CHAPTER

THIRTY-NINE

“I think it’s time you went to Hell,” I told the king of the vampires.

“Ah, darling. Is it over between us already?”

“Very funny. Just for a visit, like last time. I’ve got no plans for you to be there forever, any more than I plan to be there forever.”

Sinclair was trying his damnedest not to look over the moon, and failing. Adorable! “As you will, my own.”

“Marc, Tina, I’d like you to come, too.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: everyone liking smoothies was so handy. We were almost always in the kitchen. Super easy to have meetings. Not like Hell, where everything was scheduled and when I wasn’t pissed I was bored and when I wasn’t bored I was overwhelmed. Tempting to just dump it all on Father Markus.

Yeah, right. Just a daydream. And a dangerous one.

“Of course, Majesty.”

“Sure!”

“Not right this second,” I added, looking at my phone, “because apparently my mom’s on her way.”

“Dr. Taylor is coming? Oh, dear . . .” Tina hopped off her stool and checked the fridge. She knew my mom liked a nice glass of Chardonnay now and again, and she tried to keep some on hand for the rare pop-in. “Ah! Still here.”

“And I need to talk to Laura.”

“Ugh,” Marc said, accurately summing up everyone’s feelings. “Why? Is it a ruse to get her here so you can punch her in the teeth?”

“It’s a ruse to get her here so I can explain to her exactly what she’s done.” I grinned, and Marc flinched. “In great and terrible detail.”

“Cripes, don’t look like that.”

“Like what?”

He shivered all over like Fur or Burr when Sinclair grabbed the Handi-Vac to suck up errant dog hair. “Like you could kill someone for looking at you crooked and never lose sleep over it.”

“It’s just to talk,” I assured him.

“You think she’ll come when you call, my own?”

“Sure. She feels safe—we can’t disappear her.”

“Not just yet,” was the silky reply.

I frowned at him. “Quit it. She’ll come because she’ll hope to see me scared. She wants that. She wants me desperate to protect myself, desperate to keep all of you from being exposed. She’s hoping I’ll be sorry. She’ll think I’ll apologize. Trust me: she’ll come running.”

“Accurate assessment,” Tina said at the same moment Marc added, “Depressing.”

Tina and Sinclair turned their heads and I heard it, too: a car pulling around the back.

“It’s like living with dogs. Blood-ravenous talking dogs,” Marc bitched.

We jeered at him and I topped off his triple berry smoothie (why did we use blackberries? they were all seed!) just as my mom came in the mudroom door, exclaimed over Fur and Burr, knocked politely, and stepped into the kitchen.

“Hello, all, can the puppies come in, too?”

“Sure, Mom. Hi.”

She crossed the room, shrugged out of her coat, and gave me a quick hug. Sinclair was on his feet at once, taking her coat, and she gave Marc a kiss. I looked her over; much as I hated to admit it, dating was doing her good. Weird to think of your mom dating. Weirder when your mom was old and dating. Weirdest that dating probably meant fucking. Annnnd time to scour that thought out of my brain . . . someone needed to invent a good brain bleach that did the job but wasn’t toxic . . . permanent damage would be okay as long as it was localized.

The puppies, while excited to find themselves back in the kitchen, frisked around for a few seconds and then darted back to the mudroom. Not like them, but it certainly made things quieter. And less slobbery.

“Dr. Taylor,” Tina said in a tone of great respect, “how pleased we are to see you. Would you like a glass of Chardonnay?”

“Yes, and you stop that,” she scolded, “how many times do we go through this? I’m not the Queen Mum.”

“Um . . . technically you are.” When all I got for that was a distracted smile, I knew this wasn’t a social call or, worse, the “soon you’ll have a new daddy!” talk. “Time to be resigned, Mom. Heaven knows I am.”

She accepted a glass from Tina and looked me over. She had always looked young for her age, despite the white hair (she’d had it since her senior year in high school), and her blue eyes were bracketed by fine laugh lines. She was dressed in Professor Casual: tweed skirt, brown tights, sensible brown shoes (despite my years of effort, she selected footgear for comfort, not style), cream-colored turtleneck, cream-and-brown cardigan. She taught at the U of M, her specialty was the Civil War, and she thought Tina was wonderful. (“What was Lincoln really like?”)

She sipped her wine and zeroed in on me with a focus that was one of my earliest childhood memories. Nothing stood in my mother’s way if she perceived an injustice to a loved one, however slight. It was why she was so stubborn about hanging on to her married name. It was why she’d fought my dad for so long before, during, and after the divorce: because “we have our daughter to think about, you cheating, creepy son of a bitch.”

“I’ve come,” she said, shaking her head at Tina’s proffered plate of hors d’oeuvres (who at once dropped her gaze and took a step back, and how long have we had Havarti with dill? Sometimes I miss cheese), “to plead for the life of your idiot father.”

Marc broke the short silence with an uncertain “Should we step out?” It was a mark of his respect for my mom that he didn’t assume he’d be staying.

“There’s no need,” I said quickly. “Mom, I won’t kill him.”

Her shoulders relaxed. “No? Because you must know your sister wouldn’t have been able to start this nonsense without his help. If nothing else, he must have financed it.”

“Half sister. And you’re forgetting her legions of dorks. They do anything she says. If she’d said, ‘Can you float me a few hundred grand to finance a campaign to expose vampires to the world?’ they’d have sprinted to the bank. No, Laura’s choices are on her, and Dad’s are on him, and I’m not going to kill either one of them for it.”

Unless they force my hand. Unless they push me to it. Unless it’s in self-defense of me or mine.

Agreed. How I cherish you, my queen. Even when you’re good, you’re somewhat bad.

We haven’t had sex in way too long.

Hours. I agree.

“Oh. Well.” She managed a smile. “I had all my arguments marshaled. Now I don’t need them.”

“All?” I teased.

“Well, one.” She took my hand in hers, the only part of her that showed her age. Wrinkled and softened and cherished, those hands had touched me with love my entire life.

So many childhood memories centered around me being small and looking up as she extended a hand: to help me up, to bring me to a library or a museum, to show me the garden, to bring me to the banks of what looked like an ordinary river but was the site of Custer’s last stand (Little Bighorn was a surprisingly peaceful spot), to clean her shotgun at the beginning and end of every hunting season. (There were several dead ducks and geese who likely hadn’t thought her hands were soft or cherished, but it’s a duck-eat-duck world out there.) “I would have wanted you to spare him to spare yourself. You don’t need patricide on your conscience. As someone with a less-than-loving father,” she added dryly, “I understand the urge. Believe me.”

I snorted. She was right; my maternal grandfather was the worst. How he’d produced a thoughtful, intelligent woman who would no sooner strike a child than she’d torch a Civil War museum was the mystery of my childhood. That, and how my dad could have preferred the Ant to her.

“Where’s BabyJon?” Marc asked, correctly gauging that the tricky part of the conversation was over.

“He’s with my—”

“Don’t say it,” I muttered. “Bad enough he can’t visit for a while; knowing your boyfriend is baby-sitting my half brother/son just adds to the weird.”

“Betsy called a few days ago and explained what was happening. We agreed I should keep BabyJon for a bit longer.”

“Prudent,” Sinclair said with an approving nod.

“And awful.”

“It’s not your fault.” That was Marc, loyal to a fault when he wasn’t bitching.

“Except it is.” I was missing his childhood. I was his legal guardian, but lately my mother had been more of a parent to him than I was. That was going to change. It had to. This was the only child I’d ever have.

But first things first. “Stay for supper?” I asked. “Soup and smoothies for everyone.”

She laughed. “Of course. But aren’t you going to ask about Jessica? She and Dick and the lovely babies had me over last night. Her new place is charming.”

“Yeah, I know.” I’d been invited, too, but couldn’t risk any reporters following me to her new place. Now that I knew the course of action we were going to take in response to Laura’s spiteful plan, I was doubly glad she and Dick were clear of it. It was going to get a lot worse before it got better. “Tell us all about it.”

So she did. And for a while, it was like we were a normal family with ordinary problems. It was as nice as it was strange.