After love, I flopped over on my back. "Now I have to call Laura and get her to come over, or meet me somewhere, because she's got her Big Girl Apartment and won't tell me where it is."

"One-three-one-one West One Hundred Forty-third Street, Burnsville, Minnesota." At my astonished silence, he reeled off, "Five-five-three-zero-six."

"You suck!" I jerked the roll pillow out from behind me and smacked him with it. Right around the time he'd been raining kisses on my inner thighs, I vaguely remembered grabbing the small log-shaped pillow and shoving it into the small of my back, and then my brain blew up. Or something.

But now I was back in my body, ready to wreak havoc with crimson-colored and gold-tasseled throw pillows. "Wait, did you go sheet shopping while I was gone? I don't recognize any of this linen. No, let's get back to Laura-how'd you find out where she lived? Did she tell you on the way to church? Which, by the way, was gonna be our little secret for a while."

"Circumstances," was his dry reply, and I had to laugh. I was teasing him now, but the moment we were alone he'd shown me the despair and loneliness that had whirled through his brain the minute I left our dimension.

"The word of the week," I agreed. "Spill!"

"On one of my walks I put a tracer on her car. Tina keeps track of your sister's hithers and thithers. It's how she knew Laura was at your mother's." I must have looked as surprised as I felt, because it was his turn to tease. "Why, my own, did you think all my fun in the sun was only about fun?"

"Kinda," I admitted. So sneaky of Sinclair to be sneaky even when he wasn't trying to be sneaky! That... that was the definition of sneaky. "I assumed your main objective was al fresco sex, sure."

"And it was," he replied sagely. "But there were occasionally other goals."

I made a fist and thumped his chest. "And I meant it about church. I thought you wanted to keep that under your immaculate vest for a while."

"And so I did." He reached for me and drew me down beside him. I ran my hand up his ribs and snuggled into his side. "But I saw an opportunity to make a point without scaring or angering her. I must say, it was rather theatrical." The badass king of the vampires giggled like a little boy pulling off a prank.

"I'll bet." So bummed I missed it. Sneaking off to church had been our little secret for days. Apparently back in the day, the Sinclair family was big on regular churchgoing. His church was a whole other community, a little town (townlet?) of people who looked out for each other and stuck together when shit went bad. I had no idea he'd missed it so much. So when he realized he could reclaim that part of his boyhood, he did, and I helped. It was wrong that it made us super horny, right? A morning of God-bless-us-everyone followed by outdoor sex, then drinking blood after the sun went down. Just your average big-city married couple. "And Laura didn't need to be pressured into doing anything, so it worked out. How'd you know I'd figured out how to come back from the hellfog by myself?"

"I realize I only gave you a chance to recount 'the CliffsNotes version' before taking you to bed-"

"To dining room, actually, then to parlor sofa, then to stairs-ow, by the way-and then to bed, technically speaking." After the ambulance had taken Not-Nick, Jessica, Naw, and Other Naw to the hospital for at minimum an overnight, Marc had disappeared to spend the next few hours cleaning up, and not just Jessica's room ("Out, out, damned purple things and their spots!"), and Tina had likewise vamoosed, to do what I couldn't bring myself to care. Which was about when my husband fell on me, with all that entailed.

"Always a stickler for the technical details, my love. But since you have not had sufficient time to recount what you endured, I must ask for a definition of 'hellfog.' But before that, what did you mean?"

Since parts of me were still numb, I was having trouble following the conversation. "Which time? About what?" Now I was stroking his abs: one, two, three, four, five-yep, a six-pack. A genuine six-pack! In elderly men, such things were mythological, like a horny unicorn.

"You wondered how I knew you could come home without Laura. I did not know."

"So you dragged her to church to-what? Threaten her with more tithing if she didn't produce me?"

"I had no plan," my man-with-a-plan spouse admitted. "Laura had assured us you were safe and would shortly return. I believed her, and I cannot explain why."

"She never lies," I suggested. "That might be one reason."

"She was so... despairing. Not because she grieves for the Morning Star, I think. Because she felt-feels-trapped. And for good reason. Now, don't look like that, my queen. Of course you were quite right to kill the devil. But the consequence of that, as you knew, as you explained to me, is that it effectively trapped the Antichrist into taking that job. For the next million years, most likely."

"Yeah." I let my head flop back onto Sinclair's biceps. I loved it when a man put his hands behind his head after love; I loved lying on biceps. I know. It's odd; I can't explain it. "Yeah, and I still have to figure out what to do about that. About her. Because nothing's been solved, you know? She was pissed and she took me and I put up with Thing One and Thing Two and then figured out how to come home and the babies came. Stuff happened, but nothing's been resolved."

"The wisdom of a serpent, the gentleness of a dove."

"The irritation of a wasp stinging my ass. Yeek!" I knocked his fingers away. "So I guess I'd better start by calling her. See if she'll meet me somewhere so we can work this out."

"She will."

"Oh, you two are best friends now?"

"Hardly. But now she trusts me a bit, I think." The fool.

"Caught that one," I said. "Be nice."

No reply to that but a stubborn silence, and who could blame him?

"She's young." I could hardly believe I was making excuses for her. Being home, safe, was erasing my irritation. Which was dumb. But I was in such a sex haze of all's well, it was hard to be mad at anyone for anything.

"She is," he allowed. "And it is only slightly less absurd that you are commenting on anyone's youth, never mind someone a bare ten years younger."

"Hey, I've aged decades in wisdom over the last three or four years." I yawned. We'd sucked. Then we'd fucked. And I was starting to think about round two. "Tell me again how much you missed me."

Much better to show you, beloved.

The man had a point. And not just with his-

"Yeek!"