She left.
We let her.
CHAPTER
THIRTY
Marc’s comment broke the difficult silence: “The Antichrist miiiight be crazy in addition to evil.”
“It’s worse,” Jessica said glumly. “It’s so much worse. The Antichrist isn’t evil and/or crazy because she’s the spawn of Satan. She’s evil and/or crazy because she’s a fundamentalist the-Bible-is-literal-and-I’ll-kill-you-to-save-you nutjob. She’s determined to be good and she’ll destroy anyone she has to in order to prove it.”
We’d adjourned to the kitchen, too depressed and freaked to even consider pulping fruit, ice, and yogurt into a delicious drink to be ardently slurped through straws. And I figured now was the best time to tackle the primary issue on my mind, while we were still reeling from what the Antichrist had visited upon us, but I didn’t yet have a plan.
I cleared my throat, and they looked at me hopefully, but that was where I was stuck. I wanted to glare and shout, but didn’t dare. Jessica and I had been friends since our training-bra days (cue jokes about how Jessica could still wear training bras, then cue me breaking your nose). I couldn’t bear it if she was scared of me after everything she’d seen me through. If she was afraid of me, this time I didn’t have the excuse of having read the Book of the Dead and turning evil (temporarily).16
But what other explanation was there?
“Jessica, how— Laura said she told you. Um, so . . . I was wondering. Just, y’know, out of curiosity. Simply to pass the time while we come up with a plan. Just as a way to keep the conversation going . . .”
Marc had buried his face in his hands. “Oh, just spit it out and ask,” he groaned into his palms. “This is too painful.”
I glared but kept my tone mild. “Why didn’t you—”
She turned her head toward me so fast I heard the tendons in her neck creak. “You think I kept this to myself? That your jackass sister confided her sinister plan and I decided silence was the best option? Why would I do that? For fun? For spite? To see what would happen?”
Tina leaned over and carefully relieved Jessica of one of her babies, then backed out of the line of fire. This freed Jessica to jump to her feet and sort of loom over me, since I was sitting at the counter. I tried not to cower. I failed.
“I’m not mad,” I said delicately, “but it’s important that you understand, we could be in a lot of—”
“Now you shut your mouth and listen to me, Elizabeth Anne Taylor.”
Whoa. Full name. Abort, abort! My hands were instantly up, placating. Now Dick and Tina were backing away with babies. “No, really, I’m not m—”
“I have no recollection of that conversation, partly because I don’t pay much attention to your judgmental bitch-cow sister—”
Bitch-cow! The gloves were off!
“—but mostly because I’ve been averaging twenty minutes of sleep a night for weeks! Which is why I didn’t mention it to you! Because I promptly forgot it! I don’t know if she called or came by or meant to tell me or just blurted it out, and I don’t give a shit! Whatever her reason, whyever she told me, if I’d been well rested and in my right mind I would have told you right goddamned away! Because the Antichrist offering shelter to me and mine while she exposed you and your husband to the world is something I would have felt you needed to know! Okay?”
I nodded so hard I almost fell over. We were all nodding. “Yep. Makes perfect sense. Thanks for clearing that up. Never doubted you—”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, but a smile broke through the scowl.
“—for a second. A nanosecond. That’s less than a second, right?”
“That said,” Jessica added, thankfully out of shout mode, “this is not good. For any of us.”
“Got that right.” Marc looked as glum as I’d ever seen him. “Not to belittle your sister’s deep insecurity and instability, but I can’t help wondering if maybe she should just get laid.”
“The only thing I want to discuss less than being exposed is my sister’s virginity. I can’t believe this is happening. Any of it.”
Tina was still cradling a baby, but came over and rested a cool hand on top of mine. Her voice was a lull. The babies loved her. She could hum about four notes and they were out like teeny lightbulbs. “Majesty, the king was right when he said this isn’t the first time humans have tried to expose us. We’ve fought this before and won before. And that was without the queen on our side.”
“Thanks for the entirely misplaced vote of confidence. And yeah, obviously Laura’s sinister plan is a rerun; other people knew about vampires in the past and tried to blow their cover. But this is the first time it’ll probably work if we don’t think of something. The world’s a lot smaller than it was a thousand years ago.”