crook of Sebastian’s arm. “Any ideas?” I asked him. He gave me a small smile, but his mouth was set in a grim line. I could tell he was still thinking about Teréza. His eyes roamed the corners of the courtyard as if expecting her to leap out again.

“Let’s go home,” he said, meaning his farm. “It’s warded. Safe.”

Except Mátyás was there.

Mátyás was Sebastian’s 150-year-old magically perpetually teenage son. I hadn’t gotten around to mentioning him to my folks either. “Sure,” I said with a shrug, “Why not?”

I mean, really, could this get any worse?

Thankfully, we decided to take separate cars, with my
folks following behind Sebastian’s new-to-him 1968, two-door Javelin in their rusty truck.

Sebastian kept an eye on them in the rearview mirror, but he drove at regular speeds and made no other special effort to make sure they were behind us. I thought for sure we’d lose them, but he pointed out that the cherry red paint job he’d had custom done was easy to spot.

After a few moments of silence, I finally asked. “Isn’t Teréza supposed to be, you know, dead?”

Sebastian chewed on his lower lip. “I thought so.”

“Mátyás had the pope exorcize her,” I remembered. Mátyás and I had become tentative friends when Sebastian had gone missing a few months ago. “He told me it worked.”

Sebastian snorted. “An exorcism? That’s just great.” His hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel.

“You seem really upset,” I said waiting for him to say more. “What’s wrong?”

“An exorcism is something you do to the devil, a demon, to an evil spirit,” he said. “Not magic.”

For the second time in so many hours, I felt like a world-class idiot. I should have guessed what made Sebastian so particularly upset. Any time a Wiccan came out to a nonmagical person, the first thing they usually had to do was explain that witchcraft had absolutely nothing to do with Satan or evil or any of the various and sundry things that went bump in the night. Of course it would bother Sebastian that an exorcism seemed to have had positive results. He’d always told me that he felt horrified that his magically enhanced and alchemically transformed blood hadn’t been sufficient to turn Teréza. But if his special brand of vampirism was actually linked to Satan? Well, for Sebastian, I imagine that would feel like a nightmare come true.