Home Improvement: Undead Edition (6 page)

A bright glow radiated from the quartz in the center of the workshop.

This wasn’t right at all. She had to find her master, had to tell him something was amiss. She turned and floated back toward the stairs.

And stopped.

Had she just heard . . . her name?

She cast glances into every corner of the room. Nobody.

Was her imagination playing tricks on her? Since she was barely a ghost, a thing artificial, a puff of magic herself, she had to wonder if she even had an imagination. And anyway,
house maiden
wasn’t technically her “name.”

She hovered, waiting to see if she heard it again.

“IN HERE, YOU
stupid cow!” Broahm screamed.

His magically amplified voice shook the interior of the capture gem like an earthquake.

He jumped up and down, waved his arms, and tried to imagine how it must look inside his workshop. He could see the shimmering figure of the house maiden blurred through the quartz. “Pay attention, you dumb ghostly transparent bitch!”

Broahm had used both his remaining spells.

First, the light spell. He’d taken twenty steps back from the quartz wall and had jabbed his dagger into the ground among the blades of thick blue grass. Then he’d focused on the hilt, casting the light spell with all the intensity he could muster. When he was finished casting the light spell on the dagger, he couldn’t look at it, had to turn away. The blinding light scorched his eyes, and he’d turned back toward the quartz wall, hoping it would act as a lens and project his shadow where the house maiden could see it.

Then the voice spell. Broahm liked this spell a lot. It could do various things depending on how you cast it. It could make Broahm’s voice seem appealing to others, not a bad trick when trying to make an argument and convince someone. It could also throw his voice up to half a mile away, a magically charged ventriloquism. It this case, Broahm had simply gone for volume. The spell made his voice boom like a Titan’s, but though it was ear-shatteringly loud within the capture gem, Broahm could only hope it made it to the outside.

“House maiden! I’m trapped in the quartz! Damn it! HOUSE MAIDEN!”

It wasn’t working. A leaden feeling crept into Broahm’s gut. What if she couldn’t hear him? What if she wasn’t able to go for help? House maidens were the simplest sorts of servants, not terribly bright. She would simply go dormant until her master called for her. It might be weeks before anyone was curious enough to come looking for Broahm. Months? Years? Broahm did not like the idea of being trapped forever in the blue world.

A sudden panic gripped him. He shouted again, jumped, waved his arms. Damn it, she wasn’t hearing him.

Broahm screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed.

SULTON ARRIVED AT
the small cottage. It belonged to a journeyman wizard named Bortz. If all went well, he’d sell him on the usual package, and the usual scheme would unfold from there.

It had been two months since he’d sent Lorran to rob Broahm’s house and Lorran had vanished. Sulton wasn’t exactly sure what had happened. Either something had gone wrong, and Broahm had gotten the better of Lorran, or Lorran had stumbled upon something truly valuable in the wizard’s home and, not wanting to share it, had hoofed it into the night.

Either way, Sulton had lost a first-rate sneak thief, and it had taken weeks for him to find a suitable replacement.

Sulton was slowly but steadily getting rich. First, he robbed wizards’ households, the ones he suspected had poor security. As an accomplished wizard himself, he was able to circumvent most of the usual wards. Then he’d sell security systems to the victimized wizards. After that, when the time was ripe, he’d rob them again. More accurately, the thief he had on payroll would rob them again.

Sulton knocked on Bortz’s door.

A few seconds later a plump wizard in green robes opened the door and squinted at Sulton. He was short and innocuous.

“You must be Master Bortz. I’m Sulton from Wizard Home Security.”

“What?” The fat wizard blinked at him. “Oh, yes. I’d forgotten you were coming. I was in the middle of a star chart . . . well, never mind. Come in. Come in.”

Sulton followed the wizard through a narrow entryway and into a small sitting room. He made mental notes of the dwelling’s interior. They’d come in handy later when he briefed his new sneak thief.

“You’ve contacted us at a good time,” Sulton said. “The Wizard’s Quarter has been ravaged by a rash of burglaries this past year. You can’t be too careful when it comes to protecting your valuables. We can set you up with a system that will allow you to feel secure, knowing that your possessions—especially any rare magical items you might have—are safe and sound.”

Bortz snorted. “Guarding my knickknacks is the least of my worries. I want to make sure my throat isn’t cut in my sleep. Especially after the disappearance.”

Sulton raised an eyebrow.
The disappearance?
“Yes, well, your concern is . . . understandable.”

“I mean, wizards just vanishing? It’s enough to make you wonder. That fellow just recently, the mage who lived a few doors down. Broahm, I think his name was.” Bortz snapped his fingers. “Gone just like that. Not a note, not a word to anyone. Foul play wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”

Come to think of it, Sulton had heard something about Broahm being gone. Sulton had been curious but didn’t ask anyone about the details for fear of raising suspicion.

In the meantime, Sulton intended to use the situation to his advantage. If Bortz truly feared for his life, then Sulton might be able to sell him an elaborate spell package for an inflated price.

“These are dangerous times,” Sulton said somberly. “What’s money compared to your life? We can spell your household in a way that guarantees your safety. The simple fact of the matter is that you
can
buy peace of mind. It’s not cheap, but you’ll sleep at night.”

Bortz was nodding. “Yes. That’s what I want. Okay, let’s talk.” Bortz gestured through a low, arched doorway. “I’ve just made a pot of tea in the kitchen. Come on. I’ll pour you a cup.”

Sulton stepped into the kitchen and—

Blue light flashed, blinded him, the world spinning.

Disoriented.

Sulton sat up, looked around, and saw that he was in a world entirely of blue.

BROAHM CAME DOWN
the back stairs into Bortz’s small kitchen. “He’s in there?”

Bortz pointed to the blue quartz on the wooden table next to his teapot. “It worked just as you described. Has he really been ripping off wizards all over the Quarter?”

Broahm bent and squinted at the quartz, wondering if he could see a tiny Sulton in there. It had taken Broahm a little over two weeks to duplicate the capture gem spell and set it up in Bortz’s kitchen. A nice little bit of wizarding if Broahm said so himself. The real trick had been raising the slain burglar. You can’t interrogate a zombie. They just slobber and try to bite you. So Broahm had been a bit clever, combining the zombieraising spell and a mind-reading charm and tying them together in a way that allowed the zombie burglar to be questioned. Bortz had helped.

“The burglar told us everything,” Broahm reminded Bortz. “Sulton has been getting obscenely rich off his fellow wizards.”

“I must admit,” Bortz said, “when your house maiden woke me out of a sound sleep in the wee hours in the middle of a raging blizzard, well, it gave me quite a start.”

“I’m just glad she finally heard me and was able to fetch you,” Broahm said. The thought of being trapped forever in the blue quartz still gave him a little shiver.

“So now that you’ve caught him, what are you going to do with him?” Bortz asked.

“I don’t know.” Broahm grinned at the chunk of quartz in the middle of the table. “But I’m going to take my sweet time thinking about it.”

Gray

PATRICIA BRIGGS

It was raining, a desultory, reluctant angry rain forced unwillingly from the gray clouds overhead. It dribbled with the fiendish rhythm of a Chinese water torture. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Elyna’s windshield wipers squeaked until she turned them off. But the drops still came down to obscure her sight. From old habit, she pulled into the space that had been hers.

She’d first parked there a couple of times because the space had been open. When she’d moved in with Jack, a lifetime ago, it was seldom open again because her car was in it. After a while if it wasn’t available for her little Ford, she’d curse the visitor who’d stolen it and find some other, less convenient parking place. When that happened, she’d go out to check before bedtime to see if it was open. If it was, she’d repark her car where it would be happy.

“Cars just are, darlin’,” Jack would tell her with a grin as he escorted her out of the apartment to keep watch as she moved the Ford. “They aren’t happy or sad.”

Jack had been in love with her, though, and was patient with her little ways. He’d loved her and she’d loved him in that wholehearted eager fashion that only the young and innocent have—secure in the knowledge that there was nothing so terrible it could tear them apart. Having successfully overcome her Polish and his Irish parents’ objections to their match had only given her more confidence.

She was less innocent now.

Much, much less innocent.

Parking in that old spot had been habit, but it sat in her belly like a meal too cold. This was a bad idea. She knew it, but she couldn’t give it up without trying to mend what she had . . .
lost
was the wrong word.
Destroyed
might have been a more apt one.

She rubbed her cold arms with colder hands, then turned off the motor. Without its warm hum, it was very quiet in the car.

She got out at last, locked the doors with the key fob, and left her car in the parking place that probably belonged to someone else now. Blinking back the aimless raindrops, she tromped through the slush from what must have been last week’s snow on the sidewalk.

Only then did she look at the gray stone apartment building ahead.
Did they still call it an apartment building when all of the apartments were being sold as condominiums?

It wasn’t a particularly large building, three floors, six apartments, surrounded by a small front parklike area that had always managed to insert a little color in the summer without requiring maintenance or inviting anyone to linger. This evening, with winter still reigning despite the rain that fell instead of snow, there was no color to be had.

The cut granite edges of the steps were familiar and alien at the same time, worn in a way they hadn’t been when this had been
their
home—and that strangeness hurt.

Next to the door, blown into the corner of the building, lay a little Valentine’s Day card with a heart on it. The ink had run, fading out the
BE MINE
to a grayish semidecipherable mush. Only the name
Jack
scribed in black crayon was still clear. It was both irony and a sign, she thought, but she didn’t know if a child’s wet card was a good portent or not.

She looked up to the topmost windows with longing eyes and murmured, “Be mine, Jack?”

She rang the bell on the side of the door, a new plastic button surrounded by stainless steel, and a buzz released the door lock. The real estate agent must have beaten her here.

She wiped her tennis shoes off on the mat in front of the door and stepped into a small foyer. At first glance, she thought the room hadn’t changed at all. Then she realized that the names written in Sharpie below the numbers on the box were different from the names she had known, and the wooden handrail next to the stairs had been replaced with the same polished steel as the doorbell.

“Our place, Elyna, just think of it!”
Jack’s voice rang in sudden memory, full of eagerness and life.

The wooden handrail had had a notch in it from when they’d hit it, she and Jack, with the sharp edge of her metal typist desk, carrying it up to their new home. She hadn’t realized she had been looking forward to seeing that stupid notch until it wasn’t there.

She looked down and saw that the new handrail was dented a little, too. She knew better than to do something like that; she had better control. But that notch had been a memory of laughter and . . . poor Jack had hated that desk, its industrial ugliness an affront to his artistic eye. Still, he’d helped her carry it all the way up the stairs to their third-floor apartment.

She’d paid him back, on top of the desk wearing (at least at first) a cream-colored lace teddy her mother had given her in a small, tastefully wrapped package with instructions to open it in private. Jack hadn’t minded the desk so much after that.

And those kinds of thoughts weren’t going to help Elyna tonight.

She continued up the stairs, trailing her hand over the new metal handrail, hard-won control keeping her hands open and light as they skimmed over the cold surface. On the third floor the real estate agent awaited her in a peacoat with damp shoulders. He had a closed rain-dampened umbrella in one hand.

“Ms. Gray,” he said, taking a step forward and reaching out with his free hand. “I’m Aubrey Tailor.”

“Yes,” she said, shaking his hand gravely. “Thank you for making time to meet me here. When I saw the ad, I just knew that this was the place.”

“You’re cold,” he said, sounding concerned. Delicately built and pretty, she tended to arouse protective instincts in some men. “There’s no heat in the condo right now.”

“It is February in Chicago,” Elyna told him. “Don’t worry, my hands are always a little cold.”

“Cold hands, warm heart,” he said, then flushed, because it was a little too personal when addressed to a single woman who was his client. He shook his head and gave her a sheepish smile. “At least that’s what my mother always said.”

“Mine, too,” she agreed. She liked him better for losing the slick salesman front—which might have been his intention all along. He let her go into the apartment first, closing the door between them. He’d wait outside, he’d told her, while she looked her fill.

Here was change that made that handrail pale in comparison.

The old oak floors Elyna had polished and cursed, because keeping them looking good was an ongoing war, were scarred and bedecked with stains that she hadn’t put on them. Her lips twisted in a snarl that made her grateful that the real estate agent had stayed outside.

Vampires are territorial and this was
her
home, the home of her heart.

One of the pretty leaded-glass windows that looked out on the street had been replaced with plain glass framed in white vinyl, giving the living room a lopsided look. Someone had started to tear down the plastered walls—messy work that had stopped about halfway. A piece of wallpaper showed where someone had broken through layers and layers of paper, plaster, and paint to a familiar scrap.

She pulled the chunk of plaster displaying that paper off the wall and sat down on the floor with the plaster in her lap. Was it her imagination or was there a rusty stain on the paper?

“Jack?” she said plaintively. “Jack?”

But, other than the normal sounds of a building with six apartments . . . condos . . . in it, five of them occupied, she heard nothing. She looked at the rest of the apartment—most of which she could see from where she sat—the gutted kitchen without the white cabinets, just odd-colored spots on the walls to show where they used to be. Bare pipes stuck out of the floor where the sink should have been, and wires dripped from the ceilings where once lights had illuminated her life.

Unable to look anymore, she put her forehead on her knees.

After a while she said, “Oh, Jack.” Then she took a deep breath and worked at getting herself put back into some kind of public-ready shape. She’d fed before she drove over, but emotional distress makes the Hunger worse, and her teeth ached and her nose insisted on remembering how good Mr. Aubrey Tailor had smelled when he’d blushed.

Something made a sighing noise in the empty apartment and she jerked her head up, all thoughts of hunger put aside. But nothing moved and there were no more sounds.

What had she expected? Time hadn’t stopped for her, why would it have stopped for this apartment? Since seeing that first newspaper article about it, she’d done her research. She’d walked in here knowing that the stripping of the old had already been begun, awaiting replacement by the new. The in-progress remodel hadn’t even bothered her until she saw it with her own eyes.

What was she doing here? The past was the past. She should strip it away just as the old plaster had been stripped from the living room wall. She should wash herself clean.

Outside, the rain slid down the windowpanes.

WHEN SHE HAD
the vampire within tamped down until it would take another vampire to see what she was, she opened the apartment door.

“As you can see,” the real estate agent said heartily—without looking at her—“it won’t take much to get it ready to become whatever you’d like. It’s good solid construction, built in 1911. You can put new flooring in, or strip the oak. It’s three-quarter-inch oak; you don’t see that in new construction. My client’s price is very good.”

“You had it sold twice this year,” Elyna said, keeping the anxiety and need out of her voice. She had money. Enough. But not so much that bargaining wouldn’t be a help.

“Ah.” He looked disconcerted. No one expected someone who looked as young and frivolous as she did to have half a brain. He cleared his throat. “Yes. Twice.”

“They both backed out before the papers were signed.”

He frowned at her. “I thought you didn’t have your own agent?”

“I took the downstairs neighbor, Josh, out to dinner yesterday.” He was a nice man about ten years older than she looked. She’d treated him, despite his argument. It had been only fair that she pay for his dinner since she’d intended he should serve as hers afterward. He’d not remember the dinner clearly or what they’d discussed. Nor would he see that it was a problem that he didn’t.

Elyna’s Mistress had had a talent for beguilement. She could have given him a whole set of memories clearer than what had actually happened. Elyna, whose talents lay in other places, made use of the more common vampire ability to cloud minds and calm potential meals.

“I see.” Elyna could tell from Aubrey’s tone that he knew the story that Josh had related to her.

Even so, she laid it out for him. “He told me that the man who bought the building to turn it into condos stayed in this apartment and fixed the others, one at a time. He finished the one over there”—she tipped her head toward the door to the other third-floor apartment—“moved in and started on this one. Only odd things started happening. First it was tools and small stuff disappearing. Then”—as the destruction increased—“it was perfectly stable ladders falling over with people on them. Sent an electrical contractor to the hospital with that one. Saws that turned themselves on at the worst possible time—they managed to reattach that man’s finger, Josh said. Chicago is a big city, but contractors do talk to each other. He couldn’t get a crew in here to work the place.” Elyna gave him a big friendly smile. “Some of that I already knew. I read the article in the neighborhood paper before I called you.” That article was why she had called him.

She could see him reevaluate her. Was she a kook who wanted a haunted house? Or was she just looking for a real bargain?

“I’m older than I look,” she told him, to help him make up his mind. “And I’m not a fool. Haunted or not, anyone looking at this apartment is going to start by getting appraisals from contractors. You haven’t had an offer on this place in six months.”

“A lot of bad luck doesn’t a haunted place make,” he said heartily, taking the bait. “All it takes is a few careless people. The man who lived here before my client, lived here for twenty years and never saw any ghost. I have his phone number and you can talk to him.”

“It doesn’t matter if I’m convinced it’s not haunted,” she told him. “It matters what the contractors think.”

He looked grim.

“I’m willing to make an offer,” she said. “But I’m going to have to pay premium prices to get anyone in to do the work, and that affects my bottom line.”

And they got down to business. Aubrey had the paperwork for the offer with him. They took care of signatures, she fed from him, and then both of them went their separate ways in the night. Aubrey, with a new affection for Elyna, would be determined to make a good bargain for her regardless of the effect it might have on his commission. She felt guilty—a little—but not as much as she would have if he hadn’t tried to take advantage of her supposed ignorance.

ELYNA’S PHONE RANG
while she was in the hotel shower. She answered it with her hair dripping onto the thick green carpeting. Only after she answered did she remember that she wouldn’t be punished for not answering the phone right away anymore.

“Elyna,” said Sean, one of the vampires who’d belonged to Corona with her. Without waiting for her greeting, he continued, “You are being foolish. There are plenty of places without seethes where you could settle. Colbert doesn’t play nicely with others and you won’t be able to hide from him forever.”

Pierre Colbert was the Master of Chicago, and a nasty piece of business he was. He’d driven the Mistress and what he’d left of her seethe out of Chicago about thirty years ago. Elyna had met him only once, and that was enough. He wouldn’t bother driving her out. He’d just destroy her—if he noticed she was in his territory.

“Elyna,” coaxed Sean’s voice in her ear. “Come back to Madison. Take your rightful place here.”

Never. That much Elyna was certain of. Sean had been her lover sometimes—two frightened people finding what solace they could. Usually they’d been friends, too, and more often allies. But Elyna wasn’t strong enough to hold the seethe—and Sean knew it. If she went back, he’d kill her to establish his power. Or maybe he was working for someone else, someone more powerful: There were several that came to mind.