2 Death Rejoices (47 page)

“Maybe it wasn't your fault. I can see how it might have happened. Dunnachie attacks the house, the vampires go nuts. Not your fault. Nobody expects you to control the monsters.”

“Revenants,” I reminded him. “It's not even six-thirty and you're busting my chops.”

He walked beside me in silence most of the way back to the cabin. As we passed the clump of asphalt where Zombie Dunnachie tried to maul me, he said, “You wanted to talk about Dunnachie, let's do that.”

“Changed my mind,” I said, “I want a do-over.”

“You're a smart woman. You get yourself into some pretty stupid situations. It's occurred to me that you're pulling a
Matlock
: feign bumpkin so your opponent dismisses your intellect.”

“Man, I wish that was true,” I said. “Can we pretend that's what I do? That's a lot cooler than me being a dolt.”

“Okay, how about this? You put yourself in dangerous situations so that a man will rescue you. Maybe you have daddy issues, a father who shunned or ignored you. This is your way of getting male attention.”

I squinted up at him. “Remind me why we're friends?”

He smiled. I thought it was smug this time. “Male attention.”
Oh, snap, you ginger bastard. I'd been ginger-snapped…. Point: Hood.
Et tu,
internal scoreboard?

After a moment, we rounded the corner and I could see my driveway again, the late summer grass scorched by the propane explosion, the gravel still stinking of death, cheese, and charred meat. “You ran me past the location of the snowmobile the other morning.”

“‘Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move,’” he quoted.

“Sun Tzu.” I stopped in my tracks and put my gloved hands on my hips. “Are we at war, Rob?”

“Us?” He squinted at the rising sun coming off the lake and then cast his swampy green eyes at me. “Do we need to be?”

“Is that why you made sure Batten knew you'd been in my bedroom and in my shower?”

Hood faced me silently.

“That was no accident. Harry picked up on it when you came out for a cup of espresso. Which, by the way, you didn't even drink. You poured it down the bathroom sink; I saw the coffee film. So you came out to flash your half-naked bod at my revenant. Then you hung around because Batten was there, and waited for the perfect time to exit the cabin and make a pile of innuendos. What I can't figure out is why. Does that accomplish something for you? No, wait… you've got the hots for Hard-Ass Batten, so you were trying to make him dump me for your scrumptious, aw-shucks act. I think you're gonna need some more junk in your trunk to pull that one off, though.”

Hood attempted his serious Cop Face again and failed, half-smiling. “I like you, Mars. You'd be an excellent adversary. Very creative.”

“Adversary? I've never even been near Nottingham, and you're the Sheriff.” I gave up trying to be funny. “I thought we were on the same team here.”

“I hope so, I truly do.”

“You seriously think I had something to do with raising Dunnachie as a zombie?”

“You do have access to that kind of knowledge. First it was ghouls, and vampires, and witches, and now zombies. I don't pretend to understand any of it, but I know you do.”

“I don't claim to be a zombie expert, Rob. The only things I'm an expert in are dick jokes and cookie consumption.”

“We'll see,” he said. “As for your plan to wallop the federal agent?”

“Aw, crap. You're gonna tell on me, aren't you? You rat fink!” I pouted. “So much for your Good Cop routine.”

“No.” He nodded his approval. “You've got yourself a deal.”

“Boy, you're flip-flopping like a goldfish on a frat boy's tongue today.”

“I'll teach you what you want to know, because it's important for you to have some hand-to-hand fighting skills, and because I promised Batten and Chapel I'd toughen you up. But you'll owe me. What's it worth to you?”

“Do you like Hummers, Robin Hood?”

Hood's lips worked hard to squelch a grin, and I heard what I'd said.

“I meant the vehicle!” I squawked, red in the cheeks, pointing to the H1 in the shadows. “The Incredible Hulkmobile over there. Not the BJ. Everyone likes BJs.”

“You just shouldn't talk,” he advised. “Maybe not ever.”

“Want my H1 or not?”

He considered this, before leading me to my back yard. “Let's get started.”

C
HAPTER
37

TWO HOURS LATER,
I strolled out of the bedroom, towel-drying my hair and adjusting to the fact that Rob Hood might be gunning for me and/or becoming my best mortal friend. It was easy to come to terms with, since it was pretty much the same deal with everyone I knew. There was a broom out of place, against the wall. I took it as a not-so-subtle hint: perhaps I should help Harry clean now and then. Harry was at the table with a newspaper — the Sunday Times from England — and wearing his
pince nez
, pinching the corners of the paper so as not to black his fingertips.

“My, but don't you fill a room with life.” Harry's eyebrow rings twitched up in appreciation.

I sniffed my armpit. “I showered!”

“I meant your heart, darling; it's chugging like an old Studebaker.”

“That's one of them old-timey cars, right?”

Harry's lips pursed into a little moue; likely his distress wasn't at my hinting at his advanced age, but my butchering of the language. “Your grandfather, Matts, owned a black Studebaker Commander in 1953. I do recall it had lovely lines.”

“Speaking of cars,” I continued, “Hood's teaching me to kick Batten's ass. Don't tell anyone, it's a secret.”

Harry struggled to tweak a laugh behind pale, wriggling lips. “Surely, you jest.”

“You don't think it's a good idea?”

“
Au contraire, ma petite chou fleur
, a more marvelous idea you have never had. Only, would you not be more comfortable if I took care of the matter for you?”

“You'd break Batten.”

“Yes,” he mused, pure, genial murder gleaming in his cashmere eyes, “I would.”

“Besides,” I said. “I want to do it myself.”

“To what end?”

“Pride.”

“Pride?” His surprise matched Hood's, though Harry's came with a teasing twinkle. “You, my angel?”

I puffed out my cheeks in exasperation. “Yes, me, pride. Why is that so hard for everyone to get? And it's not just mine; I think Jerkface needs to be taken down a peg.”

At that, Harry grinned, and I could feel the warm rush of approval through our Bond, wrapping around me like a blanket fresh from the dryer. “Indeed, pride is remarkably absent in this home,” he assented. “The young sheriff has his work cut out for him.”

“If he manages to train me well enough, I'm giving him the Hummer, and by that, I mean my truck.”

Harry squawked like I'd pinched him, rolled the newspaper and used it to swat the table. “Fickle woman! I just bought you that hideous vehicle on your insistence, and so soon you are prepared to trade it away?”

“You're the one who gave away a frigging two million dollar Bugatti. And I only wanted another Buick,” I reminded him.

“You are not getting a Buick,” he enunciated crisply.

I waggled the broom at him. “Fine. Maybe I should make like Harry Potter and fly.”

“You may do no such thing!”

I blinked, surprised. “I was joking, I can't fly. Holy shit… I could fly?”

“Don't be daft,” he said, but he grabbed the broom, holding it at arm's length away from me. “Of course you cannot. Neither should you entertain the notion of attempting it; the last thing this world needs is an airborne Bara—” His eyes lit up, as though he had solved one of life's oldest riddles. “Of course,” he murmured, and drifted into the pantry with the broom. His Oxfords made light claps as he made his way down the basement stairs quickly.

I scowled after him, waiting for him to come back and explain his behavior. “Fine. Keep being cryptic, but don't be surprised when you wake up with a garlic clove shoved down your pants.” When he didn't respond, beyond slipping a tendril of distracted amusement via Bond, I threw my hands up in the air and began a search for brownies. After folding a brownie around one Twix bar and eating it like the best sandwich ever, I took my little white not-vitamins, thinking I never needed to see Asmodeus in my mirror ever again, and got back to work.

I went to my office bookshelves, avoiding the cabinet entirely. There was a soft rustling noise behind the cabinet's sliding door, like an open palm across plywood, a sickly drag. I tried not to picture Ruby Valli's Grimoire creeping like an inch worm, looking for attention; in the back of my mind, I heard the theme song from
Jaws
.

The rest of the day was spent researching. In my entire library, there were only a few chapters about necromancy scattered sparingly in some of the shadier texts, the ones written by people who were at least tiptoeing on the left hand path, if not skipping gleefully down it. I'd already read
The Serpent and the Rainbow
by Wade Davis, and everything published on the subject by anthropologist Zora Hurston. Still, certain nuances eluded even those who had links to modern sorcery and preternatural biology. Necromancy was not the easiest subject to wrap my head around, mostly because it was damn scary and I'd seen its results up close and in my face. In Haiti, home of the Vodou, it is a criminal offense to concoct zombie-making potions, and it's against the law to raise the dead, a risk taken so seriously that the concrete tombs of the recently deceased are often chained and padlocked shut against snatching hands. The costs for such black magic are severe, and the laws forbidding such things are equally rigorous. Again, I wondered if there were discoveries to be made in Ruby's Big Book of Badness, but Harry's voice in my head prevented me from exploring that option.

When I tried to sleep later that night, I had demon promises and Vodou threats making music in the auditorium of my skull. I'd have preferred a chorus line of male strippers, or even a zydeco AC/DC cover band.

It was after midnight when I realized, after hours of tossing, that I wasn't going to fall asleep with the combination of caffeine, questions and stress soft-shoeing through my skull. I was sure if I read the files again, without interruption or distraction, and applied the weight of my intellect, something would pop out at me. Preferably not from under my bed.

I pulled the chain on the bedside lamp but it didn't oblige with its usual warm halo of orange light. A quick dangle over the side of my bed with a fishing hand proved the lamp's cord was plugged in.

“Oh, good,” I murmured, “power's out. I wonder what…” A spatter of goosebumps rushed up my arms and I bolted upright. “Oh, this is it. This is the moment in every horror movie where the next victim goes hunting for the source of the power outage down in the basement and gets their head chomped off. Well, screw that.” I shuffled in my sheets, hugging them tighter to my knees, and announced to the room, “I don't do power outages. I'm staying right here.”

And sleeping?
my brain taunted.

“Well, maybe not sleeping.” My libido helpfully reminded me about Harry's amorous overtures from the night before, and my lack of battery-operated stress relief the other day, or
daemonis interruptus
as I'd taken to calling it. “But you can't stop me from relaxing, Multiverse.” I rummaged for a moment and came out with Mr. Buzz. “Battery operated, motherfuckers. Let's see your power outage ruin my good time.”

Naturally, no sooner had things begun to get interesting than my cell phone buzzed on the nightstand and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Cell phones: also battery operated. I realized I was brandishing a purple glow-in-the-dark vibrator as a weapon, and lowered it as I answered.

Batten's reduced volume reflected the late hour. “Power's out. You okay?”

“Of course I'm okay, why wouldn't I be okay? You think you're the only one who can be okay?”

“Sounding a little frazzled there, Snickerdoodle.”

“It's after midnight. Don't you think you might be interrupting something?”

His answer was a soft snort of derision. “What are you doing?”

“I'm crooning ABBA songs to my vibrator. He likes a little romance while I use and abuse him.”

He was quiet a beat; I used the opportunity to apologize. “I'm sorry, Agent Batten. ‘Romance’ is this thing two people do when they really like one another.” I was all set to elaborate when it occurred to me I wasn't equipped to describe any examples of romantic activity, and how fucking sad was that?

Worse yet, Batten knew it. “You wouldn't know romance if it slapped you on the ass.”

“Romance wouldn't slap me on the ass,” I parried. “It would stroke my ass and tell me I'm sweet.”

“Romance would be lying.”

“Romance often does,” I informed him seriously.

I thought I heard him chuckle. “What song?”

Leaning back against my headboard, I tried not to smile, tapping the vibe against my kneecaps. “The Day Before You Came.”

“Don't know that one,” he said, “but it sounds appropriate.”

“I could hum you a few bars, but you'll wish I hadn't.”

“Pass.” I heard the rustle of papers. “Got a call on a body; we need to get motoring. Know where Glenwood Springs is? Near Aspen?”

“Can we pretend I don't? At least for another six minutes?”

“This comes first.”

“Wanna bet?”

“I'll be over in three minutes,” he warned. “Be ready.”

“Hmm, that's pretty quick, but I bet I've got time.”

“Marnie.” His voice was a frustrated growl.

“And don't interrupt me. Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually need you for this.”

“Leave it to you to make me spiral out of control.”

“Are you really spiraling, or just twirling around in your room?”

He hung up with an aggravated, “Ugh.”

I slammed Mr. Buzz in the drawer, wondering why Batten's voice had effectively turned me off when the rest of him usually made me weak in the knees. Maybe the prospect of driving to Glenwood Springs was a buzz-kill. I smirked at the pun and swung out of bed. Dressed, I padded out to find Harry in the living room, reading by candlelight; his affection for candelabras was occasionally practical. He looked
up from a novel, peering over his
pince nez
to examine my jeans and Super Grover t-shirt, his lips pursed with disapproval.