Nickie-Dickie-Tavvie (best Rudyard Kipling story ever) held a gun on the Marc Thing while Tina taped him to the fridge. I was gripping the cross on my necklace . . . one twitch, and maybe not even one, and I was gonna jam it through his forehead.

I had to stare for a good thirty seconds to understand what I was seeing. I thought the hallway had been surreal? Sinclair was right; I was an idiot. (He was also a jerk: who calls the awesome and only love of his life an idiot? Note to me: jerk his testicles up to his nostrils, then twist. Then nobly accept his apology. Repeat.)

Tina had yanked the fridge out from the wall and unplugged it. She'd found several rolls of duct tape-you know how most people have a junk drawer in their kitchen? Yeah, well, in our Green Mill-sized kitchen, we had a junk cabinet, and in that cabinet were many rolls of duct tape. (Also many rolls of regular tape, index cards, Post-its, pens and pencils, markers, string-who used string anymore?-and various envelopes. And that was only the first shelf.)

Old vampires like Tina and Sinclair loved duct tape. Looooooved it. They didn't like just using it for what it was intended (e.g., fixing, repairing, undoing), they made things out of it. Pretty much any vampire born before duct tape had been invented thought it was the coolest stuff on earth. Velcro-cool. IPod cool.

Anyway, Tina was taping the Marc Thing to the fridge. And doing it at ramped-up vampire speed. So what I saw was basically a blur of Tina spooling tape all over the Marc Thing like Charlotte spewed web for Wilbur. Which the Marc Thing found hilarious.

It was all surreal enough to almost make me forget the pain of my mashed ribs. Which, to be honest, were feeling better and better. I hadn't had any blood in-what century was I in? Okay, not quite right, I'd munched a bit on Sinclair before all the madness started (again), but it wasn't the first time I noticed I was needing less blood and healing faster.

Something to wonder about, some other time.

"You'd be surprised," Dickie/Nickie was telling Jessica, who looked as fascinated as I felt. "You can't break it-most people can't break it, and look how many rolls she's going through!-and you can't untie it. It's as good as rope made out of Holy Water."

"The things I learn when I've been knocked up," she commented.

"So many questions," Marc agreed, "and none of them are tape-related."

"I have questions for youuuuuu, tooooo," the Marc Thing hummed.

"Ech, why do you talk like that?" Jessica asked. "Are you trying to come off as batshit crazy?"

"That is what I was going for, Big Round Jessica," he confessed, "yes."

"I guess I should defend your honor," Nickie/Dickie/ Tavvie said doubtfully, "but how? Kick him? Shoot him? Can I get a stake through all that tape?"

"Save that for later," Sinclair said. He was watching the blur of Tina and tape with approval. Then he turned back to the Marc Thing. "Unchivalrous comments aside, perhaps I won't kill you."

It pouted, which was not a pretty sight. "Spoilsport."

"I will, however, require information."

"I require it, too," Marc added, and Jess and N/Dick both nodded.

I didn't . . . I required him to die, leave, burst into flames, or turn into a new pair of Beverly Feldmans. But I had the feeling I wasn't going to get what I wanted, at least right away. It wasn't the first time no one gave a tin shit for my opinion. Queen-schmeen.

Sinclair glanced at our friends with an expression we'd all seen before, because Jessica jumped right in. "Don't you start pulling that only-vampires-can-know-about-this crap, Sink Lair."

My husband closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids. He looked like the Before picture in a Pepto-Bismol commercial. "Please don't pronounce my name like that."

"Because we all live here; you're not in this alone! Yeah, we're not vampires-"

"Not yet," Marc Thing said slyly, earning him a sharp rap on the top of his head ("Hey!") from Tina. If I were him, I wouldn't antagonize Tina any further . . . the next smack could cave in his 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."

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