The Voodoo Killings (10 page)

I sighed. Walking by a crime scene and pulling a globe wasn’t illegal…yet. But if Aaron saw me…

“Lee, look, I’m sorry. It’s too risky. Things are bad enough right now without me sticking my nose over the police tape—”

“I’ll pay you,” Lee said. “Fifteen hundred just to look. I know you need the money.”

“Lee, that’s not fair—”

“No,” she said, “it isn’t. But you need the money and I need to know what happened to Marjorie.”

“Why?”

Lee stared at me for a long moment. “I owed her some favours,” she finally said. Her fingers absently brushed the drawer key again. I don’t think I’d ever seen Lee perform an action that wasn’t conscious and deliberate. Marjorie’s death had really rattled her.

I tried one last time. “Lee, you don’t need me, you need a private investigator with a practitioner on retainer. Scrap that—you need to
talk to Aaron. I’ve got enough of a problem with this zombie without poking my nose into Marjorie’s murder—”

“Kincaid, now that they know she was a zombie, you know there will be no investigation.”

I closed my eyes and worded what I said next very carefully. “They’ll investigate the break-in and treat what happened to her as aggravated assault. I’ll talk to Aaron. If he knows she was part of the local underground community—”

Lee actually hissed. I stopped. She was right. No matter how you dice it, zombies can’t be murdered. Since they aren’t technically alive, no one can “kill” them. California was the only one of the states even close to figuring out the legal quagmire of zombies, and only because it was full of them. A lot of people in show business really don’t want to die, even if that means chugging brains for the next hundred years.

“Please, Kincaid,” Lee said. “I do not ask many favours.”

I checked to see if there was a hint of ulterior motive in her green eyes, but no. Just grief—or as much grief as someone like Lee ever shows.

I sighed. Why do people always have to be so sincere when they ask me for favours? If someone broke Marjorie’s bindings, there might be a trace left at the coffee shop. Or a flood of jumbled emotions, maybe an image or two.

“All right, Lee. I’ll take your fifteen hundred. But just to look. If I don’t find anything, I don’t find anything, got it?”

Lee nodded. “That is all I need you to do.”

“I’ve got to deal with Cameron first. I’ll let you know what I find.”

“What do you plan to do with him?” Lee asked.

I wanted to find out what the hell Max had done and give him shit for it. At least, that was at the top of my list. That and keep him out of Aaron’s sight. “I’ll figure it out,” I said.

“A piece of advice, Kincaid? Find who made him and return him to that person as soon as you can.”

“What do you know about his bindings that you’re not telling me?”

“It’s just advice. Take it or leave it.”

I nodded and closed the office door behind me.

Cameron was still leaning against the wall. Cooler in hand, I led him out the side entrance into a narrow alley. “Remember anything else about your life yet?” I asked.

“Bits and pieces, images at most. Nothing coherent.”

Yeah, but he was using words like
coherent
now. With luck, the fresh brains would do the trick.

We started back through the crowds towards the stairs. The whole way back to the City Gate, I wondered what it was Lee wasn’t telling me about my zombie.

CHAPTER 6

DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES

When we were back above ground, I headed down the alley towards First. If I was lucky, the police tape would be gone and I could take a look at Marjorie’s tonight, before any Otherside traces at the scene dissipated. What was one more globe after the night I’d had?

But Cameron didn’t follow. “We came that way,” he said, nodding down the alley in the direction of the docks.

So he picks now to get his bearings back. I fished the penlight out of my pocket. “Cameron, look at me, will you?”

“Wha—? Jesus!” Cameron threw a hand up to try to shield his eyes as I shone the penlight in his face. “Will you get the damn light out of my eyes?”

“Humour me,” I said. Both his pupils constricted. All systems relatively normal. I moved my finger back and forth, checking to see if both his eyes could follow it.

“Will you stop it?” Cameron said. “You said something about police, I remember that much—Jesus, why does that have to be so bright?”

So his eyes were good as new, or as close as they needed to be for Cameron to pass for normal on the street.

“You’re thinking critically again and your short-term memory is back.
This
,” I said, flicking the light off, “was for checking how your eyes reacted. Peripheral cranial neurons—the ones in your face—regenerate faster than the ones in the rest of your body. They’re closer to the brain.”

Still wincing, he said, “Couldn’t you have just asked me to smile, or blink, or, I don’t know, wiggle my nose?”

“Too easy. Eyes are more complicated.” I headed towards First. Again Cameron didn’t follow.

“Are you sure we should go out there? There are…”

“People?” I said, filling in the obvious blank.

“I can smell them,” he said, as if admitting a dark secret.

“I just need to take a look at something. It won’t take long.”

After a moment, he nodded and fell in step beside me. “Will I get all of it back? My memory, I mean?”

“Honestly?”

He thought that over, then nodded.

“At this point, your guess is as good as mine.”

Pioneer Square still hummed with nightlife—people, cars, even the closed storefronts blaring with neon lights. The dinner crowd had gone home, leaving the area to a younger, louder bunch of club-goers and hipsters. I wasn’t worried about anyone spotting Cameron. With his hood up, he looked like everyone else still out on a Friday night.

I looped my arm in his. “Just avoid staring at anyone,” I told him. “If you get nervous, stare at the logo on my jacket.” On my shoulder I’d fixed a red hawk badge in honour of my bike.

We dodged around a group of kids stumbling along the sidewalk and then ducked under the awnings that lined First. Marjorie’s was on the opposite side of the square, so we waited at the crosswalk along with the motley crew looking to catch the night bus at the stop on the other side. I could see that the yellow tape marking the crime scene had been removed. But if everyone was gone, what the hell were the lights still doing on inside the shop?

The signal to cross flared and we all piled into the street. I led Cameron across the intersection, avoiding the Pergola, an intricate wrought iron leftover from the 1909 Expo. Though it was built decades before the barrier had thinned between here and the Otherside, no one in their right mind should ever have stuck an iron walkway in one of the rainiest port cities in the world—iron is too good a conductor of Otherside—unless they actually wanted ghosts strolling through the barrier on their own. Thankfully, the drizzle tonight wasn’t enough to trigger the iron. Still, I didn’t want to push our luck and run the risk of Cameron having yet another ghost encounter, even though he’d kept it together the first two times.

Once we were directly across from the shop, I stopped to scope it out. Cameron came to a jarring halt beside me. Why were the lights on? For all I knew, an employee could have been called in to clean up. Still…I stepped off the curb and crossed the street a few doors down.

“Shit.”

I grabbed Cameron and pulled him into a deep doorway.

Tucked in the adjacent alley was a black sedan, in all its unmarked glory. Discreet if you didn’t know what to look for, but I couldn’t forget that licence plate number if I tried.

“Son of a bitch.”

Cameron was studying me, so I pointed out the sedan. “Homicide detectives,” I said. “They shouldn’t be here.” Were Aaron and Sarah trying to piss off the new captain? No, they weren’t that stupid. It had to be something else.

“So?” Cameron asked. When I shot him an incredulous look, he said, “There are people all over the sidewalk. Why don’t we just walk past?”

I weighed how much to tell him. “These homicide cops know me,” I said. “I used to work with them.” I didn’t mention that I’d been avoiding Aaron like the plague the last few weeks and had ignored his last three voice messages.

I considered my options. There were a whopping two: I could go home, come back in the morning and risk that any trace of Otherside
bindings would have dissipated, or I could take my chances and stroll by now. If it was only Sarah in the car, I could bluff my way past her—
if
she spotted me. Aaron, not so much. Aaron had an unfortunate knack for picking me out in a crowd. I still hadn’t figured out how. Still, that didn’t mean he was in the car.

“Wouldn’t they be more inclined to help since you’ve worked with them?”

“We’re not that friendly anymore,” I said.

Ah, screw it. Like I said, patience isn’t one of my virtues. I grabbed Cameron and headed for the coffee shop window, keeping my eyes on the car, watching for any movement. Nothing.

As we drew close, there was still no indication of anything amiss. No noise, no moving shadows, just a warm, inviting yellow glow.

“Shit.” I tightened my grip on Cameron’s arm as Aaron got out of the driver’s side. I swear, if I didn’t know for a fact he couldn’t see Otherside…I forced myself to keep going at the same pace, my eyes on the ground. We were almost at the window.

“Who’s the blond?” Cameron whispered.

“No one. Why?”

“Because he’s looking straight at us.”

“Well, stop looking back,” I said.

“It’s impossible not to—
Oomph
. What the hell was that for?”

“Keep your eyes down, Cameron. Stare at the hawk patch.”

Cameron snorted but fell silent. I stopped in front of the window, pulled out my cell and pretended to check messages as I pulled a globe faster than I should have. A streak of nausea seared through me. As the edges of my globe stopped wavering and settled into place, I pushed thoughts of Aaron away. I focused on the window and opened my eyes.

Nothing. I let out a pulse towards the shop glass, and it crashed against the window like a wave and came back at me. I chewed my lower lip. I’d stuck to working with mirrors so much over the past year, I must be out of practice working with windows. I loosened my globe and gave the wave of Otherside a push, adding another mental kick when it hit the glass.

This time I caught sight of the barrier before the Otherside ricocheted back at me, even harder. I grabbed the sill to steady myself and swore as the nausea hit me. Why the hell hadn’t I thought to check for a ward? Marjorie was an old-school zombie living on the surface of Seattle; of course she’d had someone ward the hell out of her place to stop prying eyes like mine from doing exactly what I was trying to do. “Damn it, this is so not my night.”

I shook my head, trying to clear the nausea while not dropping my globe; I wouldn’t be able to manage another one. I waited a few seconds then made a second, gentler and much more explorative probe of the window blocking me. Now I knew what to look for, it didn’t take much for me to pick out the symbols holding the barrier in place. They had been carved into the wooden windowsill with anchors placed at the four corners of the frame. Subtle but effective. Good work, too—an old collection of Celtic symbols. And they’d been there for at least five or six decades, considering there were no signs of the modern shortcuts.

Question was, could I break it?

I focused on the nearest corner and waited until the entire anchor floated out of the tangled mess of Otherside threads holding the ward over the window. It was a Celtic knot I knew how to break. Anything more intricate would have been out of my realm.

A girl’s shriek of laughter tore my attention away from the window. I let my globe go as a group of twenty-somethings darted past us and across the road, chasing after a bus as it pulled away from the curb.

“He’s still watching us—the blond,” Cameron whispered.

I checked the reflection in the window. Sure enough, Aaron stood on the corner with his hands in his pockets, facing our way. I could have sworn he looked straight at my reflection, but then he took a call.

Regardless of whether I
could
break the ward around Marjorie’s shop, it wasn’t happening tonight—not without supplies and not with Aaron hanging around.

Another group of students were heading our way, probably to join the crowd huddling at the bus stop.

I looped my arm in Cameron’s again and made a beeline for the bus stop, trying not to look as if I was dragging him. If Aaron suspected it was me, seeing me with someone would throw him off. That and he knew I hated buses.

When we reached the stop, I pulled the hood farther over my face, feigning cold, then waited, watching the traffic light. It turned green as a bus pulled up and cars angled around and into the intersection. The front door opened and the throng of people pushed to get on. Cameron tensed beside me.

“Kincaid, I don’t think I can get on there. The smell—” Cameron said, shuddering. The overpowering scent of fresh brains. Dinner.

“Steady, man. Just wait.”

The bus door closed just as the stoplight turned red.

One, two, three, four…

I dragged Cameron behind me, keeping count in my head. Thirty seconds to cross the park and duck back into the alley before the light turned green. It was doable.

“Walk fast, Cameron, and don’t look back.”

Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three…

Halfway across the park. “Almost there,” I whispered.

We reached the other side of the park and bolted across the crosswalk.

Twenty-eight, twenty-nine
…

I heard the bus gasp as it switched into gear. Time’s up.

Only a small group of people stood between us and the alley.

“Excuse me,” I said, and shoved past a slender girl a few inches taller than me even with my chunky-heeled boots on. She glanced down at me, first in anger, then with recognition.

She was one of the artists who lived in my building—twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, short pixie cut with dyed neon-pink tips. I wasn’t used to seeing people from my building on the street, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. Our place was stumbling distance, all downhill. She looked about to say something to me then stopped and stared at Cameron. Of course she’d recognize him—all the art students knew who he was.