Undead 11, Undead and Unstable - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,41

mess of shattered glass splinters and milk and a little bit of her sluggish vamp blood. “Damn.”

“Let me take a look,” Marc said, extending his hand. He’d said it with such authority that even as she let him grab her by the wrist, she looked bemused. “Huh. Not too bad. Let’s get it rinsed out first.”

“I’ll be fine. You must know that.”

“Humor the Walking Dead Doc, willya? This is the perfect way for me to keep busy. It’s not like if I fuck up I could do any real damage to you.”

“How comforting,” she said wryly, but suffered herself to be pulled to her feet, and obediently followed him to the bathroom down the hall, the one with the first aid kit.

Then I was in the kitchen by myself, with toaster innards all over the table and a mess of glass splinters and milk.

What just happened?

TWENTY-NINE

“So she managed to stop being evil for three seconds and begged you to help her?” Jessica was strolling beside me down the aisle, popping green grapes into her mouth. “Weird. Or a trick. Or a weird trick.”

“Tell me,” I said gloomily. “I think I like Wrinkly Me better when she’s being an imperious asshat.”

“Glad I was napping and missed it.”

Say it twice, honey. “Yeah. I sort of wish I’d missed it.”

“Nope. That’s why you get all the queen perks.” She popped another grape into her mouth. “Comes with the job.”

“Oh, perks? Is that what those are?” I reached out a hand and tumbled two cans of cranberry jelly into our cart. “Perks, my luscious white butt.”

“Don’t make me think about your butt. No, not that kind. Get the real stuff.”

I eyed the two cans rolling around with the can of sweet potatoes. “That is the real stuff.”

“Cranberries are not can-shaped. Ergo, those aren’t proper cranberries.”

I thought about running her down with the cart, then reconsidered. Probably couldn’t displace her mass with one measly grocery cart, anyway. “I’m hanging on by a thread here, Jess. A goddamn thread.”

“Oh, here we go.”

“I’ve gotta keep Zombie Marc occupied while Decrepit Me is slumming in her past for mysterious reasons she won’t explain while you’re furiously gestating, Sinclair’s hiding from me so I don’t accidentally skin him and then write on him, Nick keeps changing his name, I stupidly decided to host Thanksgiving, my mom’s dating a guy who looks like a giant baby, and I haven’t seen my brother-slash-foster son in days and don’t dare let him anywhere near the mansion right now. A goddamn thread!”

“Canned cranberries are lame.”

“Canned cranberries are the only thing I like about Thanksgiving.” I whipped two more cans into the cart. “Canned cranberries are the only thing letting me hang on to the shreds of my so-called sanity.”

“At least buy real sweet potatoes.”

“Canned sweet potatoes are real, you enormous harpy!”

She shook the bag of grapes, now half empty, at me. “Are you trying to make me body conscious? I’m creating life here.”

“Yeah, listen, that reminds me. There’s no way in heck you can be due next summer.”

“Sure I can.”

“Jessica. Seriously. Look at you—and I say this with love—but look at you. You’re huge!”

“Maybe I got my dates mixed up.” She shrugged. Gulp, gulp, and more grapes disappeared down her gullet. What the heck … if she didn’t care, then I didn’t, either. She probably did have her dates mixed up, what with all the weirdness that had been in our lives the last few years.

“This is the kind of thing we need to put on the spreadsheet.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Never mind, we’ll talk about it later. Because right now, I’ve got bigger problems.” I glanced at her belly. Bigger emotionally, not bigger physically, clearly… “Oooch over, I gotta grab a turkey.”

“Do you even know how to make a turkey?”

“God makes turkeys, not me. I know how to cook ’em, though.” I’d gone through a Martha Stewart phase after I dropped out of college. Jessica (who’d been majoring in psych at the time) explained that I was trying to control my environment, since I felt so out of control after getting kicked out. I mean, dropping out.

I also knew how to make “real” cranberry sauce, but then found out the real stuff is overrated. Who wants to spend the night picking cranberry skins out of your teeth? Blurgh. A wiggly can-shaped pile of cranberry jelly was the way to go.

“Oh, come on! A Butterball?”

“It’s a turkey, Jess. We need one. And here’s a bunch of ’em.” I pawed through the