Undead and Uneasy by MaryJanice Davidson Page B

head. I assessed their strength, their tone, their
    differences from Antonia.

    Antonia, who was strong but not a shape-shifter.

    Antonia, who could see the future but at a horrible cost to herself, and the one she loved.

    I couldn't imagine what was worse: being considered a freak by, well, other freaks, or
    having horrible visions that were never, ever wrong.

    Is that why she was gone? Had she seen something awful

    (Please God, nothing bad about Sinclair or Marc or Jessica okay, God? I'll owe you a big
    one, God, in Jesus's name, amen.)

    and vamoosed, taking her own personal Fiend with her?

    No way. Antonia was a lot of things, but she'd never run for cover. And if she did run for
    cover, which she'd never do, she wouldn't do it without warning me first. After all, I was
    her—what was it? Pack leader pro tem?

    "You know," I said, sitting across from Michael, "Antonia was pretty tight-lipped about

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    Silence.

    "She didn't talk a lot about Pack stuff." In fact, I was trying to remember a single damned
    thing I knew about the Pack. And I was coming up pretty close to blank. And not just
    because I usually tuned Antonia out five or ten seconds into her rant du jour. Well, yeah,
    that was probably the main reason, but, bottom line . . . "She just didn't."

    "She didn't talk to me about vampire stuff," Michael volunteered. "Every month it was the same thing. Everything okay? Yes. Need anything? No. Any messages you want me to
    pass along? No. Anything you want to tell me about?Hell , no."

    "We all sat in silence for a few seconds. I don't know about them, but I was thinking that I
    was damned fortunate Antonia was able to juggle her loyalties so well. From the look on
    Wyndham's face, he was thinking the same thing, or close to it.

    I crossed my legs and stared at my black socks. Must remember to get my saddle shoes
    out of the foyer. "She must have explained when she moved in. Didn't she?" I looked up
    and beheld identical puzzled expressions. "I mean, she said she had to get permission from
    you, and I thought it was extremely weird that a grown woman had to 'get permission' to
    live with us, but when I said that, all she said was that my face was extremely weird and to
    shut the hell up."

    Wyndham and his peeps nodded. Michael added, "She had little to say about you even
    when she moved to the Midwest. 'I found my destiny,' she says, 'and it's with the king and
    the queen of the vampires. Yes, they're real,' she says."

    "Don't feel bad about not believing," I told him. "I didn't believe in werewolves until Antonia showed up. And, uh, didn't change into a wolf."

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    " 'I'm not coming back,' she says—this was her way of asking permission. 'So sell my
    house and cut me a check. And don't give me any shit, or I'll foresee your death and forget
    to mention it.'

    I had to admit, it had the ring of authenticity.

    "She agreed to check in every month," Michael said, "and that was the end of it. Until, of course, we didn't hear from her. Now. Tell me, Betsy. What is a Fiend? And where can we
    find the one that killed our Pack member?"

Chapter 17

    “Whoa, whoa,whoa ! ” I said, wishing I wasn't doing this all by myself. "Let's not jump to
    any conclusions, my eager little pups. Garrett would eat his own balls before he'd ever hurt
    Antonia, and he'd never,never kill her."

    Derik shuddered and covered his eyes. "Must you use phrases that I'll never get out of my
    head? 'Eat his own balls'? Who says that?"

    "Not to mention, it's hard to believe," Cain added.

    "Believe? Why is that so hard? Now all of a sudden you're big vampire and Fiend
    experts?"

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    "Vampires aren't accident-prone?" Jeannie asked, and to her credit, it