Dead Over Heels

forth, crying. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m—”

The elevator dinged and then Jessica was kneeling beside me. “Oh, Betsy. You had to.”

“—sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—”

“Elizabeth, we must—”

“Is everybody okay? I gotta get this kid back to his parents.”

“—I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—”

“Elizabeth—please—”

“I think she’s in shock,” Nick worried. “Can vampires go into shock?”

In the end, it took all three of them to wrench her out of my arms and I think—I think I fainted or something, because I don’t remember much after that.

Chapter 19

I opened my eyes to a familiar sight . . . a ring of concerned faces hovering over me.

“Sorry,” I said faintly. I covered my eyes. “That was—that was bad there. For a minute.”

“It was fairly awful for all of us, so don’t beat yourself up,” Jessica assured me. “We’re just glad you and Sinclair are all right.”

Silence. Then I heard Jess stomp on Nick’s foot, and his stifled yelp. “Aren’t we?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Thanks for killing the bellman,” I said. “That must have felt good.”

“I only shot him in the head. I have no idea if that kills you guys. I think Sinclair delivered the coup de grace, as it were.”

“But he was coming after me. He was coming after me, and you shot him three times in the head.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I smiled for the first time in what felt like weeks.

“My poor Elizabeth,” Sinclair said, sitting down beside me on the bed. He picked up my hand—my killing hand, my stake-wielding hand—and kissed it. “You won’t be naive much longer at this rate. Pity.”

“Right now I feel about a thousand years old.”

“Well, you look great,” Jessica assured me. “Your hair isn’t even messed up.”

That cheered me up a little. “So what happens now?”

“The staff helps us cover this up, of course. They’re walking around on eggshells right now, wondering what we’ll do to them.”

“I promised Bernie we’d leave them alone.”

“That doesn’t mean,” Sinclair said grimly, “that we can’t stop in now and again and check on them.”

“You mean, like a second honeymoon?” Jessica teased.

I groaned. “Jesus Christ, let me recover from this one first!”

As jokes went, it was fairly lame, but we were all so stressed out we laughed anyway. And then it was better.

I was just glad I didn’t have nightmares since coming back from the dead, because I knew Bernie’d be haunting my thoughts plenty when I was awake.

But that was a worry for another time; right now I had to focus on getting rid of Jess and Nick, and finishing my honeymoon without worrying about dead children popping up and ruining the mood.

And that’s exactly what I did.

Survivors

The Whiskers are trying to survive in a hostile new area after being evicted from their manor by the vicious Commandos.

—MEERKAT MANOR, ANIMAL PLANET

SURVIVOR: noun. 1) One who lives through affliction. 2) One who outlives another. 3) An animal that survives in spite of adversity.

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,

A tale of a fateful trip

That started from this tropic port

Aboard this tiny ship.

—“THE BALLAD OF GILLIGAN’S ISLAND,” by George Wyle and Sherwood Schwartz

For my children,

who got me hooked on Animal Planet.

Now you’ll all have to suffer for it.

Author’s Note

The events of this novella take place after Swimming Without a Net, the second Fred the Mermaid book.

Chapter 1

This is Con ‘Bad Baby’ Conlinson. I’m just like you . . . only I’m on TV. I’ve gotten really close to the summit of Everest, spent the night in the Everglades (Motel^TM), faced down numerous angry dogs and cats, gotten thrown out of no less than seven—seven—bars, surfed the insanity of Lake Ontario, stayed dry in Seattle, and been audited twice.

“I’ve been through it all, and I’ll show you how to survive all that and worse in . . . Con Con the Survivin’ Man (pronounced ‘mahn,’ or so I keep reminding my producer). Tonight’s episode, Con Conlinson stupidly tells the crew to take their boat and separate, resulting in THE GIANT FUCKING MESS I find myself in this evening.”

Newly stranded, Animal World™’s Conwin Edmund Conlinson sighed and stared at the sky. The glorified rowboat rocked and swayed in this, a more or less unoccupied stretch of the Pacific Ocean.

And it hadn’t seemed like that much of a storm, either.

Con sighed again. When he stretched out, the boat was a foot longer than his head and his feet. The craft itself was little more than a couple of life jackets, a tarp, a first aid kit (which he hadn’t needed; he’d come through the storm without a scratch . . . or a crew), a knife, a flint, a notebook that he took to be some sort of log, and a box of blue Bics.

No food, of course. Or fishing gear.

Or land.

Just that silver coconut that had managed to keep a perfect distance between him and his boat for the last several hours, no matter where he drifted. He watched it bob, bored. He supposed he could start a diary. But he was a TV guy, not a journalist. TV guys weren’t known for their writing skills. But give ’em a teleprompter and they went to town! Yeah!

And what would he write about, anyway? How, in his arrogance, he’d wanted a smash-bang season opener