THIRTY-THREE

"The second least annoying person has left," Satan informed us, "so I will, too. Remember what we discussed." And she blinked right out of sight.

"I hope she was talking to you," I said to Laura.

Marc stared, then shook his head. Nick actually rubbed his eyes like it hurt to see someone teleport out of his kitchen. "I'm never gonna get used to that," he said, still rubbing. "Satan in our kitchen. And religious debates."

"I hope not, because what does it say about us if this is just an ordinary day?"

"An ordinary day sounds good, babe." Nick bent and kissed Jess on the lips twice: Smek! Smek! "Let's have one soon. I gotta crash." He yawned. "Gotta go interview a bunch more witnesses later ... there's nonparanormal crime going on once in a while..." He left the kitchen, half talking to himself.

"You know, the old Nick would have shot me after that argument about me always planning to help Marc," I commented.

"That was the old Nick," Jessica said. "It's like Old You said ... the timeline's changed. This is how things are. Suck it up."

"Do not take her side."

"I'm not, but I know good advice when I hear it."

"Do not! Maybe. Look, I can't deal with that now ... Laura? Why were you and the devil even hanging out, anyway? Why'd you both show up here?"

"She was showing me more of hell. And then I ... wanted to see you."

I nearly swallowed my tongue in sympathy-gagging. "Sorry. That sounds like the opposite of a fun evening."

"It's actually quite fascinating."

"Touring hell."

"Yes."

"Fascinating."

"Yes."

"Have you-" Lost your damned mind? Gone rabid? OD'd on Green Tea Frappes at Starbucks? My brain got too crowded, so my tongue was sort of hung up for a moment. Which was when Sinclair came up behind me and rubbed my shoulders.

Softly, softly, my own.

She's losing it! I don't have time for the Antichrist to get all nostalgic and go to hell for Mommy and Me classes!

Laughter in my head, followed by more, That is the opposite of softly, softly.

Well. At least he wasn't hiding from me anymore.

I was not hiding. I was researching.

I had a rare moment of maturity and let that one pass. "Why'd you want to see me?"

"I talked to my folks, my adopted folks, and they're fine if I bow out of Meals on Wheels early to have Thanksgiving here. And then I ran into your mom-"

"My mom!" I groaned and resisted the urge to slap my own forehead. "My mom walked in on the middle of all that weirdness!"

"She did really good, though."

"Laura, you're an angel-"

"Half angel," she corrected, smiling.

"-but you can't make me feel better about that."

"It could have been worse."

"How, Jess?"

"Could've been your dad."

"Oooh." Good point. My dad, when he'd been alive, had not handled confrontations, the paranormal, family fights, or changes to the tax code at all well. I'd explained to him that I had come back from the dead as a vampire, the same thing I'd told my mother, and he reacted to that by hiding from me until he died in a stupid car vs. garbage truck accident. "Really good point." It was stupid, but I could feel myself cheer up.

"You will explain to your mother at the right time. She is a woman of rare intelligence and understanding."

"Suck-up." Sinclair loved his mother-in-law. And she thought he was pretty neat-o, too. God help me should I succeed in skinning him; my mom wouldn't stand for it.

"Indeed. Which is why you will explain. I will be elsewhere. With all respect to your mother, I am certain it hasn't escaped your notice that she is, on occasion, capable of Olympian levels of stubbornness."

"Yeah..."

"And temper."

"Yeah."

"Suffice it to say, those qualities did not skip a generation."

"What's that-"

"So it's best you two sort this out yourselves. Meanwhile..." Turning courteously to Laura. "How was hell?"

"Besides all burning lakes of fire and stuff," Jess added, then yawned. "And give us the CliffsNotes version ... I'm overdue for my nap."

"Yeah, she's only had three today," Marc teased. He got to his feet and ambled over to the sink, where several glasses were clean and gleaming in the dish drainer, and the blender was set up and ready to go. "You guys..."

"Yeah," several of us said. Taking it as a matter of course, Marc was already digging bags of frozen berries out of the freezer. Would he fix one for himself? He didn't have to eat or drink anymore. I didn't need to drink smoothies, but I still liked how they tasted. I'd have to get him alone later, find out what was up with zombie taste buds.

"I thought of this earlier, but you weren't around." I turned to my sister. "So, tell me if this is right. If Lucifer Corningware-"

"Morningstar," Laura corrected, and the corner of her mouth twitched.

"Right, sorry-I flunked Sunday school."

"You never went to Sunday school."

"Did, too! I'm pretty sure ... can we please stay on point? So as I was saying before the Antichrist butted in for the zillionth time-"

"Oh, boy," the Antichrist said.

"-if Lucifer is God's direct creation-she calls Him Father, right? She's always bitching about her Father-okay, that means Lucy was one of the first things God even made, right? Maybe even before Adam and Eve?"

"Yessss," Laura said cautiously, not sure where I was going.

"Then that means ... God ... is your grandpa!"

"Lame," Marc said.

"He is your kin, but I am your Father," Laura murmured. At my stare, she said, "It's a line from The Stand."

"Great. If, while we're saving Sinclair and the future and me-though I think I can cross saving Marc off my list now-and we need someone to come up with random Stephen King quotes, I'll get in touch with you immediately. In the meantime, let's focus, people! No, Marc, no more bananas! Please, I'm begging you, just keep it simple. Strawberries. Pleeeeeeese. The queen of all vamps is begging you, only strawberries!"

"Only if you cross me off your list in pencil, not pen. I might still need saving in the future."

"Slave driver," I muttered.

"That's why your mom shows you stuff down there, right?" Jess asked. "If hell is 'down there.'"

"It's another dimension," Laura began.

"Never mind hell." I knew it was rude, but didn't care. Talking about hell when Laura was ambivalent about the worst place in existence made me nervous. And I had enough things making me nervous this month. "I'm just glad you're out of there."

"But not for long, right?" Jess asked, heartlessly scaring the shit out of me. "Because you're sort of the heir apparent, right, Laura?"

"No she isn't."

"My queen," Sinclair began with great care.

"She isn't."

"Betsy." She was gazing at me with those incredible blue eyes, radiating pure calm, and I was still scared half to death. "You know I am. I'm the only one in the universe who could even think of taking my mother's job."

"It's not the dumbest idea in the world," my traitorous whore of a best friend said.

"It's absolutely the dumbest idea in the world!" I nearly shrieked. "Have you lost your mind? Laura has spent her entire life not following in her mother's hoofsteps!"

"Heh," Marc said. "Hoofsteps." Then he pressed Liquefy. He often did that if he thought the argument du jour was getting too heated. But nobody had trouble hearing my screams over the buzz-saw blender.

"She spent her life loathing what her mother stands for! She's not the Antichrist, she's the Anti-Antichrist!"

"O-kay," Jessica said, rubbing her left ear. "Relax."

"I'll relax when you stop calmly explaining why it's so logical for Laura to take over hell, you traitorous whore!"

"Now you're just being mean," she reproached. "You wait until I tell your mom how you talk to pregnant women."

"Not all of 'em. Just you. And don't you dare go telling my mom." I thought I'd been scared three minutes ago? Nothing compared to the thought of enduring a lecture on etiquette from the terrifying relentless Dr. Taylor, who was fairly unphased to run into two of me, but plenty pissed when I lost my temper and acted like a brat.

Brrrr!

"Betsy, come on." Laura was trying to sound reasonable. And maybe she did sound reasonable. But I had no interest in what the Antichrist thought was reasonable. The devil was the devil. Laura was ... was Laura. My little sister. A good person (when she wasn't executing rogue vamps or serial killers, or trying to kill me in a fit of rage. Hey, nobody was perfect.). Not destined to run hell. "My mother hasn't had a day off ever. She's never had a vacation ever."

"So tell her to register a grievance with the union." I was utterly unable to summon even the teensiest amount of pity or empathy for the devil. Y'know ... because she was the devil.

"You're making jokes-"

"Not really."

"-but there's no one for her to turn to. Don't you get it? There's no one else. No one but me."

"Uh, no." I didn't like where this was going. At all. And Sinclair had gone dead quiet in my brain again. His face had all the expression of an Easter Island statue.

"Even if I hated her-"

"You do hate her!"

"-I don't know that I could abandon her once I realized why I was here," she continued. "D'you know I'm one of the few people who actually knows the answer to the eternal question-"

Do you want fries with that?

"-why am I here?"

"Listen to me, Laura. Very carefully. Okay? Watch my lips: you are not the temp worker of the damned."

"More jokes," she sighed.

"I am absolutely not joking!"

"C'mon, guys. Ease up." Marc was shoving small juice glasses oozing with smoothies at all of us. "Have a drink. We're just shooting the shit, nobody's taking over hell right this second."

"Or ever."

"Right this second," he said again, in case I hadn't heard him two seconds ago. "Besides, Betsy, I think you might be projecting."

"Oh, really, Dr. Zombie?"

"And when you think you're cornered, or wrong, you lash out and say mean things," he added, looking pretty pious for a fucking zombie.

"Shut up, you reject from a George Romero wet dream."

"Elizabeth."

"And you can shut up, too," I added, knowing I was acting like a brat, a bitch, and helpless to stop. Or maybe I didn't want to stop. Hurting my friends' feelings sometimes seemed worth it if I didn't have to ponder the truly awful, things like-

"I think you resist Laura maybe taking over hell because you see it as her destiny, just like yours is to rule the vampire nation and maybe even take care of humanity, too, after some awful disaster in the future blots out the sun." Marc watched me and, when I didn't leap at him and rip off his face and stuff it down his pants, took a breath (he didn't need to breathe but ... old habits) and added, "Maybe if Laura can refuse her destiny, the thing she's expected to do, maybe you can, too. Maybe this whole big mess in the future ... maybe it can be somebody else's problem." Then he shut his eyes with a grimace. "Be gentle. I've got no idea how long it'll take me to grow my nose back."

"Maybe it could be somebody else's problem," I said in a watery voice, then downed my smoothie in a monster gulp and abruptly sat down. Vampires weren't prone to brain freeze, but at least it stopped me from bursting into tears like a six-foot blond baby. "And don't judge me, okay?"

"I'm not judging you," he soothed. He came around to my side of the table and rested his clammy zombie hands on my shoulders. "I'm just calling into question every moral and legal decision you've made in the last few years."

"That's exactly judging me!" I said, indignant, and Jessica laughed so hard she dribbled smoothie down her chin and onto her hot pink T-shirt.

"You shush," I told her, but she cheerfully disobeyed and kept yukking it up and dripping everywhere. I finally got up and handed her about eighty napkins before she ruined her pants, too.