Undead and Unwelcome

Chapter 9

Why did I seize so quickly on the possibility that BabyJon was special? Well, consider our sister, Laura, who was still back in Minnesota but still very much in my thoughts as I whispered super-​minty breath across the mahogany expanse that separated me from the alpha male of Antonia’s werewolf Pack.

Laura, an impossibly beautiful, naïve, and sweet blonde, was raised by a minister and his wife, which partially explained why she was currently a tireless worker for charities, as well as a cheerful and frequent Goodwill volunteer.

Laura worked in soup kitchens and went to church on Sundays. She stuck twenty-​dollar bills into red Salvation Army buckets at Christmastime (and Laura was far from rich; her folks made less in one year than Sinclair made in a month). In February she had literally given the shirt (well, the coat) off her back to someone down on her luck.

Sickening? Okay. Yes. A little. But still, it all made perfect sense. How else could someone rebel against their parent? Laura fought back by being sweet and kind. Mostly sweet. Although she had a spectacular temper.

Also, her birth mother (not the minister’s wife) was the devil. Yes. The devil. As in Satan. As in Lucifer. As in a woman who looked weirdly like Lena Olin, except with better footgear. Either Satanic influence or Lena Olin’s terrific fashion sense had endowed Laura with supernatural abilities—of course! She was half angel, right? Lucifer’s lineage hadn’t changed when he/she was tossed out of heaven.

And I was beginning to suspect BabyJon had powers, too. Not that we could confirm this by asking Lena-​Satan—after possessing the birth mother long enough to experience breast-​feeding and stretch marks, she had fled for the easier comforts of hell. The minister and his wife who adopted Laura had been the best thing to happen to her, and kept her diabolic lineage in check.

So who will keep, I wondered, my half brother in check, if he inherits anything unusual? Me? It was the only thing that made sense in an increasingly complicated family history.

(I have a point. I promise.)

Okay, I can see how some of this—most of this—could be confusing. Shit, it’s my life and even I get mixed up sometimes. So. The Cliffs Notes version: the devil possessed my stepmother, the Ant, because she wanted to try the whole giving birth and raising a kid thing. My stepmother, the late Antonia Taylor (I know, I know . . . two Antonias? Both dead? What were the odds on something like that?) was so unrelievedly nasty, no one had any idea she was possessed.

Think about that for a minute. My stepmother was so horrible and nasty on a daily basis that no one noticed when she was possessed by the devil for almost a year.

I know! It boggles my mind, too.

Anyway, the devil had hated labor and delivery, not to mention breast-​feeding and stretch marks, and fled my stepmother’s body to get the hell back to hell.

When my stepmother realized that someone else had been running her body for almost a year (remember: nobody even noticed!), she promptly gave the baby up for adoption.

And didn’t tell my father about it. Hey, the couple that lies together (no pun intended) stays together. Or however that saying went.

Only the Ant knew my dad had fathered Laura, which is why she and I didn’t meet until two decades later. My late father, who I’d always thought of as a colorless coward, had fathered the Beloved of the Morningstar (in other words, the Antichrist) and a vampire queen.

God help us if it turned out I had another half brother lurking out in the world somewhere; maybe he was the reincarnation of Attila the Hun. Maybe I should have talked Dad into having some of his sperm frozen.

Yuck. Time to get off the subject of my father’s sperm.

Anyway, back to BabyJon. Now I was wondering—maybe it was silly . . . vampire queen or no, this stuff really wasn’t my field—maybe my stepmother’s body had retained some leftover magic from her days of possession. And maybe that had had a profound effect on her late-​in-​life baby.

Shoot, the poor kid had been conceived purely out of spite. The Ant had not liked it at all when her spoiled bimbo stepdaughter returned from the dead, and tried to pull her husband’s attention back to his second family with the age-​old trick: she’d gotten pregnant to jazz up her marriage.

Michael was still talking. Jeannie and Derik were still pacing. Sinclair’s face was serene and composed, but he kept glancing at me and I knew he knew I wasn’t paying attention. Well, who could right now?

Besides, Sinclair would give me the scoop on anything I needed to know when we were alone. Meanwhile I, the Daphne of the Undead, had a mystery to solve.

I carefully nudged the car seat with the toe of my left shoe, forcing it farther away from the desk and toward the middle of the floor.

Again, Derik veered. He didn’t look down. He didn’t frown at the baby, or at me. He just kept giving the sleeping BabyJon a wide berth. And it looked like Jeannie hadn’t noticed the phenomenon, which didn’t surprise me. She’d just lost a family member; her mind was definitely on other things.

Hmmmm.

“—know when the service will be,” Michael was saying.

I was instantly diverted. Ah ha! Now we would find out the secret of werewolf funeral rituals. Did they burn the body on a pyre? Loft it into the ocean? Cremate it and scatter the ashes over sacred moss? Bury her while in wolf form with some yowling ritual under the yellow glow of a full moon? Preserve her in spice-​soaked cocoon wrappings underground, like mummies?

Everyone was staring at me, and I would have died if I hadn’t already. I hate when I think I’m thinking something only to find out I’ve been saying it out loud.

“Pyres?” Michael asked. “Yowling ritual?”

“Oh, fuck me twice,” Derik said, throwing his hands in the air. “Did you really think we were going to bury Antonia in the woods like she was a dog treat?”

“Well, how’m I supposed to know what you’re going to do?” I snapped back as I leaned over and pulled BabyJon’s car seat closer. “That’s why we’re here. To do things your way. Ow!” Sinclair had kicked me none too gently in the ankle. I glared at him, then returned my attention to Derik. “Sorry. Muscle spasm.”

“Mummies,” Derik was muttering. “Funeral pyres. Burial at sea? Antonia was Presbyterian, morons.”

How anticlimactic.

“You may call me whatever you wish,” my husband was saying in a voice more smoke than sound. “But do not insult my wife and queen.”

“Well, which is it?” Jeannie asked. I heard the clinking rattle of more ice as she filled her glass with something. Her tone was okay; she didn’t sound mean or anything. Sort of half-​teasing/half-​curious. “Are you here wearing your wife hat or your queen hat?”

Huh. Hope they had a few hours to kill, because it was a long story.