“Get used to that one,” I panted, meeting his thrusts with my hips, trying not to hear the laughter in his head.
He bit me on the other side of my throat, and I thought, we're going to have to change the sheets. Stupid undead lovemaking!
He stiffened over me and then rolled away, stifling a yawn. “There, now. Don't you feel better?”
“Loads. So about the wedding—”
“The ceremony we have no use for?”
Poof. All gone, afterglow. “Shutup! Some moldy old book written by dead guys tells you we're married, and that's good enough for you?”
“Are we discussing the Book of the Dead, or the”— He made a terrible face, like he was trying to spit out a mouse, and then coughed it out—“Bible?”
“Very funny!” Though I was impressed; even a year ago, he could never have said Bible. Maybe I was rubbing off on him? He was certainly rubbing off on me; I'd since found out the Wall Street Journal made splendid kindling. “Look, I'd just like you to say, just once, just this one time, I'd like to hear that you're happy we're getting married,”
“I am happy,” he yawned, “and we are married.” And around and around we went. I wasn't stupid. I was aware that to the vampires, the Book of the Dead was a bible of sorts, and if it said we were consorts and coregents, then it was a done deal.
But I was a different sort of vampire. I'd managed (I think) to hang on to my humanity. A little, anyway. And I wanted a real wedding. With cake, even if I couldn't eat it. And flowers. And Sinclair slipping a ring on my finger and looking at me like I was the only woman in the universe for him. A ring to match the gorgeous gold engagement band clustered with diamonds and rubies, wholly unique and utterly beautiful and proof that I was his. And me looking understated yet devastating in a smashingly simple wedding gown, looking scrumptious and gorgeous for him. Looking bridal. And him looking dark and sinister and frightening to everyone except me. Him smiling at me, not that nasty-?nice grin he used on everyone else.
And we'd be a normal couple. A nice, normal couple who could start a—start a—
“I just wish we could have a baby,” I fretted, twisting my ring around and around on my finger.
“We have been over this before,” he said with barely concealed distaste.
We had. Or I had. Don't get me wrong; I wasn't one of those whiny women (on the subject of drooling infants, anyway), but it was like once I knew I could never have one (and once my rotten stepmother, the Ant, did have one), it was all I could think about.
No baby for Betsy and Sinclair. Not ever. I'd even tried to adopt a ghost once, but once I fixed her problem, she vanished, and that was that. I had no plans to put my heart on the chopping block again.
I sat up in bed much too fast, slipped, and hit the floor with a thud. “Don't you want a baby, Sinclair?”
“We have been over this before,” he repeated, still not looking at me. “The Book of the Dead says the Queen can have a child with a living man.”
“Fuck the Book of the Dead! I want our baby, Sinclair, yours and mine!”
“I cannot give you one,” he said quietly, and left me to go back to his desk. He sat down, 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?
Chapter 2
“Take that rag off,“ my best friend rasped. ”It makes you look like a dead crack whore.'
“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 pulse. She slapped him away like she would an annoying wasp.
“Grumpy,” I said, as more attendants with armfuls of tulle appeared. “I swear. I was completely prepared to 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.”
“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.
