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"It's not over yet," my dead stepmother warned. There hadn't been time to work in a halfway decent insult ("Why can't you go straight to hell like any other decent God-fearing-") before I was shoved so hard, I smacked into the wall and fell.

The impact forced a shower of plaster to rain down on me. There was the deafening boom of a pistol being fired several times over my head. We were trapped in the doorway like ants in a straw. Nobody had any room.Advertisement

And from that, worse was to come: "Why wasn't she getting up?"

"Twenty-two longs, perfect for the job . . . They ricocheted around her skull but didn't exit . . ."

"But she's a werewolf!"

"Her brains are all over the floor. There will be no coming back from this."

"But she's-she's Antonia! She can't be-I mean, shot?"

"No, she can't be. You're wrong. She's not."

"She jumped in front of me. She saved me."

"Everybody saves you."

And that last flashback quote was still echoing in my head, the way they get all echoey: saves you, saves you, saves you.

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All that was still thrumming around in my gray matter when the last of the expositional flashback clicked home.

Then we heard the splintering crash come from the stairwell.

I stood, trembling at the silence, and peered into the foyer. I choked back a sob at what Garrett had done to himself.

The regretful Fiend-turned-vampire had kicked the banister off a stretch of curved stairs in the foyer, leaving a dozen or so of the rails exposed and pointing up like spears. Then he had climbed to the second floor to a spot overlooking the stairs and swan dived onto the rails, which had gone through him like teeth.

"See?" my dead stepmother said as we stared down at the second body of a friend in less than a minute. "I warned you."

And the last thing. The last thing I said at the end of that crazy stupid weird scary night.

"It was all just so-so stupid." And preventable, my conscience had whispered. If only you'd been paying attention to business.

And here was the proof! The proof had walked through my kitchen door. The proof was wearing red and white flannel, and carrying a canvas tote bag stuffed with primary colored balls of yarn and knitting needles. I wondered why in this timeline, Garrett hadn't killed himself after Antonia died. Did something happen in this timeline's Garrett that made the death of his wife bearable?

"This timeline's Garrett", "that timeline's so-and-so" . . . gaaaaah. I needed an Alternate Timeline vs. Other Timeline scorecard. I was gonna get a headache if I thought it over for too long. And why was I even wondering? Here he was.

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