"Thanks for coming so quickly."

Delk hadn't taken off his coat, and had tracked mud all the way (groan) to the kitchen. His full name was Jonathon Michael Delk, but too many people in his life called him Jonny. So he was going all tough guy now and insisting on the moniker Delk. I couldn't blame him: I had a silly first name, too.

"She said you were in trouble," J-er, Delk was saying. "But it sounds like that was just another vampire trick to get me to-"

"I said the Queen needed you," Tina corrected him with more than a little sharpness. Tina didn't care for Delk, given his vampire-slaying past. No doubt the car ride up from the farm had been a carnival. Not least because she and Eric thought it was perfectly fine to leave Jon out of it. But I just couldn't do it. He had written the book. It was being published. How could I keep my mouth shut about it?

"Delk, sit down."

"What's going on?" He shook the catalog at me, dropped it on the table, and rubbed his hands together; they were red with cold. "One minute I'm home, the next I'm in the car with Tina-"

"Do you want something to warm up with?"

He gave me a look I supposed he thought was subtle. I was feeling sicker and sicker by the moment, and it wasn't all the failed rainbows. Delk had a bit of a crush on me, and if he had come charging up to the Cities because he thought I was in trouble-well, that was just too damned sweet.

In fact, he'd shown up here a few months ago when he heard about my impending unholy nuptials. The gist of our conversation:

DELK: You can't marry Eric Sinclair.

ME: Just watch.

DELK: He's a bad man.

ME: You don't know from bad.

DELK: You're making a mistake.

ME: Shut your head.

Not exactly Tristan and Isolde, but it passed the time around here.

Then, inexplicably (except I was pretty sure I knew why) he hung around the mansion. Started interviewing me for a class project. Eventually produced a book. But then Sinclair-

"Tina, would you leave us alone for a minute?"

"I'll go see if the king is available," she said, backing out of the kitchen, looking at Delk the way a cat looked at a really big rat. I can take you. I might get hurt, but that's all right.

We were alone. Except for Marc and Jessica, shamelessly eavesdropping outside the kitchen door. I couldn't do anything about that, so I addressed the problem at hand. "You wrote the book. It's coming out this fall as a paperback everyone thinks is funny fiction."

"You're saying someone used my name on their book?"

Oh, boy. He was standing there, so earnest and flushed and blond and young, I almost couldn't bear it. He was a nice kid. I liked him a lot. There never would have been anything between us, and not just because of Sinclair, but I still liked him and sure didn't want to upset him.

I could almost hear Sinclair in my head: Then don't.

Too bad.

"I'm saying you wrote this book, this Undead and Unwed. Someone-probably you-turned it in to a publisher, and now it's going to be on bookshelves this fall."

"But-I mean, I did a paper for class before holiday break-"

"You turned the paper into a book. You followed me around for days, transcribing my life story, putting your own spin on it. You had, like, three hundred pages."

He was blinking so fast, for a second I thought he had something in both eyes. "But I don't remember that! I'd remember if I wrote a book, right?"

"Yeah, normally. Except Sinclair made you forget you'd written it. And since you didn't remember writing it, you didn't think to warn us that you'd sent it in to get published."

" Warn you? I-" He walked dazedly back and forth by the table for a moment, not quite pacing. He looked like he didn't know what to do with his hands. "Sinclair made me forget?"

"Well." Tell the truth and shame my sister's mother, wasn't that how the saying went? Sure, we could be done now, but I didn't want any part of this conversation left undead. Whoops-Freudian slip. Unsaid. Another surprise down the road I didn't need. "Tina found the electronic version of your manuscript-she was looking for it, or something like it-and told Sinclair. He mojoed you into forgetting all about it, and then they deleted your work. They thought all of your work."

"Did you call me down here," he whispered, "because you just found out and you want my help to stop them?"

"Ah, no. See, after they did all that, they told me. This was around Christmas. And at first I told Sinclair to undo his undoing, if you get what I mean. But then I remembered."

"What?"

"I remembered I'm the queen and I'm responsible for all the vampires," I said simply. "So I let it all stand. It was shitty for you, but I thought if the book got out that would be shitty for all vampires."

He was clutching the back of one of the kitchen chairs and I saw all the knuckles had gone from pink to dead white. All the color had fallen out of his face, except for two patches of red way up on each cheek.

"Are you okay?" I asked, dumbest question of the year, no doubt. "Maybe you better sit down."

"You-you let-him-do that? To me?"

"Well, I didn't know about it until afterward," I began lamely, "but-"

He actually swayed a little while he hung on to the chair. I edged a little closer, figuring I could catch him if he fainted. He looked like he was going to faint. After he threw up. "You let him do that-let him into my fucking mind-and then you had the chance to help me and you took their side?"

"I-yeah. That's more or less it."

"You didn't help me-you let him-and you didn't-"

"Delk, I think you should sit down before you-"

"Shut! Up!" he screamed at me, the cords standing out on his neck. "You aren't even sorry! Because if you did it, if you fucked me over to help all of goddamn vampire-kind, you can't be sorry."

"I'm sorry you got stuck in the middle. I'm sorry there's a book out there that you don't remember writing. A funny book the critics like," I added, trying to find a speckle of good in this whole awful nightmare. Oooh, and there was something else! "You kind of got the last laugh, because the book is coming out anyway, and the vampires who know about it are pretty annoyed, so-"

"So everything you let him do to me was for nothing."

"Okay, that's another way to look at it."

He wiped his nose with the back of the hand not holding the chair. "I can't believe this," he whispered.

"I'm really sor-"

"I can believe that bitch snuck around in my files, and I can believe that prick jumped into my mind, but you! You're supposed to be the good one! I-I thought you-you aren't supposed to be a bad guy! You're supposed to look out for me, and for vampires-they're all the same to you, right?"

I stammered, trying to say five things at once.

"Right?"

"Delk, I-"

He wheeled around and almost slipped in one of the little puddles he'd made.

"Please don't leave! Please, let's talk some more."

He barked an incredulous laugh, staggered for the door, and shoved against it, hard.

Unfortunately, it only moved about a foot before it thudded into something.

"Aagghh!" I heard Jessica say from the other side, then another thud as she fell down. I rushed over, held the door open, and saw her rolling back and forth on the floor, hands cupped around her nose. The blood, it was-it was sheeting down her throat and onto her shirt; the blouse was already wrecked.

Marc was crouched beside her, doing the doctor/mom chant: "No, I won't touch it, just let me look, no, I'm not going to touch, just get your hands down so I can see, let me see."

That was no ordinary nosebleed. It was just-it was everywhere. I whirled upon Delk. "She's sick! And you practically broke her nose-she didn't do anything. And she's sick, you asshole!"

Before I knew what was happening, I had seized him by the shirt and was holding him right up to my nose. "You thouhd have kept your handth to yourthelf."

"Betsy, don't! It was an accident, come on, it's-" Jessica choked a little from her spot on the floor and spat blood. "It's a swinging door, for heaven's sake. I'm surprised this doesn't happen every week. Come on, put him down."

I threw him away from me. He bounced off the wall (and I'd be lying if I didn't admit it felt good to watch him fly like a paper airplane, and where had all my sympathy for him gone?) and crumpled to the floor in a heap.

I knelt by my friends. "Jeth, are you all ri-"

"Look out!" she screamed, and I turned just in time to get shot.

I'll bet Marc is sorry he skipped work today, I thought, toppling into Jessica's bloody face and knocking her down again.

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