CHAPTER

SIX

“Excuse me, Mrs. Sinclair?”

Like an idiot I looked around for whomever she was talking to. Then I realized: “Oh. Me. It’s me? Yes.” Mrs. Sinclair. Mrs. Eric Sinclair. Mrs. Sink Lair. Mr. and Mrs. Sink Lair?

When I was little I was nervous about trying a kiwifruit. Fuzzy brown skin, green inside with icky-looking black seeds, it was some sort of fruit/Tribble hybrid and I had no interest in sticking it in my mouth. Nothing that looked that weird could be yummy.

But my mother hectored me until I bit into it. It was perfectly ripe, if not entirely sweet, with an odd texture that wasn’t unpleasant, just strange to me. It took me a few seconds to decide if it was vile or delicious; I eventually settled on delicious, but only when I was in the mood for one. That was how it felt now, hearing someone call me Mrs. Sinclair, which was my legal name even if I never, ever used it.

It was not that I didn’t love Eric Sinclair. It was beyond love; I’d die for him and kill for him (and had). But our relationship was at once like and unlike any union between lovers. We were in love, yes. But we had a business relationship, too; we were co-monarchs . . . except not really. As the foretold vampire queen, I outranked the king. Tina had explained it to me: Sinclair was a king consort, I was a queen regnant. I reigned in my own right; Sinclair, to be blunt, was just along for the ride.

Like most lovers (but not many business partners), I had no secrets from him, and he didn’t have very many from me (given his exquisite skills in the bedroom, there were some things I didn’t want to know . . . hearing your lover’s bang résumé wasn’t at all romantic). And though we’d touched and kissed and caressed every inch of each other, I almost always called him Sinclair, and he always called me Elizabeth. It sounded formal (in his case) and flippant (in mine) to everyone else; to us, it was like a stolen kiss.

We also shared everything . . . kind of. I let Sinclair handle the tedious side of monarching—the petitions, the management of our property, the newsletter (hey, we were a modern vampire monarchy), while I handled the fun stuff, and Hell.

I was very specific about Hell: it was mine. Yes, I formed a committee to help me, but at the end of the day (and the beginning, for that matter) I was in charge. I wasn’t a co-anything in Hell, and although that was the way I wanted it, I wasn’t entirely sure why.

Sinclair and I trusted each other—except he knew I was a procrastinating shoe lover with a horror of paperwork and any kind of bureaucracy, and would do my best to wiggle out of anything that hinted it might not be one hundred percent fun. And I knew he was loyal only to me . . . but always kept an eye on his own bottom line.

I had yet to let him have much to do with Hell. I’d brought him here once, but hadn’t done so again. Unlike the vampire monarchy, there wasn’t a foretold partner who would pop out of nowhere to help me. I had killed the devil and then taken the Antichrist’s birthright. If I couldn’t hold it on my own, I had no right to be here.

At least, I was pretty sure that was my reasoning. Bottom line, I was worried about giving him any real power. This was the man who had tricked me into making him king, after all. I loved him, but never forgot who he was.

All that to say I loved kiwis, sometimes, and my husband, all the time, but was wary of both.

“Mrs. Sinclair? Ma’am?”

“Right, right. Sorry. I was thinking about kisses and kiwis.”

“As you will.” I got a good look at the older woman who had hailed me from the direction of the Lego room. She was short, with a sort of hat/bonnet hybrid on her head, a long-sleeved blouse and floor-length skirt in sober gray and cream, with an equally sober darker gray shawl wrapped around her shoulders. The clothes were modern, if not trendy. And she looked vaguely familiar, though I was sure I hadn’t seen her before. “My pardon for disturbing your thoughts of fruit and bussing.”

Eh? Oh, who cares. “What can I do for you?”

“My name is Mary Ball Washington.” She paused, expectant. When all I did was blink at her, she adjusted her shawl a bit higher and looked crushed. “Oh. I thought . . . I thought you might know me.”

“I’m new here, I’m still learning everyone’s names.” The billions of names, cripes, give me a break, lady!

“Oh, not know me personally, but rather know my purpose. My old friend Christina Caresse Chavelle—” My giggle stopped her. “Pardon?”

“Nothing.” Tina’s real name, heh. I knew I was an immature asshat but every time I heard it, I pictured a romance novel cover from the eighties, complete with shirtless muscular tanned hero and the heaving bosom of a heroine whose name was probably something like Christina Caresse Chavelle. “You were saying?”

“Miss Chavelle asked me to escort your friend Dr. Spangler about. She wishes me to introduce him to ‘interesting people.’” She paused, then added, “I know several interesting people.”

“Huh?”

“Dr. Marc Spangler.” She paused, doubtless trying to gauge the depth of my ignorance. “The sodomite.”

“Jesus, don’t call him that!”

She flinched away from me. “I— Forgive me. You seemed to have trouble placing— I mean, I thought that—”

“He’s not in Hell because he’s gay, y’know. He’s in Hell because he’s my friend!” Hmm. Better rephrase. “I mean, he’s a volunteer. And it’s nobody’s business who he’s attracted to.”

“Oh, I quite agree. A friend of mine was only interested in adhesive love—”

“Ad—” I made my mouth snap shut. Then made it open again. “Sorry, go on.” Adhesive love. Jesus God.

“But he was a good man for all that,” she hastened to assure me, like I’d assumed otherwise. “He was a good Christian; he loved God. He would have taken the vows but he wanted children. He prayed for the devil’s feelings to leave him . . .”

“Devil’s feelings,” I managed with a straight face, “are the worst.”

“. . . to let him be with a woman as he wanted to be with a man. We both prayed,” she finished sadly, then peeked up at me. “It didn’t work. And now that I’ve been around for a bit, I’ve begun to understand why. Some things cannot be helped. I meant no disrespect to your queer fellow.”

I mentally groaned. But she was already skittish and old. So I let it go. “That’s great, now we know who everybody’s talking about. But what does Tina getting you to give Marc the Cool People Tour have to do with me?”

“Oh. Well.” Mary Ball Washington floundered for a moment. (Flounder, not founder. They’re not interchangeable. Major pet peeves: towards instead of toward, amongst instead of among, and founder instead of flounder. Nobody was filling with water and sinking. Mary Ball Washington was verbally thrashing. Not sinking.) “As your underlings—”

“For your own safety, never call them that within earshot. Well, Dr. Spangler, anyway.” Tina probably wouldn’t care. I’d even heard her refer to herself as a minion once. I dunno, she might’ve lost a bet.

“—it is a courtesy to bring such things to your attention, lest you wonder if she’s usurping your lawful authority.”

“Time for a new rule, Mary Ball Washington. I don’t have to know every little thing my underli— No, not that . . .”

“Lackeys?”

“No! My—my fellow committee members! I don’t need to sign off on everything they’re doing.” Especially something silly like Tina asking a local to give Marc a tour. Exactly the sort of thing I trusted Tina with while also not giving a shit about.

Cripes, Satan, micromanage much? I knew Cathie and the Ant tried to head off a lot of these types of—petitioners, would they be? I made a mental note to be especially nice to Cathie, and a little nice to the Ant. “It’s why I have a committee. Because the new boss isn’t the same as the old boss, no matter what the Who said.”

She dropped her head so quickly I heard her neck creak a little. “Of course, Mrs. Sinclair. My apologies for overstepping again.”

“No, no. It’s good that you brought it up; it’s something that everyone in Hell needs to know. It’s gotta be understood that anyone on the committee is acting with my total permission.” My fervid, thankful, grateful permission. “I’ll bring it up tomorrow at the next meeting. I guess that’s gonna mean more flyers.”

She’d been standing with her face at an angle. Now she faced me straight on and the feeling that she looked familiar got stronger. Something about the hair . . . and the dour smile . . . “Your pardon, ma’am?”

I had a vision of her picturing literal flyers: souls soaring about Hell bellowing out the news of the day. Fun, but ultimately impractical. “Nothing. Have you been here awhile? In Hell?”

“Oh yes. Since 1789.”

“Yeah?” I gestured to her outfit. “But you’re letting yourself look different?” That explained the modern materials, but the old-fashioned look. And the shawl. “Good for you.”

“I died in my . . .” She glanced around, then leaned in and whispered, “Night attire. I was delighted when I realized I could wear whatever I wished. It only took me seventy years to master.”

Hmm. Was it like any skill, then? Some people just had a knack for driving, for picking up foreign languages, for gardening. Did some people have a knack for the whole “my flesh was only a vessel, my spirit roams as I will it” thing, while for others it took longer? Should we be teaching classes in this stuff? Something else for tomorrow’s (groan) meeting.

“You’ve been here awhile . . .” Minnesota politeness had me ready to add I know it’s none of my business, but . . . so I squashed it. Anything anyone did here was now officially my business. I didn’t have to apologize for asking questions. “What’d you do?”

“I blasphemed. And . . .” She took a breath, let it out. “I was not as good a mother as I could have been to my George.”

“What, you beat him?” Ugh, she didn’t kill him, did she? She looked harmless but willful, like a church organist who ran everything behind the scenes, and she smelled like old cookies and powder. Which didn’t mean shit; if I’d learned anything since dying the first time, I’d learned that looking harmless was no guarantee of being harmless.

“Of course I beat him! It was my duty, for does it not say, ‘He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes’?”

What am I, a game show contestant? “Probably.”

“In point of fact I fear I didn’t beat him enough. ’Twas only me, you know; my husband passed on when I was thirty-five, and left me with five children to raise and a plantation to run. I wasn’t—there wasn’t—there wasn’t as much time for frivolity and tenderness. I had to be mother and father to him. I was . . .” She paused, visibly struggling for the words to explain to the newer, dimmer Satan. “. . . determined to have my way. In all things.”

“Okay. Well. Single motherhood is a bitch. My mom was one. But if all single mothers are doomed to Hell, I’d think it’d be a lot more crowded here.”

“No, no . . . I’m here because I blasphemed. And when my George was led astray by evil companions, I blamed God the Father and not my own weakness. It cost me my son.”

“Did he die?”

“Well, yes.” She regarded me with a puzzled smile. “It’s been centuries.”

“Right, right. I mean, did he die because of anything you did?”

“He died because I didn’t do enough. I must have told him a hundred times a hundred times—”

“So, a thousand times?” Why not just say that?

“—not to go straight to dinner after chores. He was out in dreadful weather for hours inspecting the grounds, got miserably soaked, and then had dinner in his wet clothes! Death was inevitable! And it was my fault! And his.”

“So, while you’re sorry you weren’t nicer to him in general, you’re also sorry you didn’t nag him more?”

“Exactly. He was only sixty-seven. He had years left!”

“Uh . . .” This was awful, but it reminded me of the uproar when Joan Rivers died. Okay, the clinic was definitely negligent, but she was eighty-one. So while it was sad to hear she died, all the “gone too soon!” and “she had years left!” and “she could have been saved and gone on for years!” stuff didn’t exactly ring true. Because: eighty-one.

Meanwhile, Mary Ball Washington was still bitching about her dead kid whom she’d successfully raised on her own and who’d gone on to live a long time.

“Showing up at Congress in a war uniform, really! Disrespectful and inappropriate. It was those fellows he knew from the war, you know—much of his nonsense can be placed at their door. Encouraging him to take chances; he was lucky he wasn’t killed in the Seven Years’ War. Or the Braddock disaster of ’55!”

“Sounds stressful,” I agreed, then snuck a peek at my watch. Then remembered that since cell phones, nobody wore watches anymore. “Really stressful.” This. This is why I should stop engaging with people in Hell.

“Was he brave?”

“I didn’t ask—”

“Of course. Impetuous, rash? Of course! Some would say that his time in His Majesty’s army allowed him to study their methods, and it did—it made him a much more dangerous traitor to King George III!”

“Um. What?”

“Who knew the Stamp Act of 1765 would lead to my son betraying his king and the eventual deaths of tens of thousands? George Mason should have persuaded my boy to fall in line. The one good thing that man did was refuse to sign the Constitution. John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, von Steuben . . . troublemakers, every one. It’s obvious. My poor son was misled by evil companions.”

Finally, the penny dropped. “Are you talking about George Washington, the first president?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The evil companions . . . those would be the guys who basically fought for and created the greatest country in the world?” (I’m a patriot. Sue me.)

“Rebelling against their lawful king!” came the indignant reply.

“The money!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing.” Every time I’d taken out my wallet, I’d seen the male version of this woman. No wonder she looked familiar. “Look, I’m sorry he gave you grief with the whole overthrowing British tyranny and all, but as a loud, proud American, I have to tell you, I think it all turned out for the best.”

“Rebels and traitors,” she sniffed. “I couldn’t hold up my head in church for years.”

Cripes, this woman could have been a professional buzzkill. “Well, yeah. Back then I’m sure it was a pretty big scandal.” Now that I was giving it some thought, I could see her side of it. After all, some could argue Hell’s rightful king had been overthrown by an annoying, vulgar American with no right to the crown and no idea what to do with it once the dim idiot had her paws on it.

It was fair to say I’d never thought about the Revolution from the perspective of a mom who was fine with being a British subject and annoyed her kid wouldn’t get with the program. As kids, we’re fed the version “the king sucked, so we kicked him out, God bless ’merica!” and not the one that went “if we’d lost, the names Washington and Jefferson and Adams would be synonymous with Hitler and Goebbels.”

“Listen, Mrs. Washington, history’s written by the winners. In this case: us. So your kid’s rebellion is generally considered pretty terrific. There are schools named after your son, and highways and cities. They named the capital after him, and a state. They carved his face into a mountain! You have bragging rights most moms can only dream of!”

An affronted sniff was my only answer. If she held grudges this long, no wonder she was in Hell. One of those souls who, even if I told her she could go, would stay, would insist she was exactly where she was supposed to be, forever and ever, amen.

I tried one more time: “You know he’s on all the money, right?”

“I hated that portrait.”

I had to stop; the grumpy Dame Washington was making me want to snort in the worst way. Luckily I spotted the sodom—Marc running out of the Lego room, and no wonder: Cathie was dismantling it as quickly as she’d put it together. The woman should have been an architect. Or a demolition engineer.

“Marc, c’mere, I want to introduce you to somebody.” He trotted right over, smiling a greeting as Dame Washington gave him a regal nod. When I tried to nod like that, I looked like I was fighting a nap. Must be a generational thing. Or a Colonial American thing. “This is May Bell Washington; Tina asked her to introduce you to interesting people.”

His friendly green eyes got big. “George Washington’s mother, hi!”

“You know who this is?” How was that possible? She didn’t have a show on cable and wasn’t on social media, two vehicles that let Marc instantly recognize almost any celebrity in the world.

“And it’s Mary Ball, Betsy. Jeesh. Get with the program.” To her: “There’s a monument and a hospital named after you. It’s so nice to meet you!”

She cleared her throat and—whoa. Was that a blush on her wrinkly cheeks? “Foolish aggrandizing. And the pleasure is mine, Dr. Spangler. I thank you for not holding my son’s crimes against me.”

“Crimes? Right, right, you were a loyalist . . . okay, back then, yeah. But don’t you see? You made him the man he is! Was. Where do you think he got that whole ‘lead by example’ thing? From you! Why do you think he called out Britain for their dick moves with the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts?”

This whole conversation is proof that I didn’t have to be here for any of it. Ugh, he’s still going on. What’d this Townshend guy ever do to him?

“Who taught him to stick up for the little guy? You! You’re a huge reason why America’s been kicking ass since before there was an America.”

Definitely a blush. I could see her revising her opinion on Marc in particular and sodomites in general. “Oh, well,” she managed, then giggled. Giggled! So very, very, very weird to see a female version of the guy on the one-dollar bill giggling with a gay zombie. “I could only do my best and God’s will, like any woman.”

“What, you’re a Revolutionary War buff now?” I wasn’t feeling pissy because they were ignoring me. I wasn’t! I had honest curiosity about whether or not Marc was a Revolutionary War buff.

“I minored in eighteenth-century American history,” was his absent reply as he extended an elbow for Dame Washington to clutch with her gnarled fingers. “Madam, I can’t wait to meet people you think are interesting.”

She chortled in response and began to lead him away, which simultaneously relieved and irked me. “Okay, well, see you later!” I said loudly. “And we’ve established I don’t need to be present for this kind of stuff, right?”

Dame Washington stopped dead (not really), turned, gifted me with a warm, slightly yellowed smile (were her teeth wooden, too?). “Thank you so much, Mrs. Sinclair, for allowing this.” She dipped her head in a respectful nod, the twenty-first-century version of a curtsy, I figured. “If I can assist any other committee members, or you, in any way, I hope you’ll call on me.”

“Mrs. Sinclair! Oh, that’s wonderful!” Marc’s delighted shriek drowned out my muffled groan. “Oh, that’s worth any amount of tedium. I’m going to use that constantly. I’m buying her so much stuff with her name on it.”

“No need!” I called loudly, to their rapidly retreating backs. Sinclair had paid off all Marc’s student loans, so the son of a bitch had actual disposable income he could piss away on stuff I didn’t want. It wasn’t an idle threat!

“Engraved stationery is always a thoughtful and practical gift for a lady,” Dame Washington suggested, because my life wasn’t weird and stressful enough. “Or monogrammed handkerchiefs.”

“No, really! I’m all set, guys. Got everything I need and then some.”

“Engraved everything! Monogrammed everything!” Marc replied grandly as they went far, far away. Or so I hoped. “Towels, toilet paper, iPhone cases, luggage tags!”

Engraved stationery and monogrammed toilet paper. Jesus wept. Or maybe that was only me.