Undead and Unsure (13 page)

“Did you—when you died and came back, did you know right away what you were going to do? Did you plan on . . .” He looked around the large, inviting kitchen. “Any of this?”

I thought of the depths of my living rage, and my cold despair. Vengeance had not come cheaply and, as Tina had warned, had brought no peace. And then decade after empty decade followed, years of knowing every trite saying

(money can’t buy happiness, you get what you pay for, a bird in the hand is worth two et cetera)

is true.

“No. And I had no essential urge to rule, or even to be a good man. I wished to be left alone. For long years, it was my only wish.” I looked into Marc’s deep green eyes, cloudy now as he paid close attention to what I was saying. “It was always difficult. To realize that however long you walk the earth, your loved ones can never return. That no matter what you overcome that particular journey does not end for you. How do you become resigned to something unthinkable? You are forever apart and while the alternative is dreadful to contemplate, you can mourn the man you once were. I mourned. And I moved on, after a fashion. And then I met the queen. Perhaps it will be different for you. But already you have what I did not.” I did not say it, but sensed Marc knew—they all knew—what I meant: he was not alone.

A pregnant silence passed, broken by Marc’s brisk, “Actually I was more worried about how to keep my licensing current, but all that stuff’s been, y’know, preying heavily on my mind, too.”

“Then I trust I have set it at ease.”

“You bet. But listen—who’s getting you intel on Laura? I’m not the spy, and I know Jess isn’t the—”

“I am the spy.” When they remained unenlightened, I elaborated. “There is a tracer on Laura Goodman’s car. I placed the device.”

“Betsy
also
said you’re a hands-on kind of monarch.”

For the first time in a while, I felt like smiling. “More now than I have been, to be sure.”

“Is that why you’re always on those walks? You’re running around placing tracer devices and figuring stuff out and other sneaky stuff?” Dr. Spangler turned to Jessica and Detective Berry. “I thought it was all about the outdoor daylight sex.”

For the first time in a while, I groaned.

“Give us
some
credit,” Detective Berry said kindly. “You two return all disheveled with your clothes half on and rumpled. In December! And grass stains everywhere . . . what
else
would you be doing?”

“
Who
else would you be doing?” Jessica added with a sly smile.

“I was wrong to discount your deductive skills,” I said, unable to keep the chagrin—or the admiration—out of my tone.

“Not mine,” Jessica said cheerfully. “I didn’t use ’em. Betsy told me. Well. She complained at me. That’s like telling, right?”

They observed my deepening discomfiture and laughed. It was a lovely sound; there was no mockery in it. Even though Elizabeth was gone, the family she had brought me was a comfort.

They would do for now.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

“Oh, hell,” my dead stepmother, Antonia O’Neill Taylor, said
again. Like dying in some car vs. garbage truck nonsense, going to Hell, toiling as Satan’s assistant, and then running into me in the hellfog was a terrible thing
for her.
Okay, that actually does sound pretty terrible. But I wasn’t having much fun, either. “What are
you
doing here?”

I glared at her, this nightmare of polyester, a bad dye job, and the wrong makeup, the woman who’d driven a bulldozer through my parents’ marriage. One of the many strange things about Hell I didn’t understand was the . . . citizens, I guess would be the word? Anyway, some of them looked as they had in life; some didn’t. Some of them were always in the middle of being tortured. Some just kind of wandered around like they were in an airport but didn’t know their flight number. Some seemed happy to be there, some bemused, some horrified, some indifferent.

My stepmother, the Ant, had been somebody in Hell (no one who knew her in life was surprised). She’d been possessed by the devil and had given birth to Laura. She was so awful that she was possessed for
over a year
by the devil and no one noticed. (This! This is what I was up against!) So she was the Antichrist’s biological mother. (It’s weird. I know. I don’t understand it myself, and people have tried to explain it to me. Several times. I’m never going to get it and I’m fine with that.) Then, in Hell, she was kind of Satan’s assistant/almost friend. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that the first person to approach me, out of what were probably millions of souls, was the Ant.

All this to say she
chose
to perceive herself wearing one of her awful polyester-blouse/miniskirt combos in hot pink and black, her bright, stiff, pineapple-colored hair, and her wobbly, cheap pumps. She looked like this
on purpose.
There were deranged drooling serial killers in Hell who had more self-respect.

“I’m not any happier about being here than you are to see me.” I’d been staring in horror so long, I finally remembered to answer her (rude!) question. “Believe me.”

“You’re not playing the victim today,” the Ant told me sternly. “You’re the one who made this mess. Serves you right to get dumped in the middle of it.”

“So’s your face.” I was a little rattled. I managed to rally and come back with, “How’d you know I was dumped? Did you sic Laura on me?”

Her glare of dislike was so intense, it nearly knocked me over. Wow, flashbacks to my sweet sixteen party. “I didn’t have to. It seemed logical. You wouldn’t have come here on your own, and since you’re here by yourself, I assume someone brought you. And since you’re here by yourself, that same someone dumped you. And since you killed the Boss, that leaves Laura. And serves you right,” she sniffed.

“Wonderful.” I turned. It had taken me an hour of walking to stumble across the Ant; time to walk in
any other direction
. For as long as it took. Years. Decades. Whatev. “Lovely seeing you, die screaming again, ’bye.”

I’d taken about ten steps when I heard, “Well, hold up.”

I snorted. “Pass.” Who would I run into next? Hitler? Henry VIII? Aileen Wuornos? The Boston Strangler? (Wait. Was he even dead?) Whoever it was, it would be an improvement.

C’mon, Henry! Let’s rumble and then work it out over hot chocolate while I explain that it’s sperm, not eggs, that determine the sex of the infant and by the way, Anne Boleyn’s daughter was five times the ruler you were. Not literally. Because you got really fat at the end. Elizabeth just got wrinkled.

“I said hold up, you horrible bitch.”

A
vast
improvement.

I heard her little tripping steps come closer. Hmm. I wasn’t making any noise when I walked, but her clop-clopping was as it had been in life: tacky and loud. She expected to make that noise, so she did. Hellfog was weird.

“I suppose you’re wondering what the deal is.” She had, more’s the pity, caught up to me and now gestured vaguely to nothing, highlighting her tacky pointy red nails. Lee Press-On stock had probably taken a hit beginning the month she died. It might not ever rebound. “With everything like this.”

“No, not really. Just—” I shut up. This was no time for “I’m lost and I miss my loved ones and I’m scared, bwaaaaah! And also, I’m thirsty.” I’d die again before confiding anything like that to the Ant. Also, could I drink blood in Hell? People here were probably thirsty and hungry and couldn’t eat or drink, and also couldn’t die (again). That was why it was Hell. No, best to keep the confidences to myself. “Just out for a walk. In the middle of a bunch of nothing. For I’m not sure how long.”

“The thing is,” the Ant said, ignoring my words in hellfog as she did in life, “they’re all waiting to see what you girls will do.”

We girls? Uh, okay.

“Maybe if you look around a little bit, talk to some people, you might get an idea.”

And maybe if you ever really looked in the mirror, you’d remember that women in their forties should not wear hot pink anything, or miniskirts, unless they are Heather Locklear or Maria Bello and you, Antonia, are no Heather Locklear or Maria Bello, you’re—wait, what?

“What? Get an idea?”

“You know.” Again with the vague look-at-my-Press-Ons gesture. “Talk to them. See what they’re thinking.”

“How can I talk to them? And why would they tell me what they’re thinking?” I asked, incredulous. I figured the Ant would be mean and bitchy, but not insane. Clinically, anyway. “I can’t see anything and they’re all out there hiding in all this . . .
this.
”

“Look. Not to sound
Matrix
-ey, but this isn’t really fog, you know. And we’re not really walking. Well, you might be.” She stopped and looked at me thoughtfully. “I’m dead and technically you are, too, but my spirit is here. Not yours, though; you’re here in the flesh. But Hell doesn’t distinguish, I guess.” Another thoughtful glance in the distance. “Not unless someone tells it to. Remember the werewolf you picked up?”

“Hell isn’t the dog pound, and yeah, I remember.” Antonia, a former roommate, had died saving my unworthy neck, been buried, and then I’d found her in Hell and brought her back to the mansion. In her body. Which was also still in the cemetery. (None of us had a clue. We were just glad to have her back.) Then she and her boyfriend moved out. I’d gotten a Christmas card from them just a couple of days ago. The warm inscription (“We’re in California and all the blondes are as dim as you”) had almost brought tears to my eyes.

“Yeah, thanks for the
Matrix
analogy. Remarkably helpful. And you’re the worst Morpheus I’ve ever seen.”

“You shut your mouth! I’m not black!” she snapped. “That stuff about my grandma was
made up
.”

Whoa. “Simmer,” I told her. Jesus-please-us. If ever race mattered less than—than anything, I’d think, it’d be in hellfog. When stumbling around in a never-ending hellfog, were people honestly judging their fellow stumblers by the amount of melanin in their skin cells?

(Of course they were. It was hellfog!)

“Look, I don’t even know for sure who’s here and who isn’t . . . how would I? Satan might have kept attendance records, but I don’t. Laura probably doesn’t even know. Maybe you don’t, either.” With the murder of her boss, the Ant was high and dry. I squashed the teensy amount of sympathy I’d felt for half a second. “It’d be one thing if I was looking for—for—I dunno, Jessica’s parents?” With Jessica’s endless-yet-brief pregnancy, her useless mother and father had been on my mind lately, mostly because they were on
her
mind. I could count on one hand how many times she’d mentioned them in the last fifteen years. I’d need both hands and a foot and a half to count how often she’d brought them up in the last month. “But how would I even know how to find them, if I ever went completely batshit insane and decided to talk to them, ever, about anything?”

“Oh, jeez! Lookit this! Lacey, look who it is!”

No, it wasn’t. It sure wasn’t. It absolutely wasn’t—

“It’s our girl’s little friend! That Betsy girl!”

I turned. Not because I was in any rush to see Jessica’s parents, but because the sooner I did this, the sooner I could get the fuck away from them.

And to think, I thought the worst I could run across was the Ant.

Hellfog
sucked.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

“I must apologize again,” I explained to Dr. Taylor as I
handed her my squirming ward. “Truly, Elizabeth and I wish to be more tactile with BabyJon.”

“Tactile?” Dr. Taylor snorted, an unlovely sound. “It’s stuff like that that’s preventing you from being any kind of parent. It’s being a mom and being a dad. And that’s it. It’s not chopper parenting or tactile parenting or attachment parenting or being a martyr mom or slow parenting. She is the Mommy. You are the Daddy. The end.”

Somewhat taken aback at the good doctor’s vehemence (which, in truth, Elizabeth and I both deserved), I could only attempt to finish explaining. “Our good intentions, however, keep getting tossed with every
crise de la semaine
.
I was wrong to let our baby remain at the mansion last night.” In truth, leaving my boy had been close to a prayer . . . or an offering. Knowing Betsy wanted the infant to spend more time with us, I had been unwilling to let Dr. Taylor take him again.
This will prove I am a worthy husband, a worthy king, a noble father. Karma will take note and return my queen.

At times I am a stupid man.

“You and your excuses.” When she rolled her eyes, my mother-in-law looked remarkably like my wife, so much so that it was a near-physical pain to me. “‘I’ve been kidnapped. My wife is trapped in the future. My wife is trapped in the past. My wife was kidnapped by the Antichrist.’ Blah-blah.”

“Yes, well.” The only son I would ever have was birthed by a woman my wife despised. It was to the queen’s credit that she held none of it against the infant, a fine, strong, handsome boy. It was to her mother’s credit that this was as close as she had yet come to our deserved scolding. “I am come with another poor excuse for an excuse.”

Jessica peeked around me. “Hi, Elise!” She had asked to accompany me and I had acquiesced. I was more than grateful now. I surmised Jessica had wished to reassure my mother-in-law that we were well on the way to retrieving Elizabeth. In truth, my queen’s absence left me grateful for any company. What had I become?

Dr. Taylor feigned startlement. “Oh! Jessica, I didn’t see you there.”

“Yeah, sure, very funny.” She stepped to my side, the great curve of her belly preceding her, and stroked one of BabyJon’s black curls. He smiled at her and popped a thumb (his own) in his mouth. “He’s sooo sweet! Betsy says he’s the kind of baby that tricks people into having them.”

“She would know, as she was that kind of baby herself,” Dr. Taylor said, smiling. “She hardly ever cried. She only minded being hungry. Nothing else could touch her; she slept through an actual tornado once. Literally. A tornado. My ex-husband and I spent the night cowering in our basement and our baby only got pissy when I was slow to get her a bottle. It took a while,” she added, “what with the kitchen being half gone.”

“She still sleeps like that,” Jessica commented. “She slept like the dead before she was dead. Listen, d’you mind if I come in to—”

“You know where it is,” she replied, stepping aside. Though I had other things on my mind, I could not help wonder: Food? The guest bath? Whatever it was, Jessica indeed knew where it was. “Eric, if I didn’t know something was awfully wrong with you, I would now.”

“Beg pardon?”

“It’s broad daylight . . . sort of,” she added, squinting at the cloudy sky. “Lunchtime. This—the sunshine—it’s too new to you. You wouldn’t flaunt it and you wouldn’t be careless about it. And right now, even though you’re doing something denied you for decades, you couldn’t care less, couldn’t you?”

“I have more pressing concerns,” I admitted. In truth, there could have been a raging tsunami and I would be indifferent.

“No doubt. Why don’t you stay for a bit? I wanted to—oh.”

I had heard the car; I had noted the driver had shut off the engine. My phone, tucked snugly into an inside jacket pocket, shook gently. Tina notifying me of Dr. Taylor’s guest. Surely it would not be this simple.

Jessica turned to look. “Oh boy.”

My sister-in-law climbed out of her car, her fresh loveliness masking her bitter soul. She checked when she saw us standing on the front sidewalk with Dr. Taylor, faltered, then walked toward us.

Mmm. It
was
going to be this simple.

The silence as Laura Goodman approached was profound, almost like a living thing. It would not have surprised me to see her actually pushing through it like a mime. And oh, how I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to strike her and make her bleed and force her to return to me my queen.

I must not do that yet.

Dr. Taylor handed the infant to Jessica, who clutched him to her chest without looking away from the new guest. I recalled what Elizabeth had said about the Antichrist’s penchant for all things maternal:
She collects mother figures. Even though she loves her adopted mom, she’s known for years her bio mom was out in the world somewhere. Then she met her and yikes, right? So whenever she meets a friendly woman who’s the right age, she’s kind of drawn to them.

As she approached, Dr. Taylor greeted her with a calm “Laura, I told you I was sorry about your mother, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” I saw what would happen and did not move. In fact, I indulged in an internal smile. Laura’s penchant for maternal figures, while understandable—

Crack!
Dr. Taylor’s palm slammed into the left side of her face.

—might in this case prove fatal.

“Whoa,” Jessica said, taking two steps backward, still clutching my infant. In those two seconds I saw something remarkable. Laura’s eyes, normally a pure blue, flared poison green and then faded to what I can only describe as banked blue coals.

“I understand why you did that,” she said politely, touching her reddened cheek. “Please don’t do it again.”

“She’s my only daughter! What did you think would happen?” If I had not had occasion to make note of this behavior before, I would now. My mother-in-law was a formidable woman on and off the playing fields of academia, and ought not to be fucked with. “How dare you even
think
of coming here without an impressive apology in your mouth?
And
my daughter in your company!”

Laura just looked at her and for a long moment, no one said a word. Not even BabyJon, who merely watched us with a baby’s peculiar intensity. Elizabeth referred to it as the “there’s a monster sneaking up behind you!” look.

“If I did have an apology,” she said at last, “that slap would have smacked it right out of me.”

“You come in here right now,” Dr. Taylor ordered. “You come in and explain yourself. And also have Rice Krispies bars.”

Her face lit up even as Dr. Taylor’s handprint deepened. So Elizabeth was correct; her half sister had an inclination for mother symbols, something I could use to my advantage. “All right. Sure, I will.”

Dr. Taylor swung the front door open wider and stepped back to let the Antichrist in. She appeared to have forgotten us completely until Jessica, loitering in the hallway, cleared her throat. Then she ran a distracted hand through her white curls and said, “And you guys, too, I s’pose.” She turned to follow Laura, leaving the door open for us.

“Wow.” Jessica’s eyes were so wide they seemed to swallow her small, pointed face. “That went a
lot
better than I thought it would.”

“It could have been worse?”

“It might still get worse. Want some advice about your ma-in-law?”

This woman had cleaved herself to my queen years ago; except for myself, she knew my queen best. I had great respect for her opinion on all things Elizabeth. “You have my full attention.”

“It is a bad,
bad
plan to piss off Elise Taylor. Betsy didn’t turn out as Betsy all by herself.”

“What a simultaneously horrifying and comforting thought.”

Jessica laughed as I stepped aside so she might walk ahead of me. My son laughed, too, peeking at me over her shoulder and waving his chubby hand as if to beckon me forward.

Obedient, I followed.