Dead If I Do (7 page)

“Whatever,” I said. “The point is, she wasn’t up and walking around.”

“She got better,” Mátyás said.

William laughed. We all looked at him blankly. “That’s the line from Monty Python—the ‘Bring Out Your Dead’ skit? Or was it the witch one? Anyway, you remember. . . . Uh.” He looked sheepish when we all continued to stare at him. “Sorry, dudes, it’s just kind of surreal all this casual talk of animated corpses and whatnot.”

I turned back to Mátyás, who was getting a glass of water for himself.

Izzy had finished with the customers and came over to where we were all seated at the far end of the bar. “Who’s got a casual corpse?” she asked, setting down two cups of black coffee—one for Mátyás, the other for Sebastian. “Yours are coming,” she told William and me. We both preferred, as Izzy mockingly called them, “froufrou” lattes.

“Mátyás was going to explain to us how his mother recovered from being dead, ” Sebastian said, handing over a twenty to cover all our drinks. “Weren’t you, son?”

Oooh, “son.” Sebastian only ever used that particular designation when he was pissed off. David Bowie and Bing Crosby softly sang “Little Drummer Boy” as we waited to see what Mátyás would say.

“You’re not going to be happy,” Mátyás said.

I glanced over at Sebastian, flashing him the try-to-be-supportive eyebrow. “He knows about the exorcism,” I told Mátyás.

“And you’re right, I’m not happy about it,” Sebastian said, taking a sip from the cup.

“It worked,” Mátyás said.

“How does an exorcism work on a dead lady?” William wondered. Izzy set frothy drinks in front of William and me. I got a honey latte and William a soy mocha with sprinkles.

“Apparently, the pope drove my evil out of her,” Sebastian said. “Do you know how irritated that makes me? The sitting pope!

I totally supported the wrong faction if his magic is stronger than mine.”

I exchanged a do-you-know-what-he’s-talking-about glance with William, but he shrugged. Mátyás and Izzy looked just as lost.

“There was the whole Avignon schism?” He started, then shrugged. “Never mind.”

I slurped the foam from the top of the coffee. It had just a hint of sweetness. “But you told me about the exorcism months ago,”

I said to Mátyás. “She waited until now—right before my wedding—to show up and start laying claim to Sebastian?”

“I might have actually mentioned the wedding,” Mátyás mumbled into his cup.

Sebastian roared, “You what?!”

“She’d been so listless before. I needed to put some fire in her belly,” Mátyás said defensively. Despite his bold tone, he sat up straighter and eyed the door, as though making sure he had a clear escape route in case Sebastian pounced. Sebastian, meanwhile, clenched his hands around his coffee cup so hard I was afraid it might break. “So you mentioned our wedding. I knew you were against it, but I never thought you’d use your mother this way. Hasn’t she suffered enough?”

Mátyás stiffened. “What would you know about her suffering? You’ve been trying to deny her existence for the past hundred fifty years.”

“That’s unfair,” I said.

“The hell it is,” Mátyás snarled. “He shoved her underground time and time again.” Turning his anger back at Sebastian, he said, “You’ve been buried alive. Tell me it was ‘peaceful.’ ”

Sebastian always claimed that Teréza rested better underground. I’d always been a bit dubious, myself. But Sebastian was a lot closer to dead than I was. What did I know about it?

“When was Sebastian buried?” William whispered to Izzy. She raised her eyebrow as if to say it was news to her as well. I made a mental note to fill them in on the whole thing later.

“That’s not the same,” Sebastian said after a grim, considering silence. “The last time I was buried, it was against my will. I was transfixed by a wooden stake.”

“I remember,” Mátyás said in a tone that dripped with and -you-should-be-more-grateful-I-dug-you-out-and-offered-myblood. Speaking of which . . . “Is Teréza a vampire now?” I asked. Because how much would it suck to have a vampire, zombie, and Gypsy witch all rolled into one after us?

Mátyás’s jaw twitched. He didn’t meet my gaze.

“Oh great Goddess, she is, isn’t she?”

If I weren’t already sitting down, my knees would have buckled. As it was, it made my stomach tingle to think about all that magical power at the disposal of someone who was so clearly unhinged.

“So, wait,” William said. “What did the pope cure, if she’s still a vampire?”

Good question. “Consumption?” I wondered. “What was she dying of?”

“The pope can cure sickness?” Izzy seemed impressed but a little skeptical. “I thought the Evangelicals did that.”

“So the vampirism wasn’t the sin,” I said to Sebastian, although it was clear by his faint smile that he ’d already come to the same conclusion.

“She’s not exactly healed,” Mátyás muttered.

Well, there was that.

We all sipped our coffee. The lights above the bar blinked in tune to George Michael’s “Last Christmas.”

Sebastian frowned intently. Every once in a while, he’d glance at Mátyás. I was just about to ask what was eating at him, when Sebastian reached over and pulled up Mátyás’s sleeve to the hollow of his elbow like he was looking for needle tracks. I wasn’t sure what Sebastian was expecting until he said, “Are you feeding her? Where are you keeping her?”

Mátyás pulled his arm away. There were no bite marks; his arm was clean, but there were other places he could be feeding her from. “I don’t need to answer your questions,” he said.

But in a way he already had. Mátyás was too responsible to let his mother wander the streets trying to hunt up blood. The way she looked, it would be hard for her to use guile to lure victims in the usual way. It seemed most likely that he was feeding her, so there had to be a ghoul and a house somewhere.

Sebastian immediately headed for the door.

“You’ll never find her,” Mátyás said, standing up.

Sebastian didn’t even turn around to respond. The bells over the door jingled as he headed out into the night.

“Where’s he going?” William nudged me.

“To tap the ghoul community to try to find who ’s feeding Teréza,” I said. I’d stood up too with the intention of following Sebastian, but he was already down the street. I could hurry to catch up to him, but it seemed clear that he wanted to deal with this on his own. Besides, I had a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with Sebastian and his ghouls, so it was probably best that I let him deal with this on his own. He didn’t need my complicating jealousy to slow down his search. On the stereo, a country singer wailed out “Beep, beep, bye, bye, Santa’s got a semi.”

“I don’t understand why you’re keeping Teréza a secret,” Izzy said from behind the counter. I turned to hear Mátyás ’s response.

“You saw how he reacted. He was happier when she was dead and buried,” Mátyás said, eyeing me. I didn’t want to argue with him, and anyway, I wasn’t sure I could make a good case in Sebastian’s defense. We rarely talked about Teréza, but when we did, Sebastian often cut the conversation short. He didn’t know what to do with Teréza, and yet he felt responsible for her. I rubbed my eyebrow, overwhelmed by the whole thing.

“Uh, hey, you look tired. And your ride just left, ” William said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “So I’ll bet you need a lift home now, eh, Garnet?”

We left Izzy and Mátyás to their own conversation.

William and I were cruising down the highway, half
way back to the farm, when he casually dropped a gigantic bomb in my lap. “Hey, I saw Parrish the other day.”

Parrish, my vampire ex-boyfriend—the one who sacrificed himself to save me a trip to federal prison and about whom my feelings were complicated at best—back in town? “What? Where?”

William rubbed his nose thoughtfully, and then returned his hands to the ten-and-two position on the wheel. “Club 5.”

“Isn’t that a gay bar? What were you doing there?”

“Dancing,” William said without guilt.

I smiled devilishly. “Alone?”

“No. I went with Jorge.”

Ah, the cute ambulance driver he’d met when I’d had a little run-in with a possessed wind chime. “Was it a date?”

William shrugged. “I had a great time dancing.”

Another thing William was clearly undecided about. “Cool. But are you sure it was Parrish?”

“Oh, yeah,” William said. “He came up and said hello. It was weird because I think Jorge thought he was
my
ex and got all jealous, which just made everything kind of weird. Anyway, didn ’t you invite him? He said he was in town for a wedding. I assumed he meant yours.”

Had I invited Parrish? Thing is, I might have.

I’d been stuffing our wedding invitation envelopes a few weeks back and feeling kind of sad about how few people would be officially sitting on the bride’s side of the aisle. Oh sure, I had the new coven Sebastian and I had started. But my old friends—the ones who knew me before the Vatican witch hunters killed my previous coven—thought I was dead. In order to stay hidden from the hunters and the FBI, I’d had to keep them in the dark about my new life. But the threat was over. I’d used magic to fool the Vatican into believing I was no longer a problem, and the FBI had closed its case. So in a fit of spontaneous nostalgia, I sent out a call on the astral plane. I wove a spell that asked my old friends to dream of me and to receive the message that I was getting married. I even “sent” specifics and a way for them to get ahold of me to RSVP. I knew it worked, because my oldest friend from high school called the next day. She ’d Googled my folks and pried out my information from them. She wasn’t even Wiccan! We caught up, and she agreed to be a bridesmaid. Others called throughout the whole week. I felt really good about it, but I ’d kind of forgotten about Parrish. Of course, of all the people I ’d ever known, Parrish would listen to a dream. Hell, a dream like that might have woken him, literally, from his grave. This was just bloody lovely. Now not only did I have Sebastian’s ex to deal with, but I also had my own.

“Did he say where he was staying?” I asked.

“So, you didn’t invite him?” William ascertained. “I kind of wondered.”

“No,” I said. “I think I did. Magically—in a dream.”

“Oh yeah, I think I had that dream,” William said with a nod and a bit of surprise.

“You did? Cool.” I said. It hadn’t occurred to me that everyone would get it, even my local friends. “But I should make sure he’s not planning on making a scene at the wedding.”

“He won’t be able to come, will he? I mean, he’s a nightwalker.” Unlike Sebastian, Parrish was restricted to nighttime hours.

“Our wedding is on Solstice. The sun is setting at four twenty -six.” I happened to know the exact time, because we’d considered having a later wedding so that some of our nocturnally oriented friends could attend. But in the end we went with a more traditional afternoon wedding. We were getting married in a church. “He could easily crash the reception.”

“What are you worried about? I thought you and Parrish were over.”

Except he’d given me his wedding ring.

William pulled the car into Sebastian’s drive. I scanned the graveyard, looking for signs of Teréza. William let the engine run, and I steeled myself to head out into the cold. Despite the fact that I knew that I was looking at a spell, Sebastian ’s house still appeared abandoned. The porch seemed slumped by age. The bulb that threw glittering light on the snow looked bare and harsh. It hadn’t fooled Teréza, though. I sighed.

“You guys should buy a new house,” William said. “No offense.”

I laughed. “It’s just the wards that make it look that way,” I said. “It’s actually really well kept up. You know that.”

William gave me the sure-if-you-say-so nod.

After fluffing my scarf closer around my neck, I thanked William for the ride, and really, for interceding between Mátyás and me.

Before I shut the door, William leaned across the seat to ask, “What do you think Sebastian is going to do when he finds Teréza? Do you think he’ll really kill her?”

“I really don’t know,” I said. “I hope not. He loved her once, and I think he still does. But I’ll tell you, having seen the state she’s in, it might be a mercy.”

“Oh.” William’s expression paled a little, but he nodded. “Take care,” he said. “Keep warm.”

I waved to his retreating taillights.

The moon shone overhead, and I could see the bright pinpoint of light that was Mars nearby. The sky was clear and dark. The Milky Way twinkled in a broad, hazy swath overhead. Lilith expanded the stillness in me until I could feel myself becoming one with the universe . . . and, of course, that’s when I felt an icy hand grip my shoulder.
Fourth Aspect: Opposition

KEY WORDS:
Overstimulation, Dissonance

Clenching my hand into a fist, I swung around full
force. Lilith added her strength to my momentum, and we sucker punched Parrish right in the gut. By the time I recognized him, it was too late to pull back. Parrish landed hard on his ass in the driveway, fifteen feet away.

I stared in shock of recognition, while Parrish flailed around on the ground, his boots unable to gain purchase on the slick surface. Finally, I thought to walk over and offer him a hand. “Parrish? Are you all right?”