24
   Wheelchair Wanda was a small woman sitting in one of those sport wheelchairs that are used for railing. She wore workout gloves, and the muscles in her arms moved under her tanned skin as she pushed herself along. Long brown hair fell in gentle waves around a very pretty face. The makeup was tasteful. She wore a shiny metallic blue shirt and no bra. An ankle-length skirt with at least two layers of multicolored crinoline and a pair of stylish black boots hid her legs.
   She was moving towards us at a goodly pace. Most of the prostitutes, male and female, looked ordinary. They weren't dressed outrageously, shorts, middrifts. In this heat who could blame them? I guess if you wear fishnet jumpsuits, the police just naturally get suspicious.
   Jean-Claude stood beside me. He glanced up at the sign that proclaimed "The Grey Cat" in a near blinding shade of fuchsia neon. Tasteful.
   How does one approach a prostitute, even just to talk? I didn't know. Learn something new every day. I stood in her path and waited for her to come to me. She glanced up and caught me watching her. When I didn't look away, she got eye contact and smiled.
   Jean-Claude moved up beside me. Wanda's smile broadened or deepened. It was a definite "come along smile" as my Grandmother Blake used to say.
   Jean-Claude whispered, "Is that a prostitute?"
   "Yes," I said.
   "In a wheelchair?" he asked.
   "Yep.'
   "My," was all he said. I think Jean-Claude was shocked. Nice to know he could be.
   She stopped her chair with an expert movement of hands.
   She smiled, craning to look up at us. The angle looked painful.
   "Hi," she said.
   "Hi," I said.
   She continued to smile. I continued to stare. Why did I suddenly feel awkward? "A friend told me about you," I said.
   Wanda nodded.
   "You are the one they refer to as Wheelchair Wanda?"
   She grinned suddenly, and her face looked real. Behind all those lovely but fake smiles was a real person. "Yeah, that's me."
   "Could we talk?"
   "Sure," she said. "You got a room?"
   Did I have a room? Wasn't she supposed to do that? "No."
   She waited.
   Oh, hell. "We just want to talk to you for an hour, or two. We'll pay whatever the going rate is."
   She told me the going rate.
   "Jesus, that's a little steep," I said.
   She smiled beatifically at me. "Supply and demand," she said. "You can't get a taste of what I have anywhere else." She smoothed her hands down her legs as she said it. My eyes followed her hands like they were supposed to. This was too weird.
   I nodded. "Okay, you got a deal." It was a business expense. Computer paper, ink pens medium point, one prostitute, manila file folders. See, it fit right in.
   Bert was going to love this one.

25
   We took Wanda back to my apartment. There are no elevators in my building. Two flights of stairs are not exactly wheelchair accessible. Jean-Claude carried her. His stride was even and fluid as he walked ahead of me. Wanda didn't even slow him down. I followed with the wheelchair. It did slow me down.
   The only consolation I had was I got to watch Jean-Claude climb the stairs. So sue me. He had a very nice backside for a vampire.
   He was waiting for me in the upper hallway, standing with Wanda cuddled in his arms. They both looked at me with a pleasant sort of blankness.
   I wheeled the collapsed wheelchair over the carpeting. Jean-Claude followed me. The crinoline in Wanda's skirts crinkled and whispered as he moved.
   I leaned the wheelchair against my leg and unlocked the door. I pushed the door all the way back to the wall to give Jean-Claude room. The wheelchair folded inwards like a cloth baby stroller. I struggled to make the metal bars catch, so the chair would be solid again. As I suspected, it was easier to break it than to fix it.
   I glanced up from my struggles and found Jean-Claude still standing outside my door. Wanda was staring at him, frowning.
   "What's wrong?" I asked.
   "I have never been to your apartment."
   "So?"
   "The great vampire expert ... come, Anita."
   Oh. "You have my permission to enter my home."
   He gave a sort of bow from the neck. "I am honored," he said.
   The wheelchair snapped into shape again. Jean-Claude set Wanda in her chair. I closed the door. Wanda smoothed her long skirts over her legs.
   Jean-Claude stood in the middle of my living room and gazed about. He gazed at the penguin calendar on the wall by the kitchenette. He rifled the pages to see future months, gazing at pictures of chunky flightless birds until he'd seen every picture.
   I wanted to tell him to stop, but it was harmless. I didn't write appointments on the calendar. Why did it bother me that he was so damned interested in it?
   I turned back to the prostitute in my living room. The night was entirely too weird. "Would you like something to drink?" I asked. When in doubt, be polite.
   "Red wine if you have it," Wanda said.
   "Sorry, nothing alcoholic in the house. Coffee, soft drinks with real sugar in them, and water, that's about it."
   "Soft drink," she said.
   I got her a can of Coke out of the fridge. "You want a glass?"
   She shook her head.
   Jean-Claude was leaning against the wall, staring at me as I moved about the kitchen. "I don't need a glass either," he said softly.
   "Don't get cute," I said.
   "Too late," he said.
   I had to smile.
   The smile seemed to please him. Which made me frown. Life was hard around Jean-Claude. He sort of wandered off towards the fish tank. He was giving himself a tour of my apartment. Of course, he would. But at least it would give Wanda and I some privacy.
   "Shit, he's a vampire," Wanda said. She sounded surprised. Which surprised me. I could always tell. Dead was dead to me, no matter how pretty the corpse.
   "You didn't know?" I asked.
   "No, I'm not coffin-bait," she said. There was a tightness to her face. The flick of her eyes as she followed Jean-Claude's casual movements around the room was new. She was scared.
   "What's coffin-bait?" I handed her the soft drink.
   "A whore that does vampires."
   Coffin-bait, how quaint. "He won't touch you."
   She turned brown eyes to me then. Her gaze was very thorough, as if she were trying to read the inside of my head. Was I telling the truth?
   How terrifying to go away with strangers to rooms and not know if they will hurt you or not. Desperation, or a death wish.
   "So you and I are going to do it?" she asked. Her gaze never left my face.
   I blinked at her. It took me a moment to realize what she meant. "No." I shook my head. "No, I said I just wanted to talk. I meant it." I think I was blushing.
   Maybe the blush did it. She popped the top on the soda can and took a drink. "You want me to talk about doing it with other people, while you do it with him?" She motioned her head towards the wandering vampire.
   Jean-Claude was standing in front of the only picture I had in the room. It was modern and matched the decor. Grey, white, black, and palest pink. It was one of those designs that the longer you stared at it, the more shapes you could pick out.
   "Look, Wanda, we are just going to talk. That's it. Nobody is going to do anything to anybody. Okay?"
   She shrugged. "It's your money. We can do what you want."
   That one statement made my stomach hurt. She meant it. I'd paid the money. She would do anything I wanted. Anything? It was too awful. That any human being would say "anything" and mean it. Of course, she drew the line at vampires. Even whores have standards.
   Wanda was smiling up at me. The change was extraordinary. Her face glowed. She was instantly lovely. Even her eyes glowed. It reminded me of Cicely's soundless laughing face.
   Back to business. "I heard you were Harold Gaynor's mistress a while back." No preliminaries, no sweet talk. Off with the clothes.
   Wanda's smile faded. The glow of humor died in her eyes, replaced by wariness. "I don't know the name."
   "Yeah, you do," I said. I was still standing, forcing her to look up at me in that near painful angle.
   She sipped her drink and shook her head without looking up at me.
   "Come on, Wanda, I know you were Gaynor's sweetie. Admit you know him, and we'll work from there."
   She glanced up at me, then down. "No. I'll do you. I'll let the vamp watch. I'll talk dirty to you both. But I don't know anybody named Gaynor."
   I leaned down, putting my hands on the arms of her chair. Our faces were very close. "I'm not a reporter. Gaynor will never know you talked to me unless you tell him."
   Her eyes had gotten bigger. I glanced where she was staring. The Windbreaker had fallen forward. My gun was showing, which seemed to upset her. Good.
   "Talk to me, Wanda." My voice was soft. Mild. The mildest of voices is often the worst threat.
   "Who the hell are you? You're not cops. You're not a reporter. Social workers don't carry guns. Who are you?" That last question had the lilt of fear in it.
   Jean-Claude strolled into the room. He'd been in my bedroom. Great, just great. "Trouble, ma petite?"
   I didn't correct him on the nickname. Wanda didn't need to know there was dissent in the ranks. "She's being stubborn," I said.
   I stepped back from her chair. I took off the Windbreaker and laid it over the kitchen counter. Wanda stared at the gun like I knew she would.
   I may not be intimidating, but the Browning is.
   Jean-Claude walked up behind her. His slender hands touched her shoulders. She jumped like it had hurt. I knew it hadn't hurt. Might be better if it did.
   "He'll kill me," Wanda said.
   A lot of people seemed to say that about Mr. Gaynor. "He'll never know," I said.
   Jean-Claude rubbed his cheek against her hair. His fingers kneading her shoulders, gently. "And, my sweet coquette, he is not here with you tonight." He spoke with his lips against her ear. "We are." He said something else so soft I could not hear. Only his lips moved, soundlessly for me.
   Wanda heard him. Her eyes widened, and she started to tremble. Her entire body seemed in the grip of some kind of fit. Tears glittered in her eyes and fell down her cheeks in one graceful curve.
   Jesus.
   "Please, don't. Please don't let him." Her voice was squeezed small and thin with fear.
   I hated Jean-Claude in that moment. And I hated me. I was one of the good guys. It was one of my last illusions. I wasn't willing to give it up, not even if it worked. Wanda would talk or she wouldn't. No torture. "Back off, Jean-Claude," I said.
   He gazed up at me. "I can taste her terror like strong wine." His eyes were solid, drowning blue. He looked blind. His face was still lovely as he opened his mouth wide and fangs glistened.
   Wanda was still crying and staring at me. If she could have seen the look on Jean-Claude's face, she would have, been screaming.
   "I thought your control was better than this, Jean-Claude?"
   "My control is excellent, but it is not endless." He stood away from her and began to pace the room on the other side of the couch. Like a leopard pacing its cage. Contained violence, waiting for release. I could not see his face. Had the spook act been for Wanda's benefit? Or real?
   I shook my head. No way to ask in front of Wanda. Maybe later. Maybe.
   I knelt in front of Wanda. She was gripping the soda can so hard, she was denting it. I didn't touch her, just knelt close by. "I won't let him hurt you. Honest. Harold Gaynor is threatening me. That's why I need information."
   Wanda was looking at me, but her attention was on the vampire in back of her. There was a watchful tension in her shoulders. She would never relax while Jean-Claude was in the room. The lady had taste.
   "Jean-Claude, Jean-Claude."
   His face looked as ordinary as it ever did when he turned to face me. A smile crooked his full lips. It was an act. Pretense. Damn him. Was there something in becoming a vampire that made you sadistic?
   "Go into the bedroom for a while. Wanda and I need to talk in private."
   "Your bedroom." His smile widened. "My pleasure, ma petite."
   I scowled at him. He was undaunted. As always. But he left the room as I'd asked.
   Wanda's shoulders slumped. She drew a shaky breath. "You really aren't going to let him hurt me, are you?"
   "No, I'm not."
   She started to cry then, soft, shaky tears. I didn't know what to do. I've never known what to do when someone cries. Did I hug her? Pat her hand comfortingly. What?
   I finally sat back on the ground in front of her, leaning back on my heels, and did nothing. It took a few moments, but finally the crying stopped. She blinked up at me. The makeup around her eyes had faded, just vanished. It made her look vulnerable, more rather than less attractive. I had the urge to take her in my arms and rock her like a child. Whisper lies, about how everything would be alright.
   When she left here tonight, she was still going to be a whore. A crippled whore. How could that be alright? I shook my head more at me than at her.
   "You want some Kleenex?"
   She nodded.
   I got her the box from the kitchen counter. She wiped at her face and blew her nose softly, very ladylike.
   "Can we talk now?"
   She blinked at me and nodded. She took a shaky sip of pop.
   "You know Harold Gaynor, right?"
   She just stared at me, dully. Had we broken her? "If he finds out, he will kill me. Maybe I don't want to be coffin-bait, but I sure as hell don't want to die either."
   "No one does. Talk to me, Wanda, please."
   She let out a shaky sigh. "Okay, I know Harold."
   Harold? "Tell me about him."
   Wanda stared at me. Her eyes narrowed. There were fine lines around her eyes. It made her older than I had thought. "Has he sent Bruno or Tommy after you yet?"
   "Tommy came for a personal meeting."
   "What happened?"
   "I drew a gun on him."
   "That gun?" she asked in a small voice.
   "Yes."
   "What did you do to make Harold mad?"
   Truth or lie? Neither. "I refused to do something for him."
   "What?"
   I shook my head. "It doesn't matter."
   "It can't have been sex. You aren't crippled." She said the last word like it was hard. "He doesn't touch anyone who's whole." The bitterness in her voice was thick enough to taste.
   "How did you meet him?" I asked.
   "I was in college at Wash U. Gaynor was donating money for something."
   "And he asked you out?"
   "Yeah." Her voice was so soft, I had to lean forward to hear it.
   "What happened?"
   "We were both in wheelchairs. He was rich. It was great." She rolled her lips under, like she was smoothing lipstick, then out, and swallowed.
   "When did it stop being great?" I asked.
   "I moved in with him. Dropped out of college. It was ... easier than college. Easier than anything. He couldn't get enough of me." She stared down at her lap again. "He started wanting variety in the bedroom. See, his legs are crippled, but he can feel. I can't feel." Wanda's voice had dropped almost to a whisper. I had to lean against her knees to hear. "He liked to do things to my legs, but I couldn't feel it. So at first I thought that was okay, but ... but he got really sick." She looked at me suddenly, her face only inches from mine. Her eyes were huge, swimming with unshed tears. "He cut me up. I couldn't feel it, but that's not the point, is it?"
   "No," I said.
   The first tear trailed down her face. I touched her hand. Her fingers wrapped around mine and held on.
   "It's alright," I said, "it's alright."
   She cried. I held her hand and lied. "It's alright now, Wanda. He can't hurt you anymore."
   "Everyone hurts you," she said. "You were going to hurt me." There was accusation in her eyes.
   It was a little late to explain good cop, bad cop to her. She wouldn't have believed it anyway.
   "Tell me about Gaynor."
   "He replaced me with a deaf girl."
   "Cicely," I said. '
   She looked up, surprised. "You've met her?"
   "Briefly."
   Wanda shook her head. "Cicely is one sick chickie. She likes torturing people. It gets her off." Wanda looked at me as if trying to gauge my reaction. Was I shocked? No.
   "Harold slept with both of us at the same time, sometimes. At the end it was always a threesome. It got real rough." Her voice dropped lower and lower, a hoarse whisper. "Cicely likes knives. She's real good at skinning things." She rolled her lips under again in that lipstick-smoothing gesture. "Gaynor would kill me just for telling you his bedroom secrets."
   "Do you know any business secrets?"
   She shook her head. "No, I swear. He was always very careful to keep me out of that. I thought at first it was so if the police came, I wouldn't be arrested." She looked down at her lap. "Later, I realized it was because he knew I would be replaced. He didn't want me to know anything that could hurt him when he threw me away."
   There was no bitterness now, no anger, only a hollow sadness. I wanted her to rant and rave. This quiet despair was aching. A hurt that would never heal. Gaynor had done worse than kill her. He'd left her alive. Alive and as crippled inside as out.
   "I can't tell you anything but bedroom talk. It won't help you hurt him."
   "Is there any bedroom talk that isn't about sex?" I asked.
   "What do you mean?"
   "Personal secrets, but not sex. You were his sweetie for nearly two years. He must have talked about something other than sex."
   She frowned, thinking. "I ... I guess he talked about his family."
   "What about his family?"
   "He was illegitimate. He was obsessed with his real father's family."
   "He knew who they were?"
   Wanda nodded. "They were rich, old money. His mother was a hooker turned mistress: When she got pregnant, they threw her out."
   Like Gaynor did to his women, I thought. Freud is so often at work in our lives. Out loud I said, "What family?"
   "He never said. I think he thought I'd blackmail them or go to them with his dirty little secrets. He desperately wants them to regret not welcoming him into the family. I think he only made his money so he could be as rich as they were."
   "If he never gave you a name, how do you know he wasn't lying?"
   "You wouldn't ask if you could hear him. His voice was so intense. He hates them. And he wants his birthright. Their money is his birthright."
   "How does he plan to get their money?" I asked.
   "Just before I left him, Harold had found where some of his ancestors were buried. He talked about treasure. Buried treasure, can you believe it?"
   "In the graves?"
   "No, his father's people got their first fortune from being river pirates. They sailed the Mississippi and robbed people. Gaynor was proud of that and angry about it. He said that the whole bunch of them were descended from thieves and whores. Where did they get off being so high and mighty to him?" She was watching my face as she spoke the last. Maybe she saw the beginnings of an idea.
   "How would knowing the graves of his ancestors help him get their treasure?"
   "He said he'd find some voodoo priest to raise them. He'd force them to give him their treasure that had been lost for centuries."
   "Ah," I said.
   "What? Did that help?"
   I nodded. My role in Gaynor's little scheme had become clear. Painfully clear. The only question left was why me? Why didn't he go to someone thoroughly disreputable like Dominga Salvador? Someone who would take his money and kill his hornless goat and not lose any sleep over it. Why me, with my reputation for morality?
   "Did he ever mention any names of voodoo priests?"
   Wanda shook her head. "No, no names. He was always careful about names. There's a look on your face. How could what I have told you just now help you?"
   "I think the less you know about that, the better, don't you?"
   She stared at me for a long time but finally nodded. "I guess so."
   "Is there any place ... " I let it trail off. I was going to offer her a plane ticket or a bus ticket to anywhere. Anywhere where she wouldn't have to sell herself. Anywhere where she could heal.
   Maybe she read it in my face or my silence. She laughed, and it was a rich sound. Shouldn't whores have cynical cackles?
   "You are a social worker type after all. You want to save me, don't you?"
   "Is it terribly naive to offer you a ticket home or somewhere?"
   She nodded. "Terribly. And why should you want to help me? You're not a man. You don't like women. Why should you offer to send me home?"
   "Stupidity," I said and stood.
   "It's not stupid." She took my hand and squeezed it. "But it wouldn't do any good. I'm a whore. Here at least I know the town, the people. I have regulars." She released my hand and shrugged. "I get by."
   "With a little help from your friends," I said.
   She smiled, and it wasn't happy. "Whores don't have friends."
   "You don't have to be a whore. Gaynor made you a whore, but you don't have to stay one."
   There were tears trembling in her eyes for the third time that night. Hell, she wasn't tough enough for the streets. No one was.
   "Just call a taxi, okay. I don't want to talk anymore."
   What could I do? I called a taxi. I told the driver the fare was in a wheelchair like Wanda told me to. She let Jean-Claude carry her back downstairs because I couldn't do it. But she was very tight and still in his arms. We left her in her chair on the curb.
   I watched until the taxi came and took her away. Jean-Claude stood beside me in the golden circle of light just in front of my apartment building. The warm light seemed to leech color from his skin.
   "I must leave you now, ma petite. It has been very educational, but time grows short."
   "You're going to go feed, aren't you?"
   "Does it show?"
   "A little."
   "I should call you ma verite, Anita. You always tell me the truth about myself."
   "Is that what verite means? Truth?" I asked.
   He nodded.
   I felt bad. Itchy, grumpy, restless. I was mad at Harold Gaynor for victimizing Wanda. Mad of Wanda for allowing it. Angry with myself for not being able to do anything about it. I was pissed at the whole world tonight. I'd learned what Gaynor wanted me to do. And it didn't help a damn bit.
   "There will always be victims, Anita. Predators and prey, it is the way of the world."
   I glared up at him. "I thought you couldn't read me anymore."
   "I cannot read your mind or your thoughts, only your face and what I know of you."
   I didn't want to know that Jean-Claude knew me that well. That intimately. "Go away, Jean-Claude, just go away."
   "As you like, ma petite." And just like that he was gone. A rush of wind, then nothing.
   "Show-off," I murmured. I was left standing in the dark, tasting the first edge of tears. Why did I want to cry over a whore whom I'd just met? Over the unfairness of the world in general?
   Jean-Claude was right. There would always be prey and predator. And I had worked very hard to be one of the predators. I was the Executioner. So why were my sympathies always with the victims? And why did the despair in Wanda's eyes make me hate Gaynor more than anything he'd ever done to me?
   Why indeed?

26
   The phone rang. I moved nothing but my eyes to glance at the bedside clock: 6:45 A.M. Shit. I lay there waiting, half drifted to sleep again when the answering machine picked up.
   "It's Dolph. We found another one. Call my pager ... "
   I scrambled for the phone, dropping the receiver in the process. "H'lo, Dolph. I'm here."
   "Late night?"
   "Yeah, what's up?"
   "Our friend has decided that single family homes are easy pickings." His voice sounded rough with lack of sleep.
   "God, not another family."
   "Fraid so. Can you come out?"
   It was a stupid question, but I didn't point that out. My stomach had dropped into my knees. I didn't want a repeat of the Reynolds house. I didn't think my imagination could stand it.
   "Give me the address. I'll be there."
   He gave me the address.
   "St. Peters," I said. "It's close to St. Charles, but still ... "
   "Still what?"
   "It's a long way to walk for a single family home. There are lots of houses that fit the bill in St. Charles. Why did it travel so far to feed?"
   "You're asking me?" he said. There was something almost like laughter in his voice. "Come on out, Ms. Voodoo Expert. See what there is to see."
   "Dolph, is it as bad as the Reynolds house?"
   "Bad, worse, worst of all," he said. The laughter was still there, but it held an edge of something hard and self deprecating.
   "This isn't your fault," I said.
   "Tell that to the top brass. They're screaming for someone's ass."
   "Did you get the warrant?"
   "It'll come in this afternoon late."
   "No one gets warrants on a weekend," I said.
   "Special panic-mode dispensation," Dolph said. "Get your ass out here, Anita. Everyone needs to go home." He hung up.
   I didn't bother saying bye.
   Another murder. Shit, shit, shit. Double shit. It was not the way I wanted to spend Saturday morning. But we were getting our warrant. Yippee. The trouble was I didn't know what to look for. I wasn't really a voodoo expert. I was a preternatural crimes expert. It wasn't the same thing. Maybe I should ask Manny to come along. No, no, I didn't want him near Dominga Salvador in case she decided to cut a deal and give him to the police. There is no statute of limitations on human sacrifice. Manny could still go down for it. It'd be Dominga's style to trade my friend for her life. Making it, in a roundabout way, my fault. Yeah, she'd love that.
   The message light on my answering machine was blinking. Why hadn't I noticed it last night? I shrugged. One of life's mysteries. I pressed the playback button.
   "Anita Blake, this is John Burke. I got your message. Call me anytime here. I'm eager to hear what you have." He gave the phone number, and that was it.
   Great, a murder scene, a trip to the morgue, and a visit to voodoo land, all in one day. It was going to be a busy and unpleasant day. It matched last night perfectly, and the night before. Shit, I was on a roll.

27
   There was a patrol cop throwing up his guts into one of those giant, elephant-sized trash cans in front of the house. Bad sign. There was a television news van parked across the street. Worse sign. I didn't know how Dolph had kept zombie massacres out of the news so long. Current events must have been really hopping for the newshounds to ignore such easy headlines. ZOMBIES MASSACRE FAMILY. ZOMBIE SERIAL MURDERER ON LOOSE. Jesus, it was going to be a mess.
   The camera crew, complete with microphone-bearing suit, watched me as I walked towards the yellow police tape. When I clipped the official plastic card on my collar, the news crew moved like one animal. The uniform at the police tape held it for me, his eyes on the descending press. I didn't look back. Never look back when the press are gaining on you. They catch you if you do.
   The blond in the suit yelled out, "Ms. Blake, Ms. Blake, can you give us a statement?"
   Always nice to be recognized, I guess. But I pretended not to hear. I kept walking, head determinedly down.
   A crime scene is a crime scene is a crime scene. Except for the unique nightmarish qualities of each one. I was standing in a bedroom of a very nice one-story ranch. There was a white ceiling fan that turned slowly. It made a faint whirring creak, as if it wasn't screwed in tight on one side.
   Better to concentrate on the small things. The way the east light fell through the slanting blinds, painting the room in zebra-stripe shadows. Better not to look at what was left on the bed. Didn't want to look. Didn't want to see.
   Had to see. Had to look. Might find a clue. Sure, and pigs could fucking fly. But still, maybe, maybe there would be a clue. Maybe. Hope is a lying bitch.
   There are roughly two gallons of blood in the human body. As much blood as they put on television and the movies, it's never enough. Try dumping out two full gallons of milk on your bedroom floor. See what a mess it makes, now multiply that by ... something. There was too much blood for just one person. The carpet squeeched underfoot, and blood came up in little splatters like mud after a rain. My white Nikes were spotted with scarlet before I was halfway to the bed.
   Lesson learned: wear black Nikes to murder, scenes.
   The smell was thick in the room. I 'was glad for the ceiling fan. The room smelled like a mixture of slaughterhouse and outhouse. Shit and blood. The smell of fresh death, more often than not.
   Sheets covered not just the bed, but a lot of the floor around the bed. It looked like giant paper towels thrown over the world's biggest Kool-Aid spill. There had to be pieces all over, under the sheets. The lumps were so small, too small to be a body. There wasn't a single scarlet-soaked bump that was big enough for a human body.
   "Please don't make me look," I whispered to the empty room.
   "Did you say something?"
   I jumped and found Dolph standing just behind me. "Jesus, Dolph, you scared me."
   "Wait until you see what's under the sheets. Then you can be scared."
   I didn't want to see what was under the army of bloodsoaked sheets. Surely, I'd seen enough for one week. My quota of gore had to have been exceeded, night before last. Yeah, I was over my quota.
   Dolph stood in the doorway waiting. There were tiny pinched lines by his eyes that I had never noticed. He was pale and needed a shave.
   We all needed something. But first I had to look under the sheets. If Dolph could do it, I could do it. Ri-ight.
   Dolph stuck his head out in the hallway. "We need some help in here lifting the sheets. After Blake sees the remains we can go home." I think he added that last because no one had moved to help. He wasn't going to get any volunteers. "Zerbrowski, Perry, Merlioni, get your butts in here."
   The bags under Zerbrowski's eyes looked like bruises. "Hiya, Blake."
   "Hi, Zerbrowski, you look like shit."
   He laughed. "And you still look fresh and lovely as a spring morning." He grinned at me.
   "Yeah, right," I said.
   Detective Perry said, "Ms. Blake, good to see you again."
   I had to smile. Perry was the only cop I knew who would be gracious even over the bloody remains. "Nice to see you, too, Detective Perry."
   "Can we get on with this," Merlioni said, "or are the two of you planning to elope?" Merlioni was tall, though not as tall as Dolph. But then who was? He had grey curling hair cut short and buzzed on the sides and over his ears. He wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a tie at half-mast. His gun stuck out on his left hip like a lumpy wallet.
   "You take the first sheet then, Merlioni, if you're in such a damn hurry," Dolph said.
   Merlioni sighed. "Yeah, yeah." He stepped to the sheet on the floor. He knelt. "You ready for this, girlie?"
   "Better girlie than dago," I said.
   He smiled.
   "Do it."
   "Showtime," Merlioni said. He raised the sheet and it stuck in a wet swatch that pulled up one wet inch at a time.
   "Zerbrowski, help him raise the damn thing," Dolph said.
   Zerbrowski didn't argue. He must have been tired. The two men lifted the sheet in one wet motion. The morning sunlight streamed through the red sheet and painted the rug even redder than it was, or maybe it didn't make any difference. Blood dripped from the edges of the sheet where the men held it. Wet, heavy drops, like a sink that needed fixing. I'd never seen a sheet saturated with blood before. A morning of firsts.
   I stared at the rug and couldn't make sense of it. It was just a pile of lumps, small lumps. I knelt beside them. Blood soaked through the knee of my jeans, it was cold. Better than warm, I guess.
   The biggest lump was wet and smooth, about five inches long. It was pink and healthy-looking. It was a scrap of upper intestine. A smaller lump lay just beside it. I stared at the lump but the longer I stared the less it looked like anything. It could have been a hunk of meat from any animal. Hell, the intestine didn't have to be human. But it was, or I wouldn't be here.
   I poked the smaller glob with one gloved finger. I had remembered my surgical gloves this time. Goody for me. The glob was wet and heavy and solid. I swallowed hard, but I was no closer to knowing what it was. The two scraps were like morsels dropped from a cat's mouth. Crumbs from the table. Jesus.
   I stood. "Next." My voice sounded steady, ordinary. Amazing.
   It took all four men lifting from different corners to peel the sheet back from the bed. Merlioni cursed and dropped his corner, "Dammit!"
   Blood had run down his arm onto the white shirt. "Did um's get his shirt messy?" Zerbrowski asked.
   "Fuck yes. This place is a mess."
   "I guess the lady of the house didn't have time to clean up before you came, Merlioni," I said. My eyes flicked down to the bed and the remains of the lady of the house. But I looked back up at Merlioni instead. "Or can't the dago cop take it?"
   "I can take anything you can dish out, little lady," he said.
   I frowned and shook my head. "Betcha can't."
   "I'll take some of that action," Zerbrowski said.
   Dolph didn't stop us, tell us this was a crime scene, not a betting parlor. He knew we needed it to stay sane. I could not stare down at the remains and not make jokes. I couldn't. I'd go crazy. Cops have the weirdest sense of humor, because they have to.
   "How much you bet?" Merlioni said.
   "A dinner for two at Tony's," I said.
   Zerbrowski whistled. "Steep, very steep."
   "I can afford to foot the bill. Is it a deal?"
   Merlioni nodded. "My wife and I haven't been out in ages." He offered his blood-soaked hand. I took it. The cool blood clung to the outside of my surgical gloves. It felt wet, like it had soaked through to the skin, but it hadn't. It was a sensory illusion. I knew that when I took off the gloves my hands would be powder dry. It was still unnerving.
   "How we prove who's toughest?" Merlioni asked.
   "This scene, here and now," I said.
   "Deal."
   I turned my attention back to the carnage with renewed determination. I would win the bet. I wouldn't let Merlioni have the satisfaction. It gave me something to concentrate on rather than the mess on the bed.
   The left half of a rib cage lay on the bed. A naked breast was still attached to it. The lady of the house? Everything was brilliant scarlet red, like someone had poured buckets of red paint on the bed. It was hard to pick out the pieces. There a left arm, small, female.
   I picked up the fingers and they were limp, no rigor mortis. There was a wedding band set on the third finger. I moved the fingers back and forth. "No rigor mortis. What do you think, Merlioni?"
   He squinted down at the arm. He couldn't let me outdo him so he fiddled with the hand, turning it at the wrist. "Could be rigor came and went. You know the first rigor doesn't last."
   "You really think nearly two days have passed?" I shook my head. "The blood's too fresh for that. Rigor hasn't set in. The crime isn't eight hours old yet."
   He nodded. "Not bad, Blake. But what do you make of this?" He poked the rib cage enough to make the breast jiggle.
   I swallowed hard. I would win this bet. "I don't know. Let's see. Help me roll it over." I stared into his face while I asked. Did he pale just a bit? Maybe.
   "Sure."
   The three others were standing at the side of the room, watching the show. Let them. It was a lot more diverting than thinking of this as work.
   Merlioni and I moved the rib cage over on its side. I made sure to give him the fleshy parts, so he ended up groping the dead body. Was breast tissue breast tissue? Did it matter that it was bloody and cold? Merlioni looked just a little green. I guess it mattered.
   The insides of the rib cage were snatched clean like Mr. Reynolds's rib cage. Clean and bloody smooth. We let the rib cage fall back on the bed. It splattered blood in a faint spray onto us. His white shirt showed it worse than my blue polo shirt did. Point for me.
   He grimaced and brushed at the blood specks. He smeared blood from his gloves down the shirt. Merlioni closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
   "Are you alright, Merlioni?" I asked. "I wouldn't want you to continue if it's upsetting you."
   He glared at me, then smiled. A most unpleasant smile. "You ain't seen it all, girlie. I have."
   "But have you touched it all?"
   A trickle of sweat slid down his face. "You won't want to touch it all."
   I shrugged. "We'll see." There was a leg on the bed, from the hair and the one remaining tennis shoe it looked male. The round, wet mound of the ball socket gleamed out at us. The zombie had just torn the leg off, tearing flesh without tearing bone.
   "That must have hurt like a son of a bitch," I said.
   "You think he was alive when the leg was pulled off?"
   I nodded. "Yeah." I wasn't a hundred percent sure. There was too much blood to tell who had died when, but Merlioni looked a little paler.
   The rest of the pieces were just bloody entrails, globs of flesh, bits of bone. Merlioni picked up a handful of entrails. "Catch."
   "Jesus, Merlioni, that isn't funny." My stomach was one tight knot.
   "No, but the look on your face is," he said.
   I glared at him and said, "Throw it or don't, Merlioni, no teasing."
   He blinked at me for a minute, then nodded. He tossed the string of entrails. They were awkward to throw but I managed to catch them. They were wet, heavy, flaccid, squeeshy, and altogether disgusting, like touching raw calf's liver but more so.
   Dolph made an exasperated sound. "While you two are playing gross out, can you tell me something useful?"
   I dropped the flesh back on the bed. "Sure. The zombie came in through the sliding glass door like last time. It chased the man or woman back in here and got them both." I stopped talking. I just froze.
   Merlioni was holding up a baby blanket. Some trick had left a corner of it clean. It was edged in satiny pink with tiny balloons and clowns all over it. Blood dripped heavily from the other end of it.
   I stared at the tiny balloons and clowns while they danced in useless circles. "You bastard," I whispered.
   "Are you referring to me?" Merlioni asked.
   I shook my head. I didn't want to touch the blanket. But I reached out for it. Merlioni made sure that the bloody edge slapped my bare arm. "Dago bastard," I said.
   "You referring to me, bitch?"
   I nodded and tried to smile but didn't really manage it. We had to keep pretending that this was alright. That this was doable. It was obscene. If the bet hadn't held me I'd have run screaming from the room.
   I stared at the blanket. "How old?"
   "Family portrait out front, I'd guess three, four months."
   I was finally on the other side of the bed. There was another sheet-draped spot. It was just as bloody, just as small. There was nothing whole under the sheet. I wanted to call the bet off. If they wouldn't make me look I'd take them all to Tony's. Just don't make me lift that last sheet. Please, please.
   But I had to look, bet or no bet, I had to see what there was to see. Might as well see it and win, as run and lose.
   I handed the blanket back to Merlioni. He took it and laid it back on the bed, up high so the clean corner would stay clean.
   I knelt on one side of the sheet. He knelt on the other. Our eyes met. It was a challenge then, to the gruesome end. We peeled back the sheet.
   There were only two things under the sheet. Only two. My stomach contracted so hard I had to swallow vomit. I coughed and almost lost it there, but I held on. I held on.
   I'd thought the blood-soaked form was the baby, but it wasn't. It was a doll. So blood-soaked I couldn't tell what color its hair had been, but it was just a doll. A doll too old for a four-month-old baby.
   A tiny hand lay on the carpet, covered in gore like everything else, but it was a hand. A tiny hand. The hand of a child, not a baby. I spread my hand just above it to size it. Three, maybe four. About the same age as Benjamin Reynolds. Was that coincidence? Had to be. Zombies weren't that choosy.
   "I'm breast-feeding the baby, maybe, when I hear a loud noise. Husband goes to check. Noise wakes the little girl, she comes out of her room to see what's the matter. Husband sees the monster, grabs the child, runs for the bedroom. The zombie takes them here. Kills them all, here." My voice sounded distant, clinical. Bully for me.
   I tried to wipe some of the blood off the tiny hand. She was wearing a ring like Mommy. One of those plastic rings you get out of bubble gum machines.
   "Did you see the ring, Merlioni?" I asked. I lifted the hand from the carpet and said, "Catch."
   "Jesus!" He was on his feet and moving before I could do anything else. Merlioni walked very fast out the door. I wouldn't really have thrown the hand. I wouldn't.
   I cradled the tiny hand in my hands. It felt heavy, as if the fingers should curl round my hand. Should ask me to take it for a walk. I dropped the hand on the carpet. It landed with a wet splat.
   The room was very hot and spinning ever so slightly. I blinked and stared at Zerbrowski. "Did I win the bet?"
   He nodded. "Anita Blake, tough chick. One night of delectable feasting at Tony's on Merlioni's tab. I hear they make great spaghetti."
   The mention of food was too much. "Bathroom, where?"
   "Down the hall, third door on the left," Dolph said.
   I ran for the bathroom. Merlioni was just coming out. I didn't have time to savor my victory. I was too busy tossing my cookies.

28
   I knelt with my forehead against the cool linoleum of the bathtub. I was feeling better. Lucky I hadn't taken time to eat breakfast.
   There was a tap on the door.
   "What?" I said.
   "It's Dolph. Can I come in?"
   I thought about that for a minute. "Sure."
   Dolph came in with a washcloth in his hand. Linen closet, I guessed. He stared at me for a minute or two and shook his head. He rinsed the washrag in the sink and handed it to me. "You know what to do with it."
   I did. The rag was cold and felt wonderful on my face and neck. "Did you give Merlioni one, too?" I asked.
   "Yeah, he's in the kitchen. You're both assholes, but it was entertaining."
   I managed a weak smile.
   "Now that you're through grandstanding, any useful observations?" He sat on the closed lid of the stool.
   I stayed on the floor. "Did anybody hear anything, this time?"
   "Neighbor heard something around dawn, but he went on to work. Said, he didn't want to get involved in a domestic dispute."
   I stared up at Dolph. "Had he heard fighting from this house before?"
   Dolph shook his head.
   "God, if he had just called the police," I said.
   "You think it would have made a difference?" Dolph asked.
   I thought about that for a minute. "Maybe not to this family, but we might have trapped the zombie."
   "Spilled milk," Dolph said.
   "Maybe not. The scene is still very fresh. The zombie killed them, then took the time to eat four people. That isn't quick. At dawn the thing was still killing them."
   "Your point."
   "Seal the area."
   "Explain."
   "The zombie has to be nearby, within walking distance. It's hiding, waiting for nightfall."
   "I thought zombies could go out in daylight," Dolph said.
   "They can, but they don't like it. A zombie won't go out in the day unless ordered to."
   "So the nearest cemetery," he said.
   "Not necessarily. Zombies aren't like vamps or ghouls. It doesn't need to be coffins or even graves. The zombie will just want to get out of the light."
   "So where do we look?"
   "Sheds, garages, any place that will shield it."
   "So he could be in some kid's tree house," Dolph said.
   I smiled. Nice to know I still could. "I doubt the zombie would climb if given a choice. Notice that all the houses are one-stories."
   "Basements," he said.
   "But no one runs down to the basement," I said.
   "Would it have helped?"
   I shrugged. "Zombies aren't great at climbing, as a rule. This one is faster and more alert but ... At best the basement might have delayed it. If there were windows, they might have gotten the children out." I rubbed the cloth on the back of my, neck. "The zombie picks one-story houses with sliding glass doors. It might rest near one."
   "The medical examiner says the corpse is tall, six feet, six-two. Male, white. Immensely strong."
   "We knew the last, and the rest doesn't really help."
   "You got a better idea?"
   "As a matter of fact," I said, "have all the officers about the right height walk the neighborhood for an hour. Then block off that much of the area."
   "And search all the sheds and garages," Dolph said.
   "And basements, crawl spaces, old refrigerators," I said.
   "If we find it?"
   "Fry it. Get an exterminator team out here."
   "Will the zombie attack during the day?" Dolph asked.
   "If disturbed enough, yes. This one's awfully aggressive."
   "No joke," he said. "We'd need a dozen exterminator teams or more. The city'll never go for that. Besides, we could walk a pretty damn wide circle. We might search and miss it completely."
   "It'll move at dark. If you're ready, you'll find it then."
   "Okay. You sound like you're not going to help search."
   "I'll be back to help, but John Burke returned my call."
   "You taking him to the morgue?"
   "Yeah, in time to try to use him against Dominga Salvador. What timing," I said.
   "Good. You need anything from me?"
   "Just access to the morgue for both of us," I said.
   "Sure thing. You think you'll really learn anything from Burke?"
   "Don't know till I try," I said.
   He smiled. "Give it the old college try, eh?"
   "Win one for the Gipper," I said.
   "You go visit the morgue and deal with voodoo John. We'll turn this fucking neighborhood upside down."
   "Nice to know we've both got our days planned," I said.
   "Don't forget this afternoon we check out Salvador's house."
   I nodded. "Yeah, and tonight we hunt zombies."
   "We're going to end this shit tonight," he said.
   "I hope so."
   He looked at me, eyes narrowed. "You got a problem with our plans?"
   "Just that no plan is perfect."
   He was quiet a moment, then stood. "Wish this one was."
   "Me, too."

29
   The St. Louis County morgue was a large building. It needs to be. Every death not attended by a physician comes to the morgue. Not to mention every murder. In St. Louis that made for some very heavy traffic.
   I use to come to the morgue fairly regularly. To stake suspected vampire victims so they wouldn't rise and feast on the morgue attendants. With the new vamp laws, that's murder. You have to wait for the puppies to rise, unless they've left a will strictly forbidding coming back as a vampire. My will says to put me out of my misery if they think I'm coming back with fangs. Hell, my will asks for cremation. I don't want to come back as a zombie either, thank you very much.
   John Burke was as I remembered him. Tall, dark, handsome, vaguely villainous. It was the little goatee that did it. No one wears goatees outside of horror movies. You know, the ones with strange cults that worship horned images.
   He looked a little faded around the eyes and mouth. Grief will do that to you even if your skin tone is dark. His lips were set in a thin line as we walked into the morgue. He held his shoulders as if something hurt.
   "How's it going at your sister-in-law's?" I asked.
   "Bleak, very bleak."
   I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't. So I let it go. If he didn't want to talk about it, that was his privilege.
   We were walking down a wide empty corridor. Wide enough for three gurneys to wheel abreast. The guard station looked like a WWII bunker, complete with machine guns, In case the dead should rise all at once and make for freedom. It had never happened here in St. Louis, but it had happened as close as Kansas City.
   A machine gun will take the starch out of any walking dead. You're only in trouble if there are a lot of them. If there is a crowd, you're pretty much cooked.
   I flashed my ID at the guard. "Hi, Fred, long time no see."
   "I wish they let you come down here like before. We've had three get up this week and go home. Can you believe that?"
   "Vampires?"
   "What else? There's going to be more of them than of us someday."
   I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. He was probably right. "We're here to see the personal effects of Peter Burke. Sergeant Rudolph Storr was supposed to clear it."
   Fred checked his little book. "Yeah, you're authorized. Take the right corridor, third door on the left. Dr. Saville is waiting for you."
   I raised an eyebrow at that. It wasn't often that the chief medical examiner did errands for the police or anybody else. I just nodded as if I had expected royal treatment.
   "Thanks, Fred, see you on the way out."
   "More and more people do," he said. He didn't sound happy about it.
   My Nikes made no sound in the perpetual quiet. John Burke wasn't making any noise either. I hadn't pegged him as a tennis shoe man. I glanced down, and I was right. Soft-soled brown tie-ups, not tennis shoes. But he still moved beside me like a quiet shadow.
   The rest of his outfit sort of matched the shoes. A dressy brown sport jacket so dark brown it was almost black, over a pale yellow shirt, brown dress slacks. He only needed a tie, and he could have gone to corporate America. Did he always dress up, or was this just what he had brought for his brother's funeral? No, the suit at the funeral had been perfectly black.
   The morgue was always quiet, but on a Saturday morning it was deathly still. Did the ambulances circle like planes until a decent hour on the weekend? I knew the murder count went up on the weekend, yet Saturday and Sunday morning were always quiet. Go figure.
   I counted doors on the left-hand side. Knocked on the third door. A faint "Come in," and I opened the door.
   Dr. Marian Saville is a small woman with short dark hair bobbed just below her ears, an olive complexion, deeply brown eyes, and fine high cheekbones. She is French and Greek and looks it. Exotic without being intimidating. It always surprised me that Dr. Saville wasn't married. It wasn't for lack of being pretty.
   Her only fault was that she smoked, and the smell clung to her like nasty perfume.
   She came forward with a smile and an offered hand. "Anita, good to see you again."
   I shook her hand, and smiled. "You, too, Dr. Saville."
   "Marian, please."
   I shrugged. "Malian, are those the personal effects?"
   We were in a small examining room. On a lovely stainless steel table were several plastic bags.
   "Yes."
   I stared at her, wondering what she wanted. The chief medical examiner didn't do errands. Something else was up, but what? I didn't know her well enough to be blunt, and I didn't want to be barred from the morgue, so I couldn't be rude. Problems, problems.
   "This is John Burke, the deceased's brother," I said.
   Dr. Saville's eyebrows raised at that. "My condolences, Mr. Burke."
   "Thank you." John shook the hand she offered him, but his eyes were all for the plastic bags. There was no room today for attractive doctors or pleasantries. He was going to see his brother's last effects. He was looking for clues to help the police catch his brother's killer. He had taken the notion very seriously.
   If he wasn't involved with Dominga Salvador, I would owe him a big apology. But how was I to get him to talk with Dr. Marian hovering around? How was I supposed to ask for privacy? It was her morgue, sort of.
   "I have to be here to make sure no evidence is tampered with," she said. "We've had a few very determined reporters lately."
   "But I'm not a reporter."
   She shrugged. "You're not an official person, Anita. New rules from on high that no nonofficial person is to be allowed to look at murder evidence without someone to watch over them."
   "I appreciate it being you, Marian."
   She smiled. "I was here anyway. I figured you'd resent my looking over your shoulder less than anyone else."
   She was right. What did they think I was going to do, steal a body? If I wanted to, I could empty the damn place and get every corpse to play follow the leader.
   Perhaps that was why I needed watching. Perhaps.
   "I don't mean to be rude," John said, "but could we get on with this?"
   I glanced up at his handsome face. The skin was tight around the mouth and eyes as if it had thinned. Guilt speared me in the side. "Sure, John, we're being thoughtless."
   "Your forgiveness, Mr. Burke," Marian said. She handed us both little plastic gloves. She and I slipped into them like pros, but John wasn't used to putting on examining gloves. There is a trick to it, practice. By the time I finished helping him on with his gloves, he was grinning. His whole face changed when he smiled. Brilliant and handsome and not the least villainous.
   Dr. Saville popped the seal on the first bag. It was clothing.
   "No," John said, "I don't know his clothing. It may be his, and I wouldn't know. Peter and I had ... hadn't seen each other in two years." The guilt in those last words made me wince.
   "Fine, we'll go on to the smaller items," Marian said, and smiled as she said it. Nice and cheery, practicing her bedside manner. She so seldom got to practice.
   She opened a much smaller bag and spilled the contents gently on the shiny silver surface. A comb, a dime, two pennies, a movie ticket stub, and a voodoo charm. A gris-gris.
   It was woven of black and red thread with human teeth worked into the beading. More bones dangled all the way around it. "Are those human finger bones?" I asked.
   "Yes," John said, his voice very still. He looked strange as he stood there, as if some new horror were dawning behind his eyes.
   It was an evil piece of work, but I didn't understand the strength of his reaction to it.
   I leaned over it, poking it with one finger. There was some dried skin woven in the center of it all. And it wasn't just black thread, it was black hair.
   "Human hair, teeth, bones, skin," I said softly.
   "Yes," John repeated.
   "You're more into voodoo than I am," I said. "What does it mean?"
   "Someone died to make this charm."
   "Are you sure?"
   He glared down at me with withering contempt. "Don't you think if it could be anything else I wouldn't say it? Do you think I enjoy learning my brother took part in human sacrifice?"
   "Did Peter have to be there? He couldn't have just bought it afterwards?"
   "NO!" It was almost a yell. He turned away from us, pacing to the wall. His breathing was loud and ragged.
   I gave him a few moments to collect himself, then asked what had to be asked. "What does the gris-gris do?"
   He turned a calm enough face to us, but the strain showed around his eyes. "It enables a less powerful necromancer to raise older dead, to borrow the power of some much greater necromancer."
   "How borrow?"
   He shrugged. "That charm holds some of the power of the most powerful among us. Peter paid dearly for it; so he could raise more and older dead. Peter, God, how could you?"
   "How powerful would you need to be to share your power like this?"
   "Very powerful," he said.
   "Is there any way to trace it back to the person who made it?"
   "You don't understand, Anita. That thing is a piece of someone's power. It is one substance to what soul they have left. It must have been a great need or great greed to do it. Peter could never have afforded it. Never."
   "Can it be traced back?"
   "Yes, just get it in the room with the person who truly owns it. The thing will crawl back to him. It's a piece of his soul gone missing."
   "Would that be proof in court?"
   "If you could make the jury understand it, yes, I guess so." He stepped towards me. "You know who did this?"
   "Maybe. "
   "Who, tell me who?"
   "I'll do better than that. I'll arrange for you to come on a search of their house."
   A grim smile touched his lips. "I'm beginning to like you a great deal, Anita Blake."
   "Compliments later."
   "What's this mean?" Marian asked. She had turned the charm completely over. There, shining among the hair and bone, was a small charm, like from a charm bracelet. It was in the shape of a musical symbol-a treble clef.
   What had Evans said when he touched the grave fragments; they slit her throat, she had a charm bracelet with a musical note on it and little hearts. I stared at the charm and felt the world shift. Everything fell together in one motion. Dominga Salvador hadn't raised the killer zombie. She had helped Peter Burke raise it. But I had to be sure. We only had a few hours until we'd be back at Dominga's door trying to prove a case.
   "Are there any women that came in around the same time as Peter Burke?"
   "I'm sure there are," Marian said with a smile.
   "Women with their throats slit," I said.
   She stared at me for a heartbeat. "I'll check the computer."
   "Can we take the charm with us?"
   "Why?"
   "Because if I'm right, she had a charm bracelet with a bow and arrow and little hearts on it, and this came from the bracelet." I held the gold charm up to the light. It sparkled merrily as if it didn't know its owner was dead.

30
   Death turns you grey before any other color. Oh, a body that loses a lot of blood will look white or bluish. But once a body starts to decay, not rot, not yet, it looks greyish.
   The woman looked grey. Her neck wound had been cleaned and searched. The wound looked puckered like a second giant mouth below her chin.
   Dr. Saville pulled her head back casually. "The cut was very deep. It severed the muscles in the neck and the carotid artery. Death was fairly quick."
   "Professionally done," I said.
   "Well, yes, whoever cut her throat knew what they were doing. There are a dozen different ways to injure the neck that won't kill or won't kill quickly."
   John Burke said, "Are you saying that my brother had practice?"
   "I don't know," I said. "Do you have her personal effects?"
   "Right here." Marian unfastened a much smaller bag and spilled it out on an empty table. The golden charm bracelet sparkled under the fluorescent lights.
   I picked the bracelet up in my still gloved hand. A tiny strung bow complete with arrow, a different musical note, two entwined hearts. Everything Evans had said.
   "How did you know about the charm and the dead woman?" John Burke asked.
   "I took some evidence to a clairvoyant. He saw the woman's death and the bracelet."
   "What's that got to do with Peter?"
   "I believe a voodoo priestess had Peter raise a zombie. It got away from him. It's been killing people. To hide what she's done, she killed Peter."
   "Who did it?"
   "I have no proof unless the gris-gris will be proof enough."
   "A vision and a gris-gris." John shook his head. "Hard sell to a jury."
   "I know. That's why we need more proof."
   Dr. Saville just watched us talk, like an eager spectator.
   "A name, Anita, give me a name."
   "Only if you swear not to go after her until the law has its chance. Only if the law fails, promise me."
   "I give you my word."
   I studied his face for a minute. The dark eyes stared back, clear and certain. Bet he could lie with a clear conscience. "I don't trust just anybody's word." I stared at him a moment longer. He never flinched. I guess my hard-as-nails look has faded a little. Or maybe he meant to keep his word. It happens sometimes.
   "Alright, I'll take your word. Don't make me regret it."
   "I won't," he said. "Now give me the name."
   I turned to Dr. Saville. "Excuse us, Marian. The less you know about all this, the greater your chances of never waking to a zombie crawling through your window." An exaggeration, sort of, but it made my point.
   She looked like she wanted to protest but finally nodded. "Very well, but I would dearly love to hear the complete story someday, if it's safe."
   "If I can tell it, it's yours," I said.
   She nodded again, shut the drawer the Jane Doe lay on, and left. "Yell when you're finished. I've got work to do," she said and the door closed behind her.
   She left us with the evidence still clutched in our hands. Guess she trusted me. Or us?
   "Dominga Salvador," I said.
   He drew a sharp breath. "I know that name. She is a frightening force if all the stories are true."
   "They're true," I said.
   "You've met her?"
   "I've had the misfortune."
   There was a look on his face that I didn't much like. "You swore no revenge."
   "The police will not get her. She is too crafty for that," he said.
   "We can get her legally. I believe that."
   "You aren't sure " he said
   What could I say? He was right. "I'm almost sure."
   "Almost is not good enough for killing my brother."
   "That zombie has killed a lot more people than just your brother. I want her, too. But we're going to get her legally, through the court system."
   "There are other ways to get her," he said.
   "If the law fails us, feel free to use voodoo. Just don't tell me about it."
   He looked amused, puzzled. "No outrage about me using black magic?"
   "The woman tried to kill me once. I don't think she'll give up."
   "You survived an attack by the Senora?" he asked. He looked amazed.
   I didn't like him looking amazed. "I can take care of myself, Mr. Burke."
   "I don't doubt that, Ms. Blake." He smiled. "I've bruised your ego. You don't like me being so surprised, do you?"
   "Keep your observations to yourself, okay?"
   "If you have survived a head-on confrontation with what Dominga Salvador would send to you, then I should have believed some of the stories I heard of you. The Executioner, the animator who can raise anything no matter how old."
   "I don't know about that last, but I'm just trying to stay alive, that's all."
   "If Dominga Salvador wants you dead that won't be easy."
   "Damn near impossible," I said.
   "So let us get her first," he said.
   "Legally," I said.
   "Anita, you are being naive."
   "The offer to come on a raid of her house still stands."
   "You're sure you can arrange that?"
   "I think so."
   His eyes had a sort of dark light to them, a sparkling blackness. He smiled, tight-upped, and very unpleasant, as if he were contemplating tortures for one Dominga Salvador. The private vision seemed to fill him with pleasure.
   The skin between my shoulders crept with that look. I hoped John never turned those dark eyes on me. Something told me he would make a bad enemy. Almost as bad as Dominga Salvador. Almost as bad, but not quite.

31
   Dominga Salvador sat in her living room smiling. The little girl who had been riding her tricycle on my last trip here was sitting in her grandma's lap. The child was as relaxed and languorous as a kitten. Two older boys sat at Dominga's feet. She was the picture of maternal bliss. I wanted to throw up.
   Of course, just because she was the most dangerous voodoo priestess I'd ever met didn't mean she wasn't a grandma, too. People are seldom just one thing. Hitler liked dogs.
   "You are more than welcome to search, Sergeant. My house is your house," she said in a candy-coated voice that had already offered us lemonade, or perhaps iced tea.
   John Burke and I were standing to one side, letting the police do their job. Dominga was making them feel silly for their suspicions. Just a nice old lady. Right.
   Antonio and Enzo were also standing to one side. They didn't quite fit this picture of grandmotherly bliss, but evidently she wanted witnesses. Or maybe a shootout wasn't out of the question.
   "Mrs. Salvador, do you understand the possible implications of this search?" Dolph said.
   "There are no implications because I have nothing to hide." She smiled sweetly. Damn her.
   "Anita, Mr. Burke," Dolph said.
   We came forward like props in a magic show. Which wasn't far off. A tall police officer had the video camera ready to go.
   "I believe you know Ms. Blake," Dolph said.
   "I have had the pleasure," Dominga said.
   Butter wouldn't have melted in her lying mouth.
   "This is John Burke."
   Her eyes widened just a little. The first slip in her perfect camouflage. Had she heard of John Burke? Did the name worry her? I hoped so.
   "So glad to meet you at last, Mr. John Burke," she said finally.
   "Always good to meet another practitioner of the art," he said.
   She bowed her head slightly in acknowledgment. At least she wasn't trying to pretend complete innocence. She admitted to being a voodoo priestess. Progress.
   It was obscene for the godmother of voodoo to be playing the innocent.
   "Do it, Anita," Dolph said. No preliminaries, no sense of theater, just do it. That was Dolph for you.
   I took a plastic bag out of my pocket. Dominga looked puzzled. I pulled out the gris-gris. Her face became very still, like a mask. A funny little smile curled her lips. "What is that?"
   "Come now, Senora," John said, "do not play the fool. You know very well what it is."
   "I know that it is a charm of some kind, of course. But do the police now threaten old women with voodoo?"
   "Whatever works," I said.
   "Anita," Dolph said.
   "Sorry." I glanced at John, and he nodded. I sat the gris-gris on the carpet about six feet from Dominga Salvador. I had had to take John's word on a lot of this. I had checked some of it over the phone with Manny. If this worked and if we could get it admitted into court, and if we could explain it to the jury, then we might have a case. How many ifs was that?
   The gris-gris just sat there for a moment, then the finger bones rippled as if an invisible finger had ruffled them.
   Dominga lifted her granddaughter from her lap and shooed the boys over to Enzo. She sat alone on the couch and waited. The strange little smile was still on her face, but it looked sickly now.
   The charm began to ooze towards her like a slug, pushing and struggling with muscles it did not have. The hairs on my arms stood to attention.
   "You recording this, Bobby?" Dolph asked.
   The cop with the video camera said, "I'm getting it. I don't fucking believe it, but I'm getting it."
   "Please, do not use such words in front of the children," Dominga said.
   The cop said, "Sorry, ma'am."
   "You are forgiven." She was still trying to play the perfect hostess while that thing crawled towards her feet. She had nerve. I'd give her that.
   Antonio didn't. He broke. He strode forward as if he meant to pluck the thing from the rug.
   "Don't touch it," Dolph said.
   "You are frightening my grandmother with your tricks," he said.
   "Don't touch it," Dolph said again. This time he stood. His bulk seemed to fill the room. Antonio looked suddenly small and frail beside him.
   "Please, you are frightening her." But it was his face that was pale and covered with a sheen of sweat. What was of Tony in such a fret about? It wasn't his ass going to jail.
   "Stand over there," Dolph said, "now, or do we have to cuff you?"
   Antonio shook his head. "No, I ... I will go back." He did, but he glanced at Dominga as he moved. A quick, fearful glance. When she met his eyes, there was nothing but rage in them. Her black eyes glittered with rage. Her face was suddenly contorted with it. What had happened to strip the act away? What was going on?
   The gris-gris made its painful way to her. It fawned at her feet like a dog, rolling on the toes of her shoes in abandon like a cat who wants its belly rubbed.
   She tried to ignore it, to pretend.
   "Would you refuse your returned power?" John asked.
   "I don't know what you mean." Her face was under control again. She looked puzzled. Gosh, she was good. "You are a powerful voodoo priest. You are doing this to trap me."
   "If you don't want the charm, I will take it," he said. "I will add your magic to mine. I will be the most powerful practitioner in the States." For the first time, John's power flowed across my skin. It was a breath of magic that was frightening. I had begun to think of John as ordinary, or as ordinary as any of us get. My mistake.
   She just shook her head.
   John strode forward and knelt, reaching for the writhing gris-gris. His power moved with him like an invisible hand.
   "No!" She grabbed it, cradling it in her hands.
   John smiled up at her. "Do you acknowledge that you made this charm? If not, I can take it and use it as I see fit. It was found in my brother's effects. It's legally mine, correct, Sergeant Storr?"
   "Correct," Dolph said.
   "No, you cannot."
   "I can and I will, unless you look into that camera and admit making it."
   She snarled at him. "You will regret this."
   "You will regret having killed my brother."
   She stared at the video camera. "Very well, I made this charm, but I admit nothing else. I made the charm for your brother, but that is all."
   "You performed human sacrifice to make this charm," John said.
   She shook her head. "The charm is mine. I made it for your brother, that is all. You have the charm but nothing else."
   "Senora, forgive me," Antonio said. He looked pale and shaken and very, very scared.
   "Calenta," she said, "shut up!"
   "Zerbrowski, take our friend here into the kitchen and take his statement," Dolph said.
   Dominga stood at that. "You fool, you miserable fool. Tell them anything more, and I will rot the tongue out of your mouth."
   "Get him out of here, Zerbrowski."
   Zerbrowski led a nearly weeping Antonio from the room. I had a feeling that of Tony had been responsible for getting the charm back. He failed, and he was going to pay the consequences. The police were the least of his problems. If I were him, I'd make damn sure grandma was locked up tonight. I wouldn't want her near her voodoo paraphernalia. Ever.
   "We're going to search now, Mrs. Salvador."
   "Help yourself, Sergeant. You will find nothing else to help you."
   She was very calm when she said it. "Even the stuff behind the doors?" I asked.
   "They are gone, Anita. You will find nothing that is not legal and ... wholesome." She made that last sound like a bad word.
   Dolph glanced my way. I shrugged. She seemed awfully sure.
   "Okay, boys, take the place apart." Uniforms and detectives moved like they had a purpose. I started to follow Dolph out. He stopped me.
   "No, Anita, you and Burke stay up here."
   "Why?"
   "You're civilians."
   A civilian, me? "Was I a civilian when I walked the cemetery for you?"
   "If one of my people could have done it, I wouldn't have let you do that either."
   "Let me?"
   He frowned. "You know what I mean."
   "No, I don't think I do."
   "You may be a bad ass, you may even be as good as you think you are, but you aren't police. This is a job for cops. You stay in the living room with the civies just this once. When it's all clear, you can come down and identify the bogeymen for us."
   "Don't do me any favors, Dolph."
   "I didn't peg you for a pouter, Blake."
   "I am not pouting," I said.
   "Whining?" he said.
   "Cut it out. You've made your point. I'll stay behind, but I don't have to like it."
   "Most of the time you're ass deep in alligators. Enjoy being out of the line of fire for once, Anita." With that he led the way towards the basement.
   I hadn't really wanted to go down into the darkness again. I certainly didn't want to seethe creature that had chased Manny and I up the stairs. And yet ... I felt left out. Dolph was right. I was pouting. Great.
   John Burke and I sat on the couch. Dominga sat in the recliner where she had been since we hit the door. The children had been shooed out to play, with Enzo to watch them.
   He looked relieved. I almost volunteered to go with them. Anything was better than just sitting here straining to hear the first screams.
   If the monster, and that was the only word that matched the noises, was down there, there would be screaming. The police were great with bad guys, but monsters were new to them. It had been simpler, in a way, when all this shit was taken care of by a few experts. A few lone people fighting the good fight. Staking vampires. Turning zombies. Burning witches. Though there is some debate whether I might have ended up on the receiving end of some fire a few years back. Say, the 1950s.
   What I did was undeniably magic. Before we got all the bogeymen out in the open, supernatural was supernatural. Destroy it before it destroys you. Simpler times. But now the police were expected to deal with zombies, vampires, the occasional demon. Police were really bad with demons. But then who isn't?
   Dominga sat in her chair and stared at me. The two uniforms left in the living room stood like all police stand, blank faced, bored, but let anyone move and the cops saw it. The boredom was just a mask. Cops always saw everything. Occupational hazard.
   Dominga wasn't looking at the police. She wasn't even paying attention to John Burke, who was much closer to her equal. She was staring at little old me.
   I met her black gaze and said, "You got a problem?"
   The cop's eyes flicked to us. John shifted on the couch. "What's wrong?" he asked.
   "She's staring at me."
   "I will do a great deal more than stare at you, chica." Her voice crawled low. The hairs at the nape of my neck tried to crawl down my shirt.
   "A threat." I smiled. "I don't think you're going to be hurting anybody anymore."
   "You mean this." She held out the charm. It writhed in her hand as if thrilled that she had noticed it. She crushed it in her hand. It made futile movements as if pushing against her. Her hand covered it completely. She stared straight at me, as she brought her hand slowly to her chest.
   The air was suddenly heavy, hard to breathe. Every hair on my body was creeping down my skin.
   "Stop her!" John said. He stood.
   The policeman nearest her hesitated for only an instant, but it was enough. When he pried her fingers open, they were empty.
   "Sleight of hand, Dominga. I thought better of you than that."
   John was pale. "It isn't a trick." His voice was shaky. He sat down heavily on the couch beside me. His dark face looked pale. His power seemed to have shriveled up. He looked tired.
   "What is it? What did she do?" I asked.
   "You have to bring back the charm, ma'am," the uniform said.
   "I cannot," she said.
   "John, what the hell did she do?"
   "Something she shouldn't have been able to do."
   I was beginning to know how Dolph must feel having to depend on me for information. It was like pulling fucking teeth. "What did she do?"
   "She absorbed her power back into herself," he said.
   "What does that mean?"
   "She absorbed the gris-gris into her body. Didn't you feel it?"
   I had felt something. The air was clearer now, but it was still heavy. My skin was tingling with the nearness of something. "I felt something, but I still don't understand."
   "Without ceremony, without help from the loa, she absorbed it back into her soul. We won't find a trace of it. No evidence."
   "So all we have is the tape?"
   He nodded.
   "If you knew she could do this, why didn't you speak up earlier? We wouldn't have let her hold the thing."
   "I didn't know. It's impossible without ceremonial magic."
   "But she did it."
   "I know, Anita, I know." He sounded scared for the first time. Fear didn't sit well on his darkly handsome face. After the power I'd felt from him, the fear seemed even more out of place. But it was real nonetheless.
   I shivered, like someone had walked on my grave. Dominga was staring at me. "What are you staring at?"
   "A dead woman," she said softly
   I shook my head. "Talk is cheap, Senora. Threats don't mean squat."
   John touched my arm. "Do not taunt her, Anita. If she can do that instantly, there's no telling what else she can do."
   The cop had had enough. "She's not doing anything. If you so much as twitch wrong, lady, I'm going to shoot you."
   "But I am just an old woman. Would you threaten me?"
   "Don't talk either."
   The other uniform said, "I knew a witch once who could bespell you with her voice."
   Both uniforms had their hands near their guns. Funny how magic changes how people perceive you. They were fine when they thought she needed human sacrifice and ceremony. Let her do one instant trick, and she was suddenly very dangerous. I'd always known she was dangerous.
   Dominga sat silently under the watchful eyes of the cops. I had been distracted by her little performance. There were still no screams from downstairs. Nothing. Silence.
   Had it gotten them all? That quickly, without a shot fired. Naw. But still, my stomach was tight, sweat trickled down my spine. Are you alright, Dolph? I thought.
   "Did you say something?" John asked.
   I shook my head. "Just thinking really hard."
   He nodded as if that made sense to him.
   Dolph came into the living room. I couldn't tell anything by his face. Mr. Stoic.
   "Well, what was it?" l asked.
   "Nothing," he said.
   "What do you mean, nothing?"
   "She's cleaned the place out completely. We found the rooms you told me about. One door had been busted from inside, but the room's been scrubbed down and painted." He held up one big hand. It was stained white. "Hell, the paint's still wet."
   "It can't all be gone. What about the cement-covered doors?"
   "Looks like someone took a jackhammer to them. They're just freshly painted rooms, Anita. The place stinks of pine scented bleach and wet paint. No corpses, no zombies. Nothing."
   I just stared at him. "You've got to be kidding."
   He shook his head. "I'm not laughing."
   I stood in front of Dominga. "Who warned you?"
   She just stared up at me, smiling. I had a great urge to slap that smile off her face. Just to hit her once would feel good. I knew it would.
   "Anita," Dolph said, "back off."
   Maybe the anger showed on my face, or maybe it was the fact that my hands were balled into fists and I seemed to be shaking. Shaking with anger and the beginnings of something else. If she didn't go to jail, that meant she was free to try to kill me again tonight. And every night after that.
   She smiled as if she could read my mind. "You have nothing, chica. You have gambled all on a hand with nothing in it."
   She was right. "Stay away from me, Dominga."
   "I will not come near you, chica, I will not need to."
   "Your last little surprise didn't work out so well. I'm still here."
   "I have done nothing. But I am sure there are worse things that could come to your door, chica."
   I turned to Dolph. "Dammit, isn't there anything we can do?"
   "We got the charm, but that's it."
   Something must have showed on my face because he touched my arm. "What is it?"
   "She did something to the charm. It's gone."
   He took a deep breath and stalked away, then back. "Dammit to hell, how?"
   I shrugged. "Let John explain. I still don't understand it." I hate admitting that I don't know something. It's always bothered me to admit ignorance. But hey, a girl can't be an expert on everything. I had worked hard to stay away from voodoo. Work hard and where does it get you? Staring into the black eyes of a voodoo priestess who's plotting your death. A most unpleasant death by the looks of it.
   Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I went back to her. I stood and stared into her dark face and smiled. Her own smile faltered, which made my smile bigger.
   "Someone tipped you off and you've been cleaning up this cesspit for two days." I leaned over her, putting my hands on the arms of the chair. It brought our faces close together.
   "You had to break down your walls. You had to let out or destroy all your creations. Your inner sanctum, your hougun, is cleaned and whitewashed. All the verve gone. All the animal sacrifices gone. All that slow building of power, line by line, drop by bloody drop, you're going to have to start over, you bitch. You're going to have to rebuild it all."
   The look in those black eyes made me shiver, and I didn't care. "You're getting old to rebuild that much. Did you have to destroy many of your toys? Dig up any graves?"
   "Have your joke now, chica, but I will send what I have saved to you some dark night."
   "Why wait? Do it now, in daylight. Face me or are you afraid?"
   She laughed then, and it was a warm, friendly sound. It startled me so much I stood up straight, almost jumped back.
   "Do you think I am foolish enough to attack you with the police all around? You must think me a fool."
   "It was worth a try," I said.
   "You should have joined with me in my zombie enterprises. We could have been rich together."
   "The only thing we're likely to do together is kill each other," I said.
   "So be it. Let it be war between us."
   "It always was," I said.
   She nodded and smiled some more.
   Zerbrowski came out of the kitchen. He was grinning from ear to ear. Something good was up.
   "The grandson just spilled the beans."
   Everyone in the room stared at him. Dolph said, "Spilled what?"
   "Human sacrifice. How he was supposed to get the gris-gris back from Peter Burke after he killed him, on his grandmother's orders, but some joggers came by and he panicked. He's so afraid of her"-he motioned to Dominga-"he wants her behind bars. He's terrified of what she'll do to him for forgetting the charm."
   The charm that we didn't have anymore. But we had the video and now we had Antonio's confession. The day was looking up.
   I turned back to Dominga Salvador. She looked tall and proud and terrifying. Her black eyes blazed with some inner light. Standing this close to her, the power crawled over my skin, but a good bonfire would take care of that. They'd fry her in the electric chair, then burn the body and scatter the ashes at a crossroad.
   I said softly, "Gotcha."
   She spit at me. It landed on my hand and burned like acid. "Shit!"
   "Do that again and we'll shoot you, and save the taxpayers some money," Dolph said. He had his gun out.
   I went in search of the bathroom to wash her spit off my hand. A blister had formed where it had hit. Second fucking degree burns from her spit. Dear God.
   I was glad Antonio had broken. I was glad she was going to be locked away. I was glad she was going to die. Better her than me.

32
   Riverridge was a modern housing development. Which meant that there were three models to choose from. You could end up with four identical houses in a row, like cookies on a baking sheet. There was also no river within sight. No ridge either.
   The house that was the center of the police search area was identical to its neighbor, except for color. The murder house, which is what the news was calling it, was grey with white shutters. The house that had been passed safely by was blue with white shutters. Neither's shutters worked. They were just for show. Modern architecture is full of perks that are just for show; balcony railings without a balcony, peaked roofs that make it look like you have an extra room that you don't have, porches so narrow that only Santa's elves could sit on them. It makes me nostalgic for Victorian architecture. It might have been overdone, but everything worked.
   The entire housing project had been evacuated. Dolph had been forced to give a statement to the press. More's the pity. But you can't evacuate a housing development the size of a small town and keep it quiet. The cat was out of the bag. They were calling them the zombie massacres. Geez.
   The sun was going down in a sea of scarlet and orange. It looked like someone had melted two giant crayons and smeared them across the sky. There wasn't a shed, garage, basement, tree house, playhouse, or anything else we could think of that had been left unsearched. Still, we had found nothing.
   The newshounds were prowling restlessly at the edge of the search area. If we had evacuated hundreds of people and searched their premises without a warrant and found no zombie ... we were going to be in deep fucking shit.
   But it was here. I knew it was here. Alright, I was almost sure it was here.
   John Burke was standing next to one of those giant trash cans. Dolph had surprised me by allowing John to come on the zombie hunt. As Dolph said, we needed all the help we could get.
   "Where is it, Anita?" Dolph asked.
   I wanted to say something brilliant. My God, Holmes, how did you know the zombie was hiding in the flower pot? But I couldn't lie. "I don't know, Dolph. I just don't know."
   "If we don't find this thing ... " He let the thought trail off, but I knew what he meant.
   My job was secure if this fell apart. Dolph's was not. Shit. How could I help him? What were we missing? What?
   I stared at the quiet street. It was eerily quiet. The windows were all dark. Only the streetlights pushed back the coming dark. Soft halos of light.
   Every house had a mailbox on a post near the sidewalk that edged the curb. Some of the mailboxes were unbelievably cute. One had been shaped like a sitting cat. Its paw went up if there was mail in its tummy. The family name was Catt. It was too precious.
   Every house had at least one large super duper trash can in front of it. Some of them were bigger than I was. Surely, Sunday couldn't be trash day. Or had today been trash day, and the police line had stopped it?
   "Trash cans," I said aloud.
   "What?" Dolph asked.
   "Trash cans." I grabbed his arm, feeling almost lightheaded. "We've stared at those fucking trash cans all day. That's it."
   John Burke stood quietly beside me, frowning.
   "Are you feeling okay, Blake?" Zerbrowski came up behind us, smoking. The end of his cigarette looked like a bloated firefly.
   "The cans are big enough for a large person to hide in."
   "Wouldn't your arms and legs fall asleep?" Zerbrowski asked.
   "Zombies don't have circulation, not like we do."
   Dolph yelled, "Everybody check the trash cans. The zombie is in one of them. Move it!"
   Everyone scattered like an anthill stirred with a stick, but we had a purpose now. I ended up with two uniformed officers. Their nameplates said "Ki" and "Roberts." Ki was Asian and male. Roberts was blond and female. A nicely mixed team.
   We fell into a rhythm without discussing it. Officer Ki would move up and dump the trash can. Roberts and I would cover him with guns. We were all set to yell like hell if a zombie came tumbling out. It would probably be the right zombie. Life is seldom that cruel.
   We'd yell and an exterminator team would come running. At least, they'd better come running. This zombie was entirely too fast, too destructive. It might be more resistant to gunfire. Better not to find out. Just french-fry the sucker and be done with it.
   We were the only team working on the street. There was no sound but our footsteps, the rubber crunch of trash cans overturning, the rattle of cans and bottles as the trash spilled. Didn't anybody tie their bags up anymore?
   Darkness had fallen in a solid blackness. I knew there were stars and a moon up there somewhere, but you couldn't prove it from where we stood. Clouds as thick and dark as velvet had come in from the west. Only the streetlights made it bearable.
   I didn't know how Roberts was doing, but the muscles in my shoulders and neck were screaming. Every time Ki put his hands to the can and pushed, I was ready. Ready to fire, ready to save him before the zombie leapt up and ripped his throat out. A trickle of sweat dripped down his high-cheekboned face. Even in the dim light it glimmered.
   Glad to know I wasn't the only one feeling the effort. Of course, I wasn't the one putting my face over the possible hiding place of a berserk zombie. Trouble was, I didn't know how good a shot Ki was, or Roberts either for that matter. I knew I was a good shot. I knew I could slow the thing down until help arrived. I had to stay on shooting detail. It was the best division of labor. Honest.
   Screams. To the left. The three of us froze. I whirled towards the screaming. There was nothing to see, nothing but dark houses and pools of streetlight. Nothing moved. But the screams continued high and horrified.
   I started running towards the screams. Ki and Roberts were at my back. I ran with the Browning in a two-handed grip pointed up. Easier to run that way. Didn't dare holster the gun. Visions of blood-coated teddy bears, and the screams. The screams sort of faded. Someone was dying up ahead.
   There was a sense of movement everywhere in the darkness. Cops running. All of us running but it was too late. We were all too late. The screaming had stopped. No gunshots. Why not? Why hadn't someone gotten off a shot?
   We ran down the side yards of four houses when we hit a metal fence. Had to holster the guns. Couldn't climb it with one hand. Dammit. I did my best to vault the fence using my hands for leverage.
   I stumbled to my knees in the soft dirt of a flower bed. I was trampling some tall summer flowers. On my knees I was considerably shorter than the flowers. Ki landed beside me. Only Roberts landed on her feet.
   Ki stood up without drawing his gun. I drew the Browning while I crouched in the flowers. I could stand up after I was armed.
   I had a sense of rushing movement but not clear sight. The flowers obscured my vision. Roberts was suddenly tumbling backwards, screaming.
   Ki was drawing his gun, but something hit him, knocked him on top of me. I rolled but was still half under him. He lay still on top of me.
   "Ki, move it, dammit!"
   He sat up and crawled towards his partner, his gun silhouetted against the streetlight. He was staring down at Roberts. She wasn't moving.
   I searched the darkness trying to see something, anything. It had moved more than human fast. Fast as a ghoul. No zombie moved like that. Had I been wrong all along? Was it something else? Something worse? How many lives would my mistake cost tonight? Was Roberts dead?
   "Ki, is she alive?" I searched the darkness, fighting the urge to look only at the lighted areas. There was shouting, but it was confusion, "Where is it? Where did it go?" The sounds were getting farther away.
   I screamed, "Here, here!" The voices hesitated, then started our way. They were making so much noise, like a heard of arthritic elephants.
   "How bad is she hurt?"
   "Bad." He'd put his gun down. He was pressing his hands over her neck. Something black and liquid was spreading over his hands. God.
   I knelt on the other side of Roberts, gun ready, searching the darkness. Everything was taking forever, yet it was only seconds.
   I checked her pulse, one-handed. It was thready, but there. My hand came away covered in blood. I wiped it on my pants. The thing had damn near slit her throat.
   Where was it?
   Ki's eyes were huge, all pupil. His skin looked leprous in the streetlight. His partner's blood was dripping out between his fingers.
   Something moved, too low to the ground to be a man, but about that size. It was just a shape creeping along the back of the house in front of us. Whatever it was had found the deepest shadow and was trying to creep away.
   That showed more intelligence than a zombie had. I was wrong. I was wrong. I was fucking wrong. And Roberts was dying because of it.
   "Stay with her. Keep her alive."
   "Where are you going?" he asked.
   "After it." I climbed the fence one-handed. The adrenaline must have been pumping because I made it.
   I gained the yard and it was gone. A streaking shape fast as a mouse caught in the kitchen light. A blur of speed, but big, big as a man.
   It rounded the corner of the house and I lost sight of it. Dammit. I ran as far from the wall as I could, my stomach tight with anticipation of fingers ripping my throat out. I came round the house gun pointed, two-handed, ready. Nothing. I scanned the darkness, the pools of light. Nothing.
   Shouts behind me. The cops had arrived. God, let Roberts live.
   There, movement, creeping across the streetlight around the edge of another house. Someone shouted, "Anita!"
   I was already running towards the movement. I shouted as I ran, "Bring an exterminator team!" But I didn't stop. I didn't dare stop. I was the only one in sight of it. If I lost it, it was gone.
   I ran into the darkness, alone, after something that might not be a zombie at all. Not the brightest thing I've ever done, but it wasn't going to get away. It wasn't.
   It was never going to hurt another family. Not if I could stop it. Now. Tonight.
   I ran through a pool of light and it made the darkness heavier, blinding me temporarily. I froze in the dark, willing my eyes to adjust faster.
   "Perssisstent woman," a voice hissed. It was to my right, so close the hair on my arms stood up.
   I froze, straining my peripheral vision. There, a darker shape rising out of the evergreen shrubs that hugged the edge of the house. It rose to its full height, but didn't attack. If it wanted me, it could have me before I could turn and fire. I'd seen it move. I knew I was dead.
   "You arrre not like the resst." The voice was sibilant, as if parts of the mouth were missing, so it put great effort into forming each word. A gentleman's voice decayed by the grave.
   I turned towards it, slowly, slowly.
   "Put me back."
   I had turned my head enough to be able to see some of it. My night vision is better than most. And the streetlights made it lighter than it should have been.
   The skin was pale, yellowish-white. The skin clung to the bones of his face like wax that had half-melted. But the eyes, they weren't decayed. They burned out at me with a glitter that was more than just eyes.
   "Put you back where?" I asked.
   "My grave," he said. His lips didn't work quite right, there wasn't enough flesh left on them.
   Light blazed into my eyes. The zombie screamed, covering his face. I couldn't see shit. It crashed into me. I pulled the trigger blind. I thought I heard a grunt as the bullet hit home. I fired the gun again one-handed, throwing an arm across my neck. Trying to protect myself as I fell half-blind.
   When I blinked up into the electric-shot darkness, I was alone. I was unhurt. Why? Put me back, it had said. In my grave. How had it known what I was? Most humans couldn't tell. Witches could tell sometimes, and other animators always spotted me. Other animators. Shit.
   Dolph was suddenly there, pulling me to my feet. "God, Blake, are you hurt?"
   I shook my head. "What the hell was that light?"
   "A halogen flashlight."
   "You damn near blinded me."
   "We couldn't see to shoot," he said.
   Police had run past us in the darkness. There were shouts of, "There it is!" Dolph and I and the offending flashlight, bright as day, were left behind as the chase ran merrily on.
   "It spoke to me, Dolph," I said.
   "What do you mean, it spoke to you?"
   "It asked me to put it back in its grave." I stared up at him as I said it. I wondered if my face looked like Ki's had, pale, eyes wide and black. Why wasn't I scared?
   "It's old, a century at least. It was a voodoo something in life. That's what went wrong. That's why Peter Burke couldn't control it."
   "How do you know all this? Did it tell you?"
   I shook my head. "The way it looked, I could judge the age. It recognized me as someone who could lay it to rest. Only a witch or another animator could have recognized me for what I am. My money's on an animator."
   "Does that change our plan?" he asked.
   I stared up at him. "It's killed how many people?" I didn't wait for him to answer. "We kill it. Period."
   "You think like a cop, Anita." It was a great compliment from Dolph, and I took it as one.
   It didn't matter what it had been in life. So it had been an animator, or rather a voodoo practioner. So what? It was a killing machine. It hadn't killed me. Hadn't hurt me. I couldn't afford to return the favor.
   Shots echoed far way. Some trick of the summer air made them echo. Dolph and I looked at each other.
   I still had the Browning in my hand. "Let's do it."
   He nodded.
   We started running, but he outdistanced me quickly. His legs were as tall as I was. I couldn't match his pace. I might be able to run him into the ground, but I'd never match his speed.
   He hesitated, glancing at me.
   "Go on, run," I said.
   He put on an extra burst of speed and was gone into the darkness. He didn't even look back. If you said you were fine in the dark with a killer zombie on the loose, Dolph would believe you. Or at least he believed me.
   It was a compliment but it left me running alone in the dark for the second time tonight. Shouts were coming from two opposite directions. They had lost it. Damn.
   I slowed. I had no desire to run into the thing blind. It hadn't hurt me the first time, but I'd put at least one bullet into it. Even a zombie gets pissed about things like that.
   I was under the cool darkness of a tree shadow. I was on the edge of the development. A barbed-wire fence cut across the entire back of the subdivision. Farmland stretched as far as I could see. At least the field was planted in beans. The zombie'd have to be lying flat to hide in there. I caught glimpses of policemen with flashlights, searching the darkness, but they were all about fifty yards to either side of me.
   They were searching the ground, the shadows, because I'd told them zombies didn't like to climb. But this wasn't any ordinary zombie. The tree rustled over my head. The hair on my neck crawled down my spine. I whirled, looking upwards, gun pointing.
   It snarled at me and leapt.
   I fired twice before its weight hit me and knocked us both to the ground. Two bullets in the chest, and it wasn't even hurt.
   I fired a third time, but I might as well have been hitting a wall.
   It snarled in my face, broken teeth with dark stains, breath foul as a new opened grave. I screamed back, wordless, and pulled the trigger again. The bullet hit it in the throat. It paused, trying to swallow. To swallow the bullet?
   Those glittering eyes stared down at me. There was someone home, like Dominga's soul-locked zombies. There was someone looking out of those eyes. We froze in one of those illusionary seconds that last years. He was straddling my waist, hands at my throat, but not pressing, not hurting, not yet. I had the gun under his chin. None of the other bullets had hurt him; why would this one?
   "Didn't mean to kill," it said softly, "didn't understand at firsst. Didn't remember what I wass."
   The police were there on either side, hesitating. Dolph screamed, "Hold your fire, hold your fire, dammit!"
   "I needed meat, needed it to remember who I wass. Tried not to kill. Tried to walk past all the houssess, but I could not. Too many houssess," he whispered. His hands tensed, stained nails digging in. I fired into his chin. His body jerked backwards, but the hands squeezed my neck.
   Pressure, pressure, tighter, tighter. I was beginning to see white star bursts on my vision. The night was fading from black to grey. I pressed the gun just above the bridge of his nose and pulled the trigger again, and again.
   My vision faded, but I could still feel my hands, pulling the trigger. Darkness flowed over my eyes and swallowed the world. I couldn't feel my hands anymore.
   I woke to screams, horrible screams. The stink of burning flesh and hair was thick and choking on my tongue.
   I took a deep shaking breath and it hurt. I coughed and tried to sit up. Dolph was there supporting me. He had my gun in his hand. I drew one ragged breath after another and coughed hard enough to make my throat raw. Or maybe the zombie had done that.
   Something the size of a man was rolling over the summer grass. It burned. It flamed with a clean orange light that sent the darkness shattering in fire shadows like the sun on water.
   Two exterminators in their fire suits stood by it, covering it in napalm, as if it were a ghoul. The thing screamed high in its throat, over and over, one loud ragged shriek after another.
   "Jesus, why won't it die?" Zerbrowski was standing nearby. His face was orange in the firelight.
   I didn't say anything. I didn't want to say it out loud. The zombie wouldn't die because it had been an animator when alive. That much I knew about animator zombies. What I hadn't known was that they came out of the grave craving flesh. That they remembered only when they ate flesh.
   That I hadn't known. Didn't want to know.
   John Burke stumbled into the firelight. He was cradling one arm to his chest. Blood stained his clothing. Had the zombie whispered to John? Did he know why the thing wouldn't die?
   The zombie whirled, the fire roaring around it. The body was like the wick of a candle. It took one shaking step towards us. Its flaming hand reached out to me. To me.
   Then it fell forward, slowly, into the grass. It fell like a tree in slow motion, fighting for life. If that was the word. The exterminators stayed ready, taking no chances. I didn't blame them.
   It had been a necromancer once upon a time. That burning hulk, slowly catching the grass on fire, had been what I was. Would I be a monster if raised from the grave? Would I? Better not to find out. My will said cremation because I didn't want someone raising me just for kicks. Now I had another reason to do it. One had been enough.
   I watched the flesh blacken, curl, peel away. Muscles and bone popped in miniature explosions, tiny pops of sparks.
   I watched the zombie die and made a promise to myself. I'd see Dominga Salvador burned in hell for what she'd done. There are fires that last for all eternity. Fires that make napalm look like a temporary inconvenience. She'd burn for all eternity, and it wouldn't be half long enough.

33
   I was lying on my back in the emergency room. A white curtain hid me from view. The noises on the other side of the curtain were loud and unfriendly. I liked my curtain. The pillow was flat, the examining table was hard. It felt white and clean and wonderful. It hurt to swallow. It even hurt a little bit just to breathe. But breathing was important. It was nice to be able to do it.
   I lay there very quietly. Doing what I was told for once. I listened to my breathing, the beating of my own heart. After nearly dying, I am always very interested in my body. I notice all sorts of things that go unnoticed during most of life. I could feel blood coursing through the veins in my arms. I could taste my calm, orderly pulse in my mouth like a piece of candy.
   I was alive. The zombie was dead. Dominga Salvador was in jail. Life was good.
   Dolph pushed the curtain back. He closed the curtain like you'd close a door to a room. We both pretended we had privacy even though we could see people's feet passing under the hem of the curtain.
   I smiled up at him. He smiled back. "Nice to see you up and around."
   "I don't know about the up part," I said. My voice had a husky edge to it. I coughed, tried to clear it, but it didn't really help.
   "What'd the doc say about your voice?" Dolph asked.
   "I'm a temporary tenor." At the look on his face, I added, "It'll pass."
   "Good."
   "How's Burke?" I asked.
   "Stitches, no permanent damage."
   I had figured as much after seeing him last night, but it was good to know.
   "And Roberts?"
   "She'll live."
   "But will she be alright?" I had to swallow hard. It hurt to talk.
   "She'll be alright. Ki was cut up, too, on the arm. Did you know?"
   I shook my head and stopped in mid-motion. That hurt, too. "Didn't see it."
   "Just a few stitches. He'll be fine." Dolph plunged his hands in his pants pockets. "We lost three officers. One hurt worse than Roberts, but he'll make it."
   I stared up at him. "My fault."
   He frowned. "How do you figure that?"
   "I should have guessed," I had to swallow, "it wasn't an ordinary zombie."
   "It was a zombie, Anita. You were right. You were the one who figured out it was hiding in one of those damn trash cans." He grinned down at me. "And you nearly died killing it. I think you've done your part."
   "Didn't kill it. Exterminators killed it." Big words seemed to hurt more than little words.
   "Do you remember what happened as you were passing out?"
   "No."
   "You emptied your clip into its face. Blew its damn brains out the back of its head. You went limp. I thought you were dead. God"-he shook his head-"don't ever do that to me again."
   I smiled. "I'll try not to."
   "When its brains started leaking out the back of its head, it stood up. You took all the fight out of it."
   Zerbrowski pushed into the small space, leaving the curtain gaping behind him. I could see a small boy with a bloody hand crying into a woman's shoulder. Dolph swept the curtain closed. I bet Zerbrowski was one of those people who never shut a drawer.
   "They're still digging bullets out of the corpse. And every bullet's yours, Blake."
   I just looked at him.
   "You are such a bad ass, Blake."
   "Somebody has to be with you around, Zerbrow ... " I couldn't finish his name. It hurt. It figures.
   "Are you in pain?" Dolph asked.
   I nodded, carefully. "The doc's getting me painkiller. Already got tetanus booster."
   "You've got a necklace of bruises blossoming on that pale neck of yours," Zerbrowski said.
   "Poetic," I said.
   He shrugged.
   "I'll check in on the rest of the injured one more time, then I'll have a uniform drive you back to your place," Dolph said.
   "Thanks."
   "I don't think you're in any condition to drive."
   Maybe he was right. I felt like shit, but it was happy shit. We'd done it. We'd solved the crime, and people were going to jail for it. Yippee.
   The doctor came back in with the painkillers. He glanced at the two policemen. "Right." He handed me a bottle with three pills in it. "This should see you through the night and into the next day. I'd call in sick if I were you." He glanced at Dolph as he said it. "You hear that, boss?"
   Dolph sort of frowned. "I'm not her boss."
   "You're the man in charge, right?" the doctor asked.
   Dolph nodded.
   "Then ... "
   "I'm on loan," I said.
   "Loan?"
   "You might say we borrowed her from another department," Zerbrowski said.
   The doctor nodded. "Then tell her superior to let her off tomorrow. She may not look as hurt as the others, but she's had a nasty shock. She's very lucky there was no permanent damage."
   "She doesn't have a superior," Zerbrowski said, "but we'll tell her boss." He grinned at the doctor.
   I frowned at Zerbrowski.
   "Well, then, you're free to go. Watch those scratches for infection. And that bite on your shoulder." He shook his head. "You cops earn your money." With that parting wisdom, he left.
   Zerbrowski laughed. "Wouldn't do for the doc to know we'd let a civie get messed up."
   "She's had a nasty shock," Dolph said.
   "Very nasty," Zerbrowski said.
   They started laughing.
   I sat up carefully, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. "If you two are through yukking it up, I need a ride home."
   They were both laughing so hard that tears were creeping out of their eyes. It hadn't been that funny, but I understood. For tension release laughter beats the hell out of tears. I didn't join them because I suspected strongly that laughing would hurt.
   "I'll drive you home," Zerbrowski gasped between giggles.
   I had to smile. Seeing Dolph and Zerbrowski giggling was enough to make anyone smile.
   "No, no," Dolph said. "You two in a car alone. Only one of you would come out alive."
   "And it'd be me," I said.
   Zerbrowski nodded. "Ain't it the truth."
   Nice to know there was one subject we agreed on.