Undead and Uneasy (3 page)

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) squinted at some paperwork, and was immediately engrossed.

Right. He couldn't. He was dead. We could never be real parents. Which is why I wanted

(stop me if you've heard this before)a real wedding. With flowers and booze and cake and

dresses and tuxes.

And my family and friends looking at us and thinking,now there's a couple that will make

it, there's a couple that was meant to be. And Marc having a date, and Jessica not being

sick anymore. And my baby brother not crying once, and my stepmother getting along

with everybody and not looking tacky.

And our other roommate werewolf, Antonia, not having a million bitchy remarks about

"monkey rituals" and George the Fiend—I mean Garrett—not showing us how he can eat

with his feet. And Cathie not whispering in my ear and making me giggle at inappropriate

moments.

And my folks not fighting, and peace being declared in the Middle East just before the

fireworks (and doves) went up in the backyard, and someone discovering that chocolate

cured cancer.

Was that so much to ask?

“Take that rag off," my best friend rasped. "It makes you look like a dead crack whore."

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"Not a dead one," my roommate, Marc, mock-gasped. "How positively blech-o."

"It's not that bad," I said doubtfully, twirling before the mirror. But Jess was right. Nordic pale when alive, I was positively ghastly when dead, and a pure white gown made me look

like—it must be said—a corpse bride.

"I think it looks very pretty," Laura, my half sister, said loyally. Of course, Laura thought everything was very pretty. Laura was very pretty. She was also the devil's daughter, but

that was a story for another time.

The five of us—Marc, Jessica, Laura, Cathie, and I—were at Rush's Bridal, an

uberexclusive bridal shop that had been around for years, that you could only get in by

appointment, that had provided Mrs. Hubert Humphrey and her bridesmaids with their

gowns. (The thank you note was framed in the shop.)

Thanks to Jessica's pull, I hadn't needed an appointment. But I didn't like stores like this. It

wasn't like a Macy's . . . you couldn't go back in the racks and browse. You told the

attendant what you wanted, and they fetched (arf!) various costly gowns for you to try on.

I found this frustrating, because I didn't know what I wanted. Sure, I'd been flipping

through Minnesota Bride since seventh grade, but that was when I had a rosy complexion.

And a pulse. And no money. But all that had changed.

"I'm sure we'll find something just perfect for you," the attendant, whose name I kept

forgetting, purred, as she had me strip to my paisley panties. I didn't care. Jessica had seen

me naked about a zillion times (once, naked and crying in a closet), Laura was

family , and Marc was gay. Oh, and Cathie was dead. Deader than me, even. A ghost.

"So how's the blushing bridegroom?" Marc asked, surreptitiously trying to take Jessica's

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) pulse. She slapped hi in away like she would an annoying wasp.

"Grumpy," I said, as more attendants with armfuls of tulle appeared. "I swear. I was

completely prepared (o become Bridezilla—"

"We were, too," Cathie muttered.

"—but nobody warned me Sinclair would get all bitchy."

"Not pure white," Jessica said tiredly. "It washes her out. How about an Alexia with black trim?"

"No black," I said firmly. "At a vampire wedding? Are you low on your meds?"

Marc frowned. "Actually, yes."

"Never mind," I sighed. "There's lots of shades of white. Cream, latte, ecru, ivory,

magnolia, seashell—"

"You don't have to wear white," Laura piped up, curled up like a cat in a velvet armchair.

Her sunny blond hair was pulled back in a severe bun. She was dressed in a sloppy blue T-

shirt and cutoffs. Bare legs, flip-flops. She still looked better than I was going to look on

The Day, and it was taking all my willpower not to locate a shotgun from somewhere in

that bridal shop's secret back room and shoot her in the head. Not to kill her, of course.

Just to make her face slightly less symmetrical. "In fact, it's inappropriate for you to wear

white."

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"Virgin," I sneered.

"Vampire," Laura retorted. "You could wear blue. Or red! Red would bring out your

eyes."

"Stop! You're all killing me with your weirdness."

"What's the budget on this thing, anyway?" Cathie asked, drifting close to the ceiling,

inspecting the chandeliers, the gorgeous accessories, the beautifully dressed yet

understated attendants (who were ignoring all the vampire talk, as good attendants did),

the utter lack of a price tag on anything.

"Mmmm mmmm," I muttered.

"What?" Cathie and Jessica asked in unison.

"Cathie was just asking about the budget." One of the yuckier perks of being queen of the

dead? I alone could see and hear ghosts. And they could see and hear me. And bug me.

Any time. Day or night. Naked or fully clothed.

But even for a ghost, Cathie was special. As we all know, most ghosts hang around

because they have unfinished business. Once they finished their business, poof! Off into the

wild blue whatever. (God knows I'd never had that privilege.) And who could blame

them? If it were me, I'd beat feet off this mortal plane the minute I could.

But even after I'd fixed Cathie's little serial killer problem, she hung around. She even ran

defense between the ghosts and me. Sort of like a celestial executive assistant.

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"So?" Marc asked.

"Don't look at . . . me," Jessica gasped. Marc's lips thinned, and we all looked away.

"Gravy train's . . . over."

"Would your friend like some water?" a new attendant said, swooping in out of nowhere.

"Got any chemo?" Jess asked tiredly. "It's, um, three million," I said, desperate to change the subject. I couldn't look at Jessica, so I looked at my feet instead. My toenails were in

dire need of filing and polishing. As they always were—no matter what I did to them, they

always returned to the same state they'd been in the night I died.

" Three million ?" Cathie screamed in my ear, making me flinch. The attendants probably

thought I was epileptic. "What, rubles? Pesos? Yen?"

"Three milliondollars ?" Marc goggled. "For a party?"

All the women glared at him. Men! A wedding wasn't 'just a party.' A party was just a

party.' This would be the most important day of my—our—lives.

Still. I was sort of amazed to find Sinclair had dumped three mill into my checking

account. I didn't even bother asking him how he'd pulled it off.

"What the hell will you spend three million on?" Cathie shrieked.

"Cake, of course."

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"Talking to Cathie?" Laura asked.

"Yeah. Cake—" I continued.

"Cathie, you should go to your king," Laura suggested.

"King?" Cathie asked in my head.

"She means Jesus," I said.

"This haunting isn't very becoming," my sister continued doggedly.

"Tell your goody-goody sister to cram it," Cathie said.

"She says thanks for the advice," I said.

"Just think of all the charitable contributions you could make with that money," Laura

gently chided me, "and still have a perfectly lovely ceremony." (Have I mentioned that the

devil's daughter was raised by ministers?)

"There's the cake," I continued.

"What, a cake the size of a Lamborghini?" Cathie .asked.

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"Gown, bridesmaids' gowns, reception, food—"

"That you can't eat!" Marc groaned.

"Honeymoon expenses, liquor for the open bar, caterers, waiters, waitresses—"

"A church to buy from the Catholics."

The others were used to my one-sided conversations with Cathie, but Marc was still

shaking his head in that 'women are fucknuts' way that all males mastered by age three.

"None of these are working," I told the attendants. I wasn't referring to the dresses, either.

"And my friend is tired. I think we'll have to try another time."

"I'm fine," Jessica rasped.

"Shut up," Marc said.

"You don't look exactly well," Laura fretted.

"Aren't you supposed to go back to the hospital soon?

"Shut up, white girl."

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"If I ever said 'shut up, black girl,' you would land on me like the wrath of the devil

herself" Laura paused. "And I ought to know."

"Stay out of my shit, white girl."

"If you're ill, you should be in the hospital."

"Cancer isn't contagious, white girl."

"It's very selfish of you to give Betsy something else to worry about right now."

"Who's talking to you, white girl? Not her. Not me. Don't you have a soup kitchen to toil

in? Or a planet to take over?"

Laura gasped. I groaned. Jessica was in an ugly mood, but that was no reason to bring up

The Thing We Didn't Talk About: namely, that the devil's daughter was fated to take over

the world.

Before the debate could rage further, the attendant cut in. "But your wedding is only a few

months away. That doesn't leave us much—"

"Cram it," I snapped, noticing the gray pallor under Jessica's normally shining skin.

"Laura, you're right. We're out of here."

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) Chapter 3

But all that stuff at the bridal shop happened months ago, and I was only thinking of my

friends because I was all alone. Worse: all alone at a double funeral.

My father and his wife were dead.

I had no idea how to feel about that. I'd never liked the Ant—my stepmother—a brassy,

gauche woman who lied like fish sucked water, a woman who had shoved my mother out

of her marriage and shattered my conception of happily ever after at age thirteen.

And my father had never had a clue what to do with me. Caught between the daily wars

waged between the Ant and me, and my mom and the Ant, and the Ant and him ("Send

heraway , dear, and do it right now "), he stayed out of it altogether. He loved me, but he

was weak. He'd always been weak. And my coming back from the dead horrified him.

And she had never loved me, or even liked me.

But that was all right, because I had never liked her, either. My return from the dead

hadn't improved our relationship one bit. In fact, the only thing that had accomplished that

trick was the birth of my half brother, Babyjon, who was mercifully absent from the

funeral.

Everybody was absent. Jessica was in the hospital undergoing chemo, and her boyfriend,

Detective Nick Berry, only left her side to eat and occasionally arrest a bad guy.

In a horrifying coincidence, the funeral was taking place where my own funeral had been.

Would have, except I'd come back from the dead and gotten the hell out of there. I was

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) not at all pleased to find myself back, either.

When I'd died, more than a year ago, I'd gotten a look at the embalming room but hadn't

exactly lingered to sightsee. Thus, I—we—were sitting in a room I'd never seen. Sober

dark walls, lots of plush folding chairs, my dad and the Ant's pictures blown up to poster

size at the front of the room. There weren't coffins, of course. Nothing that might open.

The bodies had been burned beyond recognition.

"—a pillar of the community, and Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were active in several charitable

causes—"

Yeah, sure. The Ant (short for Antonia) was about as charitably minded as that little nutty

guy in charge of North Korea. She threw my dad's money at various causes so she could

run the fund-raising parties and pretend she was the prom queen again. One of those

women who peaked in high school. It had always amazed me that my father hadn't seen

that.

I looked around the room of mostly strangers (and not many of them, either, despite the

two of them being "pillars of the community") and swallowed hard. Nobody was sitting on

either side of me. How could they? I was here by myself.

Tina, Sinclair's major domo, had gone on a diplomatic trip to Europe, to make sure

everybody over there was still planning to play nice with everybody over here. The

European faction of vampires had finally come to visit a few months ago, murder and

mayhem ensued, and then they got the hell out of town. Me? I thought that was fine. Out

of sight, out of mind . . . that was practically the Taylor family motto. Sinclair the

worrywart? Not so much.

Since Sinclair and I were wrapping up wedding arrangements, Tina had agreed to go.