Dead Ever After

his girlfriend.
    I was sure he’d had some reason for doing me that large good turn.
    Does it sound like I was labeling Eric as ungenerous, uncaring? In some respects, and to some people, he was never those things. But he was a practical vampire, and he was a vampire about to become the consort of a true queen. Since dismissing me as his wife apparently was one of Freyda’s conditions for marrying Eric (and frankly, I could sure understand that), I couldn’t imagine her accepting Eric’s decision to put up an awfully large amount of money to secure my freedom. Maybe that had been part of some negotiation? “If you’ll let me bail out my former wife, I’ll take a decreased allowance for a year,” or something like that. (For all I knew, they negotiated how many times they would have sex.) And I had the most depressing mental image of the beautiful Freyda and my Eric . . . my former Eric.
    Somewhere in the midst of wandering through a mental maze, I fell asleep.
    I slept twenty minutes too late the next day and woke up to the awareness that my house was full of guests. I threw myself out of bed, aware of other brains firing into thought all over the house. I was showered and out in the kitchen quicker than greased lightning, and I fixed pancakes and bacon, put the coffeepot on, and got out the juice glasses. I listened to Amelia being sick in the hall bathroom and sent a groggy Diantha into mine to speed up the shower process.
    As the pancakes came off the griddle, I slid them right onto plates so my guests could eat them while they were hot. I put out all the fruit I had, for the healthy minded.
    Mr. Cataliades loved pancakes, and Diantha was not far behind him in pancake consumption. I had to make up some more batter in a hurry. Then there were dishes to wash (Bob helped) and my bed to make. So I had plenty to do, but throughout the busyness of my hands and thoughts, I was unhappily aware that I hadn’t heard from Sam.
    I e-mailed him.
    I chose that format so I could say exactly what I wanted to say without having to restate it several times. I worked on my composition for a while.
    Sam, I don’t know why you don’t want to talk to me, but I wanted you to know that I’m ready to come to work any day you need me. Please let me know how you’re feeling.
    I read this message over several times and decided it put the ball in Sam’s court pretty firmly. It was perfect until I impulsively typed, “I miss you.” And then I clicked Send.
    After years of having what I considered a happy relationship with Sam—for the most part—with no effort at all, now that I’d actually made a sacrifice for him, we were down to e-mails and mysterious silences.
    It was hard to understand.
    I was trying to explain this to Amelia a few minutes later. She’d come upon me staring at the computer as if I were trying to will the screen to talk to me.
    “What did you sacrifice?” she asked, her clear blue eyes intent on my face. When Amelia was in the right mood, she could be a good listener. I knew that Bob was shaving in the hall bathroom, Barry was out in the yard doing yoga stuff, and Mr. C and Diantha were having an earnest conversation at the edge of the woods. So it was safe to be frank.
    “I sacrificed my chance to keep Eric,” I said. “I gave it up to save Sam’s life.”
    She bypassed the big important part of that to go straight to the painful questions. “If you have to use big magic to keep someone with you, was it really meant to be?”
    “I never thought about it as an either/or,” I said. “But Eric did. He’s a proud guy, and his maker began the process of hitching him to Freyda without consulting Eric at all.”
    “And you know this how?”
    “When he finally told me about it, he seemed . . . genuinely desperate.”
    Amelia looked at me like I was the world’s biggest idiot. “Right, ’cause it’s nobody’s dream to go from managing a backwater area of Louisiana to being consort of a beautiful queen who’s hot for you. And why did he end up telling you?”
    “Well, Pam insisted,” I admitted, feeling doubts overwhelm me. “But he hadn’t told me because he was trying to think of a way to stay with me.”
    “I’m not saying anything different,” she said. Amelia has never been tactful, and I could tell she was making a huge effort. “You’re pretty great. But you know, honey . . . Eric is all about Eric. That’s why I was so willing to encourage Alcide. I figured Eric would break