Chapter 11
She was Sinclair’s majordomo, which was a fancy word
to describe the awesomeness that was Tina, super secretary and
administrative assistant to the damned. But she was even more than
that.
She knew where the
bodies were buried—not an idle phrase in this house. She knew all the account numbers and
passwords. She knew birthdays and death days. She knew favorite
foods and allergies. She was practically a genius with firearms—a
pretty good trick for someone who’d been born during the Civil War.
Or turned into a vampire during same.
She had made my
husband—turned him. And stuck with him ever since, and when she met
me, instantly threw her loyalty right at me.
She was—you know. She
was Tina. Tina, undead citizen of the undead with a penchant for
booze made from potatoes and flavored with cured
meats.
Really, about all I
knew about her was that she turned Sinclair into a vampire the
night of his family’s triple funeral, and I guess they’d never
looked back.
Tina and my husband
hadn’t hooked up, which I found both a relief and weird—they would
have made a gorgeous power couple. I was sort of amazed he’d
resisted her, frankly. She was supremely gorgeous, and even better,
massively smart. Like, Dog Whisperer smart.
No, the two of them
had just calmly gone about the business of amassing money and
property and ... this is going to sound pretty damn conceited, even
for me, but they basically spent scores of decades waiting for
yours truly to show up.
Enter moi, recently deceased and pissed off (the latter
nothing new; the former extremely new). The night I met Tina she
saved my ass. I’ve managed to return the favor once or
twice.
The point? I guess
the point was, I loved and admired and lived with and depended on
people I really knew very little about. Not that they were
taciturn—I just usually couldn’t be bothered. Who cared if Sinclair
had been raised Presbyterian or Lutheran? Who cared if his
grandmother ever made him eat lutefisk at Christmas time? Who cared
if Tina had ever been married, ever been a mom?
Well. They did,
probably.
And I should
have.