I was Wonder Woman, I was Power Girl, I was—
Sinclairenstein reached out, flash-quick, and whipped the sheets away. It was like an evil, sexy magic trick. “Darling, is it your intention to show the household the color of your nipples? And that you have not one, but two dimples on your—”
“Shut up. I’ll get dressed. Never mind my dimples.”
“Oh, I never do,” he said, surging to his feet so quickly, if I’d blinked I’d have missed it. “I don’t mind this one—”
“Hey!”
“—or this one.”
“Yeeek!”
CHAPTER TWO
“You’re probably all wondering why I’ve called you here.” I tried, and failed, not to stare at Jessica’s gigantic gut.
“Not really,” The Thing with the Gut replied. “You’re back from hell and chock-full of gossip.”
“Intel,” I grumbled. “Gossip is what old ladies do after church.”
“Gossip is what you do, every day. And given the way you can’t not stare at our kid,” Nick added, sitting beside my best friend with an arm slung casually across her shoulders, “I’m guessing we’re living in an altered time stream.”
I gaped. I couldn’t help it. Every word I had ever uttered since the age of twenty-nine months (shut up, I was a slow talker) ran right out of my brain. I was morbidly aware my mouth was hanging open, and prayed most of the bugs in the mansion were dead on one of a hundred windowsills and not flying around looking for something to fly into. “I, uh, well, that’s a real time-saver for me. I’ll come right out and admit it. I thought this would take longer to explain.”
Wordlessly, they jerked their thumbs at Sinclair. Seeing me stare and flop still more, Jessica added, “You want the CliffsNotes version?”
“Are you two done? Sounds like you’re done. Thank God you’re done.” Another roommate, Dr. Marc Spangler, shoved the swinging kitchen door open and marched straight to the blender, which was oozing with strawberry-banana smoothies. It was a lava flow of delicious strawberry-icy goodness!
He poured himself a generous cup, stared at the fridge where Tina kept her vodka, debated leaping off the wagon, decided to cling to said wagon for another hour, turned away from the fridge, and plopped onto one of the kitchen chairs around our big, wide wooden table. You could slaughter and dress a moose on the thing. We mostly just drank smoothies there, though.
A quick word about Tina’s vodka collection. Like all vampires, she was constantly thirsty. Unlike many (many being my code for less than a dozen) she tried to keep it at bay with frozen drinks made from potatoes. She also adored variety. Not that you could tell from her schoolgirl-bait wardrobe. Wait. Did schoolgirl-bait mean she was dressing to bait schoolgirls or was bait to people who liked—argh, focus!
Anyway, in our freezer lurked cinnamon-flavored vodka and bacon-flavored vodka. Ditto chili pepper and bison grass and bubble gum. Go ahead and barf . . . I nearly did.
“Now that you two’ve finished your unholy banging,” Marc began, taking a monster slurp, “tell me all about the past. Is it smelly? Is the food great? Do they really say ‘prithee’? And how come Laura’s not here?”
“Laura didn’t come back with me.” Even as I said it I realized it was weird. “I mean, she made a doorway to here for me, but she stayed in hell. Or made herself a doorway and went to her apartment from hell. Or both. Or neither.”
“Ah, beloved, one of the things I most cherish about you is your attention to detail.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll cherish you for shutting up now. I’m not my sister’s keeper.” Though if anyone needed one, the Antichrist qualified.
Marc was gulping his smoothie, and Jessica and Nick were watching him with some fascination. He had told me once that he’d gotten in the habit of bolting liquid meals when he was an intern. He could gulp down the equivalent of two pints of strawberries in three monster swallows. When he was off the wagon, he drank all his meals.
It was an indicator of how little I wanted to talk about the future and the past by how interested I was letting myself get in something I was normally leery about discussing. “Uh, so, how are the AA meetings going?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Don’t take my inventory, Betsy.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I admitted over Nick’s snort.
“It means addicts in recovery know what they’re supposed to do to stay clean and whether or not they’re doing it. They dislike being reminded of it.”
“Is that what