Undead and Unforgiven by MaryJanice Davidson Read Free Book Online Page A

omnipotent. Or Satan went up there to tattle on me.”
    â€œDoubtful,” the Ant said. “She wouldn’t set foot in Heaven for anything. They haven’t spoken since the Fall.”
    â€œA long time to sulk,” Cathie commented, and that made Father Markus bristle.
    â€œIt’s a bit more complicated than a father-son spat over who put the ding in the bumper,” he said. “Lucifer upended the world order. Even if there could be forgiveness for such an act—and of course our Father can forgive all who genuinely repent—who’s to say the Morningstar would want it?”
    â€œClearly she
didn’t
want it,” Cathie replied. “Or at least, not in all the time she was running the show down here.”
    (Clarification: Lucifer, also known as Satan 1.0, was a fallen angel and thus, apparently, genderless. But she’d always appeared to us in the guise of Lena Olin in terrific designer suits and killer footgear, so most of us were in the habit of referring to the devil as “she.” “It” was probably correct, but it sounded weird
and
mean. Though why I worried about sounding mean to the devil, of all creatures, was a mystery. You can take the Miss Congeniality out of the Miss Burnsville pageant, but you can’t take theMiss Burnsville pageant out of the Miss Congeniality. Or something.)
    And all of this raised the question: where did the devil go when you killed her? Not Hell. Not Heaven. Where? Walmart? Where?
    I shook my head. “I can’t worry about that now. Too much other stuff on my plate.”
    â€œMajesty, if we cannot stay focused, bringing change will be that much more difficult.” Tina always managed to say “focus, idiot!” without actually saying it, which I appreciated.
    â€œYes, focus, idiot,” Cathie said. I mentioned I appreciated Tina’s tact, right? Tina’s lips went thin and she opened her mouth, so I jumped in. (Figuratively. Not literally.)
    â€œI
am
, but there’s so much stuff to worry about! For one thing, I’m still figuring out how my kind-of onomatopoeia works.”
    â€œOmniscience,” Tina corrected gently. “Onomatopoeia is when the name of a sound is its sound, my queen.”
    â€œYou lost me,” Marc said, and thank goodness, because I was trying to limit my stupid questions to under a dozen an hour. So far, no good.
    â€œLike honk or quack or sizzle,” she explained, and you’d think that would have helped, but nope. “
Quack
really does sound like a duck’s quack.
Splash
really does sound like a splash. Like that.”
    â€œWhatever. So my problem is figuring out the other thing you said. Omniscience. I’m stronger here than I ever have been, which, for a vampire queen, is pretty great.” Queenhood, much as I liked to bitch about it, had its perks. Unlike other vampires, I could bear sunlight, could blaspheme from dawn ’til dusk, could gargle with holy water with no ill effects (except wondering how many people had had their hands in the holy water I just glugged, and then feeling ill). I could accessorize with crosses like a mideightiesMadonna and the only thing that would hurt would be knowing how tacky and mideighties Madonna it was.
    In Hell, however, I was even more powerful. Which was cool, but terrible. Because . . .
    â€œThe power—Satan’s abilities? Are they an executive perk, like a company car? I can use them because she isn’t? They come with the job, like health bennies?”
    â€œI think that’s exactly it,” the Ant said. “You can’t do such things up in your precious mansion, right?” Ooh, she couldn’t resist getting in a zinger. The Ant deeply coveted my Summit Avenue mansion, but was usually better at hiding it.
    I took her breaking of the Tenth Commandment (People: I
just
gave you a list of things not to do!) at face value. “Right. In the ‘real