dullest needle. We'd had so many fights like this, I practically had scars there. “I'm. Not. Going. Anywhere. Besides, it's my house! You can't kick me out of – ”
“Also, Sinclair wants to buy it from you. I mean, we want to buy it. The house. We totally do. Together. It's not just him alone. We want to.” Because that's what married couples did, right? Bought real estate together and drank each other's dark, dead blood?
“Oh, I'll just bet you do.” She pulled her small, sleek head back, like a snake getting ready to bite. It was silly, kind of: I was a foot taller, I was thirty pounds heavier, I had legions of the Undead at my command (sorta) and vampiric strength, and I was scared to death of her. I tried not to cower as she ranted, “Well, you can't have it! For one thing, it's not for sale, and for another, it's my house!”
“Jessica, we almost lost you this summer, and – ”
“Betsy, even if you couldn't cure cancer, I wouldn't be afraid of the Fiends. But hey! Since you can? I can't say I'm worried about something as silly as a few bites.”
We started walking again, only she was stomping toward the elevator, and I was doing the Igor Shuffle (“Yes, master, right away, master, I am not an animal, master.”) right behind her. “A few bites? That's like calling the cost of the War on Terror a few dollars. And I know you're not afraid, it's not about you being afraid, it's about taking the sensible precaution of being elsewhere when the bad guys come back, doy!”
She snorted and jabbed the elevator button. “Listen to you. 'Sensible precautions.' ”
“And don't forget the 'doy.' Jess, how many scary movies have we seen where the heroine does something really dumb like hang around in a hallway when she knows the bad guys are, like, a room away?”
“ 'Bout a zillion,” she acknowledged.
“We got off real lucky this time – Marc with a few scratches, and you not even hurt – and I think it's completely nuts to push it. So how about you don't be an asshole about it and just stay with Marc until we kill all the bad guys?”
“Oh, someone's being an asshole,” she agreed, practically leaping into the elevator in her agitation, “but it's not this girl.”
I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. Mostly against the awful fluorescents in the elevators; there were about eight too many. “I knew you were gonna be like this.”
“But you had to open your yap anyway.”
I squinted at her. “Don't come crying to me when a Fiend tears your head off.”
She smiled a little, and I knew that was partly because she thought she had won the argument. She hadn't, but she was forcing me to do something I really, really, really didn't want to do.
I was gonna tell on her.
Chapter 21
l nearly walked through the Ant on my way from the bathroom to the bed, and neither of us were very happy about the near miss.
“Must you ignore everyone's personal boundaries? ”
“Yeeeeeggghh! Stop doing that, you disgusting horrible dead wretch!”
Sinclair, all the way across the room, looked guilty and bent down to untie his other Kenneth Cole, as opposed to just yanking it off and tossing it in the general direction of the closet.
“You might think about what would happen to me if you got your silly self killed.”
“Yeah, I should have realized what a terrible thing that would be, Ant. For you.” I ran the six steps from the bathroom, jumping into the middle of the bed, so nothing hiding under it could grab my feet. “And I wasn't talking to you,” I added to my husband, “but it's nice to see you treating your shoes with more respect. ”
The Ant was looking in our direction with rabid suspicion. Which, since she'd been heavily Botox'd before her death, came across as slightly raised eyebrows and rapidly blinking eyes. “What are you two doing? You're not going to bed now?”
“We've been up all night, you pineapple-?colored idiot.” Pineapple referring to her hair, which was stiff and yellow. “Dawn's about an hour away.”
“Well, in that time you could be – ”
“Having nasty sex with my husband. Nasty,” I added, ignoring Sinclair as he picked up a pillow, calmly pressed it over his face, and barked laughter into it. “With, um, probes and things. We like to role-?play. I'm the alien, and he's the helpless probed human. Now get lost, because it's going to get messy in here.”
Ah! It worked. She'd popped out while I was horrifying her with lurid descriptions of my imaginary sex life. I wish she'd just tell me what she wanted and go back to Hell already.
“Thank” – I searched for a word that wouldn't make Sinclair cringe – “goodness she's gone.”
“Help, help, I'm being probed!” The pillow sailed at my head, and I knocked it away, trying not to grin. Beside me, Sinclair tried his best to look horrified. “If only I didn't feel a sick, wrong sexual attraction to these alien invaders. If only I had listened to my mother's warnings about loose alien women!”
“Pal, you are so not getting any tonight.”
“If only,” he continued dolefully, “they didn't keep telling me to turn my head and cough.”
That was it; I lost it. I shrieked and laughed and kicked at the covers until the bed looked like what I told the Ant we'd be up to.
“That was slightly... hysterical.”
“Hey, it's been a long night.”
“Indeed it has, my darling alien intruder.” Sinclair yanked the remaining sheets and blankets off the bed and threw them to the floor with a theatrical flourish. Then he pounced on me while sheets billowed all over the place.
He kissed me for a wonderfully long time, then pulled back and cocked an eyebrow. “Want to see my probe?”
Chapter 22
The next evening started off nice and quiet. Marc wasn't around, of course, Garrett was probably still cowering in the basement, and I didn't look too hard for Jessica.
Almost as soon as I'd gotten up, Tina and Sinclair had left for the library. This made sense, as the former librarian, Marjorie, had kept extensive files on every vampire she knew of, heard of, or could track down.
Information, as far as the late, unmourned Marjorie believed, had been power.
They had politely asked if I wanted to come, pretending I'd actually be of use to a couple of near geniuses trapped in a warehouse disguised as a library. They probably thought hours of research on computers and – and whatever you did research on would be a good time, poor morons. Of course I'd said no.
But even if I'd lost all my cool points and was a hopeless, helpless virgin weirdo geek who wanted to spend half the night in a vampire library, I couldn't.
I, after all, had serious work to do for the Minneapolis Police Department. Make that Homicide Department. Yeah, that's right, we vampire queens are in constant demand all over the place for –
“Are you actually going to get in my car?” Nick Berry demanded, shaking his keys at me. “Or just keep staring off into space like that? Because it is fuckin' creepy, Betsy, you look like the Exlax is about to kick in.”
“Huh? Oh. That was mean. And I'm coming, don't nag.”
“I'm a grown man,” he forced out through gritted teeth, “and we don't nag.”
“You were! You were nagging!”
“Betsy, I swear to God, if you don't shut your fucking yap and get in the car, I'm going to pull out my gun and blow your – ”
“Ha! You said 'blow.' ”
The gun had cleared the holster. Hmm, Nick was a short-?tempered fellow these days. “I'm gonna count to
