Undead and Unfinished – To be released July 6, 2010

I would never have gone to Hell in the first place if the Anti-Christ hadn’t been fluent in Tagalong. Talk about your perfect storm of paranormal weirdness...and on Halloween, too.

Okay, so, I’ll back up. This whole mess started simply enough (they always, always do): Bloomingdale’s was having a shoe sale and for once, the retail time warp worked in my favor.

Okay, I’ll back up more. You know how stores are actually about four months ahead of the actual calendar? Like Halloween decorations on sale the day after Easter (pardon me while I embrace the horror)? Like that. So anyway, even though it was Halloween, they were having their spring shoe sale (because when there’s a foot of snow on the ground, everybody wants to buy sandals, right?). And the Anti-Christ asked if she could tag along, so I said okay.

I...said...okay! You’d think I hadn’t been paying attention the last four years. Okay, I haven’t been. Still: how could I not see the coming disaster? It shouldn’t have mattered that the Anti-Christ needed a new pair of loafers. I should have realized that an innocent quest for fine leather footwear would have ended up with me in Hell and the Anti-Christ freaking out. Again.

Right. The Anti-Christ. I should probably explain that, too. My half-sister, Laura, was fathered by my, uh, father. Dear Old Dad was banging away at my stepmother, the wretch formerly known as Antonia and whom I had always called the Ant, and Dim Old Dad didn’t notice she was possessed by Satan. I’m betting devil-possessed Ant isn’t any worse than non-devil possessed Ant, which is a sad commentary on my father’s taste in second wives.

The thing is, Satan hated pregnancy, delivery, and breast-feeding. So she did the whole “baby on the doorstep” thing and beat feet back to Hell.

So my sister, who was raised by a minister, is not only the Anti-Christ, it’s been foretold she’ll take over the world. Possibly between donating blood and teaching Sunday school.

But! I will be the first to admit, the Anti Christ is nice. Works in homeless shelters, runs blood drives (kind of hilarious, given that her sister is a vampire), makes cupcakes for church bake sales. Chocolate ones. With real buttercream frosting. Buttercream, not the colored Crisco grocery stores try to pass off as frosting. Ummmm.

God, I miss solid food.

Of course, Laura’s got a temper. Who doesn’t? And occasionally she loses it and then slaughters anyone she can get her hands on. That gets awkward, kind of. And she’s totally conflicted about the undead. Which is actually a pretty normal reaction to vampires.

Her temper and occasional forays into psychopathic rage were why we were meeting tonight at the Mall of America. Laura had sort of tried to kill me a couple of months ago, and still felt crummy about it. She detested conspicuous consumerism and also shopping, which is why her offer to go to my personal Graceland was an olive branch.

I had risen from my unholy grave (bed, actually, with navy blue flannel sheets from Target—it was November, and I’m not a savage), devoured an innocent for breakfast (a tripleberry smoothie; a perk of being the Queen of the Undead was that I didn’t have to suck down blood every day, though to be honest, I always want to), then commandeered my sinister chariot (Ford Hybrid Escape) and was mallward bound.

I parked in the East Parking Lot, second floor—lots of my favorites were on that side, including William Sonoma and Coach—not that I’d ever cough up four hundred bucks for a knapsack that looked like it was designed by a bright second grader. Also, Tiger Sushi was there, and Laura was seriously addicted to their Tiger Balls. Yeah, that’s right, I said balls. Grow up, why doncha?

So I forced a smile as I marched toward a restaurant that sold seaweed, rice, and raw fish for a profit margin of several hundred percent. The sushi thing. I didn’t get it and I never would. I’d been fishing too much as a kid; I couldn’t make myself eat bait. No matter how fresh it was.

I spotted Laura while I was still thirty feet away, and it had nothing to do with my super-cool vampire powers. Laura was just ridiculously gorgeous, all the time. So annoying.

Look, it’s not envy, okay? Well, not extreme envy. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not one of those girls who pretends they have no idea they’re mega-cute. I’m cute; I freely confess. Tall and blonde (big surprise in Minnesota...we’re about as rare as yellow snow in the dog park); pale skin, light eyes. Never really had to fight the fat, and being undead means I’ll be slender forever. The phrase “I’m at my winter weight” no longer has power over me. My senior year I was a contestant in the Miss Burnsville pageant and went home with the Miss Congeniality sash, sort of the “you’re not the prettiest or the most talented, but the other gals thought you were nice” consolation prize. I don’t exactly drink my water out of a dog dish.

Laura, though.

Breathtaking. Gorgeous. And, as my friend Marc put it, “mouth-watering”.

My gay friend Marc.

And there she was, standing with someone I didn’t know, gesturing wildly in the manner of the native Minnesotan (or, perhaps, The Omen). And as I approached I remembered the real reason the Spawn of Satan and My Dead Stepmother made me so uneasy.

She was just annoyingly stunning, all the time. One of those (vomit) natural beauties. Elbow-length hair the color of corn silk. Big blue eyes. First day of spring blue. Cloudless summer day blue. Really really gorgeous blue. Oh, and thin—did I have to tell you that? I probably didn’t have to tell you that.

Great tits, of course, and always primly secured in a 36-B bra. Long legs—she was just a hair shorter than me, and I topped out at six feet—clad in truly faded blue jeans. Not ‘pre-washed and faded’ blue jeans...Laura’s mom bought them new (yeah, her adopted mom still bought most of her clothes, though the girl was a student at the U of M). Then Laura wore them and wore them and wore them until they were actually faded, ripped, etc. Waste was a sin, after all. Oh! And let’s not forget the Spawn of Satan’s flawless creamy complexion, courtesy of Noxema.

And faded running shoes, I realized as I got closer. Also by Target. Running shoes! Who wore those to go buy sandals? She’d have to sit down and pull off her shoes and socks each time she...argh, it was going to make me nuts just thinking about it, so I thought about something else. Like the woman she was waving at. It wasn’t a surprise the Antichrist was talking to someone; it was a surprise she wasn’t followed around by packs of men and women and small children, all the time. In addition to being gorgeous, people just naturally flocked to Laura. Like I said—for the Antichrist, she was pretty nice.

Except, I realized as I got close enough for her to notice me, she wasn’t talking to the woman. And she wasn’t waving at her, either. Both sets of hands were flying—Laura had either gone deaf, or recently become fluent in American Sign Language.

Me, Myself and Why – To be released September, 2010

The lilting strains of thrash metal crashed through my skull and I sat bolt upright in bed, clutching my ears. Someone—probably my psycho sister—had set my alarm to W-ROX and cranked it. It was a lot like being awakened on an airport runway by an approaching DC-10.

I clawed for the snooze button, missed, swiped again, knocked the radio to the carpet, slithered off the bed, fell on top of the snooze button, and mercifully, the Sweet Jerkoff’s new release, Raining Hell On Your Stupid Face, stopped.

Don’t ask me how I knew the song and the band. I won’t tell.

“Too early,” came a sonorous voice from the bed above. What the—? “Sleep more.”

I cautiously peeked over the edge of the bed. A strange, nude man was tangled up in my Laura Ashley sheets. His long dark hair covered half his face and fluttered as he resumed snoring. He had a tattoo of Donald Duck performing a sexual act on Daisy; it was almost four inches across!

And—what the—?—I was naked, too.

Over his slurred protests (he smelled like he’d fallen into a tequila vat on the way to my apartment), I pulled him out of bed as efficiently and politely as I could. I found his jeans under the bed, his shirt hanging over my bedside lamp, his boxer briefs on top of the heating vent, one of his shoes in the bathroom, and the other in my kitchen sink. It was tough work getting him dressed while not looking at his penis, but I managed.

Don’t ask me how; I won’t tell.

After the stranger was gone, I set about cleaning up the empty tequila bottles, the gnawed lemon slices (one was nestled beside my toothbrush like a bedraggled yellow comma), the spilled salt shakers (my moo cow shaker! In the toilet! Darn it all!), and something that looked like a small purple whale.

I was studying it, hoping it wasn’t what I knew it was, when it started to buzz in my hand and I dropped it. What was that doing in the fridge?

Never mind. Never mind. I—I had to get to work. Mustn’t be late! Mustn’t be late!

I kicked the vibrator across the kitchen floor until it was close to the garbage, then darted into the bathroom. I took a quick shower, dried at light speed (my blonde hair looked all right, but my eyes were bloodshot—what had my sister been—never mind, never mind), and dressed in my best conservative navy suit.

Then I grabbed a breakfast Hot Pocket (ham n’cheese), and headed out the front door. I had a splitting headache, but some iced coffee ought to fix that nicely...along with about ten Advil. No time for makeup, but I twisted my hair up into a large barrette.

“Morning, Ms. Jones,” Ben, the doorman, said on my way out. “Late night, huh?”

I had no idea what he was talking about, as my last memory was of walking down Lake Street at 5:30 p.m. the day before (a peek at the newspaper assured me of the date), but nodded and waved my Hot Pocket at him.

It took ten minutes to find my Mitsubishi Eclipse—I was thankful it hadn’t been towed again, intruding crookedly on the sidewalk as it was—and another twenty-five to drive (a bit more quickly than usual) to BOFFO headquarters, located on Marquette Ave in Minneapolis. It looked like an office building, maybe the corporate headquarters for Target or one of those financial advisor firms that did so well until 2008. But this was no office.

Well, it was in that there were printers and desks and things, but it was actually a branch of the FBI, the Bureau of False Flag Ops.

After I parked, I took the elevator to the correct floor, slid my key card through the slot, waited for the retinal scan, then popped in. Five minutes early! Victory was mine.

As always, I was greeted by Opus, the custodian for my floor.

“Hi...Cadence.”

“Hi, big guy. Have a nice night?”

Opus gave the question careful thought before answering. “Yes.” Opus didn’t understand the concept of small talk—he had savant syndrome (never, never use the phrase ‘idiot savant’; soooo 20th century!)—but he could do incredible things with numbers, even if he couldn’t write out a grocery list. He was a shambling bear of a man—well over six feet tall, with shaggy brown hair, bushy eyebrows, mud-colored eyes, and thick forearms. His two-piece brown uniform made him look not unlike a grizzly bear. With a mop.

I’ll admit, I had a soft spot for the man. I’d had to defend him from occasional taunts from some of my less sensitive co-workers, “Rainman” being a popular insult.

It was almost funny, that anybody who worked for BOFFO would have the nerve to insult anyone else who worked for BOFFO. After all, we all had—

“Cadence!” George Pinkman was actually dancing from one foot to another. “I got the new Halo! You should come over and help me blow shit up.”

“Some other time,” I replied sweetly. George gave me the creeps. A textbook sociopath, he didn’t think anything was real except the world of violent video games. Why BOFFO needed him I would never understand, but was certainly in no position to complain or judge. I mean, jeepers! I was a federal cop, not King Solomon. “But thanks.”

“Maybe your sister, then.”

I shivered and moved past him to my desk. He really was crazy. Well, sure. He had a BOFFO I.D. card, didn’t he? And he’d fooled a lot of people with those big green eyes, aquiline nose, and firm jaw. His eyebrows were slashing commas across his forehead and, although he had a slim build, held no less than three black belts. He often dressed and talked effeminately to provoke the local rednecks. Then he’d lure them out into the parking lot and break various bones. All in the name of self-defense, of course, while sporting one of his huge collection of incredibly garish and tasteless neckties.

The one he wore now featured a single cartoon puppy in a dead-Christ pose, against a background of rainbows.

I scanned the morning faxes, checked arrest reports, did some work on the computer, and heated up my Hot Pocket, which I gobbled in six bites (so hungry!). I got a Frappucino from the vending machine, balanced it on my Hello Kitty mouse pad, and began gulping it with a few Advil. This would, I hoped, take care of my hangover.

“Cadence Jones!”

I swung around in my chair, nearly spilling my drink. My supervisor, Michaela, was framed in the doorway of Da Pitt (where all her field agents congregated to fight crime and work on their Secret Santa drawings). She was a fifty-something woman with silver, straight chin-length hair and amazing green eyes. Pure green, not hazel. Like leaves! Hair the color of precious metal, eyes the color of wet leaves—she’d have been gorgeous if she wasn’t so scarily efficient and surrounded by cubicles and printers and mail carts. And today, as usual, she was dressed in Ann Taylor.

I squashed the urge to shake the ringing out of my ears—boss lady had the volume and pitch of a steamer whistle. “Weren’t we going to work on our inside voice?”

“Debriefing! Thirty minutes!”

“I know, I saw the email.” I pointed at my computer screen. “But thanks for assuming I hadn’t learned to read in the first grade.”

“Leave the mouth at your desk!” Thankfully, she vanished through another doorway.

Now how was I supposed to do that? Physically, it was impossible. Figuratively, it didn’t make any sense, since my mouth was essentially what made me valuable to BOFFO. Maybe Michaela was coming off an odd night, too.