warn everyone. I’d have to let my friends and family know about the awful thing I hadn’t done yet. Just when I thought their opinion of me couldn’t plummet further . . .
“I-I thought you should know.” I shook my head and stared at the floor. It was very hard to look my husband in the eyes just now. “I didn’t want to tell you.”
“No. I imagine you didn’t.” He put a finger beneath my chin and raised my head. “Do you know, I haven’t been afraid of anyone until you cured Jessica’s cancer? After my twin was murdered, I feared nothing. I felt nothing. Now the only thing I fear is you. I shall pause so you can make a sarcastic observation.”
“And a smoothie made with frozen, not fresh, strawberries! And having someone fill up your Jaguar with regular unleaded, not premium!” It nearly burst out of me. He knew me so well. “You’re afraid of lots of things.”
“Yes, thank you for comparing my fear to petrol. I don’t mind, you know.”
I was getting that surreal am-I-drunk-or-just-weirded-out feeling. “Don’t mind what?”
“Being afraid of you. Well. I mind, but it doesn’t prey on me. And the reason it doesn’t—”
“Maybe we should be getting back in there with Marc and the Marc Thing and the others.” How long had we been yakking in this secluded hall, anyway? Time was a-wastin’.
“—is because I love you more than I fear you.”
“Okay.” That didn’t seem adequate, so I added, “Thanks. I think you’re neat-o, too.”
Sinclair rubbed his forehead with a familiar I’m-getting-a-migraine-and-want-to-shoot-someone expression. “Frightened of an idiot; it is a shameful, shameful day for the House of Sinclair.”
“The House of Sinclair?” I shrieked. Lame! So completely fully utterly laaaaaame! “House of Sinclair! Oh, that’s a riot. What’s our family crest, a cross with the international symbol for No slashed across it? A blender wrought in gold leaf?”
“Thank you as always for your courteous attention and appropriate commentary.” He grabbed my wrist, swung around, and back to the kitchen we went.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nickie-Dickie-Tavvie (best Rudyard Kipling story ever) held a gun on the Marc Thing while Tina taped him to the fridge. I was gripping the cross on my necklace . . . one twitch, and maybe not even one, and I was gonna jam it through his forehead.
I had to stare for a good thirty seconds to understand what I was seeing. I thought the hallway had been surreal? Sinclair was right; I was an idiot. (He was also a jerk: who calls the awesome and only love of his life an idiot? Note to me: jerk his testicles up to his nostrils, then twist. Then nobly accept his apology. Repeat.)
Tina had yanked the fridge out from the wall and unplugged it. She’d found several rolls of duct tape—you know how most people have a junk drawer in their kitchen? Yeah, well, in our Green Mill–sized kitchen, we had a junk cabinet, and in that cabinet were many rolls of duct tape. (Also many rolls of regular tape, index cards, Post-its, pens and pencils, markers, string—who used string anymore?—and various envelopes. And that was only the first shelf.)
Old vampires like Tina and Sinclair loved duct tape. Looooooved it. They didn’t like just using it for what it was intended (e.g., fixing, repairing, undoing), they made things out of it. Pretty much any vampire born before duct tape had been invented thought it was the coolest stuff on earth. Velcro-cool. IPod cool.
Anyway, Tina was taping the Marc Thing to the fridge. And doing it at ramped-up vampire speed. So what I saw was basically a blur of Tina spooling tape all over the Marc Thing like Charlotte spewed web for Wilbur. Which the Marc Thing found hilarious.
It was all surreal enough to almost make me forget the pain of my mashed ribs. Which, to be honest, were feeling better and better. I hadn’t had any blood in—what century was I in? Okay, not quite right, I’d munched a bit on Sinclair before all the madness started (again), but it wasn’t the first time I noticed I was needing less blood and healing faster.
Something to wonder about, some other time.
“You’d be surprised,” Dickie/Nickie was telling Jessica, who looked as fascinated as I felt. “You can’t break it—most people can’t break it, and look how many rolls she’s going through!—and you can’t untie it. It’s as good as rope made out of Holy Water.”
“The things I learn when I’ve been knocked up,” she commented.
“So many questions,” Marc agreed,