THIRTY
The cherry on my nightmare sundae: we were all screaming at each other. In. The. Basement.
“It’s the only part of the house that can hold everyone,” Tina had explained, because the Peach Parlor was sadly insufficient. Even our huge kitchen—back in the day the kitchen had pumped out meals that fed twenty or thirty people a day, every day, multiple times a day—was too small for all the “visitors” (as polite a term as I could manage).
Worse? Worse than being here? It had been cleaned! The basement ran the width of the mansion, which meant it was as long as hell and almost as wide, with lots of rooms off the main area. It was basically a dark, underground mansion with a tunnel leading to the river. Someone had been down here dusting and scrubbing and mopping, and brought lots of big tables and all kinds of chairs, from folding (“Poker, anyone?”) to overstuffed easy chairs (“Football game, anyone?”). Here I assumed we were just between housekeepers, cleaning up puppy pee without complaint, when Tina had hired an army of them and they’d spent the week making the basement slightly less revolting.
I felt tricked.
“It’s not about tricking you,” Marc soothed while I’d stomped down the stairs. “It’s about not wanting to hear all the whining for a week beforehand. Now we just have to hear the whining now.”
“Not better,” I growled.
“Depends on where you’re standing.”
So we had vampires interrupting each other in their rush to complain about Laura exposing them, and Sinclair just letting them vent, and now tromp-tromp-tromp down the stairs, here came Derik and Michael and Lara and Jeannie, and I knew damned well at least three of them didn’t have to make a sound when they moved; they just wanted to be noisy. Hey-ho, the werewolves are here, sorry we’re late, U mad, bro?
“Oh, check this,” I muttered. “Something jerk-ass this way comes.”
Marc, who’d been leaning against the wall watching with an avid gaze, pretended to stagger. “Whoa. I—whoa! Was that a literary reference?”
“Shut up,” I snapped. “I read.” It was true! Though I’d never read that book. I just really loved the title. C’mon, how badass is a title that basically tells you bad shit is en route? Hey,” I said a little louder as the Wyndhams approached. “Grab a seat and get ready to bitch.” I remembered the world’s most terrifying middle schooler was there and added, “Sorry about the language.”
“’Sfine,” Lara said with a giggle.
Normally I’d say something dumb and tiresome like “are you sure this meeting in a spooky basement packed with pissy vampires is an appropriate hangout for your child?” except, again: Lara Wyndham. She’d probably handle it better than I did. She was handling it better than I was; she at least had a smile on her face and seemed genuinely interested in the goings-on.
“This is amazing,” Marc murmured. “I can’t believe Sinclair isn’t just telling them all to shut up and fall in line.”
“That’s the plan. Y’know, eventually. But I asked him to let them have their say first. What, bored already? Play with your phone.”
“Definitely not bored. And I forgot it upstairs.”
“Yeah, me, too.” It was in my bedroom. Tina and Sinclair probably had theirs; they were famous for taking their screens to bed long before taking screens to bed was considered acceptable twenty-first-century behavior. In fact I almost never had my phone on me because whoever I was with nearly always had theirs. “No big.”
At least people were only yelling. No one was punching. Or biting. Nothing was on fire. It might not end horribly for all involved.
Ha.