4
   The alarm screamed. I rolled over swatting at the buttons on top of the digital clock. Surely to God, I'd hit the snooze button soon. I finally had to prop myself up on one elbow and actually open my eyes. I turned off the alarm and stared at the glowing numbers. 6:00 A.M. Shit. I'd only gotten home at three.
   Why had I set the alarm for six? I couldn't remember. I am not at my best after only three hours of sleep. I lay back down in the still warm nest of sheets. My eyes were fluttering shut when I remembered. Dominga Salvador.
   She had agreed to meet me at 7:00 A.M. today. Talk about a breakfast meeting. I struggled out of the sheet, and just sat on the side of the bed for a minute. The apartment was absolutely still. The only sound was the hush-hush of the air-conditioning. Quiet as a funeral.
   I got up then, thoughts of blood-coated teddy bears dancing in my head.
   Fifteen minutes later I was dressed. I always showered after coming in from work no matter how late it was. I couldn't stand the thought of going to bed between nice clean sheets smeared with dried chicken blood. Sometimes it's goat blood, but more often chicken.
   I had compromised on the outfit, caught between showing respect and not melting in the heat. It would have been easy if I hadn't planned to carry a gun with me. Call me paranoid, but I don't leave home without it.
   The acid washed jeans, jogging socks, and Nikes were easy. An Uncle Mike's inter-pants holster complete with a Firestar 9mm completed the outfit. The Firestar was my backup piece to the Browning Hi-Power. The Browning was far too bulky to put down an inter-pants holster, but the Firestar fit nicely.
   Now all I needed was a shirt that would hide the gun, but leave it accessible to grab and shoot. This was harder than it sounded. I finally settled on a short, almost middrift top that just barely fell over my waistband. I turned in front of the mirror.
   The gun was invisible as long as I didn't forget and raise my arms too high. The top, unfortunately, was a pale, pale pink. What had possessed me to buy this top, I really didn't remember. Maybe it had been a gift? I hoped so. The thought that I had actually spent money on anything pink was more than I could bear.
   I hadn't opened the drapes at all yet. The entire apartment was in twilight. I had special-ordered very heavy drapes. I rarely saw sunlight, and I didn't miss it much. I turned on the light over my fish tank. The angelfish rose towards the top, mouths moving in slow-motion begging.
   Fish are my idea of pets. You don't walk them, pick up after them, or have to housebreak them. Clean the tank occasionally, feed them, and they don't give a damn how many hours of overtime you work.
   The smell of strong brewed coffee wafted through the apartment from my Mr. Coffee. I sat at my, little two-seater kitchen table sipping hot, black Colombian vintage. Beans fresh from my freezer, ground on the spot. There was no other way to drink coffee. Though in a pinch I'll take it just about any way I can get it.
   The doorbell chimed. I jumped, spilling coffee onto the table. Nervous? Me? I left my Firestar on the kitchen table instead of taking it to the door with me. See, I'm not paranoid. Just very, very careful.
   I checked the peephole and opened the door. Manny Rodriguez stood in the doorway. He's about two inches taller than I am. His coal-black hair is streaked with grey and white. Thick waves of it frame his thin face and black mustache. He's fifty-two, and with one exception, I would still rather have him backing me in a dangerous situation than anyone else I know.
   We shook hands, we always do that. His grip was firm and dry. He grinned at me, flashing very white teeth in his brown face. "I smell coffee."
   I grinned back. "You know it's all I have for breakfast." He walked in, and I locked the door behind him, habit.
   "Rosita thinks you don't take care of yourself." He dropped into a near-perfect imitation of his wife's scolding voice, a much thicker Mexican accent than his own. "She doesn't eat right, so thin. Poor Anita, no husband, not even a boyfriend." He grinned.
   "Rosita sounds like my stepmother. Judith is sick with worry that I'll be an old maid."
   "You're what, twenty-four?"
   "Mm-uh."
   He just shook his head. "Sometimes I do not understand women."
   It was my turn to grin. "What am I, chopped liver?"
   "Anita, you know I didn't mean ... "
   "I know, I'm one of the boys. I understand."
   "You are better than any of the boys at work."
   "Sit down. Let me pour coffee in your mouth before your foot fits in again."
   "You are being difficult. You know what I meant." He stared at me out of his solid brown eyes, face very serious.
   I smiled. "Yeah, I know what you meant."
   I picked one of the dozen or so mugs from my kitchen cabinet. My favorite mugs dangled from a mug-tree on the countertop.
   Manny sat down, sipping coffee, glancing at his cup. It was red with black letters that said, "I'm a coldhearted bitch but I'm good at it." He laughed coffee up his nose.
   I sipped my own coffee from a mug decorated with fluffy baby penguins: I'd never admit it, but it is my favorite mug.
   "Why don't you bring your penguin mug to work?" he asked.
   Bert's latest brainstorm was that we all use personalized coffee cups at work. He thought it would add a homey note to the office. I had brought in a grey on grey cup that said, "It's a dirty job and I get to do it." Bert had made me take it home.
   "I enjoy yanking Bert's chain."
   "So you're going to keep bringing in unacceptable cups."
   I smiled. "Mm-uh."
   He just shook his head.
   "I really appreciate you coming to see Dominga with me."
   He shrugged. "I couldn't let you go see the devil woman alone, could I?"
   I frowned at the nickname, or was it an insult? "That's what your wife calls Dominga, not what I call her."
   He glanced down at the gun still lying on the tabletop. "But you'll take a gun with you, just in case."
   I looked at him over the top of my cup. "Just in case."
   "If it comes to shooting our way out, Anita, it will be too late. She has bodyguards all over the place."
   "I don't plan to shoot anybody. We are just going to ask a few questions. That's all."
   He smirked. "Por favor, Senora Salvador, did you raise a killer zombie recently?"
   "Knock it off, Manny. I know it's awkward."
   "Awkward?" He shook his head. "Awkward, she says. If you piss off Dominga Salvador, it's a hell of a lot more than just awkward."
   "You don't have to come."
   "You called me for backup." He smiled that brilliant teeth flashing smile that lit up his entire face. "You didn't call Charles or Jamison. You called me, and, Anita, that is the best compliment you could give an old man."
   "You're not an old man." And I meant it.
   "That is not what my wife keeps telling me. Rosita has forbidden me to go vampire hunting with you, but she can't curtail my zombie-related activities, not yet anyway."
   The surprise must have shone on my face, because he said, "I know she talked to you two years back, when I was in the hospital."
   "You almost died," I said.
   "And you had how many broken bones?"
   "Rosita made a reasonable request, Manny. You have four children to think of."
   "And I'm too old to be slaying vampires." His voice held irony, and almost bitterness.
   "You'll never be too old," I said.
   "A nice thought." He drained his coffee mug. "We better go. Don't want to keep the Senora waiting."
   "God forbid," I said.
   "Amen," he said.
   I stared at him as he rinsed his mug out in the sink. "Do you know something you're not telling me?"
   "No," he said.
   I rinsed my own cup, still staring at him. I could feel a suspicious frown between my eyes. "Manny?"
   "Honest Mexican, I don't know nuthin'."
   "Then what's wrong?"
   "You know I was vaudun before Rosita converted me to pure Christianity."
   "Yeah, so?"
   "Dominga Salvador was not just my priestess. She was my lover."
   I stared at him for a few heartbeats. "You're kidding?"
   His face was very serious as he said, "I wouldn't joke about something like that."
   I shrugged. People's choices of lovers never failed to amaze me. "That's why you could get me a meeting with her on such short notice."
   He nodded.
   "Why didn't you tell me before?"
   "Because you might have tried to sneak over there without me."
   "Would that have been so bad?"
   He just stared at me, brown eyes very serious. "Maybe."
   I got my gun from the table and fitted it to the inter-pants holster. Eight bullets. The Browning could hold fourteen. But let's get real; if I needed more than eight bullets, I was dead. And so was Manny.
   "Shit," I whispered.
   "What?"
   "I feel like I'm going to visit the bogeyman."
   Manny made a back and forth motion with his head. "Not a bad analogy."
   Great, just freaking, bloody great. Why was I doing this? The image of Benjamin Reynolds's blood-coated teddy bear flashed into my mind. All right, I knew why I was doing it. If there was even a remote chance that the boy could still be alive, I'd go into hell itself-if I stood a chance of coming back out. I didn't mention this out loud. I did not want to know if hell was a good analogy, too.

5
   The neighborhood was older houses; fifties, forties. The lawns were dying to brown for lack of water. No sprinklers here. Flowers struggled to survive in beds close to the houses. Mostly petunias, geraniums, a few rosebushes. The streets were clean, neat, and one block over you could get yourself shot for wearing the wrong color of jacket.
   Gang activity stopped at Senora Salvador's neighborhood. Even teenagers with automatic pistols fear things you can't stop with bullets no matter how good a shot you are. Silver plated bullets will harm a vampire, but not kill it. It will kill a lycanthrope, but not a zombie. You can hack the damn things to pieces, and the disconnected body parts will crawl after you. I've seen it. It ain't pretty. The gangs leave the Senora's turf alone. No violence. It is a place of permanent truce.
   There are stories of one Hispanic gang that thought it had protection against gris-gris. Some people say that the gang's ex-leader is still down in Dominga's basement, obeying an occasional order. He was great show-and-tell to any juvenile delinquents who got out of hand.
   Personally, I had never seen her raise a zombie. But then I'd never seen her call the snakes either. I'd just as soon keep it that way.
   Senora Salvador's two-story house is on about a half acre of land. A nice roomy yard. Bright red geraniums flamed against the whitewashed walls. Red and white, blood and bone. I was sure the symbolism was not lost on casual passersby. It certainly wasn't lost on me.
   Manny parked his car in the driveway behind a cream colored Impala. The two-car garage was painted white to match the house. There was a little girl of about five riding a tricycle furiously up and down the sidewalk. A slightly older pair of boys were sitting on the steps that led up to the porch. They stopped playing and looked at us.
   A man stood on the porch behind them. He was wearing a shoulder holster over a sleeveless blue T-shirt. Sort of blatant. All he needed was a flashing neon sign that said "Bad Ass."
   There were chalk markings on the sidewalk. Pastel crosses and unreadable diagrams. It looked like a children's game, but it wasn't. Some devoted fans of the Senora had chalked designs of worship in front of her house. Stubs of candles had melted to lumps around the designs. The girl on the tricycle peddled back and forth over the designs. Normal, right?
   I followed Manny over the sun-scorched lawn. The little girl on the tricycle was watching us now, small brown face unreadable.
   Manny removed his sunglasses and smiled up at the man. "Buenos dias, Antonio. It has been a long time."
   "Si, " Antonio said. His voice was low and sullen. His deeply tanned arms were crossed loosely over his chest. It put his right hand right next to his gun butt.
   I used Manny's body to shield me from sight and casually put my hands close to my own gun. The Boy Scout motto, "Always be prepared." Or was that the Marines?
   "You've become a strong, handsome man," Manny said.
   "My grandmother says I must let you in," Antonio said.
   "She is a wise woman," Manny said.
   Antonio shrugged. "She is the Senora." He peered around Manny at me. "Who is this?"
   "Senorita Anita Blake." Manny stepped back so I could move forward. I did, right hand loose on my waist like I had an attitude, but it was the closest I could stay to my gun.
   Antonio looked down at me. His dark eyes were angry, but that was all. He didn't have near the gaze of Harold Gaynor's bodyguards. I smiled. "Nice to meet you."
   He squinted at me suspiciously for a moment, then nodded. I continued to smile at him, and a slow smile spread over his face. He thought I was flirting with him. I let him think it.
   He said something in Spanish. All I could do was smile and shake my head. He spoke softly, and there was a look in his dark eyes, a curve to his mouth. I didn't have to speak the language to know I was being propositioned. Or insulted.
   Manny's neck was stiff, his face flushed. He said something from between clenched teeth.
   It was Antonio's turn to flush. His hand started to go for his gun. I stepped up two steps, touching his wrist as if I didn't know what was going on. The tension in his arm was like a wire, straining.
   I beamed up at him as I held his wrist. His eyes flicked from Manny to me, then the tension eased, but I didn't let go of his wrist until his arm fell to his side. He raised my hand to his lips, kissing it. His mouth lingered on the back of my hand, but his eyes stayed on Manny. Angry, rage-filled.
   Antonio carried a gun, but he was an amateur. Amateurs with guns eventually get themselves killed. I wondered if Dominga Salvador knew that? She may have been a whiz at voodoo but I bet she didn't know much about guns, and what it took to use one on a regular basis. Whatever it took, Antonio didn't have it. He'd kill you all right. No sweat. But for the wrong reasons. Amateur's reasons. Of course, you'll be just as dead.
   He guided me up on the porch beside him, still holding my hand. It was my left hand. He could hold that all day. "I must check you for weapons, Manuel."
   "I understand," Manny said. He stepped up on the porch and Antonio stepped back, keeping room between them in case Manny jumped him. That left me with a clear shot of Antonio's back. Careless; under different circumstances, deadly.
   He made Manny lean against the porch railing like a police frisk. Antonio knew what he was doing, but it was an angry search, lots of quick jerky hand movements, as if just touching Manny's body enraged him. A lot of hate in old Tony.
   It never occurred to him to pat me down for weapons. Tsk-tsk.
   A second man came to the screen door. He was in his late forties, maybe. He was wearing a white undershirt with a plaid shirt unbuttoned over it. The sleeves were folded back as far as they'd go. Sweat stood out on his forehead. I was betting there was a gun at the small of his back. His black hair had a pure white streak just over the forehead. "What is taking so long, Antonio?" His voice was thick and held an accent.
   "I searched him for weapons."
   The older man nodded. "She is ready to see you both."
   Antonio stood to one side, taking up his post on the porch once more. He made a kissing noise as I walked past. I felt Manny stiffen, but we made it into the living room without anyone getting shot. We were on a roll.
   The living room was spacious, with a dining-room set taking up the left-hand side. There was a wall piano in the living room. I wondered who played. Antonio? Naw.
   We followed the man through a short hallway into a roomy kitchen. Golden oblongs of sunshine lay heavy on a black and white tiled floor. The floor and kitchen were old, but the appliances were new. One of those deluxe refrigerators with an ice maker and water dispenser took up a hunk of the back wall. All the appliances were done in a pale yellow: Harvest Gold, Autumn Bronze.
   Sitting at the kitchen table was a woman in her early sixties. Her thin brown face was seamed with a lot of smile lines. Pure white hair was done in a bun at the nape of her neck She sat very straight in her chair, thin-boned hands folded on the tabletop. She looked terribly harmless. A nice old granny. If a quarter of what I'd heard about her was true, it was the greatest camouflage I'd ever seen.
   She smiled and held out her hands. Manny stepped forward and took the offering, brushing his lips on her knuckles. "It is good to see you, Manuel." Her voice was rich, a contralto with the velvet brush of an accent.
   "And you, Dominga." He released her hands and sat across from her.
   Her quick black eyes flicked to me, still standing in the doorway. "So, Anita Blake, you have come to me at last."
   It was a strange thing to say. I glanced at Manny. He gave a shrug with his eyes. He didn't know what she meant either. Great. "I didn't know you were eagerly awaiting me, Senora."
   "I have heard stories of you, chica. Wondrous stories." There was a hint in those black eyes, that smiling face, that was not harmless.
   "Manny?" I asked.
   "It wasn't me."
   "No, Manuel does not talk to me anymore. His little wife forbids it." That last sentence was angry, bitter.
   Oh, God. The most powerful voodoo priestess in the Midwest was acting like a scorned lover. Shit.
   She turned those angry black eyes to me. "All who deal in vaudun come to Senora Salvador eventually."
   "I do not deal in vaudun."
   She laughed at that. All the lines in her face flowed into the laughter. "You raise the dead, the zombie, and you do not deal in vaudun. Oh, chica, that is funny." Her voice sparkled with genuine amusement. So glad I could make her day.
   "Dominga, I told you why we wished this meeting. I made it very clear ... " Manny said.
   She waved him to silence. "Oh, you were very careful on the phone, Manuel." She leaned towards me. "He made it very clear that you were not here to participate in any of my pagan rituals." The bitterness in her voice was sharp enough to choke on.
   "Come here, chica," she said. She held out one hand to me, not both. Was I supposed to kiss it as Manny had done. I didn't think I'd come to see the pope.
   I realized then that I didn't want to touch her. She had done nothing wrong. Yet, the muscles in my shoulders were screaming with tension. I was afraid, and I didn't know why.
   I stepped forward and took her hand, uncertain what to do with it. Her skin was warm and dry. She sort of lowered me to the chair closest to her, still holding my hand. She said something in her soft, deep voice.
   I shook my head. "I'm sorry I don't understand Spanish."
   She touched my hair with her free hand. "Black hair like the wing of a crow. It does not come from any pale skin."
   "My mother was Mexican."
   "Yet you do not speak her tongue."
   She was still holding my hand, and I wanted it back. "She died when I was young. I was raised by my father's people."
   "I see."
   I pulled my hand free and instantly felt better. She had done nothing to me. Nothing. Why was I so damn jumpy? The man with the streaked hair had taken up a post behind the Senora. I could see him clearly. His hands were in plain sight. I could see the back door and the entrance to the kitchen. No one was sneaking up behind me. But the hair at the base of my skull was standing at attention.
   I glanced at Manny, but he was staring at Dominga. His hands were gripped together on the tabletop so tightly that his knuckles were mottled.
   I felt like someone at a foreign film festival without subtitles. I could sort of guess what was going on, but I wasn't sure I was right. The creeping skin on my neck told me some hocus-pocus was going on. Manny's reaction said that just maybe the hocus-pocus was meant for him.
   Manny's shoulders slumped. His hands relaxed their awful tension. It was a visible release of some kind. Dominga smiled, a brilliant flash of teeth. "You could have been so powerful, mi corazon."
   "I did not want the power, Dominga," he said.
   I stared from one to the other, not exactly sure what had just happened. I wasn't sure I wanted to know. I was willing to believe that ignorance was bliss. It so often is.
   She turned her quick black eyes to me. "And you, chica, do you want power?" The creeping sensation at the base of my skull spread over my body. It felt like insects marching on my skin. Shit.
   "No." A nice simple answer. Maybe I should try those more often.
   "Perhaps not, but you will."
   I didn't like the way she said that. It was ridiculous to be sitting in a sunny kitchen at 7:28 in the morning, and be scared. But there it was. My gut was twitching with it.
   She stared at me. Her eyes were just eyes. There was none of that seductive power of a vampire. They were just eyes, and yet ... The hair on my neck tried to crawl down my spine.
   Goose bumps broke out on my body, a rush of prickling warmth. I licked my lips and stared at Dominga Salvador.
   It was a slap of magic. She was testing me. I'd had it done before. People are so fascinated with what I do. Convinced that I know magic. I don't. I have an affinity with the dead.
   It's not the same.
   I stared into her nearly black eyes and felt myself sway forward. It was like falling without movement. The world sort of swung for a moment, then steadied. Warmth burst out of my body, like a twisting rope of heat. It went outward to the old woman. It hit her solid, and I felt it like a jolt of electricity.
   I stood up, gasping for air. "Shit!"
   "Anita, are you all right?" Manny was standing now, too. He touched my arm gently.
   "I'm not sure. What the hell did she do to me?"
   "It is what you have done to me, chica," Dominga said. She looked a little pale around the edges. Sweat beaded on her forehead.
   The man stood away from the wall, his hands loose and ready. "No," Dominga said, "Enzo, I am all right." Her voice was breathy as if she had been running:
   I stayed standing. I wanted to go home now, please.
   "We did not come here for games, Dominga," Manny said. His voice had deepened with anger and, I think, fear. I agreed with that last emotion.
   "It is not a game, Manuel. Have you forgotten everything I taught you. Everything you were?"
   "I have forgotten nothing, but I did not bring her here to be harmed."
   "Whether she is harmed or not is up to her, mi corazon."
   I didn't much like that last part. "You're not going to help us. You're just going to play cat and mouse. Well, this mouse is leaving." I turned to leave, keeping a watchful eye on Enzo. He wasn't an amateur.
   "Don't you wish to find the little boy that Manny said was taken? Three years old, very young to be in the hands of the bokor."
   It stopped me. She knew it would. Damn her. "What is a bokor?"
   She smiled. "You really don't know, do you?"
   I shook my head.
   The smile widened, all surprised pleasure. "Place your right hand palm up on the table, por favor."
   "If you know something about the boy, just tell me. Please."
   "Endure my little tests, and I will help you."
   "What sort of tests?" I hoped I sounded as suspicious as I felt.
   Dominga laughed, an abrupt and cheery sound. It went with all the smile lines in her face. Her eyes were practically sparkling with mirth. Why did I feel like she was laughing at me?
   "Come, chica, I will not hurt you," she said.
   "Manny?"
   "If she does anything that may harm you, I will say so."
   Dominga gazed up at me, a sort of puzzled wonder on her face. "I have heard that you can raise three zombies in a night, night after night. Yet, you truly are a novice."
   "Ignorance is bliss," I said.
   "Sit, chica. This will not hurt, I promise."
   This will not hurt. It promised more painful things later. I sat. "Any delay could cost the boy his life." Try to appeal to her good side.
   She leaned towards me. "Do you really think the child is still alive?" Guess she didn't have a good side.
   I leaned back from her. I couldn't help it, and I couldn't lie to her. "No."
   "Then we have time, don't we?"
   "Time for what?"
   "Your hand, chica, por favor, then I will answer your questions."
   I took a deep breath and placed my right hand on the table, palm up. She was being mysterious. I hated people who were mysterious.
   She brought a small black bag from under the table, as if it had been sitting in her lap the whole time. Like she'd planned this.
   Manny was staring at the bag like something noisome was about to crawl out. Close. Dominga Salvador pulled something noisome out of it.
   It was a charm, a gris-gris made of black feathers, bits of bone, a mummified bird's foot. I thought at first it was a chicken until I saw the thick black talons. There was a hawk or eagle out there somewhere with a peg leg.
   I had visions of her digging the talons into my flesh, and was all tensed to pull away. But she simply placed the gris-gris on my open palm. Feathers, bits of bone, the dried hawk foot. It wasn't slimy. It didn't hurt. In fact, I felt a little silly.
   Then I felt it warmth. The thing was warm, sitting there in my hand. It hadn't been warm a second ago. "What are you doing to it?"
   Dominga didn't answer. I glanced up at her, but her eyes were staring at my hand, intent. Like a cat about to pounce.
   I glanced back down. The talons flexed, then spread, then flexed. It was moving in my hand. "Shiiit!" I wanted to stand up. To fling the vile thing to the floor. But I didn't. I sat there with every hair on my body tingling, my pulse thudding in my throat, and let the thing move in my hand. "All right," my voice sounded breathy, "I've passed your little test. Now get this thing the hell out of my hand."
   Dominga lifted the claw gently from my hand. She was careful not to touch my skin. I didn't know why, but it was a noticeable effort.
   "Dammit, dammit!" I whispered under my breath. I rubbed my hand against my stomach, touching the gun hidden there. It was comforting to know that if worse came to worst, I could just shoot her. Before she scared me to death. "Can we get down to business now?" My voice sounded almost steady. Bully for me.
   Dominga was cradling the claw in her hands. "You made the claw move. You were frightened, but not surprised. Why?"
   What could I say? Nothing I wanted her to know. "I have an affinity with the dead. It responds to me like some people can read thoughts."
   She smiled. "Do you really believe that your ability to raise the dead is like mind reading? Parlor tricks?"
   Dominga had obviously never met a really good telepath. If she had, she wouldn't have been scornful: In their own way, they were just as scary as she was.
   "I raise the dead, Senora. It is just a job."
   "You do not believe that any more than I do."
   "I try real hard," I said.
   "You've been tested before by someone." She made it a statement.
   "My grandmother on my mother's side tested me, but not with that." I pointed to the still flexing foot. It looked like one of those fake hands that you can buy at Spencer's. Now that I wasn't holding it, I could pretend it just had tiny little batteries in it somewhere. Right.
   "She was vaudun?"
   I nodded.
   "Why did you not study with her?"
   "I have an inborn gift for raising the dead. That doesn't dictate my religious preferences."
   "You are Christian." She made the word sound like something bad.
   "That's it." I stood. "I wish I could say it's been a pleasure, but it hasn't."
   "Ask your questions, chica."
   "What?" The change of subject was too fast for me.
   "Ask whatever you came here to ask," she said.
   I glanced at Manny. "If she says she will answer, she will answer." He didn't look completely happy about it.
   I sat down, again. The next insult and I'm outta here. But if she could really help ... oh, hell, she was dangling that thin little thread of hope. And after what I'd seen at the Reynolds house, I was grabbing for it.
   I had planned to be as polite as possible on the wording of the question, now I didn't give a shit. "Have you raised a zombie in the last few weeks?"
   "Some," she said.
   Okay. I hesitated over the next question. The feel of that thing moving in my hand flashed back on me. I rubbed my hand against my pants leg as if I could rub the sensation away. What was the worst she could do to me if I offended her? Don't ask. "Have you sent any zombies out on errands ... of revenge?" There, that was polite, amazing.
   "None."
   "Are you sure?" I asked.
   She smiled. "I'd remember if I loosed murderers from the grave."
   "Killer zombies don't have to be murderers," I said.
   "Oh?" Her pale eyebrows raised. "Are you so very familiar with raising 'killer' zombies?"
   I fought the urge to squirm like a schoolchild caught at a lie. "Only one."
   "Tell me."
   "No." My voice was very firm. "No, that is a private matter." A private nightmare that I was not going to share with the voodoo lady.
   I decided to change the subject just a little. "I've raised murderers before. They weren't more violent than regular undead."
   "How many dead have you called from the grave?" she asked.
   I shrugged. "I don't know."
   "Give me an … " she seemed to be groping for a word "estimation."
   "I can't. It must have been hundreds."
   "A thousand?" she asked.
   "Maybe, I haven't kept count," I said.
   "Has your boss at Animators, Incorporated, kept count?"
   "I would assume that all my clients are on file, yes," I said.
   She smiled. "I would be interested in knowing the exact number."
   What could it hurt? "I'll find out if I can."
   "Such an obedient girl." She stood. "I did not raise this 'killer' zombie of yours. If that is what is eating citizens." She smiled, almost laughed, as if it were funny. "But I know people that would never speak to you. People that could do this horrible deed. I will question them, and they will answer me. I will have truth from them, and I will pass this truth on to you, Anita."
   She said my name like it was meant to be said, Ahneetah. Made it sound exotic.
   "Thank you very much, Senora Salvador."
   "But there is one favor I will ask in return for this information," she said.
   Something unpleasant was about to be said, I'd have bet on it. "What would that favor be, Senora?"
   "I want you to pass one more test for me."
   I stared at her, waiting for her to go on, but she didn't. "What sort of test?" I asked.
   "Come downstairs, and I will show you." Her voice was mild as honey.
   "No, Dominga," Manny said. He was standing now. "Anita, nothing the Senora could tell you would be worth what she wants."
   "I can talk to people and things that will not talk to you, either of you. Good Christians that you are."
   "Come on, Anita, we don't need her help." He had started for the door. I didn't follow him. Manny hadn't seen the slaughtered family. He hadn't dreamed about blood-coated teddy bears last night. I had. I couldn't leave if she could help me. Whether Benjamin Reynolds was dead or not wasn't the point. The thing, whatever it was, would kill again. And I was betting it had something to do with voodoo. It wasn't my area. I needed help, and I needed it fast.
   "Anita, come on." He touched my arm, pulling me a little towards the door.
   "Tell me about the test."
   Dominga smiled triumphantly. She knew she had me. She knew I wasn't leaving until I had her promised help. Damn.
   "Let us retire to the basement. I will explain the test there."
   Manny's grip on my arm tightened. "Anita, you don't know what you're doing."
   He was right, but ... "Just stay with me, Manny, back me up. Don't let me do anything that will really hurt. Okay?"
   "Anita, anything she wants you to do down there will hurt. Maybe not physically, but it will hurt."
   "I have to do this, Manny." I patted his hand and smiled. "It'll be all right."
   "No," he said, "it won't be."
   I didn't know what to say to that, except that he was probably right. But it didn't matter. I was going to do it. Whatever she asked, within reason, if it would stop the killings. If it would fix it so that I never had to see another half-eaten body.
   Dominga smiled. "Let us go downstairs." '
   "May I speak with Anita alone, Senora, por favor," Manny said. His hand was still on my arm. I could feel the tension in his hand.
   "You will have the rest of this beautiful day to talk to her, Manuel. But I have only this short time. If she does this test for me now, I promise to aid her in any way I can to catch this killer."
   It was a powerful offer. A lot of people would talk to her just out of pure terror. The police can't inspire that. All they can do is arrest you. It wasn't enough of a deterrent. Having the undead crawl through your window ... that was a deterrent.
   Four, maybe five people were already dead. It was a bad way to die. "I've already said I'd do it. Let's go."
   She walked around the table and took Manny's arm. He jumped like she'd struck him. She pulled him away from me. "No harm will come to her, Manuel. I swear."
   "I do not trust you, Dominga."
   She laughed. "But it is her choice, Manuel. I have not forced her."
   "You have blackmailed her, Dominga. Blackmailed her with the safety of others."
   She looked back over her shoulder. "Have I blackmailed you, chica?"
   "Yes," I said.
   "Oh, she is your student, corazon. She has your honesty. And your bravery."
   "She is brave, but she has not seen what lies below."
   I wanted to ask what exactly was in the basement, but I didn't. I really didn't want to know. I've had people warn me about supernatural shit before. Don't go in that room; the monster will get you. There usually is a monster, and it usually tries to get me. But up till now I've been faster or luckier than the monsters. Here's to my luck holding.
   I wished that I could heed Manny's warning. Going home sounded very good about now, but duty reared its ugly head. Duty and a whisper of nightmares. I didn't want to see another butchered family.
   Dominga led Manny from the room. I followed with Enzo bringing up the rear. What a day for a parade.

6
   The basement stairs were steep, wooden slats. You could feel the vibrations in the stairs as we tromped down them. It was not comforting. The bright sunlight from the door spilled into absolute darkness. The sunlight faltered, seemed to fade as if it had no power in this cavelike place. I stopped on the grey edge of daylight, staring down into the nightdark of the room. I couldn't even make out Dominga and Manny. They had to be just in front of me, didn't they?
   Enzo the bodyguard waited at my back like some patient mountain. He made no move to hurry me. Was it my decision then? Could I just pack up my toys and go home?
   "Manny," I called.
   A voice came distantly. Too far away. Maybe it was an acoustic trick of the room. Maybe not. "I'm here, Anita."
   I strained to see where the voice was coming from, but there was nothing to see. I took two steps farther down into the inky dark and stopped like I'd hit a wall. There was the damp rock smell of most basements, but under that something stale, sour, sweet. That almost indescribable smell of corpses. It was faint here at the head of the stairs. I was betting it would get worse the farther down I went.
   My grandmother had been a priestess of vaudun. Her Humfo had not smelled like corpses. The line between good and evil wasn't as clear cut in voodoo as in Wicca or Christianity and satanism, but it was there. Dominga Salvador was on the wrong side of the line. I had known that when I came. It still bothered me.
   Grandmother Flores had told me that I was a necromancer. It was more than being a voodoo priestess, and less. I had a sympathy with the dead, all dead. It was hard to be vaudun and a necromancer and not be evil. Too tempting, Grandma said. She had encouraged my being Christian. Encouraged my father to cut me off from her side of the family. Encouraged it for love of me and fear for my soul.
   And here I was going down the steps into the jaws of temptation. What would Grandma Flores say to that? Probably, go home. Which was good advice. The tight feeling in my stomach was saying the same thing.
   The lights came on. I blinked on the stairs. The one dim bulb at the foot of the staircase seemed as bright as a star. Dominga and Manny stood just under the bulb, looking up at me.
   Light. Why did I feel instantly better? Silly, but true. Enzo let the door swing shut behind us. The shadows were thick, but down a narrow bricked hallway more bare light bulbs dangled.
   I was almost at the bottom of the stairs. That sweet, sour smell was stronger. I tried breathing through my mouth, but that only made it clog the back of my throat. The smell of rotting flesh clings to the tongue.
   Dominga led the way between the narrow walls. There were regular patches in the walls. Places where it looked like cement had been put over doors. Paint had been smoothed over the cement, but there had been doors, rooms, at regular intervals. Why wall them up? Why cover the doors in cement? What was behind them?
   I rubbed fingertips across the rough cement. The surface was bumpy and cool. The paint wasn't very old. It would have flaked in this dampness. It hadn't. What was behind this blocked up door?
   The skin just between my shoulder blades started to itch. I fought an urge to glance back at Enzo. I was betting he was behaving himself. I was betting that being shot was the least of my worries.
   The air was cool and damp. A very basement of a basement. There were three doors, two to the right, one to the left that were just doors. One door had a shiny new padlock on it. As we walked past it, I heard the door sigh as if something large had leaned against it.
   I stopped. "What's in there?"
   Enzo had stopped when I stopped. Dominga and Manny had rounded a corner, and we were alone. I touched the door. The wood creaked, rattling against its hinges. Like some giant cat had rubbed against the door. A smell rolled out from under the door. I gagged and backed away. The stench clung to my mouth and throat. I swallowed convulsively and tasted it all the way down.
   The thing behind the door made a mewling sound. I couldn't tell if it was human or animal. It was bigger than a person, whatever it was. And it was dead. Very, very dead.
   I covered my nose and mouth with my left hand. The right was free just in case. In case that thing should come crashing out. Bullets against the walking dead. I knew better, but the gun was still a comfort. In a pinch I could shoot Enzo. But somehow I knew that if the thing rattling the door got out, Enzo would be in as much danger as I was.
   "We must go on, now," he said.
   I couldn't tell anything from his face. We might have been walking down the street to the corner store. He seemed impervious, and I hated him for it. If I'm terrified, by God, everyone else should be, too.
   I eyed the supposedly unlocked door to my left. I had to know. I yanked it open. The room was maybe eight by four, like a cell. The cement floor and whitewashed walls were clean, empty. It looked like a cell waiting for its next occupant. Enzo slammed the door shut. I didn't fight him. It wasn't worth it. If I was going to go one on one with someone who outweighed me by over a hundred pounds, I was going to be picky about where I drew the line. An empty room wasn't worth it.
   Enzo leaned against the door. Sweat glimmered across his face in the harsh light. "Do not try any other doors, senorita. It could be very bad."
   I nodded. "Sure, no problem." An empty room and he was sweating. Nice to know something frightened him. But why this room and not the one with the mewling stench behind it? I didn't have a clue.
   "We must catch up with the Senora." He made a gracious motion like a maitre d' showing me to a chair. I went where he pointed. Where else was I going to go?
   The hallway fed into a large rectangular chamber. It was painted the same startling white as the cell had been. The whitewashed floor was covered in brilliant red and black designs. Verve it was called. Symbols drawn in the voodoo sanctuary to summon the lao, the gods of vaudun.
   The symbols acted as walls bordering a path. They led to the altar. If you stepped off the path you messed up all those carefully formed symbols. I didn't know if that would be good or bad. Rule number three hundred sixty-nine when dealing with unfamiliar magic: when in doubt, leave it alone.
   I left it alone.
   The end of the room gleamed with candles. The warm, rich light flickered and filled the white walls with heat and light. Dominga stood in the midst of that light, that whiteness, and gleamed with evil. There was no other word for it. She wasn't just bad, she was evil. It gleamed around her like darkness made liquid and touchable. The smiling old woman was gone. She was a creature of power.
   Manny stood off to one side. He was staring at her. He glanced at me. His eyes were showing a lot of white. The altar was directly behind Dominga's straight back. Dead animals spilled off the top of it to form a pool on the floor. Chickens, dogs, a small pig, two goats. Lumps of fur and dried blood that I couldn't identify. The altar looked like a fountain where dead things flowed out of the center, sluggish and thick.
   The sacrifices were fresh. No smell of decay. The glazed eyes of a goat stared at me. I hated killing goats. They always seemed so much more intelligent than chickens. Or maybe I just thought they were cuter.
   A tall woman stood to the right of the altar. Her skin gleamed nearly black in the candlelight as if she had been carved of some heavy, gleaming wood. Her hair was short and neat, falling to her shoulders. Wide cheekbones, full lips, expert makeup. She wore a long silky dress, the bright scarlet of fresh blood. It matched her lipstick.
   To the right of the altar stood a zombie. It had once been a woman. Long, pale brown hair fell nearly to her waist. Someone had brushed it until it gleamed. It was the only thing about the corpse that looked alive. The skin had turned a greyish color. The flesh had narrowed down around the bones like shrink wrap. Muscles moved under the thin, rotting skin, stringy and shrunken. The nose was almost gone, giving it a half-finished look. A crimson gown hung loose and flapping on the skeletal remains.
   There was even an attempt at makeup. Lipstick had been abandoned when the lips shriveled up but a dusting of mauve eye shadow outlined the bulging eyes. I swallowed very hard and turned to stare at the first woman.
   She was a zombie. One of the best preserved and most lifelike I had ever seen, but no matter how luscious she looked, she was dead. The woman, the zombie, stared back at me. There was something in her perfect brown eyes that no zombie has for long. The memory of who and what they were fades within a few days, sometimes hours. But this zombie was afraid. The fear was like a shiny, bright pain in her eyes. Zombies didn't have eyes like that.
   I turned back to the more decayed zombie and found her staring at me, too. The bulging eyes were staring at me. With most of the flesh holding the eyes in the socket gone, her facial expressions weren't as good, but she managed. It managed to be afraid. Shit.
   Dominga nodded, and Enzo motioned me farther into the circle. I didn't want to go.
   "What the hell is going on here, Dominga?"
   She smiled, almost a laugh. "I am not accustomed to such rudeness."
   "Get used to it," I said. Enzo sort of breathed down my back. I did my best to ignore him. My right hand was sort of casually near my gun, without looking like I was reaching for my gun. It wasn't easy. Reaching for a gun usually looks like reaching for a gun. No one seemed to notice though. Goody for our side.
   "What have you done to the two zombies?"
   "Inspect them yourself, chica. If you are as powerful as the stories say, you will answer your own question."
   "And if I can't figure it out?" I asked.
   She smiled, but her eyes were as flat and black as a shark's. "Then you are not as powerful as the stories."
   "Is this the test?"
   "Perhaps."
   I sighed. The voodoo lady wanted to see how tough I really was. Why? Maybe there wasn't a reason. Maybe she was just a sadistic power-hungry bitch. Yeah, I could believe that. Then again, maybe there was a purpose to the theatrics. If so, I still didn't know what it was.
   I glanced at Manny. He gave a barely perceivable shrug. He didn't know what was going on either. Great.
   I didn't like playing Dominga's games, especially when I didn't know the rules. The zombies were still staring at me. There was something in their eyes. It was fear, and something worse-hope. Shit. Zombies didn't have hope. They didn't have anything. They were dead. These weren't dead. I had to know. Here's hoping that curiosity didn't kill the animator.
   I stepped around Dominga carefully, watching her out of the corner of my eye. Enzo stayed behind blocking the path between the verve. He looked big and solid standing there, but I could get past him, if I wanted it bad enough. Bad enough to kill him. I hoped I wouldn't want it that bad.
   The decayed zombie stared down at me. She was tall, almost six feet. Skeletal feet peeked out from underneath the red gown. A tall, slender woman, probably beautiful, once. Bulging eyes rolled in the nearly bare sockets. A wet, sucking sound accompanied the movements.
   I'd thrown up the first time I heard that sound. The sound of eyeballs rolling in rotting sockets. But that was four years ago, when I was new at this. Decaying flesh didn't make me flinch anymore or throw up. As a general rule.
   The eyes were pale brown with a lot of green in them. The smell of some expensive perfume floated around her. Powdery and fine, like talcum powder in your nose, sweet, flowery. Underneath was the stink of rotting flesh. It wrinkled my nose, caught at the back of my throat. The next time I smelled this delicate, expensive perfume, I would think of rotting flesh. Oh, well, it smelled too expensive to buy, anyway.
   She was staring at me. She, not it, she. There was the force of personality in her eyes. I call most zombies "it" because it fits. They may come from the grave very alive-looking, but it doesn't last. They rot. Personality and intelligence goes first, then the body. It's always that order. God is not cruel enough to force anyone to be aware while their body decays around them. Something had gone very wrong with this one.
   I stepped around Dominga Salvador. For no reason that I could name, I stayed out of reach. She had no weapon, I was almost sure of that. The danger she represented had nothing to do with knives or guns. I simply didn't want her to touch me, not even by accident.
   The zombie on the left was perfect. Not a sign of decay. The look in her eyes was alert, alive. God help us. She could have gone anywhere and passed for human. How had I known she wasn't alive? I wasn't even sure. None of the usual signs were there, but I knew dead when I felt it. Yet ... I stared up at the second woman. Her lovely, dark face stared back. Fear screamed out of her eyes.
   Whatever power let me raise the dead told me this was a zombie, but my eyes couldn't tell. It was amazing. If Dominga could raise zombies like this, she had me beat hands down.
   I have to wait three days before I raise a corpse. It gives the soul time to leave the area. Souls usually hover around for a while. Three days is average. I can't call shit from the grave if the soul's still present. It has been theorized that if an animator could keep the soul intact while raising the body, we'd get resurrection. You know, resurrection, the real thing, like in Jesus and Lazarus. I didn't believe that. Or maybe I just know my limitations.
   I stared up at this zombie and knew what was different. The soul was still there. The soul was still inside both bodies. How? How in Jesus' name did she do it?
   "The souls. The souls are still in the bodies." My voice held the distaste I felt. Why bother to hide it?
   "Very good, chica."
   I went to stand to her left, keeping Enzo in sight. "How did you do it?"
   "The soul was captured at the moment it took flight from the body."
   I shook my head. "That doesn't explain anything."
   "Don't you know how to capture souls in a bottle?"
   Souls in a bottle? Was she kidding? No, she wasn't. "No, I don't." I tried not to sound superior as I said it.
   "I could teach you so much, Anita, so very much."
   "No, thanks," I said. "You captured their souls, then you raised the body, and put the soul back in." I was guessing, but it sounded right.
   "Very, very good. That is it exactly." She was staring at me so hard that it was uncomfortable. Her empty, black eyes were memorizing me.
   "But why is the second zombie rotting? The theory is with the soul intact, the zombie won't decay?"
   "It is no longer a theory. I have proved it," she said.
   I stared at the rotted corpse, and it stared back. "Then why is that one rotting, and this one isn't?" Just two necromancers talking shop. Tell me, do you raise your zombies only during the dark of the moon?
   "The soul may be put into the body, then removed again, as often as I wish."
   I stared at Dominga Salvador now. I stared and tried not to let my jaw drop, not to let the dawning horror slip across my face. She would enjoy shocking me. I didn't want her taking pleasure from me, for any reason.
   "Let me test my understanding here," I said in my best executive trainee voice. "You put the soul into the body and it didn't rot. Then you took the soul out of the body, making it an ordinary zombie, and it did rot."
   "Exactly," she said.
   "Then you put the soul back in the rotted corpse, and the zombie was aware and alive again. Did the rotting stop when the soul went back in?"
   "Yes. "
   Shit. "So you could keep the zombie over there rotted just that much forever?"
   "Yes."
   Double shit. "And this one?" I pointed this time, like I was doing a lecture.
   "Many people would pay dearly for her."
   "Wait a minute, you mean sell her as a sex slave?"
   "Perhaps."
   "But ... " The idea was too horrible. She was a zombie, which meant she didn't need to eat or sleep or anything. You could keep her in a closet and take her out like a toy. A perfectly obedient slave.
   "Are they as obedient as normal zombies, or does the soul give them free will?"
   "They seem to be very obedient."
   "Maybe they're just scared of you," I said.
   She smiled. "Perhaps."
   "You can't just keep the soul imprisoned forever."
   "I can't," she said.
   "The soul needs to go on."
   "To your Christian heaven or hell?"
   "Yes," I said.
   "These were wicked women, chica. Their own families gave them to me. Paid me to punish them."
   "You took money for this?"
   "It is illegal to tamper with dead bodies without permission of the family," she said.
   I don't know if she had planned to horrify me. Maybe not. But with that one sentence she let me know that what she was doing was perfectly legal. The dead had no rights. This was the reason we needed some laws to protect zombies. Shit.
   "No one deserves to spend eternity locked in a corpse," I said.
   "We could do this to criminals on death row, chica. They could be made to serve society after death."
   I shook my head. "No, it's wrong."
   "I have created a non-rotting zombie, chica. Animators, I believe you call yourselves, have been searching for the secret for years. I have it, and people will pay for it."
   "It's wrong. I may not know much about voodoo, but even among your own people, it's wrong. How can you keep the souls prisoner and not allow them to go on and join with the lao?"
   She shrugged and sighed. She suddenly looked tired. "I was hoping, chica, that you would help me. With two of us working, we could create more zombies much faster. We could be wealthy beyond our dreams."
   "You've asked the wrong girl."
   "I see that now. I had hoped that since you were not vaudun, you would not see it as wrong."
   "Christian, Buddhist, Moslem, you name it, Dominga, no one's going to think it's all right."
   "Perhaps, perhaps not. It does not hurt to ask."
   I glanced at the rotted zombie. "At least put your first experiment out of its misery."
   Dominga glanced at the zombie. "She makes a powerful demonstration, does she not?"
   "You've created a non-rotting zombie, great. Don't be sadistic."
   "You think I am being cruel?"
   "Yeah," I said.
   "Manuel, am I being cruel?"
   Manny stared at me while he answered. His eyes were trying to tell me something. I couldn't tell what. "Yes, Senora, you are being cruel."
   She glanced over at him then, surprise in the movement of her body, her face. "Do you really think I am cruel, Manuel? Your beloved amante?"
   He nodded slowly. "Yes."
   "You were not so quick to judge a few years back, Manuel. You slew the white goat for me, more than once."
   I turned towards Manny. It was like that moment in a movie where the main character has a revelation about someone. There should be music and camera angles when you learn one of your best friends participated in human sacrifice. More than once she had said. More than once.
   "Manny?" My voice was a hoarse whisper. This, for me, was worse than the zombies. The hell with strangers. This was Manny, and it couldn't be true.
   "Manny?" I said it again. He wouldn't look at me. Bad sign.
   "You didn't know, chica? Didn't your Manny tell you of his past?"
   "Shut up," I said.
   "He was my most treasured helper. He would have done anything for me."
   "Shut up!" I screamed it at her. She stopped, her face thinning with anger. Enzo took two steps into the altar area. "Don't." I wasn't even sure who I was saying it to. "I need to hear from him, not from you."
   The anger was still in her face. Enzo loomed like an avalanche about to be unleashed. Dominga gave one sharp nod. "Ask him then, chica."
   "Manny, is she telling the truth? Did you perform human sacrifices?" My voice sounded so normal. It shouldn't have. My stomach was so tight, it hurt. I wasn't afraid anymore, or at least not of Dominga. The truth; I was afraid of the truth.
   He looked up. His hair fell across his face framing his eyes. A lot of pain in those eyes. Almost flinching.
   "It's the truth, isn't it?" My skin felt cold. "Answer me, dammit." My voice still sounded ordinary, calm.
   "Yes," he said.
   "Yes, you committed human sacrifice?"
   He glared at me now, anger helping him meet my eyes. "Yes, Yes!"
   It was my turn to look away. "God, Manny, how could you?" My voice was soft now, not ordinary. If I didn't know better, I'd say it sounded like I was on the verge of tears.
   "It was nearly twenty years ago, Anita. I was vaudun and a necromancer. I believed. I loved the Senora. Thought I did."
   I stared up at him. The look on his face made my throat tight. "Manny, dammit."
   He didn't say anything. He just stood there looking miserable. And I couldn't reconcile the two images. Manny Rodriguez and someone who would slaughter the hornless goat in a ritual. He had taught me right from wrong in this business. He had refused to do so many things. Things not half as bad as this. It made no sense.
   I shook my head. "I can't deal with this right now." I heard myself say it out loud, and hadn't really meant to. "Fine, you've dropped your little bombshell, Senora Salvador. You said you'd help us, if I passed your test. Did I pass?" When in doubt, concentrate on one disaster at a time.
   "I wanted to offer you a chance to help me with my new business venture."
   "We both know I'm not going to do that," I said.
   "It is a pity, Anita. With training you could rival my powers."
   Be just like her when I grew up. No thanks. "Thanks anyway, but I'm happy where I am."
   Her eyes flicked to Manny, back to me. "Happy?"
   "Manny and I will deal with it, Senora. Now will you help me?"
   "If I help you without you helping me in some way, you will owe me a favor."
   I didn't want to owe her a favor. "I would rather just trade information."
   "What could you possibly know that would be worth all the effort I will expend hunting for your killer zombie?"
   I thought about that for a moment. "I know that legislation is being written right now, about zombies. Zombies are going to have rights, and laws protecting them soon." I hoped it was soon. No need to tell her how early in the process the legislation was.
   "So, I must sell a few non-rotting zombies soon, before it becomes illegal."
   "I wouldn't think illegal would bother you much. Human sacrifice is illegal, too."
   She gave a tiny smile. "I do not do such things anymore, Anita. I have given up my wicked ways."
   I didn't believe that, and she knew I didn't believe it. Her smile widened. "When Manuel left, I stopped such evil practices. Without his urgings, I became a respectable bokar."
   She was lying, but I couldn't prove it. And she knew that, too. "I gave you 'valuable information. Now will you help me?"
   She nodded graciously. "I will search among my followers to see if any knows of your killer zombie." I had the sense that she was quietly laughing at me.
   "Manny, will she help us?"
   "If the Senora says she will do a thing, it will be done. She is good that way."
   "I will find your killer if it has anything to do with vaudun," she said.
   "Great." I didn't say thank you, because it seemed wrong. I wanted to call her a bitch and shoot her between the eyes, but then I would have had to shoot Enzo, too. And how would I explain that to the police? She was breaking no laws. Dammit.
   "I don't suppose appealing to your better nature would make you forget this mad scheme to use your new improved zombies for slaves?"
   She smiled. "Chica, chica, I will be rich beyond your wildest dreams. You can refuse to join me, but you cannot stop me."
   "Don't bet on it," I said.
   "What will you do, go to the police? I am breaking no laws. The only way to stop me is to kill me." She looked directly at me while she said it.
   "Don't tempt me."
   Manny moved up beside me. "Don't, Anita, don't challenge her."
   I was sort of mad at him, too, so what the hell. "I will stop you, Senora Salvador. Whatever it takes."
   "You call death magic against me, Anita, and it is you who will die."
   I didn't know death magic from frijoles. I shrugged. "I was thinking something more down to earth, like a bullet."
   Enzo surged into the altar area, moving to stand between his boss-lady and me. Dominga stopped him. "No, Enzo, she is angry this morning, and shocked." Her eyes were still laughing at me. "She knows nothing of the deeper magics. She cannot harm me, and she is too morally superior to commit cold-blooded murder."
   The worst part about it was that she was right. I couldn't just put a bullet between her eyes, not unless she threatened me. I glanced at the waiting zombies, patient as the dead, but underneath that endless patience was fear, and hope, and ... God, the line between life and death was getting thinner all the time.
   "At least lay to rest your first experiment. You've proved you can put the soul in and out multiple times. Don't make her watch."
   "But, Anita, I already have a buyer for her."
   "Oh, Jesus, you don't mean ... Oh, God, a necrophiliac."
   "Those that love the dead better than you or I ever will, will pay extraordinary amounts for such as her."
   Maybe I could just shoot her. "You are a cold-hearted, amoral bitch."
   "And you, chica, need to learn respect for your elders."
   "Respect has to be earned," I said.
   "I think, Anita Blake, that you need to remember why people fear the dark. I will see that very soon you have a visitor to your window. Some dark night when you are fast asleep in your warm, safe bed. Something evil will creep into your room. I will earn your respect, if that is the way you want it."
   I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. I was angry and wanted to go home. "You can force people to be afraid of you, Senora, but you can't force them to respect you."
   "We shall see, Anita. Call me after you have gotten my gift. It will be soon."
   "Will you still help locate the killer zombie?"
   "I said I would, and I will."
   "Good," I said. "May we go now?"
   She waved Enzo back beside her. "By all means run out into the daylight where you can be brave."
   I walked to the pathway. Manny stayed right with me. We were careful not to look at each other. We were too busy watching the Senora and her pets. I stopped just inside the path. Manny touched my arm lightly, as if he knew what I was about to say. I ignored him.
   "I may not be willing to kill you in cold blood, but hurt me first, and I'll put a bullet in you some bright, sunshiny day."
   "Threats will not save you, chica," she said.
   I smiled sweetly. "You either, bitch."
   Her face went all thin and angry. I smiled wider.
   "She does not mean it, Senora," Manny said. "She will not kill you."
   "Is this true, chica?" Her voice was a rich growl of sound, pleasant and frightening at the same time.
   I gave Manny a quick dirty look. It was a good threat. I didn't like weakening it with common sense, or truth. "I said, I'd shoot you. I didn't say I'd kill you. Now did I?"
   "No, you did not."
   Manny grabbed my arm and started pulling me backwards towards the stairs. He was pulling on my left arm, leaving my right free for my gun. Just in case.
   Dominga never moved. Her black, angry eyes stared at me until we rounded the corner. Manny pulled me into the hallway with its cement covered doors. I pulled free of him. We stared at each other for a heartbeat.
   "What's behind the doors?"
   "I don't know."
   Doubt must have shown on my face because he said, "God as my witness, Anita, I don't know. It wasn't like this twenty years ago."
   I just stared at him as if looking would change things. I wish Dominga Salvador had kept Manny's secret to herself. I had not wanted to know.
   "Anita, we have to get out of here, now." The light bulb over our head went out, like someone had snuffed it. We both looked up. There was nothing to see. My arms broke out in goose bumps. The bulb just ahead of us dimmed, then blinked off.
   Manny was right. We needed to leave now. I broke into a half jog towards the stairs. Manny stayed with me. The door with its shiny padlock rattled and thumped as if the thing were trying to get out. Another light bulb flashed off. The darkness was snapping at our heels. We were at a full run by the time we hit the stairs. There were two bulbs left.
   We were halfway up the stairs when the last light vanished. The world went black. I froze on the stairs unwilling to move without being able to see. Manny's arm brushed mine, but I couldn't see him. The darkness was complete. I could have touched my eyeballs and not seen my finger. We grabbed hands and held on. His hand wasn't much bigger than mine. It was warm and familiar, and damn comforting.
   The cracking of wood was loud as a shotgun blast in the dark. The stench of rotting meat filled the stairwell. "Shit!" The word echoed and bounced in the blackness. I wished I hadn't said it. Something large pulled itself into the corridor. It couldn't be as big as it sounded. The wet, slithering sounds moved towards the stairs. Or sounded like they did.
   I stumbled up two steps. Manny didn't need any urging. We stumbled through the darkness, and the sounds below hurried. The light under the door was so bright, it almost hurt. Manny flung open the door. The sunlight blazed against my eyes. We were both momentarily blinded.
   Something screamed behind us, caught in the edge of daylight. The scream was almost human. I started to turn, to look. Manny slammed the door. He shook his head. "You don't want to see. I don't want to see."
   He was right. So why did I have this urge to yank the door open, to stare down into the dark until I saw something pale and shapeless? A screaming nightmare of a sight. I stared at the closed door, and I let it go.
   "Do you think it will come out after us?" I asked.
   "Into the daylight?" Manny asked.
   "Yeah," I said.
   "I don't think so. Let's leave without finding out."
   I agreed. The August sunlight streamed into the living room. Warm and real. The scream, the darkness, the zombies, all of it seemed wrong for the sunlight. Things that go bump in the morning. It didn't sound quite right.
   I opened the screen door calmly, slowly. Panicked, me? But I was listening so hard I could hear blood rush in my ears. Listening for slithery sounds of pursuit. Nothing.
   Antonio was still on guard outside. Should we warn him about the possibility of a Lovecraftian horror nipping at our heels?
   "Did you fuck the zombie downstairs?" Antonio asked.
   So much for warning old Tony.
   Manny ignored him.
   "Go fuck yourself," I said.
   He said, "Heh!"
   I kept walking down the porch steps. Manny stayed with me. Antonio didn't draw his gun and shoot us. The day was looking up.
   The little girl on the tricycle had stopped by Manny's car. She stared up at me as I got in the passenger side door. I stared back into huge brown eyes. Her face was darkly tanned. She couldn't have been more than five.
   Manny got in the driver's side door. He put the car in gear, and we pulled away. The little girl and I stared at each other. Just before we turned the corner she started pedaling up and down the sidewalk again.

7
   The air conditioner blasted cold air into the car. Manny drove through the residential streets. Most of the driveways were empty. People off to work. Small children playing in the yards. A few moms out on the front steps. I didn't see any daddies at home with the kids. Things change, but not that much. The silence stretched out between us. It was not a comfortable silence.
   Manny glanced at me furtively out of the corner of his eye.
   I slumped in the passenger seat, the seat belt digging across my gun. "So," I said, "you used to perform human sacrifice."
   I think he flinched. "Do you want me to lie?"
   "No, I want to not know. I want to live in blessed ignorance."
   "It doesn't work that way, Anita," he said.
   "I guess it doesn't," I said. I adjusted the lap strap so it didn't press over my gun. Ah, comfort. If only everything else were that easy to fix. "What are we going to do about it?"
   "About you knowing?" he asked. He glanced at me as he asked. I nodded.
   "You aren't going to rant and rave? Tell me what an evil bastard I am?"
   "Doesn't seem much point in it," I said.
   He looked at me a little longer this time. "Thanks."
   "I didn't say it was alright, Manny. I'm just not going to yell at you. Not yet, anyway."
   He passed a large white car full of dark-skinned teenagers. Their car stereo was up so loud, my teeth rattled. The driver had one of those high-boned, flat faces, straight off of an Aztec carving. Our eyes met as we moved by them. He made kissing motions with his mouth. The others laughed uproariously.
   I resisted the urge to flip them off. Mustn't encourage the little tykes.
   They turned right. We went straight. Relief.
   Manny stopped two cars back from a light. Just beyond the light was the turnoff 40 West. We'd take 270 up to Olive and then a short jaunt to my apartment. We had forty-five minutes to an hour of travel time. Not a problem normally. Today I wanted away from Manny. I wanted some time to digest. To decide how to feel.
   "Talk to me, Anita, please." ,
   "Honest to God, Manny, I don't know what to say." Truth, try to stick to the truth between friends. Yeah.
   "I've known you for four years, Manny. You are a good man. You love your wife, your kids. You've saved my life. I've saved yours. I thought I knew you."
   "I haven't changed."
   "Yes," I looked at him as I said it, "you have. Manny Rodriguez would never under any circumstance take part in human sacrifice."
   "It's been twenty years."
   "There's no statute of limitations on murder."
   "You going to the cops?" His voice was very quiet.
   The light changed. We waited our turn and merged into the morning traffic. It was as heavy as it ever got in St. Louis. It's not the gridlock of L.A., but stop and jerk is still pretty darn annoying. Especially this morning.
   "I don't have any proof. Just Dominga Salvador's word. I wouldn't exactly call her a reliable witness."
   "If you had proof?"
   "Don't push me on this, Manny." I stared out the window. There was a silver Miada with the top down. The driver was white-haired, male, and wore a jaunty little cap, plus racing gloves. Middle-age crisis.
   "Does Rosita know?" I asked.
   "She suspects, but she doesn't know for sure."
   "Doesn't want to know," I said.
   "Probably not." He turned and stared at me then.
   A red Ford truck was nearly in front of us. I yelled, "Manny!"
   He slammed on the brakes, and only the seat belt kept me from kissing the dashboard.
   "Jesus, Manny, watch your driving!"
   He concentrated on traffic for a few seconds, then without looking at me this time, "Are you going to tell Rosita?"
   I thought about that for about a second. I shook my head, realized he couldn't see it, and said, "I don't think so. Ignorance is bliss on this one, Manny. I don't think your wife could deal with it."
   "She'd leave me and take the kids."
   I believed she would. Rosita was a very religious person. She took all the commandments very seriously.
   "She already thinks I'm risking my eternal soul by raising the dead," Manny said.
   "She didn't have a problem until the pope threatened to excommunicate all animators unless they stopped raising the dead."
   "The Church is very important to Rosita."
   "Me, too, but I'm a happy little Episcopalian now. Switch churches."
   "It's not that easy," he said.
   It wasn't. I knew that. But, hey, you do what you can, or what you have to. "Can you explain why you would do human sacrifice? I mean, something that will make sense to me?"
   "No," he said. He pulled into the far lane. It seemed to be going a little faster. It slowed down as soon as we pulled in. Murphy's law of traffic.
   "You won't even try to explain?"
   "It's indefensible, Anita. I live with what I did. I can't do anything else."
   He had a point. "This has to change the way I think about you, Manny."
   "In what way?"
   "I don't know yet." Honesty. If we were very careful, we could still be honest with each other. "Is there anything else you think I should know? Anything that Dominga might spill later on?"
   He shook his head. "Nothing worse."
   "Okay," I said.
   "Okay," he said. "That's it, no interrogation?"
   "Not now, maybe not ever." I was tired all at once. It was 9:23 in the morning, and I needed a nap. Emotionally drained. "I don't know how to feel about this, Manny. I don't know how it changes our friendship, or our working relationship, or even if it does. I think it does. Oh, hell, I don't know."
   "Fair enough," he said. "Let's move on to something we aren't confused about."
   "And what would that be?" I asked.
   "The Senora will send something bad to your window, just like she said she would."
   "I figured that."
   "Why did you threaten her?"
   "I didn't like her."
   "Oh, great, just great," he said. "Why didn't I think of that?"
   "I am going to stop her, Manny. I figured she should know."
   "Never give the bad guys a head start, Anita. I taught you that."
   "You also taught me that human sacrifice is murder."
   "That hurt," he said.
   "Yes," I said, "it did."
   "You need to be prepared, Anita. She will send something after you. Just to scare you, I think, not to really harm."
   "Because you made me fess up to not killing her," I said.
   "No, because she doesn't really believe you'll kill her. She's intrigued with your powers. I think she'd rather convert you than kill you."
   "Have me as part of her zombie-making factory."
   "Yes."
   "Not in this lifetime."
   "The Senora is not used to people saying no, Anita."
   "Her problem, not mine."
   He glanced at me, then back to the traffic. "She'll make it your problem."
   "I'll deal with it"
   "You can't be that confident."
   "I'm not, but what do you want me to do, break down and cry. I'll deal with it when, and if, something noisome drags itself through my window."
   "You can't deal with the Senora, Anita. She is powerful, more powerful than you can ever imagine."
   "She scared me, Manny. I am suitably impressed. If she sends something I can't handle, I'll run. Okay?"
   "Not okay. You don't know, you just don't know."
   "I heard the thing in the hallway. I smelled it. I'm scared, but she's just human, Manny. All the mumbo jumbo won't keep her safe from a bullet."
   "A bullet may take her out, but not down."
   "What does that mean?"
   "If she were shot, say in the head or heart, and seemed dead, I'd treat her like a vampire. Head and heart taken out. Body burned." He glanced at me sort of sideways.
   I didn't say anything. We were talking about killing Dominga Salvador. She was capturing souls and putting them into corpses. It was an abomination. She would probably attack me first. Some supernatural goodie come creeping into my home. She was evil and would attack me first. Would it be murder to ambush her? Yeah. Would I do it anyway? I let the thought take shape in my head. Rolled it over like a piece of candy, tasting the idea. Yeah, I could do it.
   I should have felt bad that I could plan a murder, for any reason, and not flinch. I didn't feel bad. It was sort of comforting to know if she pushed me, I could push back. Who was I to cast stones at Manny for twenty-year-old crimes? Yeah, who indeed.

8
   It was early afternoon. Manny had dropped me off without a word. He hadn't asked to come up, and I hadn't offered. I still didn't know what to think about him, Dominga Salvador, and non-rotting zombies, complete with souls. I decided not to think. What I needed was good physical activity. As luck would have it, I had judo class this afternoon.
   I have a black belt, which sounds a lot more impressive than it really is. In the dojo with referees and rules, I do okay. Out in the real world where most bad guys outweigh me by a hundred pounds, I trust a gun.
   I was actually reaching for the doorknob when the bell chimed. I put the overstuffed gym bag by the door and used the little peephole. I always had to stand on tiptoe to see out of it.
   The distorted image was blond, fair-eyed, and barely familiar. It was Tommy, Harold Gaynor's muscle-bound bodyguard. This day was just getting better and better.
   I don't usually take a gun to judo class. It's in the afternoon. In the summer that means daylight. The really dangerous stuff doesn't come out until after dark. I untucked the red polo shirt I was wearing and clipped my inter-pants holster back in place. The pocket-size 9mm dug in just a little. If I had known I was going to need it, I would have worn looser jeans.
   The doorbell rang again. I hadn't called out to let him know I was in here. He didn't seem discouraged. He rang the doorbell a third time, leaning on it.
   I took a deep breath and opened the door. I looked up into Tommy's pale blue eyes. They were still empty, dead. A perfect blankness. Were you born with a stare like that, or did you have to practice?
   "What do you want?" I asked.
   His lips twitched. "Aren't you going to invite me in?"
   "I don't think so."
   He shrugged massive shoulders. I could see the straps of his shoulder holster imprinted on his suit jacket. He needed a better tailor.
   A door opened to my left. A woman came out with a toddler in her arms. She locked the door before turning and seeing us. "Oh, hi." She smiled brightly.
   "Hello," I said.
   Tommy nodded.
   The woman turned and walked towards the stairs. She was murmuring something nonsensical and high-pitched to the toddler.
   Tommy looked back at me. "You really want to do this in the hallway?"
   "What are we doing?"
   "Business. Money."
   I looked at his face, and it told me nothing. The only comfort I had was that if Tommy meant to do me harm he probably wouldn't have come to my apartment to do it. Probably.
   I stepped back, holding the door very wide. I stayed out of arm's reach as he walked into my apartment. He looked around. "Nice, clean."
   "Cleaning service," I said. "Talk to me about business, Tommy. I've got an appointment."
   He glanced at the gym bag by the door. "Work or pleasure?" he asked.
   "None of your business," I said.
   Again that bare twist of lips. I realized it was his version of a smile. "Down in the car I got a case full of money. A million five, half now, half after you raise the zombie."
   I shook my head. "I gave Gaynor my answer."
   "But that was in front of your boss. This is just you and me. No one'll know if you take it. No one."
   "I didn't say no because there were witnesses. I said no because I don't do human sacrifice." I could feel myself smiling. This was ridiculous. I thought about Manny then. Alright, maybe it wasn't ridiculous. But I wasn't doing it.
   "Everyone has their price, Anita. Name it. We can meet it."
   He had never once mentioned Gaynor's name. Only I had. He was being so bloody careful, too careful. "I don't have a price, Tommy-boy. Go back to Mr. Harold Gaynor and tell him that."
   His face clouded up then. A wrinkling between his eyes. "I don't know that name."
   "Oh, give me a break. I'm not wearing a wire."
   "Name your price. We can meet it," he said.
   "There is no price."
   "Two million, tax-free," he said.
   "What zombie could be worth two million dollars, Tommy?" I stared at his softly frowning face. "What could Gaynor hope to gain that would allow him to make a profit on that kind of expenditure?"
   Tommy just stared at me. "You don't need to know that."
   "I thought you'd say that. Go away, Tommy. I'm not for sale." I stepped back towards the door, planning to escort him out. He moved forward suddenly, faster than he looked. Muscled arms wide to grab me.
   I pulled the Firestar and pointed it at his chest. He froze. Dead eyes, blinking at me. His large hands balled into fists. A nearly purple flush crept up his neck into his face. Rage.
   "Don't do it," I said, my voice sounded soft.
   "Bitch," he wheezed it at me.
   "Now, now, Tommy, don't get nasty. Ease down, and we can all live to see another glorious day."
   His pale eyes flicked from the gun to my face, then back to the gun. "You wouldn't be so tough without that piece."
   If he wanted me to offer to arm wrestle him, he was in for a disappointment. "Back off, Tommy, or I'll drop you here and now. All the muscle in the world won't help you."
   I watched something move behind his dead eyes, then his whole body relaxed. He took a deep breath through his nose. "Okay, you got the drop on me today. But if you keep disappointing my boss, I'm gonna find you without that gun." His lips twitched. "And we'll see how tough you really are."
   A little voice in my head said, "Shoot him now." I knew as surely as I knew anything that dear Tommy would be at my back someday. I didn't want him there, but ... I couldn't just kill him because I thought he might come after me someday. It wasn't a good enough reason. And how would I ever have explained it to the police?
   "Get out, Tommy." I opened the door without taking either my gaze or the gun off the man. "Get out and tell Gaynor that if he keeps annoying me, I'll start sending his bodyguards home in boxes."
   Tommy's nostrils flared just a bit at that, veins straining in his neck. He walked very stiffly past me and out into the hall. I held the gun at my side and watched him, listening to his footsteps retreat down the stairs. When I was as sure as I could be that he was gone, I put my gun back in its holster, grabbed my gym bag, and headed for judo class. Mustn't let these little interruptions spoil my exercise program. Tomorrow I would miss my workout for sure. I had a funeral to attend. Besides, if Tommy really did challenge me to arm wrestling, I was going to need all the help I could get.

9
   I hate funerals. At least this one wasn't for anyone I had particularly liked. Cold, but true. Peter Burke had been an unscrupulous SOB when alive. I didn't see why death should automatically grant him sainthood. Death, especially violent death, will turn the meanest bastard in the world into a nice guy. Why is that?
   I stood there in the bright August sunlight in my little black dress and dark sunglasses, watching the mourners. They had set up a canopy over the coffin, flowers, and chairs for the family. Why was I here, you might ask, if I had not been a friend? Because Peter Burke had been an animator. Not a very good one, but we are a small, exclusive club. If one of us dies, we all come. It's a rule. There are no exceptions. Maybe your own death, but then again being that we raise the dead, maybe not.
   There are things you can do to a corpse so it won't rise again as a vampire, but a zombie is a different beast. Short of cremation, an animator can bring you back. Fire was about the only thing a zombie respected or feared.
   We could have raised Peter and asked him who put a gun to his head. But they had put a 357 Magnum with an expanding point just behind his ear. There wasn't enough left of his head to fill a plastic bag. You could raise him as a zombie, but he couldn't talk. Even the dead need mouths.
   Manny stood beside me, uncomfortable in his dark suit. Rosita, his wife, stood spine absolutely straight. Thick brown hands gripping her black patent leather purse. She is what my stepmother used to call large-boned. Her black hair was cut just below the ears and loosely permed. The hair needed to be longer. It emphasized how perfectly round her face was.
   Charles Montgomery stood just behind me like a tall dark mountain. Charles looks like he played football somewhere. He has the ability to frown and make people run for cover. He just looks like a hard ass. Truth is, Charles faints at the sight of anything but animal blood. It's lucky for him he looks like such a big black dude. He has almost no tolerance for pain. He cries at Walt Disney movies, like when Bambi's mother dies. It's endearing as hell.
   His wife, Caroline, was working. She hadn't been able to switch shifts with anyone. I wondered how hard she had tried. Caroline is okay but she sort of looks down on what we do. Mumbo jumbo she calls it. She's a registered nurse. I guess after dealing with doctors all day, she has to look down on someone.
   Up near the front of the crowd was Jamison Clarke. He was tall, thin, and the only red-haired, green-eyed black man I've ever met. He nodded at me across the grave. I nodded back.
   We were all here; the animators of Animators, Incorporated. Bert and Mary, our daytime secretary, were holding down the fort. I hoped Bert didn't book us in anything we couldn't handle. Or would refuse to handle. He did that if you didn't watch him.
   The sun slapped my back like a hot metal hand. The men kept pulling at their ties and high collars. The smell of chrysanthemums was thick like wax at the back of my throat. No one ever gives you football mums unless you die. Carnations, roses, snapdragons. they all have happier lives, but mums, and glads-they're the funeral flowers. At least the tall spires of gladiolus had no scent.
   A woman sat in the front line of chairs under the canopy. She was leaning over her knees like a broken doll. Her sobs were loud enough to drown out the words of the priest. Only his quiet, soothing rhythm reached me as I stood near the back.
   Two small children were gripping the hands of an older man. Grampa? The – children were pale, hollow-eyed. Fear vied with tears on their faces. They watched their mother break down completely, useless to them. Her grief was more important than theirs. Her loss greater. Bullshit.
   My own mother had died when I was eight. You never really filled in the hole. It was like a piece of you gone missing. An ache that never quite goes away. You deal with it. You go on, but it's there.
   A man sat beside her, rubbing her back in endless circles. His hair was nearly black, cut short and neat. Broad shouldered. From the back he looked eerily like Peter Burke. Ghosts in sunlight.
   The cemetery was dotted with trees. The shade rustled and flickered pale grey in the sunlight. On the other side of the gravel driveway that twined through the cemetery were two men. They stood quietly, waiting. Grave diggers. Waiting to finish the job.
   I looked back at the coffin under its blanket of pink carnations. There was a bulky mound just behind it, covered in bright green fake grass. Underneath was the fresh dug earth waiting to go back in the hole.
   Mustn't let the loved ones think about red-clay soil pouring down on the gleaming coffin. Clods of dirt hitting the wood, covering your husband, father. Trapping them forever inside a lead-lined box. A good coffin will keep the water and worms out, but it doesn't stop decay.
   I knew what would be happening to Peter Burke's body. Cover it in satin, wrap a tie round its neck, rouge the cheeks, close the eyes; it's still a corpse.
   The funeral ended while I wasn't looking. The people rose gratefully in one mass movement. The dark-haired man helped the grieving widow to stand. She nearly fell. Another man rushed forward and supported her other side. She sagged between them, feet dragging on the ground.
   She looked back over her shoulder, head almost lolling on her neck. She screamed, loud and ragged, then flung herself on the coffin. The woman collapsed against the flowers, digging at the wood. Fingers scrambling for the locks on the coffin. The ones that held the lid down.
   Everyone just froze for a moment, staring. I saw the two children through the crowd still standing, wide-eyed. Shit. "Stop her," I said it too loud. People turned to stare. I didn't care.
   I pushed my way through the vanishing crowd and the aisles of chairs. The dark-haired man was holding the widow's hands while she screamed and struggled. She had collapsed to the ground, and her black dress had worked up high on her thighs.
   She was wearing a white slip. Her mascara had run like black blood down her face.
   I stood in front of the man and the two children. He was staring at the woman like he would never move again. "Sir," I said. He didn't react. "Sir?"
   He blinked, staring down at me like I had just appeared in front of him. "Sir, do you really think the children need to see all this?"
   "She's my daughter," he said. His voice was deep and thick..
   Drugged or just grief?
   "I sympathize, sir, but the children should go to the car now."
   The widow had begun to wail, loud and wordless, raw pain. The girl was beginning to shake. "You're her father, but you're their grandfather. Act like it. Get them out of here."
   Anger flickered in his eyes then. "How dare you?"
   He wasn't going to listen to me. I was just an intrusion on their grief. The oldest, a boy of about five, was staring up at me. His brown eyes were huge, his thin face so pale it looked ghostly.
   "I think it is you who should go," the grandfather said.
   "You're right. You are so right," I said. I walked around them out into the grass and the summer heat. I couldn't help the children. I couldn't help them, just as no one had been there to help me. I had survived. So would they, maybe.
   Manny and Rosita were waiting for me. Rosita hugged me. "You must come to Sunday dinner after church."
   I smiled. "I don't think I can make it, but thanks for asking."
   "My cousin Albert will be there," she said. "He is an engineer. He will be a good provider."
   "I don't need a good provider, Rosita."
   She sighed. "You make too much money for a woman. It makes you not need a man."
   I shrugged. If I ever did marry, which I'd begun to doubt, a it wouldn't be for money. Love. Shit, was I waiting for love? Naw, not me.
   "We have to pick up Tomas at kindergarten," Manny said. He was smiling at me apologetically around Rosita's shoulder. She was nearly a foot taller than he. She towered over me, too.
   "Sure, tell the little guy hi for me."
   "You should come to dinner," Rosita said, "Albert is a very handsome man."
   "Thanks for thinking of me, Rosita, but I'll skip it."
   "Come on, wife," Manny said. "Our son is waiting for us."
   She let him pull her towards the car, but her brown face was set in disapproval. It offended some deep part of Rosita that I was twenty-four and had no prospects of marriage. Her and my stepmother.
   Charles was nowhere to be seen. Hurrying back to the office to see clients. I thought Jamison had, too, but he stood in the grass, waiting for me.
   He was dressed impeccably, crossed-lapels, narrow red tie with small dark dots on it. His tie clip was onyx and silver. He smiled at me, always a bad sign.
   His greenish eyes looked hollow, like someone had erased part of the skin. If you cry enough, the skin goes from puffy red to hollow white. "I'm glad so many of us showed up," he said.
   "I know he was a friend of yours, Jamison. I'm sorry."
   He nodded and looked down at his hands. He was holding a pair of sunglasses loosely. He looked up at me, eyes staring straight into mine. All serious.
   "The police won't tell the family anything," he said. "Peter gets blown away, and they don't have a clue who did it."
   I wanted to tell him the police were doing their best, because they were. But there are a hell of a lot of murders in St. Louis over a year. We were giving Washington, D.C. a run for their money as murder capital of the United States. "They're doing their best, Jamison."
   "Then why won't they tell us anything?" His hands convulsed. The sound of breaking plastic was a crumbling sharp sound. He didn't seem to notice.
   "I don't know," I said.
   "Anita, you're in good with the police. Could you ask?" His eyes were naked, full of such real pain. Most of the time I could ignore, or even dislike, Jamison. He was a tease, a flirt, a bleeding-heart liberal who thought that vampires were just people with fangs. But today ... today he was real.
   "What do you want me to ask?"
   "Are they making any progress? Do they have any suspects? That sort of thing."
   They were vague questions, but important ones. "I'll see what I can find out."
   He gave a watery smile. "Thanks, Anita, really, thanks." He held out his hand. I took it. We shook. He noticed his broken sunglasses. "Damn, ninety-five dollars down the tubes."
   Ninety-five dollars for sunglasses? He had to be kidding. A group of mourners were taking the family away at last. The mother was smothered in well-meaning male relatives. They were literally carrying her away from the grave. The children and Grampa brought up the rear. No one listens to good advice.
   A man stepped away from the crowd and walked towards us. He was the one who reminded me of Peter Burke from the back. He was around six feet, dark-complected, a black mustache, and thin almost goatee like beard framing a handsome face. It was handsome, a dark movie-star face, but there was something about the way he moved. Maybe it was the white streak in his black hair just over the forehead. Whatever, you knew that he would always play the villain.
   "Is she going to help us?" he asked, no preamble, no hello.
   "Yes," Jamison said. "Anna Blake, this is John Burke, Peter's brother."
   John Burke, the John Burke, I wanted to ask. New Orleans's greatest animator and vampire slayer? A kindred spirit. We shook hands. His grip was strong, almost painfully so, as if he wanted to see if I would flinch. I didn't. He let go. Maybe he just didn't know his own strength? But I doubted it.
   "I am truly sorry about your brother," I said. I meant it. I was glad I meant it.
   He nodded. "Thank you for talking to the police about him."
   "I'm surprised you couldn't get the New Orleans police to give you some juice with our local police," I said.
   He had the grace to look uncomfortable. "The New Orleans police and I have had a disagreement."
   "Really?" I said, eyes wide. I had heard the rumors, but I wanted to hear the truth. Truth is always stranger than fiction.
   "John was accused of participating in some ritual murders," Jamison said. "Just because he's a practicing vaudun priest."
   "Oh," I said. Those were the rumors. "How long have you been in town, John?"
   "Almost a week."
   "Really?"
   "Peter had been missing for two days before they found the ... body." He licked his lips. His dark brown eyes flicked to the scene behind me. Were the grave diggers moving in? I glanced back, but the grave looked just the same to me.
   "Anything you could find out would be most appreciated," he said.
   "I'll do what I can."
   "I have to get back to the house." He shrugged, as if to loosen the shoulder muscles. "My sister-in-law isn't taking it well."
   I let it go. I deserved brownie points for that. One thing I didn't let go. "Can you look after your niece and nephew?"
   He looked at me, a puzzled frown between his black eyebrows.
   "I mean, keep them out of the really dramatic stuff if you can."
   He nodded. "It was rough for me to watch her throw herself on the coffin. God, what must the kids be thinking?" Tears glittered in his eyes like silver. He kept them open very wide so the tears wouldn't spill out.
   I didn't know what to say. I did not want to see him cry. "I'll talk to the police, find out what I can. I'll tell Jamison when I have anything."
   John Burke nodded, carefully. His eyes were like a glass where only the surface tension kept the water from spilling over.
   I nodded to Jamison and left. I turned on the air-conditioning in my car and let it run full blast. The two men were still standing in the hot sunshine in the middle of summer brown grass when I put the car in gear and drove away.
   I would talk to the police and find out what I could. I also had another name for Dolph. John Burke, biggest animator in New Orleans, voodoo priest. Sounded like a suspect to me.

10
   The phone was ringing as I shoved the key into my apartment door. I yelled at it, "I'm coming, I'm coming!" Why do people do that? Yell at the phone as if the other person can hear you and will wait?
   I shoved the door open and scooped up the phone on the fourth ring. "Hello."
   "Anita?"
   "Dolph," I said. My stomach tightened. "What's up?"
   "We think we found the boy." His voice was quiet, neutral.
   "Think," I said. "What do you mean, think?"
   "You know what I mean, Anita," he said. He sounded tired.
   "Like his parents?" It wasn't a question.
   "Yeah."
   "God, Dolph, is there much left?"
   "Come and see. We're at the Burrell Cemetery. Do you know it?"
   "Sure, I've done work there."
   "Be here as soon as you can. I want to go home and hug my wife."
   "Sure, Dolph, I understand." I was talking to myself. The phone had gone dead. I stared at the receiver for a moment. My skin felt cold. I did not want to go and view the remains of Benjamin Reynolds. I did not want to know. I pulled a lot of air in through my nose and let it out slowly.
   I stared down at the dark hose, high heels, dress. It wasn't my usual crime scene attire, but it would take too long to change. I was usually the last expert called in. Once I was through, they could cover the body. And everyone could go home. I grabbed a pair of black Nikes for walking over grass and through blood. Once you got bloodstains on dress shoes, they never come clean.
   I had the Browning Hi-Power, complete with holster sort of draped atop my little black clutch purse. The gun had been in my car during the funeral. I couldn't figure out a way to carry a gun of any kind while wearing a dress. I know you see thigh holsters on television, but does the word "chafing" mean anything to you?
   I hesitated on getting my backup gun and shoving it in my purse, but didn't. My purse, like all purses, seems to have a traveling black hole in it. I'd never get the gun out in time if I really needed it.
   I did have a silver knife in a thigh sheath under the short black skirt. I felt like Kit Carson in drag, but after Tommy's little visit, I didn't want to be unarmed. I had no illusions what would happen if Tommy did catch me with no gun. Knives weren't as good, but they beat the hell out of kicking my little feet and screaming.
   I had never yet had to try to fast draw a knife from a thigh sheath. It was probably going to look vaguely obscene, but if it kept me alive ... hey, I can take a little embarrassment.
   Burrell Cemetery is at the crest of a hill. Some of the gravestones go back centuries. The soft, weathered limestone is almost unreadable, like hard candy that's been sucked clean. The grass is waist tall, luxuriant with only the headstones standing like tired sentinels.
   There is a house on the edge of the cemetery where the caretaker lives, but he doesn't have to take care of much. The graveyard is full and has been for years. The last person buried here could remember the 1904 World's Fair.
   There is no road into the graveyard anymore. There is a ghost of one, like a wagon track where the grass doesn't grow quite so high. The caretaker's house was surrounded by police cars and the coroner's van. My Nova seemed underdressed. Maybe I should get some buggy whip antennae, or plaster Zombies "R" Us on the side of the car. Bert would probably get mad.
   I got a pair of coveralls from the trunk and slipped into them. They covered me from neck to ankle. Like most coveralls the crotch hit at knee level, I never understood why, but it meant my skirt didn't bunch up. I bought them originally for vampire stakings, but blood is blood. Besides, the weeds would play hell with my panty hose. I got a pair of surgical gloves from the little Kleenex-like box in the trunk. Nikes instead of dress shoes, and I was ready to view the remains.
   Remains. Nice word.
   Dolph stood like some ancient sentinel, towering over everyone else in the field. I worked my way towards him, trying not to trip over broken bits of headstone. A wind hot enough to scald rustled the grass. I was sweating inside the overalls.
   Detective Clive Perry came to meet me, as if I needed an escort. Detective Perry was one of the most polite people I had ever met. He had an old-world courtliness to him. A gentleman in the best sense of the word. I always wanted to ask what he had done to end up on the spook squad.
   His slender black face was beaded with sweat. He still wore his suit jacket even though it had to be over a hundred degrees. "Ms. Blake."
   "Detective Perry," I said. I glanced up at the crest of the hill. Dolph and a handful of men were standing around like they didn't know what to do. No one was looking at the ground.
   "How bad is it, Detective Perry?" I asked.
   He shook his head. "Depends on what you compare it to."
   "Did you see the tapes and pictures of the Reynolds house?"
   "I did."
   "Is it worse than that?" It was my new "worst thing I ever saw" measurement. Before this it had been a vampire gang that had tried to move in from Los Angeles. The respectable vampire community had chopped them up with axes. The parts were still crawling around the room when we found them. Maybe this wasn't worse. Maybe time had just dimmed the memory.
   "It isn't bloodier," he said, then he hesitated, "but it was a child. A little boy."
   I nodded. He didn't need to explain. It was always worse when it was a child. I never knew exactly why. Maybe it was some primal instinct to protect the young. Some deep hormonal thing. Whatever, kids were always worse. I stared down at a white tombstone. It looked like dull, melted ice. I didn't want to go up the hill. I didn't want to see.
   I went up the hill. Detective Perry followed. Brave detective. Brave me.
   A sheet rested on the grass like a tent. Dolph stood closest to it. "Dolph," I said.
   "Anita."
   No one offered to pull back the sheet. "Is this it?"
   "Yeah."
   Dolph seemed to shake himself, or maybe it was a shiver. He reached down and grabbed the edge of the sheet. "Ready?" he asked.
   No, I wasn't ready. Don't make me look. Please don't make me look. My mouth was dry. I could taste my pulse in my throat. I nodded.
   The sheet flew back, caught by a gust of wind like a white kite. The grass was trampled down. Struggles? Had Benjamin Reynolds been alive when he was pulled down into the long grass? No, surely not. God, I hoped not.
   The footed pajamas had tiny cartoon figures on them. The pajamas had been pulled back like the skin of a banana. One small arm was flung up over his head like he was sleeping. Long-lashed eyelids helped the illusion. His skin was pale and flawless, small cupid-bow mouth half open. He should have looked worse, much worse.
   There was a dirty brown stain on his pajamas, the cloth covering his lower body. I did not want to see what had killed him. But that was why I was here. I hesitated, fingers hovering over the torn cloth. I took a deep breath, and that was a mistake. Hunkered over the body in the windy August heat the smell was fresh. New death smells like an outhouse, especially if the stomach or bowels have been ripped open. I knew what I'd find when I lifted the bloody cloth. The smell told me.
   I knelt with a sleeve over my mouth and nose for a few minutes, breathing shallow and through my mouth, but it didn't really help. Once you caught a whiff of it, your nose remembered. The smell crawled down my throat and wouldn't let go.
   Quick or slow? Did I jerk the cloth back or pull it? Quick. I jerked on the cloth, but it stuck, dried blood catching. The cloth peeled back with a wet, sucking sound.
   It looked like someone had taken a giant ice cream scoop and gutted him. Stomach, intestines, upper bowels, gone. The sunshine swam around me, and I had to put a hand on the ground to keep from falling.
   I glanced up at the face. His hair was pale brown like his mother's. Damp curls traced his cheeks. My gaze was pulled back to the gaping ruin that was his abdomen. There was some dark, heavy fluid leaking out of the end of his small intestine.
   I stumbled away from the crime scene, using the tombstones to help me stand. I would have run if I hadn't known I would fall. The sky was spinning to meet the ground. I collapsed in the smothering grass and vomited.
   I threw up until I was empty and the world stopped spinning. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and stood up using a crooked headstone for support.
   No one said a word as I walked back to them. The sheet was covering the body. The body. Had to think of it that way. Couldn't dwell on the fact that it had been a small child. Couldn't. I'd go mad.
   "Well?" Dolph asked.
   "He hasn't been dead long. Dammit to hell, Dolph, it was late morning, maybe just before dawn. He was alive, alive when that thing took him!" I stared up at him and felt the hot beginnings of tears. I would not cry. I had already disgraced myself enough for one day. I took a deep careful breath and let it out. I would not cry.
   "I gave you twenty-four hours to talk to this Dominga Salvador. Did you find out anything?"
   "She says she knows nothing of it. I believe her."
   "Why?"
   "Because if she wanted to kill people she wouldn't have to do anything this dramatic."
   "What do you mean?" he asked.
   "She could wish them to death," I said.
   He widened his eyes. "You believe that?"
   I shrugged. "Maybe. Yes. Hell, I don't know. She scares me."
   He raised one thick eyebrow. "I'll remember that."
   "I have another name to add to your list though," I said.
   "Who?"
   "John Burke. He's up from New Orleans for his brother's funeral."
   He wrote the name in his little notebook. "If he's just visiting, would he have time?"
   "I can't think of a motive, but he could do it if he wanted to. Check him out with the New Orleans police. I think he's under suspicion down there for murder."
   "What's he doing traveling out of state?"
   "I don't think they have any proof," I said. "Dominga Salvador said she'd help me. She's promised to ask around and tell me anything she turns up."
   "I've been asking around since you gave me her name. She doesn't help anyone outside her own people. How did you get her to cooperate?"
   I shrugged. "My winning personality."
   He shook his head.
   "It wasn't illegal, Dolph. Beyond that I don't want to talk about it."
   He let it go. Smart man. "Tell me as soon as you hear anything, Anita. We've got to stop this thing before it kills again."
   "Agreed." I turned and looked out over the rolling grass. "Is this the cemetery near where you found the first three victims?"
   "Yes."
   "Maybe part of the answer's here then," I said.
   "What do you mean?"
   "Most vampires have to return to their coffins before dawn. Ghouls stay in underground tunnels, like giant moles. If it was either of those I'd say the creature was out here somewhere waiting for nightfall."
   "But," he said.
   "But if it's a zombie it isn't harmed by sunlight and it doesn't need to rest in a coffin. It could be anywhere, but I think it originally came from this cemetery. If they used voodoo there will be signs of the ritual."
   "Like what?"
   "A chalk verve, drawn symbols around the grave, dried blood, maybe a fire." I stared off at the rustling grass. "Though I wouldn't want to start an open fire in this place."
   "If it wasn't voodoo?" he asked.
   "Then it was an animator. Again you look for dried blood, maybe a dead animal. There won't be as many signs and it's easier to clean up."
   "Are you sure it's some kind of a zombie?" he asked.
   "I don't know what else it could be. I think we should act like that's what it is. It gives us someplace to look, and something to look for."
   "If it's not a zombie we don't have a clue," he said.
   "Exactly."
   He smiled, but it wasn't pleasant. "I hope you're right, Anita."
   "Me, too," I said.
   "If it did come from here, can you find what grave it came from?"
   "Maybe."
   "Maybe?" he said.
   "Maybe. Raising the dead isn't a science, Dolph. Sometimes I can feel the dead under the ground. Restlessness. How old without looking at the tombstone. Sometimes I can't." I shrugged.
   "We'll give you any help you need."
   "I have to wait until full dark. My ... powers are better after dark."
   "That's hours away. Can you do anything now?"
   I thought about that for a moment. "No. I'm sorry but no."
   "Okay, you'll come back tonight then?"
   "Yeah," I said.
   "What time? I'll send some men out."
   "I don't know what time. And I don't know how long it will take. I could be wandering out here for hours and find nothing."
   "Or?"
   "Or I could find the beastie itself."
   "You'll need backup for that, just in case."
   I nodded. "Agreed, but guns, even silver bullets, won't hurt it."
   "What will?"
   "Flamethrowers, napalm like the exterminators use on ghoul tunnels," I said.
   "Those aren't standard issue."
   "Have an exterminator team standing by," I said.
   "Good idea." He made a note.
   "I need a favor," I said.
   He looked up. "What?"
   "Peter Burke was murdered, shot to death. His brother asked me to find out what progress the police are making."
   "You know we can't give out information like that."
   "I know, but if you can get the facts I can feed just enough to John Burke to keep in touch with him."
   "You seem to be getting along well with all our suspects," he said.
   "Yeah."
   "I'll find out what I can from homicide. Do you know what jurisdiction he was found in?"
   I shook my head. "I could find out. It would give me an excuse to talk to Burke again."
   "You say he's suspected of murder in New Orleans."
   "Mm-huh," I said.
   "And he may have done this." He motioned at the sheet.
   "Yep."
   "You watch your back, Anita."
   "I always do," I said.
   "You call me as early tonight as you can. I don't want all my people sitting around twiddling their thumbs on overtime."
   "As soon as I can. I've got to cancel three clients just to make it." Bert was not going to be pleased. The day was looking up.
   "Why didn't it eat more of the boy?" Dolph asked.
   "I don't know," I said.
   He nodded. "Okay, I'll see you tonight then."
   "Say hello to Lucille for me. How's she coming with her master's degree?"
   "Almost done. She'll have it before our youngest gets his engineering degree."
   "Great."
   The sheet flapped in the hot wind. A trickle of sweat trailed down my forehead. I was out of small talk. "See you later," I said, and started down the hill. I stopped and turned back. "Dolph?"
   "Yes?" he said.
   "I've never heard of a zombie exactly like this one. Maybe it does rise from its grave more like a vampire. If you kept that exterminator team and backup hanging around until after dark, you might catch it rising from the grave and be able to bag it."
   "Is that likely?"
   "No, but it's possible," I said.
   "I don't know how I'll explain the overtime, but I'll do it."
   "I'll be here as soon as I can."
   "What else could be more important than this?" he asked.
   I smiled. "Nothing you'd like to hear about."
   "Try me," he said.
   I shook my head.
   He nodded. "Tonight, early as you can."
   "Early as I can," I said.
   Detective Perry escorted me back. Maybe politeness, maybe he just wanted to get away from the corpus delicti. I didn't blame him. "How's your wife, Detective?"
   "We're expecting our first baby in a month."
   I smiled up at him. "I didn't know. Congratulations."
   "Thank you." His face clouded over, a frown puckering between his dark eyes. "Do you think we can find this creature before it kills again?"
   "I hope so," I said.
   "What are our chances?"
   Did he want reassurance or the truth. Truth. "I haven't the faintest idea."
   "I was hoping you wouldn't say that," he said.
   "So was I, Detective. So was I."

11
   What was more important than bagging the critter that had eviscerated an entire family? Nothing, absolutely nothing. But it was a while until full dark, and I had other problems. Would Tommy go back to Gaynor and tell him what I said? Yes. Would Gaynor let it go? Probably not. I needed information. I needed to know how far he would go. A reporter, I needed a reporter. Irving Griswold to the rescue.
   Irving had one of those pastel cubicles that passes for an office. No roof, no door, but you got walls. Irving is five-three. I'd like him for that reason if nothing else. You don't meet many men exactly my height. Frizzy brown hair framed his bald spot like petals on a flower. He wore a white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, tie at half-mast. His face was round, pink-cheeked. He looked like a bald cherub. He did not look like a werewolf, but he was one. Even lycanthropy can't cure baldness.
   No one on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch knew Irving was a shapeshifter. It is a disease, and it's illegal to discriminate against lycanthropes, just like people with AIDS, but people do it anyway. Maybe the paper's management would have been broad-minded, liberal, but I was with Irving. Caution was better.
   Irving sat in his desk chair. I leaned in the doorway of his cubicle. "How's tricks?" Irving said.
   "Do you really think you're funny, or is this just an annoying habit?" I asked.
   He grinned. "I'm hilarious. Ask my girlfriend."
   "I'll bet," I said.
   "What's up, Blake? And please tell me whatever it is is on the record, not off."
   "How would you like to do an article on the new zombie legislation that's being cooked up?"
   "Maybe," he said. His eyes narrowed, suspicion gleamed forth. "What do you want in return?"
   "This part is off the record, Irving, for now."
   "It figures." He frowned at me. "Go on."
   "I need all the information you have on Harold Gaynor."
   "Name doesn't ring any bells," he said. "Should it?" His eyes had gone from cheerful to steady. His concentration was nearly perfect when he smelled a story.
   "Not necessarily," I said. Cautious. "Can you get the information for me?"
   "In exchange for the zombie story?"
   "I'll take you to all the businesses that use zombies. You can bring a photographer and snap pictures of corpses."
   His eyes lit up. "A series of articles with lots of semi-gruesome pictures. You center stage in a suit. Beauty and the Beast. My editor would probably go for it."
   "I thought he might, but I don't know about the center stage stuff."
   "Hey, your boss will love it. Publicity means more business."
   "And sells more papers," I said.
   "Sure," Irving said. He looked at me for maybe a minute. The room was almost silent. Most had gone home. Irving's little pool of light was one of just a few. He'd been waiting on me. So much for the press never sleeps. The quiet breath of the air conditioner filled the early evening stillness.
   "I'll see if Harold Gaynor's in the computer," Irving said at last.
   I smiled at him. "Remembered the name after me mentioning it just once, pretty good."
   "I am, after all, a trained reporter," he said. He swiveled his chair back to his computer keyboard with exaggerated movements. He pulled imaginary gloves on and adjusted the long tails of a tux.
   "Oh, get on with it." I smiled a little wider.
   "Do not rush the maestro." He typed a few words and the screen came to life. "He's on file," Irving said. "A big file. It'd take forever to print it all up." He swiveled the chair back to look at me. It was a bad sign.
   "I'll tell you what," he said. "I'll get the file together, complete with pictures if we have any. I'll deliver it to your sweet hands."
   "What's the catch?"
   He put his fingers to his chest. "Moi, no catch. The goodness of my heart."
   "All right, bring it by my apartment."
   "Why don't we meet at Dead Dave's, instead?" he said.
   "Dead Dave's is down in the vampire district. What are you doing hanging around out there?"
   His sweet cherubic face was watching me very steadily. "Rumor has it that there's a new Master Vampire of the City. I want the story."
   I just shook my head. "So you're hanging around Dead Dave's to get information?"
   "Exactly."
   "The vamps won't talk to you. You look human."
   "Thanks for the compliment," he said. "The vamps do talk to you, Anita. Do you know who the new Master is? Can I meet him, or her? Can I do an interview?"
   "Jesus, Irving, don't you have enough troubles without messing with the king vampire?"
   "It's a him then," he said.
   "It's a figure of speech," I said.
   "You know something. I know you do."
   "What I know is that you don't want to come to the attention of a master vampire. They're mean, Irving."
   "The vampires are trying to mainstream themselves. They want positive attention. An interview about what he wants to do with the vampire community. His vision of the future. It would be very up-and-coming. No corpse jokes. No sensationalism. Straight journalism."
   "Yeah, right. On page one a tasteful little headline: THE MASTER VAMPIRE OF ST. LOUIS SPEAKS OUT."
   "Yeah, it'll be great."
   "You've been sniffing newsprint again, Irving."
   "I'll give you everything we have on Gaynor. Pictures."
   "How do you know you have pictures?" I said.
   He stared up at me, his round, pleasant face cheerfully blank.
   "You recognized the name, you little son of ... "
   "Tsk, tsk, Anita. Help me get an interview with the Master of the City. I'll give you anything you want."
   "I'll give you a series of articles about zombies. Full-color pictures of rotting corpses, Irving. It'll sell papers."
   "No interview with the Master?" he said.
   "If you're lucky, no," I said.
   "Shoot."
   "Can I have the file on Gaynor?"
   He nodded. "I'll get it together." He looked up at me. "I still want you to meet me at Dead Dave's. Maybe a vamp will talk to me with you around."
   "Irving, being seen with a legal executioner of vampires is not going to endear you to the vamps."
   "They still call you the Executioner?"
   "Among other things."
   "Okay, the Gaynor file for going along on your next vampire execution?"
   "No," I said.
   "Ah, Anita ... "
   "No."
   He spread his hands wide. "Okay, just an idea. It'd be a great article."
   "I don't need the publicity, Irving, not that kind anyway."
   He nodded. "Yeah, yeah. I'll meet you at Dead Dave's in about two hours."
   "Make it an hour. I'd like to be out of the District before full dark."
   "Is anybody gunning for you down there? I mean I don't want to endanger you, Blake." He grinned. "You've given me too many lead stories. I wouldn't want to lose you."
   "Thanks for the concern. No, no one's after me. Far as I know."
   "You don't sound real certain."
   I stared at him. I thought about telling him that the new Master of the City had sent me a dozen white roses and an invitation to go dancing. I had turned him down. There had been a message on my machine and an invitation to a black tie affair. I ignored it all. So far the Master was behaving like the courtly gentleman he had been a few centuries back. It couldn't last. Jean-Claude was not a person who took defeat easily.
   I didn't tell Irving. He didn't need to know. "I'll see you at Dead Dave's in an hour. I'm gonna run home and change."
   "Now that you mention it, I've never seen you in a dress before."
   "I had a funeral today."
   "Business or personal?"
   "Personal," I said.
   "Then I'm sorry."
   I shrugged. "I've got to go if I'm going to have time to change and then meet you. Thanks, Irving."
   "It's not a favor, Blake. I'll make you pay for those zombie articles."
   I sighed. I had images of him making me embrace the poor corpse. But the new legislation needed attention. The more people who understood the horror of it, the better chance it had to pass. In truth, Irving was still doing me a favor. No need to let him know that, though.
   I walked away into the dimness of the darkened office. I waved over my shoulder without looking back. I wanted to get out of this dress and into something I could hide a gun on. If I was going into Blood Square, I might need it.

12
   Dead Dave's is in the part of St. Louis that has two names. Polite: the Riverfront. Rude: the Blood Quarter. It is our town's hottest vampire commercial district. Big tourist attraction. Vampires have really put St. Louis on the vacation maps. You'd think that the Ozark Mountains, some of the best fishing in the country, the symphony, Broadway level musicals, or maybe the Botanical Gardens would be enough, but no. I guess it's hard to compete with the undead. I know I find it difficult.
   Dead Dave's is all dark glass and beer signs in the windows. The afternoon sunlight was fading into twilight. Vamps wouldn't be out until full dark. I had a little under two hours. Get in, look over the file, get out. Easy. Ri-ight.
   I had changed into black shorts, royal-blue polo shirt, black Nikes with a matching blue swish, black and white jogging socks, and a black leather belt. The belt was there so the shoulder holster had something to hang on. My Browning Hi-Power was secure under my left arm. I had thrown on a short-sleeved dress shirt to hide the gun. The dress shirt was in a modest black and royal-blue print. The outfit looked great. Sweat trickled down my spine. Too hot for the shirt, but the Browning gave me thirteen bullets. Fourteen if you're animal enough to shove the magazine full and carry one in the chamber.
   I didn't think things were that bad, yet. I did have an extra magazine shoved into the pocket of my shorts. I know it picks up pocket lint, but where else was I going to carry it? One of these days I promise to get a deluxe holster with spaces for extra magazines. But all the models I'd seen had to be cut down to my size and made me feel like the Frito Bandito.
   I almost never carry an extra clip when I've got the Browning. Let's face it, if you need more than thirteen bullets, it's over. The really sad part was the extra ammo wasn't for Tommy, or Gaynor. It was for Jean-Claude. The Master Vampire of the City. Not that silver-plated bullets would kill him. But they would hurt him, make him heal almost human slow.
   I wanted out of the District before dark. I did not want to run into Jean-Claude. He wouldn't attack me. In fact, his intentions were good, if not exactly honorable. He had offered me immortality without the messy part of becoming a vampire. There was some implication that I got him along with eternity. He was tall, pale, and handsome. Sexier than a silk teddy.
   He wanted me to be his human servant. I wasn't anyone's servant. Not even for eternal life, eternal youth, and a little compromise of the soul. The price was too steep. Jean-Claude didn't believe that. The Browning was in case I had to make him believe it.
   I stepped into the bar and was momentarily blind, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. Like one of those old westerns where the good guy hesitates at the front of the bar and views the crowd. I suspected he wasn't looking for the bad guy at all. He had just come out of the sun and couldn't see shit. No one ever shoots you while you're waiting for your eyes to adjust. I wonder why?
   It was after five on a Thursday. Most of the bar stools and all the tables were taken. The place was cheek to jowl with business suits, male and female. A spattering of work boots and tans that ended at the elbow, but mostly upwardly mobile types. Dead Dave's had become trendy despite efforts to keep it at bay.
   It looked like happy hour was in high gear. Shit. All the yuppies were here to catch a nice safe glimpse of a vampire. They would be slightly sloshed when it happened. Increase the thrill I guess.
   Irving was sitting at the rounded corner of the bar. He saw me and waved. I waved back and started pushing my way towards him.
   I squeezed between two gentlemen in suits. It took some maneuvering, and a very uncool-looking hop to mount the bar stool.
   Irving grinned broadly at me. There was a nearly solid hum of conversation in the air. Words translated into pure noise like the ocean. Irving had to lean into me to be heard over the murmuring sound.
   "I hope you appreciate how many dragons I had to slay to save that seat for you," he said. The faint smell of whiskey breathed along my cheek as he spoke.
   "Dragons are easy, try vampires sometimes," I said.
   His eyes widened. Before his mouth could form the question, I said, "I'm kidding, Irving." Sheesh, some people just don't have a sense of humor. "Besides, dragons were never native to North America," I said.
   "I knew that."
   "Sure," I said.
   He sipped whiskey from a faceted glass. The amber liquid shimmered in the subdued light.
   Luther, daytime manager and bartender, was down at the far end of the bar dealing with a group of very happy people. If they had been any happier they'd have been passed out on the floor.
   Luther is large, not tall, fat. But it is solid fat, almost a kind of muscle. His skin is so black, it has purple highlights. The cigarette between his lips flared orange as he took a breath. He could talk around a cig better than anyone I'd ever met.
   Irving picked up a scuffed leather briefcase from off the floor near his feet. He fished out a file over three inches thick. A large rubber band wrapped it together.
   "Jesus, Irving. Can I take it home with me?"
   He shook his head. "A sister reporter is doing a feature on local upstanding businessmen who are not what they seem. I had to promise her dibs on my firstborn to borrow it for the night."
   I looked at the stack of papers. I sighed. The man on my right nearly rammed an elbow in my face. He turned. "Sorry, little lady, sorry. No harm done." Little came out liddle, and sorry slushed around the edges.
   "No harm," I said.
   He smiled and turned back to his friend. Another business type who laughed uproariously at something. Get drunk enough and everything is funny.
   "I can't possibly read the file here," I said.
   He grinned. "I'll follow you anywhere."
   Luther stood in front of me. He pulled a cigarette from the pack he always carried with him. He put the tip of his still burning stub against the fresh cigarette. The end flared red like a live coal. Smoke trickled up his nose and out his mouth. Like a dragon.
   He crushed the old cig in the clear glass ashtray he carried with him from place to place like a teddy bear. He chain smokes, is grossly overweight, and his grey hair puts him over fifty. He's never sick. He should be the national poster child for the Tobacco Institute.
   "A refill?" he asked Irving.
   "Yeah, thanks."
   Luther took the glass, refilled it from a bottle under the– bar, and set it back down on a fresh napkin.
   "What can I get for ya, Anita?" he asked.
   "The usual, Luther."
   He poured me a glass of orange juice. We pretend it is a screwdriver. I'm a teetotaler, but why would I come to a bar if I didn't drink?
   He wiped the bar with a spotless white towel. "Gotta message for you from the Master."
   "The Master Vampire of the City?" Irving asked. His voice had that excited lilt to it. He smelled news.
   "What?" There was no excited lilt to my voice.
   "He wants to see you, bad."
   I glanced at Irving, then back at Luther. I tried to telepathically send the message, not in front of the reporter. It didn't work.
   "The Master's put the word out. Anybody who sees you gives you the message."
   Irving was looking back and forth between us like an eager puppy. "What does the Master of the City want with you, Anita?"
   "Consider it given," I said.
   Luther shook his head. "You ain't going to talk to him, are you?"
   "No," I said.
   "Why not?" Irving asked.
   "None of your business."
   "Off the record," he said.
   " No."
   Luther stared at me. "Listen to me, girl, you talk to the Master. Right now all the vamps and freaks are just supposed to tell you the Master wants a powwow. The next order will be to detain you and take ya to him."
   Detain, it was a nice word for kidnap. "I don't have anything to say to the Master."
   "Don't let this get outta hand, Anita," Luther said. "Just talk to him, no harm."
   That's what he thought. "Maybe I will." Luther was right. It was talk to him now or later. Later would probably be a lot less friendly.
   "Why does the Master want to talk to you?" Irving asked. He was like some curious, bright-eyed bird that had spied a worm.
   I ignored the question, and thought up a new one. "Did your sister reporter give you any highlights from this file? I don't really have time to read War and Peace before morning."
   "Tell me what you know about the Master, and I'll give you the highlights."
   "Thanks a lot, Luther."
   "I didn't mean to sic him on you," he said. His cig bobbed up and down as he spoke. I never understood how he did that. Lip dexterity. Years of practice.
   "Would everybody stop treating me like the bubonic fucking plague," Irving said. "I'm just trying to do my job."
   I sipped my orange juice and looked at him. "Irving, you're messing with things you don't understand. I cannot give you info on the Master. I can't."
   "Won't," he said.
   I shrugged. "Won't, but the reason I won't is because I can't."
   "That's a circular argument," he said.
   "Sue me." I finished the juice. I didn't want it anyway. "Listen, Irving, we had a deal. The file info for the zombie articles. If you're going to break your word, deal's off. But tell me it's off. I don't have time to sit here and play twenty damn questions."
   "I won't go back on the deal. My word is my bond," he said in as stagy a voice as he could manage in the murmurous noise of the bar.
   "Then give me the highlights and let me get the hell out of the District before the Master hunts me up."
   His face was suddenly solemn. "You're in trouble, aren't you?"
   "Maybe. Help me out, Irving. Please."
   "Help her out," Luther said.
   Maybe it was the please. Maybe it was Luther's looming presence. Whatever, Irving nodded. "According to my sister reporter, he's crippled in a wheelchair."
   I nodded. Nondirective, that's me.
   "He likes his women crippled."
   "What do you mean?" I remembered Cicely of the empty eyes.
   "Blind, wheelchair, amputee, whatever, old Harry'll go for it."
   "Deaf," I said.
   "Up his alley."
   "Why?" I asked. Clever questions are us.
   Irving shrugged. "Maybe it makes him feel better since he's trapped in a chair himself. My fellow reporter didn't know why he was a deviant, just that he was."
   "What else did she tell you?"
   "He's never even been charged with a crime, but the rumors are real ugly. Suspected mob connections, but no proof. Just rumors."
   "Tell me," I said.
   "An old girlfriend tried to sue him for palimony. She disappeared."
   "Disappeared as in probably dead," I said.
   "Bingo."
   I believed it. So he'd used Tommy and Bruno to kill before. Meant it would be easier to give the order a second time. Or maybe Gaynor's given the order lots of times, and just never gotten caught.
   "What does he do for the mob that earns him his two bodyguards?"
   "Oh, so you've met his security specialist."
   I nodded.
   "My fellow reporter would love to talk to you."
   "You didn't tell her about me, did you?"
   "Do I look like a stoolie?" He grinned at me.
   I let that go. "What's he do for the mob?"
   "Helps them clean money, or that's what we suspect."
   "No evidence?" I said. ,
   "None." He didn't look happy about it.
   Luther shook his head, tapping his cig into the ashtray. Some ash spilled onto the bar. He wiped it with his spotless towel. "He sounds like bad news, Anita. Free advice, leave him the hell alone."
   Good advice. Unfortunately. "I don't think he'll leave me alone."
   "I won't ask, I don't want to know." Someone else was frantically signaling for a refill. Luther drifted over to them. I could watch the entire bar in the full-length mirror that took up the wall behind the bar. I could even see the door without turning around. It was convenient and comforting.
   "I will ask," Irving said, "I do want to know."
   I just shook my head.
   "I know something you don't know," he said.
   "And I want to know it?"
   He nodded vigorously enough to make his frizzy hair bob.
   I sighed. "Tell me."
   "You first."
   I had about enough. "I have shared all I am going to tonight, Irving. I've got the file. I'll look through it. You're just saving me a little time. Right now, a little time could be very important to me."
   "Oh, shucks, you take all the fun out of being a hard-core reporter." He looked like he was going to pout.
   "Just tell me, Irving, or I'm going to do something violent."
   He half laughed. I don't think he believed me. He should have. "Alright, alright." He brought out a picture from behind his back with a flourish like a magician.
   It was a black and white photo of a woman. She was in her twenties, long brown hair down in a modern style, just enough mousse to make it look spiky. She was pretty. I didn't recognize her. The photo was obviously not posed. It was too casual and there was a look to the face of someone who didn't know she was being photographed.
   "Who is she?"
   "She was his girlfriend until about five months ago," Irving said.
   "So she's ... handicapped?" I stared down at the pretty, candid face. You couldn't tell by the picture.
   "Wheelchair Wanda."
   I stared at him. I could feel my eyes going wide. "You can't be serious."
   He grinned. "Wheelchair Wanda cruises the streets in her chair. She's very popular with a certain crowd."
   A prostitute in a wheelchair. Naw, it was too weird. I shook my head. "Okay, where do I find her?"
   "I and my sister reporter want in on this."
   "That's why you kept her picture out of the file."
   He didn't even have the grace to look embarrassed. "Wanda won't talk to you alone, Anita."
   "Has she talked to your reporter friend?"
   He frowned, the light of conquest dimming in his eyes. I knew what that meant. "She won't talk to reporters will she, Irving?"
   "She's afraid of Gaynor."
   "She should be," I said.
   "Why would she talk to you and not us?"
   "My winning personality," I said.
   "Come on, Blake."
   "Where does she hang out, Irving?"
   "Oh, hell." He finished his dwindling drink in one angry swallow. "She stays near a club called The Grey Cat."
   The Grey Cat, like that old joke, all cats are grey in the dark. Cute. "Where's the club?"
   Luther answered. I hadn't seen him come back. "On the main drag in the Tenderloin, corner of Twentieth and Grand. But I wouldn't go down there alone, Anita."
   "I can take care of myself."
   "Yeah, but you don't look like you can. You don't want to have to shoot some dumb shmuck just because he copped a feel, or worse. Take someone who looks mean, save yourself the aggravation."
   Irving shrugged. "I wouldn't go down there alone."
   I hated to admit it, but they were right. I may be heap big vampire slayer but it doesn't show much on the outside. "Okay, I'll get Charles. He looks tough enough to take on the Green Bay Packers, but his heart is oh so gentle."
   Luther laughed, puffing smoke. "Don't let of Charlie see too much. He might faint."
   Faint once in public and people never let you forget.
   "I'll keep Charles safe." I put more money down on the bar than was needed. Luther hadn't really given me much information this time, but usually he did. Good information. I never paid full price for it. I got a discount because I was connected with the police. Dead Dave had been a cop before they kicked him off the force for being undead. Shortsighted of them. He was still pissed about that, but he liked to help. So he fed me information, and I fed the police selected bits of it.
   Dead Dave came out of the door behind the bar. I glanced at the dark glass windows. It looked the same, but if Dave was up, it was full dark. Shit. It was a walk back to my car surrounded by vampires. At least I had my gun. Comforting that.
   Dave is tall, wide, short brown hair that had been balding when he died. He lost no more hair but it didn't grow back either. He smiled at me wide enough to flash fangs. An excited wiggle ran through the crowd, as if the same nerve had been touched in all of them. The whispers spread like rings in a pool. Vampire. The show was on.
   Dave and I shook hands. His hand was warm, firm, and dry. Have you fed tonight, Dave? He looked like he had, all rosy and cheerful. What did you feed on, Dave? And was it willing? Probably. Dave was a good guy for a dead man.
   "Luther keeps telling me you stopped by but it's always in daylight. Nice to see you're slumming after dark."
   "Truthfully, I planned to be out of the District before full dark."
   He frowned. "You packing?"
   I gave him a discreet glimpse of my gun.
   Irving's eyes widened. "You're carrying a gun." It only sounded like he shouted it.
   The noise level had died down to a waiting murmur. Quiet enough for people to overbear. But then, that's why they had come, to listen to the vampire. To tell their troubles to the dead. I lowered my voice and said, "Announce it to the world, Irving."
   He shrugged. "Sorry."
   "How do you know newsboy over here?" Dave asked.
   "He helps me sometimes with research."
   "Research, well la-de-da." He smiled without showing any fang. A trick you learn after a few years. "Luther give you the message?"
   "Yeah."
   "You going to be smart or dumb?"
   Dave is soma blunt, but I like him anyway. "Dumb probably," I said.
   "Just because you got a special relationship with the new Master, don't let it fool you. He's still a master vampire. They are freaking bad news. Don't fuck with him."
   "I'm trying to avoid it."
   Dave smiled broad enough to show fang. "Shit, you mean ... Naw, he wants you for more than good tail."
   It was nice to know he thought I'd be good tail. I guess. "Yeah," I said.
   Irving was practically bouncing in his seat. "What the hell is going on, Anita?"
   Very good question. "My business, not yours."
   "Anita ... "
   "Stop pestering me, Irving. I mean it."
   "Pestering? I haven't heard that word since my grandmother."
   I looked him straight in the eyes and said, carefully, "Leave me the fuck alone. That better?"
   He put his hands out in an I-give-up gesture. "Heh, just trying to do my job."
   "Well, do it somewhere else."
   I slid off the bar stool.
   "The word's out to find you, Anita," Dave said. "Some of the other vampires might get overzealous."
   "You mean try to take me?"
   He nodded.
   "I'm armed, cross and all. I'll be okay."
   "You want me to walk you to your car?" Dave asked.
   I stared into his brown eyes and smiled. "Thanks, Dave, I'll remember the offer, but I'm a big girl." Truth was a lot of the vampires didn't like Dave feeding information to the enemy. I was the Executioner. If a vampire stepped over the line, they sent for me. There was no such thing as a life sentence for a vamp. Death or nothing. No prison can hold a vampire.
   California tried, but one master vampire got loose. He killed twenty-five people in a one-night bloodbath. He didn't feed, he just killed. Guess he was pissed about being locked up. They'd put crosses over the doors and on the guards. Crosses don't work unless you believe in them. And they certainly don't work once a master vampire has convinced you to take them off.
   I was the vampire's equivalent of an electric chair. They didn't like me much. Surprise, surprise.
   "I'll be with her," Irving said. He put money down on the bar and stood up. I had the bulky file under my arm. I guess he wasn't going to let it out of his sight. Great.
   "She'll probably have to protect you, too," Dave said.
   Irving started to say something, then thought better of it. He could say, but I'm a lycanthrope, except he didn't want people to know. He worked very, very hard at appearing human.
   "You sure you'll be okay?" he asked. One more chance for a vampire guard to my car.
   He was offering to protect me from the Master. Dave hadn't . been dead ten years. He wasn't good enough. "Nice to know you care, Dave."
   "Go on, get outta here," he said.
   "Watch yourself, girl," Luther said.
   I smiled brightly at both of them, then turned and walked out of the near silent bar. The crowd couldn't have overheard much, if any, of the conversation, but I could feel them staring at my back. I resisted an urge to whirl around and go "boo." I bet somebody would have screamed.
   It's the cross-shaped scar on my arm. Only vampires have them, right? A cross shoved into unclean flesh. Mine had been a branding iron specially made. A now dead master vampire had ordered it. Thought it would be funny. Hardyhar.
   Or maybe it was just Dave. Maybe they hadn't noticed the scar. Maybe I was overly sensitive. Make friendly with a nice law-abiding vampire, and people get suspicious. Have a few funny scars and people wonder if you're human. But that's okay. Suspicion is healthy. It'll keep you alive.

13
   The sweltering darkness closed around me like a hot, sticky fist. A streetlight formed a puddle of brilliance on the sidewalk, as if the light had melted. All the streetlights are reproductions of turn-of-the-century gas lamps. They rise black and graceful, but not quite authentic. Like a Halloween costume. It looks good but is too comfortable to be real.
   The night sky was like a dark presence over the tall brick buildings, but the streetlights held the darkness back. Like a black tent held up by sticks of light. You had the sense of darkness without the reality.
   I started walking for the parking garage just off First Street. Parking on the Riverfront is damn near impossible. The tourists have only made the problem worse.
   The hard soles of Irving's dress shoes made a loud, echoing noise on the stone of the street. Real cobblestones. Streets meant for horses, not cars. It made parking a bitch, but it was ... charming.
   My Nike Airs made almost no sound on the street. Irving was like a clattery puppy beside me. Most lycanthropes I've met have been stealthy. Irving may have been a werewolf but he was more dog. A big, fun-loving dog.
   Couples and small groups passed us, laughing, talking, voices too shrill. They had come to see vampires. Real live vampires, or was that real-dead vampires? Tourists, all of them. Amateurs. Voyeurs. I had seen more undead than any of them. I'd lay money on that. The fascination escaped me.
   It was full dark now. Dolph and the gang would be awaiting me at Burrell Cemetery. I needed to get over there. What about the file on Gaynor? And what was I going to do with Irving? Sometimes my life is too full.
   A figure detached itself from the darkened buildings. I couldn't tell if he had been waiting or had simply appeared. Magic. I froze, like a rabbit caught in headlights, staring.
   "What's wrong, Blake?" Irving asked.
   I handed him the file and he took it, looking puzzled. I wanted my hands free in case I had to go for my gun. It probably wouldn't come to that. Probably.
   Jean-Claude, Master Vampire of the City, walked towards us. He moved like a dancer, or a cat, a smooth, gliding walk. Energy and grace contained, waiting to explode into violence.
   He wasn't that tall, maybe five-eleven. His shirt was so white, it gleamed. The shirt was loose, long, full sleeves made tight at the wrist by three-buttoned cuffs. The front of the shirt had only a string to close the throat. He'd left it untied, and the white cloth framed the pale smoothness of his chest. The shirt was tucked into tight black jeans, and only that kept it from billowing around him like a cape.
   His hair was perfectly black, curling softly around his face. The eyes, if you dared to look into them, were a blue so dark it was almost black. Glittering, dark jewels.
   He stopped about six feet in front of us. Close enough to see the dark cross-shaped scar on his chest. It was the only thing that marred the perfection of his body. Or what I'd seen of his body.
   My scar had been a bad joke. His had been some poor sod's last attempt to stave off death. I wondered if the poor sod had escaped? Would Jean-Claude tell me if I asked? Maybe. But if the answer was no, I didn't want to hear it.
   "Hello, Jean-Claude," I said.
   "Greetings, ma petite," he said. His voice was like fur, rich, soft, vaguely obscene, as if just talking to him was something dirty. Maybe it was.
   "Don't call me ma petite," I said.
   He smiled slightly, not a hint of fang. "As you like." He looked at Irving. Irving looked away, careful not to meet Jean-Claude's eyes. You never looked directly into a vampire's eyes. Never. So why was I doing it with impunity. Why indeed?
   "Who is your friend?" The last word was very soft and somehow threatening.
   "This is Irving Griswold. He's a reporter for the Post Dispatch. He's helping me with a little research."
   "Ah," he said. He walked around Irving as if he were something for sale, and Jean-Claude wanted to see all of him.
   Irving gave nervous little glances so that he could keep the vampire in view. He glanced at me, widening his eyes. "What's going on?"
   "What indeed, Irving?" Jean-Claude said.
   "Leave him alone, Jean-Claude."
   "Why have you not come to see me, my little animator?"
   Little animator wasn't much of an improvement over ma petite, but I'd take it. "I've been busy."
   The look that crossed his face was almost anger. I didn't really want him mad at me. "I was going to come see you," I said.
   "When
   "Tomorrow night."
   "Tonight." It was not a suggestion.
   "I can't."
   "Yes, ma petite, you can." His voice was like a warm wind in my head.
   "You are so damn demanding," I said.
   He laughed then. Pleasant and resonating like expensive perfume that lingers in the room after the wearer has gone. His laughter was like that, lingering in the ears like distant music. He had the best voice of any master vampire I'd ever met. Everyone has their talents.
   "You are so exasperating," he said, the edge of laughter still in his voice. "What am I to do with you?"
   "Leave me alone," I said. I was utterly serious. It was one of my biggest wishes.
   His face sobered completely, like someone had flipped a switch. On, happy, off, unreadable. "Too many of my followers know you are my human servant, ma petite. Bringing you under control is part of consolidating my power." He sounded almost regretful. A lot of help that did me.
   "What do you mean, bringing me under control?" My stomach was tight with the beginnings of fear. If Jean-Claude didn't scare me to death, he was going to give me an ulcer.
   "You are my human servant. You must start acting like one."
   "I am not your servant."
   "Yes, ma petite, you are."
   "Dammit, Jean-Claude, leave me alone."
   He was suddenly standing next to me. I hadn't seen him move. He had clouded my mind without me even blinking. I could taste my pulse at the back of my throat. I tried to step back, but one pale slender hand grabbed my right arm, just above the elbow. I shouldn't have stepped back. I should have gone for my gun. I hoped I would live through the mistake.
   My voice came out fiat, normal. At least I'd die brave. "I thought having two of your vampire marks meant you couldn't control my mind."
   "I cannot bewitch you with my eyes, and it is harder to cloud your mind, but it can be done." His fingers encircled my arm. Not hurting. I didn't try to pull away. I knew better. He could crush my arm without breaking a sweat, or tear it from its socket, or bench press a Toyota. If I couldn't arm wrestle Tommy, I sure as hell couldn't match Jean-Claude.
   "He's the new Master of the City, isn't he?" It was Irving. I think we had forgotten about him. It would have been better for Irving if we had.
   Jean-Claude's grip tightened slightly on my right arm. He turned to look at Irving. "You are the reporter that has been asking to interview me."
   "Yes, I am." Irving sounded just the tiniest bit nervous, not much, just the hint of tightness in his voice. He looked brave and resolute. Good for Irving.
   "Perhaps after I have spoken with this lovely young woman, I will grant you your interview."
   "Really?" Astonishment was plain in his voice. He grinned widely at me. "That would be great. I'll do it any way you want. It ... "
   "Silence." The word hissed and floated. Irving fell quiet as if it were a spell.
   "Irving, are you alright?" Funny me asking. I was the one cheek to jowl with a vampire, but I asked anyway.
   "Yeah," Irving said. That one word was squeezed small with fear. "I've just never felt anything like him."
   I glanced up at Jean-Claude. "He is sort of one of a kind."
   Jean-Claude turned his attention back to me. Oh, goody. "Still making jokes, ma petite."
   I stared up into his beautiful eyes, but they were just eyes. He had given me the power to resist them. "It's a way to pass the time. What do you want, Jean-Claude?"
   "So brave, even now."
   "You aren't going to do me on the street, in front of witnesses. You may be the new Master, but you're also a businessman. You're mainstream vampire. It limits what you can do."
   "Only in public," he said, so soft that only I heard him.
   "Fine, but we both agree you aren't going to do violence here and now." I stared up at him. "So cut the theatrics and tell me what the bloody hell you want."
   He smiled then, a bare movement of lips, but he released my arm and stepped back. "Just as you will not shoot me down in the street without provocation."
   I thought I had provocation, but nothing I could explain to the police. "I don't want to be up on murder charges, that's true."
   His smile widened, still not fangs. He did that better than any living vampire I knew. Was living vampire an oxymoron? I wasn't sure anymore.
   "So, we will not harm each other in public," he said.
   "Probably not," I said. "What do you want? I'm late for an appointment."
   "Are you raising zombies or slaying vampires tonight?"
   "Neither," I said.
   He looked at me, waiting for me to say more. I didn't. He shrugged and it was graceful. "You are my human servant, Anita."
   He'd used my real name, I knew I was in trouble now. "Am not," I said.
   He gave a long sigh. "You bear two of my marks."
   "Not by choice," I said.
   "You would have died if I had not shared my strength with you."
   "Don't give me crap about how you saved my life. You forced two marks on me. You didn't ask or explain. The first mark may have saved my life, great. The second mark saved yours. I didn't have a choice either time."
   "Two more marks and you will have immortality. You will not age because I do not age. You will remain human, alive, able to wear your crucifix. Able to enter a church. It does not compromise your soul. Why do you fight me?"
   "How do you know what compromises my soul? You don't have one anymore. You traded your immortal soul for earthly eternity. But I know that vampires can die, Jean-Claude. What happens when you die? Where do you go? Do you just go poof? No, you go to hell where you belong."
   "And you think by being my human servant you will go with me?"
   "I don't know, and I don't want to find out."
   "By fighting me, you make me appear weak. I cannot afford that, ma petite. One way or another, we must resolve this."
   "Just leave me alone."
   "I cannot. You are my human servant, and you must begin to act like one."
   "Don't press me on this, Jean-Claude."
   "Or what, will you kill me? Could you kill me?"
   I stared at his beautiful face and said, "Yes."
   "I feel your desire for me, ma petite, as I desire you."
   I shrugged. What could I say? "It's just a little lust, Jean-Claude, nothing special." That was a lie. I knew it even as I said it.
   "No, ma petite, I mean more to you than that."
   We were attracting a crowd, at a safe distance. "Do you really want to discuss this in the street?"
   He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "Very true. You make me forget myself, ma petite."
   Great. "I really am late, Jean-Claude. The police are waiting for me."
   "We must finish this discussion, ma petite," he said.
   I nodded. He was right. I'd been trying to ignore it, and him. Master vampires are not easy to ignore. "Tomorrow night."
   "Where?" he asked.
   Polite of him not to order me to his lair. I thought about where best to do it. I wanted Charles to go down to the Tenderloin with me. Charles was going to be checking the zombie working conditions at a new comedy club. Good a place as any. "Do you know The Laughing Corpse?"
   He smiled, a glimpse of fang touching his lips. A woman in the small crowd gasped. "Yes."
   "Meet me there at, say, eleven o'clock."
   "My pleasure." The words caressed my skin like a promise. Shit.
   "I will await you in my office, tomorrow night."
   "Wait a minute. What do you mean, your office?" I had a bad feeling about this.
   His smile widened into a grin, fangs glistening in the streetlights. "Why, I own The Laughing Corpse. I thought you knew."
   "The hell you did."
   "I will await you."
   I'd picked the place. I'd stand by it. Dammit. "Come on, Irving."
   "No, let the reporter stay. He has not had his interview."
   "Leave him alone, Jean-Claude, please."
   "I will give him what he desires, nothing more."
   I didn't like the way he said desires. "What are you up to?"
   "Me, ma petite, up to something?" He smiled.
   "Anita, I want to stay," Irving said.
   I turned to him. "You don't know what you're saying."
   "I'm a reporter. I'm doing my job."
   "Swear to me, swear to me you won't harm him."
   "You have my word," Jean-Claude said.
   "That you will not harm him in any way."
   "That I will not harm him in any way." His face was expressionless, as if all the smiles had been illusions. His face had that immobility of the long dead. Lovely to look at, but empty of life as a painting.
   I looked into his blank eyes and shivered. Shit. "Are you sure you want to stay here?"
   Irving nodded. "I want the interview."
   I shook my head. "You're a fool."
   "I'm a good reporter," he said.
   "You're still a fool."
   "I can take care of myself, Anita."
   We looked at each other for a space of heartbeats. "Fine, have fun. May I have the file?"
   He looked down at his arms as if he had forgotten he was holding it. "Drop it by tomorrow morning or Madeline is going to have a fit."
   "Sure. No problem." I tucked the bulky file under my left arm as loosely as I could manage it. It hampered my being able to draw my gun, but life's imperfect.
   I had information on Gaynor. I had the name of a recent ex-girlfriend. A woman scorned. Maybe she'd talk to me. Maybe she'd help me find clues. Maybe she'd tell me to go to hell. Wouldn't be the first time.
   Jean-Claude was watching me with his still eyes. I took a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth. Enough for one night. "See you both tomorrow." I turned and walked away. There was a group of tourists with cameras. One was sort of tentatively raised in my direction.
   "If you snap my picture, I will take the camera away from you and break it." I smiled while I said it.
   The man lowered his camera uncertainly. "Geez, just a little picture."
   "You've seen enough," I said. "Move on, the show's over." The tourists drifted away like smoke when the wind blows through it. I walked down the street towards the parking garage. I glanced back and found the tourists had drifted back to surround Jean-Claude and Irving. The tourists were right. The show wasn't over yet.
   Irving was a big boy. He wanted the interview. Who was I to play nursemaid on a grown werewolf? Would Jean-Claude find out Irving's secret? If he did, would it make a difference? Not my problem. My problem was Harold Gaynor, Dominga Salvador, and a monster that was eating the good citizens of St. Louis, Missouri. Let Irving take care of his own problems. I had enough of my own.