I was hurt. Well, pretending to be. "Are you thaying I thould be athamed?

Thith is who I am now."

"Yes," Marc said, and Jessica swallowed her laugh. "You should be very, very ashamed. You should go to your room and hide your head until the shame passes. And until you don't look like you're trying out for the next Dracula remake."

A sly thought popped into my head, there and gone, one

Eric would understand, and so would Alonzo

too slippery to hold on to. Probably just as well. These days, none of my thoughts were nice ones.

"Doeth anybody have thum gum? I'm freth out."

"Sure," Jessica said brightly, as if a wonderful idea had just occurred to her, "and hey, maybe this time you can stick the wads in a garbage can, if you want to avoid eviction." She slid a brand-new pack of strawberry Bubblicious toward me.

"I'll second that motion," Marc mumbled. "Honestly, Betsy, do you know what theyput in that stuff? The artificial gunk that slides down your throat, leaving the hard, gray crud behind?"

"Thut up," I told him, reaching for the pack. "Thith ithn't very conthructive."

"Yeah? Constructive is the last damned thing on my mind. This place drives me nuts sometimes: nutty vampires, a bitchy werewolf, a zombie, a grumpy billionaire, and a vampire on a hunger strike."

"You have to admit," Jessica said, starting to put away the liquor bottles, "there's never a dull moment. What's the polar opposite of a dull moment?

'Cuz that's what we got around here. All the time."

"I don't think you should call Garrett a zombie. He's a little slow, but—hey!

Don't take the vodka."

"You can have it back," she said in her annoying Mommy voice, "when your fangs go away."

"I can have it back rightnow , honey."

Marc put his hands over his eyes. "Don't fight, you guys. No more. I'm sincere here."

She slapped my hand when I reached for it. "No! Bad vampire!"

I glared. "You know, most sensible people would be scared of me."

She laughed at me. "Most sensible people haven't seen you dancing the

Pancake Dance in your granny underpants on New Year's Eve."

"Hey! Your fangs are gone." Marc digested what she'd just said. "Granny

underpants? You?" Apparently me doing the Pancake Dance wasn't so hard to believe.

"It was just that one time," I grumbled, the last of my mad-on vanishing as quickly as it had come upon me. "All my thongs were in the wash." What had I even been so mad about, anyway? I couldn't remember. Jessica and Marc were the greatest. I was lucky to have friends like them. They were—

The kitchen door swung open, framing the former head of the Blood

Warriors. "I don't understand," Jon Delk said. "You're saying I published a book?"

—sunk. We all were.

Chapter 19

"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.