2 Death Rejoices (62 page)

It took me half a second to clue in. “Which one? I mean… of course not, love spells are black magic.”

“But love is a good thing.”

“Not forced-by-magic love. That's like heart rape.”

She nodded. “Raping a heart can't be good.”

“It's one of the worst things you can do to a person: take away their free will and their own genuine emotions. I'd turn him into a toad before I forced him to love me.” I scowled, feeling exposed. “Not that I could. Or would even consider looking up how. Anyways, I don't know who you're talking about. And why the hell do you ask?”

“Batten,” she said, not fooled but humoring me. “He's so far out of your league. It makes no sense for him to be looking at you the way he does. I can't figure out what he's seeing.”

I bared my teeth at her in what was surely the most maniacal fake smile that had ever lain upon my face. “Maybe it's my warm, sparkling personality.”

“Shit's warm, and icebergs sparkle.”

My lips twitched, and I had to admit, if she were aiming that sharp tongue at anyone else, I'd be laughing.

“Maybe I bring a little charming clarity to his otherwise crushingly dark existence.”

The eye-roll that engendered made it very, very easy to picture ankh-shaped eyeliner being big part of her past. Nobody disses a poorly-executed mope harder than a former goth.

I poured her another glass of lemonade. She looked suspiciously into it, as if I'd waste my time poisoning her. “It's fine, you're not worth going to prison for.”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe it's the youth thing?” I suggested.

She looked like she was giving that serious consideration. “Meaning?”

“Well, I know I'm plain. But in fifty years, I'll still look like a plain-faced twenty-five-year-old. You're
a lot
better looking than me now, truth be told, but by then you'll be a wrinkly-ass old hag with a prolapsed vagina and permanent titty-sag.” I smiled sweetly.

Golden's lips pinched together and she went back to reading, or pretending to read. A few minutes more passed, during which the crunch of our pretzels was punctuated by bird song and a softly whispering breeze.

“You did okay,” she said finally. “At the fish camp, I mean.”

I didn't know what to say; I
had
done okay. Who would have predicted that?

“I'm not going to pretend I understand much of it,” she continued, “but I appreciate what you did for me at the shed. I'm sorry I gave you a hard time.” She pressed her cool glass against her forehead. “I should maybe learn to listen better.”

“Are you being human?”

She gave a one-shouldered shrug.

“Don't do that, you're creeping me out,” I said, and tried not to smile. She tried not to either.

“So, what do you see in him?”

I gave her an
are-you-shitting-me
stare.

“Besides the obvious,” she said. “Sure, he's hot, but big deal. He can be such a hard-ass. Is he romantic?”

“Mark Batten is about as romantic as a Valentine's Day card that says ‘Just the tip, baby’.”

“And the other one?” she asked. “The skinny-dipping vampire?”

“Saw that, huh?”

“We all did. When Chapel helped him out of the lake, after you stormed off, I got quite an eyeful.”

“Fun fact: most types of undead avoid water, because that's where their power fades, and running water is worse.” I turned a magazine page, looking at stuff I'd never buy, mentally purchasing things and imagining how I'd use them. “Shaw's Fist has currents that dull Harry's power.”

“What about rivers?”

“Yep, and showers. Or draining bathtubs, even.”

“Come on,” Golden scoffed.

“How many times have you seen the living dead in a bathtub? Between zero and three times? That's what I thought.”

“But the zombie deputy came out of the lake, you said.”

“He had no choice, he'd been raised th—” My jaw dropped open.

“What?”

“Oh, I'm such a dumbass. If he was raised there …” I thumbed Batten's number on my cell. “There's got to be evidence along the coastline. The cadaver dogs should be able to find the spot, at least. Hey,” I said when Batten answered.

“Don't start.”

“Start what?”

“I don't want to hear any whining about Golden.”

“I'm not whining about Golden,” I said, rolling my eyes over at her. “She's a perfectly lovely person, if you hadn't noticed.”

“Just get her up to speed and don't give me grief.”

I held the phone away from my mouth so I wouldn't take his head off. “Yeah,” I whispered to Golden. “Romantic. And
so
charming, did I mention the fucking charm?”

I said into the phone, “Take the K9 units along the north shore of the lake again, all the way around. Focus on where Hood found the snowmobile. The cadaver dogs will freak out in the spot where the
bokor
raised Dunnachie. There's got to be the taint of death and UnDeath there. Maybe the CSIU or the CDC guys can pick up some evidence of whatever the
bokor
used there in the ritual. If you get me something I can Grope, I can bust this case open.”

For a moment, he was quiet. I waited for an apology, knowing pigs would fly before I'd get one.

“Right. On it,” was his gruff reply. “Any ideas where Spicer's hiding out, yet?”

I flipped another magazine page, dream-bought some shoes. “I'm putting the full weight of my subconscious to work on it while I space-out. That almost never fails.”

He hung up on me.

I glared at the phone. “Good work, Dr. Baranuik. Why, thank you, Special Agent Cockbucket.”

Golden gave me a commiserating little moue of her lips.

I rested my head back against the lounger and let the sun warm my face. “This is great. I hardly hate you at all now.”

“Ditto.” She crossed her bare feet at the ankles. “Can I confess something to you?

“You probably shouldn't,” I advised. “I'll mock you if it's silly, and I suck at secret-keeping.”

“I transferred from behavioral sciences because I thought the whole monster thing would be…” She foundered.

“Less mundane? Weird? Creepy-fun? Sexy?”

She admitted, “Maybe. And my first couple cases were exciting. Challenging. The zombie thing, though, it's getting to me. I can't sleep. I can't even relax, really. There's a knot in my gut like back at the academy when all I could think of were my grades, where all my focus was on this one thing. Now, I can't stop washing my hands; I keep thinking there's plague on them. Everything I touch, I wonder if a zombie brushed by it, and if it would be tainted. And I have nightmare after nightmare about being eaten.”

“Zombies aren't scary because they eat you.” I mowed through a few more pretzel sticks, because I do subtle about as well as Batten
does charming. “Lots of things can eat you. A mountain lion can eat you. Agent Batten can eat you.”

Golden crooked an eyebrow and I gave her a girl-to-girl
oh, yeah
look. To my surprise, her head rocked back and she gave a loud, stress-busting laugh.

“That good?” she asked.

“I don't like you enough to dish details,” I said, “but try not to be annoying for the rest of the day and maybe I'll tell you later. Which will make my sister absolutely fucking weep with jealousy; because she's such a bitch, I haven't told her a thing yet.”

“So, if zombies aren't scary because of the eating thing, why can't I sleep?”

“Zombies are scary because they
infect
you. They make you one of them.”

She looked away from me to stare at the yard in thought; her face drained in a rush, and the Blue Sense flared. My belly responded to a hiccup of terror from her direction. She pointed, finger shaking, at the end of the drive.

“So I shouldn't be terrified that that zombie will eat me?”

I blinked in open-mouthed astonishment and we sprang out of the loungers in unison like a dance team beginning a well-choreographed number, her in bare feet, me in my flip-flops. Tactical dress, not so much.

Just beyond the driveway, where the road met a ditch, a zombie stood fingering his fly-speckled mouth. It was pretty easy to peg as a Type C on sight, what with the skin slipping off the bones in a fleshy avalanche from the knees down; it looked like it had puffy tan skin-socks rolled down to the ankle. In the underlight of the shaded road, it sapped all rationality from behind my eyes right before devouring all expectation of my ever sleeping again.

Its soft gibbering was a low, slobbering mockery of language, like words from a drug-softened tongue. This one had disintegrated quickly, and the only thing marking it as the late Roger Kelly was the crusty uppermost half of a curly-tailed, tawny-brown chimp suit.

That, and the missing top half of his skull.

C
HAPTER
51

“
AHHH!
Zombie dentist in a chimp suit! Zombie dentist in a chimp suit!” I danced away on the balls of my feet, shaking my hands in quicksilver horror. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh
fuckanut!”

“Marnie?” Golden prompted. She had her Glock in her hands. It would do no good: Roger Kelly had no brain to shoot. The head was an open bowl from the back; I'd seen it at the fish shack two days ago, and it couldn't have improved much.

Zombie Roger began to run at us, full-out. My brain tilted from fight to flight.

“My bad,” I cried. “Run!”

“Where?”

I couldn't think. Raw, stropping panic stole what little wit I might have once commanded. It moved quickly, and in seconds it was on us; it swiped at Golden. She had frozen in place, grabbing her bag of pretzels in the crook of her left arm to hold it like a security blanket, aiming the Glock one-handed with her right hand.

I ran forward and kicked the zombie in the crotch.

The zombie went “
derp,”
and I lost a flip-flop to the fursuit.

“He's got no feelings, why did I kick him in the junk?” I shouted at no one in particular — to the yard, to the Goddess, to Golden — but if I didn't know, they probably didn't, either. I hooked Golden by the elbow and screamed, “Go, go, go!”

As I hurtled to the house behind her, the ground snuck up on me and I promptly face-planted on the lawn, skidding both knees in the grass. I lurched up the porch steps and threw myself into the cabin after Golden, slid on the rug, and went down on my knees again,
hitting the hall floor but feeling nothing in my panic. My sweat-slick palm slipped on the linoleum and made wet, sloppy noises as I scrambled for purchase.

“Un-invite him!” Golden yelled.

“That doesn't work with zombies! Zombies don't need permission to break into your house!” I didn't have time to point out that he hadn't been invited in the first place. I am obviously a terrible hostess to the slavering undead. There weren't even any finger sandwiches, and I wasn't about to provide fingers.

As if to prove it, the zombie roared into the hall on our heels. I vaulted up in a mad panic. Slapping the bowl of apples off the kitchen table onto the floor to trip the zombie, I tore around the table to put it between us, my single flip-flop slapping the floor loudly.

It nearly went down on the apples; one hip shot to one side as its balance wavered.

“Silverware!” I shouted at Golden, pointing at the chest above the microwave. Her hands were a jangling blur as she dropped the bag of pretzels, holstered her gun, plucked out several pieces of silverware at random and started chucking them in my direction. I dodged butter knives haphazardly slung at my head and snatched at something sailing toward my face, jerking back. A two-pronged pickle fork.

The zombie said, “
huuuurgl-raaawr
” and darted forward against the corner of the table, shaking it hard enough to dislodge the Coke bottle full of roses, which took a rolling bump off the edge. It came at me like an aged uncle wanting a hug at a family reunion. Saying a prayer, I lunged forward like a fencer, thrust my ungloved hand forward, and jammed the pickle fork towards the open maw, angled up into its soft palate. The tines sank in with a meat-piercing sound, a wet crunch, effectively propping its mouth open.

“Salt shaker,” I cried, pointing to the back of the stove, knowing it wouldn't be enough. My rock salt was with Batten, having been transferred to his kit. I flicked the nubby stopper out of the bottom anyways and palmed the salt. “Pretzel bag!”

Golden blinked, uncomprehendingly, at the bag still clutched in her left hand.

“Gimme the goddamned pretzels!”

I flung my scant handful of salt at the zombie's mouth, but spattered ineffectively off its face. This wasn't going to work if it kept wobbling around, trying to lurch at me. I felt behind me on the counter, and my fingers brushed the butcher block.

A horrible idea tickled my mind; before I could get too grossed-out to take advantage of it, I snatched two steak knives, dove at the floor, log-rolled to the zombie's sloughing shins, and slammed a knife as hard as I could through one putrid bare foot and into the linoleum floor. I tried not to hear the knife sink through soft tissue with a
spluh-thunk
and did the same thing to the other foot.

While the zombie's rot-slicked tongue worked around the pickle fork, slurping and clucking, I rolled away again, jumped up to take the pretzel bag from Golden, and tried to shovel the pretzels out of the bag without spilling the pile of salt cubes rattling around at the bottom. Zombie Roger's jaws made uneven headway moving down the fork, driving the tines deeper. Something brown spurted in a foul fountain from its mouth. My best guess was that the fork had hit the nasal passages, and the world's nastiest sinus infection had just drained all over my linoleum. My last case saw my kitchen strewn with ghoul scum; zombie phlegm was not an improvement.

I knew what I had to do, but knowing wasn't the same as doing, or doing well, not without getting myself killed or infected. Tipping the pretzel bag up, I aimed it down the chute of the zombie's forked-open mouth, just as its left foot tore free of the knife with a fleshy tearing sound I may never forget.

The zombie hissed pretzel breath at me, but that was all I'd accomplished.
So much for salt. Who came up with these half-assed ideas for what works against the undead, anyway? If I get out of this alive, I'm gonna punt them right in the squidgy bits.