Chapter 3

She shrugged sullenly at me and tried to haul my undead carcass toward the retail Hellmouth, but I wasn't having it. And not just because of the obvious reason.

"Speak, Laura! You don't mind doing it when strange children are around. Why clam up now? It's part of what you can do, isn't it? You don't like talking about your mom, you don't like other people talking about your mom-and you sure don't like talking about what you got from your mom. You just-you know every language. On earth."

Oh, the deals she could haggle in Paris! I was momentarily dizzy at the thought. Every language. On earth. Every spoken language on earth ... so she was fluent in Latin and all sorts of other dead languages. Zow! And typical of Laura, she'd never said shit. In any language.

"Just like in that movie!"

"What movie?"

"The Devil's Advocate, That one where A1 Pacino is the devil." The awesomest devil ever.

She looked away. If it was possible for someone so gorgeous and nice and smart and occasionally insane to look ashamed, she was pulling it off. "I never saw it. My parents wouldn't-and then I didn't want-it was about-you know."

Her! It was about her-or her if she'd been Keanu Reeves in that movie. She didn't just dislike movies about Satan, she disliked movies about spawn of same. She disliked movies starring ... herself! "So you haven't seen any-"

She shook her head, making shiny blonde waves obscure her face. Her demonically pimple-free face.

"The Omen? The Omen II? The Omen III: The Final Conflict? Or Rosemary's Baby? Or Little Nicky? Or Bedazzled? No, you're not in that one, just your-"

"No, I haven't!"

Except she didn't sound mad. Well, she did, but she also sounded ... interested?

I peered at her. I knew that look. That was a my-God-those-Pradas-are-on-sale! look.

"Well, you're gonna," I decided, clamping down on her demonically clammy palm and hauling her-praise Jesus!-away from Payless. "I've got at least half those, and we'll Netflix the rest. You're gonna learn all about your heritage-at least, what Hollywood thinks it is. Which, given that they greenlit sequels for Speed, Teen Wolf, Legally Blonde, Dumb and Dumber, Jaws, and The Fly, you should totally take with a ton of salt"

"Have you seen all those-"

"One of my many superpowers," I assured her, hauling her away from the Hellmouth.

Chapter 4

l have to tell the truth," the Antichrist said through a mouthful of popcorn. "A1 Pacino is a terrific Satan."

"Tell me about it" I was on my seventh strawberry smoothie, furtively slurping because my snobby fink husband thought frozen berries were worse than early morning Mass. In the summertime that was fine; all the good stuff was in season. In the winter, I had to be stealthy with my smoothie fixins. "Although tell me anything A1 Pacino isn't terrific at-ah! Cool, I love this part. Look, he's gonna jam his finger into holy water and make it so you could boil an egg in there."

"What is the purpose of that?" Laura asked, aghast and amused.

"Who cares? He's A1 freakin' Pacino!"

Munch. Crunch. "He is A1 freakin' Pacino."

We'd gone through The Omen ("Have no fear, little one. I am here to protect thee."), Rosemary's Baby ("We're your friends, Rosemary. There's nothing to be scared about. Honestly and truly there isn't!"), and now we were coming in on the homestretch with Big Al.

Laura, after her initial resistance, was gorging on these movies the way I wolfed down chocolate shakes (or strawberry smoothies out of season). It definitely had the look of forbidden fruit. And whenever we heard a door slam in another part of the house, she'd jump a little, as though she were afraid of getting caught.

Her parents-her adoptive parents, I mean-knew she was the devil's daughter. Laura had told them. Satan had told them (she's a big believer in partial disclosure at the worst possible time).

And I think ... I think Laura tried to make it up to them for being the Antichrist by pretending indifference or even dislike toward any pop culture Antichrist references.

Because she sure as shit couldn't get enough of these movies now. Presumably this wouldn't come back to bite me in the ass. Right? Right.

Sure.

"What's your favorite?"

"Elizabeth Hurley. Bedazzled, 'Most men think they're God. This one just happens to be right.' Also she was a great traffic cop. And candy striper! Giving M&Ms to the patients instead of their meds ... it's kind of like belonging to a really sucky HMO."

"My mother ..."

"Yeah? Your mother?" I tried not to sound too eager to prompt her; Laura never talked about this stuff. I was afraid to even move, sprawled on the love seat as I was with one of my shoes upside down on the floor and the other dangling from my big toe-I didn't want to break the spell. "Your mother, Satan ..."

Laura shook her head so hard, I couldn't see her face for all the blonde strands whipping around.

"Come on! Laura, you're the Antichrist and I'm the queen of the vampires. You're still a virgin and I lost mine after prom to a guy named Buck. Buck! You beat a serial killer to death and I once passed off a knockoff pair of Louboutins as the real thing. I'm just as sick and evil as you are. I'm in no position to judge."

"Oh." Then: "Buck?"

"Well, jeez, don't judge me, either."

"Oh, never. Um. Really, your virginity? Well. I've been seeing her."

"Your biological mother."

Laura smirked. "I'm not even sure that's so. I wasn't born of her body; I was born of your stepmother's body. The devil fled back to hell after I was born."

I nodded. "Yeah, living with a newborn just must be so incredibly awful, if hell seems like a respite." Memo to me: be thankful you have BabyJon and quit bitching about never being able to get pregnant and force another human being through your uterus and out into the world.

"I'm not her biological child at all."

"Do I look like a genetics expert to you? Or a theology expert? It's just all kinds of supernatural fuckery. Who knows how it works? Not me; I'm still trying to get through the vampire queen manual. You'll drive yourself nuts if you try to force all of this-Antichrists, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and half brothers who are wards, and weddings and funerals and suicides and kings and queens and coups-to make sense. So, your mom's been popping in a lot uninvited?"

"She's always uninvited."

"Yeah, tell me." The devil occasionally dropped in on me as well. Worse: the heartless cow tempted me with shoes! Wonderful, beautiful, sinfully delicious and hard-to-come-by shoes. Oh, she was a diabolical wretch. Also, she looked weirdly like Lena Olin: cougar hot, with sable-dark hair shot through here and there with gray strands. Killer legs. Great suits. And the shoes ... let me not get started on the shoes ...

"She's been telling me things."

"Eh?" Oh. Right. Laura was opening up about her mom. I should probably pay closer attention. "Okay." I was fairly certain this was going to be bad with a capital B-A-D.

"And I ... I'm curious about her." Laura almost whispered that last. Like it was bad. Like it was shameful; like she was.

I laughed. "Oh, honey, is that's what's bugging you? Shit. What adopted child hasn't been curious about their parents? What, you think that makes you a bad daughter? Like it's disrespectful of your folks who raised you?" I laughed again. I didn't want to, but it was funny, and I was relieved. "Stop kicking your own ass for being normal, okay?"

My sister instantly loosened up ... her shoulders lost the bowed-in look of somebody in the middle of a serious stress-out. She leaned forward and brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Okay. So, Baal keeps-"

"Whoa, whoa. I'm gonna have to ask the audience for a replay on that one. Ball?"

"An old name for my mother."

"Really old, because I've never heard of it. I guess it's slightly less offensive than crack whore."

"Slightly."

"I prefer Beelzebub, personally."

"Call her Old Scratch if you like. Call her the Lord of Lies. Call her Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. Whatever name she uses, she wants me to visit her. To see her."

"Okay."

"See her world. Her lands."

"Your mom wants you to go to hell." I paused, chewing that one over. "Literally."

Yeesh. And I thought my mom was a pill when she made me come to the all-faculty cocktail party when I was seventeen. There's no group duller than a group of academics with inferiority complexes. So, not just any historians. Bragging historians.

"And I won't deny I'm tempted. I'd-I'd like to see it. I'd like to ... I don't know. I'm just so curious, all the time. I have so many questions. And to think, if I hadn't met you, I never would have thought it was okay to-"

"Whoa, whoa. Nuh-uh. This is not my fault-it's not going to be my fault. Do not drag me into this."

"I'm not blaming you. I'm thanking y-"

"Well, stop it! Whatever happens after this moment, whatever happens the rest of November, none of it was my fault." Being dead the last couple of years had made me paranoid beyond belief. And I was starting to smell disastrous situations that started out cutely innocent and ended up with me almost dying, or my husband almost dying, or one of my friends actually dying. Or a parent dying, or a thousand werewolves out to get me.

What can I say? Fate likes me to keep busy.

"I just think it would be an interesting trip."

"Wrong, oh sweetly deluded sister of mine. Chicago is an interesting trip. The Boundary Waters is an interesting trip, if you don't mind hiding your food in a tree. Hell is a life sentence. More than that, actually." She opened her mouth, and I made a slashing motion with my hand. "Don't even. I'm not gonna talk you out of it-I know better than to try-and I am definitely not going with you. I've never done one thing in my life to warrant a field trip to hell."

This was a rather large lie. I could think of several reasons I might have earned a day pass to the Underworld, starting with burying my mom's purse in the backyard when I was five, figuring that with no driver's license, she wouldn't be able to drive me to Payless Shoes. As gambits went, it was risky. As punishments went, it was lengthy.

And we ended up going to Wal-Mart instead. Jesus, pity your humble undead servant.