Undead and Unreturnable Read Online Free

the walking. Or the—anyway. They were monsters, but it wasn't their fault… the
real
monster had gotten to them first.
     
    All I could do was try to look out for them… and keep George amused. Unlike the others, George liked to drink my blood every couple days or so. Unlike the others, George was walking.
     
    It was very strange.
     
    "Check it out, baby," Jessica said, bringing out a crochet hook of her own and showing it to him. Then she glanced at me. "Uh, he's eaten this week, right?"
     
    "Unfortunately, yes." I glared at my wrist, which had already healed over. I only liked sharing blood with Sinclair; the rest of it sort of squicked me out. And I only did it with Sinclair during, um, intimate moments.
     
    Sad to say, my blood (queen blood, sigh) was the only thing making George better. Three months ago, he was covered with mud, naked, howling at the moon, and eating the occasional rapist. Yarn work in my basement and consenting to red Jockeys was a big damn improvement.
     
    "Like this," Jessica was saying, showing him what looked, to me, like an incredibly complicated stitch. But then, I'd tossed out my counted cross-stitch patterns at age sixteen after declaring them way too hard. Crocheting and knitting… yurrgh .
     
    My mom tried to teach me to knit once, and it went like this: "Okay, I'll do it really slowly so you can follow." Then the needles flashed and she'd knitted half a scarf. That's about when I gave up on all crafts.
     
    "And then…" Jess was murmuring, "through the loop… like this."
     
    He hummed and took the yarn from her.
     
    "What's next on the wedding agenda?"
     
    "Um…" I shut my eyes and thought. My Sidekick was upstairs, but I knew most of the wedding details by heart. "Flowers. I'm still pushing for purple irises and yellow alstromeria lilies, and Sinclair is still pretending we're not getting married."
     
    "What's the new date?"
     
    "September 15."
     
    Jessica frowned. "That's a Thursday."
     
    I stared at her. "How do you know
that
?"
     
    "Because it's the date my parents died, so I try to get out to the cemetery then. And I remember, last September was a Wednesday."
     
    "Oh." We did not discuss Jessica's mother and father. Ever. "Well, what difference does it make? Like Sinclair cares? Like the other vampires do? Oh, what, we've all got to get up early for work the next morning?"
     
    "How many times have you changed the date? Four?"
     
    "Possibly," I said grudgingly. It had been, respectively, February 14 (I know, I know, and to give me credit, I
did
scrap the idea eventually), April 10, July 4, and now September 15.
     
    "I don't understand why you don't just get it done, hon. You've wanted this how long? And Sinclair is agreeable and everything? I mean, what the hell?"
     
    "There just hasn't been time to get all the details taken care of. I
have
been solving murders and dodging bloody coups," I bitched. "That's why I keep moving the date. There aren't enough hours in the day. Night."
     
    Jessica didn't say anything. Thank God.
     
    "Look!" I pointed. George was crocheting the new stitch she'd just showed him. "Wow, he's catching on."
     
    "Next: the knit stitch."
     
    "Can't you ever rest on your laurels? Let the guy make a blanket or something."
     
    "And after that," she said confidentially, "we're going to start with reading and math."
     
    "Oh, boy."
     
    "He already knows how. He must. It's just a matter of reminding him."
     
    "Yeah, that's what it's a matter of."
     
    She ignored that. "So what else? Flowers? And then what? You've got the gown picked out."
     
    "Yup. Picked it up last week. The nice thing about being dead is one fitting pretty much did the trick."
     
    "Well, there you go. What else?"
     
    "The tasting menu."
     
    "How are you going to pull
that
off?"
     
    "It's wine for them, juice and stuff for the rest of us." I heard myself say that and wondered:
Who did I think "us" was
?
     
    "Oh. Good work. And?"
     
    "The cake. Not for us." There was