TWENTY-SEVEN
“I’m not saying you don’t have any problems, obviously you do, and I’m not just talking about the way you dress—”
“How could I have forgotten your essential vacuous nature?”
“—I’m just saying I’ve got a buttload of problems, too! My life has never been easy.” Okay. Exaggeration. Looking back, pre-death, the Ant was my biggest problem and, ironically, I saw a lot more of her now that we both hung out in Hell. And even when Time and Newsweek and MSNBC and the Pioneer Press were speculating about vampires, I still had a husband I adored and lived in a mansion with the coolest people ever.
But we’d barely gotten in the house before Fred was grouching about how my problems were making her life difficult. When, if anything, my problems were making my life difficult. “I don’t expect you to get it, by the way.” Why was I in such an ugly mood? Why was I picking a fight? Other than the fact that Fred was smarter than me, handling infamy better than me, and about a zillion times more respected than me? “I’m just saying things aren’t all sunshine all the time around here.”
Fred’s eyes rolled so hard, she could probably see her big fat brain. Wow. Being on the receiving end of an epic eye roll was kind of annoying.
“Do tell me about your insurmountable stack of first-world problems.”
“My father divorced my mom for the worst person in the world. I say that totally without hyperbole.”*
“I was raised by hippies.”
“I had to get nibbled on by feral vampires.”
“I walked in on the hippies having sex.”
“Then I woke up dead.”
“I can only swim with my tail, never my legs.”
“I had to kill a Big Bad who was a thousand years older than me.”
“I had to put down a revolt virtually single-handedly.”
Damn. Impressive. “Yeah, well. I’m having dad issues.”
“My father led that revolt, the end result of which was we fought to the death. And since you’ve likely noticed I’m not dead, you can probably deduce how that turned out.”
“. . . I think we should be best friends forever and ever.”
Then: the impossible of impossibles. Dr. Fredrika Bimm burst out laughing. “Ah,” she said when she finally stopped chortling like a hyena. “Now I remember why I don’t completely loathe you.”
“Well, good.” I’d take what I could get. And who knew? Maybe she had some dad-killing tips I could use.
I couldn’t believe I just thought that.
Progress, my own. You must know that you’ll likely have to kill him. Soon.
Stay out of my head, Sinclair. That was just for me.
If you would merely allow me to kill him, everything would—
Not better! Oh my God!
“Hi, Dr. Bimm,” Jessica said, and where the hell did she come from? “I’m Jessica; I used to live here.”
“Fredrika Bimm.” They shook.
“Yeah, I know. Thanks for coming to help us.” Us. Fred was hot shit, no doubt, and there were probably more Undersea Folk than vampires, but Jessica’s love and loyalty were worth a dozen brainy mermaids. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Jess put the baby toter on the counter, where Eric or Elizabeth was inside, sound asleep.
“Hey, you’re short an infant. Where’s Eric or Elizabeth?”
“Elizabeth’s got a minor cough, so Dick took her to the pediatrician today.” Jessica was unhurriedly taking out the good blender, fruit, yogurt, ice. “I wanted to swing by and pick up some of our stuff from storage.”
“Storage?”
“The basement.”
“Ugh. Have fun.”
Jessica shrugged at Fred. “Betsy’s got a thing about our basement.”
“You didn’t put ‘dark, spooky basement’ on your list of woes,” Fred pointed out. “If only you had, I might have mustered sympathy from somewhere.”
I snorted. “This is me, not holding my breath.”
“Also, you probably hear this all the time, Fred, but I’ve got to ask—”
“Yes, I’m really a mermaid.” Fred had perched on one of the barstools around the big butcher-block counter and was looking around with an expression that was almost pleasant. “No, I don’t grant wishes.”
“Don’t start with the pestering, Jess,” I warned. “Marc scampered off to change his shirt, for God’s sake, though there was nothing wrong with the one he had on, and that after he fangirled all over her all the way here. It was awful.”
Jessica giggled. “Don’t deny it, Marc fangirling is a beautiful sight.”
“When it’s Game of Thrones, sure. But he blew off Will Mason so he could keep bugging Fred.” Which . . . huh. Was weird. Maybe Cathie was onto something. Marc talked about how much he wanted to spend time getting to know Will, dating, maybe canoodling, maybe beyond canoodling. (Marc’s sex life was none of my business and that had been the case since day one. I was careful not to inquire. And I definitely never wondered about Cathie’s hideous invasive blood-flow “can you even get it up as a zombie?” question.)
“He knows I’m a zombie,” he’d whispered to me while we were binge-watching season four of BBC Sherlock, “and he doesn’t mind! He thinks it’s cool. It’s not cool, of course. But it’s nice that he thinks so.”
“It’s a little cool,” I suggested. Marc wasn’t gross or shambling or dripping. He was cute as hell, like always.
“It’s . . . handy,” Marc conceded. “Especially if I’m going to be running around with you guys, facing lethal danger often before lunch. And after lunch.”
“Martin Freeman looks like a sad potato,” I announced, which sparked a long, long, long argument.*
For a lonely guy who put in too many hours at the ER for a long-term relationship, and hadn’t been on a date in the last year and a half, Marc was sure finding it easy to keep putting Will off. I needed to start taking Cathie’s theory more seri-ously.
“Betsy!” Jess snapped her fingers right under my nose, because she’s horrible. “Come back to us. Stay away from the light.”
“Yes, are you all right? You look like your dinner disagrees with you.” Fred added under her breath, “Whomever that might be.”
“Don’t worry about my dinner, you—you vampirephobe.” Actually, I hadn’t fed in three days. Queen perk: I didn’t have to glug-glug blood as often as other vampires. To Fred: “Don’t be one of those awful, awful vegetarians. ‘Oh, you eat meat?’ And they say it in a tone like ‘meat’ is code for ‘kittens.’”
“Fair point,” Fred conceded. “The tight-asses give us all a bad name.”
Well, amen to that. I’d take that as a minor victory and decided to be generous in the face of her concession. “Sorry again about Marc. He’s very immature.”
“Yes, that must be maddening.”
“Are you messing with me?”
“Yes. May I have a smoothie?” And, when Jessica nodded, Fred added with—I hated to admit it—a charming smile, “Maybe a few more strawberries to go with the bananas?”
A vegetarian mermaid, and you only had to look at her teeth to know why. Fred had inherited her mom’s teeth: the flat grinders of landlubbers. Her dad and his kind had what looked like a mouthful of needles. They needed them; think about how tough it was to get through a piece of octopus sushi. Now think about having to do that just about every time you ate. The Undersea Folk needed the strength and speed and stamina and sharp, sharp teeth to catch and eat any manner of deep-sea creatures. Humans? We just needed cash. Or access to a pantry and stove. Or even a gas station. If you had to, you could get a sandwich there. It wasn’t pretty, but people did desperate things to survive.
So, Fred “No meat” Bimm. No fish, even though fish made up something like sixty-five percent of your average Undersea Folk’s diet. One of many reasons she had trouble fitting in. Killing her dad? Probably another reason.
Hmm, empathy for Fred Bimm. Was I maturing? Or just really, really tired?
“One of the times you were almost bearable in Boston was how much you enjoyed Faneuil Hall,” she announced out of nowhere. “You were almost charming.”
“How much I liked what?”
Fred closed her eyes to slits and the slits glared at me. “You pronounced it Nathanial Hall.”
“Oh, that place. Yum.”
In next to no time, Jessica had given us all glasses full of dark pink liquid and walked off, basement bound, leaving her baby snoozin’ away on the counter. The nice thing, when they were that age? They stayed where you put them.
Sinclair walked into the kitchen, BabyJon slung over one shoulder; BabyJon was out of the stay-where-you-put-them stage, alas. “This child is getting tired,” he said by way of greeting, gaze glued to his phone. Just like a man, or a monarch: make an announcement and wait for everyone around you to scramble to fix it.
“Thanks for the update,” I said sweetly.
“And the Wyndhams would like to stop by.”
“Well, that could get awkward.” That brought the score this evening to at least three werewolves, two dozen vampires, a human/USF hybrid, Jessica, Eric, other Eric, a zombie, and whatever the heck BabyJon was.
“No, my queen, this is good for us. We can have all our problems in one spot at one time.” His dark gaze flicked over to Fred, who was gulping her smoothie like her life depended on it. Guess a leisurely swim down the Mississippi made her hungry. “I was not, of course, referring to you, Dr. Bimm. You are many things, but a problem is not one of them.” I think. Crafty!
She flapped a hand at him, finished her smoothie, then nearly dropped her glass. “It’s no concern of mine, but—where is the baby?”
We looked.
The baby carrier was empty.
Okay, complicated. “It’s not a big deal,” I began.
“Excuse me, but it is,” she corrected sharply. “Your friend didn’t take the baby with her. No one has touched the baby. People are very likely spying on you. Your sister and father are definitively out to get you. You have out-of-town guests who may or may not be allies.”
“Hey,” I pointed out, “you’re on that list.”
“So where is your friend’s infant?” Fred was on her feet, like she was going to start checking cupboards and peeking behind furniture. “We need to find it right away.”
“Oh hey, Fred Bimm! Wow. So, you were always kind of bossy, huh? Even in your youth.”
I pointed to the teenager standing in the mudroom doorway. “He’s right there. Eric Berry, Fredrika Bimmm.”
Jessica’s newborn let out a deep chuckle. “We’ve met.”
“When?” Fred still sounded sharp, and now looked bewildered and suspicious. Annoyingly, this didn’t impact her looks in a negative way.
“Another place and time.” His big brown eyes lit up. “Any strawberries left?”
“Sure,” I said, and made room so the baby could saunter over and take a seat.