Undead and Uneasy

Chapter 16

I darted up the stairs, praying the werewolves wouldn't get into trouble while unsupervised, checked on Babyjon (still snoring away), then ran back down and led the werewolves and Jeannie into the kitchen just in time to grab the phone as it rang.

“S'up?”

“Betsy? It's Laura. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about—”

“Not now,” I said, and hung up. I felt bad, but not too bad. She'd been one of the bums to disappear on me in a time of need, after all. And that was weirdly convenient, wasn't it? That Antonia and Garrett and Marc and Sinclair should all disappear right around the time my dad died and my half sister made herself scarce?

Naw. Crazy. But. . . weird,

Naw.

Weird.

Naw! Dammit, naw!

Great. Lonely, and now paranoid. Oh, and surrounded by werewolves. Let's not forget that!

“Let's see,” I said, peering into the fridge. “We’ve got strawberries, bananas, and peaches. Also ice, for smoothies. Oh, and Antonia's left half a raw T-​bone.” I sniffed. “Smells fine. Prob'ly good for another day or two.”

“We'll pass on the fruit.”

“I could also,” I added doubtfully, “defrost some hamburger for you guys.”

“We're fine. Let's get down to business.”

“I'm not fine. I'm thirsty as hell.” I gave them all a big, toothy grin, enjoying the mutual flinch. “So it's smoothie time.”

“I'd like a smoothie,” Lara piped up. “Banana, please.”

“Coming right up.” Now it was my turn to flinch; how many times had I heard that phrase from Marc in this very kitchen as he played bartender? How many strawberry smoothies had I fixed for Sinclair? How many times had he brought me upstairs and poured said smoothie all over my—

“Banana, please!” she repeated.

I shook myself. “Sorry. Drifted off for a moment. Peel these, will you?” I said, handing Lara some bananas.

Michael cleared his throat, while his kid (cub? puppy? whelp?) stripped three bananas and tossed the skins into the sink. "So, ah. Antonia didn't check in. And she checks in at 10:00 a.m. EST on the twentieth of the month. So when she didn't, you can imagine our—

The rest was drowned out as I hit “puree.” I left it on for a nice long time, ignoring the way it felt like a thunderstorm in my head (stupid advanced vampire hearing). It was worth it just to drown out the arrogant, gorgeous asshat.

Wait. Did I say gorgeous? Sinclair, where the hell did you go?

Via gestures, I directed Lara to the glasses, and she brought me two. She really was the cutest thing, and I smiled at her, then dropped the grin when she didn’t smile back. This was a kid older than her years, that was for damned sure. What had she said? That she was the future Pack leader? That was a lot to pile onto a—what? Seven-​year-​old? Eight?

A perfect miniature amalgam of her mom and her dad: his eyes, her face, their attitudes. She'd be scary as shit when she hit adolescence. Or possibly the fourth grade.

I shut off the blender, filled Lara's glass to the brim, then heard Michael droning, “—natural for us to jump to the conclusion that nefarious creatures of the night had—”

And on goes the blender again. I took my time win my own smoothie, but eventually I couldn't liquefy the fruit and ice any more and had to shut it off.

“—the fight,” he finished.

Jesus! Couldn't this guy take a hint? How did Jeannie stand it? How did any of them? Luckily, I was not that kind of leader.

I was no kind of leader.

“Yeah, well, you were wrong, wrong, wrong.” I took a large gulp of my smoothie. “Which I'm betting is a common thing with you people.”

“ 'You people'?“ the strawberry blond—the guy called Brendan—demanded. He was about a head shorter than Michael, with the aforementioned shoulder-​length strawberry blond hair, the usual-​to-​werewolves sculpted muscles (at least, the werewolves I’d seen), lean build, chiseled good looks, big gorgeous eyes (a kind of gold/brown in his case). They almost seemed to glow from within. Luminous. That was the word. ”What's that supposed to mean?"

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

“I said, what's that supposed to mean?”

Mild-​mannered ones?

“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. “You 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.

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?”

“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.

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’ 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 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.”

" '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?”