"Following me back was a bad idea," I told the Marc Thing as I manfully cradled my cracked ribs. "The sort of idea that will get you staked a zillion times in the balls."

"Don't tease," it said.

I glanced at Marc. His color was high; he had a look of avid curiosity on his face. He smelled like-it's hard to explain; he smelled like hot wiring. You know how you sometimes taste metal when you get an adrenaline rush? He smelled like how that tastes. Excited. A little afraid. But not enough afraid, and was that a good thing or a bad thing?

How to explain this to him? Say, Marc, in the future I turned into Supremo Bitch-o of North America and tortured you for decades-after not saving you from being killed, oopsie!-until you went batshit nuts and now the you from the future is here to do all sorts of disgusting things to all of us, which is all my fault. Sorry. I owe you one, okay?

"My queen is quite correct . . . you will be staked. Only not in the balls." We all jumped; I jumped and groaned . . . reeeally wish the cracked ribs would heal already. Tina, one of the awesomest vampires I knew (I didn't know very many awesome vampires; shame it was such a short list) had snuck up on the Marc Thing and stuck the barrel of her 9mm Beretta in his ear.

"Wonderful," the Marc Thing and Marc said in unison, which was just creepy.

It always surprised me to see Tina wielding firearms; she was an expert with all sorts of guns and had been ever since I'd known her.

Because she'd been born, or died, or whatever, during the Civil War, I was always amazed to see her handling modern weaponry. Which was dumb . . . it wasn't like I expected to see her running around in hoopskirts brandishing mint juleps. Such a capricious nature has man. Or something.

Tina always looked good, but tonight she looked like an angel. And could have passed for one-she'd been killed in her late teens, or early twenties . . . something like that. Who can keep track of when everybody died? Anyway, she was mega-gorgeous, with a gorgeous fall of shiny blond hair and the biggest, prettiest brown eyes I'd ever seen. Pansy eyes, my mom called them.

"Have I mentioned," Sinclair began, smiling for the first time since the Marc Thing made his presence known, "that I adore having you around?"

"Oh yes, my king. You are good enough to make frequent mention of it."

"You're not really theeeeeere," the Marc Thing sang. He acted like standing in a hostile house surrounded by enemies, and with an earful of gun, was all in a day's work. Which it prob'ly was.

"On your knees. Slowly, if you please. And . . . yes." Tina kept the barrel of the gun socked tightly in his ear as she bent at the knees to accommodate the Marc Thing getting on his. "Now on your stomach. Yes." Sinclair shifted so his foot was resting lightly on the Marc Thing's wrist. My husband smiled pleasantly at the Marc Thing, who leered back, and everyone in the hall knew that if the Marc Thing even twitched, Sinclair would grind his wrist into splintered bone. Which made it safe for Tina to pull back and step back. Still: maybe next time Sinclair should rest his foot on its neck. Call me hospitable.

For the first time I realized Garrett had also come out of the kitchen, which was something of a shock. In my timeline, Garrett had been a wreck, a shell, a disaster of a man. A coward, but not without reason. He'd been murdered, then driven insane, then murdered some more . . . and in my timeline, it drove him to suicide.

"Uh, maybe you should go back in the kitchen and keep an eye on Dee-Nick and Jessica. Back in the kitchen. And not in here."

"Dee-Nick sent me out here." Garrett correctly read my look of surprise, because he lifted his left shoulder in a slight shrug and added, "Antonia died right in front of me. There's nothing to be scared of now."

He was wrong, of course. But I didn't have the heart to disabuse him of that sorry-ass notion. He was almost a hundred years old, but I'd always felt older than him in both timelines.