NINE

"Who did it?" I screeched, pointing a shaking finger at him. A shaking finger with chipped Marshmallow fingernail polish (people have been dying, dammit, and Jess won't go with me to the salon anymore; was it any wonder I needed a touch-up? Not for what the pedicurist actually did to my toes, but the pampering was essential to my mental well-being.). "Who did that to you? Did you figure out how to bring yourself back? If you did, you are so dead! You're supposed to be dead until I'm damned good and ready to bring you back!"

Marc opened his mouth.

"Do you have any fucking idea how hard this has all been on me? Huh? I'm gonna guess no, dead guy! I'm gonna guess you don't have the faintest clue!"

"Betsy-"

"I turn my back for five seconds and you kill yourself? That's the thanks for being one of the coolest roommates in the history of human habitation, huh? No regard for how that'd make me feel, huh? Like I don't have enough friends getting shot or ending up in hell or both? Huh? Oh, and that stupid nasty scary Marc Thing is dead, thanks to me, and you're welcome!" Oh. Except the reason the Marc Thing existed at all was also because of me. Icky stoic cranky Future Me.

Irrelevant! Marc had a lot of nerve being alive, and I was going to explain just how much in loud and shrill detail.

"Betsy-" He sort of flowed to his feet ... not fast, not like a vampire moved, but slow and not-quite-graceful. Like when you've given yourself a pedi and you sort of roll over and carefully climb to your feet so you don't smear anything. You get there, the job gets done, but it's not the most beautiful way to move. That was how Marc moved now.

My mind was ticking off possibilities even as I bitched and yowled at my inconveniently resurrected friend. Not a vampire. Not human-no way ... he didn't smell anything like his old cotton-and-blood-on-hospital-scrubs self. And you didn't "catch" being a werewolf from a bite; I'd found out a couple of years ago that either you were born a werewolf, or you weren't. Scratch lycanthropy. So that meant...

I brandished the stool at Marc like he was a zombie bull. "Back! Stay back! Do not lurch over here to try to eat my brains or I'll bash yours right in. Why? Why am I even surprised to run into another zombie in this same attic? Again?"

"Betsy-"

"Don't think," I warned, taking a big step back. I hate hate hated zombies, and the only reason I wasn't shitting myself in terror, other than the fact that I couldn't, was because he wasn't gross and goopy or trying to eat my brains. And because it was Marc. "Don't think I won't kill you again, buster. I'll jam this stool up your ass so far you'll barf splinters for a week! And then I'll really make you sorry!"

"I believe you," he said dryly. He'd stopped coming for me, just stood there with his hands up in the universal please-don't-shoot-me-in-the-face position. His hands were bloody-no. The surgical gloves on his hands were bloody. Because he'd been-he'd been-"Listen, Betsy, I-"

"Oh my God! What have you been doing up here?" My brain was still cycling through reasons, and not liking anything it was coming up with. I stared at the cat with fresh horror, then back at Marc, who was staring at the floor in ... what? Shame? Hunger? Anger? "Why? Oh, Marc, what are you doing here, and why are you cutting up my dead cat? How could you do this to me?" I wailed, then flung myself facedown on the floorboards

(ow!)

and burst into tears.

TEN

It wasn't entirely Sink Lair's fault. But I didn't figure that out 'til later. At the time, things were kind of an undead gross weird shocking scary mess. And they'd been bad enough before my husband literally burst in on the scene.

So anyway, Sinclair hurtled through the attic door and galloped up the stairs, and because he heard me screaming and yelling and crying, and because he knew it wasn't at him, he took all seventeen of the stairs in about half a second.

Then he burst into the attic just in time to see a zombie with bloody hands looming over his wife. "Aw, c'mon, Betsy, don't cry, I-glllkkkkk!"

"Never touch her," he said in a tone that would seem friendly and conversational if you didn't know him, and thus scared the shit out of at least two of us, "and explain yourself. Right now. Do not lie: I know you are not a new subject."

Marc's zombie feet kicked and swung about a foot in the air-Sinclair already had several inches on the poor guy, and had now hoisted him in the air in what looked like the beginning of Make Marc My Personal Pinata.

"Glllkkk!"

"Get your hands off him!" In a more mercurial than usual swing, I went from scared and pissed and crying to scared and pissed and protective. "He wasn't doing anything except coming back from the dead without permission before I was ready and freaking me out by chopping up my dead cat after making me shake a stool in his direction to ward him off. Leggo!"

My shrill nagging had no effect. I jumped to my feet, silently groaning at the dust all over my wine-colored tights (the black mini was probably also a total loss), and tugged on Sinclair's arm. It was like tugging on a redwood and expecting it to come to dinner with you. Just. Wouldn't. Budge. Great: the one time I actually wanted vamp strength, I was tussling with a vamp stronger on his worst day than I was on my best.

"Let-ack-him-nng-go!" Ye gods, what did the man have in his pockets, gold bricks? "You better not ... make ... me ... withhold ... sex!" Please please don't make me withhold sex ... if there was a merciful God (and I was starting to seriously question the guy's mercy), I wouldn't have to withhold sex.

I nearly fell on my ass (again) when Sinclair obeyed (again). I'd ponder what that meant later; for now I was just glad he'd put Marc down and I wasn't clinging to the inside of his arm like a damn kinkajou.

"What is going on?" Sinclair asked. He bent, hauled me to my feet with as much trouble as he'd have picking up a box of paper clips, then thrust me behind him in one slick move. I could admire the guy's sneaky deftness while being irritated that his Fred Flintstone side was showing. "Explain. Now."

"What, like I know? I came up here, and there he was, all reanimated and back from the grave and everything." I stood on tiptoe to peek at Marc over Sinclair's shoulder. "You're in a lot of trouble, pal!"

"Tell me," Marc said dryly. He took the chance to strip off his surgical gloves and fire them, without looking, at a nearby wastebasket. That was such a Marc-ism, a trick I'd seen him do a few times before, that some of my fear and anger ebbed, and I felt the first beginning gladness that my friend was walking and talking and firing rubber gloves at things without missing. "You want the long version or the short version?"

"I want the version where you start by saying, 'Then I stupidly OD'd in my bedroom so my roommate could find me and be totally traumatized' and finish with 'and then Sinclair shook me like a maraca.'"

He grinned, and it actually hurt my heart. If hearts could get cramps, mine did just then. I didn't know how to feel, which made it cramp more. "I stupidly OD'd in my bedroom, and then all of a sudden I was back here. In the mansion."

"You're saying," Sinclair began slowly, stepping to the side to block me when I tried to duck around him. "Ah ... what are you saying?"

"I don't know what happened. I've got no idea how I ended up here. I'm saying I was kind of hoping you guys would."

Sinclair looked at me, and his usually excellent poker face was not home this evening; he looked as perplexed as I felt. We sort of stared at each other for a few seconds, and then stared at Marc.

"Well, heck," I said, figuring one of the three of us should probably say something. "I guess we'd better go talk to the others."

Marc sighed. Did that mean he needed to breathe? "They're not gonna like it."

They didn't.

ELEVEN

Jessica screamed and screamed. She probably wanted to jump up and down as well, but couldn't reach escape velocity with The Belly That Ate the World. So she screamed some more as she stood in one spot.

"I can explain!" I shouted, trying to be heard over her air-raid-siren wails. "It's not what it looks like!"

"It looks like you resurrected Marc after you said you wouldn't!" Nick grabbed Jessica's shoulder and yanked back, so she was now behind him. His gun wasn't out, but his hand was on the butt and he never took his gaze off Marc, though he was talking to me. "That's what it looks like!"

"Okay, you're right!" I shouted back. "I can see why you're confused! We'll have to straighten this whole thing out! So don't worry!"

"Bullshit don't worry! I've got some questions, Betsy! I thought we'd shelved this topic! And now I find you've brought Marc back from the dead!"

"It wasn't me! That's what I want to talk to you guys about! If we just-good God, Jess, take a breath before you pass out."

She stopped as suddenly as if I'd thrown a switch on her vocal cords. "What is this?" she asked hoarsely, pointing a shaking finger at Marc, who looked defiant and embarrassed and unhappy and hopeful all at once. "What's going on? Betsy? Why? Why'd you do it?"

"My queen did nothing," Sinclair said. He had a wary expression on his face, and Tina, who'd burst into the kitchen seconds after Jessica let loose with her first yowl, was rubbing her ears. Jess had lungs when she wanted 'em ... the others hadn't ever seen this side of her before. Of course, they'd never met her scum-bucket parents, either. "But she-we-could not keep this new development from you."

"New development?" Nick/Dick asked, amazed. "Is that what this is? Because it looks more like a sign of the apocalypse to me."

"Please." I made a conscious effort not to roll my eyes. "You think people running yellow lights are signs of the apocalypse."

"So here we are again," Sinclair finished, then added, "What a pity all the blenders are still dirty from our last meeting."

"That's why God made sinks and Dawn liquid soap," I snapped. "Would it kill you to grab a sponge?"

"It would not kill me," he admitted, "but I would find it unpleasant. Do you have any idea how many germs are lurking in a sponge at any given time?"

"Sinclair, I swear to God, you worry about the dumbest things at the dumbest times..." The only thing, the only good thing, about this kitchen confrontation was that Antonia and Garrett had flitted off somewhere, probably to a yarn shop, or to have sex in the spoon at the Walker Art Center. In November! Brrrr. But at least there were two less people to prevent from having hysterics. Try to prevent, anyway.

"Marc, what happened?" Jess was peeking at him from behind Nick/Dick. "Why did you do it? Why'd you come back? Oh, Marc..." She trailed off and her mouth turned down; her lips trembled despite her efforts to press them into a grim line. "How could you scare me like that? How could you scare us?"

Then she started to cry, and we started to feel really, really, really shitty. As for Marc, he looked so mortified I could tell he was wishing he could disappear down a hole/grave/abandoned well just then. He took a slow step forward, but a look from Nick made him stop.

"Jess, please don't cry." He didn't touch her, but he made sort of pleading motions with his hands. "I don't know why I'm back. I know I should have stayed hidden-I know I should have stayed in the attic. I just-I was so..." He trailed off, then added with simple dignity, "I missed you guys. I was lonesome. And ... it's kind of spooky up there in the dark by myself. It started to get to me after the first couple of days."

Okay, now I was gonna cry. The thought of my dear friend creeping around upstairs, hoping we didn't hear him but also hoping, just a little, that we would ... Christ! Lonely and afraid. That was what being friends with me got you: premature death, followed by hiding in attics, screaming matches with friends, and being afraid ... being afraid all the time.

"The first couple of ... jeez. Wait. How long were you up there? You haven't even been dead a whole week."

"Because time is a wheel."

"What?" I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly.

"What?" He seemed to shake himself. "I'll tell you everything," he promised, "but I don't know much about what happened. I was sort of hoping you guys might know."

"Why don't we all just ... uh..." Tina gestured to the kitchen chairs, and we slowly went to them and settled ourselves. Marc stayed on his feet the longest, and then finally walked over to the last empty chair and sat. It didn't escape my attention that Nick had pushed Jessica into the seat farthest from the friendly neighborhood zombie. "Marc? Do you want to tell us what happened?"

"Not really," he sighed. "But I guess I'd better. Once upon a time..."