Undead 6, Undead And Uneasy - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,1

the vampires told me. "One, my love for you is not anything like 'shimmering amber waves of summer wheat.' Two, my love for you has nothing to do with adorable, fluffy cartoon rabbits. Three. . . " And he sighed here. "Rabbits do not sparkle."

I looked at the shiny yellow card, aglitter with sparkling bunnies. It was the least objectionable of the pile of two dozen I had spread all over our bed. What could I say? He had a point. Three of them. "It's just an example—don't have a heart attack and friggin' die on me, all right?"

"I do not have," he muttered, "that kind of good fortune."

"I heard that. I'm just saying, there will be a lot of people at the wedding"—I ignored Sinclair's shudder—"but there will also be people who can't make it. You know, due to having other plans or being dead, or whatever. So what you do is, you send a wedding announcement to pull in all the people who couldn't come. That way people know we actually did the deed. It's polite." I racked my brain for the perfect way to describe it so my reluctant groom would clamber aboard. "It's, you know, civilized."

"It is a voracious grab for gifts from the crude and uncouth."

"That's true," I acknowledged after a minute, knowing well where I was in the Wars of the Couth. Come on, we all knew he was right. There was no point—no point—in all those birth and wedding and graduation announcements beyond, "Hey! Limber up the old checkbook; something new has happened in our family. Cash is also fine."

"But it's still nice. You didn't fuss nearly so much about the invitations."

"The invitations have a logical point."

"The invitations are weird. Just 'Sinclair,' like you don't have a middle or first name. Why wouldn't you put your full name on the thing?"

"Our community knows me as Sinclair."

'Our' my butt. He meant the vampire community. I couldn't resist one last dig. "I'm marrying Cher!"

"Don't tease."

I bit my tongue for what felt like the hundredth time that night. . . and it was barely 9:00 p.m. With the wedding only three weeks away, Sinclair, my blushing groom, was growing bitchier by the hour.

He had never liked the idea of a formal wedding with a minister and flower girls and a wedding cake frosted with colored Crisco. He said that because the Book of the Dead proclaimed him my consort, we were already married and would be for a thousand years. Period. End of discussion. Everything else? A waste of time. And money. Tough to tell the greater sin in his eyes.

After what seemed like a thousand years (but was only one and a half) I'd gotten Eric (yes, he had a first name) to profess his love, propose, give me a ring, and agree to a ceremony. But he never promised to take his dose without kicking, and he sure never promised to get married without a heavy dose of snark.

I had two choices. I could rise to his bitchy comments with a few of my own, and we could end up in a wicked big fight, again. Or, I could ignore his bitchy comments and go about my day, er, night, and after the wedding, Sinclair would be my sweet blushing boy-toy again.

Then there was the honeymoon to look forward to: two weeks in New York City, a place I'd never been! I'd heard NYC was a great place to visit, if you had money. Sinclair had gobs of money to his name. Ew, which reminded me.

"By the way, I'm not taking your name. It's nothing personal—"

"Not personal? It is my name."

"—it's just how I was raised."

"Your mother took your father's name and, even after he left her for the lethal flirtations of another woman, kept his name. Which is why, to this day, there are two Mrs. Taylors in town. So in fact, it is not how you were raised."

I glared. He glared back, except his was more like a sneer. Since Sinclair looked like he was sneering even when he was unconscious, it was tough to tell. All I knew was, we were headed for yet another argument and thank goodness we were doing it in our bedroom, where one of the house's many live-ins weren't likely to bother us. Or, even worse, rate us (Marc had given our last fight a 7.6—we started with an 8 based on volume alone, but he had taken four-tenths of a point off for lack of