Undead 9, Undead and Unfinished - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,1

at my stepmother, the wretch formerly known as Antonia and whom I had always called the Ant, and Dim Old Dad didn’t notice she was possessed by Satan. I’m betting devil-possessed Ant isn’t any worse than non-devil-possessed Ant, which is a sad commentary on my father’s taste in second wives.

The thing is, Satan hated pregnancy, delivery, and breast-feeding. So she did the whole baby-on-the-doorstep thing and beat feet back to hell.

So my sister, who was raised by a minister, is not only the Antichrist, it’s been foretold she’ll take over the world. Possibly between donating blood and teaching Sunday school.

But! I will be the first to admit, the Antichrist is nice. Works in homeless shelters, runs blood drives (kind of hilarious, given that her sister is a vampire), makes cupcakes for church bake sales. Chocolate ones. With real buttercream frosting. Buttercream, not the colored Crisco grocery stores try to pass off as frosting. Ummm.

God, I miss solid food.

Of course, Laura’s got a temper. Who doesn’t? And occasionally she loses it and then slaughters anyone she can get her hands on. That gets awkward, kind of. And she’s totally conflicted about the undead. Which is actually a pretty normal reaction to vampires.

Her temper and occasional forays into psychopathic rage were why we were meeting tonight at the Mall of America. Laura had sort of tried to kill me a couple of months ago, and still felt crummy about it. She detested conspicuous consumerism and also shopping, which is why her offer to go to my personal Graceland was an olive branch.

I had risen from my unholy grave (bed, actually, with navy blue flannel sheets from Target—it was a day away from November, and I’m not a savage), devoured an innocent for breakfast (a triple-berry smoothie; a perk of being the queen of the undead was that I didn’t have to suck down blood every day, though to be honest, I always want to), then commandeered my sinister chariot (a Lexus hybrid) and was mallward bound.

I parked in the east parking lot, second floor—lots of my favorites were on that side, including Williams-Sonoma and Coach—not that I’d ever cough up four hundred bucks for a knapsack that looked like it was designed by a bright second-grader. Also, Tiger Sushi was there, and Laura was seriously addicted to their Tiger Balls.

So I forced a smile as I marched toward a restaurant that sold seaweed, rice, and raw fish for a profit margin of several hundred percent. The sushi thing. I didn’t get it and I never would. I’d been fishing too much as a kid; I couldn’t make myself eat bait. No matter how fresh it was.

I spotted Laura while I was still thirty feet away, and it had nothing to do with my supercool vampire powers. Laura was just ridiculously gorgeous, all the time. So annoying.

Look, it’s not envy, okay? Well, not extreme envy. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not one of those girls who pretends they have no idea they’re mega-cute. I’m cute; I freely confess. Tall and blonde (big surprise in Minnesota ... we’re about as rare as yellow snow in the dog park), pale skin, light eyes. Never really had to fight the fat, and being undead means I’ll be slender forever. The phrase I’m at my winter weight no longer has power over me. My senior year I was a contestant in the Miss Burnsville pageant and went home with the Miss Congeniality sash, sort of the you’re-not-the-prettiest-or-the-most-talented-but-the-other-gals-thought-you-were-nice consolation prize. I don’t exactly drink my water out of a dog dish.

Laura, though ...

Breathtaking. Gorgeous. And, as my friend Marc put it, “mouthwatering.”

My gay friend Marc.

And there she was, standing with someone I didn’t know, gesturing wildly in the manner of the native Minnesotan (or, perhaps, The Omen). And as I approached I remembered the real reason the spawn of Satan and my dead stepmother made me so uneasy.

She was just annoyingly stunning, all the time. One of those (vomit) natural beauties. Elbow-length hair the color of corn silk. Big blue eyes. First-day-of-spring blue. Cloudless-summer-day blue. Really, really gorgeous blue. Oh, and thin—did I have to tell you that? I probably didn’t have to tell you that.

Great tits, of course, and always primly secured in a 36-B bra. Long legs—she was just a hair shorter than me, and I topped out at six feet—clad in truly faded blue jeans. Not prewashed and faded blue jeans ... Laura’s mom bought them new (yeah, her adopted mom still bought