Page 42 of Your Final Resting Place

“Hi.” I smiled up at him.

Victor cleared his throat. “The vampire queen continues to remain deceased in my arms, so if you don’t mind, please postpone the romantics for later?”

“Ugh . . . You suck all the fun out of everything. If this portal ruins my fuckn’ pants imma make you pay, Fancy Daddy.” Zee opened the cabinet door, took a deep breath, dropped to his knees, and climbed in. The portal gobbled him all up until the last thing to vanish was his tail.

“He will be fine,” Victor said, seeing the concern on my face.

He probably would be okay. He’d said before that portals always popped up in Demontown. Something to do with lots of Lost Ones in one place altering the environment. But just because he’d always been fine, didn’t mean he wasn’t in danger. “How can you be so certain?”

Victor considered it and replied simply, “He is Zodiac.”

Zee splurged from the portal, thankfully not lubed. He tumbled into my legs, knocking me against Daisy, and then Victor, like a short run of dominoes. Victor growled in my ear, his patience with closet living wearing thin.

I grabbed Zee by an arm and helped haul him upright. “You okay?”

He ruffled himself and smoothed his pants. “Uhm, so . . .” A flurry of hand gestures flicked dust off his chest and then fluffed his purple hair. “Am I okay? Hm . . . Let’s fuckin’ see. I’m in a closet with my favorite people, which is fine, but then you add another dead vampire queen, and there’s a portal . . .” A deep breath expanded his chest. Clearly, something bad had been on the other side and he was building up to saying it.

“A portal to . . . ?” I urged.

His gaze skipped behind me to Victor, then down.

He yelped, and leaped back. “Vampire!”

Daisy—close behind me—yelled, “Demon!” in my ear.

Zee screamed.

I might have screamed too—it felt right, at the time. There was a whole lot of screaming for such a tiny closet.

I spun, to try and see how and why Daisy was alive to scream. She kicked out. Her pretty pink shoe struck my chest. I toppled, flailing into Zee. In my arm-waving panic, I dislodged a broom. It skittered sideways down the wall. Zee shrieked, caught me, but as he reeled, he stepped on the broom, snapping the handle in half.

Zee—in full-blown protect-Adam mode—smacked the upright broken bit of broom with his tail, right as Daisy launched herself from Victor’s arms.

The jagged end of the broken broom met the flying vampire, punching into her chest. She jolted, mid-air, hung there a moment, then dropped back into Victor’s grip.

Daisy looked down at the broom sticking out of her.

Oh dear.

Zee pressed his hands to his mouth, with me tucked under his arms, and gasped, “Fuuuuccckk.”

Daisy’s head lifted. Furious vampire eyes swirled with ancient menace. “You are so fuckin’ dead!”

Zee poofed out of the closet.

He’d left us?!

No, he wouldn’t, but he had vanished.

Purple sparks fizzled from his dramatic exit.

“Victor, hold her!”

Victor bared his gritted, fanged teeth. “I am!”

He’d locked his arms around Daisy, pinning her arms to her sides.

“Unhand me! I am your queen!” She bucked, kicked, and thrashed, but Victor held firm. Now we just needed to figure out what to do with this very angry and very alive queen with a broom handle sticking out of her chest.