Authors: MaryJanice Davidson
to me."
"Oh ho! The prude is rearing her ugly head, If not the wedding that's bugging you, it's the
living in sin."
"It's a sign," she repeated stubbornly. "You're blind not to see it."
A chilling thought occurred to me. "Laura. Honey? Did you snatch my fiance? Did you
stick him with that light-show sword of yours?"
"I didnot ."
"I've seen your temper tantrums before, Laura, so don't get up too high on that horse.
People usually die when you get pissed."
"They do not! Not real people, anyway. And you're one to talk, you have to drink blood to
keep walking around. You—and your kind—are abominations!"
"At least our socks match!"
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"That's it!" She threw up her hands. "I'm leaving. I might have known you would spurn
perfectly good advice."
"Spurn this," I said, and gave her the finger.
She looked like she'd found a minnow in her cereal, which was probably close to the
expression on my own face. She turned, and I grabbed her shoulder and shoved her across
the kitchen. She bounced off the wall, hit the floor, but was back on her feet in half a
second. Just in time for me to grab her by the throat and slam her against the wall.
That's when I noticed the bright light just below my left eye. Her sword. She could call it
up simply by force of will. It was made of Hellfire, and turned vampires into towers of
flame, and then ash. Where it went when she wasn't using it, even she didn't know.
"Let go," she grated.
"Put it away," I snapped back.
"Let go."
"Put it away."
The light from her sword—if my eyes could have watered, they would have. They would
have been streaming by now. As it was, I couldn't see out of that eye at all.
"You're not leaving until you tell me what you did."
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"Put me down or I'll—"
"What? Kill me? Like you killed Sinclair?"
"I didn't kill him! I wouldn't do that to you!"
"No, you just suggested I leave him forever."
"For your sake!"
"No, for yours. It's hard to pretend to be Mil Goody Goody of the universe if your sister is
the queen of the vampires, isn't it?"
"You know what you're doing is wrong."
"Says the girl with a temper-powered sword."
"I don't mean to lose my temper."
"Did you lose your temper with Sinclair?"
"No!"
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"How about Antonia and Garrett? You nearly beat Garrett to death once. Did he piss you
off again? Did you dispatch him with your handy-dandy sword, get rid of Antonia, and
then lie yourself black in the face?"
"I don't lie!"
Ah. There we go. Her eyes were shifting from blue to poison green. Her blond hair was
growing red streaks. She was losing her temper. She wasn't Laura, daughter of a pastor.
She was the Devil's Own, and she was in my kitchen with a weapon that could kill me.
Excellent . "Fess up, Red. What'd you do?"
"I did nothing. Let me go or I'll—"
"Kill me?"
"Let me go," she hissed. "Let me go or I'll kill you, and never mind if I'm sorry after."
"Are you really going to stick me with that thing? Kill your only sister? Orphan Babyjon . .
. twice in line week?"
"All that and more if you don't let me go now let me go let go of me right now, Vampire
Queen, right now!”
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"What'd you do, Laura?"
"Let go of me!" she screamed, and behind me, the window over the sink shattered.
"Whoa. New trick. Nice one, devil's daughter. Any other new stuff you want to share with
the class?"
She was silent for a long moment, and I suddenly felt silly, hoisting my little sister by the
neck a good foot off the ground, trying to avoid the sword pointing at my eye. Was this
what happened when things went wrong all at once? You couldn't trust anybody?
"I see what you're doing. It won't work. Put me down, please."
Her eyes were blue again, the red fading to blond. The sword disappeared in a flash. No, it
didn't work. If she had done something, it likely would have come out when she was her
other self, her darker self. When she was in a temper, she lost her mind. She wasn't sly,
like her mother. Just red-rage pissed. Too pissed to lie.
But now she was calm again. Careful again. Now she could lie.
I put her down.
"Really, Betsy," she fumed, straightening out her mussed shirt. "What would Jesus do?"
"Turn you into loaves and fishes?"
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"I've had about enough of your blasphemy." She started for the door, puffing her bangs
out of her face as she stomped past me.
"You're a lot more interesting when you're pissed!" I yelled after her.
"Go to hell! And I mean that as a literal invitation."
"Where do you think I am right now?" I cried, but the slamming of the front door (damn,
she must have really booked down that long foyer) was my only answer.
I didn't want to do it. In fact, I could think of about a thousand things I'd rather do,
including having a root canal without anesthesia.
I resisted it as long as I could. Well, I resisted it for about ten minutes after I had the idea.
But this could be considered "the beginning."
It was also right around the time Nick would have realized I was a vampire, and that we
had stomped all over his brain with big black boots. But Nick wasn't the only one we'd
vampire mojoed and regretted it, after.
One phone call to Tina, who was in the middle of trying to cross the border into
Switzerland, was all it took. This was a surprise. Not that she had the info. Frankly, I had
no idea Switzerland was anywhere near France.
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"Isn't that, like, way farther north? Like by Greenland?"
"My queen, how may I be of service?" Tina replied, sounding harassed.
"I need Jon Delk's home address."
Long pause.
"Tina? Stupid cell phones . . ."
"My queen, what good would that information do you? As you have promised not to leave
the house until I return."
"Every day is another pint of Sinclair's blood, Tina, assuming he's still alive at all." I could actually feel her wince through the phone. "Delk's old job was killing vampires, and he
hates Sinclair more than anyone I know. It's worth paying a visit to the family farm, don't
you think?"
Another pause, this one shorter. Then: "Bring Laura."
"Sure," I lied. Damn. I was getting good at lying through my fangs. I'd make it up to Tina
once she got back.
"And please call me the minute you find out anything," Tina was saying. "Or don't find out anything. It's an excellent idea, Majesty. I just wish I was there to run the errand for you."
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"You've got your hands full already, sunshine. Now hit me with the address, please."
"I've text messaged it to your phone while we've been talking."
"Sneaky and efficient. That's my girl."
"Majesty, it's kind of you to pretend I'm actually being of assistance."
"Stop that," I ordered. "There's no point in beating yourself up. You had an important job to do, and you did it. Who could have predicted all this?"
"Someone," she said, "my age with my IQ."
"Whoever did this took him out from under my nose. Did all this shit right in front of me,
and I didn't even notice. Whatever's happened . . . well, it's on me, that's all. Not you."
"Kind," she replied, "but untrue. Take all care, Majesty. How I adore thee."
"What?"
"N-nothing."
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) Awkward!
As we hung up, I found myself wondering about the mysterious Tina. How had she turned
into a vampire? Who had done it, and why, and where were they now? I had no answers
here, only her unabashed devotion. In fact, the only person I knew less about was my
recently vamoosed fiancé.
How was it that these two vampires, who seemed to care so much about me, had
remained so mysterious about their pasts?
Well, wondering wasn't getting me any closer to finding Sinclair. After some digging (I
was always misplacing the damned thing), I found my cell in the bottom of an old Louis
Vitton purse Jessica had bought me for my twenty-first birthday.
I noted not only the address but precise directions (I knew Tina would make sure she
could track down a Blade Warrior if necessary), and got ready to make the long drive to
the Delk family farm.
Jon Delk's parents lived in a St. Paul suburb, but lately he was spending a lot of time at his
grandparents' farm in Burlington, North Dakota. I made the fourteen-hour drive in nine
hours, mostly because I didn't have to stop to pee or eat, and because I went ninety on the
interstate almost the whole way. I was pulled over three times, all three times by single
male state troopers. Didn't get a ticket once.
It was the next evening—I'd had to get a motel room just before sunrise, but was on the
move again by 5:00 p.m. the next afternoon.
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) Long gone were the Minnesota cornfields I was used to; out here, close to the Canadian
border, it was all wheat fields and sloughs. Got kind of monotonous after a while. At least
cornfields were an interesting color.
I pulled into the mile-long drive and shut off the engine (I'd picked Sinclair's banana
yellow Ferrari for this drive . . . ninety felt like fifty), staring at the neat, large cream-
colored farmhouse with not a little trepidation. I wasn't at all looking forward to what was
coming next.
For one thing, it was late—for farmers, anyway. Ten o'clock at night. For another, Delk
and I had not exactly parted on good terms. Specifically, he found out we'd stomped
around inside his head and was not at all pleased. He expressed this by shooting me. (It
was astonishing how often this sort of thing happened.) Then he'd stomped out, and we
hadn't seen him since.
Making him a pretty good suspect for all the weird goings-on.
I stumbled up the gravel driveway, regretting my choice of footwear. I was wearing
lavender kitten heels to go with my cream linen shorts and matching cardigan (sure, it was
eighty degrees outside, but I felt cold almost constantly).
I went up the well-lit porch steps, inhaling myriad typical farm odors on my way: manure,
wheat, animals, rosebushes, the exhaust from Sinclair's car. There were about a zillion
crickets in the back field—or at least, that's what it sounded like.
I knocked on the porch door and was instantly distracted when a shirtless Delk answered.
"Betsy?" he gaped.
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) Farm Boy was built. Too young for me (not yet drinking age), blond, nice shoulders,
fabbo six-pack. Tan, really tan. Blond hair almost white from being out in the sun all day.
He smelled like soap and healthy young man. His hair was damp from a recent shower.
"What are you doing here?"
"Huh?"
His blue eyes went flinty and he squinted past me, trying to see past the porch light into
the dark driveway. "You didn't bring anyone with you, did you?"
"I came by myself."
"Well, I'm not inviting you in." He crossed his (muscular, tanned) arms across his (ripped,
tanned) chest and glared.
I opened the screen door and pushed my way past him, gently. "Old wives' tale," I said.
"Got any iced tea?"
“My grandparents are asleep upstairs," he said, keeping the crossbow pointed in my
general direction, while I dropped six sugar cubes into my tea. "Twitch in their direction,
and I won't take the arrow out."
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"I tremble and obey. Got any lemon?"
"Yes, and you can't have any."
"Crybaby." I took a sip, then dropped in two more cubes. Delk knew that a stake (or
wooden arrow) to the heart wouldn't kill me like it would any other vampire . . . but until
he pulled it out, I'd do an excellent impersonation of a dead girl. "Don't worry, I grabbed
.1 snack on the way." From that pig of a Sleep E-Z Motel front desk guy who'd actually
goosed me while I signed the register. I'd nearly bitten his fingers off. Settled instead for
hauling him behind the registration desk and helping myself to a pint.
Delk shifted in his chair, the arrow point never wavering. "What do you want?"
"Oh, the usual. World peace, a pair of Christian Louboton heels, a perfect wedding."
He tried not to wince, and I pretended not to notice. "Still marrying King Psycho, huh?"