by Jane Kindred
“You fantasize about me?”
“Constantly.” Lucien beamed. “Can I come in?”
“Watch out for darting cats. I’m not supposed to let Puddleglum out.” She unlocked the screen door, and Lucien stepped in and closed it behind him just as the cat skulked around the corner and tried to make a break for it.
“Curses. Foiled again,” Lucien said in a cartoon villain voice, grinning at the cat. He glanced up at Theia, looking slightly chagrined. “I have no idea where that came from. I think I was channeling him. Is he a warlock?”
Theia laughed. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
Lucien kissed her, silencing her laugh, and pulled her close. “I missed you in my bed. I think I may have to keep you there.” He stepped back after a moment and glanced down at the damp marks her robe had left on his khakis. “You’re all wet.” He untied the belt at the front of the robe, sliding his hands inside and around her ass. “Can I dry you with my tongue?”
Now she was definitely wet. But she hadn’t thought about where this might go. As fantastic as yesterday had been, she couldn’t just expect him to continue his one-sided pleasuring. But she wasn’t sure if she was ready to take the plunge into post-virginity immediately.
Lucien’s lascivious grin turned questioning. “No pressure, of course.”
“Sorry. I just...hadn’t thought about what might happen next.”
“Theia.” He played with a strand of her hair, a wistful smile on his face. “There’s no timeline. I can dial it back a bit. I know I can be a little intense.” He retied her belt, making a prim little bow. “For now, how about breakfast? If you haven’t already eaten, that is. There’s this cute little place on Cedar Street that makes fantastic lavender scones.”
Theia grinned up at him. “Now I’m starting to think you’re some kind of warlock.” She turned toward the bedroom. “Just let me get dressed. You had me at scones.”
“That was kind of the last word I said, actually, but at least I managed to reel you in while I was still speaking.”
* * *
They had just ordered when Lucien received a text. He frowned as he read it.
Theia watched him over her coffee cup. “Anything wrong?”
“No.” Lucien looked up. “I mean, yes. Another job. Lucy’s unavailable, so I have to leave now to handle it.”
Theia’s mouth curved into a pout. “No fantastic lavender scones?”
“Not for me, I’m afraid. I’m really sorry about this. We’re not usually this busy. But you should stay—I’ll settle the bill.”
“Why don’t I just go with you?”
“You want to come with?” Lucien glanced at the message again with a dubious look. “It’s a botched resurrection.”
“Botched...resurrection?” Theia blinked, not sure she was hearing right.
“Someone paid a reanimator to bring a loved one back from the dead. It literally never works. It’s the monkey’s paw of spells, and yet people try it all the time. Like teenagers calling up vengeful spirits in the mirror as a drunken party game, trying to resurrect the dead never goes out of style, no matter how disastrous. Of course, Smok is very good at making sure those disasters never get publicized.”
The idea of witnessing the results of a botched resurrection was both horrifying and compelling. She’d seen Phoebe and Rafe deal with the spirits of the dead before, but never the reanimated dead.
“I’m up for it, if it’s not against the rules.”
“There aren’t really any rules—or if there are, I make them.” Lucien grinned. “If you really want to come, I can tell them you’re just observing as a new apprentice so they won’t expect you to step in. And you have to promise to follow my directions. I’m not being an ass—I just have to be able to ensure your safety.”
Theia smiled. “I do want to come. And I give you my word. I promise I have absolutely zero interest in getting in the way of a revenant. Because, you know—actual revenant.”
Lucien grimaced. “Touché.” He paid for the uneaten scones, and they hit the road.
“The client is in Oak Creek,” Lucien told her as they drove through Uptown Sedona. “Nice to have something close by for a change.”
“Aren’t all of your clients local?”
“No, we’re worldwide. I spent a lot of time on the West Coast and in Europe after college, working with our agencies there. Edgar wanted me home for the lab opening. Lucy’s been handling things for him locally, but he’s been trying to encourage me to take a more active role in the company.”
“What about your mother? Is she not involved in the company?”
Lucien’s expression was guarded. “They’re divorced. The business was never her thing anyway. She kind of loathes the entire Smok enterprise. Can’t say that I blame her.”
“But you still do it.” Theia realized it was a shitty thing to say. “I mean—”
“No, you’re right. I take part in aspects of the business that I find morally and ethically...uncomfortable. I can’t really justify it other than to say I feel a sense of familial obligation.” Lucien was quiet, and Theia thought it better not to intrude on his silence.
He turned onto Jack’s Canyon in the Village of Oak Creek and headed west.
“Ione lives a few blocks from here.” Theia glanced at Lucien. “Which maybe I shouldn’t have told you. You’ve abandoned the idea of going after Dev, I hope?”
“I already know where your sister lives. But unless Dev’s demon goes on a rampage, yes, I’ve given up on that plan. I’m rethinking my sources.”
“Your sources?”
“For information on rogue creatures. I have a few insiders who alert me to candidates in the area. And some anonymous sources.” Lucien glanced at her. “That’s what put me on your family’s trail, actually. An anonymous ‘concerned individual’ tipped me off.” He paused. “The same person that sent me the link to your personal genealogy research.”
“Someone sent you that?” Theia frowned. Who could have been able to link to the file? It was a private upload to the genealogy site, which only immediate relatives could access without expressly having the link.
They pulled into the driveway of a modest-looking duplex. Theia wondered how the occupants were able to afford Smok Consulting’s services.
“Keep behind me when we approach the subject,” Lucien advised. “Sometimes they can move surprisingly fast.”
“How do you...get rid of it?” Theia asked as he rang the doorbell. “Do you have to kill the revenant?”
“No, it’s already dead. All I have to do is release the shade from the body.” He shook his head. “It’s really a cruel thing to tie a shade to a rotting corpse. It’s unconscionable that anyone would do it.”
A middle-aged woman opened the door. Dark circles under bloodshot eyes made her look somewhat manic, as if she hadn’t slept in days.
“Mrs. Castillo. I’m Lucien Smok, and this is my colleague, Theia Dawn. She’ll be observing—”
“Thank God you’re here.” The woman grabbed Lucien’s hand and held it in both of hers. “Es mi abuela. She passed on a month ago, but my mother was distraught, and she couldn’t get over the loss. I didn’t know she had called a brujo until I came home from work on Friday, and I found her sitting with Abuelita. I didn’t know what to do. My husband’s cousin told me about your services.”
Lucien patted her hand and gently drew his other out of her grip. “You did the right thing, Mrs. Castillo. Just let us take it from here.”
As soon as they stepped inside, the smell nearly bowled Theia over. Her eyes watered, and she covered her mouth as Lucien’s client led them to a bedroom in the back.
“Mamá? The doctor’s here.” Mrs. Castillo turned to Lucien and lowered her voice. “I had to tell her you were a doctor coming to help my grandmother. She has Alzheimer’s. My mother, I mean. N
ot my grandmother.” Tears sprang to her eyes as she opened the door.
The curtains were drawn, and it took a moment for Theia’s eyes to adjust to the light. On a little day bed in the shadows, two elderly women sat holding hands. But one of them had a swollen face with a grayish-blue discoloration. The swollen one began to curse in Spanish. Theia understood just enough to know that the words were shocking.
Mrs. Castillo crossed herself.
Lucien touched her arm. “What’s your mother’s name?”
“Rosa Campos.”
“And your grandmother?”
“Lupe Ramirez. Lupita.”
“I’ll need Rosa to move away from the—” Lucien caught himself. “From your grandmother.” He held out his hand. “Mrs. Campos, I’m Dr. Smok. Can I speak with you?”
Rosa looked confused. “The doctor was here. Mamá was sick but the doctor made her better.”
Obscenities continued to fly from the older woman’s mouth—along with a terrible stench that Theia was surprised she could even distinguish next to the pervasive smell of rotting flesh.
“I just need to give her a checkup. And I have some vitamins for you.” He took a bottle from his bag and emptied two pills into his hand. He turned to Mrs. Castillo. “Can you get a glass of water?”
The woman eyed the pills with mistrust. “What are those for?”
“I think it’s best if she’s sedated,” he murmured, “before I take care of the—your abuela.”
Hands trembling as she stepped into the room to pour a glass of water from the pitcher beside the bed, Mrs. Castillo took the pills. “Come on, Mami. Take your vitamins and let the doctor look at Abuela.”
The old woman reached obediently for the pills, but the revenant knocked them from her hand with a snarl, and Rosa began to cry.
“That’s okay. I have more.” Lucien shook out another two pills. “Can you come here to me?”
“You’re not my doctor.” Rosa began to speak rapidly in Spanish.
“She wants her granddaughter.” Mrs. Castillo looked at Theia. “She thinks you’re my daughter. She wants you to give her the pills.”
“Me?” Theia glanced at Lucien. The smell of the decaying flesh was making it difficult not to gag.
Lucien shook his head. “You don’t have to.”
But Rosa had gotten up, reaching for Theia. “Conchita, be a good girl. Dame las vitaminas.” The revenant tugged at her hand, and Rosa tugged back. Theia swallowed bile as a layer of the revenant’s skin sloughed away.
She took the pills and the water and stepped closer. “Here you go, Abuela.”
The old woman took them, and Theia held the water for her, trying to ignore the rage—and stench—emanating from the revenant.
“Puta!” The undead woman spat the word at Theia, along with a viscous gray substance that struck her cheek.
Theia covered her mouth and stumbled back. For a moment, she was sure she was going to lose the battle and vomit.
Stepping to her side, Lucien wiped the trail of slime from her cheek with a handkerchief. “You’re doing amazing,” he murmured.
Rosa’s eyelids began to flutter, and she leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder.
“Mamá, why don’t you lie down and take a little nap?” As Mrs. Castillo moved toward her mother, the revenant lunged for her, letting Rosa tumble onto the bed.
Mrs. Castillo screamed and threw her arms over her face reflexively, and the revenant sank her teeth into one of the upraised arms. Watching in horror, Theia thought incongruously how impressive it was that a woman in her nineties had died with all her teeth.
Lucien darted forward, taking a vial of clear liquid from his pocket. He opened it and flung the contents at the revenant, shouting in what sounded like Latin.
The revenant shrieked and let go, cringing and backing toward the daybed at the touch of the liquid as if it were acid.
“Lupita Ramirez.” Lucien’s voice projected with a deep, authoritative tenor. “You don’t belong here. I command you to come out. Be free.” He repeated the words in Spanish, and the revenant made an agonizing sound, a wail that seemed to encompass both misery and relief. The haunted, rage-filled eyes emptied, turning glassy and dull, and the body crumpled lifeless to the floor.
Mrs. Castillo began to sob. Mercifully, Rosa’s eyes had remained closed, unconscious to the loss of her mother for the second time.
“A crew will be here shortly to take care of the remains.” Lucien spoke soothingly, patting the woman’s shoulder. “They should be done before your mother wakes up. It’s entirely possible she won’t remember any of this.” He cleared his throat. “And while I hate to speak of business at a time like this, there is the matter of payment. I assume our policy regarding the timing in the case of a reanimation reversal has been explained to you?”
She nodded, wiping her eyes.
Lucien glanced at the sleeping woman on the bed. “If I can make a suggestion...it might be a mercy to let your mother make the payment.”
“No, no.” Mrs. Castillo shook her head vehemently. “It will be me. I’ve already made arrangements. My daughter will take care of my mother.”
Lucien nodded and took a small vial from his pocket. “This will complete the transaction. I recommend that you take it at bedtime and go to sleep as usual.”
As Mrs. Castillo took the vial, she grabbed Lucien’s hands once more. “Gracias, Mr. Smok. You don’t know what this means to my family. I haven’t slept since Abuelita...” She glanced at the corpse and squeezed her eyes shut. “And now it’s over. It’s over.”
Lucien pressed her hands and extracted himself from her grip. “You should see to that arm.” He nodded to the bite mark.
Mrs. Castillo’s eyes flew open, wide with terror. “It won’t make me like her, will it?”
“No, no. Of course not. It’s just that it looks painful.”
* * *
On the drive back to Sedona, Theia was quiet, trying—and failing—to reconcile the events she’d witnessed.
Lucien glanced at her after a few minutes. “Are you okay? That was a rough one.”
“What was that vial you gave her?”
“Holy water. Well, really, just plain water. Its power is in the belief of the shade. She actually left on her own, believing she’d been exorcised.”
“No, I mean the other vial. The one you gave Mrs. Castillo.”
“Oh.” Lucien stared ahead. “I probably should have done that in private.”
“Lucien. What was it?”
“A lethal dose of pentobarbital. It’s painless.”
Theia leaned back against the headrest, letting her breath out slowly. She’d wanted to be wrong. Wanted him, at least, to express some shock at the statement.
“So that’s the payment. She’s going to kill herself.”
“Well, no. Not exactly. The payment for any of our services of this nature is a soul.”
Theia’s head throbbed as she turned to look at him. “What the hell do you mean, a soul?”
“It’s my family’s legacy. We...” He glanced at her for an instant before looking back at the road. “Legend says we collect souls for the devil.”
“The devil. There’s an actual devil.”
Lucien shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s not even any such thing as a soul. But those are the bargains we make at Smok. And people enter into them willingly. In most cases, the designated payer lives out his or her normal life. But to reverse a resurrection, payment is due in full when services are rendered.”
Sweat beaded her forehead, and Theia gripped her door handle. “Pull over.”
“What?”
“Pull over! Right now.”
Lucien pulled onto the shoulder of the highway, and Theia threw open the door and vomited into the dirt. Her stomach lurched so violently she exp
ected to see it in the gravel turned inside out.
Lucien held out his handkerchief when she straightened and sat back against the seat, and Theia yanked it from his hand, careful not to wipe her mouth with the bilious substance he’d cleaned off her cheek from the revenant.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you.”
“You shouldn’t have brought me? That’s what you’re sorry about? You just told a woman to kill herself and go to hell—and handed her the poison to do it.”
“It’s the job. It’s why I hate it so much.”
“Oh! Well!” Theia threw her hands in the air. “As long as you hate it.”
“Theia—”
“Just take me home. I need to be alone.”
Lucien pulled back onto the highway without a word.
When they arrived at Phoebe’s place, he looked over at her at last, obviously wanting to say something. Whatever it was, Theia didn’t want to hear it. She got out and slammed the door and went inside without a backward look.
Chapter 16
Lucien drove home, the usual dark funk that hung over him after a job magnified by a thousand. Why had he taken Theia with him? In one afternoon, he’d revealed to her every repugnant thing about himself and the Smok legacy. He was so used to letting Lucy handle the negotiations that he’d forgotten just how personal and ugly it felt—especially this one. And yet he’d done it in front of Theia without even preparing her beforehand.
Yesterday, he’d been devastated by the news of Theia’s heritage, ready to renounce her. Twenty-four hours later, he’d pushed her away with the ugly truth of his own, and all he wanted to do was get down on his knees and beg her not to leave him. As if she was even with him in the first place.
His smashed laptop screen greeted him when he got home, and Lucien punched it again for good measure. And then punched it a third time and a fourth, imagining it was his face. The ecto gel in his arm reverberated with a sickening thud. Lucien kicked the laptop onto the floor and stomped on it. After a moment, he started to laugh at his own stupidity, dropping onto his knees on the Berber carpet and laughing until he was crying and could barely breathe. He tipped over sideways and rolled onto his back, wheezing and gasping, tears pouring down his temples into his ears.