Chapter 2
Oh, and here she is!” Laura’s hands, with their long,
slender fingers and bluntly short nails, flew as she introduced me.
“This is my sister, Betsy. Betsy, this is Sandy Lindstrom.” A
short, plump woman in her thirties, Sandy brushed her shaggy bangs
away from her dark, tip-tilted eyes and smiled at me. “She was
wondering when Macy’s was having their next sh—”
“November second,” I
replied automatically. “It starts at eight a.m., an hour before
their store usually opens. Park in the west ramp.”
Laura’s hands moved
in translation—I was always amazed at how cool and mysterious sign
language looked—while I jabbered shoe-sale tips like a crazed
robot.
“Okay, thanks,” Sandy
Lindstrom mouthed while signing.
“No problem,” I said,
but she was already turning away, so I started to raise my voice,
then realized I was getting ready to shout “No problem!” at a deaf
person. Not too lame. Instead, I turned to my sister. “Who was
that?”
“Eh? Sandy
Lindstrom.”
“Oh. You mean you
didn’t know her, or—”
“No, but I knew
you’d be the perfect person to answer
her question.” Laura grinned and linked her arm through mine. The
Antichrist was a toucher and a hugger, did I mention?
“So she was just some
random person?”
“Sure.” A frown
creased Laura’s perfect creamy brow. “Why?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I
assured her as we began marching past Crabtree & Evelyn, arms
linked like half of the cast from The Wizard
of Oz. The brainless and clueless half. (“This isn’t the
Burnsville Mall anymore, Toto.”). “I just didn’t know you knew sign
language, is all.”
“Oh.” That short
reply was completely unlike Laura; so was the shutting-up period
that followed. In fact, we were passing Daniel’s Leather before she
said, “So is this the way to Payless?”
“Payless?” I nearly
screamed, coming to such an abrupt stop the Antichrist nearly
brained herself on a nearby pillar. “What foul mouth speaks that
filth?”
“Mine,” the spawn of
Satan replied, straightening up and making sure she hadn’t dropped
her purse in the near collision. Laura was a terrific fighter of
the undead (weapons of Hellfire, daughter of Satan, etc.) but not
so much a shopper of retail. “You know I’m on a budget, Betsy. We
can’t all be married to millionaires.”
“Undead
millionaires,” I reminded her, just to see the ninch—and it came,
just as I expected. Which is what a lot of people did when mention
of my husband, Sinclair, king of the vampires, came up. Hell, half
the time I still flinched, but usually in irritation instead of
fear. “And be fair—you know damn well I bought designer shoes on an
admin’s salary.” Like my precious, precious Burberry rain boots, a
steal at two hundred bucks, and it took me almost nine weeks to
save up for them.
“Yes, well.” She
fussed a bit, then spotted a mall directory. “Um ... Payless Shoes
... You could pay more, but why?”
Now it was my turn to
flinch at the sound of the dreaded slogan. You could pay more, but
why? But why? How about because quality
costs, nimrods? How about—
“Here it is! One
Fifty North Garden.”
“Barf Garden.” Sure,
it was childish. Sue me.
Can dead people be sued? The way the last three
years had gone, I was likely to find out by
Thanksgiving.
Barf, don’t get me
started on Thanksgiving.
“Oh, come on.” She
grabbed my arm again—ugh—and lunged toward the escalator. “You
might see something you like.”
“That’s about as
likely as you fretting about what to buy next Mother’s
Day.”
She gasped and
wilted, and I had to clutch her arm to keep her from slithering to
the bottom of the escalator. “Too mean,” she reproached, while
people heading up stared down at us with polite midwestern
curiosity.
“Oh, please. Since
when do we pretend she isn’t your mom? Think that’s shameful? I
admit your other mom is my stepmom.”
“Your dead
stepmom.”
“Yeah, well, I’m
seeing her as often as I ever did.” Disadvantage Number 235 about
being queen of the vampires: I see annoying dead
people.
“Insinuating I would
ever buy her a Mother’s Day card ever.”
“Yeah, well, that’s
why it was a joke, because I’m not likely to
find—hey!”
Laura had just as
abruptly unslithered and spotted ... something, because she was now
dragging me off the escalator and hauling me toward ... a crying
child of about three, dressed in typical kid gear of jeans and a
MoA T-shirt.
Oh, for—not again!
Laura was always finding/sensing/ communing with lost children. It
was one of her superpowers, along with never having a pimple, or
bad breath, or eye boogers.
Look. I’ve got
nothing against children. I even have one of my own, sort of. He
was my half brother, but also my ward, so I was his sister/mother.
Mine and Sinclair’s own little tax deduction. I liked kids, all right? But I didn’t find them like
a booger-seeking missile. Laura always did. It’s why I wouldn’t go
to the zoo with her anymore.
Now she was kneeling
in front of the dark-haired tyke, chattering away in—um—another
language I didn’t know. Jeez. Probably shouldn’t have dropped out
of the U back in the day; they apparently had a fierce foreign
language program for sophomores.
Ah! Now, predictably,
Lost Tyke Number 32 had forgotten all about crying and was now
babbling at my sister, who was listening and nodding at every
unintelligible word, and would—ah!
The cry of
happiness/stress from Lost Mom Number 32, who had either spotted
Laura the Gorgeous and was drawn to her beauty while forgetting
about her kid, or had heard her kid’s mumbling and zeroed in
like—well, like another booger-seeking missile.
Now Lost Mom and Lost
Tyke were Reunited Family Number 6, chattering in response to
whatever Laura was chattering, now came the handshakes, now came
the sticky but earnest hug from the kid, now came earnest and
tearful gratitude from the mother, and now ... they
depart!
“What is it with
you?” I asked as the Antichrist bounced up to me.
“Only you could make
helping a lost child sound like a character defect.” She smiled as
she said it, so I wouldn’t take offense. Laura tried very hard not
to offend vampires when she wasn’t trying to kill
them.
“No, but—and what was
that?”
“What?”
“How you were talking
to them. What was it?”
“Tagalog.” Another
curt report, and now she was tugging me toward the hated Payless
Shoe Source.
I’d do anything to
avoid being immersed into that retail Hellmouth, so I asked,
“Tagalong? What’s that?”
“Tagalog. It’s a language.”
“Well, I didn’t think
you three were doing an impromptu play. What language,
specifically?” Not only did I not know the language, I’d never
heard of it, either.
“It’s spoken in
mmpphhheemes.”
Now she wasn’t
tugging; she was yanking. This was a girl who wouldn’t yank if a
garbage truck was bearing down on me because she thought startling
people was rude. Curiouser and curiouser.
I set my feet, hoping
I, intrepid vampire queen, wouldn’t actually get into a tug-of-war
contest outside Payless Shoe Source with the Antichrist. My
reputation! Not to mention my sanity. “I didn’t catch that. You
want to stop mumbling? And pulling?”
“It’s spoken in the
Philippines,” she almost shouted. “By
about twenty-two million people.”
“Twenty-two million
and one,” I joked. “And seriously. You’re cutting off the
circulation to my wrist. If I still had any.” Then it hit me. Why
the conversation was making her so uncomfortable—when usually only
one thing made her uncomfortable. “Wait. You didn’t learn Tagalong,
did you?”
“Tagalog.”
“Or sign language,
right? Oh my God. You didn’t learn them; you already knew them. I
mean, you just know them. You know them all. Every language ... you
know every language in the world, don’t you?”