I was hip-deep in velvet clogs and last year's pumps, simultaneously cursing this timeline's lack of Louboutin while admiring Marc's shelf-building skills, and heard what was becoming a near-daily sound: someone on Summit Avenue had stomped on their brakes right outside our house. There's something about the shriek of brakes and the creak of fingers tightening on the steering wheel that kicks adrenaline from "Ho-hum, should I have breakfast and lunch at Burger King?" to "I'm going to be killed any second and I should do something right now!"

Even before I died that was a stressful sound, and as a vampire that hadn't changed. It could mean anything-an undead drive-by, the cops showing up to ask about any of the people I'd killed, somebody racing home ahead of a hit squad, one of my subjects warning of an impending IRS audit, another of my subjects whining about why couldn't we all just get along, still another of my subjects informing me that I wasn't cut out to be queen and then being amazed when I agreed... like that.

It wasn't any of those things, though; I knew that without leaving the closet. These days that sound meant one thing: Eric Sinclair, the king of the vampires, was playing in traffic again.

With a groan I lurched to my feet, not as sorry as I should have been to leave the closet. The velvet clogs were just awful, and I had thirty-eight pairs. (You're thinking, Then why buy them? And I'm thinking, Then why not shut up?)

Since there wasn't a Christian Louboutin in this reality, all my really terrific shoes didn't exist and (alas!) would never exist. I'd been able to fill the yawning void in my (black) soul with Manolo pumps (the Perpeta Silhouettes helped assuage my agony) and Feldman flats (ditto the Diamond 4-Ever red multi), but that didn't mean I didn't wish for what I once had. You could admire a cheetah and a golden eagle, but still regret the extinction of, I dunno, the dodo? The passenger pigeon? (Analogies are not my strong point.) I had made Christian Louboutin extinct when I tinkered with my timeline, and it haunted me, and would for the rest of my death. Unlife. What-have-you.

But I had more pressing pains in the ass to deal with. Unwilling to suffer further frostbite, I grabbed the shoes closest to me, which happened to be the two-tone green Bloch snake-print flats. Snake-print, not snakeskin. I'd quit PETA around the time they decided it was okay to encourage people to euthanize entire breeds (pit bulls, we're talking about you) in the name of protecting animals, but before they announced they were going to do porn to protect their furbabies. (This is true! Unbelievable but true! This is per their own data.)

Say it with me: ???? Makes me crave a WTF stamp, so I could just walk around stamping WTF on everything that freaks me or scares me or just plain puzzles me.

Anyway, I jumped ship after the breed-wide euthanasia train started up; it reminded me of those whack-job freedom fighters who scream things like, "Die, pig oppressors! Fear not, repressed villagers, we're here and you're safe and we'll kill you to save you!" Definitely one of those "wow, I got clear of that car crash just in time" moments.

But that didn't mean I condoned widespread snake murder. You could make all kinds of gorgeous footgear without shedding blood except that of the designer working her fingers to the bone. In fact, starting with material that was already dazzling struck me as a cop-out. Start with something wretched and make it beautiful-that was much more challenging.

Alas, no time for further shoe rumination. Wait, would it be ruminations? Was that right? Anyway, I galloped down the Gone with the Wind staircase, zipped past a couple of parlors, and was out the front door in time to see the vampire king standing on Summit, cuddling Fur and Burr to his (broad) chest and waving a cheerful good-bye to a rattled driver who was not lingering. "I am certain that will buff right out!" he called, and the car lurched as the driver stomped the gas pedal. "It was lovely talking to you!"

"Ah, man." I fought the urge to slap myself on the forehead or grunt "d'oh!" "Again with this?" Among other things, my favorite vampire liked to dart into traffic without looking.

Eric Sinclair spun toward me, Fur's and Burr's long silky ears flaring out as he did. Identical bundles of fluff and teeth, Fur and Burr were black Lab sisters, with the soft short coat and large liquid brown eyes of the breed. They also drooled prodigiously. Fur wore a red collar with matching leash; Burr had the green one, also with matching leash. Unless it was the other way around. Who could tell? Who wanted to?

"Ah, my own, a glorious sunny day rivaled only by your beauty."

"It's cloudy," I pointed out as he came up the driveway. "And what was the other thing? Hmm, it's on the tip of my tongue, why'd I come sprinting out of-oh, right! Stop playing in traffic! Stop! Playing! In-"

"Traffic?" he guessed.

"I can't believe I've had to say that even one time to a grown man. A very grown man in your case-certainly old enough to know better."

"I am warmed by your loving concern. As much as I am warmed by the sun as it-"

"Lurks behind a cloudbank." I tried not to smile. My husband was a pile of contradictions, which I found as sexy as I did interesting/annoying/infuriating. Tall, dark, and-there was no other word-foreboding, with big hands capable of killing, hands that had killed-but he'd never hurt an innocent. Immaculately dressed, but walking around in a cloud of dog hair. Old enough to qualify for social security, but forever in the taut, toned, sleekly muscular body of a young man in his physical prime. An unstoppable satyr in the bedroom and veteran of more threesomes than Charlie Sheen, but faithful to me. Glittering black eyes capable of forcing anyone's will to his, but when he looked at me it was with sweet, sappy luurrrrv. I suppose a staid, predictable mate would be boring. Sinclair was never boring.

Yes indeed, he was my husband and my king, and together we (sorta) ruled the vampire nation (such as it was... no borders and no border patrols or citizenship tests or patriotic bumper stickers or taxes) and were feared and loathed by many, and bugged by many more, and there King Puppy Love was in all his insane puppy-cuddling glory.

And it was still damn near impossible not to gape up at him and grin and grin, because his unalloyed joy at his new freedom was contagious.

I stomped on my happiness. One of us had to be the responsible adult, dammit, and the cosmic joke of it all was: that meant me. Setting an example. Or something.

"When I asked the devil to fix it so you could run around in sunshine, I had no idea the downside was you'd drop fifty IQ points." I was going for scolding and not pulling it off. "Is it asking too much to want you to retain some self-respect? Because you're capable of at least that. If memory serves."

Fur and Burr answered for him with puppy yaps. The little black dogs had begun squirming like hairy worms when I'd come out. They adored him, they lived to be near him, they cried on the infrequent occasions he left them, but they loved getting their fur and slobber all over me almost as much. Sinclair thought they were perfect in all ways, but I could only take their incontinent cuteness in small doses. I was a cat person whose cat was dead. So I had pretty much the same relationship with Giselle as I'd had when she was alive: we ignored each other while going about our lives. Which had suited us both fine, so don't even start with the judging.

"Where's my badass vampire king?" I complained. Unlike most rhetorical questions, this one was answerable. Temporarily replaced by the farmer's son was correct. Sinclair had grown up on a farm and been around swarms of dogs his whole childhood and adolescence (though he was a teenager before the word teenager was invented). After he became a vampire, he decided it would be cruel to try to keep a dog or dogs when he could never take them for a walk during the day, and when at any moment he could be killed again. Kind of a grim tale, right? Yeah, well, I accidentally changed that. I also accidentally changed the timeline and accidentally killed Lena Olin. Because that's me in a nutshell: accident-prone.

Not only had I made a (literal) deal with the devil for Sinclair's soul (sorta), I'd picked up the puppies and brought them home for him, a "hey, great to have you back in the sunshine!" gift. Again, in my defense, I had no idea it would leave him clinically insane.

"You were once a badass but now you're the undead Dog Whisperer," I teased. "Where's the cold, ruthless vampire I loved and loathed?"

"Right here! Isn't um badass vampire king wight here, li'l woogums, yes he is! Yes he is!"

Dear God. "Well, we had a good run, but it's time for our divorce now. I'll have my people call your people. Which will be easy since my people are your people."

"Oh no, not ever," he replied, confident in my love and horniness. He grinned and I smiled back-just could not help it. He only talked the baby talk to Fur and Burr when I could hear him; he knew it set my teeth on edge. Right?

Please, God, that's why he's doing it, that's the only reason he's doing it, to get a rise out of me. The alternative is unthinkable!

"Come walk with me," he coaxed over the puppies' whimpering. They were trying as hard as they could to get down so they could put muddy paws on my dark purple leggings. Purple leggings that matched my slightly less purple sweatshirt, and pale green flats on my feet... what had I been thinking? I looked like an upside-down eggplant.

"Pass." I stepped close to pet them, which only increased the wiggling and yelping. "Bad enough to have these two always wanting to climb all over me; I don't need the neighborhood dogs chasing me home again." One of the perks of being Elizabeth, the One (gah, I know, sue me; I didn't make up that dumb dumb dumb title), is that I'll be pretty cute forever. One of the not-perks was that dogs were drawn to me.

"How can my true love say nay," he sang, "on such a beautiful d-bbllech!" He'd been cut off as Fur had licked his face and accidentally Frenched him. Heh. That alone had been worth running out of the house for. "No, no, you dreadful hound," he scolded in the same tone people used for "I love you and everything you do is wonderful." Yeah, that'd show those two who was boss. "Just for that, whee!"

"Please stop doing the Mary Tyler Moore twirl."

"Never!"

I'd always assumed that when I met the right vampire, we'd settle down and live with a houseful of weirdos and I'd be the embarrassing one. Oh, life, must you always teach me lessons?

But Sinclair had had enough, both of the sunshine and making me nuts, since he gently put the puppies on the ground and kept a tight hold on their leashes. "I saw your sister on my way back," he said, all traces of play gone. "You had words?"

"At least three or four of them." We fell into step together as we let the dogs lead us up the walk and around the side of the house. "I'm getting somewhere with her. At least she came over and yelled at me for a couple of minutes. It's sad that I'm taking that as a positive, isn't it?"

"It is optimistic," he decided. "Not sad. Was it the singing minstrel? I have a wager with Tina." He opened the kitchen door and held it for me. I scuttled past him to beat the puppies inside.

"No, I think the balloon bouquets pushed her over. She had a big one in her car when she showed up."

Sinclair snickered as he shrugged out of his black wool coat and unleashed the dogs, tossing both coat and leashes into the mudroom just off the kitchen. If I needed further proof that things were different now that my hub was a pet owner, the sight of him tossing a six-hundred-dollar-plus Ralph Lauren cashmere overcoat onto a dirty counter, then closing the door on the whole mess-ta-dah! all gone!-would have done it.

The mudroom was aptly named. It always looked like someone had thrown a mud grenade, then slammed the door. Ker-bloosh! Mud all over. Mud in places you can't get mud out of. Mud in places mud was never meant to be. The girls, knowing the routine, dashed past the door to their corner and started frisking around their food dishes.

"I have every confidence you shall wear her down with your incessant singing telegrams and refusal to acknowledge that killing her mother was a bad thing."

"Yeah, I-wait. That almost sounded like you think-"

"Followed by your insistence that, like, you're totally a victim, too." His emphasis on like and totally was pointed yet shrill, as if he were channeling a cheerleader from the early '80s. Any cheerleader, actually. I could feel my eyes squeezing into slits while he grabbed the canister kept on the puppies' part of the kitchen counter. Yeah. The dogs had their own section of counter. I didn't have my own section of counter.

"This is not funny," he concluded.

"I know!" I cried. "Your bitchy and inaccurate impression of me aside, none of this is funny. All right, Laura yelling at me with a fistful of balloons was funny, but not much else."

His piercing gaze met mine for a moment and I felt hot and cold at once. Cold because although Sinclair would set himself on fire before hurting me, he was pretty much the baddest vampire on the planet; you didn't break his gaze without giving something up. Hot because he was pretty much the baddest vampire on the planet and you didn't break his gaze without giving something up. Yum. Yum squared.

His lips parted. I felt myself leaning toward him... now that I thought about it, we hadn't had sex in almost seventy-two hours. The horror! Unimaginable.

"Tina!" he bawled, and I jerked back. That wasn't the name I'd expected him to shriek.

We heard feet pounding down the stairs, we heard someone galloping down the hall to the kitchen, and then-whoosh! Tina was sliding to a stop in front of us. She loved fuzzy socks, but bemoaned their lack of traction... most days, anyway. Also, her socks were yellow with black stripes, making it look like she had bee feet.

"Majesties." She wasn't panting, because she had no breath to be out of, but she'd wasted no time coming on the run. "How may I serve?"

Sinclair, meanwhile, had twisted the lid off the puppies' canister o' treats. "This is unacceptable."

"My king?"

He held the canister upside down and shook it. "It is not to be borne!"

Tina blinked slowly, like an owl. She loved my husband; she had loved him for decades before I was born and I confidently expected her to love him for centuries more. But her love didn't threaten mine. She had been a friend of the Sinclair clan for generations; she was the vampire who had turned my husband from a grieving brother and son to a coldly infuriated predator. She was devoted, had killed and (at least twice that I knew of) almost died for him, and her love for him was utterly maternal.

Which, given how she looked, was as hilarious as it was touching. Tina had been a prime hottie in her day and still was, in mine. Her dark blond hair was pulled back into a thick braid, which brought attention to her pale face, making her dark eyes and bristly lashes even more striking. Pansy eyes, my mom called them. She was regularly carded when she tried to a) drink and b) see an NC-17 movie. This was partly because she was a vampire and partly because she liked dressing the part of a lecherous senator's fantasy: plaid skirts, usually in a green or red tartan; crisp white blouses; little to no jewelry; no makeup. In life, she must have driven the other Southern belles out of their teeny tiny minds, and trust me, their minds were having enough trouble grasping the fact that Daddy's slaves had nutty ideas about how it sucked to be owned. (Yeah. She was that old. Her full name was Christina Caresse Chavelle. Ha!)

All this to say she was a creature of contradictions, just like my insane husband; and also like my insane husband, she loved and protected us. That didn't mean we didn't drive her bugshit sometimes. Like now, for instance. Sinclair was shaking an empty canister and I could tell she wanted to roll her eyes but wouldn't indulge. Thus the slow blinking.

After a few seconds while Sinclair practically tapped his foot waiting for her answer, she said, "I must apologize, my king."

"How could you let this happen?"

"I foolishly let the budget, the management of our offshore accounts, an audit on the nightclub the queen keeps forgetting she inherited, a conference call with Michael Wyndham and Dr. Bimm to lay groundwork for possible alliances, and the monthly newsletter take precedence."

I wanted to sigh with admiration. Only Tina could have gotten away with it: a perfectly serious response, with terrific undertones of Because it's not my fucking job, nimrod, now how about you go play with your dogs and let me get back to the grown-up stuff?

"It's nothing to freak out about. We're not out." I figured I'd toss Tina a save, not that she needed one. "There's a whole pack of those Chew-eez puppy treats things in-"

"Store-bought?" the king of the vampires nearly shrieked. I had the feeling he would have said "Abstinence?" in the same horrified tone. "Factory-churned dreck with peanut shells and corncobs as filler? Never! Never while I live!"

"Technically you're not ali-quit that." Tired of waiting for her snack, Fur had abandoned her bowl and jumped up on my legs. She had sharp claws to go with her sharp baby teeth-those puppies had mouths full of sewing needles. "Stop it!"

"My darling, my own," Sinclair crooned as he set the canister down and came to me. He put his lovely strong hands on my shoulders and pulled me in for what I hoped would be some heavy kitchen smoochin'. Maybe we'd shoo everyone out and nail each other on the butcher block. Hmm, no, we made our smoothies there; the others would throw a fit. The puppy counter? I'd throw a fit. It was no coincidence that the kitchen was one of the few rooms in this monstrosity we hadn't christened by defilement. "I need you at my side."

"Back atcha, big guy."

"Let us bake love."

"Oooh, I've been waiting all day for-what?"

"Bake love." Was he... ? He was! Eric Sinclair was reaching past me and grabbing an apron, which he dropped over his head and then tied behind his back. "That is how you show love to your pets," he went on as if this was a serious topic of conversation and not further evidence of clinical insanity. "You bake love. I shall begin with a batch of Apple Crunch Pupcakes."

"Please lose the apron," I begged while Tina sloooowly backed out of the room. "I can psychologically block most of this if you just lose the apron. I can blitz the whole day, just please lose the apron!" Oh God, God, why wouldn't he lose the apron?

"It will not stand! We may have run out of homemade dog biscuits but my precious darlings will never be forced to choke down-"

"Forced? So you've never once noticed how they eat? Because they are not forced. Ever."

"-repulsive store-brand dog treats loaded with by-product meal and chicken heads. Now where..." He stood still for a moment, thinking. ". . . where is my mixing bowl?"

I fled the horror.

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