Undead and Uneasy (10 page)

to mean?"

Were there no fugly werewolves? Fat ones? Nearsighted, squinty-eyed ones?

"Isaid , what's that supposed to mean?"

Mild-mannered ones?

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"You carnivorous ravenous creatures of the full moon," I said sweetly. "Carrying off

babies, biting people and turning them into fellow ravenous creatures of the full moon,

attacking large-breasted women wearing tight T-shirts." I hailed him with the smoothie.

'You know. 'You people.'

"Ugh!" Derik said, looking genuinely revolted. Looking, in fact, a lot like Antonia when

she had told me what he was about to say. "Omnivores taste awful. Trust me. We don't

eat you."

"And it's not the measles," Cain (again: What kind of name was that for a woman?)

barked. Literally. "Yon can't catch it. We're two different species, you highlighted

dimwit."

"Like them?" I asked, pleased, while I patted my bangs back into place. "And if we're two different species, you want to explain her?"

Lara coughed out some banana smoothie as I pointed at her.

"Uh," was all Derik got out.

"I mean, there are no zebra-tigers, right? No gorilla-giraffes? Porcupine-platypi?"

"It's . . . complicated," Michael grumped.

"Nothing you could possibly understand," Cain snarled. Cain.

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) Cain sat down and shut her mouth. Hah! I looked at Michael with a smidge more respect.

Guy hadn't even raised his voice, and Cain was looking like a whipped hound. Really, he

was a lot like Sinclair in many ways, and it was a damned shame he was m—

Stop that, Betsy.

"—mean to offend you in your own home."

"No, you certainly wouldn't want to offend me. That's coming through loud and clear, Fist

Boy."

"Pack Leader Fist Boy," Brendan corrected, fixing me with a glare he probably thought

was menacing. He’d never dealt with a hysterical Marc when he couldn't find a clean scrub

shirt. Or Laura when she was late for church. Or Garrett when he ran out of yarn before

he finished a sweater.

Or Sinclair, for that matter, at any time. My guy had only to look this pup dead in the eye,

and the kid (couldn't have been a werewolf hair over twenty-two) would be his slave as

long as Sinclair wanted.

As a matter of fact,I could probably make this kid my slave.

I actually thought about it while one of them babbled about something or other. But in the

end I decided to play it carefully. They already knew I was quick and strong. That was

two things too many for strangers to know about me. There was plenty of time to turn on

the charm, if I needed to.

"—where they might be?"

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"Who?"

"Antonia and Garrett, you twit!"

"Brendan."

Puppy Boy sat down and shut his piehole.

"So?" Michael prompted.

"What?"

Michael ran both hands through his brown hair, mussing it to no end. "So. Where. Do.

You. Think. Antonia. And. Her. Friend. Are?"

"I. Have. No. Idea. That's. The. Whole. Problem."

Lara giggled. Or gurgled; she had another mouthful of smoothie. I drained the rest of mine

in two gulps and got up to head for the counter.

"Not the blender again, vampire, we're begging you." Cain said it with touching, horrified

sincerity; Brendan managed to look equal parts sneery and weary.

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) That's vampire queen , I thought. But I took pity on them. Their hearing was probably as

good as mine.

Maybe better. I narrowed my eyes at them while I rinsed my glass without looking, then

accidentally broke it on the faucet head. I assessed their strength, their tone, their

differences from Antonia.

Antonia, who was strong but not a shape-shifter.

Antonia, who could see the future but at a horrible cost to herself, and the one she loved.

I couldn't imagine what was worse: being considered a freak by, well, other freaks, or

having horrible visions that were never, ever wrong.

Is that why she was gone? Had she seen something awful

(Please God, nothing bad about Sinclair or Marc or Jessica okay, God? I'll owe you a big

one, God, in Jesus's name, amen.)

and vamoosed, taking her own personal Fiend with her?

No way. Antonia was a lot of things, but she'd never run for cover. And if she did run for

cover, which she'd never do, she wouldn't do it without warning me first. After all, I was

her—what was it? Pack leader pro tem?

"You know," I said, sitting across from Michael, "Antonia was pretty tight-lipped about

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) you guys."

Silence.

"She didn't talk a lot about Pack stuff." In fact, I was trying to remember a single damned

thing I knew about the Pack. And I was coming up pretty close to blank. And not just

because I usually tuned Antonia out five or ten seconds into her rant du jour. Well, yeah,

that was probably the main reason, but, bottom line . . . "She just didn't."

"She didn't talk to me about vampire stuff," Michael volunteered. "Every month it was the same thing. Everything okay? Yes. Need anything? No. Any messages you want me to

pass along? No. Anything you want to tell me about?Hell , no."

"We all sat in silence for a few seconds. I don't know about them, but I was thinking that I

was damned fortunate Antonia was able to juggle her loyalties so well. From the look on

Wyndham's face, he was thinking the same thing, or close to it.

I crossed my legs and stared at my black socks. Must remember to get my saddle shoes

out of the foyer. "She must have explained when she moved in. Didn't she?" I looked up

and beheld identical puzzled expressions. "I mean, she said she had to get permission from

you, and I thought it was extremely weird that a grown woman had to 'get permission' to

live with us, but when I said that, all she said was that my face was extremely weird and to

shut the hell up."

Wyndham and his peeps nodded. Michael added, "She had little to say about you even

when she moved to the Midwest. 'I found my destiny,' she says, 'and it's with the king and

the queen of the vampires. Yes, they're real,' she says."

"Don't feel bad about not believing," I told him. "I didn't believe in werewolves until Antonia showed up. And, uh, didn't change into a wolf."

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" 'I'm not coming back,' she says—this was her way of asking permission. 'So sell my

house and cut me a check. And don't give me any shit, or I'll foresee your death and forget

to mention it.'

I had to admit, it had the ring of authenticity.

"She agreed to check in every month," Michael said, "and that was the end of it. Until, of course, we didn't hear from her. Now. Tell me, Betsy. What is a Fiend? And where can we

find the one that killed our Pack member?"

“Whoa, whoa,whoa ! ” I said, wishing I wasn't doing this all by myself. "Let's not jump to

any conclusions, my eager little pups. Garrett would eat his own balls before he'd ever hurt

Antonia, and he'd never,never kill her."

Derik shuddered and covered his eyes. "Must you use phrases that I'll never get out of my

head? 'Eat his own balls'? Who says that?"

"Not to mention, it's hard to believe," Cain added.

"Believe? Why is that so hard? Now all of a sudden you're big vampire and Fiend

experts?"

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"Vampires aren't accident-prone?" Jeannie asked, and to her credit, it sounded like an

honest question.

"Well, I am," I admitted. "But not Garrett."

"You can explain about Fiends?" Sure.

"There are no taboos against discussing such things with outsiders?"

"I dunno." Wyndham couldn't hide his surprise, so I borrowed a phrase from his pal Derik.

"I think it's that culture clash thing again. If it'll keep you from pulling Garrett's legs off, I'll answer any question you like."

"That's a good thing, chief," Derik said. "Stop looking like you're expecting the other shoe to drop—on your head."

"For a ruthless despot of the undead, you're awfully charming," Michael said, and no one

in the room was surprised when Jeannie's fist slipped. But he got his breath back in no

time at all.

Lara asked—and received—permission to use the bathroom. Jeannie got up to accompany

her. And I used the kid's absence to explain about Fiends, about Nostro and his sick-ass

psycho games, about Garrett's slow recovery, about all the progress he made and how

much he and Antonia loved—

"So by your own admission, this creature was sub-human only six months ago?"

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"I don't know if sub—"

"Subsisting on buckets of blood, running around on all fours, and howling at the moon?"

"Physician, howl thyself," I pointed out.

"And he couldn't even talk?" Michael persisted.

"I don't know about couldn't. Didn't talk would be more accurate. But see, after he drank

my blood and the dev—and my sister's, he got better. And you guys—you just don't

know. I mean, the way he feels about Antonia. She's his everything. He'd ki—uh, he'd die

for her."

"And she for him, I s'pose?"

"Well, it's hard to imagine Antonia getting all mushy and stuff, but yeah, I imagine she'd—

" Too late, I saw the trap Michael had set for me. I shot to my feet and started to pace.

"You guys, Garrett did not kill Antonia and then take off for parts unknown. There's no

way. No way."

"Mmmm," Wyndham said.

"Hmmm," Derik added, also apparently unconvinced.

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"You don't see me with my knickers in a knot, asking you if your Pack member killed my

guy and then took off. Did I show up, fists flying, jumping to conclusions? No." I smirked

to see the Wyndhams looking uncomfortable. Except for Brendon, who

glared at me.

"We've been over this," Michael said, mildly enough.

"Yeah, but now that your kid's gone, you can apologize for being totally out-of-control,

foaming, slavering assholes who hit first and asked questions later."

He drummed his fingers on the table for a few seconds, and then, after a long, difficult

moment (difficult for him, not for me) he said, "I apologize."

"Okay. It's totally conceivable that Antonia saw the future and got the hell out of here and

that Garrett tried to stop her and so she—she—I dunno, gave him a bath in holy water and

then left town on the first Amtrak headed east. That could totally happen, but I'm not

getting all suspicious and paranoid, right? So there's no reason for you guys to stay beady-

eyed."

"Are there any other unusual goings-on?" Michael asked, leaning forward. "Anything

mysterious? Something that might lead us to answers?"

"Everything's fine," I lied. I cocked my head;

I could hear Babyjon asking for a bottle. Loudly. "And you'll have to excuse me a minute;

my brother needs me."

I moved past them, and Wyndham's hand shot out and closed over my forearm. I saw the

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) whole thing and had plenty of time to avoid him. But I didn't. His hand was really warm. I

could actually feel his heartbeat through his fingers.

And he smelled—have I mentioned how frigging delicious these guys smelled? No wonder

Garrett found Antonia irresistible. It sure wasn't her personality.

Michael's hand squeezed my arm. He was so cute, thinking he was actually holding me in

place. "Betsy, really. Is there anything going on?"

I smiled. "Michael, you worry too much, anybody tell you? I said everything's fine, now

didn't I? So don't sweat it."

On my way to the nursery, from one room and a hallway away, I heard Michael's very

distinct order to Derik.

Derik bounded beside me on the stairs like a big blond puppy. "It's nothing personal," he

said cheerfully keeping pace with me as I climbed the eighty zillion stairs to the nursery.

"But we can't tell if you're lying or not—that whole 'no scent' thing—and it's driving the

chief out of his head."

"I'll bet." I was a smidge—-just a smidge— sympathetic. To go your whole life being able

to tell if everyone around you was lying or not, that had to come in handy. One of the few

things Antonia had mentioned was that her Pack hardly ever bothered with lying . . . there

was absolutely no point. And then to run into me, someone who could I she was a short,

genius brunette and still smell fine not smell, as the case was), that had to be frustrating.

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