CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

I stomped into the kitchen right on Sinclair’s heels. Not literally. Which was too bad. I was also thinking about kicking his shins, but I’d have to get in front of him first, and he was a speedy sucker. “I can’t believe you’re pulling this Fred Flintstone shit again.”

“I cannot believe you insist on comparing real-life problems to cartoons created for elementary school children.”

“Again with the snobbery!”

“Refusing to see parallels between our lives and The Flintstones is not snobbery. It is the function of a rational mind.”

Well, he might have a point. Too bad! The best defense was a good whatever-the-saying-is. “It’s 2015—that chauvinist thing doesn’t play so well. Bad enough you’re regressing decades, but you’re pulling attitude after you tricked me into marrying you? Yeah, that’s right, I said it, tricked—”13

“I deny nothing.”

“—bamboozled me into a crooked vampire marriage and then tried to pull that ‘no wife of mine will leave the kitchen’ crapola, which was just as asinine then as it is now.” It took a few seconds for his response to sink in. “And—and you deny nothing!”

Scowling, Sinclair was tying on his apron (twill, knee length, red and white striped, gift from Tina), then turning to the cupboards and getting out the whole wheat flour, the peanut butter (Dick was happy with Jif; the puppies got the gourmet stuff from Trader Joe’s), free-range eggs, Madagascar vanilla, organic bananas. Goddamned dogs ate better than most of the city.

“That apron looks stupid.”

“There is no need to malign the good people at Williams-Sonoma simply because you’re angry with me.” He was hauling bowls out of the cupboard and slamming them on the counter, so thank God for stainless steel.

“I’ll malign whoever I want! And you’re denting the shit out of those bowls,” I added, and I definitely wasn’t spiteful about it.

“They’ll still work,” he snapped back, setting one on a dent so it was on its side, looking like a small stainless steel cave. “Again, when you are prepared to have an adult discussion— Quiet!”

The puppies, who had been enjoying one of their eighteen daily naps, had heard Sinclair and sent up a racket from the mudroom. If yelps and barks could be translated, we’d hear, “Let us out! We aren’t licking your face! You’re just standing there, unlicked! This will not stand! Freeeeedom!”

Since Sinclair didn’t raise his voice at them when they desecrated his Italian loafers and the backseats of two of his cars (in the same week!), it was a pretty good indicator of how angry he was. But before I could say anything, we heard the back door slam, and then the mudroom door popped open.

“All right, jeez, we’ll go into the kitchen, settle already, what, you smell peanut butter? Or Sinclair? Oh.” Marc was looking at us as Fur and Burr made a beeline for Sinclair’s knees. They were babies, but they knew what it meant when the apron, stainless steel bowls, and peanut butter came out.

“Complain as you will about how our marriage began—”

“Yeah, I was. Keep up.”

“—you did eventually come to embrace it, figuratively and literally, and must admit that all I did for you—”

“To me, Sinclair. To me.”

“—worked out for the best.”

“Oh, spoken like a true Martian!”

“I insist you stop reading that book.”14

“I don’t! Marc reads it to me and then explains the tricky parts!”

“Whoa.” Marc’s hands were up and he was edging toward the swinging kitchen door, keeping his distance. “Leave me out of it.”

“And that’s another thing, I didn’t embrace anything! I was tricked. Into all of it. You tricked me into being the vampire queen—”

“That’s not true!” Marc cried, stopping in midsidle. “You were always going to be queen; it was your destiny! Sinclair just tricked you into making him king.”

“Thank you,” Sinclair replied. Then, pinching the bridge of his nose: “Please run along and stop defending me, and do those things in no particular order.”

“Yes! Exactly!” I was so stuffed with triumph I was almost giddy. Marc had a great point! Which I had kind of forgotten! But now could hammer into the dirt! “And you’re all mystified: Jeepers, why doesn’t Betsy want me in Hell? What in our shared history would make her so wary? Why, it’s a puzzler! It’s not like I’ve slimed my way into every other aspect of her life with or without her consent.”

I heard myself. But it was too late. Never has a man in an apron looked so sexy or terrifying, I thought.

“Never has a woman been granted so much power for so little reason! Before we met, you stumbled your way through your tedious superficial life complaining about a series of first-world problems you were lucky to have. Then you died because you didn’t recall what any five-year-old is taught: to look both ways before crossing the street!”15

Marc gasped an oh-no-you-didn’t! gasp, which perfectly summed up my feelings.

“Then you stumbled through the city, maimed any number of the innocent and the guilty, and managed to whine your way into defeating one of the most powerful vampires ever to walk the earth! All the while complaining about your stepmother’s shoes and the job the mortician did on your makeup as opposed to concentrating on your new role. I had to force you to ‘step up,’ as you insist on recalling it, because you refused to ‘step up.’ You would have been beheaded years ago if not for me.”

“Oh, sure, tricking me was all about helping me and not at all about helping yourself to the throne! So to speak, because we don’t actually have thrones!”

“Ah yes, here comes the litany of how difficult your wonderful life is. You’re powerful, wealthy, loved, even worshipped by some. Legions of the undead bend to your will.”

“When they’re not trying to kill me! Besides, you’re forgetting— What the hell?”

There had been a low rumbling getting louder and louder in pitch, a sound I’d never heard before. It took me a moment to place the source: Fur and Burr.

The small bundles of black fluff were bristling so much that they looked like irked hedgehogs. Their tiny puppy milk teeth were all showing, and wrathful growling bubbled out of them like . . . like . . . I dunno . . . evil soda pop?

And they were growling at Sinclair.

Never had I seen my husband so astonished—and this was a man who’d seen me pull off all sorts of impossible weirdness. Burr and Fur looked ready to make the alpha male their bitch. He’d kill them, of course, but they’d still go for it. They wanted to go for it.

Sinclair took a tentative step closer to me and both puppies lunged exactly as far as his step had taken him, then stopped.

“No . . . bad dogs,” I said faintly, glad for once not to be in heels, because not falling down in surprise in socks was difficult enough. “Don’t. Don’t do that. You love him and he loves you. It’s not right that you’re on my side—I don’t even like you!” Well, I did. Just hadn’t realized how much until now. “You—stop it!”

They stopped growling and hurried to me, crouching miserably against my ankles and glaring at Sinclair.

My husband finally found his voice. “As you find my company so unendurable—all three of you—I shall retire.” He managed to pull that off with stiff dignity while untying his apron and hanging it next to his other two aprons.

“Oh no, you don’t! I’m walking out on you! You can just stay here and think about what you’ve done.” Think about what you’ve done? Did I just get the king of the vampires mixed up with a third grader sent to the corner? “And it’ll be a cold day in Hell before I let you back into Hell, mister! The minute I turn my back you’ll be running the show—”

“Which, if your continual bitching is accurate, is what you desired from the beginning.”

“Quit pretending you’re a power-hungry megalomaniac for my own good!”

“But I am a power-hungry megalomaniac for your own good,” he replied, having the complete balls to sound genuinely puzzled.

Which, of course, was the problem, and always had been.