Undead and Unappreciated by MaryJanice Davidson

three of them were unanimous in their dislike of screaming at Jessica’s closed door, so Marc had picked up a set of baby monitors. He’d popped one into Jessica’s room that morning, while she was out and the rest of us were conked. She couldn’t have minded—we didn’t find the monitor in little pieces in the kitchen garbage, at least.
    Wait a minute.
    Laura?
    “Satan’s kid is named Laura?”
    “Laura Goodman.” Tina giggled.
    “That’s pretty dumb.”
    “Almost as ridiculous a name as Betsy for a vampire queen,” Sinclair commented.
    Was that a nasty comment or a nasty-nice comment? Was he getting over being mad? And why did I care so much? He was usually on my shit list.
    I had to admit, I didn’t much care for the role reversal. But what could I do? I had the distinct impression that apologizing for having sex with him would just make everything worse. And things were plenty bad enough, thanks. “So, what else did you guys find out?”
    Plenty, as it turned out. Laura had been adopted about ten seconds after the Ant had dumped her, thank goodness, by the Goodmans, who settled with her in Farmington, where she grew up. Even better, Laura was a student at the U of M and had an apartment in Dinkytown. My mom could probably help me out a little there.
    “It wasn’t even very hard to find this stuff out,” Marc added. He turned to Tina. “My review is tomorrow. Will you please come to work with me?”
    She rolled her eyes and laughed again. “Oh, Marc.”
    “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t have been,” I said. I had great respect for Tina’s sinister powers. Hey, trying to kill her could be seen as a compliment! A sad, lame compliment. “If there’s someone out there Tina can’t put the vamp mojo on, I haven’t met them.”
    “Less mojo was needed than you would believe. Everyone was very open about…well, everything. The adoption and where she is now and what she’s doing. We’ve even got her phone number.”
    “Well, good.” I guess. That was good, right? Right! Time to regain control of this meeting. Assuming I’d ever had it. “So I guess we’ll…what? Go see her? Track her down in the root of all evil—Dinkytown, is it? Tell her we’re onto her, and she’d better not fulfill her destiny or we’ll…what?”
    “One thing at a time,” Sinclair said. Since he was having very little to say these days, I was glad to hear him piping up. “We must find her first.”
    “Together?”
    He speared me with his dark gaze. Which was as uncomfortable as it sounds. “You shouldn’t speak to Satan’s own by yourself. Of course, I will come with you.”
    “Of course.” I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back.
    “Meeting’s over,” Marc told the baby monitor. “Over.”

Chapter 18
    “S he volunteers at the church,” I said. “Oh. My. God! She volunteers at the church!”
    “No matter how many times you say it out loud,” Sinclair said, “it still seems to be true.”
    We’d been shadowing a group of kids—all girls in their late teens—for the last two hours. I wasn’t sure which of them was my sister—there were three blondes, two brunettes, and even a strawberry blonde in the group. They’d gone from the U (my mom had most helpfully provided Laura’s class schedule, breaking about twenty school regs in the process) to an apartment house in Dinkytown, and now they had all trooped into the local Presbyterian church.
    “They’re like a flock,” Sinclair observed.
    “That’s just what girls do at that age.” Heck, any age. “They travel in clumps. Like hair!”
    “Charming.”
    We were in Sinclair’s Passat. I know, I know…the king and queen of the vampires, tooling around in a blue Passat? He was keeping the really good cars—the convertible (a Mustang ironically a convertible), the Spider, the various other pretty cars that I didn’t know the names of—under wraps for the time being.
    Maybe he had hauled the good ones out before to impress me, and now that