Chapter 42

So, what? Should we go outside?"

"To do what?"

I gestured, but I'm not sure why. Frustration, maybe. Anyway, I was waving my arms in a darkened dirty barn, leaving a cloud of dust wherever I paced. "Look for someone to help, maybe?"

"You're assuming we helped Caroline," Laura pointed out. "We might have messed up the time stream. She might have been fated to die and will instead live to be the great-great-grandmother of another Hitler."

"Yeah, and if my grandma had balls, she'd be my grandpa. But she doesn't. And she isn't. Look: we can do the couldashoulda-woulda dance until our knees lock and it won't help. So, we either stay here in McBarn Town and try to get back, or we go out, take a tour, save someone (or not), and then try."

"Well, okay, but you're assuming-"

"Kids? Kids! You put that wagon in the barn, then c'mon and help your mother finish packing!"

I must have flinched pretty good, because Laura seemed startled. "What? Is someone coming?"

"A couple of someones," I said just as the double doors at the other end of the building opened. "But I don't think we're in the soup just yet."

The couple of someones were short. And young. And cuter than bugs' ears. They were lugging a wooden wagon-the homemade version of the Little Red Wagon, I figured-and stopped short when they saw us.

"Oh, hello," the boy said. He was exactly the same height as his sister, and they were portraits of extreme cuteness.

They both had dark hair, carefully trimmed so they had matching bangs. The girl's was longer, and braided; her braid was long enough to touch her own butt.

Other than that, and the fact that the girl was wearing a checked yellow dress (with filthy bare feet-a sensible precaution in a family that probably saved their shoes for church), they were portraits of identical cuteness.

Twins! Like anyone who wasn't a twin, I thought they were fascinating yet creepy. These two hadn't fled screaming, which I couldn't help admiring.

"Hi, kids," I said.

Laura followed with, "We're not dangerous," which I thought was a rather large lie.

"What happened to your clothes?" the girl asked, seeming more surprised than frightened.

"Where to begin?" I answered. To Laura: "I thought we were in a town, not on somebody's-"

"Our farm's on the edge of the Grove," the boy explained. He was wearing a dirt-streaked linen shirt in dark blue, and black trousers. And little suspenders! Also bare, dirty feet. His eyes were so dark I couldn't pick out the iris from the-the other thing in the eye that wasn't the white part. (It wasn't the first time I'd come to regret getting a C-in Biology.) "Past our place is just country. Town's the other way."

"What town?" Laura asked.

The boy opened his mouth to answer just as a piercing shout made all four of us jump. Laura didn't have any trouble hearing that one; none of us did.

"Erin! Eric! You two get in here and get these puppies out of my kitchen!"

"Oh God." I groaned. I'd forgotten all about this potential disaster. "Puppies." I looked at my sister. "We so don't want to hang out if they get a whiff of me."

Laura nodded but couldn't keep the grin off her face. She knew one of the more annoying consequences of my being undead was the fact that dogs drooled and slobbered helplessly when they saw or smelled me. That would have given the Salem thing the final, surreal touch: freeing witches, fighting with town elders, then being chased from the church by packs of baying, slobbering canines. Ugh.

"Sorry to bother you," Laura said to the girl. "We'll get out of your way."

"But your clothes," the girl-Erin?-was persisting. "Why are you wearing such funny underwear? Don't you have proper-"

"Erin and Eric Sinclair! You two get your butts in this house right now! These dogs aren't gonna let themselves out!"

"Oops," Erin Sinclair said, not looking too freaked. "Mama's getting mad."

"We're s'posed to start to move to Minnesota tomorrow," my future husband told the Antichrist. "We're not done packing. But we almost are."

"She's not mad about the packing," Erin Sinclair explained to the freakish strangers in her barn. "She just doesn't want t'move to Minnesota. Aunt Tina's making her."

"It's private business," her twin said, managing to look intrigued and scandalized at the same time. "Not supposed to tell strangers."

Laura didn't reply. I contributed to the nothing by saying ... nothing. Shock had my vocal cords in a vapor lock.

"Well ... 'bye," my soon-to-be-dead sister-in-law said, giving me a small wave.

As for the boy? He smiled at me, a shy grin, then trotted after his twin. He looked back, once. "You're goin' now?"

I managed a nod. Got another cute smile for my trouble, and then the wooden doors slammed shut.

Which was good, since I was going to fall down pretty much any second.

Chapter 43

Okay," I managed after what felt like ninety minutes. "Okay. That's ... okay?"

"We're on your husband's farm!" Laura had grabbed my arm, and her sensibly short nails were doing a dandy job of sinking into my tender vampire skin. "Your husband's family's farm!"

"Not for long. Argh, quit it!" I removed her claws from my flesh. "They're moving, remember?"

"So Sinclair's parents were farmers?" Laura goggled at me. "Farmers? I thought he was-I don't know-a trust-fund baby. Or something."

"Yeah. It seemed weird to me, too. When we met, I mean." I shook my head. Fucking time travel; it made polite conversation impossible. "In the future, I mean. It was weird. Here's this big rich classy scary vampire guy, and he got his start farming. I always thought that was kind of funny. I mean, I'm not wrong-Sinclair dresses like a city boy."

Laura nodded. "He sure does. And didn't you tell me his whole family ... ?"

"Yeah. Died. In fact, Tina found him in the cemetery the day of his parents' funeral. I think-"

Shit. What did Tina tell me that night? It had been a couple of years, and I'd barely paid attention at the time. In my defense, I'd been thrown into a pit and was a little more worried about getting out than listening to the babbling of my new friend.

"Okay. She told me she turned him that night. I remember being surprised, because the Sinclair I knew wasn't a guy who inspired sympathy, you know?

"And ... I always thought that's how they met, that Tina met him the night she gave him the old one-two chomp. But the kids-the little twins-were talking about Aunt Tina." We looked at each other. "She knew them before. She was a friend of the family. Before."

Laura had paled, from fright or stress or both. "Then what happened?"

"Then ... nothing. I mean, that's all the story I got. She saw him, she turned him, they've been friends ever since."

A small lie. In fact, that was all the story I ever bothered with. I lost all interest in The History of Eric Sinclair once I found out I was supposed to spend five thousand years ruling vampires with him. Soooo not on the career aptitude test I took when I was a senior at Burnsville High School.

In my defense, the Sinclair I met had been conniving, sneaky, sexy, slick, underhanded, horny, sexy, scheming, sexy, and duplicitous. He'd tricked me! I'd had sex with him under false pretenses. And all those orgasms were under false pretenses, too!

"Let's get the hell out of here," I said, but Laura was way ahead of me. Her sword was already out, was already cutting a circle through the dusty barn air.

Just like last time, getting back to the waiting room was the easy part: we clasped hands and took a big step together, and the barn and the twins and the dust fell away from us. Cake.

"Thank goodness," I said, "we're back in hell."

Not a sentence I thought I'd ever say.

Chapter 44

We both looked for the door that led back out into hell proper, and neither was exactly astonished when it didn't show up. The devil wasn't done teaching us Time Travel 101.

"Now what?"

"Now it's the same decision we were looking at the last time we were in this room that isn't a room. We either stay here and hope my mother takes pity on us-"

"Yeah, that's likely."

"Or pick another door. And find whatever it is we're supposed to find."

"Yeah. No choice at all, then. But listen-wait, wait!" I backed up. Laura was getting really quick with her fists, and if I hadn't been undead I'd be at two shiners and counting. Or two nosebleeds and ... eh, fuck it. Nobody cared but me. "Can we at least try to get clean clothes while we're here?"

"Or maybe period-appropriate clothing! Oh, Betsy, I never, ever would have thought of that!"

I won't lie; that cheered me up. Laura seemed so independent and cool these days, like she didn't need me so much.

Which was a weird way for me to feel ... I'd never known she existed before a couple of years ago. So why would I want to be needed? That wasn't just pathetic, that was Ant-level pathetic. Level-one pathetic! Ye gods.

"I'm so glad you brought that up. I could use something more appropriate than jeans. One of these time jumps we could be the ones accused of witchcraft. Let's-" She glanced around. "Uh ... I'm not sure how we would do that."

"I'm not sure, either. What if you waved your sword through, I dunno, my dirty leggings?"

"No! I could hurt you. Even kill you." She shook her head, a hard series of snaps: left, right, left. "Killing you wasn't part of the time-travel-in-ten-easy-lessons plan."

"Yeah, you're right ... killing me would really put the stink on our shitty week. Look, your sword only disrupts paranormal energy, right? So if a werewolf jumped on you, you could slice him-"

"And he'd turn back to human, yes. But our clothes are real. They're not paranormal energy. There's nothing for my sword to disrupt."

"Well, nuts." And me without my overnight bag! I knew I'd been right to pack one. And not just because it was a spot to stash my letter from Sinclair.

I bent, brushed as much dust and dirt off my legs as I could, then straightened. I thought about l'il Sinclair, and couldn't hold back a smile. That open-faced cherub had been long gone-long dead-by the time I'd met up with his grown-up self. But it still was kind of a kick to meet my heart's own love as a child. A brother. A twin.

"Okay, so, let's get to it"

"Are you sure you're ready?"

I beckoned Laura with my fingers, a come-on-and-hit-me gesture I might make to a fighter. If this were a martial arts movie. And I was trapped in it. "Don't mind me, I'm just going to cringe and flinch and cry like a bitch until I wake up in Stillwater, circa 1961-ow!"