MaryJane Davidson: Undead and Unwelcome

“So, if I’m reading this correctly, you’re a vampire now. Not a secretary.”

“Not an administrative assistant,” I corrected automatically. I mean, jeez! I knew Cooper was old and creaky, but what century did he think we were living in? (Or in my case, dying in and then reliving?)

“The important bit,” Cooper went on, “is about the vampire.”

“Well, yeah.”

“And how you’re the queen of them.”

I sighed and flopped into an airplane seat. I examined the toes of my navy blue Cole Haan Penny Air Loafers . . . not a scratch so far. “I guess some people would consider that an important point. The queen thing.”

“It’s bulleted and boldfaced. Also, the date of your death is in italics, along with how you don’t have to urinate anymore.”

“My pee or the lack thereof is nobody’s business!” I gnashed my teeth and added, “Give me that.”

I snatched the memo away from Cooper so quickly, he didn’t see my hand move until his wrinkly fingers were clutching air. This startled him into a gasp, which we then both pretended I hadn’t heard. That, I was learning, was vampire etiquette. Or, that is, vampire etiquette when dealing with humans. I’d finally figured it out after three years of being undead.

There should be a class, you know. Vampire Etiquette When Dealing with Humans 101. In another fifty years, I could teach the stupid thing.

I scanned the memo, my eyes bulging so much they felt like they were trying to leap from my skull. Cooper hadn’t been kidding. Jessica had sent him a memo detailing my bodily functions. Two pages!

To: Samuel Cooper.

From: The Boss.

Re: Betsy, Vampirism, and Cargo.

Cargo? My gut churned.

And the part about me being the vampire queen was bulleted.

“I can’t believe she sent you a memo.”

“She always does. And I send ’em to her. Increasing fuel costs, licensing issues, route changes. You know how expensive fuel’s getting now that China’s buying all the oil? The E.M. ain’t cheap, you know.” The E.M.: Jessica’s private joke. It stood for Emancipated Minor.

“And she sends her memos to me to keep me in the loop, don’t you know. Seems this one’s a little late, though,” he muttered.

“ ‘Creepy speed and unnaturally grotesque super-​strength’?” Aghast, I kept reading as other blechy phrases leaped out at me. “ ‘Still obsessed with shoes but married rich and can now actually afford the stupid things’? That scrawny traitor, I’m going to—agh! ‘Immortality hasn’t given her any interest in any topic she cannot refer to in the first person.’ Why, that—okay, I can’t really argue with that last one, but she didn’t have to highlight it. Look! It’s highlighted. ”

“So is ‘extreme narcissistic tendencies.’ In any case, I’m to fly you to Cape Cod, so you can meet with the King of the Werewolves and make sure he doesn’t sic his pack on you.”

“I think it’s pronounced Pack.”

Cooper heard the capital P and nodded. “Right. This Pack, they’re pretty ticked? Because of that little gal Antonia?”

I nibbled on the inside of my lip, distressed, as always, by any mention of Antonia. It had only been a week. It didn’t still sting, as much as feel like a lateral slice through the liver.

See, poor Antonia was making the trip with us—in the cargo hold, as all corpses flew. In a plain wooden coffin, the lethal bullet holes all over her skull still not filled in by an undertaker. My husband, Sinclair, and I had no idea what werewolf funeral customs entailed, so we’d given orders that her body simply be placed in a coffin and loaded onto Jessica’s private plane.

We didn’t even wash her beautiful, dear face.

But that was nothing compared to what we did with Garrett’s body.

“Look, Cooper, the important thing is now you know what you’re getting into. So if you can’t fly us out there, or if you think you—”

“Bite your tongue, miss. Or missus, I suppose. I’ve been flying for Jessica Wilson since she was seven years old, don’t you know, and we’ve had hairy days and we’ve had hairy days.”

“Cooper, I never, ever want to hear about your hair.”

He ignored me. It was just as well. “I’ve seen and heard things—never mind, that’s private family business.”

“Oh, come on, we’re best friends. I mean, Jessica and me.” I didn’t know if Cooper had any friends. “There’s no way you know stuff that I don’t—”

Cooper ruthlessly interrupted my shameless scrounging for gossip. “This doesn’t scare me.” He nodded at the memo, inadvertently crumpled in my fist. “But I surely wish Miss Jessica had told me earlier.”

He meant, of course, “Like, how about before I flew you and the vampire king to New York City for your honeymoon, dumbass?” But Cooper neither a) freaked out, nor b) quit. And thank God, because finding another private pilot at this hour would have been a bitch.

“You got a problem with the boss?” I asked. “Take it up with the boss. What I want to know is, are we still leaving at eight o’clock?” Because if we weren’t, I (and probably my husband) was going to be in big trouble with seventy-​five thousand werewolves. I held my breath, remembered for the thousandth time I didn’t have to breathe anyway, and waited for his answer.

“Memos don’t slow down my flight check,” Cooper semi-​scolded in his luscious Irish accent. I managed not to swoon with relief. Also, oooh, European accents, I could listen to them all day. Americans sounded like illiterate bumpkins by comparison. “Gunshots don’t slow down my flight check.”

“Don’t worry. Nobody’s packing.” On this flight.

“I could tell you stories about the carnage and body counts . . .” Cooper’s pale blue eyes went misty with nostalgia while I watched him nervously, then he seemed to shake himself. “But the government made me promise.”

“Well, hoo-​ray for the government.”

Cooper had first worked for Jessica’s dad and, when her folks died (an ugly yet fitting death and a story for another time) and their assets transferred to her, he kept right on flying for her.

And as he’d said, Cooper heard things. Chances were he’d already known I was walking around dead. He was just miffed that Jessica hadn’t told him three years ago.

And you know, he wasn’t revolting looking. Tall—my height—with eyes the color of new denim and a shock of pure white hair that he wore over his shoulders, he was like an ancient hippy, albeit one who had never touched drugs nor alcohol.

He was wearing what Jessica teasingly called his uniform: khaki shorts, sandals, and a T-​shirt that read, JESUS SAVES. HE PASSES TO NOAH. NOAH SCORES! He had tons of weird Jesus shirts. People picked fights if he wore the wrong T-​shirt to the wrong place. Fights Cooper always won, despite his age. It was unreal, yet cool . . . sort of like Cooper himself. Jessica had fired him dozens of times for his own safety, but he always showed up the next day.

“Okay, then.” I stood, forgetting I had been sitting under a bulkhead, and banged my head. “Ow!”

“Luckily being dead hasn’t dulled your natural grace.”

“Shut up, Cooper.”

He smirked and tipped two fingers in a mock salute.

“All right, so I’ll see you in another hour or so. They’re, um, they’re done loading Antonia and my husband’s pulling together some paperwork . . .”

For what, I had no idea—Sinclair had his fingers in a lot of pies, and I wasn’t interested enough to ask. He might answer, and then I’d have to listen. Or look like I was listening, which was harder than it sounded.