"I think this is a sign from God," my half sister, Laura, told me after she took a sip of her orange pekoe.
I managed not to groan out loud. She'd swung by for tea, showing up about twenty minutes after I woke up (being the queen, I usually woke up around 4:00 p.m. or so, and could go outside without being sauteed).
As usual, she was indecently beautiful: about my height, with long buttercup-blond hair caught up in a sensible ponytail. No makeup. Tan capris and a faded blue oxford shirt. Navy blue Keds, one black sock and one navy blue sock. Big, gorgeous blue eyes framed by lashes that you usually only saw on little boys.
I'd given serious thought to not inviting her to my wedding, because, bottom line, she looked better on her worst day than I did on my best. Fortunately, I quickly came to my senses. Well. Six or seven days later, anyway.
"Really, I think God is trying to tell you something," the daughter of the devil went on. (Have I mentioned? She rebelled against her mother, the Lady of Lies, by being a faithful churchgoer). "You should take it as a sign. I was praying over it just last night."
"Laura, what the hell are you talking about?"
She frowned. "Don't talk like that. I'm saying that perhaps your wedding to the king of the vampires wasn't meant to be. He could have picked any other time to leave you, but he chose now?"
"That's the thing, Laura." I ignored my own tea. I was ragingly, crazily thirsty, and I didn't give a damn. "I don't think he left me. I think someone snatched him."
"But why? Why would someone do that? No, I think you should cancel your wedding and be thankful he didn't decide to pull this nonsense after you'd been married a hundred years. By then, you'd have been emotionally committed."
"Laura, he didn't run out on me. Even Tina agrees.'
"Oh, her." Laura waved Sinclair's most loyal friend away with her unmanicured hand. "Another vampire. What do you expect her to say? You're always complaining that she's more loyal to him than you."
That was true, I had confided that to Laura. I never dreamed she'd toss it back in my face, though. And it was getting real hard to hold on to my temper. "She's worried about him. So am I."
"She's a vampire. She lies."
"I'm a vampire."
"Yes, well. I know you're doing the best you can."
"When you said you wanted to come over to help me figure out what to do, this was your big plan?"
"I'm helping," she said, reaching for my hand. I snatched it away "You need friends now, Betsy. Besides your mother and a sick Jessica, I'm the only one left who really cares about you."
"Laura. Darling? You're so full of shit your eyes are brown."
She stiffened. "Don't talk like that."
"Then cut the shit. Jeez! Did you really come to my house-"
"Jessica's house."
"-to encourage me to forget about the man I love? Who's either dead or captured? To blow off Tina, who spends all her time trying to make our lives as comfortable and murder-free as she can?"
"God doesn't want you to throw in with the minions of Satan," she sniffed. "Don't ignore the signs."
"What the hell do you know about God, you murdering psychotic spawn of Satan?"
She was on her feet. So was I. "Don't talk to me like that!" she shrilled, our faces only inches apart.
"Or what? You'll give me shitty, insensitive advice?"
"It's not my fault that creature tricked our father, birthed me, then went back to Hell!"
"Well, it's not my fault I'm a vampire who fell in love with a vampire!"
"You can control who you live and-and fornicate with. I can't control my bloodline."
I felt my eyes bulge. "Are we really playing Who's The Biggest Sinner?"
"You chose to throw your lot in with him," she went on. "I didn't choose what happened to me."
"Oh ho! The prude is rearing her ugly head, If not the wedding that's bugging you, it's the living in sin."
"It's a sign," she repeated stubbornly. "You're blind not to see it."
A chilling thought occurred to me. "Laura. Honey? Did you snatch my fiance? Did you stick him with that light-show sword of yours?"
"I did not ."
"I've seen your temper tantrums before, Laura, so don't get up too high on that horse. People usually die when you get pissed."
"They do not! Not real people, anyway. And you're one to talk, you have to drink blood to keep walking around. You-and your kind-are abominations!"
"At least our socks match!"
"That's it!" She threw up her hands. "I'm leaving. I might have known you would spurn perfectly good advice."
"Spurn this," I said, and gave her the finger.
She looked like she'd found a minnow in her cereal, which was probably close to the expression on my own face. She turned, and I grabbed her shoulder and shoved her across the kitchen. She bounced off the wall, hit the floor, but was back on her feet in half a second. Just in time for me to grab her by the throat and slam her against the wall.
That's when I noticed the bright light just below my left eye. Her sword. She could call it up simply by force of will. It was made of Hellfire, and turned vampires into towers of flame, and then ash. Where it went when she wasn't using it, even she didn't know.
"Let go," she grated.
"Put it away," I snapped back.
"Let go."
"Put it away."
The light from her sword-if my eyes could have watered, they would have. They would have been streaming by now. As it was, I couldn't see out of that eye at all.
"You're not leaving until you tell me what you did."
"Put me down or I'll-"
"What? Kill me? Like you killed Sinclair?"
"I didn't kill him! I wouldn't do that to you!"
"No, you just suggested I leave him forever."
"For your sake!"
"No, for yours. It's hard to pretend to be Miss Goody Goody of the universe if your sister is the queen of the vampires, isn't it?"
"You know what you're doing is wrong."
"Says the girl with a temper-powered sword."
"I don't mean to lose my temper."
"Did you lose your temper with Sinclair?"
"No!"
"How about Antonia and Garrett? You nearly beat Garrett to death once. Did he piss you off again? Did you dispatch him with your handy-dandy sword, get rid of Antonia, and then lie yourself black in the face?"
"I don't lie!"
Ah. There we go. Her eyes were shifting from blue to poison green. Her blond hair was growing red streaks. She was losing her temper. She wasn't Laura, daughter of a pastor. She was the Devil's Own, and she was in my kitchen with a weapon that could kill me.
Excellent. "Fess up, Red. What'd you do?"
"I did nothing. Let me go or I'll-"
"Kill me?"
"Let me go," she hissed. "Let me go or I'll kill you, and never mind if I'm sorry after."
"Are you really going to stick me with that thing? Kill your only sister? Orphan Babyjon. . . twice in one week?"
"All that and more if you don't let me go now let me go let go of me right now, Vampire Queen, right now!"
"What'd you do, Laura?"
"Let go of me!" she screamed, and behind me, the window over the sink shattered.
"Whoa. New trick. Nice one, devil's daughter. Any other new stuff you want to share with the class?"
She was silent for a long moment, and I suddenly felt silly, hoisting my little sister by the neck a good foot off the ground, trying to avoid the sword pointing at my eye. Was this what happened when things went wrong all at once? You couldn't trust anybody?
"I see what you're doing. It won't work. Put me down, please."
Her eyes were blue again, the red fading to blond. The sword disappeared in a flash. No, it didn't work. If she had done something, it likely would have come out when she was her other self, her darker self. When she was in a temper, she lost her mind. She wasn't sly, like her mother. Just red-rage pissed. Too pissed to lie.
But now she was calm again. Careful again. Now she could lie.
I put her down.
"Really, Betsy," she fumed, straightening out her mussed shirt. "What would Jesus do?"
"Turn you into loaves and fishes?"
"I've had about enough of your blasphemy." She started for the door, puffing her bangs out of her face as she stomped past me.
"You're a lot more interesting when you're pissed!" I yelled after her.
"Go to hell! And I mean that as a literal invitation."
"Where do you think I am right now?" I cried, but the slamming of the front door (damn, she must have really booked down that long foyer) was my only answer.