Extraits

"Petit aparté, ce n’est pas pour avoir l’air d’une voyeuse malsaine (comme s’il en existait d’autres types…), mais voir Anne Boleyn décapiter Henri VIII pendant qu’il la suppliait de lui pardonner pour l’avoir mise enceinte d’Elizabeth Ire avait été super jouissif. J’avais eu envie de m’attarder et de lui balancer : « Oh ! donc tu en as appris un peu plus sur la biologie au cours des cinq cents dernières années, hein, espèce de gros porc ? Eh oui, c’est le sperme qui détermine si un gamin va être de sang royal, et il vient de l’homme ! C’est-à-dire de toi ! Je sais que tu n’as pas la moindre idée de qui je suis ! Ta coiffure est stupide ! Hé, Anne, et si tu te la jouais de nouveau façon reine de cœur ? “Qu’on lui coupe la tête” ! » Heureusement, j’avais été un modèle de retenue et je m’étais contentée de m’éloigner sans rien dire."

"Comment pouvait-on être plus diabolique que le diable ? Ce serait comme essayer d’être plus écervelé que les Kardashian : même si vous êtes super déterminé et que vous ne lâchez jamais votre objectif des yeux, même si vous passez des jours ou des années à tenter d’accomplir une tâche que vous soupçonnez fortement d’être impossible, vous n’y arriverez jamais."

-Tu m’as manqué? M’exclamations je. Jusqu’à il y a une 1/2 heure, j’ignorait que tu étais sortie.

-Tes mots tendres réchauffent mon âme .

Il remua sur le lit, et je devinai qu’il n’avait pas obtenu ce qu’il voulait. Mais je savais aussi qu’il ne voyait pas d’inconvénient à attendre que je lui demande son aide. En cela, nous étions bien accordés, car je possédais généralement la patience d’un enfant de trois ans qui vient de faire une orgie de sucre, tandis que Sinclair était plutôt du genre à tisser sa toile et à attendre avec flegme : « Viens par ici, prends ton temps. Tu sais que je finirais par t’avoir. »

Ça n’aurait pas dû me réconforter, mais ce fut le cas malgré tout.

_Pourquoi on ne l'aide pas ? demanda Marc à voix basse.

_Parce qu'on n'aide pas Van Gogh à peindre, Thomas Edison à inventer ou Kristen Stewart à tirer la gueule, répondit Dick avec un soupir admiratif. C'est inutile.

_Ooooh ! (Marc pose sa tête sur l'épaule de Dick.) C'est magnifique.

Cette garce ! Rien que d'y penser, la moutarde me Certaines écoles au nez.

montait de nouveau demandaient à leurs élèves de faire semblant d'être les parents d'un æuf ; la nôtre avait utilisé des petits plants de romarin en pots. Quand j'avais refusé de prêter à Jessica le numéro de Glamour consacré aux bals de fin d'année, elle s'était vengée en kidnappant mon romarin et m'avait ensuite envoyé des demandes de rançon bourrées de fautes d'orthographe et accompagnées de brins de romarin (« Voilà la preuve que nous avons votre plant!! Renoncez au magazine ou votre romarin ne garnira jamais aucun plat !»). Refusant de négocier avec une terroriste, j'avais accepté mon 8 en sciences, puis porté fièrement mon déshonneur tels des escarpins Jimmy Choo de la saison passée. À ce jour, ni elle ni moi ne supportions l'odeur du romarin.

Malgré tout, je parvins à ne pas sauter dans tous les sens, surexcitée. Quelque chose n'allait pas chez ma meilleure amie et elle avait de toute évidence besoin de mon aide ! Quelle chance que quelque chose n'aille pas chez ma meilleure amie et qu'elle ait de toute évidence besoin de mon aide!

- Oui. Comme je l'avais expliqué, je n'étais pas une bonne personne.

"Mmm. S’exprimait-il depuis un tunnel où la lumière déclinait à vive allure ? ou la rage éclipsait-elle tout sauf le besoin de lui arracher la colonne vertébrale par le cul pour l’étrangler avec ?"

Jessica's acting weird, Sinclair wants to buy a tanning bed, Betsy doesn't want to have anything to do with Hell, and the AntiChrist is pissed. Minor spoiler about the end of UNDEAD AND UNSURE...

(minor spoiler)

...Marc delivered Nick and Jessica's twins. In the mansion. Betsy was appropriately appalled. Also: warnings for severe pottymouth.

CHAPTER FOUR

A flight of stairs and several hallways and doors later, and I found Jessica in her room up to no good. Not ‘are you hiding up here because it’s your turn to change a poopy diaper’? no good. ‘Clandestine research followed by hurriedly shoving papers under the bed when she saw me’ no good.

“Betsy!” She finished shoving papers around and glared up at me from her spot on the floor beside her and DadDick’s* bed. “Scared the hell out of me.”

“Uh-huh, and that’s not futive at all. Jess, what’s going on?”

“What? I’m just sorting. And thinking. And then more sorting. Yes.” She got to her feet and began prowling around the room. She’d stuck a clipping in her back pocket, but I couldn’t think of a subtle way to grab it other than tripping her, sitting on her, and emptying her pockets. For which I would pay and pay and pay. I was stronger and faster; Jess was smarter and cherished grudges like diabetics cherished insulin. Just the thought of all the terrible things she could do to me was enough to make me feel guilty for even thinking of assault as a way to get to the bottom of this, however careful I would have been. And even though she’d made her view on being turned into a vampire mucho clear before I cured her cancer (long story), I could absolutely see her nagging a vamp into turning her just so she could keep punishing me through the centuries. Also, the tripping and sitting and pocket-rifling wasn’t a nice thing to do to a best pal. It’s very wrong that I thought of that one last.

She looked startled, but that could have been the ‘do—she kept her black hair pulled back so tightly her eyebrows were always arched. Her manicure (lime green, urrgghh) was chipping, something pre-twins/not-insane Jess would never have allowed, and her t-shirt had splotches on it that, luckily, were only spit-up formula. (I hadn’t given one thought to Enhanced Vampire Senses + Newborns = Gross while she was pregnant, and really, I should have. Ohhhhh, I should have.) Her jeans were so faded they were nearly white, and she was annoyed that skinny jeans were out again. She was so painfully thin (when carrying Thing One and Thing Two**, she’d looked like a tent pole someone had hung a bag of volleyballs on), any jeans she pulled on were skinny jeans, even just a few weeks after popping twins.

“Why are you in here?” she barked.

“Because I’m lonesome?”

Jess snorted but didn’t kick me out.

I sidled closer to the bed but knew I was no match for Jessica’s chaotic ‘pile everything into a box beneath the bed’ filing system. For a modern businesswoman, she was a Luddite when it came to paperwork. A big fan of old-fashioned wooden file cabinets and long plastic containers which she stuffed with newspaper and mag clippings, she still shopped at Hallmark, for God’s sake. Unless I was willing to sneak in here when she and DadDick were out, or sleeping the sleep of the deeply sleep-deprived, and then rummage endlessly through decades of clippings while trying to figure out which story had grabbed her interest, or worse, which story was missing and now riding in her back pocket, I’d have to finesse it out of her. Subtlety, that was key.

“Tell me what’s wrong or I’ll sit on you!”

“What?”

My finesse sucked. Time for a new tactic. “So how’s my mom?”

“Huh?” Jess had at least ten I.Q. points on me, which anyone overhearing this would assume was a testing error. “What?”

“My mom. Who you went to see.” Wait. Whom? Whom she went to see? Gah, Sinclair was rubbing off me in all the wrong ways. “With the babies you forgot.”

“Oh. I didn’t...” She waved vaguely at me. “You know.”

“I don’t know, Jess, you post-natal weirdo. What’s going on? You look like someone clipped you with a brick.” Sighing at the effort this was taking (vampire queen/best friend’s work was never done), I plunked down on the queen-sized bed she’d had for a decade. Jess was indifferent to her riches (the wealth was impressive, but her shitpoke father earned it all, making it much less awesome in her eyes) and formed deep emotional attachments to restaurants, pals (we’ve been friends since junior high), and beds. (Also, DadDick and the babies, I assumed. Before you accuse me of vanity, I listed myself second on that list.) So the bed didn’t so much sag as suck me in, like a quicksand quilt. But I was used to its ways and kept both feet on the floor.

I really liked Jessica’s room; this wasn't the first time I'd come looking for her and stayed to yak. It was the most modern in terms of set-up and decoration, the carpet a deep caramel, the walls tan, the furniture all light wood (blonde wood?). The wallpaper was red and tan and there were red accents all over the place, including the quilt and several picture frames.

And gawd, when would she stop displaying the one of us on my 21st birthday? Drunk was not a good look for me. Jess looked cutely rumpled and was grinning into the camera while hoisting a daiquiri-filled plastic cup, her arm slung around my shoulders in what looked like camaderie, but in fact she was keeping me from pitching face-first into the floor. I was so much more than rumpled, sweaty, and my face was so flushed I looked like I’d sworn off sunscreen before napping in a tanning bed. My t-shirt was more stained than a new mom’s, making it difficult to make out the logo (Step Aside, Coffee, This Is A Job For Alcohol), but worst of all was the expression on my face. One eye was half-closed, my mouth was hanging open like a dying trout, I was giving Jess the side-eye stinkeye (she had just cut me off, which unfortunately did not prevent the vomiting that started an hour later), and basically looked like a crazy cat lady in her youth, before the cats.

And it had pride of place on the wall! I could only pray that once the twins were sleeping more, Jess would update their walls with baby pics, a new parent phase I was actually looking forward to.

I wriggled on the bed, trying to get more comfortable without actually getting slurped in. Sinclair and I slept on a—wait for it—superking. Yeah. I know. But the thing was doomed; we went through half a dozen a year. Was there such a bed as a superduperking?

“Did somebody come up to you and say something? Are—nnf! Stop it, bed, I know all your tricks...are you getting audited? Were you meeting a new boyfriend?” The last was completely out of character, but Jess was a sleep-deprived mom now, and they were crazy.

“Yes. But it’ll be fine.”

“Wait, yes?” Oh God! In a moment of carelessness one of my feet had left the floor! I shifted my weight until I had them both planted again. Might be time to make a break for it. “Which yes?”

“I’ve got to go,” she replied, laying off the pacing in favor of darting to the door. Her fingers went to the clipping barely peeking out of her pocket, double-checking to see if it was still there. “I’ll take the babies to see your mom.”

I was so startled I shifted my weight and both feet left the floor. “Good God, woman, you are losing it! You’ve got to tell me what’s wrong. Okay? Jess?” Her hand was on the knob, her bod was through the door. “You get back here, young lady!” Normally I could have crossed the room and blocked the door before she got anywhere near it, but normally I wasn’t being inexorably devoured by Bedzilla. I was reduced to wrenching myself upright with superhuman strength to escape, finally reaching the door only to almost knock the vampire king on his ass.

“Aw, fuck!”

Sinclair beamed. His vampire reflexes had saved him from my vampire klutziness. “Darling! You missed me.”

* Betsy's current nickname for Det. Nicholas Berry, Jessica's boyfriend. Don't try to make it make sense.

** The twins haven't been named yet. Betsy has also referred to them as Salt and Pepper, Frick and Frack, and Super and Duper. She also thinks the babies are lazy.