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"I'm tired," I whined after we'd been walking for a hundred years.

"It's only a bit farther," my lying bastard husband said.Advertisement

"You keep saying that, and we keep not being there."

"I keep dreaming about divorce and not being divorced."

"Oh, very nice!" I raged, running to catch up with them, ignoring Marc's yelps as he was jolted in my arms. "Married not even a season, and you're looking for the door, such a typical guy, I knew you - hey!"

I had been lifted easily, effortlessly. "Now shush, Your Majesty," Tina said, shifting my and Marc's combined weight with no effort. "And we really are almost there."

"This," Marc announced over the distinctive gagging noise of Jessica stifling laughter, "is too much. My masculinity could stand being carried by Betsy, but - "

"The gay guy has concerns about masculinity?" Jessica managed, then broke down completely.

"I'm gay, not a eunuch. Have you ever seen me in drag? Or even mascara? I'm a regular guy in every way - "

"Except you like to put your penis in weird places," I said primly.

"Can we please have one midnight getaway without having to talk about Marc's penis?" Tina asked, aggrieved.

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We all shut up as we navigated another set of stairs... and then another. I'd been living here for months and months, and nobody had told me about the secret vampire escape tunnel.

I remembered that Sinclair had steered Jessica toward this house when we had to upgrade. Back in the days when I thought I hated him. And here I thought it had been because he was a history buff and liked old houses!

"I've never been bored, and scared, at the same time," Marc commented.

"What do you want me to do with that information?" Tina asked.

"Just put us down," he grumbled, and Tina did, hard enough to rattle my teeth. Marc and I groaned in unison.

Sinclair pressed another button, another wall raised, and I suddenly could hear flowing water. He walked out into what must have looked like pure darkness to the others, except I could hear his heels clanking on the boards of the dock. He sounded like a sheriff from the Old West.

"We walked all the way to the Mississippi?" Marc goggled.

"What 'we'?" Jessica asked. "And it was, what? Seven, eight whole blocks?"

We heard Sinclair start up the Evinrude, and as he hit the lights Jessica and Marc cheered.

"Get the rope, will you, darling?" he asked casually, as if he didn't look, at that moment, like the coolest guy in the universe.

The dock was a memory a few seconds later, and when Sinclair opened 'er up, I decided I wasn't mad anymore and allowed him to put his arm around me. pqdm.com