Undead 11, Undead and Unstable - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,23
ceiling. “It’s just so creepy. He’s our friend and I wanted him back—”
“Monkey’s paw,” Sinclair muttered.
“—but there’s a zombie creeping around our house.”
“He has to keep busy.”
Boy, did he. Marc had explained that he needed tons of mental stimulation as a zombie, and thus was doing everything he could to keep his zombie brain sharp. Apparently the modern zombie fed from mentally taxing work (like accountants, I guess), which kept him from needing brains. Excuse me: Braaaaaaaains. Marc was a modern cuddly zombie as opposed to a revolting terrifying George Romero creation.
Okay. Fine. We could adapt. We had to adapt to weird stupid things all the time. But we still had the problem of knowing a zombie was creeping around the house trying to keep busy so he wouldn’t rot.
I wriggled around on our new bed (Sinclair and I occasionally broke our beds, which was why we were on bed no. 7 … thank goodness Sinclair was rich!), which mussed our sheets.
“Now I’m apprehensive and my feet are cold,” Sinclair sighed.
“You think I’m any happier? It’s so creepy knowing he’s creeping around being all creepy.”
We stared at the ceiling for a few more minutes. “It may be psychological,” Sinclair said.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I cannot actually hear anything. We did not know he was in the house before he revealed himself. Now we know he is not only here, he is a zombie. Perhaps our tension is psychological.”
“I have no idea what you just said. Oh, fuck.”
“Was that a request, or an epithet?”
“My mom’s supposed to drop BabyJon off tomorrow.” BabyJon was my half brother/ward/son, kinda. But because I was a vampire, and all sorts of bad shit tended to happen around me, I often fobbed him off on my poor mother. The good news was, she’d had to baby-sit so often she was actually getting attached to the kid. “This is gonna be so lame … hey, thanks for watching our baby yet again, and by the way, you can’t drop him off because now there’s a zombie in the house and we’re not sure he can be trusted, here’s more money for diapers. Ugh.”
“The alternative is even less pleasant.”
“Dammit!”
We stared at the ceiling some more. “At least Laura called me right back.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah. But she wants to meet at this farm outside the Cities, God knows why.” My husband flinched at the G word, and I muttered an apology. To all vampires except me, the G word was like the lash of a whip, or a summons to traffic court: unbearably painful. “She said she’s got stuff to show me and she wanted to meet on neutral territory. So some farm on the outskirts of Mendota Heights qualifies, I guess.”
“I shall accompany you.”
“Figured as much.”
We examined the ceiling in silence for a few seconds, broken by Sinclair’s hopeful “Perhaps, to take our mind off the problem, we could—”
“Uh, no. It’s just too weird. I won’t be able to not hear him while we’re—nope. Sorry.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
Stupid Thanksgiving.
FIFTEEN
“It’s here, okay? Turn left here, that’s what her directions say.”
“Her directions do not say anything; they read.”
“Oh, you’re channeling Alec Baldwin in Malice now?”
“I do not know what that means.”
“Means you’re being a jerk.”
“Is that more or less desirable than being a bitch?”
“God God God God God God God.”
“Stop that at once!” My husband shuddered all over and we nearly went into a ditch. Served him right for taking the Volkswagen. He had a garage full of really cool cars and he picked the Jetta? The romance was dead. “Really, Elizabeth. That is beneath you.”
“Ha! Shows what you know. There’s not much that’s beneath me.” Wait. Did I just insult myself?
“Indeed,” he muttered, finally turning left. We were in the boonies somewhere south of Mendota Heights, and the farm my sister wanted to meet us at looked deserted.
And it wasn’t much of a farm, either. There were no barns, no outbuildings of any kind except a big cream-colored garage, no livestock, no hay sheds, no corn cribs, no bores (except the one I was married to—hee!). Just a garage, a driveway, a short sidewalk leading to the house, and the house: two stories, cream siding with dark blue shutters. The place was dark except for what I assumed was the living room.
“Why’d Laura want to meet us here?”
“I dare not guess.”
“Well, dare not to park crooked again, too.”
“I have never once parked ‘crooked.’”
“Except for last week.”
“I was following the lines! That was a forty-five-degree parking spot!”