Davidson, Mary Janice - Betsy 03 - Undead And Unappreciated (v1.0)

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侵权投诉
UNDEAD
AND
UNAPPRECIATED
By
MaryJanice Davidson
Contents
Prologue 1: Secrets
Prologue 2: Problems
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 5
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL. England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road. Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ). Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd.. 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South
Africa
Penguin Books Ltd.. Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over
and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2005 by MaryJanice Davidson Alongi.
Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.
All rights reserved.
BERKLEY SENSATION is an imprint of The Berkley Publishing Group. BERKLEY SENSATION
and the "B" design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First edition: July 2005
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davidson, MaryJanice.
Undead and unappreciated / MaryJanice Davidson.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-425-20433-2
1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Nightclubs—Fiction. 3. Sisters—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.A949U525 2005
813'.6—dc22
2005043615
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
For my brother-in-law, Daniel,
who never complains.
No matter how often I try
to drag good gossip out of him, dammit.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without… me!
Also my husband, my PR person, my sister, my parents, my editor, my girlfriends, my agent, the copy
editor, the cover artist, the sales reps, the marketing team, the booksellers, the makers of Godiva
chocolates, and my readers.
But mostly me.
Author's Note
Of course, the devil's daughter doesn't really live in a suburb of Minneapolis. She lives in a suburb of
Saint Paul. Duh.
Also, Betsy researched the Web for nondenominational wedding information and relied heavily on
http://www.maggiedot.com/7Destiny/ . Many thanks to the Reverend Marcia Ann George.
The Queene's sister shalt be Belov'd of the Morning Star, and shalt take the Worlde.
—THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself.
——ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, STEP FOUR
Will you still need me, will you still please me, when I'm sixty-four?
——JOHN LENNON AND PAUL MCCARTNEY
Prologue 1: Secrets
Once upon a time, the devil was bored, and possessed a not-very-nice pregnant woman, and ran that
woman's body for about a year.
The devil still drank and smoked, but only in moderation. The devil was good about taking prenatal pills
but grumbled about the inevitable constipation.
And eventually, the devil gave birth to a baby girl.
After a month of diapers, night feedings, colic, laundry, spilled formula (the devil hated to breast-feed),
and spit-up, the devil said, "Enough of this," and went back to Hell, which was infinitely preferable to
living with a newborn.
The devil's daughter was adopted and grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her name was
Laura, and she liked strawberry ice cream, and she never, ever missed church. She was a very nice
young lady. But she had a terrible temper.
Prologue 2: Problems
Thunderbird Motel
Bloomington, Minnesota
8:57 p.m.
"Okay, guys, let's set up here… Charley, you okay here? You got light?"
Her cameraman looked up. "It's shitty out here. Should be better inside."
"We won't film out here… we'll go inside the conference room. So, you're sure this is okay?"
The representative, who was smooth and sweatless like an egg, clasped his hands together and nodded
slowly. Even his suit seemed to be free of threads or seams. "People need to see that it's not a bunch of
chain-smoking losers who are afraid to go outside. There's doctors. There's lawyers. There's"—he stared
at her with pale blue eyes, pilot's eyes—"anchorwomen."
Subtle, jerk. "Right, right. And we'll put all that across." She turned away from the AA rep, muttering
under her breath. "Fuckin' slow news days… give me a war update anytime… okay! Let's get in there,
Chuckles."
Charley knew his stuff, and with the new equipment, setup was not only a breeze, it was relatively quick
and quiet. The conference room looked and smelled like a thousand others; sparse and scented of
coffee. Interestingly, none of the room's inhabitants looked at them directly. There was a lot of coffee
drinking and low chatting, a lot of nibbling on cheese and crackers, a lot of quiet milling and sideways
glances.
They looked, the newswoman thought to herself, exactly like the man said. Respectable, settled. Sober.
She was amazed they'd agreed to the cameras. Wasn't the second A supposed to be forAnonymous ?
"Okay, everyone," the rep said, standing in the front of the room. "Let's get settled and get started. You
all remember Channel 9 was coming tonight to help raise awareness… someone watching tonight might
see we're not all villains in trench coats and maybe will come down."
"I'll start, and then we've got a new person here tonight…"
Someone the reporter couldn't see protested in a low yet frantic voice, and was ignored—or wasn't
heard—by the rep. "I'm James," the rep continued, "and I've been sober for six years, eight months, and
nine days."
There was a pause as he stepped down, then a rustle, a muffled, "Oof! Stupid steps." Then a young
woman in her mid-twenties was standing behind the small podium. She squinted out at the audience for a
moment, as if the fluorescent lighting hurt her eyes, and then said in a completely mesmerizing voice,
"Well, hi there. I'm Betsy. I haven't had a drink in three days and four hours."
"Get on her!" the reporter hissed.
"I'm tight," Charley replied, dazzled.
The woman was tall—her head was just below theno smoking on these premises sign—which put her at
about six feet. She was dressed in a moss green suit with the kind of suit jacket that buttoned up to her
chin and needed no underblouse. The richly colored clothing superbly set off the delicate paleness of her
skin and made her green eyes seem huge and dark, like leaves in the middle of the forest. Her hair was
golden blond, shoulder length and wavy, with lovely red and gold highlights that framed her face. Her
cheekbones were sharp planes in an interesting, even arresting face.
Her teeth were very white and flashed while she spoke.
"Okay, um, like I said, I'm Betsy. And I thought I'd come here… I mean, I saw on the Web that…
anyway, I thought maybe you guys would have some tricks or something I could use to stop drinking."
Dead silence. The reporter noticed the audience was as rapt as Charley was. What presence! What
clothes! What… Were those Bruno Maglis? The reporter edged closer. They were! What did this
woman do for a living? She herself had paid almost three hundred bucks for the pair in her closet.
"It's just… always there. I wake up, and it's all I think about. I go to bed, I'm still thinking about it."
Everyone was nodding. Even Charley was nodding, making the camera wobble.
"It just… takes over. Totally takes over your life. You start to plan events around how you can drink.
Like, if I have breakfasthere with my friend, I can hit an alley afterwardthere , while she's going uptown.
Or, if I blow another friend off for supper, I can reschedule onhim andget my fix instead."
Everyone was nodding harder. A few of the men appeared to have tears in their eyes! Charley,
thankfully, had stopped nodding, but was getting in on the woman as tightly as he could.
"Get the suit in the shot," the reporter whispered.
"I'm not used to this," the woman continued. "I mean, I'm used to wanting things, but not likethis . I
mean, gross."
A ripple of laughter.
"I've tried to stop, but I just made myself sick. And I've talked to some of my friends about it, but they
think I should just suck it up. Ha-ha. And my new friends don't see it as a problem at all. I guess they're,
what do you call them, enablers." More nods all around. "So here I am. Someone with a problem. Abig
problem. And… I thought maybe coming here and talking about it would help. That's all." Silence, so she
added, "That's really all."
Spontaneous, almost savage, applause. The reporter had Charley pan back, getting the crowd's
reaction. She wasn't sure the rep would let all their faces be shown on the ten o'clock news, but she
wanted the film in the can, just in case.
She wanted Charley to get the woman walking to the back of the room, but when he panned back, she
was gone.
The reporter and her cameraman looked for the gorgeous stranger for ten minutes, with zero luck.
Neither of them could figure out how a woman could just disappear out of a small conference room.
Gone.
Shit.
Chapter 1
I took another slurp of my tea (orange pekoe, six sugars) and stuck out my left foot. Yep, last season's
Brunos still looked great. Hell, they could be from the last decade and still look great. Quality costs…
and it lasts, too.
Marc Spangler, one of my roommates, slouched into the kitchen, yawning. I withdrew my leg before he
tripped and brained himself on the microwave. He looked like pan-fried hell, which was to say, he
looked like he just came off shift. Since moving in with an emergency ward physician, I've discovered
that your average doc comes off shift grimier than your average garbageman.
I greeted him warmly. "Another hard afternoon saving lives and seducing the janitor?"
"Another hard night suckering poor slobs out of their precious lifeblood?"
"Yep," we both said.
He poured himself a glass of milk and sat down across from me. "You look like you need some toast," I
prompted.
"Forget it. I'm not eating food so you can get off on it secondhand. 'Ooh, ooh, Marc, make sure you
smear the butter allllll over the bread… now let me smell it… don't you want some sweet, sweet jelly
with that?' I've gained seven pounds since I moved in, you cow."
"You should have more respect for the dead," I said solemnly, and we both cracked up.
"God, what a day," he said. His hair was growing in nicely (he'd gone through a head-shaving phase this
past summer), so now he looked like a clean Brillo pad with friendly green eyes. I wished my eyes were
like that, but mine were murky, like fridge mold. His were clear, like lagoon water.
"Death? Bloodletting? Gang war?" Unlikely in Minnesota, but he looked pretty whipped.
"No, the fucking administration changed all the forms again." He rubbed his eyebrows. "Every time they
do it, there's a six-month learning curve. Then when we've figured out who has to sign what and in what
order, they change them again. You know, in the name of efficiency."
"That blows," I said sympathetically.
"What about you, what'd you do? Chomp on any would-be rapists? Or was tonight one of the nights
you didn't bother to get anything to eat?"
"The second one. Oh, and I crashed an AA meeting."
He was halfway to the fridge for a milk refill and froze like I'd yelled "I see a Republican!"
"You did what?"
"Crashed an AA meeting. Did you know they film those now?"
"Theywhat ?"
"I was kind of nervous because I didn't know if I'd have to, y'know, prove I was a drunk or if they'd
take my word for it, or if I needed a note from a doctor or bartender or something, and it was kind of
weird with the camera lights and all—"
He was giving me the strangest look. Usually I got that look from Sinclair. "It doesn't work like that."
"Yeah, I know, I found out. Really nice bunch of people. Kind of jumpy, but very friendly. Had to
dodge the reporter, though."
"Reporter—" He shook his head. "But Betsy… why did you go?"
"Isn't it obvious?" I asked, a little irritably. Marc was usually sharper than this. "I drink blood."
"And did it work?" he asked with exaggerated concern.
"No, dimwad, it did not. The reporter and the lights freaked me out, so I left early. But I might go back."
I took another gulp of tea. Needed more sugar. I dumped some in and added, "Yep, I just might. Maybe
they don't teach you the trick until you've gone a few times."
"It's not a secret handshake, honey." He laughed, but not like he thought what I'd said was funny. "But
you could try that, see how that works."
"What's your damage? Maybeyou should have a drink," I joked.
"I'm a recovering alcoholic."
"Oh, you are not."
"Betsy. I am."
"Nuh-uh!"
"Uh-huh."
I fought down escalating panic. Sure, I hadn't known Marc as long as I'd known, say, Jessica, but still.
You'd think he would have brought something like that up. Or—ugh!—maybe he had, and I'd been so
obsessed with the events of the past six months I hadn't—
"Don't worry," he said, reading my aghast expression and interpreting it correctly. "I never told you
before."
"Well, I… I guess I should have noticed." I could put away a case of plum wine a month, and Jessica
liked her daiquiris, and Sinclair went through grasshoppers like there was gonna be a crème de menthe
embargo (for a studly vampire king, he drank like a girl), but I'd never noticed how Marc always stuck to
milk. Or juice. Or water.
Of course, I'd had other things on my mind. Especially lately. But I was still embarrassed. Some friend!
Didn't even realize my own roommate had a drinking problem. "I guess I should have noticed," I said
again. "I'm sorry."
"I guess I should have told you. But there didn't ever seem to be a good time to bring it up. I mean, first
there was the whole thing with Nostro, and then all the vampires getting killed, and then Sinclair moved
in…"
摘要：

UNDEADANDUNAPPRECIATEDByMaryJaniceDavidsonContentsPrologue1:SecretsPrologue2:ProblemsChapter1Chapter2Chapter3Chapter4Chapter5Chapter6Chapter7Chapter5Chapter9Chapter10Chapter11Chapter12Chapter13Chapter14Chapter15Chapter16Chapter17Chapter18Chapter19Chapter20Chapter21Chapter22Chapter23Chapter24Chapter2...

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