Free Undead and Unsure by MaryJanice Davidson Page B

puff of Civil War gunpowder and Dr. Taylor took her place. Long before she made her living teaching the Civil War, Mom put the
buff
in
Civil War buff
. For her sixteenth birthday my grandpa gave her some Civil War canister shot, which looked exactly like big dirty rocks, and she cried. Not for the reason I would have cried; apparently certified authentic dirty rocks are a sweet gift. So natch, Tina had been almost a literal gold mine of info. Sometimes I had the idea Mom wanted BabyJon
and
Tina in her house all the time.
    Too bad! They’re mine! But hey, Mom was distracted and thus off my back, so all was well. Also: they’re mine!
    On that possessive note, we left.

CHAPTER
    TEN
    “Dammit! I can’t remember if the Antichrist likes terrible cranberry sauce or real cranberry sauce.”
    “We went through this last time we shopped,” Jess reminded me.
    And wouldn’t need to shop again, or go through this again, if you didn’t devour . . . steady, steady. Creating life, she’s creating life. Or something.
    I gulped down the sarcasm and forced a smile. “I just don’t want to get off on the wrong foot when we’re close to reconciling.” Say it twice. I’d almost dreaded opening my eyes this afternoon, unsure if the new day would bring reconciliation or horror, or reconciled horror.
    “Good point,” Marc agreed, looking up from Foster’s
With Friends Like These
. “Killing her mom . . . that was a huge faux pas. You definitely don’t want to make things worse by feeding her canned cranberries. There’s only so much a person can take.”
    “Exactly.” I held a sack of cranberries in one hand and a can in the other. We were in the kitchen again, starting to prep the big family meal while fighting the vague feeling we should have gotten started hours earlier.
    But it wasn’t my fault. This one thing, at least, probably wasn’t my fault maybe. What with sipping supper with my husband (okay,
from
my husband), dropping off over a dozen pairs of shoes at the Fairview Avenue Goodwill branch, faking admiration for the wallpaper swatches Jess had picked out for the nursery (
that
afternoon), faking admiration for the way Fur and Burr would scamper outside to poop after eating (Sinclair swore this was a trick he and he alone had taught them), faking interest while Marc explained all the reasons why Daenerys was the queen foretold to usurp Cersei (if HBO hadn’t shown it, I didn’t want to hear about it), and returning Fred the mermaid’s bitchy e-mail #7 (long story), the afternoon had vanished. Along with the morning and the previous week and, also, the previous month and two years. Why did my life speed up after I died?
    “Enough mistakes have been made,” I decided, still weighing the bag against the can. “Even though killing Satan wasn’t a mistake.”
    “That’s probably something you want to keep to yourself,” Jess suggested while Marc nodded in agreement so hard I thought he was going to topple out of his chair.
    “Duh, and thanks. But that still leaves the question: terrible cranberries or real ones?”
    I wasn’t so dim I couldn’t see fretting over the meal was a little hilarious; most of us wouldn’t be able to eat any of it. Not without the help of Mr. Food Processor. Still, Jess was eating for nineteen, Not-Nick always had thirds, Marc liked to smell the food, Laura ate like a twenty-year-old who didn’t have to cut calories or work out to look hot and assumed it would always be that way, my mom would take a bunch of the bird home for sandwiches to bring to the U, and Fur and Burr would stand ready to snarf down scraps. I didn’t foresee a lot of leftovers cluttering up the mansion fridge(s).
    Jess glanced at the horrible clock (it was one of those creepy ones with a black cat whose eyeballs clicked back and forth, and it had followed us from my dorm room to our duplex to the mansion). “What time’s dinner?”
    I shrugged. Ina Garten I was not. In life my most valued kitchen tool