by Kim Harrison
The zombie was between me and Ivy, and I hefted my two-by-four. “That’s not getting in my car,” I said, and Ivy jerked.
“You’re the one with the convertible,” she said, and Mr. Z groaned in indecision, relying on our voices to find us, as his eyes were a hazed opaque.
“So?” I adjusted my grip as Mr. Z decided on me. “You telling me your trunk hasn’t had a dead man in it before?”
“Not one that smelled like that.”
“Ladies?” Jenks said from my hair. “Can we finish this before the sun goes nova? I have to talk to Trent tonight about renting out a tree in his conservatory.”
A real smile came over my face, and I suddenly felt invincible. Jenks would survive the winter at Trent’s, and there was no way in hell that decaying piece of animated magic was getting in my car. I nodded to Ivy, and we both jogged forward. Eight steps was all it took, and Ivy cut his feet out from behind him as I smacked him on the forehead.
Mr. Z collapsed backward with a startled whimper, his face to the sky and blubbering as his orientation was lost. It would be at least ten minutes before he realized he was on the ground.
“Sweet as pixy piss,” Jenks said, and I dropped the two-by-four. Ivy met my grin with her own. It was always a pleasure to work with her, even this little.
Slowly my smile fell, but no one noticed, as David had finally gotten over his heebie-jeebies and was striding through the long grass and tombstones with the pool table cover to wrap Mr. Z in. I didn’t want Ivy to stay at Piscary’s when we moved back into the church, but with Nina . . . It was better this way. Ivy had been drifting away for a long time.
And as I’d told Jenks, it wasn’t as if she was dead.
CHAPTER
2
a small crowd had gathered At the back gate to the zoo, mostly patrons, since the employees had probably had their fill of zombie stink by now and were finding other things to do—things requiring them to be on the other side of Cincinnati’s world-class zoo. Ivy and I stood almost forgotten in the overdone show of getting Mr. Z out of Ivy’s trunk and carefully leashed between three keepers who then slowly led the rotting animated corpse to the zombie enclosure.
I thought it would’ve been easier to strap him to a gurney and wheel him there, but the keepers were big on trying to show their charges in as natural a setting as possible. My comment that strapped to a gurney was his natural setting hadn’t gone over well, and watching them shamble off surrounded by kids excited to be grossed out, I had a feeling that “walk with the zombies” was going to be one of the zoo’s more lucrative efforts come winter when they didn’t smell so bad.
Not surprisingly, we’d been asked to wait. Ivy and I stood in the sun, my head down over my phone as I texted Trent that I’d had to take a zombie to the zoo and couldn’t make Carew Tower. Ivy sighed, and I tucked my phone in a back pocket. I didn’t smell zombie on me, but I knew Ivy could as she plucked her shirt and winced.
“Thanks for waiting,” the lingering woman in tan slacks and a white top with the zoo’s logo on it said. “The FIB wants to talk to you before you leave.”
My eyebrows rose. “Ah, we were told to bring him here.”
“You’re fine.” The woman blinked fast as the smell of zombie rising from us hit her anew. “We informed the I.S. and FIB that we had a seventh zombie, and Captain Edden asked us to keep you here to sign the paperwork.”
“How long?” Ivy asked, and she shrugged, her eyes on the retreating, shambling group.
“He’s on-site. Five minutes?” she guessed. “If you promise not to leave . . .”
“We’ll sit tight,” I said, and she hustled away, fleeing almost.
“Good thing I canceled on Trent,” I muttered as I went to the nearby bench. Ivy followed, chuckling as she sat beside me in a languid display of grace. In the distance, howler monkeys began hooting. It was unusual this time of day, but I’d shout, too, if a zombie was passing my enclosure. My phone buzzed, and I took it out, smiling at Trent’s text telling me to be sure I took the zombie to see the pandas and buy him popcorn. Take a zombie to the zoo . . . , I thought, smirking at myself. I probably could have worded that better.
“It sort of sticks to you, doesn’t it?” Ivy said, and I tucked my phone away again, glad both Trent and I knew work was work and that sometimes unexpected things happened that needed to be dealt with immediately and to not get bent out of shape about it. Kisten had taught me that.
“The stink?” I said, wanting to be sure we were talking about the same thing. “I know I didn’t touch it.” I grimaced when a little girl passing asked her mom what that bad smell was. “You ever smell anything like this before?”
“Once,” Ivy said, shifting her posture and taking a breath to tell me about it.
“Stop!” I said, and then I sneezed. I froze, waiting for the second one, but it never came.
Ivy took her phone out, checked the time, then put it away. “Top of the hour,” she said, meaning the sneeze, and I made an “Mmm-hum” of an answer. “Your last sneeze was, too,” she added, wary this time, and I nodded, stretching my feet in my designer vamp boots into the sun.
“Yep.” I didn’t want to get into it. Ivy knew what structured sneezing meant as well as I did. Someone was trying to reach me via a scrying mirror. That someone probably being a demon.
“It might be a job,” Ivy said cautiously, and I slumped. The demons had been surprisingly quiet since regaining the ability to walk in reality at will, but working for them wouldn’t help my reputation. Then again, the last time I’d ignored a polite repeated call, I’d been jerked into a demon court to stand trial for breaking the ever-after.
“That’s why I snipped the end off that yew bush before we left,” I said, and Ivy glanced at it sticking out of my shirt pocket like a weird nosegay. She’d never been comfortable with my spell crafting, but it was a part of me, and she accepted it. I needed a yew stylus to make a new scrying mirror, preferably from a bush growing over a grave. My old mirror hadn’t worked since Al had cracked it in a self-indulgent pity party.
“You need the upstairs kitchen?” Ivy asked, her eyes on the cute little girl sporting a panda-eared cap.
“If you’re not going to be in it,” I said. I didn’t like the barren industrial counters and cold ovens that still smelled like vamps and pizza, but I couldn’t set a circle over water. “It won’t take long. Half an hour, maybe. I need to set a protection circle.”
She smiled a closed-lipped smile. “That’s why I asked. Take all the time you need.”
“Thanks.” My phone pinged, and I dug it out, eyebrows rising. Trent clearly wanted me there. He’d changed Ellasbeth’s ill-thought plan for lunch at Carew Tower’s rotating restaurant to ice cream at Eden Park, and could I make it by four? Right after his and the girls’ naps.
“Actually, we might want to designate that freestanding counter as yours,” Ivy said, brightening. “Nina wants to try her hand in the kitchen more, and it will be faster to cordon off a corner for you than to educate her on the dos and don’ts of mixing spell prep with food prep.”
“She wants to cook? Really?” I said as I answered Trent’s message with a “yes” and hit send. I’d have time to make a new scrying mirror and shower. No problem. “What is it with the undead wanting to cook?” I asked, remembering Piscary. “It’s not as if they eat it.”
“It gives them a way into our lives that doesn’t involve blood,” she said softly, and I nodded. Piscary had the reputation of making Cincinnati’s best pizza as a way to lure potential blood sources closer and give his contacts a plausible-deniability way to check in. Nina, though, was a new kind of undead, thanks to Ivy holding her soul and giving Nina sips of it along with her blood. The drive to give back to Ivy was probably a desperate need.
“She wants to make Thanksgiving dinner,” Ivy said, a faint blush coloring her cheeks. “Her parents are both
gone, and I think she’s trying to recapture something. You want to come?”
“Um, sure,” I said, still thinking it odd that an undead vampire wanted to make a dinner she couldn’t eat. “Mind if I ask Trent and the girls?”
“Oh, crud,” Ivy said softly. “I forgot about that. Forget I asked. You’ve already got plans.”
“No, I don’t. I mean, Trent’s got reservations at Carew Tower. That’s not Thanksgiving. He needs to experience what it’s like to sit at a card table and eat dry turkey and listen to the same old jokes year after year.” I hesitated. “Unless three more is too many.”
Ivy’s smile warmed. “I think we can handle it. That makes seven including Jenks,” she said, and I stifled an unexpected, slow quiver threatening to rise up through me. Damn it, my neck was tingling, and I looked away as Ivy sent out a wash of pheromones. Food. I’d forgotten that eating crunchy things was a living vampire turn-on. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
“We’re doing this after dark, right?” I asked. Ivy might have been good living in Piscary’s old digs now that Rynn Cormel had gone back to Washington, but the downstairs always gave me the creeps. My attention followed the yellow leaves skating across the plaza, rising up in a breath of air to pass before a silent crow hunched in a tree waiting for an unattended pretzel. Cincy seemed to be thick with them this year. Maybe they paired up with the zombies.
“Upstairs, yes,” Ivy said, her voice distant. “The downstairs kitchen isn’t big enough to make anything but popcorn in. There’s Edden.”
She sounded pleased, and I smiled at the somewhat squat, square older man striding purposefully toward us across the zoo. I stood in anticipation, liking the FIB captain. He’d helped me pay off my I.S. debt three years ago, but it seemed longer than that. He moved with a military precision, one arm holding a folder as he squinted in the sun from behind his plastic-frame, round glasses and acknowledged our presence with a raised hand. Though dressed professionally, he wasn’t in uniform. I knew he didn’t get out of the office as much as he liked. He wasn’t flabby, but his shoes weren’t made for running.
Ivy stood as well, and his smile widened to encompass his entire somewhat round face.
“Ivy! Rachel! I heard they got a zombie in the Hollows, but I didn’t know it was you.”
“Who else would it be?” I said, taking in his graying black hair cut short to his head and his ever-whitening mustache before I gave him a professional hug just so I could breathe in the scent of old coffee. It felt odd, even as I smiled. Trent was a lot thinner. Taller, too.
“True, true,” Edden said when I let go, somewhat red as he nodded to Ivy. “He didn’t give you trouble, did he? I think he’s the oldest one yet. The rest look almost normal compared to him.”
Ivy took his extended hand, and the two shook as she gave him an earnest but closed-lipped smile. “Older is easier when it comes to zombies. No charge on this one.”
“A freebie?” I muttered, but I suppose I should be glad they took him.
Edden beamed, his eyes lingering briefly on the sprig of yew poking out of my shirt pocket. “Thank you, ladies. Where’s Jenks? Too cold?”
I gave Ivy a sideways look. Jenks and Edden had a great relationship, having bonded over lost wives and a night of karaoke. “No, he and David crapped out on us and went for coffee after we got Mr. Z in the trunk. Why?” I asked, suspicious when Edden dropped the folder open on the bench behind us.
“Paperwork,” the older man said. “But I’d think your two signatures will be enough.” He fumbled the pen out of his front shirt pocket, but Ivy had already taken hers from her jacket’s inner pocket and clicked it open. “If you could sign here, saying that you took responsibility of the zombie after it encroached on your property, and then this one releasing your rights to it.”
He extended his pen to me when Ivy began signing with her own, but I wouldn’t take it. “Responsibility?” I echoed. “We knocked it down and took it to the zoo.”
“Sign the paper or he’s yours.” Ivy finished her scrawl and spun the papers to me. “You don’t want one that old. Too much maintenance.”
“I don’t want one at all,” I said, and Edden’s mustache bunched up.
“Then sign the paper. Here, and again here. Unless you want him back.”
I looked down, not wanting to read the gobbledygook. Ivy hadn’t. There was a picture of Mr. Z in his grungy lab coat and empty pocket protector that made me wonder how many people had seen and ignored him on his ramblings to our graveyard. “I swear, Edden, if this comes back to bite me, I will take it out of your hide. We tried to call it in, and no one would come.”
Edden’s posture eased as I bent low to sign, putting a period after my name so the signature couldn’t be used to target a spell to me. “And we at the FIB appreciate you handling it,” he said cheerfully. “Last night was busy, and because everyone is afraid to look over the edge of the box they put themselves in, it hit my desk. Three days of someone’s shoddy work is now my problem.”
But he didn’t seem to be unhappy about it as I straightened from my uncomfortably low stoop. A warning flag snapped in my thoughts when Ivy nodded, the motion hardly there. She knew something about it, whatever it was.
“Honestly, Rachel,” Edden said as he tucked the papers into the file, “you don’t know how good you have it, being able to pick and choose your runs.”
“Uh, huh?” My stare at Ivy became a squint, and a flash of thrill hit me when her eyes met mine and darted away. Three days of shoddy work landing on Edden’s desk? “You got the first human-on-human lethal domestic dispute, didn’t you,” I said, remembering the newscast I’d turned off, and Edden nodded, smile wide.
Cincy wasn’t known for its violent crime. Oh, it happened, but the city wasn’t known for it, and the recent spate of Inderland passion crimes ending in death was unusual. The media was busy inventing reasons for it, but the FIB would be involved now if there had been a human fatality.
“How did you get ahold of the I.S. reports?” I asked, my eyes immediately flicking back to Ivy. She was the only one who’d share information with the FIB like that—which meant she was working the cases and hadn’t told me. I put a hand on my hip, peeved.
“Ivy,” Edden said, confirming it. “Which means I have the straight poop, not the watered-down pap we usually get,” he added in satisfaction as he tucked the folder under his arm.
Which was true, but it still hurt that Ivy hadn’t told me she was working the case. “Banshee?” I offered, trying to keep the annoyance from my voice. Mia was still in custody as her lawyers tried to balance the logic of raising a child with special needs against Mia’s multiple assaults and murders to accomplish it. But that didn’t mean one of Mia’s sisters wasn’t trying to encroach on her city.
Edden shook his head, but I was more interested in Ivy’s wince. “The I.S. says no,” he said, “and seeing as I’m getting my information from Ivy, I believe them.”
Eyebrows high, I faced Ivy.
“Oh,” Edden said, only now noticing Ivy’s discomfort, “I guess you didn’t tell Rachel you’re working the cases.”
“Only because I’ve dealt with banshees,” Ivy said, but it didn’t explain why she hadn’t told me.
“How come you didn’t tell me you were working this?” I finally said, and Edden rocked back a step. “The confidentiality barrier never stopped you before.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” Ivy glanced at Edden, her apparent guilt far more obvious than her annoyance. “But since they released it to the media this morning, I can say it’s not a banshee. My moulage-reading skills are not court rated, but it’s obvious that the emotion left at every crime scene is exactly what you’d expect. If it was a banshee, there’d be no residual emotion left at all.”
Released to the media, I mused, miffed. I knew the law, but I knew how to keep my mouth shut, too. “Okay,” I s
aid, trying to keep my voice light so the disappointment wouldn’t show. “Well, when you want to know what or who’s doing it, let Jenks and me know.” Ivy was right. It wasn’t my job to figure out what was behind the attacks. But if I had my way, it would have been.
“Rachel . . . ,” Ivy protested.
Edden took an awkward step back. “Thanks for the paperwork, ladies,” he said with forced cheerfulness.
“You know I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation,” Ivy said, but the pheromones she was unconsciously putting out to ease the situation had broken through the zombie stink, and the vampire scar on my neck was tingling. Worse, it irked me that she was right, and then I got mad that I was irked. But seeing as we were arguing, getting in her car wasn’t a good idea.
“Edden, can I hitch a ride with you back to the church?” I asked, giving Ivy a sour smile to try to tell her it was okay. “I left my car there.”
“Seriously?” Ivy complained, thinking I was mad at her, which I was, but I was only trying to keep from pushing her vampire buttons. “I was invited to the scenes as a matter of courtesy. I couldn’t talk about it, and I didn’t bring it up because the I.S. is handling it. And if you’re going to do this with every case I have, then we are going to have real problems.”
“I get that,” I said forcefully. “But you really think it’s a good idea I get in a car with you right now?”
Ivy’s eyes went to my neck, and I stiffened, suppressing the tendril of promise just her focused attention sent through me. She was hungry. Working in the I.S. tower all night around the long-undead did that to a girl. Ivy caught her breath, then smiled to show a slip of fang as she found a compliment in there somewhere.
“Ah, sure. I can drop you off,” Edden said, nervous now for an entirely different reason. “But can you come out to the FIB once you get your car? I came out here for more than paperwork.”
My head jerked up, and my breath caught. The I.S. had made it clear I wasn’t invited, but the FIB was another story. Edden wanted me in on this? “Really?” I said, voice high, and Edden chuckled as he shared a look with Ivy.