Chapter 3

Dear Myself Dude,

I can't remember the last time I tried to write in a diary. This one will go the way the others went, I think. I'll write like gangbusters for a week or two, then lose all interest in writing about my life and get back to living my life. But here I am again, starting a diary for the first time in over twenty years.

That's a lie, of course. One of my psych profs told me in college that we lie best when we lie to ourselves.

The man knew his shit. I know exactly when I quit writing in diaries: it was right around the time I realized I had zero interest in girls, but plenty of interest in boys. I was fourteen, and kept waiting to grow out of it. Kept wondering what was wrong with me. Hoped it was just a phase. Prayed my father wouldn't find out. Prayed no one in high school would find out.

The trouble with being a closeted homosexual is exactly this: you live with the agonizing fear you will be found out.

I hid until I was old enough to drink.

When I was sixteen, I tore up my last diary for the simplest and most cowardly of reasons: I didn't want my dad to find it. Colonel Phillip P. Spangler's only son a bum puncher? A faggot? A crank gobbler? He would have killed me, or I would have killed me, so best to stop writing things like "I wish Steve Dillon would dump that idiot cheerleader and blow me for an hour or two."

So.Diaries. Specifically, new diaries. No chance the colonel will find this one; he's in hospice, crankily dying of lung cancer.

It's pretty rotten that I wasn't sad when I heard. It's worse that I reran his labs myself to confirm it. I was relieved. Poor excuse for a man's only son.

My name is Marc Spangler. I'm a doctor, an ER resident at one of the busier Minneapolis hospitals, and I live in a mansion. No, I am not rich. Not yet . . . and probably not ever unless I specialize in cardiology, oncology, or face-lifts. Fortunately, this is not the sort of job you go into in order to make money. Which is a good thing, because I found out (quite by accident) that when you break down my shifts into hourly rates, every receptionist in the building makes more money than I do.

But back to the mansion. My best friends are a vampire and the richest woman in the state of Minnesota (and, as Jessica herself would point out, not the richest black woman . . . the richest woman). In fact, they are my only friends. Once I left the shithole I grew up in, I never went back. And I never will.

I haven't gotten laid in a while, but on the upside, I lead the most interesting life of anyone I know . . . except maybe for Betsy and Sinclair, the King and Queen of the Vampires.

Ooooh, Sinclair. Don't get me started. Tall, broad-shouldered, dark hair, dark eyes, long fingers, and when he and Betsy go at it, the entire mansion shakes. Those are usually the nights I go out and get drunk.

Mostly because I've always been wildly attracted to him, and partly because Betsy has unconsciously worked her charm on me . . . she's about the only woman I've ever seriously considered sleeping with. And-don't get me wrong, dude, because I love her to death-it's just as well we didn't hook up. What with the shoe shopping and the bitching about being stuck in a job she didn't ask for and didn't want, and the way she manages (quite unconsciously, I'm sure) to make everything about her . . . nope, nope, nope. If she was my girlfriend, I probably would have jammed a needle full of potassium into my heart before the end of the first week.

She has twenty-eight pairs of black pumps. Twenty-eight! I counted them myself. Then I counted again to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, and got twenty-nine. Those twenty-eight or -nine pairs were maybe a third of her collection. Her love for fine footgear . . . it's almost pathological.

Thing is, while I was debating trying sex from the other side of the fence, Betsy didn't even know she was doing it. Getting into my head, inspiring me to wear a bit more aftershave than I usually do, making me want her . . . she did it completely unknowingly and by accident. My inner scientist wished I could have known her in life, so I could compare her premortem charisma with her "vampire mojo," as she called it.

And why am I going on and on about Betsy's unholy sex appeal? That's not what I wanted to say at all.

Basically, I guess I've started another diary because things aren't all happy-happy-yay-yay, the-good-guys-win anymore. I thought I'd learned that by the time I was in my fourth year of medical school, but I didn't know shit about death back then.

I know a lot more, now.

People are dying. Good guys are dying. Friends are dying. And I just figure someone ought to be writing it all down.

Because one of these days, I'm worried they'll be flying me in a private plane and I won't be riding in first class, if you know what I mean.

The colonel might care. Might. I won't be around to see it, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Chapter 4

My husband grimaced as I plopped down next to him with BabyJon in my arms. Not particularly keen on fatherhood in the first place, Eric had found it an annoying shock that his wife was the legal guardian of her infant half brother.

He was, like any man, jealous of anything that took his wife's attention away from him (which was part cute and part irritating).

Also, it was my fault my father and stepmother were dead (long story short: cursed engagement ring, grants wishes, and the cost is always high). And when I used the ring, my father was killed. As well as my stepmother.

I had wished for a baby of my own and, like that story "The Monkey's Paw," my wish was granted in a rather grisly way: With BabyJon's parents dead, guess who got custody? Bingo. Leaving me with an instant baby, zero stretch marks, and a ton of buried guilt.

Since I had inadvertently made BabyJon an orphan, I figured the least I could do was raise him. He was my only shot at motherhood; obviously, dead people don't breed.

He squirmed in my arms. I smiled at him. Jet-black hair and crystal blue eyes, plump where babies are supposed to be plump. (Enjoy society's acceptance of your body fat while it lasts, baby brother.) He had four teeth so far, and his lower lip was a waterfall of drool.

"Why not put him in his seat?" my husband asked, shaking out the Wall Street Journal like it was a beach blanket.

"Because we're not going anywhere right this second."

"Not yet!" Jessica called from the cockpit. She took off her headphones-she thought they made her look cool, when I knew she was listening to the latest Shakira album-and headed toward us.

She plopped into the seat behind us and curled up like a cat. She was so small, she actually pulled it off.

"So we're really doing this thing?"

Sinclair looked around as if verifying the cockpit, the pilot, his papers, my magazines. "It appears so."

"Because, for the record? I think it's nuts. What happened to that poor girl wasn't your fault."

"Sure," I said, shocked at how bitter I sounded. It felt like I was sucking on a psychic lemon. "I'll blame the next-door neighbor's dog."

"Not Muggles?" Jessica gasped, which made me snicker in spite of myself. She could always do that. I was awfully glad she hadn't died.

"Even if Elizabeth felt no sense of responsibility, bringing the body back is respectful."

And it lets you get a good look at the maybe-bad guys, doesn't it, hot stuff? But I kept that stuff to myself; it was pillow talk, and none of Jessica's business.

She probably knew, though. Sinclair would no more let an advantage like that slip (meeting a powerful force in neutral territory) than he would go outside without pants.

"But I would like to add once again-"

"Oh, here we go."

"I don't think you should accompany us, Jessica. It's likely to be dangerous."

Jessica waved her sticklike arms around. She could put an eye out with one of those things. "Since Betsy came back from the dead, what isn't? Shit. I can't even go to the Mall of America without running into a sniper team."

"You exaggerate."

"Yes, but not by much."

Sinclair shrugged. "As you like." He knew, as we all did, that it was Jessica's plane. And that she'd insist on coming even if it was his plane.

In some ways, and I know this sounds terrible, but in some ways it was almost bad that I'd cured her cancer. Now she was in the middle of this whole "lust for life" thing and was being more of a tagalong than usual.

I'd cured her by accident, which was terrific. But I'd also made her fearless by accident, which wasn't. There'd come a day-the law of averages demanded it-when I wouldn't be around to save her teeny butt.

"You know, Sinclair's got a point," I began, knowing I was wasting my time (I had no actual breath to waste). "Who knows what the reception's going to be like? There's still time to get off this crazy train and-"

"Taking off right about now, ma'am," Cooper called.

"You did that on purpose," I muttered.

Up front, Cooper was doing his flight check while Jessica climbed out of her seat, walked to the front (the fore? The cabin? I was many things, but a pilot wasn't one of them), and took her seat next to Cooper.

She couldn't fly and only had a passing knowledge of the instruments Cooper used, but it was her plane. I figured someday she would summon the nerve to ask him to teach her.

Jessica's presence was less problematic for Cooper than for me, which is a horrible thing to say about a best friend. As I said, I'd cured her of a lethal blood disease, totally by accident.

But while the vampire in me had once cured her cancer, it had also attacked her. It had also ripped her boyfriend from her and leeched off her generous spirit.

Every time I looked at her I worried, and resolved to deserve her, and then worried again.

To distract myself I stood up, popped BabyJon into his car seat, made sure it was secured to the airplane seat, and then sat back down to buckle my own seat belt. Little brother stared out the window without making so much as a peep.

Wait. Buckle my seat belt? Should I bother? Could a plane crash even hurt me? I looked down at Eric's waistline and saw that he hadn't bothered.

Huh. Well. Old habits, you know?

"Aren't you nervous?" I asked.

"Extremely."

"I'm being serious."

"Oh." The newspaper slowly came down. "My pardon, dear one. Nervous about what? Facing down an unknown number of opponents as strong and fast as we are? Or surviving a plane flown by an Irish-man?"

"Nasty! What'd the Irish ever do to you?"

"Never mind," he muttered darkly. "It was a long time ago."

"Just focus on not dying, and we'll be fine."

He smiled and cupped my chin in his hand. In a second, our faces were only inches apart. "I shall promise not to die, but only if you do so as well."

"Deal," I murmured, having no idea what I was agreeing to. Being this close to Sinclair often had this effect on me.

"Taking off now, ladies and gents," Cooper said, the party pooper.

Sinclair took his hand away and picked up the paper; I just stared at the ceiling. That was how we began the long taxi toward a place I had never been and didn't particularly want to go.

With a corpse somewhere under my feet.Mustn't forget that.