Free Undead and Unwary by MaryJanice Davidson Page B

before I screwed up the timeline—he was Nick and he hated me almost as much as he feared me, and he was right to do both) only occasionally leaving her side to arrest bad guys.
    Tina had been out of the country, making sure the European vampire faction—who had come to town to wreak havoc and went out on the toes of my Manolos and Sinclair’s Louis Vuittons—were playing nice across the pond.
    My mother hadn’t gone to the funeral, and not just for obvious reasons. The accident had orphaned BabyJon, my father’s son by the Ant. I didn’t know it at the time, but BabyJon was about to become my son as well as my half brother. The accident made me his legal guardian, courtesy of my wish for a baby of my own, granted by my cursed engagement ring. It had been a monkey’s paw deal. Fucking antiques.
    Sinclair had also been nowhere to be found. Vanished. I didn’t know it at the time, but he’d been kidnapped by a librarian; I thought he’d bailed on our wedding. Marjorie, the librarian, had been a tremendous pain in my ass, and killing her had been kind of fun. The blood rush I got from slurping down her life force like it was a blood-stuffed cream puff helped me cure Jessica of her blood cancer. Yeah, I know, but at the time it all made sense. Don’t ask me to do any of it again; I don’t even know how I managed it the first time. It was a perfect storm of supernatural nutjobbery.
    Oh, almost forgot—when all that awfulness was going on, I was also planning my wedding. So, stressful.
    To sum up: worst time of my life, and I was essentially alone for all of it. 1
    “No coffins, though, right?” Jessica asked carefully.
    I barely heard her. I should have been paying attention, I knew that, but now that I’d started thinking about that dreadful month it blotted out everything else: unnamed babies, avoiding the Hell work-study program, Sinclair’s new terrible habit of playing in traffic . . . gone. It was all gone.
    Instead I remembered the eerie double funeral. I remembered feeling guilty because I wasn’t sad. I remembered feeling completely alone and it had nothing to do with their deaths and more to do with the sick friend and absentee husband.
    I had confused and annoyed my father before I died; I had horrified him after. And try as I might, that was all I really remembered of him: his confusion, his dismay. His horror.
    “The bodies,” I said, “had been burned beyond recognition.”
    “Oh.”
    “But it was her, and it was their car, and it was him. I mean, they had their IDs—mostly melted but good enough for identification—and the cops traced the car registration and they were on their way to a thing they were known to go to.”
    “A thing?” Marc asked.
    “Some charity something or other.” I waved off the specifics. One of the Ant’s “look at me, I didn’t peak in high school and this latest gaudy party proves it!” balls, most likely. (A ball , for God’s sake, like she was Cinderella and my dad was a balding prince prone to indigestion if he had too much dairy.) They could have been on their way to shave kangaroos for all I’d known; it didn’t matter. They were on their way, they never made it, the end. “So . . .”
    Marc was leaning in, concern writ large in his green eyes. “Are you all right?”
    “Hmm?” Betsy your father can’t make it Betsy your father is stuck out of town Betsy your father had to miss it Betsy your father loves you he’s just very busy Betsy your father is moving out Betsy of course it’s not your fault Betsy I’ll keep your father’s name but I won’t touch his money Betsy we don’t need it Betsy your father your father your father your father . . . “Sure.” I had to make a concerted effort to be an active participant in the conversation. In older movies, the heroine can often rely on someone to slap her, or at least shake her, to get her to focus
    (PAY THE FUCK ATTENTION, YOU DIMWIT, THIS IS IMPORTANT)
    but I preferred to skip the