Page 11 (1/2)

EIGHTEEN

"Sinclair"

More silence Ye gods The sexiest coolest uy I lovedOver Fur and Burr! Yerrggh, I could still smell the little monsters all over him

"Sinclair, you couldn&039;t just steal those puppies"

Nothing Argh, he knew I hated the silent treat Or scrubbing toilets at the airport The silent treat it left hts And that ful

"Come on! Count up all the reasons this is a terrible idea: we don&039;t have leashes, we don&039;t have puppy choe don&039;t knohat shots they&039;ve had and if they need more, we&039;re not set up for puppies, ith all the va at the ular"

"We&039;re not set up for it! Plus we live in a big gorgeous expensive mansion full to the attic with antiques and old wood and also the undeadcan you iht sht of what those two could get up to with their puppy shenanigans left me cold(er) all over Giselle wasn&039;t the, um, cuddliest pet, but she knehere to poop and she stayed the hell out of my way As a return courtesy, I stayed the hell out of hers It worked! It was, come to think of it, a perfect relationship

"Okay, shouldn&039;t have used that last as an example You should see your eyes, man, they lit up like a pinball ht up"

"Oh yes they do Listen, back to my point-"

"Your inters aresoive theotta do with dogs all the tio out during the day without doing an i the earth&039;s atmosphere! You can&039;t take care of puppies And are they really your puppies if so all the work?"

The second it was out, I wished I could take it back Wished I&039;d never openedmouth in the first place I was the only va, the child of farht al-dead faht decade, he could have been a flower child, that&039;s how into nature the poor schmuck was

"Point," was all he said

I still felt shitty, though And the best way to leave my faux pas in the dust was to barrel on ahead to the next faux pas, to wit: "And-and they aren&039;t our puppies to take, anyway What&039;s poor Jon Delk gonna think when he gets back fros short? Didn&039;t we do enough to alotta steal dogs in the new one? Hthat&039;s so weird, "

"I doubt he would noticehe left the, which was a scary thought I tucked s beneath me so I could face hi sitters or whatever cos and walks and, I dunno, puppy pedicures and stuff We&039;re lucky we missed them"

"They&039;re lucky"

"Stop that Jon set all that stuff up before he even left for the first city on his tour" Laura had known all about Jon&039;s book tour and dog-sitting plans When I asked her how she&039;d stuotten a mysterious, "I followed some bread crumbs my mother left," for an answer Which didn&039;t s to obsess over

"Besides," I suer probleht future"

"Well Yeah" We really needed to have sex soon Alhiht "And we&039;ve still got to figure out Marc&039;s deal And his dad"

"Sorry?" Sinclair stopped glaring through the windshield long enough to look at me "His father?"

"Well, yeah Did we even notify him that Marc was dead? I didn&039;t I didn&039;t have that ho, and frankly, I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to look Marc didn&039;t leave a will, just his journal He forbade a funeral-he wasn&039;t even buried (and noe knohy) Only now Marc&039;sback So do we tell his dad, Colonel Homophobia? Or not?"

"Likely we should ask Marc," he said, looking thoughtful "Interesting that we can ask Marc, but it does not change the fact"

"We fucked up"

"We were careless," he amended "But not without cause"

"So with cause We had tons of cause! But it&039;s another one of the little details that always seeonna take over the world-and I won&039;t-but if I was-and I&039;m not-I&039;d hire a whole tea care of the ass-biting details I always forget about"

"A whole tea teahed, and I did, too So it was a little better

For a while

NINETEEN

"You stupid, stupid, stupid woman" It was safe to say the Antichrist was displeased "Afterin the future, and the past? Oh, Betsy! How could you be so stupid?"

"Hey, hey! Two stupids are all you&039;re gonna need to cover my many mental deficiencies And I didn&039;t do"-I pointed to Marc-"that In fact, I ondering if you did it Look! Look at what you may or may not have done, you bad, bad Antichrist!"

"I have a na and he has a na and has a narossness"

The zoed y "I know, sorry, but you knohat I mean, Marc-the main reason you let yourself be seen was so you could find out the answers to those exact saet picky Now shush The grown-ups are talking"

"This is bad" Laura sat down so quickly, I had the feeling it was plop onto the sofa or fall down Poor kidI kne she felt "This is"

"Bad?" Marc asked politely

"Do the others" Laura asked in a near whisper, glancing toward the entrance hall We were in the first parlor off the hall, with almost the whole rest of the house beyond that parlor "Do they know about this?"

"Oh yeah No need to lower your voice Like, at all"

"Oh" She thought about it for a second, then looked alarmed "Oh"

"Yeah See, Jessica knows so much she brained me with a kitchen chair, and Nick/Dick&039;s kept her out of the way ever since I won&039;t say I didn&039;t have it co, but it was still pretty rude Antonia knows so ive a shit, and Garrett knows so much he was politely interested for half a second and then ran off to crochet a grill cover or whatever the heck he&039;s working on now"

"Oh my God" At Sinclair&039;s near-i better at handling the G word?), Laura uess It&039;s bad?" Marc asked

"Sorry" The Antichrist was huge with the apologies And you&039;d never get a more beautifully written thank-you note than the one Laura popped in the mail on real stationery "Marcplease don&039;t lad for you-I-" She raised her arave her a stiff hug She didn&039;t stand, just sort of halfheartedly raised her ared back I couldn&039;t tell if the aard body language was because he had to move his creaky zombie ar her back Or even if he should have hugged at all I&039;ve seen hugs between people suing each other that had lad for you?"

Really good question, one I was instantly eave Marc my full attention

"Glad?" Marc had been the one to let us in; he kneereback to the mansion He knew the plan was to shock Laura withwellhim Exhibit A: Behold and ye shall see before ye a zombie Now take it back, ye sinner!

And it had worked Laura had been plenty shocked But not shocked enough, I guess, or about the right things We weren&039;t any closer to knohat had happened than ere before she&039;d walked into our house "Glad?"