THIRTY-FOUR

We'd finished our smoothies and most of the tension was gone when Sinclair decided to ruin everything and bring up bad shit again.

"My own, why do you insist on behaving as if you do not have the skills to rule us?"

"Um ... because I don't?" Sinclair was usually smarter than this. And nakeder than this. Wait. That wasn't right. I really, really needed to have sex with him soon. This was getting ridiculous. Almost a week! Cripes.

"No, he's right. Your track record's not that bad," Jessica said, probably thinking she was soothing me.

"My track record blows."

"Nuh-uh."

"Yuh-huh."

"You did only set that poor kid's ghost free after how many decades?"

I remembered the kid. God, she'd scared the shit out of me. I hadn't known until then I could see the dead ... the real dead, ghosts, not just vampires. I'd been terrified of her. And the kid ... she'd just been sad.

"And then you got rid of a serial killer-"

"Laura did that," I objected. "I was the one cowering in the corner with the last victim. Believe me, we were both trying to figure out where it all went wrong in our lives. Laura's the one who swung into action." And then some. I'd nearly thrown up when I saw what she'd left of him. Oh, sure, a serial killer, he had it coming, right?

Nobody had that coming.

"-and you figured out that evil old librarian had kidnapped Sinclair-"

"Okay, that I will take credit for," I admitted. "I did eventually realize in between my search for the perfect wedding dress who had stolen my king, and after finding a caterer, I got around to killing her eventually."

"For which I was grateful, my queen." He said it with a straight face, but I could sense the smile lurking beneath. I gave him a later-for-you look.

"So one cool thing among dozens of incompetent fuckups."

"And you didn't let the werewolves kill all of us when Antonia died. The Werewolf Antonia," Jessica added because, stop me if you've heard this, there were two hell-bound Antonias in my life. "In fact, the WIC kind of liked you. Werewolf in Charge," she added before Marc could ask. "And then you got the devil to let Antonia be alive again!"

Well. Yeah.

"See?"

Maybe.

"Don't forget, pretty much the first thing you did was kill that Nostro creep ... how bad was that guy? And you killed him and took over."

"It was a little more complicated than that," I said, "and I wasn't alone, Sinclair and Tina-"

"And you totally saved Garrett."

"Well, yeah-"

"And you saved Dickie's life that time when all those witches were gonna-"

"Um, I didn't." Witches? I'd never met a witch in my life, except my stepmother. "Look, guys, I appreciate what you're doing, but all you've proven is that I should seek psychiatric help, not that I should be running the joint. By which I mean the world, eventually."

"And you tried to save the other Fiends after you saved Garrett. It wasn't your fault they-"

"Were disgusted with my lame leadership and turned on me in rightful fury?"

"Well, you found out your sister was the Antichrist," the Antichrist reminded me. "And you took that pretty well."

If memory served, I'd had a giant tantrum when I found out she was two inches taller and ten times more beautiful than I was, but what the heck. They were trying to be nice. It wasn't their fault they were completely totally utterly wrong when they thought I sometimes maybe knew what I was doing.

"I think we should get out of this kitchen," Jessica announced. "Am I the only one who feels like we've been in here half a day?"

"You have to admit, it's pretty interesting."

"Nope. I don't."

Laura shrugged. "Okay, but there's just one other thing I want to get cleared up..."

"Aw, shit!" Jessica sat up straight and put a hand on her belly, looking puzzled. "What was that?"

"Gas? You've eaten ... um ... everything, I think." Multiple smoothies on top of the chocolate chips on top of the grapes on top of the Peanut Buster Parfait on top of the Filet-O-Fish on top of the Cinnabon with extra frosting.

"I don't think it's gas..." She rubbed her stomach and frowned.

"It's absolutely gas. You said yourself you're not due until next summer."

"I thought you were due next month," Marc commented.

"It depends on where I am," Jessica explained, like that would make sense to any of us. She must have been getting light-headed from, I dunno, not enough carbs? Too many carbs?

"Owwwww! Guys, I think ... I think I might be in labor."

"No you're not. You are not! This is not a wacky premise for a Thursday night sitcom. This is a mansion full of the damned and the pregnant, and you are not in labor!"

"Oh, shit, here comes another ... ahhhhh ... son of a bitch." Marc was getting to his feet. And I was getting into my ninth panic attack of the week. "Betsy, this is labor. These are labor pains. I am in labor, which will eventually result in-aaaahhh, cripes!-a baby."

"Well, stop it! Stop it right now." Once again Jessica was trying to make it all about her. The woman had no shame. "I mean it: quit that."

She sat up so abruptly I flinched. Then she grinned. "Gotcha."

Startled silence, broken by my wheezing, "You bitch." The relief was actually making me light-headed.

"Hey, it worked. For a few seconds you forgot all your problems."

"For a few seconds, I knew terror the likes of which I had never known in life or death, you bitch."

"You're welcome," she said, and I honestly didn't know whether to punch her or hug her. So I just got the heck out of there.

THIRTY-FIVE

An hour or so later, I'd thought of some great rebuttals for their "you probably wouldn't totally suck at ruling the world, maybe, at least not too much" arguments, but before I could run back to track them all down and berate them with my logic, Sinclair came out of the library and basically scooped me up and tossed me over his shoulder, caveman style.

"This might work on other vampire queens," I said to his ass as he steadily climbed the stairs to our bedroom, "but it's leaving this one cold."

"No. It isn't."

"Smug bastard."

"Yes."

"I don't love you," I told his ass. His marvelous, marvelous ass. Jeez, how many friggin' stairs were there, anyway? "Not even a little bit."

"Liars get spanked."

Oooh, really? That could be all sorts of dirty nasty fun. And frankly, we'd been a little short of dirty nasty fun around here lately. It was high time, no, past high time to get naked with the vampire king, naked and sweaty and rude, among other-

Sinclair stopped, two stairs from the top. I could tell he was listening, but had no idea for what. At least I knew better than to shrill, "What is it?" the way annoying movie heroines did when the good guys were trying to listen for the bad guys, only the annoying movie heroine's "What is it?" comes at just the wrong time for them to-

There was low growling from far down the hall, growling that was getting steadily louder. Lame. And who'd be growling, for God's sake? Jessica was probably napping by now. Nick/Dick was also napping, unless he'd finished and had gone back to work. Laura didn't growl. I was pretty sure Marc didn't, either. In fact, the only logical candidate for a growl was-

"Oh, shit. The full moon!"

Sinclair sighed and put me down.

"With all the crap going on, I totally forgot about the full-"

And here came Antonia, like she'd been cued by the god of missed sexual opportunities. In her wolf form, she was all black, her lush fur the exact color of her messy hair. Her eyes were glowing pools I tried not to stare into-Antonia was pretty touchy on two feet. On four, she was a goddamn hurricane of fur and teeth.

It didn't help that she'd only recently been able to even turn into a wolf during the full moon. See, she'd been born into their Pack, but some Pack members (you can hear the capital P, right?) didn't ever Change. Just looked human all the time, though they weren't. And these poor guys, they were treated like dying invalids by the ones who could turn into wolves. You know the drill: Oh you poor thing, I've gotta go turn into a wolf now, see ya later ... or never. Like that.

Anyway, when the librarian had kidnapped Sinclair before our wedding, Antonia had gotten snatched, too. And when I killed the librarian ("You can choke and die on those overdue books, bitch, and fuck your late fees!"), I'd somehow fixed it so Antonia could, for the first time in her life, turn into a wolf.

We were all still adjusting. Case in point: a big-ass ebony-black scary-ass werewolf with about a thousand gleaming teeth was racing down the hall toward us, her growls like tearing velvet, and she probably wouldn't hurt us, probably, but this was Antonia, a woman whose idea of a polite greeting was, "Why don't you get the hell out of the way?" A woman the entire Pack had feared before she'd ever figured out how to Change. A woman the devil wanted to get rid of because she'd been such a pain in the ass in hell. The devil. In hell.

Maybe we should just hit the carpet and cower like crying little babies?

Believe me, darling, I'm giving it serious thought. She likely would not hurt us, but...

Before we had to indulge in our mutual cowardice, Antonia ran right up to us. Then we saw her legs bunching as she gathered herself, saw her sort of screwing herself into the carpet, and then she launched herself right over us.

We turned in staring unison to see her sail over our heads and fly down most of the steps, hitting the fourth from the bottom, catching herself, and then one more light leap ... and then she was galloping for the front door, only there was a great big picture window in the-

KKKSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!

Exit Antonia.

"Aw, son of a-"

More footsteps. And now here came Garrett, racing down the exact path Antonia had just taken, zipping past us with a panted, "Sorry!" Then bounding down the stairs, taking them four and five at a time like a big skinny pale gazelle, bounding through the new hole in the picture window with a final, "She's got issues with claustrophooooooooobia!"

Oh, and he'd been naked. Did I mention that?

I turned to my husband, who was, like me, pretty much frozen in startlement. "So now we've got a bitchy werewolf running around in our sleepy neighborhood, with a naked sometimes-feral vampire hot on her trail."

"Yes."

"We should probably go do something, I dunno, royal and leader-ish."

"Yes," my husband said, with a last mournful glance at my cleavage. Then he sighed, turned, and started down the stairs. "I shall attend to it, my own."

"Don't be dumb, I'll help."

"Please." He turned and held up a hand. "I continually worry for you, now more than ever. Please stay here where things are relatively safe."

"Here? Safe?" I laughed. "C'mon, I'll help. We'll see the funny side of it," I added, trying to cheer him up. "You know, eventually."

He shook his head but smiled at me, and the smile was almost enough to make our sexless trek through the neighborhood something to look forward to.