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—From The Guide for the Newly Undead
Dick did not stop the car.
Instead, he promised to drive me home, give me his cell phone, and let me call Gabriel the second I felt anything out of the ordinary. He had Gabriel’s number saved in his phone book under “Jackass.” Dick also offered to let me kick him in the goods if he let anything happen to me. If that wasn’t a guarantee of my safety, I didn’t know what was.
My parents’ car was parked outside the house when we got to River Oaks, but I couldn ’t find them anywhere. Jettie materialized next to me and started talking at a speed only birds could understand. Thrilled to see someone I knew for sure wasn’t trying to kill or frame me, I tried to hug her and fell through her. Fortunately, Dick came in a few seconds later, so Jettie was the only one who saw it. Distracted, Jettie let her guard down enough to allow Dick to see her. He tried to introduce himself but was ignored in favor of more gibbering at me.
My phone rang. I shushed Jettie and picked it up. I could hear someone sobbing softly in the background. I recognized that sound. It was my mother.
“Mama?” I yelled. I checked the caller ID, but the number was blocked. “Mom?”
“Jane, hi, shug, how are you?” Missy cooed from the other end of the line. “I was just talking to your folks!”
“Missy, let me talk to them,” I said in as cool a tone as I could manage. “Let me talk to them right now.”
“Oh, now, shug, they can’t come to the phone, they’re a little tied up,” she said, chuckling at her own little joke.
“Right now, you crazy bitch.”
“Language, Jane, language. You know, maintaining your composure is the first step in any negotiation.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind when I’m not dealing with a freaking sociopath!” I yelled into the phone. “Now let me talk to my parents!”
“I think you’ll want to be more cordial, Jane, honey, or I might not feel quite so hospitable toward your parents, ” she said, her voice constricting like the coils of a snake. “Now, we’re going to meet at my place in an hour. If you don’t arrive promptly and in a more cooperative mood, I may have to do something drastic. Some of your daddy’s favorite parts may just find themselves removed. Then he might end up being turned and, by horrible coincidence, locked in a concrete box until he goes mad with thirst.”
“Please, just let him go.”
“That’s nothing compared with what I’ll do to your mother,” she said. “Jane? Are you listening?” she asked when I didn’t respond immediately. “Jane!”
“I’m thinking!”
I could hear Mama’s squeals of indignation from the other end of the line. If we all survived, I was pretty sure I would never hear the end of this.
So, suddenly, the mysterious deaths and explosions and my poor standing with the council made a lot more sense. It took me thirty-five minutes and a smashed chair or two before Dick and Jettie would let me out of the house. Dick insisted on coming with me, and I couldn’t help but be grateful for it. Missy had not, after all, made the clichéd supervillian demand that I come alone. I might have called Gabriel, but I didn’t want to have to explain how I managed to stumble into another life-threatening situation in such a short time. Every man has his limits.
When I arrived at Missy’s, I tried to close the car door as quietly as possible, but Missy still yelled, “We’re around back, shug!”
I was starting to hate being called “shug.”
Dick had agreed to lurk around the front yard until he heard the sounds of a struggle. I found my parents on Missy ’s back deck, surrounded by twinkling Christmas lights and Japanese paper lanterns. While they were bound and gagged, Missy had taken the time to set out a nice cheese tray and a chilled chardonnay. And there was a covered presentation easel set up behind them.
Maybe this was all an elaborate setup to get me to buy one of her stupid prefab houses.
“Jane!” Missy chirped. “So nice to see you.”
My father looked groggy and confused. Mama looked ready to chew through the gag and start screaming at somebody.
“You guys OK?” I asked.
“Have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?” Missy offered sweetly, the picture of Southern charm. I hoped that if we lived through this, it would serve as a lesson to Mama that having fancy cocktail napkins and coordinated clothing did not necessarily make you a well-adjusted person.
“No, thank you.” I sat next to my dad and squeezed his taped hands.
Ahem-ing pointedly, Missy motioned to the shackles attached to my chair. I reluctantly snapped them around my wrists and jangled them, hoping Dick could discern the noise—surely he had to recognize it.
“Well, aren’t you the tricky one?” Missy said, pouting prettily. “Do you know how much trouble I’ve gone to just to get your attention? I used my powers to track you, followed you around. I lured that idiot Walter back to the scene of your pathetic fight, killed him to get the council to watch you. I played those stupid pranks on you, watched your house to make you feel uneasy, painted your car, put a little something extra in your doggie’s bowl. Hell, I even shot at you.”
“Shot me,” I corrected her as Mama shrieked under her gag. “You actually shot me, and it hurt, quite a bit.”
