Read Online Undead and Undermined by MaryJanice Davidson - Free Book Online

skull.
    “—but it affects us, it affects all of us, the living and the undead, landlord and tenants.”
    “Not that you let any of us pay rent,” N/Dick pointed out with a dammit-I’m-a-man-not-a-consort expression. “So you can’t shut us out this time, Sinclair.”
    Sinclair’s eyes opened slowly, like a lizard’s. “Can’t?”
    Jessica faltered for a second; her hand went to her gruesomely massive stomach and rubbed . . . I would have bet a thousand dollars that she wasn’t aware of it. “Shouldn’t. You shouldn’t shut us out, is what we meant.”
    “Where have you even been?” I asked Tina, who was using the last of the seventh roll. “I forgot you were even in the house until you rode in like Marshal Dillon in a pastel green T-shirt.”
    “Waiting for you and the king to finish your lovemaking.” Tina smiled and brushed duct-fuzz from her perfect green shirt. Green was excellent on most blondes, and super-excellent on her. She looked like a sexy leprechaun. “I imagined that, once you renewed affectionate relations—”
    “I’m not having this conversation,” I decided.
    “—you would debrief His Majesty.”
    “Oh.” Marc coughed. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
    “You guys, let’s not get sidetracked by my sex life,” I begged.
    “Usually you can time it,” Jessica said as they all (!) nodded with intent expressions. “They reunite, they bang, they talk, they bang again, they get thirsty, they make smoothies, we know it’s safe to get close.”
    “None of that is so bad,” N/Dick said, “but they don’t stick to their bedroom. Shit, last week I was minding my own business, looking for the weed whacker—I know it’s November, somebody please tell that to the weeds by the back gate—and they were doing it in the damn shed! I’ll never look at bags of fertilizer the same way again.”
    “And now, neither will any of us,” Marc said.
    “You guys,” I pleaded. Unfortunately, he had me there. And even if he didn’t, Marc had walked in on Sinclair and me not even three hours ago. (I’d been very, very, very, very, very glad to return from hell and reunite with my husband.) “You can’t blame us for occasionally following our instincts.”
    “Why do your instincts involve sex and rooms that people normally would not have sex in?”
    “If you go into the basement,” Garrett said, “you can barely hear them, and if you go into the tunnel you can’t hear them at all.”
    “That’s a good idea! I’ll remember that,” Jessica said, and Dickie/Nickie nodded.
    Incredibly, Tina was also nodding. Like this wasn’t a bizarro conversation. Like this was a normal thing in their lives. “I shall as well. But as I was explaining, I was waiting for Their Majesties to finish—it was the third time this week, so going by their pattern in the past—”
    “We should make a chart,” N/Dick said.
    “That would be easier—you could just see at a glance—”
    “And you’d know which areas on the property to avoid!”
    “We’re not having this conversation!”
    A short, sudden silence, broken by the Marc Thing: “It seems as though we are.”
    I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Shut up, you crazy fucking psycho vampire weirdo.”
    “Ouch,” it said mildly. “Words can hurt, too, Vampire Queen.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
     
    “Before things go any further, we need to call Laura.”
    “Good idea,” I replied. “We were going to anyway, because of . . .” I eyed the Marc Thing. Why give the psycho more info than we had to? “Because of the errand I need to run later.”
    “Don’t you remember? You’re not very bright in this century, but don’t let that shame you for even a moment,” the Marc Thing soothed. His tone didn’t match his expression, so it was like being soothed by a rattlesnake. A creepy, well-dressed rattlesnake who would bite you, and be sorry after. Maybe. Needless to say, I wasn’t soothed. “You need your sister to take you to