I popped open the kitchen door and practically leaped into the middle of the floor. "I have returned!" I cried.
"Yeah, so have I," Jessica said. She was still in her caramel-colored coat, a man's coat that came almost to her ankles, and had her knitting bag in one hand and her gloves in the other. Nobody else looked up. Maybe I'd better rethink the dramatic entrance; too many people were used to it. "Thanks for canceling on me, you evil whore."
"Oh, come on, like you really cared that I went over there and bugged the shit out of the Ant. And I have to cancel on you tomorrow, too, because I'm"-I paused for dramatic impact-"baby-sitting my baby brother."
Jessica gaped. "You're doing what to the baby?"
Tina and Sinclair actually looked up. "We didn't catch that one, dear," Sinclair told me.
"You all caught it. You heard exactly what I said." I pulled my cold hands out of my pockets and blew on them, which did zero good. "Yeah, that's right. I'm babysitting. The baby likes me, and even though the Ant doesn't, she's desperate to get out of the house. So I'm going back tomorrow night."
"Back... into your stepmother's home."
"To be alone with her baby," Tina clarified.
"Your stepmother's baby," Sinclair added.
"I know! It's a Christmas miracle!"
"Well, I'll come with," Jessica decided. "Keep you company. And I'd like to see-John, is it?"
"Jon. Yeah. It'll be fun! Weird. But fun. We can zap some popcorn and 'forget' it in the back of her closet." I tossed my keys on the counter and crossed the room. "What are you guys working on?"
Eric Sinclair leaned back so I could take a look. He was the king of the vampires, my lover, my fiance, my nemesis, and my roommate. It had been, to put it mildly, an interesting year.
As usual, I was so distracted by Sinclair's essential deliciousness, I almost forgot to look at the book they were so engrossed in. He was just so... well, yummy.
Yummy and great-looking and tall and broad-shouldered and so so fine. Should-be-against-the-law fine. Big hands. Big smile. Big teeth. Big everything. Oofta. After months of fighting my attraction to him, I didn't have to anymore, and baby, I was gorging. We both were. It was nice not to be looking at him out of the corner of my eye all the time. We were getting married. We were in love. We were supposed to be drooling all over each other.
I brushed some of his dark hair off his forehead, tried not to stare longingly into his black eyes, let my hand wander down to his lapel, and finally tore my gaze back to the table. In half a second, my good mood evaporated like the Ant's taste at a sample sale.
"What the hell is that doing here?"
"Darling, your grip-" He put his hand on my wrist and gently disengaged me, because I'd twisted the cloth of his lapel in my fist and, knowing him, he was less worried about the damage to his windpipe than ruining the line of his clothing.
"Don't get upset," Tina began.
"Ahhh! Ahhh!" I ahhh'd, pointing.
"The UPS man brought it," she continued.
Jessica and I stared at her.
"No, really," she said.
"The UPS guy brought that?" Jessica squeaked, also pointing at the Book of the Dead.
"And a box from your mother," Tina added helpfully.
"Christ, I'd hate to see what's in the other box!"
"I thought we-" Jessica glanced at Sinclair, who was as smooth-faced as ever, though his black eyes were gleaming in a way that made the hair on my arms want to leave. "I thought it was gone for good."
"Shit, shit, shit," I muttered. It was open-open!-and I slammed it closed. "Shit! Don't look at it. Shit! Why were you looking at it?"
"Oh, well, the best-laid plans and all of that." Sinclair smiled, but he didn't look especially happy. "Better luck next time, and by that I mean, don't you dare try it again."
Long story short: I'd read the Book of the Dead around Halloween and had gone nuts for a while. Really nuts. Biting and hurting my friends nuts. Even now, three months later, I was still so desperately ashamed of how I'd acted, I could hardly think about it. I had punished myself by wearing Kmart sneakers for a month, but even that didn't seem to strike the right note of penitence.
The up side was, now I could rise from my deep, dark slumber in the late afternoon, instead of being conked from dawn to dusk. But it wasn't enough of a trade-off for me, and I'd thrown the Book into the Mississippi River, and good riddance.
Sinclair had been coldly furious, and Tina hadn't been especially happy with me, either. Historical document, priceless beyond rubies, invaluable soothsaying tool, blah-blah. He hadn't shut me out of his bed, but the entire time we were having sex that night, he never stopped with the lecturing. And in his head (I can read his mind, though he doesn't know that-yet), he was pissed. It had been a new kind of awful. But at the time, I thought it was a small price to pay to be rid of it.
And now it was back.
"Shit," I said again, because for the life of me, I couldn't think of anything else.
"Well," Jessica said, staring at the Book, "I have some good news."
"This is a really good fake?"
"No. I've just finished my last crochet class. Now I can teach George another stitch."
"Oh." I managed to tear my gaze from the Book. "Well, that is good news. That's-really good."
"How was your grave?" Tina asked politely.
"Don't change the subject."
"But it's so tempting."
"What are we going to do with that?"
"Jessica already changed the subject. And I thought we'd put it back in the library."
"Where it belongs, and should never have been taken from in the first place," Sinclair added silkily.
"Hey, my house, my library, my book."
"Hardly," he snitted.
"Besides, it's our house," Jessica said, which was kind, because she paid the mortgage. Sinclair paid a pittance in rent, and I didn't pay anything. We'd used the proceeds from the sale of my old, termite-ridden place to put a partial down payment on the mansion.
"It's dangerous," I said, which was futile because I knew when I was beat.
"It's a tool. Like any tool, it depends on how you use it." Sinclair started to get up. "I'll remove it to the library."
"Nuh-uh." I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed. It was like trying to budge a boulder. "C'mon, siddown already. I'll put it in the library. I promise not to pitch it into the river on the way."
After a long moment, he sat. I awkwardly scooped up the Book (it was about two feet long, a foot wide, and six inches thick) and shuddered; it was warm. The vampire bible, bound in human skin, written in blood, and full of prophecies that were never wrong. Trouble was, if you read the thing too long, it drove you nuts. Not "I'm having a bad day and feel bitchy" nuts, or PMS nuts. "I think I'll commit felony assault on my friends and rape my boyfriend" nuts.
"I'm going to the basement," Jessica said after the long silence. "I'm going to show George the new stitch."
"Wait," I grunted, hefting the Book.
"C'mon, I want to show him now, so he can practice."
"I said wait, dork. You're not supposed to be alone with him, remember?"
"He's never hurt me. He's never even looked in my direction. Not since you keep him full of your icky queen blood."
"Nevertheless," Sinclair said, free of the Book and now picking up the Wall Street Journal, "you are not to be alone with him, Jessica. Ever."
She scowled, but she was scowling at the paper, which was now in front of Sinclair's face. I almost laughed. Dismissed. He did it to me all the time.
"Let me dump this thing in the libe," I said, staggering toward the door-it was hard to carry something and not gag at the same time-"and I'll be right with you. Anything's better than this."
"That's a bold statement," Tina observed, stirring her coffee. "Especially since you've recently been to your stepmother's."
"Har," I said, and made my way toward the library.
