Undead and Unreturnable

"Well!" I said brightly, descending the stairs. "That was about the most disgusting thing ever."

"And you drink blood every week."

"Ugh, don't remind me. George? Honey, you up?"

We went to the other end of the basement (the place was huge; it ran the length of the mansion and, among other things, we'd had decapitated bodies down there as well as a body butter party) and found George in his room, busily crocheting another endless yarn link. Sky blue, this time.

He looked up alertly when we walked into his room and then went back to his crocheting. The scary thing about George was how normal he was starting to look.

He was tall and lean, with a swimmer's build, shoulder-length golden brown hair, and dark brown eyes. When he'd been more feral, it was tough to see the man under all the mud. Now that he was on a steady diet of my blood, it was hard to see the feral vampire under the man.

He was too thin, but he had the best butt I'd ever seen, never mind that my heart belonged to Sinclair (and his butt). His eyes were the color of wet mud, and occasionally a flash of his intelligence gleamed out at me. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

He seemed only to like me, which was fair, because I was the only one who hadn't wanted to stake him and his fellow Fiends. The others were at a mansion in Minnetonka, being cared for by another vampire. Unlike George, the other Fiends had no desire to do anything but crawl around on all fours and drink blood out of buckets.

I wasn't really sure what to do about the Fiends, thus my great and all-encompassing "live and let die" policy. The asshat who used to run the vampires was a big experiment fan-you know, like the Nazis. And one of his favorite things to do was starve newly risen vampires.

Thus, the Fiends: feral, inhuman, and not so great with the vocalizing. Or the walking. Or the-anyway. They were monsters, but it wasn't their fault... the real monster had gotten to them first.

All I could do was try to look out for them... and keep George amused. Unlike the others, George liked to drink my blood every couple days or so. Unlike the others, George was walking.

It was very strange.

"Check it out, baby," Jessica said, bringing out a crochet hook of her own and showing it to him. Then she glanced at me. "Uh, he's eaten this week, right?"

"Unfortunately, yes." I glared at my wrist, which had already healed over. I only liked sharing blood with Sinclair; the rest of it sort of squicked me out. And I only did it with Sinclair during, um, intimate moments.

Sad to say, my blood (queen blood, sigh) was the only thing making George better. Three months ago, he was covered with mud, naked, howling at the moon, and eating the occasional rapist. Yarn work in my basement and consenting to red Jockeys was a big damn improvement.

"Like this," Jessica was saying, showing him what looked, to me, like an incredibly complicated stitch. But then, I'd tossed out my counted cross-stitch patterns at age sixteen after declaring them way too hard. Crocheting and knitting... yurrgh.

My mom tried to teach me to knit once, and it went like this: "Okay, I'll do it really slowly so you can follow." Then the needles flashed and she'd knitted half a scarf. That's about when I gave up on all crafts.

"And then..." Jess was murmuring, "through the loop... like this."

He hummed and took the yarn from her.

"What's next on the wedding agenda?"

"Um..." I shut my eyes and thought. My Sidekick was upstairs, but I knew most of the wedding details by heart. "Flowers. I'm still pushing for purple irises and yellow alstromeria lilies, and Sinclair is still pretending we're not getting married."

"What's the new date?"

"September 15."

Jessica frowned. "That's a Thursday."

I stared at her. "How do you know that?"

"Because it's the date my parents died, so I try to get out to the cemetery then. And I remember, last September was a Wednesday."

"Oh." We did not discuss Jessica's mother and father. Ever. "Well, what difference does it make? Like Sinclair cares? Like the other vampires do? Oh, what, we've all got to get up early for work the next morning?"

"How many times have you changed the date? Four?"

"Possibly," I said grudgingly. It had been, respectively, February 14 (I know, I know, and to give me credit, I did scrap the idea eventually), April 10, July 4, and now September 15.

"I don't understand why you don't just get it done, hon. You've wanted this how long? And Sinclair is agreeable and everything? I mean, what the hell?"

"There just hasn't been time to get all the details taken care of. I have been solving murders and dodging bloody coups," I bitched. "That's why I keep moving the date. There aren't enough hours in the day. Night."

Jessica didn't say anything. Thank God.

"Look!" I pointed. George was crocheting the new stitch she'd just showed him. "Wow, he's catching on."

"Next: the knit stitch."

"Can't you ever rest on your laurels? Let the guy make a blanket or something."

"And after that," she said confidentially, "we're going to start with reading and math."

"Oh, boy."

"He already knows how. He must. It's just a matter of reminding him."

"Yeah, that's what it's a matter of."

She ignored that. "So what else? Flowers? And then what? You've got the gown picked out."

"Yup. Picked it up last week. The nice thing about being dead is one fitting pretty much did the trick."

"Well, there you go. What else?"

"The tasting menu."

"How are you going to pull that off?"

"It's wine for them, juice and stuff for the rest of us." I heard myself say that and wondered: Who did I think "us" was?

"Oh. Good work. And?"

"The cake. Not for us." There was that word again! "But there will be some regular guys there. You, Marc, my folks."

"The Ant?"

"I'm inviting her."

"You are? Well, maybe she'll have a face-lift scheduled that day."

I perked up. "Maybe. You think? Anyway. I'm leaning toward chocolate with raspberry ganache filling, topped with chocolate-covered strawberries. And, you know, ivory basket-weave fondant icing."

"Stop, you're making me hungry."

"And I've been trying to get Sinclair to go tux shopping."

"Why? He's got a million of them."

"Yeah, but this is the tux. The mother of all tuxes. The wedding day tux. He needs something special."

"Maybe in a nice powder blue," she suggested.

I laughed. "Or canary yellow. Can you imagine? Wouldn't he just die?"

"Again. Actually, he seems pretty close to it. He, uh, doesn't seem all that interested in the details. I mean, more than most guys. Which is weird, given his cool metrosexualness."

I hadn't heard that exact term (which had been sooo trendy the year before but was now woefully overused) applied to Sinclair, but I only had to mull it over for half a second before I realized she was right. He had a big dick, adored women, didn't mind kicking the shit out of bad guys, insisted on redecorating all the parlors, was a foodie and a tea snob. Ah, the love of my life. Great in bed and would only drink tea from leaves, not bags. Whodathunkit.

I sat down on one of the chairs and watched George busily crochet. Speaking of metrosexuals. He'd already done four inches across.

"You know how it is. Sinclair's like a tick, he gets so stubborn. 'We're married by vampire law, a ceremony is redundant,' blah-blah."

"That's tough," she said sympathetically. She was digging around in her craft bag and tossing more skeins of yarn to George. A wool rainbow flew through the air: red, blue, yellow, purple. "But you know it's not a question of love. You know that, right?"

"I guess..."

"Come on, Bets. You guys got that cleared up at Halloweentime. He worships you. He'd do anything for you. He's done anything for you. It's not his fault he's considered you guys to be married for the last eight months."

"Mmm. Did you know, our wedding is going to be the first vampire monarch wedding in the history of dead people?"

"Something for the diary. Vampire monarch wedding?"

"Umm. Because vampires get married now and again. And a vampire/human couple will get married-like Andrea and Daniel. But I guess since the Book of the Dead claims we're already married, it's never actually been done."

"So?"

"Exactly," I said firmly. "Exactly! Who gives a damn if it's never been done? No reason not to do it. But I'm not taking his name."

Jessica burst out laughing. "I just realized. If you did, you'd be Sink Lair."

"Don't even tell me."

"Better not tell him. He's kind of a traditionalist."

Exactly what had been worrying me lately.