l had just finished checking on my new "ink" and deciding who would rest in peace, and who would be my new gopher, when a familiar doorway made of Hellfire began cutting its way into my office.

I leaned back, opened the top drawer, extracted the pen I'd had made just for this, then smiled as the devil dropped through the door in the ceiling onto my carpet.

"That's dramatic," I commented, "even for you."

Laura Morningstar grinned. "What can I say, big sister? I'm in a flamboyant mood."

"Another of your would-be heirs made it through adolescence?" I asked idly. "Or another dupe allowed himself to be seduced? Or did you think up something even more wonderfully awful to do to our father?"

"All three!" my sister answered, hugging herself with glee. She was, as I was, still a beautiful woman. In fact, at only a thousand-some years old, she was years away from her prime.

Which was fine with me. I didn't need her in her prime, but she needed me in mine.

"I'm glad to see you," I said, and it was nothing but the truth.

"I'm sure." She plopped into the chair opposite my desk. "Relieved they're gone?"

"There are no words," I fervently replied. "What a distasteful business."

"You just don't like remembering how you used to be."

Among other things, yes. But never mind, little sister. Never mind.

"And speaking of the bad old days, I'm finished with your husband."

"Excellent. Because I'm ready to take him back."

"Oooh, sounds kinky. Can I watch?"

"It doesn't, and no, you cannot."

Laura held out her hands. A small circle of Hellfire-even after all these centuries, I still couldn't look at it directly-opened about two feet above her, and an enormous book landed in her hands with a distinctive whump!

"Behold, the king of the vampires," Laura dropped the book on my desk. "It took longer than I anticipated to quiet him, skin him, and bind him, I won't lie: I was impressed. He never made a sound. Not once in seventy-five years."

I sighed . . . an unnecessary breath, but old habits were the hardest to break. Case in point: my husband.

I had disliked him at first. Then had become infatuated. Then devoted. And then disappointed. Finally: disenchanted.

He never would have helped me keep things the way they were, the way I knew, from my travels with the devil, they had to be.

Really, there was only one way he could help me now.

"It'll take a while to get it all down exactly right. There's quite a bit to remember."

Laura yawned. She'd never been one for details.

"But once it's finished, you'll be able to bring it back? It's a trip of more than a thousand years, you'll recall."

"If I recall, why d'you remind me? And a thousand years might as well be six months, after all this time. Or did you forget about practice making perfect?" She smiled. "I got my start schlepping you around Salem, remember?"

"Vividly."

I picked up my pen, flipped open the cover of the blank book, dipped the tip of the pen in blood, and began to write on my husband.

Chapter one, page one.

The Book of the Dead.