Zombies Sold Separately

by Cheyenne McCray

  “I’m sorry.” I closed my eyes. “You didn’t want to touch the other one and instead sent me to the Magi—”

  “Being immediately apprised of a significant situation is mandatory, Nyx,” he said and my face grew hotter. “Regardless of how you believe a problem or situation should be dealt with, if it is something like this, it is for me to be consulted with, and it is for me to judge. I am your Proctor.”

  I didn’t want to look at Colin. My amethyst skin did look purple when I flushed.

  “Yes, Rodán.” I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. “I understand.”

  “Good.” The word was said with such brevity it felt like a slap. “Tell me about this second stone.”

  I stared at it and told Rodán about everything that had happened that night. The image of Candace or Candy looked tired.

  When I finished telling Rodán everything I could think of regarding the night’s activities, he said, “I want to see you at eight, before you meet with your team tomorrow night.”

  “Yes, sir.” I don’t know why I tacked on the “sir.” I’d never called him that before. Ever. But then he’d never been angry with me like this.

  “I will see you in my office then,” he said before he clicked off.

  “That went well,” I muttered as I tucked the phone in my belt. “I really screwed up by not going immediately to Rodán. I should have gotten that over with—debriefing with him about tonight and about the new stone, regardless of whether or not he’d have wanted to look at it.”

  I hadn’t wanted to see Rodán, but the choice that I’d made hadn’t been professional at all.

  Colin placed his hand on mine and squeezed before releasing it. “How about another beer—on the house.”

  “I think I’m all beered out.” I gave him a little smile. “I’ll just be collecting my woman-rock and get home to bed.”

  I had told Colin about the other stone rather than bringing it out to show him. I hadn’t thought I could handle any more than I already had tonight. I let out a breath when both stones were secured in my pocket.

  Colin walked me to the door as I left. I paused in the doorway and he reached out to me and brushed my hair over my shoulder. “See you tomorrow night.”

  I nodded.

  Then turned and ran.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Wednesday, December 29

  “About time you got your ass in to work,” Olivia said as I dragged said ass in through the door of the PI office at ten the next morning.

  “You decided to make it.” I smiled then winced. My head ached thanks to the four beers I’d ended up having last night. I was usually only good for two. “Stay an extra day with the family unit?”

  Olivia rolled her eyes and stood from behind her desk so that I could see her shirt.

  SILENCE IS GOLDEN

  DUCT TAPE IS SILVER

  “Took sixteen rolls to shut all of them up,” Olivia said and I laughed.

  “Lots of interesting things to tell you.” I plopped my purse onto my desktop, then pulled my hair back from my face and knotted it.

  “Get going then.” Olivia leaned back in her chair and put her orange Keds up on her desk and crossed her legs at her ankles. “I’m ready.”

  For a moment I hesitated. How was I going to do this without telling her I had not only one, but two of the stones. But the memory of the Magi’s words was clear.

  “I suggest you not even show it to your partner unless you have to.”

  I paced back and forth in front of our desks as I started with the trip to visit my parents and the discussion about what had happened twenty-two years ago; my visit to Rodán and then to the Magi; my search for the Sorcerer Desmond; the Zombie and Sentient attack last night. I told her that we were supposed to watch out for stones and mentioned the Sentients had at least one, but I managed not to tell her that I had two of them with me.

  “You were a little busy while I was gone.” Olivia looked thoughtful as she made the understatement. “Tell me more about the Sorcerer.”

  I went around my desk and drew my cell phone out of my purse before setting it on the desktop. “I don’t know anything about the Sorcerer except that he’s an artist who shows his work in a gallery.”

  “Desmond, right?” Olivia scooted her feet off her desk. “Does he have a last name?”

  “Yes on Desmond, and for all I know that is his last name.” I pulled out my chair and sank into it. “That’s how he signs his work.”

  She straightened in her seat and turned to her computer monitor. “Gallery name?”

  “Sun Lee,” I said.

  The click-clack of Olivia’s keys on her computer keyboard was loud as she typed. “In SoHo,” she said, apparently finding the gallery.

  “You’ve got it.” I rubbed my forehead as I wished shifting from Drow to human could get rid of mild hangovers. “Hopefully Ms. Sun Lee will call soon with some good news.”

  “If she doesn’t call you soon, maybe you should give her a little reminder,” Olivia said. “But for now, tell me more about the stones.”

  I stared at my purse and thought about the Magi’s instructions again.

  Why couldn’t I show the stones to Olivia?

  The phone rang and I looked away from Olivia to glance at the identification screen. I didn’t recognize the number.

  “This is Sun Lee.” The woman’s voice was quick and efficient when I answered. “Desmond will meet you at his studio at two-thirty this afternoon.”

  “Can he meet earlier?” I asked. That wouldn’t give me much time to talk with him and then get back home to shift before sunset, which was close to four-thirty this time of year.

  “It is the only time he has available, Ms. Carter,” Sun Lee said. “Desmond is a difficult individual to pin down for any kind of meeting.”

  I’d just have to have the speediest conversation possible on Zombies, Sentients, Hosts, keystones, and women in stones, and hope he wasn’t late. I sure wasn’t going to be.

  “Okay,” I said. “Two-thirty it is.” I grabbed a blank pink sticky note from a dispenser on my desk. “What’s his address?”

  “Just one second while I look it up…” Sun Lee’s voice trailed off. “My apologies, Ms. Carter, I neglected to update my files with the address of his new studio,” she said. “I’ll let you know in time for your appointment.”

  She hung up before I had a chance to respond. I scowled at the phone then rolled my shoulders.

  “Where is he?” Olivia asked.

  “Sun Lee is going to call me back with the information.” I looked at the time on the computer. “We have a little while before our meeting. I just hope that it’ll be enough time to get what we want and leave.”

  Olivia frowned. My cell phone rang and I glanced at it. I smiled.

  “Adam,” I said when I answered the phone. “Did you make it back?”

  “Late last night,” he said. “Are we still on for lunch at one P.M.?”

  “Can’t wait to see you.” My smile broadened. “Feels like it’s been forever.”

  “I’m working up a few leads on a new case for Captain Wysocki,” he said, “so I’ll meet you there.”

  “Okay.” Something suddenly felt a little strange. Off. Or maybe it had been there all along and I had just missed it. “Is everything okay, Adam?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “See you then.”

  An odd feeling made my stomach twist in the strangest way as he disconnected the call.

  * * *

  In Il Cortile, an Italian restaurant, I sat alone at a table for two, facing a tall alabaster sculpture of a woman with her leg bared, her skirt flaring away from her knee up to her thigh. It was a pretty sculpture, I thought. Sultry.

  It was after one. Adam was almost fifteen minutes late, which was unusual for him.

  “Nyx.” Adam touched the back of my shoulder as he came up from behind me. The warmth of his hand burned through my blouse to my skin. I tilted my head and smiled at him, and he gave me a light kis
s on my lips. “Sorry I’m late. Accident on Canal Street.”

  My eyes, head, heart, and soul were so hungry for him that I wanted him to wrap his arms around me and hold on tight.

  Everything about Adam drew me to him. His smile, his touch, every intimate conversation we’d ever had. The way he cared for me. Accepted me. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Adam until he took his seat across from me and I met his gaze.

  I didn’t realize how much I needed him until then. Something I hadn’t recognized or acknowledged before. A need to be with someone I loved, and to be needed.

  Then an odd sensation tightened my belly at the look in his eyes. The feeling I was getting from him wasn’t the excited thrill I usually felt when I was with him.

  Like I had when we were talking on the phone, it felt off. Wrong. I wanted to ask him if something was bothering him, but it didn’t feel right to do so.

  When the waiter took our order, I went with the capellini like I’d planned, even though I’d lost my appetite. Adam ordered bruschetta as our antipasti as well as gnocchi for his meal. I let him choose the wine and he went with a Barbera.

  Adam asked me how my holiday was with my family, and I found myself avoiding anything that made it different. Like saying “Otherworld” or “Drow Realm” or anything magical. I talked about my trip as if they lived in another part of New York.

  In turn I asked Adam about his visit to his family and I felt distanced from him when he talked about all of his relatives—his cousins, aunts, uncles, sister, her husband, and his brother.

  It’s so different with Elves in Otherworld. It’s more like a large extended family, not broken down into smaller groups as humans do.

  When we finished eating we both declined dessert and I didn’t order the limoncello I would normally have gone with.

  The plates were cleared away and the silence between us wasn’t a comfortable one. I knew he had something to say, and my senses told me I wasn’t going to like it.

  “Nyx.” He looked uncomfortable as he cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking a lot about us.”

  My face washed hot. I knew what was coming and I didn’t want to believe it.

  “Last week, at the reception, it put a lot of things into perspective for me. It was a dose of reality.” Adam clasped his hands on the table and focused on me as he spoke. “We are literally from two different worlds.”

  For the first time ever I was glad I couldn’t cry. At least not tears. The need to cry was strong, the pressure backing up behind my eyes. But the Drow part of me had no tears to shed.

  It felt like it was coming from a long distance when my phone rang inside my purse. I just ignored it as I stared at Adam.

  No words would come to me. I just listened to him, feeling an almost out of body sensation, as if he was talking with someone else.

  “We would constantly be making up stories, living a lie when around my family and friends.” He looked down at his fingers and then back at me. “We could never go out together anywhere close to sundown. That means no night out on the town with friends. No dinners with family.” He paused. “I can’t even take you out to dinner and a Broadway show if we wanted to go to one.”

  My back felt stiff and straight, my body frozen. This was happening and I barely comprehended it. Adam was breaking up with me.

  “My parents could never meet yours.” Adam sighed. “You couldn’t join my family for anything that involves an overnight stay. Like going to the family’s Adirondack cabin with my parents and other family members, or whatever else involved the sunset or sunrise.”

  Everything I’d thought before, everything I’d felt, started to crack then shatter.

  “You would be a secret I couldn’t share,” he continued. “That’s not fair to either one of us.”

  The desire to scream at Adam rose up within me so swift and strong that I could barely hold it back. How could he do this? From the beginning he knew what I am. He knew. But he continued seeing me and now he was breaking my heart.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. “It’s mine. I led you to believe it could work because I thought it could work.”

  His words nearly made me split in half.

  The air around us crackled. Water whirled inside our glasses like mini whirlpools. Our table shook, silverware rattling on the table. Wine sloshed over the lip of my wineglass and splashed onto the white tablecloth, staining it deep red. The whole room was shaking.

  Adam looked around us then back at me with a stunned expression. He seemed to recognize that I was causing everything that was happening.

  Embarrassed that I’d lost control like I had, I dragged my elemental magic back to me. When everything was calm again, I picked up my purse and stood.

  “Thank you for lunch,” I said, managing to keep my voice from shaking like the room had been.

  “Nyx, wait,” he said as he stood, too. “I don’t want it to end like this.”

  “Maybe you should have thought about that when you first found out what I am,” I said and held up my hand before he could say anything else. “There’s nothing more to talk about.”

  I turned and walked out of the restaurant, my heart breaking with every step I took.

  “Nyx!” Adam called after me but he hadn’t gotten the bill yet from the waiter and was trying to pay it while calling after me.

  A taxi was coming up the street and I ran to the curb and flagged it down. The cabby pulled into traffic just as Adam made it out of the restaurant.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Just drive,” I said to the driver as I told myself to breathe.

  Breathe, Nyx.

  I sucked in a lungful of air and let it out. I had to get myself together. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to be doing right now. And it was important, whatever it was.

  Oh. The Sorcerer.

  I glanced at my cell phone and saw that Adam and I had spent about an hour at lunch. The call I’d missed was from Olivia. I’d forgotten that the phone rang while Adam was … while Adam was breaking up with me.

  I took another deep breath, trying to shift focus. The light blinked telling me I had a message and I saw that it was a text from Olivia:

  Do you have the address for the meeting with the Sorcerer?

  I’d forgotten. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten.

  It was a quarter after two and Sun Lee hadn’t called with directions yet.

  Just as I was about to dial her number, a call came through. I recognized it this time as the gallery.

  When I answered, Sun Lee said, “My apologies, I only now received the address. Desmond was unavailable,” she said. “His loft is in the Gunther Building.” The southwest corner of Broome and Greene Streets in SoHo.

  She gave me the apartment number and I thanked her before I told the cab driver where to go.

  I clutched my purse to my chest, over my breaking heart. I tried to relax against the seat of the taxi but my muscles remained tense. I had a job to do and I needed to focus on that.

  Not Adam.

  We were almost there when I remembered I needed to tell Olivia. My brain just wasn’t cooperating with me right now.

  Instead of sending her a text, I called and gave her the information. “Sorry,” I said. “Just got the address a few minutes ago.”

  Olivia said she was on her way and would meet me there.

  When the cab driver pulled up to the Gunther Building I tossed him a twenty, not caring that I’d just way overpaid him for the short drive.

  It was a beautiful cast iron building, and I might have enjoyed looking at the architecture if I wasn’t so heartbroken.

  I felt sick inside, a weighted awful feeling. I couldn’t stop seeing Adam’s face. Hearing his words.

  When I stood in front of the elevators I straightened my spine, lifted my chin, and focused on the meeting. This was too important to screw up. Lives counted on me gaining the assistance of the Sorcerer Desmond.

  Now that it was time t
o meet him, I felt the weight of the stones in my purse. Not the physical weight, but a weight on a different level. As if just having them with me put pressure on my head and shoulders, pushing me down to the floor. When I got on the elevator and the doors closed behind me the pressure seemed to increase with every level we passed until we reached the top floor.

  I found the apartment number of the loft and knocked on the door. It occurred to me then that I’d forgotten about waiting for Olivia, that I was supposed to go to the Sorcerer with her. Maybe as long as she showed up, it didn’t matter if we arrived at the same time or not.

  A sound came from inside the loft, like someone was brushing up against the door to look out the peephole. I realized I was holding my breath, hoping the Sorcerer wouldn’t realize he had a paranorm on his doorstep and that something could be up, before I had a chance to talk with him. The Magi had said he wouldn’t be happy about being found. Her exact words were that he’d be angry.

  Not promising.

  The rattle of a chain lock, the sound of a bolt lock, and the twist of a lock on the door handle were loud in the stillness of the corridor as I waited. The door squeaked as it opened and Fae bells jangled.

  Terrific. The door was warded and he’d know I wasn’t totally human the moment I stepped over the threshold.

  I barely had time to think that over when I registered the Sorcerer himself. I’d been expecting someone older, maybe even someone with a few wrinkles and gray hair.

  What I didn’t expect was a man who looked to be in his early forties with shoulder-length wavy brown hair and a day’s growth of stubble on his cheeks. He was startlingly good-looking and in incredibly good shape with a swimmer’s build. His naked chest had a slight sheen of sweat and his Levis fit him a little loose around the hips and thighs.

  I’d never expected to find a hot Sorcerer.

  His blue-gray eyes had a wild, excited, impatient look to them and he had a smudge of green paint on his cheek as well as on his bare chest.

  “Desmond?” I said. “I’m Nicole Carter.”

  “Hurry on then.” He gestured with his hand for me to come into the loft.