She'll just worry.”
“I'll come up with something,” Laura promised at once. God, she was so low maintenance. When she wasn't in the grip of a simmering, murderous rage. “It wouldn't be such a big deal, but I think your mother is still taking your father's death kind of hard. Harder than – I mean, hard.”
Laura had corrected herself because she'd been about to say “harder than you,” which was nothing but the truth. I'd been fairly indifferent about my dad in life and wasn't sure how I felt about him dying. It was even partly my fault he was dead and I wasn't sure how I felt.
When I had died and come back as a vampire, he'd essentially told me to stay away. Seemed only fair that I return the favor... to seem like I didn't care if he was gone forever. But then, that sounded so cold and mean, I couldn't stand it. He was my father.
“Which reminds me,” I sighed, slumping in my seat, “you won't even guess who's been hanging around.”
“Umm... Detective Berry?”
“Well, yeah, but also my stepmother... and your birth mother.”
Laura had been polishing an apple on her immaculate buttercup yellow wool blazer, but stopped. “She's haunting you?”
“Yeppers.”
“What does she need you to do?”
“That's the super fun part. She won't tell me.”
Laura shook her head; gorgeous blond strands flew about her face and then settled perfectly. “That does it. I can no longer stay away from your house for more than a week. I miss too much!”
“It's not always like this,” I sighed.
“In fact, I'm going to stick to you like cow poop on a Furragrammo.”
“It's Fair-?uh-?gahm-?oh... and don't even say it!” I begged, but it turned out she wasn't exaggerating.
Chapter 35
“I still don't understand why Midwestern Barbie is along for the ride,” Detective Nick whined as we pulled onto the highway.
“One of the three of us in this horrid little car has my sister's best interests at heart. One of them isn't you,” Laura said sweetly, “and the other isn't her.”
I forced a cough. “Any luck with that, um, errand Jessica asked you to run?” After some discussion, Tina, Sinclair, and I had agreed Jessica was the best person to ask Nick to keep an eye out for unusual murders.
“You mean have your runaway pets mangled any citizens? Not that we can tell. Yet. And again, if I didn't make this clear: nice one, doorknob.”
“I said I was sorry,” I grumped, slumping against the backseat. (Yes, he'd dumped me in the back – at least it was a plain car and not a cruiser.)
“You stop picking on her,” Laura ordered. “She's doing the best she can. Although when she shuts out family members it only makes things – ”
“I'm sitting right behind you. I can, sorry to say, hear everything. Where are we going, anyway?”
“Got a tip that our bad guys might be meeting down here.”
“Wait, 'bad guys' the Fiends? Or – ”
“No, my bad guys, dummy. I hate to break this to you for the twentieth time, but it's not always about you, Betsy.”
I disagreed, but let it pass. “And a fellow cop showing up isn't going to scare the alleged bad guys away?”
“We think they're actually contracting out – giving the info to one of their perps, a guy (or gal) they can count on to pull the trigger. Do a few of those, and the triggerman disappears.”
“So... wait. You think they aren't just killing bad guys, they're getting other bad guys to kill bad guys, and then killing those bad guys?” Laura sounded truly horrified, but I had to admit it was fiendishly logical.
“Hey, I know it sounds bad, but our stats look great. Crime's down across the board almost eighteen percent.”
“Nick Berry!”
“I know, I know.” He slumped against the steering wheel. Luckily he'd gotten off the highway and we were at a red light. “We gotta put a stop to it. Tell me something I wasn't the first to figure out. Why do you think the chief's been riding my ass?”
“The entire force should be out on this, not just you,” Laura continued, snug in her cocoon of moral superiority. “It dishonors all of you. Your chief should understand that.”
“The last thing we need is the papers getting ahold of this tidbit. So it's on the down low for now.”
“You worry too much about the papers. Also, nobody says down low anymore,” I announced.
Nick sighed. “Bad enough you have to come along. Next time,” he said, catching my gaze in the rearview mirror, “Pollyanna stays home.”
I shrugged. “See if you can make her.”
We were in a fairly beat-?up Minneapolis neighborhood, one of those places that might have been pretty a few decades ago, but had suffered from a few too many absentee landlords, and not quite enough good jobs.
Nick parked, and we all got out. The street was dimly lit, and clumps of teenagers and twenty-?somethings stood out like mushrooms sprouting on various corners. We got a few looks, but nobody came over – or appeared to recognize Nick as a cop.
The storefronts were all empty, some with windows soaped over. The sidewalks were a mess; paper, beer bottles, and cigarette butts all over the place. If I hadn't been dead (or with the devil's daughter), I never would have gotten out of the car.
At least it wasn't too cold out yet; it was nearly seventy degrees, not too shabby for nighttime in September. It was funny; I'd always had contempt for California and Florida transplants who bitched about how cold the weather got in my home state. Shoot, I used to wear shorts in February and sneer at the whiners.
That was all over with, now. O, irony, you are a harsh mistress. I actually had a pair of gloves in my Burberry handbag... how was that for wimpy?
“I've just got a tag number,” Nick was saying, “but I don't know if it ties in to – ”
I didn't hear the rest, because I was distracted by rapidly approaching footfalls and turned just in time to get slammed off my feet. The chilly sidewalk rushed up to smack into my back, and I cracked my head hard enough to see black roses.
Then someone with truly awful breath was yanking me off the ground by my purse strap, which, to my amazement, held. I had no idea if I was mad or glad. It had been a gift from Jessica. It was my only designer handbag. But then, if it had snapped free, I wouldn't have a stranger's hands around my neck right now. Decisions, decisions.
“Leave her alone!” Laura shrieked, while around her, teens fled. “Let her down! Detective Berry! Do something!”
“Freeze?” he suggested.
Bad Breath Boy and I were spinning around on the sidewalk in a tight little dance, and the stench of fresh, drying, and old blood was making me nuts.
“A Fiend,” I managed, trying to break his grip – he was much taller, much broader. “It's a Fiend, don't get too close.” Here? Now? What the fuck? Had they followed me from the house? Worse, had they followed Laura? That could be extremely awful.
“I could shoot it, but might kill Betsy by mistake. Ah, well,” Nick said cheerfully, and I could hear him unsnap his holster. “A risk I'm willing – hey!”
There was a blinding light, like someone was holding a bolt of lightning, and then the light swung through both of us. It didn't do a thing to me but make me blink furiously.
But the effect was devastating on the Fiend, who didn't so much burst into flame as burst into ash. This was
