Undead 12,Undead and Unsure - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,2

Uggy heel and started for her car, a used but well-cared-for ginger-ale-colored Fusion. Because the Antichrist was all about green, and gas mileage. Except, now that the devil was dead, did that mean Laura was the devil?

"But what about Thanksgiving?" I called after her. My trump card! Laura would turn down charity work before she'd turn down mashed potatoes and gravy, especially on a family holiday.

"What about Thanksgiving? It was days ago."

"Yeah, we postponed it." As she turned and her glare got ever more pissy, I continued. "Because it's not Thanksgiving without blood relatives. And Jessica. And her boyfriend whom we've known maybe a year? And Marc, who's dead." Ah! My loyalty to friends both living and dead would show that deep down I cared about her, we all cared about her, and this latest awful thing would blow over and our bond as sisters would be ever more strengthened. It was just a matter of-

"You lying bitch."

"Whoa!" Usually Laura's idea of foul language was to pepper her exclamations with dang, darn, doy, and ish. "That's cold. Like my poor frozen feet. Which you shouldn't even think about because us working this out is way more important than my blue shriveled feet, which have gone numb in an agony of coldness."

"You're postponing Thanksgiving because you hate Thanksgiving," she snapped, and dammit if she didn't have a point. "Not because you're waiting for us to be friends again. Not that we ever were."

"My hatred is only one small factor," I protested.

"You stay away." She stepped back (to my relief, because she had a real Close Talker thing going, and I made it a rule never to give way to a Close Talker) and turned, and this time I knew there was no point in trying to call her back. Her blond hair twirled and swirled around her shoulders as she headed for her car. The balloons bobbed in her wake.

Wait. Blond? Huh.

One of Laura's odder traits (and consider the source who called it odder for an idea of how weird it was) was, when she got super pissed, red-hot furious, her outside matched her inside, a soul trying so hard to be good when all of its instincts were to be bad. When she was angry her hair deepened to the color of blood on fire, and her eyes went poison green.

Not today, though. And I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. Her coloring was a litmus test to gauge her temper. Blue eyes and blond hair meant that no matter what she said or how she said it, the Antichrist wasn't furious. There was strong emotion there, sure, but it wasn't anger. She was afraid.

Of me? Herself? Both? The latter probably, yeah. It struck me as a sensible reaction, and I had to face the knowledge that things between the (new) devil and me were gonna get worse before they got better.

CHAPTER THREE

"I bet it was the minstrel greeting," the zombie said from behind me. "That would have sent me screaming over the edge, too."

I turned and looked at my friend Marc and at first didn't know what to say. I went through a dizzying mix of emotions whenever I saw him these days: relief and surprise and joy and fear and pity and exasperation and the simple gladness that after all he'd been through and seen and heard, he still wanted to be my friend.

Or he was too afraid of what might happen to him (he'd kill himself again?) if he left. But that didn't bear thinking about.

"You're one to talk." I shivered as my sister raced to her car, wrestled the balloons into the backseat, leaped into the driver's seat, started the engine with a roar, slammed it into reverse, and shot out of the driveway, then turned, popped it into drive, and howled down Summit Avenue, leaving a smoking tire trail behind her.

Naw. The Antichrist left like she always did: she carefully snapped on her seat belt, checked her rearview and blind spots as she started the car (took a while with the balloons), cautiously backed out of the driveway, paused to let a car a block away drive past, then pulled out, turned left, and headed for home via the speed limit.

"I'm telling you," he insisted. "That's what did it."

"Nuh-uh." My personal bet was the singing telegram. "And like your suggestion wasn't a thousand times worse?"

"What?" My friend Jessica waddled out the front door and stood on the porch, one hand on the small