by SM Reine
It was easy to figure out if a living person was a witch. We all kind of had kind of a glow to us. But dead bodies didn’t glow. They were too busy being dead.
“Does it matter?” Isobel asked.
A shiver coursed through Ann’s body. “Sometimes.”
The door banged open, bouncing off the wall. Malcolm and Bellamy entered the basement with a tarp-wrapped bundle struggling between them. It was big and bulging and had been tied up with chains. I couldn’t see what they held captive, but I could guess. My heart sank into my stomach.
“Ho ho ho!” Malcolm said, dragging hard on the chain. The bundle bumped down the stairs.
We’d prepared a second table for the daimarachnid, but there was no way in holy squirming hell that it was going to be able to stay up there. I pushed the table aside and the men dumped it alongside Yvette’s table instead.
“Jesus,” I said. “I thought you were going to sedate it.”
Bellamy looked exhausted. “We did.”
I stepped back as they attached the chains to O-rings anchored in the concrete floor. I wasn’t sure why a condo building had O-rings in the basement, but it was exactly what we needed, so I didn’t plan on complaining to management.
The spider fought so hard that it threw the tarp off of its face. Its pincers strained toward me. Bullet holes peppered its carapace.
“By the way, Isobel,” Malcolm said as he clasped the end of the last chain on an O-ring, “we transported this in the trunk of your brand spankin’ new rental car. You’re good to go whenever you’re ready.”
Isobel’s eyes met mine. If necrocognitive powers included laser vision, I would have been incinerated on the spot.
Apparently, she hadn’t come to see reason yet.
“We’ll start prepping the SUV for zombie transport,” Malcolm said. “On a scale from one to braaains, how much reinforcement do we need in the compartment holding our dead friend here?” He patted Yvette’s table.
Ann’s upper lip curled. “She won’t be a zombie like that, thank you very much. No reinforcement at all. God. What do you think I do here?”
“Make zombies?” he suggested.
Isobel laughed. “Get out of here before you hurt something.”
Malcolm saluted her, wink-blinked at me, and pushed Bellamy upstairs again. That left us alone with one very dead woman and one very angry spider that was still trying to break free.
The three of us stared at the daimarachnid for too long. When I realized Ann wasn’t doing anything, I turned to her.
“Well?”
She wet her cracked lips with her tongue. “I don’t know. It depends on what you need Yvette to be able to do.” She circled the table, stroking the stone scepter gently. “It’s not hard to reanimate a dead person. It’s harder to raise one and heal it, or raise one that you want to talk like a real person.” Her brow furrowed. “Um, she doesn’t need to talk, does she?”
“Nah,” I said. I wasn’t imagining a lot of chit-chat with Cain. I thought we could just lure him out onto the beach and stand back while a sniper rifle armed with silver bullets introduced itself to him.
“Yeah. In that case, I just have to…” Ann made a stabby gesture at the daimarachnid with the scepter in her hand. “And then the rest just kind of flows from there.”
Isobel checked her watch. “We don’t have much time, so we should really get started.”
Ann grabbed a knife off of Yvette’s table. “Which part do you think bleeds the most?” she asked, leaning around the struggling daimarachnid to look at it.
Jesus. How were we supposed to know? It was a fucking spider. I didn’t think normal spiders even had blood.
I thought back to our fight in the mine, struggling to make sense of the violence and insanity. My memories went kind of hazy around the worst of the confrontation. “The eyes bleed a lot,” I said slowly. “I think they’re weak around the head.”
“All righty,” Ann said, standing at its side.
She still didn’t stab. She looked pale.
“Are you okay?” Isobel asked.
“It’s just…” Ann cringed. “Spiders.”
I was going to have to do it. I took the knife from her.
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath and blowing it out again. Stabbing a daimarachnid shouldn’t have been difficult. Some of its brethren had almost killed Suzy and me in the mines. All I needed to do was tap into that frustrated anger that had made me want to nuke the whole place.
Easy. Right?
Except that the bulbous red eyes glaring their fury at me had consciousness in them. The same kind of consciousness that had fueled Connie, as much as it creeped me out to think about being in Soup Express with one of these things.
There was a world of difference between thinking violent thoughts and committing acts of violence. And an even bigger difference between killing in self-defense and killing something that couldn’t scratch an itch on its venomous pincer if it wanted to.
A hand closed around my wrist, interrupting my circuitous thoughts.
“Just do it already!” Ann said, and she shoved my hand forward.
The blade of the dagger plunged into the daimarachnid’s head behind the rows of eyes. Blood gushed forth. It made an awful squeaking noise that could have been a scream or air escaping the cracks in its exoskeleton.
Shocked, I released the dagger and took a big step away from Ann.
The daimarachnid wasn’t dead yet. The necromancer jerked the knife out and stabbed again, this time without hesitation.
Her face lit up as she plunged the knife in again and again and again, until there was nothing left but a bloody mush. Black fluid spattered over her hand and wrist. It must have burned. She didn’t show it.
Isobel reached for the kid, opening her mouth, but then seemed to change her mind.
Smart woman.
When the spider stopped moving, Ann slicked the blood all over the stone scepter, eyes shut in joyous rapture. She traced her finger along Yvette’s dead arm.
“Rise,” Ann said simply.
I’d kind of expected the magic to build like it did with Isobel. A sudden crest of energy, followed by the emergence of something beautiful and unsettling. The ghosts were creepily gorgeous. They did honor to the memory of the person who had died.
Raising a zombie wasn’t any kind of gorgeous.
Yvette’s legs bent at the knees with an audible pop. Her neck twisted, swiveling her head around to look at us. I could actually hear the rasp of her eyelids peeling open.
“Holy shit,” I gasped, staggering backwards.
The body’s spine made a grinding noise. Her skin moved strangely as she twisted, puckering in places and stretching in others.
Ann looked like she was on the verge of happy tears as Yvette sat up. “Oh, baby!” She smoothed her hand over Yvette’s forehead. “She’s beautiful!”
My jaw had dropped open and I couldn’t think of what to say. When I looked at Isobel, I found that she didn’t look any better.
Beautiful? Hell, I was willing to believe anything that was going to save my life was beautiful at this point.
Even a freaking zombie.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT Ann,” I said as Isobel and I headed toward the alley behind the condos. “She’s not right in the head. She’s not going to get better unless someone intervenes for her sake, and fast.”
She groaned and massaged her temples. “Cèsar…” She managed to load a lot of meaning into my name. Like, You’re in over your head again, Cèsar, and, If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from Ann, Cèsar. I didn’t disagree with her. With everything that had happened this week, I was so far in over my head that I was drowning.
But I couldn’t shake the memory of Ann stabbing the shit out of a demon with glee in her eyes.
Dammit, she was just a kid.
“We can’t just send her back to Helltown after this,” I said. “You saw what she did in there.”
“No, Cèsar. This isn’t how this works.”
“Yes, Isobel. I might work for a secret government agency, but we’ve got ways to communicate with the not-secret agencies. Ann’s seventeen, right? Child Protective Services can still help her. Or there are government grants for education—”
“She doesn’t need to be saved,” Isobel said.
“Like hell she doesn’t.”
“Ann’s happy with her life the way it is.”
“And I’m happy living on a diet of Cheetos and Mountain Dew, but that doesn’t mean I should.” I stepped in front of Isobel before she could open the back door to the alley, forcing her to look at me. “She’s just a kid, Izzy. I’m going to do something about her. I have to.”
Isobel gazed up at me. She sniffled. It was only then that I realized her eyes were red and puffy, like she was crying. Guilt punched through my heart. “Oh, Jesus,” I said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s not that.”
I opened the door, trying to figure out where this mood swing had come from. The car was waiting for us outside with the keys on the trunk. Malcolm and Bellamy had delivered.
There was only one reason I could think that Isobel might be so upset.
“Fritz,” I said. No, wait, that wasn’t how I’d meant to bring him up. I ran a hand through my hair and tried again. “Look, he’s gonna be okay. He’s not just some empty suit that hides behind a desk. You don’t get into upper management with the OPA unless you can take care of yourself.”
I was talking bullshit. For all I knew, Fritz really was just candy-ass old money sitting pretty on what he’d inherited from his family. But I thought that was probably what Isobel needed to hear. That wherever he was, Cain wasn’t breaking him down. Wouldn’t really hurt him. That Fritz was going to be okay.
It might have been the truth. I mean, I hadn’t known that he had a medical background. For all I knew, he had a background in surviving werewolf abduction, too.
Hey, you never know.
“I trust that he’ll be fine,” Isobel said. “I want to believe it, anyway. I’m an optimist. I’m not upset because I’m worried about him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t—”
“Yes, you were,” she said.
Okay, that was exactly what I’d been thinking. “It’s none of my business.”
“I’m not the type of woman that falls apart over a man.” She folded her arms over her chest. Shot me a sideways look. “Most men.”
“Of course not,” I said. When in doubt, agree with the ladies. Yet another one of Pops’s wise pieces of advice.
“You’re going to laugh at me if I tell you what’s wrong.”
I grabbed the keys but didn’t open the car. “That is one thing I definitely won’t do.”
Isobel flung her hands in the air and sighed. “I don’t want to leave the case. Isn’t that stupid? I’m upset that I haven’t finished the job.” She leaned back against the Kia and massaged her temples even more viciously. I somehow doubted that was having quite the effect she intended. “This is what I’ve come to. Being shuttled away from danger before the bad guys come to justice, like I’m some delicate fucking butterfly.”
I didn’t laugh, but I did have to fight not to smile. Her distress was surprising, not stupid. I just didn’t expect a woman that lived in an RV that spent her life running away to be so reluctant to hit the road again. “Justice, huh? You’d make a good OPA agent.”
She rolled her eyes. “Be nice.”
Yeah, guess that wasn’t much of a compliment. “You’re not being sent away because anyone thinks you’re weak, but we can’t have you arrested, either.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Isobel reached into her purse and extracted a jar as big as her thumb. She shoved it into my hands. “Here. Take this.”
“What is it?” I asked, moving to pull out the cork.
She stopped me by grabbing my wrist. “Careful. That’s my going away present for you.”
A smile crept over my lips. “Going away present?” I lifted the jar and looked inside as I swirled it around. The sludgy fluid looked familiar. Too thick to be water, too red to be mercury.
As soon as I realized what I was holding, my smile slipped.
“Sparklebomb,” Isobel said. “I tinkered with it a little more. I think it’s really cool now, and maybe even a little bit useful. Try it out sometime…when you’re alone.”
“Like…alone-alone?” I lifted my eyebrows.
“Yeah, you probably don’t want to splatter anyone with it. You know. Glitter.” She made an exploding gesture with her fingers. “Poof!”
So not “open it when you’re naked in bed”-type alone. I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or not.
I couldn’t imagine a situation in which sticky gold glitter would be useful, much less sticky gold glitter that Isobel had been “tinkering” with while lacking direct supervision. She’d tied a ribbon around the neck of the jar, though. She’d put some thought into the present. It obviously meant a lot to her.
“Thanks,” I said, sliding it into my back pocket.
I unlocked the car and tried to hand Isobel the keys. She didn’t take them. She leaned her hip against one of the rear doors, staring at the back door of the condominium.
“I raised the ghost of Fritz’s late wife, Emmeline,” Isobel said. “That was why Fritz originally hired me. I know you’ve been wondering. He wanted to talk to his wife.” She rubbed a hand over her eyes, massaging her eyebrows with her fingertips. “It’s hard not to feel for a widower after seeing how much he loves the ghost of a woman he’s lost. Do you know what happened to her?”
“None of my business,” I said again. Just like whatever was between Isobel and Fritz wasn’t my business, either.
I tried to push the keys into her hand again. She ignored me. “He asked me to marry him,” Isobel said. “That’s why we stopped being…involved.”
“You broke up with the billionaire because he wanted to marry you.”
“I broke up with Fritz because I’d barely known him for a month when he said that he wanted to marry me. That’s strange. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
For Fritz? Yes. I had a hard time believing Fritz was the type to throw marriage certificates at a woman after knowing her for a couple weeks. I’d have thought of him as more of the lengthy courtship ending with a prenup and a press release about his engagement kind of guy.
“Damn,” I said.
Isobel was staring at my hand. I hadn’t even realized I had pulled out Fritz’s BlackBerry until that moment. It had been weighing heavily in my pocket all day as I tried desperately to pretend it wasn’t in my possession, but I kept grabbing it without thinking.
“Anyway,” she said softly, “Fritz isn’t my type.” Her fingertips skimmed up my forearms, gently teasing the hairs, sending heat rippling through my body and making my muscles tighten. “I don’t want to leave the case, and—and I don’t want to leave you.”
There was no way that Isobel could know the effect that touch had on me. How such a small gesture could push me instantly toward the brink. “Careful,” I said, but I didn’t push her away.
Isobel leaned against me, letting her warm softness mold against my chest. “I don’t want to be careful, either.”
Lord, it just wasn’t fair. “The fact that Fritz found you first—”
She laughed softly. “It doesn’t mean I belong to him. I don’t belong to anyone, Agent Cèsar Hawke. I don’t belong to Fritz Friederling, I don’t belong to you, and I don’t belong to…” Her lips pursed. “Well, I am my own woman.” The “hear me roar” part was unsaid, but it didn’t need to be spoken for me to believe it one hundred percent.
And a hell of a woman she was. I wanted to throw everything Pops had ever told me about respect and letting ladies make the first move out the window and show her that she was mine in seven different ways to Sunday, half of which would be illegal in some Southern s
tates.
Except…Fritz.
No matter what Isobel said, this was the guy that had given me a job. Jailed the incubus that tortured my sister. And he was obviously very much in love with Isobel. I wasn’t a real smart guy, but I could see that.
There were lines that just shouldn’t be crossed.
So I took those Neanderthal urges and set them in a mental corner for a time out.
“Call Fritz’s phone as soon as you get back to Los Angeles,” I said, opening the door to the car. “It should be safe for you to leave a message. Just don’t mention your name or where you ended up exactly. I’ll know it’s you, and we’ll find you after the case is over.”
Isobel didn’t move for the driver’s seat. “Cèsar.”
“Miss Stonecrow.”
She grabbed me by the earlobe and tugged. Hard. Ouch. I doubled over just to keep her from ripping my ear off, which put my face on the same level as hers. “Don’t you dare try to put distance between us with formalities. I’ve seen you do that before and I won’t fall for it.”
“It’s not a ploy,” I said.
“You are as frustrating as you are sexy.”
“Do you mean I’m not frustrating you at all, or—?”
Isobel bit my bottom lip, shocking me into silence. Which was apparently what she wanted. As soon as I was quiet, she licked the place she had bitten, and then her tongue was in my mouth, and her fingers were locked behind my neck, and she was pushing herself hard against my body.
My back hit the side of the car. She was all over me, like she had a dozen hands and every last one of them were hell-bent on feeling me up. She groaned into my mouth, wrapped my tie around her fist, pulled on it hard.
Before I could react, Isobel stepped away again, but she didn’t release my tie. She had a death grip on it still, keeping me against the car. “You’d better survive this case, mister,” she said, poking me hard in the chest with each word. “Bring Fritz back, shoot the werewolf, and then come find me. Got it?”
“I think so,” I said, still struggling to catch my breath. She responded with another hard kiss against my lips. A brief one. Then she slipped into the driver’s seat and smiled up at me from the shadows within the car.