Dead Over Heels

No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it . . . the honeymoon would be as short as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.

—THOMAS JEFFERSON

I do not want a honeymoon with you. I want a good marriage. I want progress, and I want problem solving which requires my best efforts and also your best efforts.

—GERALD FORD

Too fucking busy, and vice versa.

—DOROTHY PARKER,

in response to her editor’s request

for work on her honeymoon

Author’s Note

The events of this novella take place a week after the events in Undead and Uneasy.

Prologue

The king and queen are coming to New York.”

The vampire, an ancient creature even by the standards of the undead, smiled. “Don’t tease, Robert. It’s so unkind.”

“I’m not teasing, my dear one. They’re coming.

They’ll be here the day after tomorrow.”

“What fun!”

Although he had made this vampire, as he had made many others, he was a little afraid of it. “Or, we could leave town.”

“Leave? This is our territory!”

“Yes, and since they took power, no one has been able to stand against The One and Sinclair.”

“The One,” the vampire scoffed. “Barely—what? Two years old? I don’t believe she even exists.”

“She killed Nostro,” he said quietly. “And Marjorie.”

“They were sloppy and complacent.”

And we aren’t? he thought but did not say.

“Someone killed them, but I’ll believe in this The One nonsense when I actually see her. No, it’s too too good. If I believed in such things I would say it’s meant to be. The king! Coming here! Of all the places he could have chosen, he’s coming here. Oh, I can’t wait!” The creature frowned. “Robert, you don’t seem terribly enthused.”

Terribly terrified was more like it, but he had no intention of admitting that. Instead, he sighed soundlessly, without breath. “So I take it we aren’t leaving town?”

Siamese blue eyes narrowed at him. “I will, of course, do as my sire commands.”

But that was a lie. He wasn’t in charge here, and they both knew it.

“Then we stay,” he said, surrendering. And the thing he had made chortled and bounced and giggled, and he smiled at it, and hated it, but he loved it, too.

Because he had made it, all those years ago when there were more horses in Manhattan than automobiles.

Chapter 1

I was so excited to land at the airport in New York City (La Guardia or the other one . . . I wasn’t paying attention to the pilot’s intercom ramblings) that I didn’t even bother with the stairs leading from the private plane to the ground. I just jumped, putting one hand on the railing and vaulting over, my black Gucci pumps dangling from my first two fingers. Didn’t even feel the shock in my knees when I hit.

This was not a trick I could have pulled off while I was alive.

At the head of the stairs, my husband (husband! bridegroom! Yessssss!), Sinclair, king of the vampires, shook out the Wall Street Journal, folded it, and scowled down at me.

“How completely indiscreet, Elizabeth.”

“Aw, Cooper doesn’t care.”

“Didn’t see a thing, mum,” Cooper assured me in his adorable Irish accent. He wasn’t our pilot, and this wasn’t our plane. It was my best friend, Jessica’s. She’d lent it to us for our honeymoon, told us we could go wherever we wanted. Cooper had worked for Jessica for ten years and, as they say, knew where all the bodies were buried. “An’ by the way, glad to see you’re not dead. That was a nasty business a couple of springs back.”

“Horrible practical joke,” I said, referring to my firing, death, thirtieth birthday, and return from the grave as the long-foretold vampire queen. The people who didn’t know I was a vampire either never knew I’d been killed, or thought it was a nasty trick thought up by my (late) evil stepmother. My friends and I did absolutely nothing to disabuse them of their silly-ass notions. “Really really bad taste. But it all worked out in the end.”

“Yes indeed, mum,” Cooper said, his blue eyes twinkling. Before Sinclair, I’d been a real sucker for Black Irish . . . that thick dark hair . . . those big blue eyes . . . umm . . .

Meanwhile, Sinclair (who wasn’t Irish . . . in fact, I had no idea what he was) was gliding down the steps like a beauty queen (all he lacked was the tiara and bouquet of roses . . . and the tearful wave), when I knew perfectly well he could step off the IDS Tower and not even rumple his tie.

“Try to contain yourself,” he sighed, moving past me toward the waiting limo.

“But it’s New York City! And we’re married! And we’re in New York!” I, the country mouse, ran after him in my bare feet. I was wearing a sky blue shirt dress, no stockings. Oh, and my wedding ring! Not to mention my non-cursed engagement ring. But that was a whole other story. “Don’t you think it’s going to be a blast?”

He muttered something that I, even with my super vampire hearing, couldn’t catch. Probably just as well. Behind us, Cooper was calling, “See you in a week, mum! Sir!”

I flapped a wave over one shoulder and practically dived into the limo (fortunately, the door was being held open by the driver, a tall, lean, gorgeous black guy with cheekbones you could cut yourself on and the most amazing green eyes). Sinclair got in on the other side and shook out his paper once again.

“The Grange Hotel?” the driver asked.

“Yes,” Sinclair replied absently as his pants made the dreaded chirrup. He fished out his cell phone, flipped it open, and blinked at the screen.

I sank back against the luxurious leather seats, halfway to full pout. “Don’t even tell me. Tina called again.”

“No matter where I am in the world,” he reminded me mildly, “I still have business to attend to. And so do you.”

“Dude! It’s our honeymoon, all right? If that thing beeps in your pants one more time, I’m going to eat it, understand? Now shut the fucking phone, toss the fucking paper, and bask in our mutual love and joy, dammit!”

“I’m not sure bask is the verb I’d choose,” he replied, but at least he put the phone away.

“Nice of Jess to arrange a limo,” I commented, relieved to finally get a fraction of his attention. We’d been married for three whole days and I still couldn’t believe it had really happened. Of course, according to my bridegroom, we’d been married since the first time we’d had sex. Don’t even get me started. “It’s not like her to throw her money around. And the plane! You believe she let us have her plane?”

“Point.” Sinclair frowned. With his dark good looks, dark suit, broad shoulders, and strong jaw, he looked formidable anyway; when he wasn’t smiling it was almost frightening. “She’s the least pretentious billionaire I’ve ever known.”

“Well, it’s her dad’s money.”

He gave me a long look and I nearly drowned in those dark dark eyes. “Correction. He’s dead. It’s her money.”

“Hwhuh?”

“It’s. Her. Money,” he repeated, well used to me being a little slow to pick up on current events.

I licked my lips. Jessica’s dad was a touchy subject. Fucking incestuous greedy arrogant asshole; if he was alive, I’d kill him. Seriously. And I am not a girl who kills lightly, as anyone who knows me will totally understand.

“I mean, she doesn’t consider it hers. It’s not like she earned it. Hey, I’m not putting her down, but that’s the way it is: she didn’t earn any of it. That’s why she doesn’t throw it around, and that’s why she has a day job.”

Sinclair just looked at me. He knew me well enough to know when I wasn’t coughing up the whole story. But in this case, it was just a theory. And the theory was, because Jessica had so recently (like, last week) recovered from terminal cancer, she was giddily celebrating life. (In all modesty, I must say that I cured her cancer. Yep. It’s true. But that’s a whole other story. Yay, me!)

“Including throwing planes and limos our way,” I continued. “God knows what is going on in the mansion back home in St. Paul while we’re away.”

Never mind. I didn’t want to know. I’d landed Sinclair—officially landed him, with paperwork and everything—and that was that. It was all I’d ever wanted, once I got over hating him and decided he was the vampire for me.

Sinclair, bless his cold, dead heart, tossed the newspaper on the floor and moved over until he was sitting beside me. He gave me a long, sweet kiss and cuddled me into his side. “Now, Mrs. Sinclair—”

“I told you, I didn’t take your name!”

“—what would you like to do first?”

“I want to check into the hotel and have nasty kinky sex. Oh, and then go see a Broadway show.”

“Odd,” my husband commented. “I’ve never been alternately intrigued and terrified at the same time.”

“Shut up. There’s lots of good ones.”

We discussed the pros and cons of live theater all the way to the hotel. I’d only seen high school stuff, and the plays at Chanhassen. And although those were pretty good, ergo Broadway would kick ass.

Sinclair, who had seen theater all over the world, begged to differ. And he did. Repeatedly. We had plenty of time, too, because even though it was full dark, traffic was horrendous.

And the noise. It sounded just as busy at ten o’clock at night as it would have during rush hour. And everything was open! Restaurants, convenience stores, shoe stores. It was unbelievable. New York City: the perfect tourist trap for vampires.

The limo driver pulled us right up to the front of the hotel, a forbidding stone building that looked like a transplanted castle. Sinclair helped me out (not that I needed it) while the driver shoved our luggage onto three bellboys.

Hand in hand, we swept into the lobby, me trying not to stare like I had cow shit on my heels, Sinclair looking perfectly at ease. He even yawned and, as we’d snacked on each other during the flight, didn’t have to worry about showing fangs.

Finally, I thought, tightening my grip on his hand, a squeeze that would have broken the metacarpals of most people, I get him to myself, and the Big Apple belongs to us. Oh, thank you, thank you Jesus.

The month leading up to the wedding had been a frightening, lonely time for me and I was very glad to be reunited with my husband. Shit, I was glad he’d made the wedding at all. And now we were here, and I was going to make the most of it. Bet your ass.

Sinclair slammed to a stop so suddenly, and so gracelessly, that I plowed right into his back. “What’s wrong?” I said into the cloth of his suit.

He muttered something, and I peeked around him.

Lounging across from the registration desk, taking up a small table in the bar area, was my best friend Jessica, and her boyfriend, Minneapolis Detective Nick Berry. They were both grinning at us with great big toothy smiles, at least one of which was fake.

“’Bout time you got here,” Jessica said, and raised her Cosmo to me in a toast.

“Oh, fuck me,” I groaned, surprised—but not in a good way.

“I don’t see how we can fit that into the schedule now,” my husband replied, looking as distressed as I’ve ever seen him.

Chapter 2

Wow, great. This is great. Seriously. So great to see you. And what a great surprise ! Now get out. Seriously.”

“Awww, you know I’m your hero.”

Sinclair was overseeing our luggage (as an alternative to strangling Jessica), Detective Nick was still in the lobby, and Jessica and I were arguing in the hallway outside our hotel room. It was a nice hallway . . . crimson carpet, gold wallpaper, gorgeous wall fixtures, dim lighting. Too bad I was so pissed it was totally wasted on me.

“You’re not a tiny bit glad to see me?” Jessica was continuing.

I snapped my attention away from the wall fixtures. “Irrelevant! Now will you get lost already?”

“Don’t you want to go shopping at Macy’s with me?” Jessica had the nerve to sound wounded.

“We have one in the Mall of America,” I said coldly. Also a Bloomingdale’s and an Orange Julius. “And we’ve been a thousand times.”

“Listen, Betsy . . .” Jessica was trying to look earnest, but as usual, her black hair was skinned back so tightly her eyebrows couldn’t move. She could barely blink. Even in the low hallway lighting, her ebony skin shone, but not in a run-for-the-blotting-papers way. She was, as usual, ridiculously beautiful, although still far too thin from the cancer. “I had to come.”

“You had to crash my honeymoon?”

“You make it sound so mean.”

I put my hands behind my back, because they wanted to fly up and fasten around my best friend’s throat. “It is mean, you nimrod! I finally haul Sinclair’s protesting ass to the altar—after rescuing him from certain death, and attending a double funeral, and taking on responsibility for BabyJon, and curing your cancer—and now here I am in New York City for the first time ever, ready to enjoy my honeymoon and you two idiots show up! No offense.”

“Listen . . .” Wary of superior vampire hearing, Jessica tugged me by the elbow about ten feet further down the hallway. I didn’t bother telling her Sinclair could still hear her from inside the room if he put his mind to it. Ears. Whatever. “I know it seems like a rotten trick—”

“‘Oh, sure, Betsy, you guys can borrow my plane, but not until tomorrow . . .’ Giving you plenty of time to beat us here.” Now my hands wanted to fly into my hair and yank, hard. “And dumbass that I am, I actually left our contact information with you.”

“Well, yes, but there was a method to my madness. You see, Nick hates you and Sinclair.”

I blinked. “Yeah. So?”

“So?” Jessica threw her bony arms up in the air. “So? So I finally find a guy who doesn’t give a shit that I gave away more money last year than the Target Corporation. So I finally find a guy who isn’t so busy crushing on my best friend he doesn’t even notice me. So I—”

“Hey, hey!”

“Oh, shut up, you know it’s true. I finally find a guy who likes me for me, and it turns out he hates my best friend and her husband. Not ‘God, they’re boring, I hate going over there’ hate, or ‘I hate how all she talks about is shoes’ hate. Hate hate. ‘I hate war’ hate. ‘I hate plague’ hate.”

I blew out a breath, which wasn’t necessary, but I’d only been dead a couple of years, and old habits died hard. Jessica wasn’t lying, or even exaggerating. Her boyfriend did hate me, and it was a problem.

See, when I was a newborn vampire, out of my mind with the thirst, I’d feasted on Nick. And it . . . sort of drove him crazy. Crying, slobbering crazy. Sinclair had to step in and fix it by erasing Nick’s memory of all events leading from my death.

We’d assumed it worked.

It hadn’t.

It had actually worn off several months ago but, like all cops, Nick could lie like a sociopath. Instead he’d waited and watched. When Jessica had gotten sick, he’d explained in terrifying detail all the things he and his Sig Sauer would do to me if I didn’t cure her. But I’d had plenty of other things on my mind at the time, and as upsetting as it was to find out how he really felt, there hadn’t been much I could do about it.

Frankly, what with one thing and another (the aforementioned rescue, the wedding, Jessica’s miracle cancer cure) I’d managed to put Nick’s simmering hatred out of my mind.

“I can’t have the man I love hating my best friend.”

“So you figure we’ll hang out on my honeymoon and get to be friends again?”

Jessica opened her mouth to reply, but our hotel door popped open and a bellboy (bellman, actually) trotted down the hallway toward us, dressed in the crimson uniform of the hotel staff. He was a wide-eyed redhead with a goatee. Goatees irritated me. Either shave it all off, or grow a proper, Grizzly Adams beard, that was my motto. “Mrs. Sinclair, did you want your shoes kept in the tissue paper, or—”

“It’s not Sinclair and go away,” I snapped, a little too forcefully, as all the expression fell out of his eyes and he spun jerkily around, hit the Exit door, and disappeared.

“Great, he’s probably going to swan into the Hudson,” Jessica said disapprovingly.

“The least of my problems,” I snarled back, pretending I didn’t feel hugely guilty. “Are you saying Nick thought coming to New York was a fine plan?”

“Well . . .”

I got it. “Ah. ‘Hey, Nick, I’ve got a great idea for a way to mess with your archenemies . . . how about we beat them to their hotel and tag along on their honeymoon?’”

Jessica spread her hands and grinned the grin I could never resist. I ground my teeth in a vain attempt to resist. “He did smile. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile when you or Sinclair’s names have come up. What could I do?”

The door opened again and Sinclair’s head popped out, which was as startling as it sounds. “Where did the bellboy go?”

“Bellman,” I said helpfully.

“I’ve got twenty pairs of shoes in here and I don’t know what you”—his eyes narrowed as he took in Jessica’s grin—“I know that look. You’re giving in, aren’t you?”

“It’s not like they’re going to be sharing the room,” I began, but my husband cut me off by shutting our door.

Great.

Jessica coughed. “Sorry,” she almost whispered.

Chapter 3

Dinner was, um, an awkward affair. Nick was morbidly cheerful because he knew he was fucking with us, Jessica was trying to play peacemaker, I was as tense as a boiled cat, and Sinclair was icier than usual.

“Can I tempt you with the dessert specials?” our waiter asked, gliding by for the fiftieth time. He seemed to find us fascinating, and no wonder—we were giving off enough tension to light up the entire island of Manhattan.

“Sure,” Nick said, grinning. He and Jessica had been the only ones to eat, of course, while Sinclair drank glass after glass of Cabernet and I worked my way through four peach daiquiris. “Run ’em by us.”

“Well, we have a lovely crème brûlée—”

As opposed to a disgusting crème brûlée.

“—a flourless chocolate cake with mint hazelnut filling, a vanilla bean gelato, a peach tartin, and a miniature root beer float served in an espresso cup.”

I burst out laughing.

“Careful, Minnesota,” Jessica murmured, looking down at her napkin. “The straw in your hair is showing.”

“I’ll have the crème brûlée,” Nick announced. “Money is no object—he’s paying.” Jerking a thumb in my husband’s direction.

“Can I have the gelato except served as a milk shake?” I asked, when steel pincers clamped down on my forearm and I yelped.

“We are not lingering over this table.”

“O-kay, can I have my arm back?”

“Mrs. Sinclair, do you want to press charges for spousal abuse?”

“Don’t call me that, Nick, you rotten bastard, and I do not. I’ll take that gelato to go,” I added to the waiter, who was unabashedly goggling. And I’d always heard nothing fazed New York waiters.

“We’ll take it in our room,” Sinclair said shortly, standing. “Along with another bottle of the Cabernet. Charge the dinner to our room as well. Jessica. Detective Berry. Good evening.”

And with that, I was unceremoniously hauled out of one of the toniest dining rooms in Manhattan. I would have given Sinclair a kick to the shins, except I caught a glimpse of Nick’s nasty grin and decided I was more pissed at him than my husband.

Chapter 4

Our door had barely snicked shut when Sinclair started in. “This is intolerable and I will not—”

I decided to distract him the best way I knew how. I jumped on him, wrapping my arms around his neck and my ankles around his back. I pressed my mouth to his and licked his teeth. The alternative was engaging him in a lively discussion about that day’s Wall Street Journal.

“Do not think,” my husband gasped, as we staggered around the room together, knocking over lamps and pictures and such, “I am unaware of your motivation.”

“Shut up and fuck me.”

“Oh, I will. I just wanted you to understand I know what you’re up to.”

“Who cares? It’s our honeymoon. Now boink!”

He snickered into my mouth. It always slew him when I used the B word.

“And stop laughing at me!”

“At once, my wife.”

“You liar,” I said, swallowing a giggle of my own.

He tugged at my clothes, and I tugged at his, and we got about two thirds naked and decided that was plenty. Then he was lowering me to the floor.

I couldn’t stop kissing him; his mouth was original sin, and the wine had made his breath sweet and spicy, like the peach tartin I hadn’t ordered. I couldn’t blame him for rushing us out of there but I sure wish I’d been able to order dessert—argh, focus, Betsy!

Let’s see, what’s he doing? Oh, yes! We were more or less naked and I could feel his hands on my inner thighs, spreading my legs apart, could feel his sharp teeth on my tongue.

He entered me and I rose to meet him, pulling his shoulders, pulling him as close as I could. His hands were buried in my hair, pulling, stroking

O Elizabeth my Elizabeth I love I love I love as we thrust against each other And I love you Eric my husband my very own husband and kissed and licked and bit. love I love I love I love

I scrabbled to get even closer, bracing my legs against the wall

Oh Eric that feels so good don’t stop don’t stop don’t WHAT THE HELL?

He stopped. And I was so surprised I barely noticed. “What’s wrong?”

“I—” I was looking right at it and I still couldn’t believe it. “I stuck my shoe in the wall!”

Carefully, he looked over his shoulder. My left leg was in the air (as was my right), but when I’d shifted to get better leverage, my super vampire strength had plunged the heel of my sandal right through the wall, where it stuck fast.

Sinclair looked back at me.

I tried to think of what to say. Stupid vampire strength! “I-I—”

Sinclair burst out laughing. I started to laugh, too, though I was slapping his shoulders and saying, “Stop it! Stop it! It’s not funny! I can’t get down! Help me, you asshat!” and in the end we left the shoe where it was, stuck about four feet up in the wall.

Chapter 5

We slept until sundown, and woke to a message from Jessica inviting us to the joint around the corner for dinner—her treat. Of course, since we couldn’t eat solid food, we were cheap dates, but still. The offer was out there.

We debated it. “This is our honeymoon. It is time for you and I to spend alone.”

“In a city of fifty million people?”

“Eighteen million,” he said dryly. “All of whom are strangers.”

I couldn’t believe I was in the position of defending Jessica and Nick tagging along on our honeymoon. “Yeah, but think of Jessica’s problem.”

“I’m thinking,” he said, “of my own.”

“Yeah, yeah, but come on. Nick hates us, and she sees this as a chance for him to get over that.”

“So we can all be one big happy family.”

“Well. Yeah.” We sort of were, usually . . . when we weren’t in New York, a bunch of us lived in the same house in St. Paul. More or less happily. So it was really bugging me that Nick wasn’t going along with the “come on, get happy” plan. I mean, it was bugging me now that Jessica had reminded me of the problem. “Exactly. Think of the position Jessica’s in . . . if we don’t fix this, she’ll have to pick between me—I mean, us—and him.”

“So?”

“Heartless bastard!” I cried, pounding on his (bare, yum!) chest with my fist.

“Jessica is a beautiful, intelligent, wealthy woman. She will have no trouble finding another boyfriend.”

This just went to show how fucking little Sinclair knew about women in general and my friend in particular.

“She doesn’t want another boyfriend, she wants Nick.”

Sinclair sniffed.

“And you have to admit, this is sort of all our fault.”

“We did what was necessary,” he said with the cool arrogance of someone who’d been walking around on the planet for more than sixty years, “and would do it again. That doesn’t mean we have to share every meal with them while we’re honeymooning.”

“Not every meal,” I compromised.

He rolled his eyes and slipped on a shirt. I fought the urge to slip it back off. “As you wish,” he said. “Not every meal.”

“Yay! I mean, thanks.”

He grunted.

“I’ll call Jess.”

He didn’t bother with a grunt this time. I whipped out my phone and texted, “Dinner OK! See you at 8?”

A few seconds later my phone chirped at me. “8, OK!”

“We’re on.”

“Oh, splendid.”

“Come on, it’ll be—” Fun, I had been about to say, which would only have been the biggest lie since “This won’t hurt a bit.” “Incredibly awkward and weird, but we can skip dessert again.”

“Ah.” He smiled at last and stepped into his boxer shorts . . . unfortunately. “A heroic sacrifice on your part, so I will say no more.”

“Nobody loves a wiseass.”

“Not true at all, my wife.”

Chapter 6

It was, if possible, even worse than the evening before. Jessica was strained and smiled too widely, Sinclair had nothing at all to say, and Nick kept making needling remarks about our Revolting Army of the Undead.

I kept ordering daiquiris.

At least the waiter was nice, though he picked up on the tension and came over only when one of us obviously needed a refill or, in Jessica’s case, more fries. I watched enviously as she plowed through a burger and fries and Nick chewed up a steak and a twice-baked potato. God, I missed solid food.

Finally, Nick pushed it too far with, “What’s the matter, Vampire King? Am I raining on your parade? Tough to slip off and snack on civilians with a cop on your trail?” There was a muffled thump, and I knew Jessica had smashed her giant size-nine foot onto Nick’s boot. Yee-ouch.

“So, anyway,” I said, “no dessert for us, but thanks anyway.”

“Once again you misunderstand my motivation, Detective Berry. If I seem terse it’s not because you are intruding where you are obviously not welcome.”

Oh, ouch, here we go.

“It’s because at least half the staff of our hotel, and at least a third of the guests, are vampires.”

I froze. Jessica froze. Nick froze. Sinclair drained his Merlot.

“Oh, fuck me,” Nick said in a watery voice I’d never heard before. And I had a flash—most of Nick’s fury was really fear.

“We’re not in any danger,” Jessica said firmly, and I could have hugged her. She had about nine yards of guts, and it had nothing to do with being rich. She was just brave. Brave and ballsy and loyal and if she wanted to tag along on my honeymoon to clear up some personal shit, was I going to get in her way? After she hugged me when I came back from the dead?

No.

“They’re the king and queen of the vampires,” she was telling Nick, who had turned as cheesy-pale as the beer he wasn’t drinking. “None of them will touch us without their say-so. Although you’re acting like such a prick, they just might sic one or two of them on us for the hell of it.”

I stifled the impulse to cheer. Also, to rip Sinclair a new one for not mentioning that little factoid. “So when you planned our honeymoon, you picked Vampire Central?”

“Of course.” He had the audacity to look surprised. “Where else would I choose? The staff can accommodate anything we wish. The Grange was a natural choice. Of course”—he gave Nick a heavy-lidded look—“I wasn’t expecting company.”

“How many of the staff?” Nick asked in a voice that sounded like he was being strangled. “And which ones?”

“That,” my husband replied, “I will not tell you.”

Jessica and I looked at the men, then at each other. It was never much fun to watch a pissing contest, especially when the odds were so firmly stacked in one person’s corner.

After a long, awful moment I said, “Jessica’s right, Nick. We’d never let them hurt you.”

“You didn’t even know about them, you stupid bitch!”

“Nick!” Jessica gasped.

Sinclair’s fist slammed on the table, which obligingly cracked. “Do not speak to my wife like that ever again.”

“It’s okay, don’t fight, I’ve been called worse, please don’t fight,” I begged. “Let’s just get the check and get out of here, okay? Oh, and, um, pay for the table.”

“Go back to Vampire Central?” Nick cried, aghast.

“Well, there’s a Hilton down the block.”

“Hilton,” Sinclair sneered. “Enjoy.”

“What’ve you got against the Hilton corporation?” I cried. “Besides them, you know, spawning Paris and all.”

“Isn’t that more than enough?”

“I’ve had more than enough,” Jessica snapped.

“Check, please!”

Chapter 7

We’d barely gotten down the block when we saw the flashing lights and crowd. “Uh-oh,” Nick said. “Crime scene.”

“The perfect end to a perfect evening,” Sinclair muttered.

“You guys stay here. I’m gonna check it out.”

“You’re a little out of your jurisdiction!” I called after him. “Like, by two thousand miles!”

“Fifteen hundred,” Sinclair and Jessica said in unison.

“You know, now that he’s gone, how much longer are you going to let him torture us?”

“I’m sorry,” Jessica said at once. “I guess this is turning out to be a pretty crummy idea. I just thought—I don’t know what I thought.” She cleared her throat. “You, uh, will mention to the staff not to snack on us, right?”

“There’s an old vampire saying,” I told her. “Don’t shit where you eat.”

“Ah, yes, that old vampire saying,” Sinclair said, smiling for the first time since the waiter took our order.

We chitchatted for another minute or two, and then Nick came trotting back. “There’s a dead kid in that alley,” he said, almost snarling. “And if he’s more than thirteen I’ll eat the candles on his last birthday cake. So which one of you two dead assholes just couldn’t wait for a little snack? Huh? Or did you team up on the poor kid? Did you—”

I slapped him. The sound was almost inaudible with all the background noise. One thing about New York I’d never get used to. All the noise. “That is enough, Nicholas J. Berry! You know Goddamned well I wouldn’t do that and neither would Sinclair. I know you’re pissed at us and I understand that, but there’s pissed and there’s ugly, and I’ve had enough of your ugliness. You don’t want to be here? Get the fuck lost. If you are going to be here, watch your fucking mouth.”

He didn’t say another word all night.

Chapter 8

He couldn’t,” Jessica said the next night. “His jaw was numb for hours afterward. No feeling at all. I tried to talk him into going to the E.R. but he wouldn’t do it. I was afraid you’d broken his jaw. But you just bruised the hell out of it.”

“Oh my God,” I said, appalled. I’d only been awake for about twenty minutes and she dropped this on me. “I didn’t mean to hurt him! That much.”

She shrugged. “He didn’t exactly not have it coming. It’s so hard to defend your boyfriend when he’s being an unreasonable dick.”

Tell me about it, I almost said, but managed to bite my tongue in time. Instead I yawned and jumped out of the bed.

“I don’t know why you bothered to pack clothes at all,” my friend snarked, eyeing my naked form.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but it is my honeymoon.”

“Where’s Sinclair?”

“Dunno. But I’m betting he’s conducting a private investigation about the dead kid. You know we’d never, and I know we’d never, but victims like that make us all look bad. Although I love how Nick gets all high and mighty, pretending ordinary humans don’t pull this shit every damn d—” I closed my mouth with a snap; I’d almost broken Rule Number One: Do Not Shit On Your Best Friend’s Honey.

She was nice enough to ignore my blunder. “And what’s this shoe doing sticking out of the wall?”

I ignored that. “How’d you get in here, anyway?”

“Huh? Oh. Sinclair let me have his spare key. Said he didn’t need one.”

“He did?” Of course he did. He didn’t have a problem with Jessica. “You’ll, uh, keep that tidbit to yourself, right?”

She gave me a look of such scorn, my eyebrows nearly scorched.

“O-kay, don’t look at me like that.” I yawned and scratched. “I guess I better get dressed.”

“Please,” Jessica begged. “And leave your armpit alone; you look like an ape when you do that. A tall, blond, vampiric ape.”

“I cannot believe the shit I’ve had to eat, and I’ve only been awake for five minutes! Leave that alone,” I added, because Jessica was tugging at the shoe in the wall.

“It won’t budge,” she gasped. “What did you do?”

“Some things will never be told.” I opened the door, put a firm hand in the middle of her back, and pushed. “Later, gator.”

The door had no sooner shut when it opened, and my husband (would I ever get tired of that phrase? prob’ly not) stood in the doorway.

“Ready for our big day?” I asked.

“I’d rather,” he replied, eyeing me up and down, “stay in tonight and discuss world politics while chewing on your labia.”

“That’s . . . sweet. But you promised.”

He sighed, which was unnecessary for a vampire. I guess his old habits died hard, too. “Let me see the list again.”

This was a stall technique, since I knew full well he remembered all the stuff I wanted to do. Still, I obligingly dug in my purse and extracted an index card, on which I’d scrawled all the tourist-type things I wanted to do today: the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty . . . like that.

Sinclair never changed expression, but the farther down the list he went, the farther the left corner of his mouth turned down. Meanwhile, I was rapidly dressing in a bra, panties, linen walking shorts, a cherry red sweater, and a pair of René Caovilla walking sandals.

“You look like a gladiator in those,” was his only comment as he handed my list back.

“I am a gladiator. Now let’s go!”

“Must we take the subway?” he whined. “We have a private car at our disposal, thanks to Jessica’s finely honed sense of guilt.”

“It’s all part of the definitive New York experience,” I said, “so yes.”

“So is getting mugged,” he muttered, courteously holding the door open for me.

“Don’t tease. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Something cool to tell my mom.”

“Awesome,” he replied tonelessly, and followed me out.

Chapter 9

Wow! It’s a good thing I’m dead, or I’d be exhausted.” “As opposed to simply bored out of your charming little mind.”

“Oh, shut up. How could we not go up in the building King Kong climbed with Naomi Watts?”

“But darling, he didn’t actually climb—”

“Stop it, you’re ruining the whole thing!”

“The remake, the original, or the evening?”

“You’re so talented, you’re wrecking all three. Now, what’s next?”

“Thankfully, we have completed your interminable list of chores—”

“Five things!”

“—and can now return to the hotel where we will be insulted and threatened by Detective Berry.”

We walked on in silence for a moment while I thought about that.

“You can’t really blame him for being scared, can you?” I asked quietly.

There was another long pause, and finally Sinclair forced out a reluctant, “No.”

“We essentially raped his brain, you know.”

No comment from the king of the vampires.

“Just sayin’.”

Still no comment. I decided to drop the subject. For the time being.

We were walking hand in hand down Broadway and I still couldn’t get over the noise. It sounded like noon, and it was nearly midnight! But on the flip side, the cool thing about NYC is that everything was open, practically all the time. We’d had no trouble knocking off my list, even though back in Minnesota, everything would have been closed by nine at the latest. Seven, in winter.

“Spare change?” the zillionth homeless guy asked us, and I smiled at him and gave him a dollar. Sinclair disapproved of this, being a self-made man, but what the hell. I was a rich woman now; legally half of his was mine, and I could do what I liked with my one dollar bills.

But—this was weird—I could hear the homeless guy fall into step behind us. Did he want more? Because that was just being greedy. It was one thing to be out of work and ask people for money, but to—

I felt something sharp and pointy against the back of my neck.

“Alley, now, fuckers!”

“Which one?” I asked, which I thought was a pretty reasonable question, but he just dug the knife in a little more, pissing me off, and nudged me to the right.

“Rings, wallet, purse,” he chanted, once we were off busy Broadway. Obviously a professional.

“I can’t believe it!” I gasped.

“I can,” Sinclair said with his usual air of morbid disdain. “And if he keeps jabbing you with that pin, I’ll be forced to make him eat it.”

“We’re being mugged! We saw the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Met, Ellis Island, and the Central Park Zoo, and now we’re finishing the day like real tourists!”

“I hate zoos.”

“What kind of a communist psycho hates zoos?”

“I’ll never get the smell of monkey out of my trousers.”

“Rings, wallet, purse, now, fuckers!”

“I can’t wait to tell my mom!”

“About my trousers?”

“Are you people fucking deaf?” Another jab. Sinclair snarled, but so quietly only I could hear him. “This is a robbery and you gotta give me your shit!”

“Oh, I know what this is,” I assured him. I whipped around, faster than he could track, and snatched the knife out of his hand. I bent the blade with my thumb until it was useless as a weapon, then handed it back to him. This was really for his own safety, as God knew what Sinclair would have done to him.

He stared at it, then stared at me, then turned to run. I thrust my ankle between his and he hit the street.

“You know, I haven’t had a bite since we got here,” I said. “I mean, besides you.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

We fell on him.

Chapter 10

You’ve got an alibi,” Nick grumped at dinner the next night. It was early—about seven thirty—which was good, because I had places to be, and couldn’t suck down my drinks fast enough.

“Besides our word?” Sinclair asked mildly. He’d given up any semblance of politeness and had brought the paper to dinner, which he was carefully reading. Although we’d been talking for ten minutes, this was the first time Sinclair had spoken up.

“Yeah. Coroner placed the kid’s time of death between ten and eleven that night—”

“While the four of us were having dinner,” I finished.

“Well, duh, Nick,” Jessica said kindly. “You must have known it was a fresh crime scene. Betsy and Sinclair didn’t have time to ditch us, kill a child, and return to the table to argue over dessert.”

“Mmmff,” Nick grunted.

“Yes, an intelligent, unbiased professional would have known that,” Sinclair said to the paper.

Astonishingly, Nick didn’t rise to the bait. A crisis of conscience, maybe?

“Do you think it was someone here at the hotel?” I asked, almost whispering.

Nick sent me a look of sizzling scorn; I almost wanted to duck. “Of course.”

“I doubt it,” Sinclair replied absently.

“Come on! If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it’s a fucking duck.”

“I have no idea what ducks have to do with your crime scene.”

Nick leaned forward, his blonde hair flopping into his eyes. He pushed it back impatiently and said, “I mean, right around the corner from a hotel run by vampires, with vampire guests, a kid gets killed—by a vampire—and you’re saying it’s got nothing to do with this place?”

“I would be surprised. As Betsy said, vampires don’t shit where they eat.”

“The smart ones, anyway.”

“I’d actually agree with her”—he nearly gagged as he said it—“but what if it’s a message?”

“You mean like a note? Except left on the body of a kid?” I felt my gorge rise.

“Yeah. A message for the king and queen. They knew you were coming, right?”

“Of course,” Sinclair said carefully. He’d actually laid the paper down.

“So, maybe someone in here is trying to impress you. Pay tribute. Whatever.”

“They pay tribute with blood oranges, not ritual sacrifice.”

“And they oughta know killing a kid is the last thing that will impress us,” I snapped.

“Will they?” Nick asked quietly. “Your predecessors were pretty bloodthirsty, right? And aren’t you having some trouble being taken seriously by the teeming hordes of the undead?”

“I wish you wouldn’t put it like that,” I grumbled, downing my Cosmo (hey, we were in New York) in a hurry.

“All they know is that there’s a new sheriff in town. My bet is that they’re trying to impress you or freak you out. Either way, he—or she—or they—killed that kid to get to you two.”

“So what do you suggest we do, Detective Berry?”

He ticked our options off on his fingers. “One: leave town. Now. Tonight. Two: interview every vampire in this building. Thr—”

“Pardon me, Your Majesty.” We all looked up and saw the bellboy (bellman) who’d tried to help unpack my shoes when we got here. “The rest of the staff has arrived and await your convenience.”

“Thank you, O’Neill. I’ll meet with them when we’ve finished here.”

“As you wish, Majesty.” He bowed in my direction. “My queen.” He ignored Jessica and Nick, but Sinclair must have said they were okay, because otherwise he wouldn’t have come up to the table in the first place.

And then he trotted off. I was relieved that he hadn’t drowned himself or jumped off a high building after I’d snapped at him our first night, though I’d had no idea he was a vampire.

“You dog!” Jessica exclaimed. “That’s why you weren’t in the room earlier . . . you were out interviewing suspects.”

“Of course. I am not unaware of my responsibilities, though it is always refreshing to have someone less than half my age point them out to me.”

Score! I thought it, but didn’t say it. Nick had the grace to look abashed. Or was it annoyed? Then he went back into jerk mode and said, “I want to be there for the interviews.”

“No,” Sinclair said coolly.

“Sinclair, you’re not a cop. There’s stuff you might miss.”

My husband laughed politely.

“Maybe you should—” Jessica began tentatively.

Doing an eerie impersonation of Nick, Sinclair started ticking points off his long fingers. “One: he’s out of his jurisdiction. Two: even if he wasn’t, this is a vampire matter. Three: with his prejudice, he will be more a hindrance than a help, and four: although there is a killer in the city—perhaps more than one—I owe my people protection. Which does not include letting a human policeman find out they’re undead.”

“Besides,” I said, “you have to help me do something instead. Now that Sinclair’s going to be tied up.”

Nick managed to look mollified and pissed at the same time.

Chapter 11

I knew I looked like a dork, twirling around like Maria in The Sound of Music, but I couldn’t help it. “Oh, it’s all sooooo beautiful!” I cried. “This is a shoe store,” Nick informed me.

“This is the Beverly Feldman shoe store,” Jessica said. “It’s Betsy’s Graceland.”

I rushed from one gorgeous shoe to the next. Pumps, flats, sandals! Lace, leather, sequins! Ballet flats! I tried to talk but gurgled instead.

Nick picked up a gorgeous pump with white lace and a brown bow. “This one is called ‘Calm.’ So maybe you should buy it.”

“Oh, I’ll buy it. I’ll—miss?”

The saleswoman, an attractive brunette in her thirties, glided over to me. Unobtrusive, yet helpful: just the way I liked ’em. “May I help you?”

I whipped out one of my wedding presents . . . a Black American Express card. I hadn’t even known they made them in black. Turns out if you spend more than—I forget exactly, but I think it was two hundred grand—if you spend more than that with Amex in a year, you get a black card. Sinclair had given me mine the day after we got married.

The saleswoman smiled at it.

“I’d like to see Calm, Dabble, Mystery, Ravish2, Splendid, Adore, Amazing, Angelic, Heaven, Infinite, Neat, Phantom, Goblin, Fairy, and Rosella. Oh, and will you deliver these to my hotel?”

“Of course.”

“You can’t remember to buy milk,” Jessica said, “but you memorized most of the Fall Feldman line?”

“Do not ruin this for me. Do not.”

Once the saleswoman disappeared, Nick took out his gun. I wasn’t sure if he was going to shoot me or himself, and frankly, I had other things to worry about. Luckily, he put it away when she came back, staggering under the load of shoe boxes.

I actually clapped my hands like a kid when I saw her.

Chapter 12

That bastard,” Nick fumed in the cab on the way back to the hotel. “He knew what he was getting out of. And he knew what you were sticking me with.”

“Oh, come on, it wasn’t so bad.”

“Six hours of shoe shopping!”

“It was only two.”

“Well, it felt like a thousand.”

“Hey, you wanted to come along on this trip.”

“Yeah, well, I was expecting treachery and betrayal and felony assault. Not this!”

“Knock it off, you two,” Jessica ordered, massaging her temples. “I’ve got a splitting headache.”

In a nanosecond, Nick became a totally different person.

“Babe? You okay? Maybe we better get you back so you can lie down.”

“I’m fine, Nick, it’s not the cancer. I just have a headache.”

Nick was in the middle; I was on his left, and Jessica was on his right. If she hadn’t been so thin, it never would have worked. But it did work, which is why I opened my purse, rummaged, then handed Nick a bottle of Advil. He shot me a look of pure gratitude—I almost fell out of the cab—and shook two into his palm, then gave them to Jess, who dry-swallowed them.

“Thanks for coming along, you guys.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” Jessica said, leaning back and closing her eyes.

“She’s only speaking for herself,” Nick added.

“I still can’t decide which pair is my favorite,” I said dreamily. “Infinite, or Fairy.”

“How about Goblin?” Nick muttered. “You just—hey, you’re going past our hotel!”

“Sorry, mahn,” the driver said calmly. “Got to admit, tough to see dis place on de street.”

He had that right. The Grange really blended, which was weird, given how scary and old-fashioned it looked.

“That’s okay,” Nick said. “Just take a left and drop us off around the corner.”

“Not at all, mahn. I will get you dere.” I could see his dark eyes in the rearview mirror, heard him pop the car into reverse, and then we were speeding backward.

“This is a one-way street!” Nick practically shrieked.

“Dis is New York, mahn.”

We came to a shuddering halt right outside the lobby steps, and Nick and Jessica couldn’t scramble out fast enough.

I handed the driver my last fifty and said, “You got some plums on you, big guy. Keep the change.”

He touched two fingers to an imaginary hat and grinned, his teeth very white in his dark face. “Anyt’ing for a pretty lady.”

I got out and watched him drive away.

Now that was cool. Hideously dangerous and illegal, but cool.

“New York, New York, it’s a helluva town,” I hummed, trotting up the steps to catch up with Nick and Jess.

Chapter 13

I spotted Sinclair waiting for us in the lounge; he’d already ordered me a Cosmo. I ran up to him, easily outpacing Nick and Jessica, and flung my arms around his neck so hard he rocked back in his chair.

He kissed my temple and said into my hair, “Did you have fun shoe shopping?”

“Oh my God, you would not believe it!”

He flinched at “God,” rallied, then said, “I’ll believe it very well when the American Express bill comes.”

“Well, I had to replace the one that’s stuck in the wall.”

“Ah, so you only bought one pair,” he teased.

Before I could give him a piece of my mind, or throw my drink at him, Nick and Jess were sitting down at our table. We’d all agreed to compare notes at the end of the evening. Interestingly, now that we were off Nick’s suspect list (not that I truly thought we’d ever really been on it) we were sort of a crime-fighting team.

Maybe he’d hate us again when we all got back home. Maybe he still hated us but was using us to solve a murder, which would be very Nick-like (and cop-like). Or maybe hanging out with us was loosening him up a little. There was absolutely no way to tell.

“You dirty rotten son of a bitch,” Nick started. Okay, maybe there was one way to tell. “You knew what her little errand was.”

Sinclair actually giggled. Giggled. “Which did you like best, Detective Berry? Calm or Infinite?”

Nick stuck a finger in my husband’s face, which was a good way to get bitten. “If I didn’t hate you with every fiber of my being before, I absolutely do now.”

“Somehow,” he yawned, “I will try to recover from the remorse.”

A pretty waitress—short, good figure, gorgeous green eyes, black hair—bounced up to our table. “Good evening, Majesties! May I bring your guests a drink?”

“Hi,” I said, sticking out a hand. Startled, she shook it. “I’m Betsy. This is Nick and Jessica. She’ll have a Screwdriver, heavy on the vodka, no ice. He’ll have a Bud.”

Her hand was clammy and almost uncomfortable to touch, but I held onto my smile and she looked weirdly gratified. “Right away, my queen,” she said, and flounced off.

“That, uh, wasn’t the killer, was it?” Jessica asked.

“I have been unable to locate the killer. Or if I have, I don’t know it yet. But that will change.” Sinclair looked grim. Well, grimmer. “Of that, I can assure you.”

“So, no luck tonight?”

“I believe I just said that.”

“Told you I should have been there!” Nick said triumphantly.

“Don’t gloat, hon, it’s unbecoming,” Jessica scolded him gently. “Besides, we were needed elsewhere.”

He threw up his hands and sank back in his chair. “Shoe shopping!”

“You don’t have to say it like you’d say ‘snake milking’.”

“Given a choice,” he began, when the über-efficient waitress (I bet vampire speed came in handy when you were waiting tables) returned with drinks.

“Thanks a lot, uh—” I squinted, but she wasn’t wearing a name tag.

“Marcia.”

“Thanks, Marcia. Just charge it to our room, okay?”

“Oh, no.”

“Uh . . . will you take a traveler’s check?”

“I meant, your money is no good here, Majesty.” And she—God, this was so embarrassing—she actually went down on one knee and bowed her head to me. “You’re The One, the foretold queen, and you’ve rid us of Nostro and Marjorie in two years.

My life is yours.” She looked up, green eyes twinkling. “Or, at the very least, I can pay for your drinks.”

“Uh . . . that’ll be fine, Marcia.” I was so rattled I didn’t know what to do. Pat her on the head? Wave her away? Invite her to join us?

Luckily, Sinclair did know what to do. “Your loyalty is noted and appreciated, Marcia. Now leave us, dear.”

Quick as a snake, Marcia was on her feet and away from the table.

Hmm. Maybe I should try that.

“Just in time,” Jessica commented. “I was about to puke.”

“I didn’t know she was going to do that,” I snapped. “It was so incredibly—”

“Vampire hearing,” Sinclair said quietly.

“—nice of her that I was speechless,” I amended hastily.

Someone waved at our table, and Sinclair stood. “I’ve received some faxes from St. Paul. If you’ll excuse me.”

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you keep ditching us,” I warned him. “You’ll pay.”

His eyes gleamed, and he kissed my knuckles. “I look forward to it. Our room, half an hour?”

“Maybe,” I sniffed, pretending my thighs weren’t already tingling.

“Oh, barf,” Jessica said. “I never thought I’d wish the cancer would come back to distract me, but . . . ”

“Don’t even joke about that!”

“So, the bloodsuckers are happy because you’re the best of a bad lot, eh?” Nick asked.

“And just when I thought you were done being a dick,” I grumbled.

“Honey, I haven’t even—wait.”

“Wait, what?”

But Nick was looking across the lounge, out into the lobby, where a lone girl was wandering around. She was startling looking, with shoulder-length platinum hair and pale skin. And she was dressed in a white nightgown, in bare feet.

“Must be a kid of one of the guests.”

“Yeah, but it’s a pretty fucking dangerous place for a kid to be wandering around, don’t you think?” Nick was already getting up. “Just a sec.”

Jessica and I looked at each other. “Are we really going to let the guys have all the fun on this trip?” she asked.

Then we got up and ran after Nick.

Chapter 14

Hon? Can I talk to you for a sec?” The little girl—couldn’t have been more than ten—whirled at Nick’s voice and I saw she had huge blue eyes, eyes the color of the sky. Then she laughed and ran off.

“Wait! I need to talk to you! Where are your folks?”

All three of us ran after her because—shit!—she had run out the lobby door, out of the (relative) safety of the crowded lobby. Her white blond hair streamed after her like a bridal veil and I thought that I had never seen such a beautiful child. Real tempting pickings for the asshole bloodsucker who liked to munch kids.

We came out in time to see her disappear around the block, laughing. I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “We’re not playing tag, kid! We gotta talk to you!”

No response. I glanced at my human friends. “Later, gators,” I said, because I was going to do my Bionic Woman thing in a sec and they had no chance of keeping up.

But even running as fast as I could, by the time I rounded the block, the kid was nowhere to be seen.

I trudged dejectedly back to them. “That’s great. Now we get to wait for another Goddamned crime scene.”

“If she lives in the hotel, she probably knows a hundred ways to get back in. Like Eloise,” Jessica suggested. “I think she’ll be okay. She certainly gave us the slip easily enough.”

“Good point,” I said, cheering up.

“All the same, I think I’ll hang out here for a while,” Nick said. “Honey, you go up to the room and get some sleep.”

“And leave you out here in the dark by yourself?”

“Uh . . . hon, I’m a cop.”

“A human cop looking for a kid-killing vampire! Besides, the Advil worked fine. I’m not even tired.”

“Well, shit. That means I have to stay out here, too.”

Jessica and Nick both looked surprised. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Oh, like I’m really going back inside to have nasty sex with Sinclair while you two are walking around trying to prevent vamp-on-kid crime. That’d only make me the biggest jerk in the world.”

“Well—” Jessica began sweetly, but Nick cut her off.

“Seriously, Betsy. Go inside. We’ll just walk around out here for a little while and if we don’t see anything, we’ll come in. And if we do see something, we’ll call your cell.” He put a (gentle!) hand on my arm. “Really, go. It’s your honeymoon, right?”

I was completely torn. Do the right thing, and stick with my human, fragile, easily shreddable friends? Or take the olive branch Nick was so plainly offering? The pleading look on Jessica’s face made up my mind for me.

“Okay, but call me if you see or hear anything. We can jump out the window and be on the street in about three seconds.”

“Just get dressed first!” Jessica hollered at me as I went up the stairs. Jerk.

Chapter 15

Too impatient to take the elevator, I bounded up the eight flights, ran down the hallway, and jammed my key card into the slot. The door obligingly beeped, I entered, then shut the door behind me and started taking off my clothes. Sinclair was already in bed, the covers turned invitingly back. His faxes were neatly piled on the desk—hey, at least he didn’t bring them to bed. This time.

“You’re flushed,” he said, surprised. “Did you feed?”

“No, I ran two blocks in about eight seconds. Nick saw a kid alone in the lobby and we were worried about her.”

“Ah. I trust you warned her.”

“Actually, we couldn’t catch her. Quick little minx. Jessica thinks she lives here and knows all the alleys and warrens, like a little rabbit. And pretty!”

“Pretty?” he asked doubtfully. (Sinclair wasn’t a fan of kids, and barely tolerated BabyJon, my ward and half-brother.)

“Oh my God, you’ve never seen a prettier kid. She’s practically got ‘bite me’ written on her forehead. So after we couldn’t find her, Nick and Jess stayed outside, just in case.” I hung my shirt on the shoe in the wall, kicked off my pumps, and stepped out of my shorts. I started to wriggle out of my bra when Sinclair held up a hand; I knew what that meant.

So I walked to the bed and let him gently remove my bra and panties, let him pull me down to him. Then I bit him, hard, on the throat and he bucked beneath me in surprise and pleasure. His cool blood trickled into my mouth like dark wine (irony: I hate wine) and my head started to swim almost immediately.

I could feel his dick pressing against my stomach, almost jerking like a live thing, and he was still spasming beneath me, so I broke off and licked his blood from my teeth.

“How about that?”

In response he rolled me over, pounced on me, and bit me right on the jugular. Now I was the one writhing in pleasure—there was something about being taken, something that was just as fine as doing the taking—I don’t know, I can’t really describe it.

Then he plunged into me and I shrieked at the ceiling, shrieked and clawed at his back while he drank and thrust, while he filled me up and I filled him up, and I had time for a scant thought

please God don’t let the cell phone ring

what?

and then my orgasm was roaring through me like a freight train, and it was times like that that I wondered why I ever bitched about being a vampire.

Sinclair shuddered above me and broke off, and I licked the bite on his neck.

“Cell phone?” he panted.

“Told . . . Jess and Nick . . . to call if . . . they ran into trouble.”

He grinned down at me and I stroked his broad back, where my scratch marks were already healing. “Then it’s a very good thing they didn’t—”

My cell phone rang.

Chapter 16

Two blks S, hurry!!!!!!!” Jess had texted, and hurry we did. Instead of dressing, we grabbed hotel robes. Instead of messing with the stairs, we broke the window and jumped out.

I managed to keep my feet, but felt the shock of the landing all the way up to my hips. Never mind. The blond kid was in trouble—or dead. I just knew it.

We got there in just a few seconds and I nearly skidded in the blood, which was as awful as it sounds, especially in bare feet.

“Oh no!”

“Fuck,” Sinclair muttered, which was very unlike him. I was the potty mouth in the Sinclair family. But the situation certainly warranted it.

Except . . . it wasn’t her. It was a different girl, slightly older, wearing filthy clothes and with dirty hands. Her skin wasn’t quite as dark as Jessica’s, and already going dusky with death.

A homeless child? A runaway? Whoever she had been, she’d crossed paths with the wrong man—or woman—and wouldn’t ever have to worry about finding a place to stay again.

“Where is everybody?” I asked, kneeling beside the child.

“We’re the first ones on scene. I’ve called 911.”

“You guys didn’t see anything?”

“We didn’t even hear anything,” Jessica said, sounding very strained. “We just rounded the corner and there she was.”

“Oh, the poor poor thing. Look! I count at least three bite marks, the fucking greedy bastard.”

“Five,” Sinclair said distantly.

“We don’t have to kill! We only have to take half a pint or so, Goddamn it!”

“Yes, that’s been my experience,” Nick said quietly.

I turned on him and snarled, “Yes, fucking A right, Nick, you’re alive, aren’t you? You’re walking around allowed to be a perfect asshole, aren’t you? But this poor kid—this . . .” I stretched out a trembling hand, wanting to touch her, stroke her face, maybe pull her into my arms. Too late, all too late.

Nick seized my wrist. “Betsy, don’t! This is a crime scene. Anything you do—change—won’t help the cops and it won’t help her. Just—don’t, okay?”

“Let go of my wrist,” I said tonelessly, and he did.

In the background, sirens.

“There’s nothing we can do except incriminate ourselves,” Sinclair said quietly. “It’s time to go. Nick can handle the cops.”

He took my hand to help me up and I yanked it out of his grip.

“And we were busy fucking while this kid was getting bled like a pig,” I hissed at him. “Don’t touch me.”

I walked out of the alley, alone.

Chapter 17

Jessica caught up with me. “You’re not mad at them, you know. You’re mad at the creature doing this under your nose.”

“Go away.”

“Oh, you can just shitcan the attitude, Miss Thang! I didn’t kill her. In fact, you and your boy-toy wouldn’t even know about her if I hadn’t told you. So spare me the ’tude.”

I didn’t say anything. What could I say? She was right.

“We’ll get him, Betsy. We won’t leave New York until he’s in flames or bristling with so many stakes he looks like a hedgehog.”

I laughed; I couldn’t help it. Quite the mental image!

“There now, that’s better.” She tucked a hand under my elbow. “And can you slow down? We’re not all six feet tall, y’know?”

“I know, how do you stand it? Is it like being a bug? Or is it more like, you know, being an inanimate object? With no real clue what it’s like to not be a midget?”

“Shut up, Miss Thang,” she ordered, but naturally I disobeyed.

“You don’t even—hey!” I stopped, which jerked Jessica to a stop. Sitting on the hotel lobby steps was the girl we’d seen earlier. Thank God! “Hey, you! We’ve been looking for you!”

“Try to sound a little more menacing, why don’t you?” Jess muttered.

The gorgeous child pointed at me. “I know you! We were playing tag earlier!”

“Uh, not exactly. Listen, where are your folks? This is so not a place for a little kid to be by herself, okay?”

“I’m not a little kid.”

“Right, whatever, where are they?”

“They’re dead.”

Jessica and I traded glances. That explained why the kid was up at practically midnight.

“But what are you doing here?”

“I live here.” She had a high, sweet voice. “The staff takes care of me.”

“Uh . . . about the staff . . . I’ve got some news you’re not going to like, but you can’t stay here another night. Another minute. Y’see—”

“The hotel is run by vampires?”

Jessica and I looked at each other again.

“Well, yes,” Jessica answered. “You, um, knew that?”

“Sure.” The child idly examined her nails, which were brutally short—probably because she bit them. “Vampires killed my folks, and the staff felt bad, so they took me in.”

“But what about school?”

“Tutors.”

“What about a proper bedtime?”

“I sleep during the day, like my guardians.”

“But-but . . .” There were things wrong with this scenario, right? Then why couldn’t I think of any?

“But don’t you want a normal life?” Jessica asked. “I bet a looker like you would get adopted in about five seconds.”

“And go live in the suburbs and attend public school and do chores for an allowance and fight with siblings?” The child rolled her eyes. “When I’m living in the greatest city in the world, with no bedtime, brilliant tutors, and thirty parents who watch out for me? Not to mention twenty-four-hour room service?”

“You’ve got us there,” I admitted. “What’s your name?”

“Bernadette, but everybody calls me Bernie.”

“Well, Bernie, I guess I’m one of your guardians now, too. See, I’m the vampire queen.”

Bernie blinked, then started to laugh. She actually rolled around on the steps, she was laughing so hard.

“It’s not that ludicrous,” I mumbled.

“It really kind of is,” Jessica whispered back.

“You! Oh! Oh, not you! It’s not you! You’re not the queen!”

I stomped my bare foot and realized anew I was wearing nothing but a hotel robe. “I am, too!”

“What is going on here?” Sinclair said, startling me badly. I’d never heard him come up behind me.

“Hey, it’s her!” Nick said happily, coming up on Jessica’s left. “And she’s okay!”

“Who is ‘her’?” Sinclair asked icily. I guess he was still pissed about the tantrum I’d thrown in the alley. Well, I’d make it up to him later.

“This is Bernie, the kid I was telling you about. But she’s safe!”

“That,” Sinclair said, “is no child.”

Bernie abruptly quit laughing. “Now him,” she said to me, smiling prettily, “he’s the king, yes. I can believe that. They told me you were young, but there is no way in hell you killed Nostro and Marjorie. You spent the evening shoe shopping!” She looked at Jessica. “And it’s not you, either. You’re just a human. So where is she? Where’s the real queen?”

“Wh-what are you talking about?”

“You’re making a fatal mistake, Bernie, and you won’t be the first to underestimate The One.”

The kid scowled. “Oh, hush up, Vampire King. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your greed—and your bite marks—gave you away,” Sinclair informed the kid. “Too narrow for an adult vampire.”

I whirled on him. “You knew a kid was doing this?”

“I suspected. The second victim confirmed it. Really, Bernie. Five bites? It’s a wonder you haven’t been caught before.”

“The staff,” Jessica rasped, then cleared her throat. “The staff protects her.”

Bernie stood, so quickly it was like she teleported to her feet. “The staff fears me,” she said, “as should you. Now get out of my hotel.”

And with that, she turned and bounded up the steps into the Grange Hotel.

We all stared at each other, and then I broke the silence with an unoriginal, but heartfelt, “Get that little bitch!”

And up the steps we went.

Chapter 18

We chased her through the lobby and across the lounge, around tables like a crazy game of tag. Which I’m betting Bernie thought this was. The staff and guests stared at us, or ignored us—I guess the true (human) New Yorkers were the ones who were ignoring us.

“Help me!” Bernie shrieked as we closed the distance (we had adult legs, after all). “They’re going to kill me!”

I didn’t dare look back to see if anyone was coming to the rescue; Bernie had proved before that she could disappear like a rabbit in a hat. I had no intention of taking my gaze off her.

Then, in a case of truly awful timing, the elevator dinged, the doors slid open, and a family of four stepped out. Who the hell goes sightseeing at midnight? Quick as thought, Bernie snatched the toddler right out of his stroller, holding him up by his neck. The parents didn’t even have time to scream before the doors slid closed and she was gone.

“Text me!” I yelled as Sinclair shoved the stairwell door open and started pounding up the stairs. I followed him, fishing out my phone.

“8888888888888888888888!” Jess texted.

“That’s our floor,” I muttered. What with the window fixers and the crazy vampires, it was gonna get mighty crowded up there. “What the—eighth floor!” I called up to my husband, who was already a flight ahead of me. I heard the door slam open again and knew Nick was doing his best to back us up, though he was four floors away.

In a few more seconds, we were in our hallway and Bernie was holding the squalling toddler and kicking at our door. “Let me in, you idiot!” she was screaming, while the kid wailed and wriggled.

Sinclair wrenched a lamp fixture off the wall and flung it straight at Bernie’s head. It landed dead on; she shrieked, clutched her head, and forgot all about the kid, who she dropped.

I ran as fast as I could, slid on my knees the last couple of feet (argh, rug burn!), and just caught him before he hit the carpet. I knew the room next to us was unoccupied—at least, I’d never heard anyone in there the entire time we’d been at the Grange—so I bounded to my feet, kicked that door open, tossed the kid into the middle of the king-sized bed, and shut the door with one hand while texting Jess, “Kid in 810 SAFE!”

I emerged just in time to get knocked sprawling as Bernie and Sinclair fought. She was on him like a cat, clawing and biting and shrieking, and he was slamming his back against the wall, trying to shake her loose.

“Oh no you don’t!” I yelled, and seized two handfuls of her gorgeous hair. Then I yanked. Hard.

She yowled (I just couldn’t get the cat metaphors out of my head) and twisted with frightening speed and agility, and then her little hands were around my throat and I jerked my head back just in time to avoid her slashing fangs. God, she was fast! Those kids never had a chance. Frankly, the outcome of this fight was in doubt, and I was three feet taller.

I wrenched her hands off and threw her—hard—into the wall. Plaster cracked and dust fell everywhere. Nobody was breathing, so nobody cared.

She sprang at me again, and again I batted her away like a fly—barely. And still she came at me, so this time I hit her with a closed fist. I could feel the bones in her face break, and still she wouldn’t quit.

Meanwhile, I could hear Sinclair frantically searching rooms—I was betting for a wooden chair leg.

“Bernie, just stop!” Wincing—I couldn’t believe I was beating up a child—I hit her again. This time her nose broke, and black blood trickled down to her lips.

“I can’t! You have to kill me. Why would I stop?”

Because I can’t bear to hurt you. Because even though you’re a monster, you look like an angel. Because somebody, a long time ago, really hurt you, and I want to make that up to you.

One of her little fists got past me and all of a sudden there was a ringing in my left ear. I shook it off and heard the stairwell door open, heard Nick run past us to the room where the toddler was still crying. Thank God. Thank God.

I caught her next fist in mid fly and broke her wrist. She screamed and tried to kick me. So I did what any asshole would do; I let go of her wrist, grabbed her by the ears, and twisted.

She fell to the carpet, all the fight out of her. But the awful thing was, she was looking up at me and trying to smile. Looking up at me, with her head twisted halfway around. I’d broken her neck, but she was still alive.

“I guess . . . I guess you really are the queen.”

I dropped to my knees beside her. “Bernie, I’m so sorry. I-I-It wouldn’t have been my choice to kill you. If only you weren’t so fucking bloodthirsty!”

“It’s all right,” she said faintly. “It was bound to happen eventually. I just didn’t think a blond fashionista would do it.”

“Well, uh, thank you.”

“I lied.”

“Which time?”

She reached for me and, wary of a trick, I took her hand. But she only squeezed it and said, “The staff—it’s not their fault. I’m small, but I’m old. I was made when they were building the Brooklyn Bridge. No one else here is more than forty, and they’re afraid. It’s why they didn’t help—didn’t help the others. Don’t—punish them.”

“I won’t.” Maybe. “But who did this to you, Bernie?”

“You idiot, is your attention span so limited? You did!”

“I meant, who made you into a vampire?”

“Oh.” Bernie managed a nod—it was a gruesome sight—over my shoulder. I looked—and saw Sinclair standing there with a snapped-off chair leg.

“No!” I almost screamed. “No, no, no, it’s not true!”

Then Sinclair ducked, and the redheaded bellboy (bellman) went sailing over his shoulder.

“Robert,” Bernie said faintly. “At last.”

I nearly swooned onto the carpet. “Ha! I knew Sinclair hadn’t killed you. And what were you doing in our room?”

“Snooping,” he admitted.

Robert slowly got to his feet, pale even for a vampire. “Oh, Bernadette, what did they do?” He glared at me. “You’ll die screaming, you pretender! You—”

“You did all this? You killed her parents, killed her? Made her into this-this thing that eats kids? And then took your time coming to the rescue, you fucking coward? She was kicking our door and screaming for help and you only came out now?”

“I can hear you, you know,” Bernie murmured. “And of course he’s a coward. He preys on children. Of course,” she added thoughtfully, “so do I. But that’s more a size issue for me.”

Robert rushed at me (I guess he wasn’t interested in answering any of my questions), and I was bracing myself for the attack when there were three quick shots and his head exploded. Just when I thought the week couldn’t get yuckier.

He fell, barely two feet from Bernadette’s body, and then I saw Nick, who had the toddler on one hip and his gun in his right hand.

Sinclair snapped the chair leg in half (luckily, it was a nice, long slender one) and plunged a piece into Robert’s back, all the way through him and into the carpet.

Then he handed the other piece to me.

“I can’t,” I cried.

“You’d better,” Bernie wheezed. “I’ll look ridiculous walking around like this. And as for catching prey? No chance.”

I raised the chair leg. “I’m sorry, Bernie. And I forgive you for the others.”

“I’m not at all sorry and you’re a fool to forgive. Good-bye, Vampire Queen.”

I shoved the stake all the way in and the light went out of those beautiful blue eyes. Her hand tightened on mine, then went limp.

I pulled her into my embrace, shuddering at the way her head lolled and rolled, and rocked her back and forth, crying. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m—”

The elevator dinged and then Jessica was kneeling beside me. “Oh, Betsy. You had to.”

“—sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—”

“Elizabeth, we must—”

“Is everybody okay? I gotta get this kid back to his parents.”

“—I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—”

“Elizabeth—please—”

“I think she’s in shock,” Nick worried. “Can vampires go into shock?”

In the end, it took all three of them to wrench her out of my arms and I think—I think I fainted or something, because I don’t remember much after that.

Chapter 19

I opened my eyes to a familiar sight . . . a ring of concerned faces hovering over me.

“Sorry,” I said faintly. I covered my eyes. “That was—that was bad there. For a minute.”

“It was fairly awful for all of us, so don’t beat yourself up,” Jessica assured me. “We’re just glad you and Sinclair are all right.”

Silence. Then I heard Jess stomp on Nick’s foot, and his stifled yelp. “Aren’t we?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Thanks for killing the bellman,” I said. “That must have felt good.”

“I only shot him in the head. I have no idea if that kills you guys. I think Sinclair delivered the coup de grace, as it were.”

“But he was coming after me. He was coming after me, and you shot him three times in the head.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I smiled for the first time in what felt like weeks.

“My poor Elizabeth,” Sinclair said, sitting down beside me on the bed. He picked up my hand—my killing hand, my stake-wielding hand—and kissed it. “You won’t be naïve much longer at this rate. Pity.”

“Right now I feel about a thousand years old.”

“Well, you look great,” Jessica assured me. “Your hair isn’t even messed up.”

That cheered me up a little. “So what happens now?”

“The staff helps us cover this up, of course. They’re walking around on eggshells right now, wondering what we’ll do to them.”

“I promised Bernie we’d leave them alone.”

“That doesn’t mean,” Sinclair said grimly, “that we can’t stop in now and again and check on them.”

“You mean, like a second honeymoon?” Jessica teased.

I groaned. “Jesus Christ, let me recover from this one first!”

As jokes went, it was fairly lame, but we were all so stressed out we laughed anyway. And then it was better.

I was just glad I didn’t have nightmares since coming back from the dead, because I knew Bernie’d be haunting my thoughts plenty when I was awake.

But that was a worry for another time; right now I had to focus on getting rid of Jess and Nick, and finishing my honeymoon without worrying about dead children popping up and ruining the mood.

And that’s exactly what I did.