Undead and Unforgiven(32)

Before I turned around, I said, “Stop following me, you bums!”

“We aren’t.” And here was Marc, loping up the sidewalk, and Jessica, crossing the street from where she’d just parked her own tidy red Ford Escape. She paused long enough to wave to the puppies, then continued toward me. “Sinclair has your car bugged. We just have to hit the right app in our phones and we know where you are.”

“Son of a bitch! Wait—we?”

“Greetings, dread queen!” Tina’s voice peeped out from Marc’s phone; he was holding it like Kirk held his communicator in the classic Star Trek movies, in his palm, faceup. “If you require assistance, we stand ready to assist you!”

From Marc’s trunk. Sure. “Everything’s under— Jess, what are you even doing out?” Jessica wasn’t a zombie, a vampire, a cop, a werewolf, or the Antichrist. She tolerated all that shit, but managed to keep out of most of the supernatural frays that had surrounded me since I woke up dead in too much makeup and my stepmother’s tacky shoes.

My oldest and best friend just grinned at me, looking more emaciated than usual (which was a frightening thought, since on her heaviest days she weighed about as much as a broom). “I’ve got newborn twins,” she said, like that would explain everything. And it did. “Any chance to get out of the house, right? Dick doesn’t go back to work for a couple more days; he practically booted me out the door.”

“You all know my car has been—”

“And phones,” Marc added, then flinched when his phone spat warning static, Tina’s preferred method of expressing displeasure. “Um, or so I heard.”

“—are bugged?”

“Also your laptop, your favorite pair of Beverly Feldmans, and the good smoothie blender.”

I reeled. Mentally, not physically. So. Much. To. Address. Here. “The blender?”

Jessica shrugged and yawned. The babies had been sleeping a bit more lately; she no longer looked embalmed, and the reddish undertones in her mahogany skin made her look lovely, not ill. She was even wearing a clean shirt! Her deep black hair was yanked back into its usual screaming-tight ponytail, making her eyebrows arch and giving her a look of perpetual surprise. She swore it never gave her headaches, and that she couldn’t think if her hair was in her face. “Hey, you’re always threatening to steal the good blender so you can creep off to make smoothies and not share them. If you weren’t such a selfish jerk, he wouldn’t have to resort to this shit.”

“Sinclair is not the aggrieved party here!”

“He kind of is, though,” Marc added, because he was a zombie and zombies don’t fear death. “I mean, look at it from his perspective. You’re always dashing off, there’s usually a bad guy lying in wait somewhere ready to kill some or all of us . . .” He trailed off when he heard my teeth grinding together.

“All respect to the king, I don’t know that I agree,” Marc’s phone pointed out. “The queen has had much to grieve her of late, and I—”

“Okay, no. No, I’m not doing this. You guys can stay here and debate it, I’m out. There’s a Caribou Coffee around here and it’s calling my name. Do not follow me there! Laura, you’re crazy and your plan is insane also. Nice to see you again, good-bye. No!” I snapped as Sinclair stepped toward me. “We’ll discuss boundaries and bugging vehicles and phones and blenders upon my return. You’re all on my list!”

“The list,” Marc’s phone said dolefully. “A terrible place.”

“It’s not so bad,” Marc said cheerfully. “I was on it for a week after I stored some dead mice in an old shoe box.”

“A Beverly Feldman shoe box! Just the boxes are works of art, never mind the—never mind. All of you, just—shoo.”

“Shoe?” Jessica asked slyly, but I didn’t take the bait. And if I stuck around much longer, I wouldn’t be able to stay mad. I marched across the street and, like I needed more proof I was going soft, stopped long enough to open Sinclair’s rear door and pet Fur and Burr, Sinclair’s black Lab puppies, who greeted me as they always did: with seizures of joy and tail wagging and licking and shrill puppy barks. Dogs loved my undead ass. It was one of those things that was slooowly growing on me. And I was finding the more I was around the same dogs, the less they needed to flock to me. A year ago, a stroll through the neighborhood meant a swarm of local dogs escaping from leashes and yards and basements to hunt me down and try to slobber me to death. Now when I was out and about, they knew I was in their territory and loved it, but didn’t feel the need to escape and ruin my shoes to prove they loved it.