Undead and Unwelcome (4 page)

was trotting herself to keep up. I’d unhooked BabyJon’s car seat and carried it with us,

though it suddenly felt like it was full of several gold bars as I hurried and sniffed and

looked around and kept my grip hard enough so that the seat didn’t bang against my shins.

Good Lord, I was really getting out of shape if a simple walk to a house . . .
castle.
. . .

taxed my attention, not to mention my balance. “And we have a lot to talk about.” Eh?

Oh, right. Michael was talking. I should absolutely be listening. “Gee, ya think?” Jessica

whispered to me. “And here I thought we were here for the lobster.” I smothered a laugh,

knowing that even if Antonia and Garrett weren’t dead this was no time to get the giggles.

We had a pretty scary itinerary and never mind the seafood jokes (though I wondered if I

could eat clam chowder). Maybe it seemed weird for a vampire to fret or be stressed—this

vampire, at least—but despite how it always looks in books and movies, whole weeks—

months
—could pass by without any life-or-death bullshit. Not last week, though. I

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) thought the early part of the week had bitten the big one, what with the Fiends going all,

you know, fiendish, solving the murders, avoiding my own murder (something I was

starting to get good at just from sheer repetition, and wasn’t
that
the opposite of

amusing), and being a helpless witness to a murder/suicide in my foyer. Okay, technically

Jessica’s foyer. So Antonia was dead, Garrett had killed himself, but the fun wasn’t over

yet, which is why I was standing in front of the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Mississippi

River. Yeah, I figured we’d all earned about six years off—shoot, I was still a newlywed, I

had a pile of thank-you notes yet to write—but the joke was on me, as it so often is, and

all the tears and terror and bullets meant for me had only brought us to Wednesday. Now

it was the weekend, and Sinclair and I had a fresh set of problems. First and foremost,

how big a mess
was
this? How much blame would fall on my friends and me, how much

did we deserve . . . or need to dodge? Most important, what were the werewolves

cloistered here going to do about it? About us? And how could I explain Antonia’s

former-Fiend boyfriend to werewolves, without going too far and screwing over my own

people? Had Antonia ever even told her Pack she’d been sleeping with a vampire? I should

have known the answer to that. But Antonia had always made it clear that her phone calls

with Michael were Pack business, and we all tried to respect her privacy. Only to the

werewolves, it would probably look like negligence, or carelessness. I had never wanted a

drink so badly in my life. We followed Michael up red brick stairs and into a vestibule the

size of a ballroom. I stared . . .
Sure, why not? You’ve been gaping like a tourist instead

of an invited head of state. Which is just fine, because you’ll never fool a
real
leader.
...

while trying not to look like I was doing so. This place made our mansion on Summit

Avenue—one of the prettiest, grandest, richest streets in the Midwest—look like a one-

bedroom apartment in the warehouse district. Michael’s castle . . .
Yep, now there’s a real

leader, so quit fakin’, bacon.
... was lit up in a blaze of lights (mostly from the overhead

chandeliers) and what little furniture I could see was mahogany. The place smelled like old

wood and cedar, floor wax and furniture. It was the most impressive dwelling I’d ever

seen, and I’d only seen a tenth of a fraction of it. We climbed a grandly sweeping flight of

stairs (Marble floors! Marble floors! Werewolves must not ever slip, or maybe they just

hated vacuuming.), followed the Wyndhams down a wide hallway carpeted in red (not the

red you might think, an orangey red, a dark pink—no, this was
red
red, a deep, rich, true

red), and were soon in a room twice as big as my kitchen that was clearly Michael’s office.

He probably filled out paperwork, or clipped coupons, or downloaded songs from iTunes

when he wasn’t ruling the world from behind the ginormous desk almost directly across

from us. And excuse me, had I described the grand piano-sized, reddish brown, beautifully

appointed, gleaming chunk of wood as a desk? More fool me. The President of the U.S.

sat behind a desk. Elementary school teachers sat behind desks. Prison wardens.

Librarians. DMV employees. Desk sergeants. (Thus the name!) Reporters. Loan officers.

Those were desks. This thing was a wooden monument to Michael’s status. There were a

few comfortable chairs scattered about, all dark wood with plush seats. Floor-to-ceiling

bookshelves lined two of the walls; the other walls had windows and pictures and such.

One framed portrait caught my eye—obviously old, but the people were familiar to me

somehow, which was impossible. I stepped closer and stared harder. No, I didn’t know

them. The man had lush dark hair and the woman had brown eyes—no, not brown, more

golden than brown, more like— More like Michael’s. Of course! The mater and pater of

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) the Pack. Damn. Bet they’d known some good stories. (
Can you hear them, Elizabeth?
) I

stifled a yelp of surprise and darted a look in Sinclair’s direction. It was handy to be able

to read your husband’s mind, but that didn’t mean I thought it was natural, normal, or not

nerve-wracking. The fact that our telepathy tended to show only during extreme stress or

excitement (making love, being murdered, trying to figure out if vampires have to pay

property tax) told me something about Sinclair’s state of mind. My tall dark darling might

come across as calm and reasonable, even a little bored, and yet he was worried enough

(about me? the whole group? both?) to pop his question right into my head, where I heard

it as easily as if he was using a megaphone.
(Elizabeth. Can you hear them?)
Oh, right,

you’re probably expecting an answer.
I nodded. Sure I could. And I knew what Sinclair

was getting at. There wasn’t a soul to be seen, and the castle seemed almost deserted, but

it wasn’t. Not even close to deserted. We could hear them walking around and, even

worse, standing still. I was—don’t ask me how—sure they were listening to us. Believe

me, I know how it sounds: We could hear them listening to us? Give me a break. Except

we absolutely could. And that was the scariest thing of all, knowing the castle was full of

monsters who really would eat you, just like an ogre in a fairy tale. My, Grandma, what

big ears you have. My worry for Jessica increased by a factor of about eight hundred . . .

she had nothing in the way of enhanced paranormal senses, but that didn’t mean she

wasn’t picking up on the tension. Boy oh boy, I hoped we’d be able to make friends with

the ogres. Which is a sentence I never thought I’d have to think, much less articulate.

Drinks?” Jeannie asked, playing bartender. I was eyeing her hair with not a little

admiration. Unlike mine, which at best could be coaxed to be wavy (I’d had a highlight

touch-up and deep-conditioning treatment the week before I’d died; I might be a slavering

ghoul of the undead, but I would never have graying split ends), hers was shoulder length,

surfer blond, and curly . . . the kind that frizzed out in July, the kind that was a mass of

soft spiral curls tonight. The rest of her was unexceptional. Okay, that came out wrong . .

. Jeannie Wyndham was a beautiful woman, admirably slim after two kids, casually dressed

in jeans, loafers (Payless; ah, well, nobody’s perfect), a soft blue chambray shirt, and a tan

wool blazer. When I described her as unexceptional, I meant in comparison to my

surroundings: Michael’s wife was the queen of everything I was staring at; it was all half

hers. But you’d never know it to look at her; she had the brisk, understated demeanor of

an experienced nurse. Except for the eyes, of course; she had the flat and calculating gaze

of a sniper. I wondered where her gun was. This was more than idle curiosity; the last time

I’d seen her she’d shot me. Three times, in the chest. But later she’d helped me pick out

the greatest dress in the history of human garments, so I didn’t hold it against her

anymore. Attempted murder is a fleeting moment, but the perfect wedding gown lasts

forever. “Betsy? Drink?” Damn, I was really gonna have to pay better attention. I’d been

so busy staring around the room and remembering point-blank chest wounds that I took

the glass without looking and drained it. And nearly barfed all over the beautiful Persian

rug. I
think
it was Persian. It looked expensive and smelled old. Michael’s great-great-

great-great-grand-parents had probably hauled it all the way to Plymouth from the

Mayflower,
centuries after their great-great-great-great-grandparents had hauled it from

the palace of Cyrus. How did I know Cyrus was one of the first rulers of the Persians, you

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) ask? Hey. I don’t
always
ignore my husband when he’s prattling on about useless stuff.

“Wwwrrllgg!”
I managed, wiping off what was dribbling down my disgusted chin. I

forced what was left of the loathsome liquid down. “What the hell is this, kerosene?”

“We’re out of kerosene,” Derik said with no trace of a smile. This was far from the Derik

I’d met before, who had been all smiles, charming and sexy and nice. “I should have

mentioned that my wife only likes drinks that come from a dirty blender,” Sinclair said. He

was sitting across from Michael, who was behind his desk. I was sitting next to him;

Jessica was on my right. Jeannie, done with handing out glasses of regurgitate, was pacing

back and forth behind us. Like I wasn’t already nervous enough. “I take it you didn’t

enjoy your first whiskey, dear one?”
Yeah, about as much as a tax audit, jerkhead. Guess

I wasn’t as thirsty as I’d thought.
Sinclair nodded thoughtfully, his fist pressed under his

nose to hide a smile. He hadn’t been reading my mind as long as I’d been able to read his

(it’s a long story, and I come off kind of bad in it), so he was still in the wow-this-is-so-

awesome stage, whereas I was at the fuck-you-I-have-no-privacy phase. I fumbled

frantically in my purse, found a tin of Altoids, and dumped half of them in my mouth. I

crunched them up like they were Rice Krispies, relishing the way the mint overpowered

the yuck-o booze. Zow! The potent little buggers were really clearing out my sinuses; my

eyes were all but watering. Which would have been a good trick, since my eyes don’t

water. “Let me begin by saying we appreciate you bringing Antonia home to us.” “Nnnn

prbm,” I crunched, trying not to cough. Dammit! Probably shouldn’t have dumped such a

big mouthful into my gaping piehole. Probably shouldn’t have done a lot of things this

week. “It was no trouble, and the least we could do,” Sinclair said, speaking as calmly and

colorlessly as Michael while I crunched furiously. I wondered if that was the royal “we.”

“It was an honor to escort her back home.” “My understanding is that she was shot

several times in the head, protecting you,” Michael said calmly. Calmly, but a muscle

beside his eye twitched. I tried not to stare, and failed. I gave serious thought to getting up

and spitting my mashed Altoids into his spotless wastebasket, but just didn’t dare. It

seemed . . . what was the word Eric would use?
Undiplomatic.
With a mighty effort, I

swallowed the minty lump down, gagged briefly, and sneezed. Beside me, I could sense

Sinclair rolling his eyes and either trying not to smirk, or thinking up an excuse for me. I’d

deal with him later. “Yes, that’s right,” I replied with startlingly fresh breath. I managed to

stifle the second sneeze. “She saved me.” “Why?”
Huh. That didn’t seem very nice.
My

tongue ran away before I could stop it: “Because she lost a bet?” There was a loud hissing

sound, like everyone had gasped at the same time. I looked at my lap and muttered,

“Sorry. Too soon?” “What could bullets have done to a vampire?” Michael continued,

unmoved by my terrific breath and sarcastic observations. And that was the $50,000

question. Because it was only recently that vampires realized werewolves existed, and vice

versa. Michael probably assumed our vampirism was straight out of a bad horror movie.

And who could blame him? I hadn’t thought lead bullets would hurt a werewolf. “What

would bullets in the brain do to anyone?” Sinclair replied quietly, totally screwing up my

assumption. “There was no chance anyone could have regenerated.” Michael had tipped

back in his chair and was staring at the ceiling. “Mmmm.” Then he had all four legs of his

chair on the floor and met all our gazes. Well. Almost all. His gaze kept skittering over the

sleeping BabyJon. He hadn’t asked one question about the baby, made one comment, not

even a careless, “Cute kid.” And from what I’d heard, he was a devoted dad who loved