Chapter 57
Oh my God!”
“Didja get ... Nick
... away?”
I clapped a hand onto
the side of Laura’s neck, ignoring her muffled yelp. “Jeez, you’re
really bleeding!”
“Well ... you were
... really ... hungry.”
I could feel her
blood trickling against my palm and, to my shame, felt my fangs
slide out. “I’m tho thorry!”
Laura giggled. “It
cracks me up when you do that. The other you did that,
too!”
“Laura, I don’t know
what to thay.” I was almost crying with remorse and mortification.
I’d saved Nick ... and arranged for my sister to get assaulted
instead. Oh, well done, Vampire Queen!
Next: Armageddon.
I hoisted Laura into
my arms and carried her around the front of the garage like an
undead, rumpled groom. “It’s okay. You’re not out here anymore. You
went inside. I think ... to sleep.”
“Good,” I said
shortly. It was probably a terrible idea to find myself and then
beat the shit out of myself, but hoo boy, was I
tempted.
I set her down and
rammed my fist through the passenger-side window, popped the lock,
and bundled Laura into the front seat. Then I scurried around to
the front of the car, belatedly remembered I kept a spare key in a
teeny magnetized box under my front left fender, and squashed the
urge to smack myself on the forehead. I grabbed it, hopped in the
front seat, and started the car. It was April, in Minnesota. So I
cranked the heat.
“You can’t steal a
car,” Laura said, abruptly sitting up. Then: “Ack! Why didn’t you
remember the spare key before you broke my window?”
I instantly cheered
up. Even better, my fangs were going down. “You sound a lot
better.”
“Yeah, the whole
thing was sort of ... hypnotically weird. You really have some
whammy in you, Betsy. I mean, I blinked and then I was bleeding and
it was almost ten minutes later.”
“I’m soooo
sorry.”
“I know.” She patted
my knee, which was an improvement over a Hellfire sword through my
knee. “And it worked, right? It was worth it?”
I didn’t answer.
Switching the victims of my assault hadn’t been the
plan.
“Did stupid, greedy
me see your face?”
“No. So when you meet
me a year or so from now, you won’t have déjà vu, I’m pretty sure.”
She stared out the windshield and shook her head disapprovingly. “I
can’t believe you stole a car.”
“It’s my
car!”
“But what are you
going to think when you get up tomorrow night and your car’s
gone?”
“I’ll have to worry
about that then. Or three years ago. Whatever.”
Laura shook her head
disapprovingly. “I’m keeping a list, Betsy. Grand theft auto,
breaking and entering—”
“It’s my
car!”
“—breaking and
entering into a house—”
“It’s my house! And I
neither broke, nor entered; I had a key.”
“Assault—wait. Did
what the other you did count as assault?” She flapped a hand.
“Anyway, we’ve only been here twenty minutes and we’ve racked up
about twenty years in Stillwater. If they incarcerated women there.
And why are we driving?”
“What are you talking
about? I had to get you away from there.”
“Yes, but why are we
driving? You did what you wanted; you saved Nick. So let’s go back
to hell.”
I hit the brakes and
thought about it. “I can’t believe this is about to come out of my
mouth, but going back to hell sounds like a great
idea.”
So we
went.