Undead and Uneasy by Mary Janice Davidson

Author:Mary Janice Davidson [Davidson, MaryJanice]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-12-18T16:22:21+00:00

Chapter 20

“Majesty?"

"Tina? Hey, finally! Great to hear from you!" From anybody without fur, frankly. "What's going on?"

"Nothing good, Majesty, I assure you." She made a sound that from anyone but Tina would have come off sounding like a snort. "Are you well?"

"Oh, sure. A bunch of werewolves stopped by to pick a fight, but—"

"You mean they broke in?" Tina interrupted. Since she never interrupted, I assumed she had to be fairly shocked. Then I remembered her strict instructions, most (or all? I couldn't remember all of them, to be honest) of which I'd broken since we last spoke.

Lucky for me she was half a continent, plus an ocean, away. She could only scold; she couldn't strangle.

"Well, no. They didn't break, exactly. They, um, knocked."

"And you let them in?"

"Like I said.Knocked. Then, the fight. Which I won, so don't worry." I decided not to mention Jeannie "Quick Draw" Wyndham. Tina hated it when I got shot. "Turns out they thought we were being sneaky, because Antonia hasn't checked in with them."

"Um."

"But I convinced them that we hadn't done away with her or anything, using my Kissinger-like powers of diplomacy."

"Um-hum."

"Now we're buddies!" I tried to put as much enthusiasm as I could into that lie. I mean line. "Isn't that great? Even as we speak, they're scouring the town, looking for the hair of Antonia's chinny-chin-chin. Wait, that was the pigs, right? That line made no sense, then. Let me think of—"

"Majesty! I must beg you to—"

"I know, I know. I've been answering the phone and the door. It's all gone horribly, horribly wrong, and all because I didn't listen to you." I slung Babyjon over my shoulder to burp him, tossing the now-empty bottle in the general direction of the sink. "If only I had listened." Babyjon yawned, and I knew how he felt. The lecture loometh.

"Majesty, I do not wish to alarm you—"

"Then don't."

"But I fear the king may be dead."

"See, that? I find that alarming." I whacked Babyjon a little too hard, because he groaned—then belched. I plunked him into the port-a-crib so I could pace.

"I'm sorry, Majesty, but it is the only conclusion that fits the data."

"What the hell makes you think that?"

"He would have answered me by now, Majesty. In seventy-some years, he has never not answered me. We have a code we use for emergencies, and the other one, no matter what is happening in his or her life, the other one must answer. And he has not."

"He blew off your super secret vampire code?"

"I realize that infantile jokes are your way of dealing with serious issues, but with all due respect, Majesty, now is not the time."

"Noted," I said, chastened.

"He is not sulking, as you think. He is not hiding. He is not shirking his duties as your groom. And more—"

"What? There's more? What?"

"He would never abandon the queen," she said quietly. "No matter how silly he thought the wedding rituals. Someone has him. Or someone has killed him.”

"What—what are we going to do?"

I heard a thud and realized that Tina, from eighty zillion miles away, had punched a wall.

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