liquor-store clerk and she was a crack-addled petty thief. It was never a good sign when the Antichrist dropped expletives. “Just let me enjoy the moment, okay? You’ve agreed to give back the book, the devil’s pissed at us, and—”
“Hey!”
“—and Antonia—”
“Dammit, what the hell?”
I looked—that was a familiar voice. And it was coming from my closet. “And Antonia—the good one—oh my God, I can’t believe it . . . I mean, I believe it, but it’s so unreal! Even though it’s happening so, by definition, it’s very real.”
“I didn’t exactly agree to give—” Laura began.
Muffled, from the far back corner of my walk-in: “Somebody better tell me what the hell I’m doing in this closet right now!”
“And Antonia’s back,” I finished. I’d recognize those growled dulcet tones anywhere.
“Betsy, about the book . . . we’re going to need it, and I’m going to help you, and I think together we can fix things, but I didn’t agree to—”
“Whoa!” I scrambled out of the way as Garrett darted down the hallway toward my room. Only my vampire nimbleness saved me from getting squished when he flew across the threshold. He didn’t so much open my closet door as yank it off its hinges. Then Antonia was rushing out—clogs flew everywhere—and into his arms so quickly she knocked him over. They practically made their own shock wave when they came together: ka-WHAM!
Momentum brought them sliding to a stop about a foot from my ankles. I could see Antonia looked exactly as she had in life . . . still beautiful (it was disgusting how many werewolves and vamps were stupidly gorgeous). She had the build of a swimsuit model and the complexion of an Irish milkmaid who put sunscreen on before she even got out of bed. Soooo irritating. And hell must have a terrific salon, because her lustrous dark hair shone and her lean limbs were as finely toned as ever. In fact, I could see more of her limbs than I wanted as the two of them were ripping off each other’s clothes.
Wait. They issued clothing in hell? Or did you have to, I don’t know, pack a suitcase? Or a steamer trunk?
While I pondered this fascinating quandary, Antonia looked up long enough from trying to devour Garrett alive—that’s how it looked to me, anyway—to say, “Hey, bimbo. Thanks for the ticket out of hell.”
For Antonia, that was sincere, heartfelt, tearful gratitude. Heck, I was almost tearing up at the warmth of her thanks. I covered it pretty well, though. “Don’t have sex with him in here, you whore.”
Predictably, they both ignored me. “Hey. Hey! You can pay me back by fixing the closet door you broke through. And by doing that somewhere else. Oh, come on! Do not, do not have sex on my bedroom floor. At least move the extra shoes out of the . . . oh, God. Oh my God. How did you do that? I can’t even imagine how you did that to something as big as—”
Laura had seized my elbow and was dragging me away from the scene of desecration. Thank goodness, because although I didn’t want them to defile my carpet, I wanted to see them do it even less. Yet I was frozen. The whole thing was like a shuttle crash in slow motion. You know how in action movies the hero always leaps forward in slow motion to stop something terrible? And you can hear his long, drawn-out, “Noooooooooo . . . !” Yeah. It was exactly like that, except I didn’t have to pay $8.75 to see it.
“At least move my end table—” The crash of shattering glass cut me off. “You guys! Gross! I forbid it! I’m the queen of the vampires and you can’t have sex right now on my . . . oh, man. That’s not gonna come out.” I looked at Laura as she mercifully pulled my bedroom door shut. “That won’t ever come out, Laura. And there isn’t a dry cleaner on the planet who will touch it. See? See what I have to deal with?”
Laura was unmoved by their romantic reunion and my revulsion at what I had (almost) seen. “We should go tell your husband everything that’s happened.”
“Okay. Do we have a CliffsNotes version? Because telling Sinclair every single detail will take a long time. Hey, let’s start with me making your mom my bitch and finish with ‘and now Garrett and Antonia are defiling our bedroom with fluids no one should be