Chapter 1

l would never have gone to hell in the first place if the Antichrist hadn't been fluent in Tagalong. Talk about your perfect storm of paranormal weirdness ... and on Halloween, too.

Okay, so, I'll back up. This whole mess started simply enough (they always, always do): Bloomingdale's was having a shoe sale and for once, the retail time warp worked in my favor.

Okay, I'll back up more. You know how stores are actually about four months ahead of the actual calendar? Like Halloween decorations on sale the day after Easter (pardon me while I embrace the horror)? Like that. So anyway, even though it was Halloween, they were having their spring shoe sale (because when there's a foot of snow on the ground, everybody wants to buy sandals, right?). And the Antichrist asked if she could tag along, so I said okay.

I ... said ... okay! You'd think I hadn't been paying attention the last four years. Okay, I haven't been. Still, how could I not see the coming disaster? It shouldn't have mattered that the Antichrist needed a new pair of sandals. I should have realized that an innocent quest for fine leather footwear would have ended up with me in hell and the Antichrist freaking out. Again.

Right. The Antichrist. I should probably explain that, too. My half sister, Laura, was fathered by my, uh, father. Dear Old Dad was banging away at my stepmother, the wretch formerly known as Antonia and whom I had always called the Ant, and Dim Old Dad didn't notice she was possessed by Satan. I'm betting devil-possessed Ant isn't any worse than non-devil-possessed Ant, which is a sad commentary on my father's taste in second wives.

The thing is, Satan hated pregnancy, delivery, and breast-feeding. So she did the whole baby-on-the-doorstep thing and beat feet back to hell.

So my sister, who was raised by a minister, is not only the Antichrist, it's been foretold she'll take over the world. Possibly between donating blood and teaching Sunday school.

But! I will be the first to admit, the Antichrist is nice. Works in homeless shelters, runs blood drives (kind of hilarious, given that her sister is a vampire), makes cupcakes for church bake sales. Chocolate ones. With real buttercream frosting. Buttercream, not the colored Crisco grocery stores try to pass off as frosting. Ummm.

God, I miss solid food.

Of course, Laura's got a temper. Who doesn't? And occasionally she loses it and then slaughters anyone she can get her hands on. That gets awkward, kind of. And she's totally conflicted about the undead. Which is actually a pretty normal reaction to vampires.

Her temper and occasional forays into psychopathic rage were why we were meeting tonight at the Mall of America. Laura had sort of tried to kill me a couple of months ago, and still felt crummy about it. She detested conspicuous consumerism and also shopping, which is why her offer to go to my personal Graceland was an olive branch.

I had risen from my unholy grave (bed, actually, with navy blue flannel sheets from Target-it was a day away from November, and I'm not a savage), devoured an innocent for breakfast (a triple-berry smoothie; a perk of being the queen of the undead was that I didn't have to suck down blood every day, though to be honest, I always want to), then commandeered my sinister chariot (a Lexus hybrid) and was mallward bound.

I parked in the east parking lot, second floor-lots of my favorites were on that side, including Williams-Sonoma and Coach-not that I'd ever cough up four hundred bucks for a knapsack that looked like it was designed by a bright second-grader. Also, Tiger Sushi was there, and Laura was seriously addicted to their Tiger Balls.

So I forced a smile as I marched toward a restaurant that sold seaweed, rice, and raw fish for a profit margin of several hundred percent. The sushi thing. I didn't get it and I never would. I'd been fishing too much as a kid; I couldn't make myself eat bait. No matter how fresh it was.

I spotted Laura while I was still thirty feet away, and it had nothing to do with my supercool vampire powers. Laura was just ridiculously gorgeous, all the time. So annoying.

Look, it's not envy, okay? Well, not extreme envy. I'll be the first to admit I'm not one of those girls who pretends they have no idea they're mega-cute. I'm cute; I freely confess. Tall and blonde (big surprise in Minnesota ... we're about as rare as yellow snow in the dog park), pale skin, light eyes. Never really had to fight the fat, and being undead means I'll be slender forever. The phrase I'm at my winter weight no longer has power over me. My senior year I was a contestant in the Miss Burnsville pageant and went home with the Miss Congeniality sash, sort of the you're-not-the-prettiest-or-the-most-talented-but-the-other-gals-thought-you-were-nice consolation prize. I don't exactly drink my water out of a dog dish.

Laura, though ...

Breathtaking. Gorgeous. And, as my friend Marc put it, "mouthwatering."

My gay friend Marc.

And there she was, standing with someone I didn't know, gesturing wildly in the manner of the native Minnesotan (or, perhaps, The Omen). And as I approached I remembered the real reason the spawn of Satan and my dead stepmother made me so uneasy.

She was just annoyingly stunning, all the time. One of those (vomit) natural beauties. Elbow-length hair the color of corn silk. Big blue eyes. First-day-of-spring blue. Cloudless-summer-day blue. Really, really gorgeous blue. Oh, and thin-did I have to tell you that? I probably didn't have to tell you that.

Great tits, of course, and always primly secured in a 36-B bra. Long legs-she was just a hair shorter than me, and I topped out at six feet-clad in truly faded blue jeans. Not prewashed and faded blue jeans ... Laura's mom bought them new (yeah, her adopted mom still bought most of her clothes, though the girl was a student at the U of M). Then Laura wore them and wore them and wore them until they were actually faded, ripped, et cetera. Waste was a sin, after all. Oh! And let's not forget the spawn of Satan's flawless creamy complexion, courtesy of Noxzema.

And faded running shoes, I realized as I got closer. Also by Target. Running shoes! Who wore those to go buy sandals? She'd have to sit down and pull off her shoes and socks each time she ... argh, it was going to make me nuts just thinking about it, so I thought about something else. Like the woman she was waving at.

It wasn't a surprise the Antichrist was talking to someone; it was a surprise she wasn't followed around by packs of men and women and small children, all the time. In addition to being gorgeous, people just naturally flocked to Laura. Like I said-for the Antichrist, she was pretty nice.

Except, I realized as I got close enough for her to notice me, she wasn't talking to the woman. And she wasn't waving at her, either. Both sets of hands were flying-Laura had either gone deaf or recently become fluent in American Sign Language.

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?"

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