"Your imagination would never even come close," The Kev muttered, looking so much like the Knight Rider I had to laugh.
"It's really not funny, Astrid," Gemma said as she began to straighten the room. "I don't think you'll be laughing five minutes from now."
"Enough," Ethan bellowed in frustration. "Someone tell us what in the Hell happened here or I'll go all Vampy, as my mate likes to say, on your asses."
"It was her fault," Jane whined and tried to slap Martha as they swung back and forth in their chains. "It was the fucking map she showed the baby."
"Map? How would a freakin' map blow out the back of my home?" I snapped.
"Good use of the word freakin'," The Kev congratulated me on not using the word fuck.
"Thank you. I repeat…how did a map cause all this damage?"
"Well, um…," Martha started. "I figured I would show him the pretty map when we took a charades break due to the six-headed Demon he conjured and then it all went to goddamned Hell in a hand basket."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I yelled. "Shit, I meant heck. What in the fucking heck are you talking about? And where is the six-headed Demon now?"
"You see that pile of dust over there?" Gemma asked.
I glanced over and noticed the rather large pile of green goo-covered ashes in the corner of the room. Son of a bitch…
"I will start with your arms," I threatened the old bags. "Then I will remove your legs, followed by your tongues. I will place you in a room with liberal news stations playing twenty-four hours a day and all of your caretakers will be transvestites. And that's only the fucking beginning."
"Nice." Gemma gave me a thumbs up.
"It got the point across," I muttered.
"Ya think?" She laughed and flipped her fingers at the old bags who fell with a loud thump to the floor. "You do realize they're immortal because you're a pussy?"
"Yes," I hissed. "Everyone makes mistakes. Is there any more to this story?"
"Please say no," Ethan added, trying to hold his shit together.
"I didn't know," Martha stuttered. "I didn't know what he could do."
Jane was now sobbing and Martha was rocking back and forth like she was drunk.
"Spit it out," I snapped. "Now."
"We had a map of the cemeteries of all forty-nine of our dead ancestors…"
"It's very colorful and educational," Jane added through her wailing.
"And then…" Martha's eyes rolled back into her head and she dropped to the floor like a sack of bricks.
"What the fuck?" I gasped and looked around the room. "Is she dead?"
"Unfortunately, no," Gemma said as she squatted down and examined Martha, then shook her head in disgust. "They showed Samuel the map and told him that all their dead aunts and uncles and grandparents were buried six feet under the cold dirt. They explained that worms and maggots were eating their skin, but not to worry because apparently most of them deserved it. They talked about how they missed some of them—how some of them owed them money. Then they started in on how they'd like to kick the asses of about ten of them."
Gemma took a huge breath and shuddered. "And next thing we knew forty-nine fucking Zombies directly related to Martha and Jane were wandering around the nursery trying to eat us."
"No good deed goes unpunished," Ethan said as he glared at Martha and Jane.
"How could we know he could call up Zombies?" Jane shrieked. "Oh my God, it was awful. I didn't recognize more than half of them with all the missing noses and partial heads."
Martha came to and curled into a fetal ball on the floor. "I tried to converse with my grandpa and he almost chewed my left ear off," she sputtered. "Literally."
"And the maggots. Oh my Hell, the maggots," Jane screamed.
"Put the stuffed cats back in their mouths," I said to Gemma. "If I hear them speak again, I will kill them. For real dead."
"We got it," Jane said as she shoved a pink cat in her mouth and popped the blue one into Martha's.
"So the Zombies destroyed the back of the house?" Ethan asked as he ran his hands through his hair.
"Um, nope," The Kev said as he pinched the bridge of his David Hasselhoff nose. "That would have been the Gnomes and the Trolls that Martha and Jane told Sammy about in tremendous detail. Venus blew the Zombies up and flushed the remains down the toilet."
Martha and Jane began to crawl in panic and shame from the room. I was not having that. Their stupidity was going to require a plumber. With a quick flick of my fingers I froze them and electrocuted them. I knew it wouldn't kill them, but it would wreak havoc on their perms and definitely hurt like a motherfucker. It was the least I could do.
"There were Gnomes and Trolls in my home?" Ethan yelled. "They are filthy and deadly. How many and where are they now?"
"Eight Trolls and two Gnomes," The Kev said with an inappropriate grin on his face. "They were fighters, but I won."
"Did you kill them?" I asked, still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that Trolls and Gnomes were real.
"I incapacitated them and took their magic. Same as death, but worse," he answered.
"Where are they?" Ethan asked, clearly impressed with The Kev.