Undead and Unwelcome (2 page)

you know what you’re getting into. So if you can’t fly us out there, or if you think you—”

“Bite your tongue, miss. Or missus, I suppose. I’ve been flying for Jessica Wilson since

she was seven years old, don’t you know, and we’ve had hairy days and we’ve had
hairy

days
.” “Cooper, I never, ever want to hear about your hair.” He ignored me. It was just as

well. “I’ve seen and heard things—never mind, that’s private family busi ness.” “Oh, come

on, we’re best friends. I mean, Jessica and me.” I didn’t know if Cooper
had
any friends.

“There’s no way you know stuff that I don’t—” Cooper ruthlessly interrupted my

shameless scrounging for gossip. “
This
doesn’t scare me.” He nodded at the memo,

inadvertently crumpled in my fist. “But I surely wish Miss Jessica had told me earlier.” He

meant, of course, “Like, how about before I flew you and the vampire king to New York

City for your honeymoon, dumbass?” But Cooper neither a) freaked out, nor b) quit. And

thank God, because finding another private pilot at this hour would have been a bitch.

“You got a problem with the boss?” I asked. “Take it up with the boss. What I want to

know is, are we still leaving at eight o’clock?” Because if we weren’t, I (and probably my

husband) was going to be in big trouble with seventy-five thousand werewolves. I held my

breath, remembered for the thousandth time I didn’t have to breathe anyway, and waited

for his answer.

Memos don’t slow down my flight check,” Cooper semi-scolded in his luscious Irish

accent. I managed not to swoon with relief. Also, oooh, European accents, I could listen

to them all day. Americans sounded like illiterate bumpkins by comparison. “
Gunshots

don’t slow down my flight check.” “Don’t worry. Nobody’s packing.” On this flight. “I

could tell you stories about the carnage and body counts . . .” Cooper’s pale blue eyes

went misty with nostalgia while I watched him nervously, then he seemed to shake

himself. “But the government made me promise.” “Well, hoo-ray for the government.”

Cooper had first worked for Jessica’s dad and, when her folks died (an ugly yet fitting

death and a story for another time) and their assets transferred to her, he kept right on

flying for her. And as he’d said, Cooper heard things. Chances were he’d already known I

was walking around dead. He was just miffed that Jessica hadn’t told him three years ago.

And you know, he wasn’t revolting looking. Tall—my height—with eyes the color of new

denim and a shock of pure white hair that he wore over his shoulders, he was like an

ancient hippy, albeit one who had never touched drugs nor alcohol. He was wearing what

Jessica teasingly called his uniform: khaki shorts, sandals, and a T-shirt that read, JESUS

SAVES. HE PASSES TO NOAH. NOAH SCORES! He had tons of weird Jesus shirts.

People picked fights if he wore the wrong T-shirt to the wrong place. Fights Cooper

always won, despite his age. It was unreal, yet cool . . . sort of like Cooper himself. Jessica

had fired him dozens of times for his own safety, but he always showed up the next day.

“Okay, then.” I stood, forgetting I had been sitting under a bulkhead, and banged my head.

“Ow!” “Luckily being dead hasn’t dulled your natural grace.” “Shut up, Cooper.” He

smirked and tipped two fingers in a mock salute. “All right, so I’ll see you in another hour

or so. They’re, um, they’re done loading Antonia and my husband’s pulling together some

paperwork . . .” For what, I had no idea—Sinclair had his fingers in a lot of pies, and I

wasn’t interested enough to ask. He might answer, and then I’d have to listen. Or look like

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) I was listening, which was harder than it sounded. “Anyway,” I finished, having almost

lost my train of thought (again), “we’ll be back a little later.” “I’ll be ready, mum.” Oh, it

was
mum
now? What was I, the queen of—never mind. “And for the zillionth time: Betsy.

It’s Betsy.” “Whatever you say, mum.” Polite as always, he didn’t turn his back on me

while I scuttled out of the plane and down the stairs. My car was parked on the west end

of the tarmac of the Minneapolis International Airport; I had no idea what strings Sinclair

had pulled so that I could park there. I didn’t want to know, frankly. Okay, “my car” was

a bit of an exaggeration . . . I’d driven one of Sinclair’s to the airport for my little hey-

guess-what-I’m-dead meeting. It was a Lexus hybrid, the only SUV I could drive without

feeling like another planet-polluting asshole. Also, it had seat-warmers. There! One

unpleasant chore out of the way—Cooper knew the scoop and, even better, hadn’t tried to

jam a cross down my throat. He’d agreed to fly us to the Cape, and best of all, hadn’t tried

to offer me a washcloth soaked in holy water. Another sneezing fit I so did not need. Have

I mentioned there are some actual perks to being the long-prophesied vampire queen? I’m

so used to bitching about my unwanted crown I tend to overlook the positives. Holy

water, crosses, and stakes can’t hurt me. Nor garlic. Antonia, my dear dead friend, had no

idea if bullets would kill me, and refused to risk my life to find out. Which is why she was

riding in the cargo hold instead of the plush seats of a private plane. I shoved Antonia out

of my head; it still hurt too much to think about her sacrifice. And speaking of sacrifices,

there was Garrett, Antonia’s late lover, to think about. Once he’d realized that Antonia

was dead—in part due to his own cowardice—he’d killed himself right in front of us.

Messily. I didn’t quite dare broach the subject with Sinclair; he felt unrivaled contempt for

a lover who would jam someone up and then not face the consequences. Me, I wasn’t so

sure it was that black and white. Garrett was never strong. He was never even brave. But

he had loved Antonia and couldn’t live without her. Literally. Tina and Sinclair had taken

care of his body, dragging it off the broken staircase (poor Garrett looked like he’d been

caught in a giant set of teeth), cutting off the head, and burying it at Nostro’s old farm

(where the Fiends . . . the ones still alive . . . lived). But that was enough of that for

now—Garrett was dead, and I couldn’t change that. But I was going to have a word with

my alleged best friend about her irritating, insulting, and idiotic memorandum

(memoranda?). I mean, jeez. Narcissistic? Didn’t she stop to think how
I
would feel if

Cooper read that about me? Not to mention, I wasn’t even cc’d on the thing. I swear, I

didn’t know what had gotten into that girl since I’d cured her cancer and she had to dump

her boyfriend because he hated my guts. Frankly, I’ve been having a terrible time this

week. And now rogue memos! It was too much for anyone to expect me to handle, which

I would be pointing out to her the minute I saw her. Self-centered? Me? Sometimes that

girl doesn’t know me at all.

Dear Myself Dude,
I can’t remember the last time I tried to write in a diary. This one will

go the way the others went, I think. I’ll write like gangbusters for a week or two, then lose

all interest in writing about my life and get back to living my life. But here I am again,

starting a diary for the first time in over twenty years.
That’s a lie, of course. One of my

psych profs told me in college that we lie best when we lie to ourselves.
The man knew his

shit. I know exactly when I quit writing in diaries: it was right around the time I realized I

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had zero interest in girls, but plenty of interest in boys. I was fourteen, and kept waiting

to grow out of it. Kept wondering what was wrong with me. Hoped it was just a phase.

Prayed my father wouldn’t find out. Prayed no one in high school would find out.
The

trouble with being a closeted homosexual is exactly this: you live with the agonizing fear

you will be found out.
I hid until I was old enough to drink.
When I was sixteen, I tore up

my last diary for the simplest and most cowardly of reasons: I didn’t want my dad to find

it. Colonel Phillip P. Spangler’s only son a bum puncher? A faggot? A crank gobbler?

He would have killed me, or I would have killed me, so best to stop writing things like “I

wish Steve Dillon would dump that idiot cheerleader and blow me for an hour or two.”

So. Diaries. Specifically, new diaries. No chance the colonel will find this one; he’s in

hospice, crankily dying of lung cancer.
It’s pretty rotten that I wasn’t sad when I heard.

It’s worse that I reran his labs myself to confirm it. I was relieved. Poor excuse for a

man’s only son.
My name is Marc Spangler. I’m a doctor, an ER resident at one of the

busier Minneapolis hospitals, and I live in a mansion. No, I am not rich. Not yet . . . and

probably not ever unless I specialize in cardiology, oncology, or face-lifts. Fortunately,

this is not the sort of job you go into in order to make money. Which is a good thing,

because I found out (quite by accident) that when you break down my shifts into hourly

rates, every receptionist in the building makes more money than I do.
But back to the

mansion. My best friends are a vampire and the richest woman in the state of Minnesota

(and, as Jessica herself would point out, not the richest
black
woman . . . the richest

woman). In fact, they are my only friends. Once I left the shithole I grew up in, I never

went back. And I never will.
I haven’t gotten laid in a while, but on the upside, I lead the

most interesting life of anyone I know . . . except maybe for Betsy and Sinclair, the King

and Queen of the Vampires.
Ooooh, Sinclair. Don’t get me started. Tall, broad-

shouldered, dark hair, dark eyes, long fingers, and when he and Betsy go at it, the entire

mansion shakes. Those are usually the nights I go out and get drunk.
Mostly because I’ve

always been wildly attracted to him, and partly because Betsy has unconsciously worked

her charm on me . . . she’s about the only woman I’ve ever seriously considered sleeping

with. And—don’t get me wrong, dude, because I love her to death—it’s just as well we

didn’t hook up. What with the shoe shopping and the bitching about being stuck in a job

she didn’t ask for and didn’t want, and the way she manages (quite unconsciously, I’m

sure) to make everything about her . . . nope, nope, nope. If she was my girlfriend, I

probably would have jammed a needle full of potassium into my heart before the end of

the first week.
She has twenty-eight pairs of black pumps. Twenty-eight! I counted them

myself. Then I counted again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, and got twenty-nine.

Those twenty-eight or -nine pairs were maybe a third of her collection. Her love for fine

footgear . . . it’s almost pathological.
Thing is, while I was debating trying sex from the

other side of the fence, Betsy didn’t even know she was doing it. Getting into my head,

inspiring me to wear a bit more aftershave than I usually do, making me want her . . . she

did it completely unknowingly and by accident. My inner scientist wished I could have

known her in life, so I could compare her premortem charisma with her “vampire mojo,”

as she called it.
And why am I going on and on about Betsy’s unholy sex appeal? That’s

not what I wanted to say at all.
Basically, I guess I’ve started another diary because

things aren’t all happy-happy-yay-yay, the-good-guys-win anymore. I thought I’d

learned that by the time I was in my fourth year of medical school, but I didn’t know shit

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about death back then.
I know a lot more, now.
People are dying. Good guys are dying.

Friends are dying. And I just figure someone ought to be writing it all down.
Because one

of these days, I’m worried they’ll be flying
me
in a private plane and I won’t be riding in

first class, if you know what I mean.
The colonel might care. Might. I won’t be around to

see it, so I guess it doesn’t matter.

My husband grimaced as I plopped down next to him with BabyJon in my arms. Not

particularly keen on fatherhood in the first place, Eric had found it an annoying shock that

his wife was the legal guardian of her infant half brother. He was, like any man, jealous of

anything that took his wife’s attention away from him (which was part cute and part

irritating). Also, it was my fault my father and stepmother were dead (long story short:

cursed engagement ring, grants wishes, and the cost is always high). And when I used the

ring, my father was killed. As well as my stepmother. I had wished for a baby of my own