TWELVE

"Once upon a time I met a pretty grotesque creature who was gonna be me in a few hundred years."

"This part we know," I said.

"My story, my rules," Marc snapped back, and I had to bite my lip so I wouldn't grin. For an evil undead shambling brain-chomping zombie, he sure sounded like my good friend. "Okay. So-"

"Where did you get the hospital scrubs?" Tina asked. She'd come late to our little "Welcome Home, Zombie Marc" party, and was wasting no time indulging her curiosity. "And how did you-"

"Will you guys give me five seconds, please? Cripes. Anyway. To save myself from becoming the Marc Thing-great phrase, Betsy, it pretty perfectly sums up that guy's extreme awfulness-"

"It did, didn't it?" I was pleased; I so rarely was able to turn a phrase without using the word asshat. "He wasn't Marc-the-vampire, he was the Marc Thing. Yuck."

"Anyway, once he got done scaring the living shit out of me with his life story-his death story?-I pulled my bag and OD'd on morphine. Which, by the way, is pretty much the awesomest way to die."

"This is not a cautionary tale," Sinclair commented. "Those do not normally begin-or end-with awesomest."

"And thanks once again for offing yourself in our house, you inconsiderate asshat!" See? Asshat was my default. Hey, it worked for me, so what could I say?

"Will you guys shut the hell up so I can tell this?" Zombie Marc glared around at us, and there was some foot shuffling and stirring in seats but we were finally quiet enough to suit him. We weren't sure what would set him off into a brain-chomping frenzy, so we tried to sit still and pay attention. "Anyway. The last thing I remember from life was falling asleep in my bed as I tumbled into morphine's sweet, sweet embrace."

Annoyed once again ("Morphine's sweet embrace"-was he kidding us or what? "Morphine's sweet embrace" in my house?), I opened my mouth-only to shut it as Tina, Sinclair, and Jessica all glared at me. Phooey.

"And then I was in the attic. Alive. Except not."

"We never put you in the ground," Sinclair prompted.

"Now that I'd figured out on my own," Marc replied with an admirable lack of cutting sarcasm.

"You forbade a funeral-remember? You left me your papers and your girly journal."

"Betsy, come on. It's not a girly journal."

"It has. A pink. Cover."

He muttered something I didn't catch ... a good trick, with my hearing. "Anyway," I continued, "what with it being late November and all-"

"Did I miss Thanksgiving? What's the date?"

"Unfortunately, Thanksgiving still looms over our lives like a scythe made of turkey drumsticks ... it's this Thursday. But anyway, you-your dead body, I mean-were in a crypt, or whatever they call those places where they keep coffins until the ground's soft enough to dig up. And then you were here."

"The part in between is what we are keenly interested in," Sinclair said.

"I'll bet. Okay, so ... I OD'd. And then I was in the attic."

"Yeah? And?" Jessica was looking less horrified and more interested. She still kept her distance, but who could blame her? "What happened?"

"Well, I had no idea how I'd gotten there, so I figured it was a good time to lie low. I stayed up there for a couple of days, trying to think of what to do. I knew I wasn't alive anymore-I felt dead, you know? No, that's not right." He stared at his hands, the long slender fingers he'd used to fix broken bones and stitch up kids who fell down on playgrounds and pump his system with a lethal dose of morphine. "I felt different. I didn't feel alive-I saw things, smelled things in a different way ... felt things in a different way." He paused, clearly struggling for a way to explain. "I wasn't rotting or craving brains or anything, but I knew I wasn't alive ... the world just looked ... I can't really explain ... shit!" His fist dropped to the table and his body language was putting out "man, I'm sooo frustrated right now" vibes. "I'm not doing this very well."

"Take your time," Tina soothed.

"Screw that ... what about my cat? Can we talk about my dead cat?"

"Oh my God." Jessica's hands went to her mouth. She saw Sinclair and Tina flinch. "I'm-I'm sorry, guys, I didn't-were you eating Giselle the cat? Were you eating her brains? You were, weren't you! Oh, Marc!"

"Gross, of course not!" Zombie Marc shot a reproving look at her. "I was just dissecting her so I wouldn't rot faster."

Nobody said anything. Probably because not a one of us had any idea what to say.

"Okay, I know that sounds bad," Marc began. "But-"

"So you wouldn't rot faster?" I practically screamed. "That's why you were up to your elbows in dead cat when I found you? To prevent rapid rotting? Because that's pretty bad, Marc, that's pretty damned awful!"

"I was only up to my wrists in your dead cat," he replied with simple dignity. "It wasn't like she cared."

"I cared!"

"I'm not defending it; I'm explaining it." I was pretty sure that was wrong ... pretty sure he was doing, at best, both. "Look, I saw you go outside to bury her."

"How did you know just what she was doing?" Sinclair asked. He, Nick/Dick, and Tina were the only ones keeping their cool.

"Why else would she bring a pillowcase that obviously had something small in it, then find a shovel, then head to the back corner of the yard? I mean, I knew you weren't happy with all those velvet clogs in your closet, but I didn't think you'd decided to bury a few pairs."

"Logical." Sinclair (barely) kept the approval out of his tone.

"And then all the dogs ... came. And they ... um ... chased Betsy. Chased her back ... back into the house. She had to, um, bang on the door a lot while dogs were slobbering all over her."

"Are you trying not to laugh right now?" I asked, never more suspicious in my life.

"Of course not ... this is a very serious ... business ... I felt for you while ... all those dogs ... um ... chased you..."

Sinclair lost it. He started laughing so hard he tilted his chair so far back that two legs were off the floor. I had to resolutely squash the impulse to give his chair a kick and send him crashing to the kitchen tile. Jessica and Nick/Dick stared-my husband had a peculiar sense of humor, but hardly anyone but me ever heard him really laugh. Then Dickie/Nickie/Tavvi broke. Only Tina and Jessica remained impassive, but Jessica's mouth was twitching in a way I didn't like.

"Never mind the dogs!" I whined. "Get back to you lurking in our attic-stop laughing!"

"I wasn't." Marc cleared his throat. He didn't dare look at Sinclair, probably figuring that'd set them both off. Jerks! "You know how big the attic is ... there are windows on all sides of the house. I could see everything from up there. I saw the-uh-"

"Hounds of heck."

"Right. They chased you inside, and nobody came back out for the cat. So I slipped outside and grabbed her."

"Okay, weird and gross. But why?"

"I get worse when I don't have something to do, or think about."

"Worse, how?"

"More dead," he replied simply.

"Um ... could you clarify that one?" Dick asked. At least his hand wasn't on the butt of his gun anymore.

"I get slower and dumber. It's a lot harder to think. If I'm not keeping busy, I find all I want to do is sort of slump in a corner and listen to the mice fucking in the walls."

"I have no idea how to respond to that," Jessica admitted.

"Yeah, I don't blame you, Jess. If I keep busy, I keep ... keep myself, I guess."

"Where did you get the scrubs?" Tina asked again.

"You guys hadn't packed up any of my stuff," he said, smiling a little. His brilliant green eyes held some of their old gleam. "I waited until everyone was out one night, then grabbed a bunch of my stuff and brought it to the attic. You guys never noticed."

"Careless of us," Tina murmured, and Sinclair nodded.

"We never even heard you moving around up there."

"We didn't hear the other zombie, either," I reminded them. Yes, in this wonderful life I'd made for myself after death, I'd encountered a zombie before Marc became one. "It must be a zombie power."

"I have no idea." Sinclair and Tina traded glances. "I know little about them," he admitted, and I knew that must have stuck in his craw. "Perhaps..."

I knew from "perhaps." My husband and sovereign, who loved me beyond anything else, had a ruthless side. He was probably telling himself that Marc being a zombie was an excellent opportunity to learn all about them. Hey, look on the bright side, right? I could admire the trait, while at the same time fearing it was one I'd develop over the years.

God, I hoped not.

Marc shrugged. "I'm not judging. I'm glad you didn't get rid of my stuff, because it made things easier. I figured it was all still here because you're in denial, or because this has all happened too soon, or because you knew I'd be back." He looked right at me for that last one. "I wondered if it was all still there because you didn't expect me to stay dead-all-the-way-dead-for long."

"Marc-I was going to try-but I hadn't done anything." I shrugged helplessly. "Please don't think we didn't miss you and weren't thinking about you all the time because we were thinking about you all the time, Sinclair can tell you I've been crying my eyes out-"

"She has," he confirmed. "It's been distressing."

"-and we'd only just talked about it yesterday, but it didn't ... um ... we couldn't..."

"We were going to respect your choice," Nick/Dick said. "That's what Betsy's trying to pussyfoot around. We figured you knew what you were doing when you OD'd, and we were going to let sleeping zombies lie."

"Really?" Marc looked astonished.

"No, that's not true-I was absolutely going to figure out how to bring you back no matter what these guys said, but first I was gonna sort of let things sit. You know, let the others get used to the idea. Then later I was going to sneak off and resurrect you-uh, somehow-but then someone else did it, so I didn't have to."

"You what?"

Ulp. Jessica.

"What?"

Thanks to a terrifying mix of hormones, Jessica could go from zero to murderous rage in less than three seconds. It was like watching a fire consume your house: terrifying, but strangely beautiful, too.

"Let me rephrase," I began, but it was too late.