by Lish McBride
“He probably does get bored, Sam. Real bored.” He scratched his beard. “Sometimes, we don’t treat other creatures like we should.” Dad pointed to the donation box by the cage. “That’s why the zoo has to go begging.”
The answer was ugly, which meant it was probably true. I was glad he didn’t lie.
“Can I give my money to the tiger?” I’d gotten five dollars for helping my dad stack wood.
“I thought you were going to get ice cream.”
“I was, but…” I twisted the bottom of my shirt. I wasn’t sure how to explain myself. Ice cream was good, but tigers were better. I looked at the ground. “I want to give it to the tiger.”
Dad nodded and stood up, pulling out his wallet. He handed me my five and a twenty. “Why don’t you put that in there, too.”
I shoved the bills into the box, and I felt better about the tiger. Surely he’d have a bigger room soon. Twenty-five dollars was a lot of money.
My dad still bought me ice cream.
The animals now had plenty of room. You didn’t see them pinned in by bars. Instead, they’d designed the cages to look like the animals lived together, all in harmony. The tiger looked less bored sunning in a field. It was a pleasant lie. He was still in a cage, but I could live with the compromise. At least the tiger wasn’t being killed by poachers. Or Mercedes-driving freaks. I’d put Brooke’s head on the couch before I’d left so she could watch TV. She’d asked me to put a pencil in her mouth so she could change channels on the remote after I left. The thought made my stomach twist.
My hand went automatically to my medicine bag—I tended to use it as a touchstone when I was nervous—only to realize I’d forgotten to put it back on after I’d showered that morning. Not that I believed it held some mystic power or anything, you know, besides the power to make me feel better, but I still wished I had it. I shoved my hands deeper into my hoodie. I’d just gotten here and already things were not going my way. Super.
I wasn’t sure exactly where the guy wanted to meet me. The Asia exhibit was huge. Was he being difficult by not specifying? Testing me? Amused at watching me try to figure it out? Part of me was too pissed off to care. Another part of me decided I should be too scared to be angry. This guy had killed my friend just to send me a message. What would he do if I missed a meeting?
I decided to pick a spot in the exhibit and stay there. When you’re a kid, they tell you that sticking to one spot is the quickest way to be found by someone looking for you. I bought a criminally overpriced cotton candy and parked my ass by the sign for the Asia exhibit. I’d almost bought the popcorn. You can look tough eating popcorn. I bet even bikers eat popcorn, though they probably put lots of butter on it. Bikers don’t care about cholesterol. But something about a pink fluffy ball screams pansy to most people. I decided that pansy was probably a better look. That way there was no possible chance this guy could take me for a threat.
He showed up, bang on time, like he’d been watching me. I’d never found punctuality to be particularly creepy until now, but the way Douglas appeared made me think he’d been following me around, which gave me a serious case of the willies. I’d never been afraid of a man wearing jeans and a polo shirt before, either. I think he could wear anything and still maintain an air of menace. He could probably pull off the cotton candy thing, too.
“You’re early,” he said. He noticed me staring at his clothes. I hadn’t figured him for a jeans person. Of course, even his jeans were clean and pressed. They had creases. I’d always imagined evil in impeccable Italian suits and handmade leather shoes. Sort of demonic CEO chic. He seemed to follow my thinking. One hand plucked at the stitching on the leg. “Suits,” he said, “stand out here. I prefer to blend.”
I nodded, looking him in the eyes. Brown eyes rarely look cold, but his were flat and icy. They held no warmth at all. But I stayed locked on them because it seemed like a good idea to keep watch on the danger. I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to piss him off. Maybe if my answers were short and sweet, my own head would stay attached to my shoulders. Maybe. At that thought I felt my anger rise up and take a seat next to my fear. This was the man who killed Brooke. My mouth started before my brain could catch up to it.
“If I was late, would you have cut off my head, too?” I stared out at the passersby as I said this.
“Perhaps. Punctuality is important.” He said it like my question was one he heard every day. I wondered if it was.
“Sam, is it?”
I nodded again.
“Do you have a last name, Sam?”
“Yes, I do.” I tried to push my anger away for now. It wouldn’t do Brooke any good if I got killed provoking this guy just to make myself feel better.
He let out a barking laugh that made me want to cover my ears. Like his eyes, the sound was cold, joyless, as if he’d heard someone else make the noise and was trying to mimic it.
“Cautious,” he said, “that’s a good trait, too. Perhaps you aren’t a complete waste of my time after all.” He motioned toward the exhibit with his head and started walking. “All right, Sam, this way. I have something to show you.”
I fell in line behind him but not too close. Something told me that, as much as I didn’t want him angry with me, I didn’t want him interested in me, either. Oh, good, subtlety—one of my strong points. Might as well dig my grave now.
“What do you want me to call you?” I asked. I was pretty sure I had his name right, but you never know. Maybe he liked to go by Monty.
“I prefer Douglas.”
Am I the only one who thinks that psychopathic killer types should have imposing names like Vlad the Impaler, Genghis Khan, or Vigo the Carpathian? As a name, Douglas was a letdown.
Douglas looked straight ahead as he walked, hands in pockets, relaxed and calm, like he was on a Sunday stroll. “You were expecting something more sinister, perhaps?”
“Yeah, I guess I was.” I didn’t think letting him know that he intimidated me was a bad thing.
No barking laughter this time. “Would it make you feel better to know that Douglas means ‘dark river’ or ‘river of blood’?”
“Not really, no.”
We walked in silence for a few minutes, winding our way through small groups of children and animal displays. Douglas finally stopped in front of the panda exhibit, which maintained a decent crowd, even on an overcast day like this. Woodland Park Zoo normally didn’t have pandas, but a zoo in China had loaned them in some sort of exchange program. The pandas had been at the zoo for a week. I had an affinity for pandas. Something about clumsy vegetarians struck a chord with me.
Douglas stayed back from the crowd, sitting on an empty park bench. I joined him, happy that I could still see the pandas from my spot.
“Why are you here, Sam?” He didn’t look at me but kept his eyes on the crowd.
“You invited me, Douglas.” I wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass, but sometimes the truth comes out that way.
“I meant in Seattle, idiot, not the zoo.” He frowned, apparently exasperated already. I think I’d lost whatever points I’d gained in his mind. I tried to keep my eye on the big picture—that this guy was dangerous—but I was also getting tired of all the cloak-and-dagger crap.
“Hey, watch the name calling,” I said. “And what do you mean? I live here.”
“Yes, so you’ve said, but you should have appealed to the Council when you moved into the area.”
“I didn’t move into the area. I told you, I live here. I have always lived here.” I took a deep breath. “And what Council?”
“Your guide should have told you all of this.”
“All of what? What the hell are you talking about?” Anger leaked into my voice. I couldn’t help it.
“Drop the act, Sam. It won’t do you any good.”
My desire to yell nearly overwhelmed me. Deep breath, count to ten. Then, through gritted teeth, “There is no act. I have no guide, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. What d
on’t you understand about that?”
Douglas turned and really looked at me then. His face remained flat, but I saw a little twitch of surprise around his eyes.
“You really have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t.”
“But surely…who taught you to control—” He paused and regrouped. “What did you do, then, when you got your powers?”
“What powers?”
“This denial is bordering on ridiculous.”
I rubbed my temples with the tips of my fingers. “What powers?” I managed not to yell, but barely.
Douglas swore and closed his eyes. “I saw my first spirit when I was a child, Sam. You can’t tell me that you haven’t had some sort of experience. Your aura isn’t that weak. Even if you can’t accomplish a full raising, you must have seen something by now.”
“Full raising?”
“Of the dead, Sam. Necromancy. You’re a necromancer, like me.”
I laughed, saw he wasn’t joking about the necromancy thing, then stopped. “I’m nothing like you,” I said. I guess my keep-my-mouth-shut policy had gone out the window. “Necromancy.” I laughed again. “You could have at least worked up to that one. You know, started with ‘Luke, you have the power’ or something like that.” I snorted. “Come over to the dark side.”
Douglas sighed. “Yes. Yes, you are like me.” He scanned the crowd, which was thinning out a little as the weather continued to lean toward the worse. “Look at me, Sam.”
“I am looking at you.”
“Not with your eyes.” He turned to me and grabbed my chin. His hands were cold and dry, and I didn’t like them on my skin one bit. “Now, close your eyes.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t have another option.
“Now look.” He let go of my chin.
Douglas’s order didn’t make any sense at all. And yet, my mind automatically obeyed. Something in my head opened up and spilled out, which sounds gross, but it wasn’t. Whatever had just happened felt good, like my mind was a man stretching after a long plane ride cramped in a seat where a kid was kicking him from behind. My sight poured out and spread. I could see, really see, like echolocation but with a boost. I cast around with it. I saw a kid walk past me with a balloon; the balloon was a bare outline, but the kid was a walking kaleidoscope of colors. His father held his hand, and I could see him too, but his colors didn’t shift as much as the child’s did. The father’s color bled slowly from one to the next and with less diversity. I wondered what that meant.
My eyes still closed, I turned my head to the right. The flowers and bushes burned green tinged with orange, and the pandas shifted colors like the kid with the balloon. Wait. Not all the pandas.
“There’s something wrong with one of the pandas,” I said, eyes still closed. I watched, but the panda didn’t shift colors at all. He was cast entirely in shadow except for one small spark of incandescent blue in the upper left of his chest. There’s no way that could be a good thing. Next to the flowers, the bushes, the passing people, the panda looked…wrong. Like a tear, an empty hole into space.
“Yes,” Douglas said. “I know.”
My head turned toward Douglas, like in a horror movie. You shout at the screen, “Don’t look! Run!” but no one ever listens. Douglas didn’t look like the panda, but I could tell they were linked to each other. Douglas glowed that same icy blue, but instead of all that empty dark space, his blue was broken up with shifting, swirling lines of blacks, grays, silvers. What the hell?
I felt like I might throw up if I kept looking, so I tore my vision away and put my head in my hands to re orient and slow things down—to regain myself. Big freaking mistake. My hands, my arms, my legs, were all coated in that blue, like a layer of radioactive dust. My gut tightened and my jaw clenched. Why wasn’t I like all the other freaky tie-dye people who kept walking past? Where were my other colors? Once past that initial layer of blue, there was nothing. Not even the darkness. Just a hazy blur that blocked out the colors of the bench and the flowers around me. Like the panda, it felt wrong. Not the same kind of wrong, but wrong nonetheless.
I opened my eyes. Light, colors, sound, all came back in a blaring wave. My head hurt from the sudden onslaught, and I felt dizzy. I never wanted to close my eyes again.
“What just happened?” I kept my gaze directed toward the ground while I tried to regain myself.
“You looked into the heart of things, into the pulse of the world.”
I bit back a retort. Telling Douglas that he sounded like the deep-voiced announcer from a daytime soap opera wouldn’t help anyone.
“Why don’t I look like everyone else?” I asked.
“Because you’re not like everyone else, Sam. Necromancers are linked to death. The underworld, the spirit world, whichever particular appellation you choose to give it, you are one of the ties that binds this world to that.”
“But I don’t look like you, either.”
Douglas didn’t answer. The silence stretched out, and I figured he wasn’t going to answer that. Okay. Try again. Douglas got up and walked over to the enclosure. I followed until I leaned up against the railing. The area had cleared even more so that only a few stragglers were looking at the pandas.
There were three pandas in the enclosure. Two of them ambled about, stopping to gnaw on the occasional clump of bamboo. But the third sat on his own in the far corner, and I couldn’t help but notice that the other two wouldn’t go near him. And that he wasn’t eating bamboo. He held some in his paw, and he stared at it, but he didn’t eat any. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s dead.”
A kid had wandered up behind Douglas and, after overhearing him, started to cry. The kid ran to his mother, grasping onto her slim waist. She glared at us and walked away. Douglas didn’t seem to notice.
“What was that?” I asked.
“The big male, Ling Tsu, died his first night here. The zoo panicked. They had promoted the exhibit for weeks, and Ling Tsu didn’t even belong to them. Someone I do considerable business with gave them my number as a…temporary solution until they can sort things out.” Douglas stared evenly at the pandas. They could have been furniture for all the reaction he had to them. “The zoo was in a tight spot, things being what they are with China and all.”
“What’s wrong with China?”
Douglas turned his stare on me, but this time it was tinged with derision. “Trade imbalance, human rights violations, contaminated medicines?”
I shook my head. I tried not to watch the news. Too depressing. They just don’t make very good episodes of it anymore.
Douglas sighed again. “Lead-based paint on toys?”
“Oh, right. They made a reference to that on Law & Order, I think.”
I watched as one of the pandas did the slow panda version of a frolic. “So, you’re telling me the zoo commissioned you to make a zombie panda in order to avoid a potential international incident,” I said.
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“And I’m supposed to believe this because…?”
“Because you’ve seen it, Sam.”
He said my name like I was a disobedient child. I got the feeling that Douglas wasn’t used to people doubting his word.
“Sorry, but this thing sounds a little far-fetched for me. And why on earth are you showing me this anyway? Here, kid, an undead panda. Enjoy?” I shook my head. “Screw you, Douglas.”
“You insolent—” Douglas cut himself off and took a deep breath. He turned those cold eyes on me, and I stepped back, just a fraction, but enough for him to see how much he scared me. Fine, let him see.
“I brought you here to make a deal, Sam. The panda is just an example of a larger idea. People die inconveniently all the time, too. Senators, heads of state, CEOs, dictators. Sometimes other people need to keep them around just a little longer. That’s what I do. The right people with the right money have my name. They could have yours, too.
”
“I don’t follow.” Why would I want politicians to have my name? Politics gave me a rash.
“Power, Sam. I’m offering you power and wealth. I could teach you, if you want. Your power isn’t great, but I could bring it out, show you how to make the most of it. I’ve kept governments from collapsing. And it’s not just politics. Do you think the Stones would still be on tour without my help?”
I mulled that one over. Really, it could be any of the Stones. They’d been living the rock ’n’ roll life for quite a long time now. And while it was easy to picture Mick as the undead, it had to be—“Keith,” I said, pleased with my quick turnaround. Douglas didn’t look too impressed with my answer, and I guess it was kind of obvious. Ramon had been operating for years under the assumption that Keith was a cyborg, and being undead wasn’t far off from that. Same general idea, just different method.
I began to wonder what he meant by politics. Zombies in the Senate and as heads of state actually cleared a lot of things up for me. In fact, if you told most people that the White House was being run by the legions of the undead, they’d probably just say, “Figures.” Who else was Douglas keeping alive? An image of Jimmy Carter flashed in my mind. Would he start campaigning for the rights of the reanimated if he passed from the mortal sphere? “Is it Jimmy Carter? The queen? She’s been around a long time.”
“I’m not about to hand over my entire client list to you, Sam.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
“Drop it.”
I shook my head. “You don’t have Hitler in your basement or anything, do you? Tabloids are always claiming he’s still alive. Him and Elvis. Because I can’t condone that sort of thing. The Hitler thing, not Elvis. I’ve got nothing against the King.”
Douglas slammed a fist against the wooden barrier keeping us from panda country. His nostrils flared slightly before he regained his composure. “This isn’t a joke.”
Sadly, I didn’t think it was, either. “Despite your behavior,” he said, “the offer still stands.” Before the zoo, I thought Douglas was a run-of-the-mill psychotic. I was wrong. The guy must have been completely bat-shit nuts. The bad thing was, I believed him. And the even worse thing was, I was beginning to believe what he’d said about me.