“We’ve got to retrieve them first.”
“That’s ominous.”
“Alex showed up at the mortuary this morning. The video feed was tampered with, and now Diana’s missing.”
“That’s ominous,” Donald repeated, anger slipping out. “Why the hell would she want a corpse?”
“A necromancer’s corpse,” Veruca said, shaking her head. “Not just any corpse. There are probably creatures who’d pay for that sort of thing. I can’t speculate as to why, but I have no doubt she figured she could make some money off of it and so she went back for it.”
“And to leave Amanda,” Finn piped up.
“Leave Amanda? Leave her where?” Donald asked.
“At the mortuary. I’m guessing she meant to stick her into Diana’s body bag, and I guess hope we didn’t notice they’re completely different people.”
“She didn’t get her in there?”
“Left her on the floor right out in the open. Maybe she was almost caught and had to leave in a hurry.”
“You’re sure that’s all it is?” Donald asked.
“It’s the most likely explanation, but I’ll ask her once I’ve got my hands around her throat.”
“Her proverbial throat?” Finn asked, his voice quieter than he meant it.
Veruca looked down and smiled at him, petting his head gently.
“I have no intention of killing her, but she’s going to need some convincing. She’s not the type to just go, ‘gee whiz, you caught me, I’ll never do anything like this again.’”
“Maybe I can help?” Donald asked. “I’m pretty good at interrogation and could spot every one of her lies.”
“I’ve got this,” Veruca said, tugging on Finn’s hair to suggest he get to his feet. “You should stay here at the hotel. You can call off the extra security, though. Diana won’t be back with any more zombies. The danger’s passed.”
“I’ll give it a few more days, just so the employees feel safe.”
“Very well. Call if you need anything,” Veruca said, gesturing that it was time to go.
“Same goes,” he said seriously, catching her eye to let her know he’d be very disappointed to learn that she put herself in danger without asking for his help again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“He’s not gonna kill me the second he sees me, is he?” Finn asked as they stepped into the Gleasons’ house for what she hoped was the last time. Belial had arranged everything, making sure extended Gleason family members were aware of the deaths, making sure they believed they had died of a faulty gas heater and a carbon monoxide leak. Their connections to the bank robberies had stood, but the case was considered closed since a neighbor had found their bodies and their deaths had thus been ruled accidental.
Belial had let her know once it was all taken care of, and though the house was about to go up on the market once the family could finish packing it up, it made a good meeting place for the scouts.
“He didn’t before,” Veruca said, looking over the boxes the moving company had prepared so far. “He knows you’re innocent now. You’ve nothing to worry about.”
“Can I still wait in the car?”
“If you’d like. I don’t think this will take long.”
“Why’ve you got to meet with him anyway? Couldn’t you’ve just had the brownie tell them I’m innocent and ask anyone involved to move along to harassing someone else?”
“It builds rapport to meet with lesser fae personally. Look at all the brownie’s been willing to do for us. I don’t pass up the opportunity to make good with a fairy.”
Finn frowned but couldn’t argue her answer. He didn’t wait in the car, or at least didn’t leave to do so before Syham appeared across the empty living room, just as hulking and furry as he’d been when she’d seen him only a few days ago.
“Reaper,” he said, bowing slightly.
“Syham, good to see you again. I wanted to make sure, in person, there were no other issues between us. To be certain no other aspersions had been cast upon myself or Finn.”
“Of course not,” Syham said, and Veruca hoped the change in stance and expression hinted at the massive fairy feeling at least a modicum of shame. “I shall convey to my superiors that you and your necromancer work only toward the concealment of Fairy from the humans.”
“I appreciate that you’d come to me prior to having words with Finn himself. I hope I can trust you to do so again should anything else arise.”
“I can’t imagine there will be further issues necessitating our cooperation,” Syham said after a moment. His tone was flat but Veruca made hers jovial as she stepped closer and reached out her hand.
“Excellent, then we can part on good terms.”
Syham didn’t hesitate to take her hand and let her pump his mitt as if she were twice as strong. Once they’d broken off contact, she turned to Finn, deliberately putting her back to Syham and hoping he took it as a sign of both trust and her dismissal of him.
“Shall we go?” Syham disappeared from her radar at the same time Finn flinched, and she leaned in to wrap her arm around his waist and lead him to the front door. “That’s all taken care of. Now we’ve just got one more fire to put out.”
“Alex may deserve burn actually.”
“Call her Doris, darling. She doesn’t get the respect of a fake name.”
****
“Haven’t we done this sort of thing before?” Finn asked, frowning over at the building in which they were supposed to meet Doris. “And didn’t it get us blown up?”
“This is completely different, darling. That was a warehouse and we had planned for things to go bad to throw Caroline off our scent.”
“This is sort of a warehouse.”
“No, this is a place of business that just happens to be vacant at the moment. That was a large, empty building with no threat to civilians. This is an industrial complex with three open businesses. See? Someone just went into that printing company.”
“Through the front door, I must point out.” Finn let her lead him around the back of the building and down the line of heavy metal doors big enough to let through a large moving truck or maybe a hearse. Finn wasn’t exactly sure how big hearses were, but his brain was mainly gibbering in fear about the threat of tricking a woman who’d casually blown up a car, set him up to get beaten to hell by a giant snake, and then stolen a necromancer’s corpse to sell after she’d been paid more than enough in proper currency.
Surely bodies hitting the floor wasn’t off the menu, and since he and Veruca were the two without guns, he was pretty worried it would be theirs that needed hauling out if the meeting went bad.
“We’ll be fine,” Veruca assured him. “I brought insurance.”
“Hopefully you paid full price and didn’t get any of that fifteen percent off garbage.”
“Not that sort.”
Finn wanted to trust Veruca. She was always cautious, the smartest person he’d ever met, and he knew she’d do anything to keep him safe. Why his body was still threatening to evacuate his bladder all down the front of his fancy pants was a mystery to him. It only got worse when Alex—er, Doris, Finn corrected to himself, mindful of what Veruca had said before—stepped into view in the middle of the workshop.
“You’re not Madeline,” she said, though she looked more amused than angry. “I should have realized.”
“Where’s the body?”
“That’s an awfully broad question to put to someone like me. Could you narrow that down a bit? What sort of body? Human? Other? Male? Fema—”
“Diana,” Veruca interrupted, though her tone was mild, her expression equally so. Finn could see a gun peeking out from Doris’s jacket, a knife strapped to her thigh, and figured the rings she was wearing on her small hands would probably help her hurt someone pretty badly too. When Veruca took a few steps forward, he went tense as if he may grab for her.
Something distracted him, though, and his attention fractured, despite his wor
ry for Veruca’s safety.
****
Doris wasn’t going to cooperate, which didn’t surprise Veruca. She wasn’t a woman of principle, and the money she’d been paid wasn’t enough to buy her loyalty permanently. Sure, she’d been reliable in her own frustrating way, while the money was a carrot, but the contract was up, and she’d taken Diana’s body for her own reasons. Veruca didn’t expect she’d hand it over by request alone.
“You’ve lost your necromancer?” Doris asked, her expression lighting up. “Did you need me to locate the body? Not as exciting as my usual gig, but I’m sure I could be of some help. There are cheaper options than I, but clearly I’ve made an impression on you.”
“Just tell me where the body is, and I won’t send an array of demons to your front door.”
“Your faith in my abilities is touching, but I’m going to need a little time to search.”
“Jesus,” Veruca breathed, sick of the lying and the greasy feeling of interacting with such a heinous person. She’d been prepared to threaten, had slim hopes that would be enough, but it seemed it wouldn’t be. “Tell me where you’ve taken the body. You don’t want to test me.”
Doris’s expression changed, surprise lifting her brows. “You think I took her?”
“We’ve seen the tape, spoken with the funeral home. If you’d left Ms. Gleason in the body bag instead of on the floor, you may have made it out of town before we discovered what you’d done, but evidently you’re lazier than you are smart.”
“She didn’t take Diana,” Finn said, the nerves in his voice palpable. Veruca turned toward him but didn’t take her eyes off Doris, trying to figure out why she looked resigned rather than scared or annoyed.
“Well, not all of her,” Doris said, drawing her gun and aiming it past Veruca. Something was humming erratically at the edge of her senses, something that was wrong in a way Veruca hadn’t quite experienced before.
****
Diana was definitely dead, Finn thought, the notion pushing through his thoughts like an icebreaker forcing its way toward the North Pole in the dead of winter. But that hadn’t stopped her from finding him yet again.
Even though she was missing her right arm, there was no mistaking the shape of her. She was still slight, still awkward, and—somehow—still moving. Finn’s necromancy was at attention, though, reaching toward her greedily, drawn to what should have been a vacant hole in her chest. Something else was there, however, blocking him from climbing in and taking over.
Not that he had any real desire to take over Diana’s body. He hadn’t wanted it when she’d been alive, and he certainly didn’t want it now that she was staggering toward him like a bad cliché. The feeling was similar to when he’d been given the freshly dead pixie in the ring, though, like a door that looked open but wouldn’t allow passage.
“Diana,” Veruca whispered, moving toward the dead girl a few steps before stopping and shaking her head. “How…”
“All of you,” Diana said, her voice scraping out of her throat and making Finn wince. “The three of you. Here. I didn’t think?”
Her gaze dropped, her speech evidently interrupted by thought and excessive blinking, even though her feet continued to carry her closer. She lifted her hand, pointing past Finn toward Doris, who wasted no time firing her gun twice into Diana’s chest. Finn yelped, dropping flat to the floor to cover his head before his testosterone could convince him to be manly and stoic instead.
****
How she hadn’t felt Diana’s approach earlier, Veruca wasn’t entirely sure. Yes, her soul was different than others, fractured and strained, closer to a growl than the usual hum of a soul she’d find stuffed in a corpse. That shouldn’t have precluded her from recognizing it as such.
Perhaps, she reasoned, it was just the fact that an empty workshop in an industrial commerce complex was the last place she expected to find the soul of a woman who’d died right in front of her the day before.
Diana’s body took the gunshots as well as could be expected, the force of each bullet hitting her like a punch to the chest. She didn’t quite hit the ground stiff as a board and all at once, but it was close. Doris stepped up next to Veruca, clearly aiming to go shoot again, probably in the head, but Veruca held her arm out, stopping her from getting closer.
“I apologize partly for my assessment of you,” Veruca said, addressing Doris even though she couldn’t take her eyes off the undead girl struggling to find her way back up with only one arm. “I see now you didn’t take the body. She took herself.”
“Like I said, I didn’t take all of her,” Doris said, stopping where Veruca held her but refusing to lower her gun. “I only needed the arm with the safety pin on it. I left the rest of her untouched. This isn’t my fault.”
Veruca closed in on Diana, circling around the side of her to keep out of the path of Doris’s bullets, squatting down next to her so she could look her in the eye.
“I had no idea necromancers could raise themselves,” she said, looking over Diana before leaning a hand down to press her palm to her chest, to the left of the bloodless bullet holes. Diana slapped her away with surprising force, baring her teeth like a caged animal, before rolling to her side and trying to push herself up. Veruca let her, staying crouched while she stood. Diana’s soul continued to hum, the frequency reminding Veruca of the screeching discordance often used in horror movies to score the appearance of a ghost. She smiled despite herself, wondering if humanity knew how often it tapped into sounds that were truly representative of evil and terror.
Diana whipped around, teeth still bared, focusing on Doris. She pointed again, and Doris wasted no time in shooting her, aiming squarely for her face and hitting her right between the eyes. Finn let out a wail, and Veruca glanced at him, wishing she hadn’t brought him to the meeting.
“It’ll be okay, darling,” Veruca said, looking back down at Diana’s body. This time, she set her hand on the corpse’s chest and pushed, making sure she knew to stay down. “Diana’s not much of a threat, not anymore.”
Finn didn’t answer, still hiding his face in his arm like a child hiding from monsters in his closet.
“You’re stupid,” Diana said, focusing murderous eyes on Veruca, lifting her hand to grip the front of Veruca’s shirt to yank her close. “You can do all you want to this body, I have others. I always have family, ready to take me in. I’ve never died before, but now I know I can’t, not really. I’ll find you, even if I have to start from across the world. Even if I have to fly on the wings of a bird. I will eat your eyeballs.”
“That’s just nasty,” Doris said, stepping around to the opposite side of Diana, gun still aimed intently. Veruca just smiled, letting Diana cling. The sound of Diana’s soul had turned metallic, fading slightly as bits of it fled, tearing apart from the scraps wrapped around her lifeless heart and off toward other parts of the ruined whole. Effortlessly, Veruca reached her power out, grabbing for them, calling them back and stuffing them back into Diana’s chest. Her eyes widened, a raspy whimper leaking out.
“I see what you’ve done, and it’s not half bad,” Veruca said, her voice low, her gaze locked with Diana’s. “I’m sure you’ve got backups all over, whether that was your intention or not. There is something you don’t know about me, however. I work directly for the Prince of Hell, and I think he’s got just the place for you.”
Diana’s soul fought as Veruca sucked it in, but her resistance was futile, weak, and ineffective against a truly determined Reaper with physical contact and the right motivation. Diana’s soul, the bulk of it at least, slipped in, tangling eagerly with the warmth and vitality of Veruca’s own. It craved life, and had it been left alone in a corpse, it would have gone after such life in much messier and more visceral ways.
As the last bit of it left Diana’s body, Veruca thought of Finn’s description of his time with Diana, how she’d eaten near-raw meat, tugging and tearing at it awkwardly. It had taken her some time to chew it down, as human teeth a
ren’t meant to rend raw chicken, but she’d managed. It seemed that even though her body had technically contained life, she’d left it so barren of her own that it had started acting undead anyway. Having full control over Diana’s soul, being able to read it and the memories it had made in her undead brain explained why.
She had zombies everywhere. As far away as the eastern tip of Florida and as close as the next town over, Diana had left human corpses of her own making, sitting alone and unbothered. Many were perceived to be homeless, hunched in gutters, moving only when something came along and forced her to enact real control. Her will had been iron, her refusal to give into the gnawing corruption of their appetite for living flesh more impressive than Veruca could have ever guessed. Some of the zombies were as old as a decade, their hunger excruciating in its demand.
Diana’s power was incredible, her deranged nature absolutely understandable once Veruca could feel the crisis of having one’s soul split into shards so small and numerous that they might as well have been grains of sand on a beach. The nearest bits were just outside, focusing on the door to the workshop through the eyes of dead birds. Diana hadn’t wasted any time using her powers to find airborne spies and send them after Doris and Veruca. She likely would have found them, no matter how far they’d run or what continents they’d crossed.
“Sneaky,” Veruca mumbled before reaching out with her own power and grasping the threads spread across the country, yanking them free of Diana’s zombies, and putting her soul back together, at least as well as could be expected. Her life essence would never fit together as it should, one long, strong strand of glowing gold, but in Veruca’s hands, it could be beautiful once again. In Veruca’s hands, Diana would be elegantly woven tapestry waiting to be passed along to Belial for safekeeping.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Silence had fallen, and all Finn could hear was his own breathing, the panting sounds of his terror enveloping his head and echoing off the ground to smack him in his face. He gave it a minute or so, partly because he couldn’t control his own body, and then peered up to see what had happened while he’d been panicking.
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