Undead and Unforgiven(50)

I shook my head. “Old wives’ tale.”

“Well, yeah, I know that now. But it was a lot closer than my dad’s house.” She closed her eyes. “Oh, God. My dad. Thank God I didn’t go there.”

I kept up with the questions, trying to distract her from that thought. “Did you hurt anyone else?”

“I can’t remember. Most of that night is a bloody blur. Oh! Your friend. Is he going to be all right?”

“Oh, sure.” Marc’s injuries had completely healed by morning. Which made no sense. The theory was if he kept close to me, my unconscious zombie-raising powers would keep him whole. Around me, he was never more than a minute dead: body still warm, no rigor, etc. “He bitched half the night—understandably, but he insisted we binge-watch season two of Sherlock while he healed. I mean, he really milked it. He’s fine now.” Relatively speaking.

“I’m glad. I don’t think I had time to hurt anyone else. I mean . . . you know.” Her lower lip started to tremble but she made a visible effort and her mouth firmed. I could practically read her mind: Crying won’t do shit. Own it already and get on with your death. “Besides Lawrence.”

“Okay. Did you— Have you seen Lawrence?”

She gasped, then shook her head. “There’s so many people . . . I’ve been too scared to really ask around.”

“I can summon him if you—”

“Please don’t. Please. I’m not— I can’t handle that right now. Please don’t.”

“All right.”

She slumped in her chair a little, relieved. “I’m glad I didn’t hurt you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Or my husband. Right?”

“Er.” She looked down. “I’m scared of the king.”

“That is a sensible mind-set to have.” In fact, the body count would have been a lot lower over the decades if Sinclair’s enemies had adopted such a mind-set.

“Lawrence told me—I mean, he and the king were friends before the king was the king. But he was super happy when he found out you guys were in charge now. He said that the old king was all that was bad about vamps, and that Sinclair—and you, too—was all that was good.”

I smiled. “Well, he was right.”

“He was.” Her small, round face crumpled in sorrow again. “About everything. You were, too. I should’ve listened.”

Don’t beat yourself up, I started to say. Except: Hell. That was precisely what you were supposed to do here.

“How come you waited to reach out to me?”

“It took me a while to work up the nerve to ask for you. And I wasn’t sure what was— It’s just, when I got here, there seemed to be some confusion about who was in charge.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Well, I’ll end the suspense: it’s me.”

“I figured. But I have to say, for Hell? This place isn’t so bad. They don’t have Mountain Dew or Doritos here, but I’m not being flayed alive over and over again, either. Mostly I’ve been exploring, but there’s so much I don’t— Y’know, I’ve only been here a little over a month. There are people here who’ve been here a thousand years or more who know lots.”

“Yesssss . . . hmm.” There it was. A blinding new idea. “I want Jennifer Palmer right now.”

And then she was there, pulled by my will in the act of handing someone a terrible Orange Julius. She took both of us in, set the drink on a nearby table, and said, “Some things you never get used to. It’s so weird to be in one place one moment and then somewhere else before you can blink.”

Tell me about it. “Jennifer Palmer, this is Cindy Tinsman. Cindy, this is your buddy from Hell. She’ll take you around, introduce you, show you the ropes—pick your cliché.” This might be one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” ideas, except for once it would be my idea everyone was wishing they’d thought of. Ha!

“Buddy,” Jennifer repeated, looking as though she was wondering if her ears had fallen off or something. I could almost read her mind: Did she really just say . . . ? “Buddy?”

“Yep. It’s a new initiative.” Real new. “You’re the test case. Or patient zero. Whatever you want to call it.” This could work. Or blow up in my face. But neither of them were in Hell because they’d gone on a killing spree or were serial pedophiles. They were there because they’d made one huge, life-altering, death-causing mistake and thought they should be punished.

“If test case and patient zero are my options, I’ll take test case.”