Undead and Unreturnable

And I in my kerchief, and Ma in her cap... that was all of it I knew, unfortunately. My mom could recite the whole thing by heart, all twenty verses or however many there were. Jess, Marc, Jon, and I were heading over there tomorrow night for Christmas Eve dinner. She'd tell it to me then.

I shut my-our-bedroom door behind me and saw Sinclair in a miserable huddle in the middle of the bed. "It's here now, isn't it?" he asked. "I can feel it. Draining the strength from me."

"Oh, jeez, you're such a baby! It's just a Christmas tree. It's not a nuclear device."

He shuddered. "You say tomato, I say toe-mah-toe."

"It's not even that big!" I held my hand up to my waist. "It's only like this big. We had to put most of the decorations back in the attic."

"It's going down the day after tomorrow, right?"

"It just went up! Oh, while I'm thinking of it, I don't suppose you want to go to you-know-what Eve dinner tomorrow with my mom."

He grimaced, like he smelled something bad. "Your mother is a charming woman in all ways, and normally I would be delighted."

"Thanks but no thanks, huh?"

"I am not leaving this house until the twenty-sixth."

"You guys. I swear."

"You will never understand, which is both boggling and frightening."

"Uh-huh. You're probably too freaked to get it up, am I right?"

He cocked an eyebrow at me. "Not quite that freaked out."

Epilogue

"Thanks for not un-hypnotizing Jon," I said drowsily, much later.

His chest rumbled beneath my cheek as he laughed. "Which reminds me, my report on President Cleveland is nearly finished."

"Ha! Serves you right. Thanks."

"There is one small problem."

"About your report?"

"No. Something else, I'm afraid."

"There aren't any small problems, good-looking. Hit me."

"Tina and I have looked everywhere, deleted everything we could. But it appears Jon made a hard copy of the book before I reached him. He did something with it. We aren't sure what."

"Why do I hate where this is going?"

"And if I ask him, really get into his mind and ask him, it could jeopardize-"

"The footprints you've already left," I said glumly. "You think he turned it in to his prof already?"

"I... hope so. Because otherwise, a book-length manuscript about our lives has gone missing. And if your column catches on, someone could see it and..."

"Well... it'll probably turn up. He was doing it for school; it's not like he had some sinister motive or anything. Right? Sinclair? Right?"

"Probably." Which is as close as Mr. Buzzkill would ever get to admitting nothing would probably come of it.

"Catchy title, though," he said as we both felt the sun start to come up on Christmas Eve. "Undead and Unwed."

"That title sucks," I said, and then it was morning, and everything went dark, and I went wherever it is vampires go when they aren't Christmas shopping.