The Voodoo Killings (11 page)

“Sorry, in a rush,” I offered, and darted past with Cameron before she could recover.

Before ducking into the alley, I allowed myself one glance back at Marjorie’s. The car was still there, but Aaron was no longer watching me.
Safe
.

Still, I didn’t let up the pace until we’d turned the corner.

“Why so scared of the cops?” Cameron asked.

“I’m not scared of them. Just keeping things uncomplicated.”

Cameron stared at me.

“Look, just forget it.”

I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t shake the feeling someone was still watching us. Probably left over from that last globe. I doubled around back of the warehouse and opened the glass door for Cameron. While I held it open, I caught sight of our reflection in the window. What the—

I spun around and scanned the sidewalk behind us. I could have sworn I’d seen someone behind me, a man….

I went numb. I’d seen the ghost from the mirror.

No, that wasn’t possible. First off, this window wasn’t set, and second, the barrier here wasn’t so thin that ghosts could cross over by themselves. I’d checked before signing the lease.

My mind had to be playing tricks on me.

Inside the lobby, I checked the gilded mirror. No sign of any ghosts.

Fantastic. It wasn’t enough I worked with ghosts, now I was imagining them.

The freight elevator was sitting on the ground floor and I dragged Cameron in. We rode up, and after minimal cursing and negotiating with the lock on my front door, I was home. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed.

“Kincaid?”

I slid the cooler onto the kitchen island and flicked the kettle on before attending to Cameron. “Come on. You’re sleeping in the spare bedroom. I’ll show you where.”

They don’t really need to, but it’s a good idea for zombies to sleep; without it, the neurons in their brains tend to get overtaxed. I grabbed
three extra blankets and a pillow from the cupboard so he could keep his feet warm. With minimal circulation, zombies are prone to opportunistic infections of the extremities. I shoved them into his arms and swung open the door. Cameron stared at my spare bedroom/storage room with trepidation.

“Don’t worry, you’ll fall asleep, and you’ll wake up again too. And you’ll remember more in the morning.”

“You sure about that?”

I shrugged. “No, but it beats thinking you’ll wake up worse off. Besides, this is the only door I can lock from outside. Otherwise, if you do go downhill, you could get out and…” No need to be graphic.

Cameron nodded and stepped inside. I locked the door behind him and bolted the three padlocks, checking twice to make sure they were secure. When I’d got into raising zombies, I’d had the foresight to make one room zombie-proof.

I needed this night to be over. The kettle boiled. I made myself a tea and opened my laptop. One last thing I needed to do before bed.

I warmed my hands on the mug as I scanned the police missing persons listings. I wasn’t supposed to have access anymore, but the department was overworked and had a non-existent tech department.

No sign of Cameron Wight anywhere on the list. Which meant that no one was looking for him. What had he done to deserve that?

I finished my tea, closed the laptop and headed into the bathroom. I draped the large hand towel over the mirror. Ghost roommate–speak for “stay out.” Not that I had anything to worry about. I was so not his type, it wouldn’t occur to Nate to take a peek.

I was brushing my teeth when something brushed against my shoulder. I yelped and spun around, half expecting to see Cameron.

There was no one there, but the towel I’d hung over the mirror was now on the floor.

“Nate.”

Nate’s reflection hazed into focus. He wore a giant grin.

“Don’t ever do that again. You scared me—”

“To death?”

I threw the towel back over the mirror.

It didn’t help. In a rare show of self-sufficiency, Nate slid out of the mirror without my help. Must be all the damn fog off the water this last week. But it was a stupid waste of energy. He was going to burn himself out before half a century was up.

I grabbed my sweats off the rack and motioned for him to turn around.

“How’s the zombie?”

“Locked in the spare bedroom. How the hell else do you think?”

Nate didn’t usually hang around in the bathroom to chat but headed straight for his PlayStation.

“Okay, what do you want?”

“I need someone to play co-op.”

“I need sleep. One of us is still alive.”

“What about the zombie? Can I have him? I promise I’ll put him back—”

“
Good night
, Nate.”

He gave a dramatic sigh. “Fine.” His extremities dissolved into streams of thin fog before coalescing into a thick cloud that made its way back up the sink to the mirror. On his way, he said, “You really need to stop going to bed angry, Kincaid. Ever since this whole Aaron thing, you’re, like, ten times worse to deal—”

“Nate.”

“Like seriously. A nightmare—”

I launched another towel at where Nate had been floating, but it only struck the cabinet.

I stomped to the kitchen, returned my laptop to my desk and then checked the office door locks one last time. I figure it can’t be OCD when zombies are involved. As an afterthought, I went back to the living room and flipped on the PlayStation, just in case Nate came back out. He could run the controller about as well as he could handle a guitar, since it was something he’d done every day of his life. But if they ever changed the controller design, Nate was hooped.

I locked my own door and crawled into bed, pulling the duvet up to my neck. Warm and familiar. I flipped the lamp off.

My phone buzzed. Damn it. I fantasized about ignoring it but checked, just in case it was Max.

It was a text from Aaron.

Call me
.

My stomach turned as I stared at the message. Screw it, I was too tired to deal with him right now. I tossed my phone back on the nightstand.

Less than a minute later, it buzzed again, casting the room in a ghostly grey-blue light. I shut my eyes and buried my face in the duvet. The phone kept buzzing, though. I grabbed it.

Nice night in Pioneer Square
.

“Fuck.” I read the text again to be sure my sleep-deprived eyes weren’t playing a trick on me. Another message popped up.

Your light went out less than five minutes ago. I know you’re awake
.

I slid out of bed and headed over to the window. Sure enough, Aaron’s black sedan was there, and Aaron was leaning against it. He waved his cellphone at me and my gut tightened. If he’d been watching Cameron…No—if Aaron thought for one second I had a zombie in here, I’d be having a conversation with the wrong end of a
SWAT
team.

I dialed.

“Hi, Kincaid.” Aaron sounded pleasant, even friendly. “So you are still awake.”

I stuffed “go to hell” and forced out a civil response. “Aaron, I’ve had a really rough day. Can this please wait until tomorrow?”

“How about you tell me what you were doing in Pioneer Square.”

“No.”

I saw Aaron tense up. Score one for me. Damn it, I was scoring our fights now.

“Kincaid, you can’t ignore me indefinitely,” he said. He actually sounded defeated. Though I wasn’t going to let myself put much faith in that. I had a track record of being wrong when it came to people I thought I loved.

I took a deep breath and pulled my verbal filter out of the cobwebbed pocket of my brain before any accusations flew out. “Aaron,
I’m going to say this once and only once. You want to know why I was in Pioneer Square tonight? It’s none of your damn business anymore.”

I heard him take a deep breath on the other end. “Kincaid, this is important.”

“It can wait until tomorrow.”

He paused, then said, “Fine. Tomorrow. Before noon.”

“Fine.”

As I turned away from the window, I pulled the drape shut, something I didn’t normally do. Before I could hang up, Aaron’s voice came through.

“How much longer are we going to do this?”

I froze as emotions I’d been keeping carefully in check flooded me. Say something civil, Kincaid, something civil.

“
Good night
, Aaron,” I said, and hung up.

How much longer? Try a goddamned apology and maybe then we could talk.

I stopped just short of launching my phone at the bedroom door and instead tossed it back on the nightstand. I got into bed, pulled the duvet up and hoped no one else called me tonight.

Max, Aaron, Cameron, Lee—it seemed as if everyone wanted something from me. You know how the saying goes: when it rains, it pours, especially in Seattle.

CHAPTER 7

HANGOVERS

I woke up to the phone ringing.

Oh man, did I ever have a headache. I reminded myself never to tap the barrier so many times in one night ever again. I peeked from underneath the duvet. Enough light streamed through the blinds that it had to be past seven.

Max wasn’t above calling me this early….

I grabbed my cell off the night table to check the number. Aaron. Scratch my previous assertion that pulling too many globes guaranteed the equivalent of a bad hangover. This was much worse.

I declined the call, shoved the phone under the pillow and pulled the duvet back over my head. He’d said before noon.

The phone started to buzz again, but with the pillow between us I had no problem ignoring it. I’m functional that way.

As I lay there attempting to get back to sleep, I registered a smell in the apartment. Smoky, salty, crispy. Bacon. Reaching out to me like a lighthouse beacon through fog. My stomach growled.

Wait a minute. I didn’t have any food in the fridge. And what the hell was Nate doing cooking bacon?

I threw my duvet off and slid out of bed as fast as I could manage without face planting on the floor. The room was spinning. Oh why did the room have to spin? I fumbled the lock on the bedroom door twice before I got it open. “Nate, if you’ve so much as burnt a piece of toast…”

Cameron, not Nate, was standing in front of the stove wielding an assortment of cooking utensils I didn’t even know I owned. At the sound of my voice, he turned around, frying pan in hand.

“Morning,” he said. “I made breakfast.”

Reaction times normal, no twitching, eyes focused…I nodded towards the open office door. “How did you get out?”

“The ghost—Nathan. I woke up at daybreak and he heard me moving around. He asked me a lot of questions before he let me out, but he said I was fine.”

I had to agree—Cameron did seem fine. I picked up the smell of coffee and spotted a full carafe tucked behind the kettle. I didn’t have coffee….

It was then I noticed the collection of plastic grocery bags on the counter.

Cameron caught me glancing at them. “You needed stuff,” he said.

I started rifling through: eggs, ketchup, milk. I held up the bag of espresso with the green and white logo I loved so dearly.

He fumbled a pair of aviator sunglasses out of his sweatshirt pocket. My aviators. The ones I kept by the front door. “Nathan told me to wear these. And use cash. I kept my hood up the entire time and I only went as far as the corner store. No one noticed me.”

That was debatable. Cameron would be hard to miss, zombie or not. I was sure he’d garnered more than a few looks, even on a short morning walk.

I made a mental note to check the missing persons postings again as soon as I had a cup of coffee in me. “You should be careful how much advice you take from Nate. In case you hadn’t noticed, he didn’t exactly win the ‘living’ lottery.”

Cameron glanced down at the sunglasses, handed them to me, then turned back to the stove. “Neither did I,” he said quietly.

“Point taken,” I said. My sensitivity leaves a lot to be desired. I migrated to the coffee pot and started to fill a mostly clean mug from the sink. I thought I heard the radio over crackling bacon and spotted my transistor on the desk, balanced on another pile of books destined for eBay.

“I turned the radio on—I hope you don’t mind,” Cameron said.

How the hell had he found it? I’d wedged it on top of the fridge behind a pair of phone books I’d never bothered to unwrap. “It’s fine,” I said. “News just depresses me.” Cameron had it tuned to the local generic pop/rock station.

I ducked my head into the living room to check for Nate.

“So I’m a zombie,” Cameron called after me.

It was a statement, not a question.

“Yup,” I called back. The PlayStation was still on, but there was no sign of Nate. “You sound like you’re dealing with the new status quo.”

“No, but there’s not a hell of a lot I can do about being dead.”

“Not really. To be honest, though, I’m used to more…resistance on the issue.” Screaming, throwing tantrums, other assorted unpleasantness. I checked the bathroom next. Hunh, no Nate here either, and no message…

“Exactly how much do you remember from last night?” I called.

“Not much. Snapshots with no context, though they get clearer closer to the end of the night.”

To be expected with regeneration.

“When I woke up this morning, I half convinced myself last night was just a bad alcohol-induced dream. That was before I realized I wasn’t breathing. I held my breath for ten minutes straight before giving up. No heartbeat either.”

I rifled through the toothbrush stand—where was the lipliner? “Yeah, your eyes will keep fading, too. No blood flow messes with pigment deposit. Happens to every zombie. I know someone who can get you contact lenses, special ones that won’t peel off….” There it was, behind the toothpaste. I wrote
Nate?
in the top corner of the mirror and waited. Where the hell was he?

I left the bathroom to find Cameron standing in the kitchen doorway holding a still-sizzling frying pan. Watching me.

Doesn’t matter what kind of dead they are, they always want the same thing: affirmation from the living that they’re still there.

I shrugged. “Look, Cameron, it’s an adjustment. You’re doing about as well as can be expected.”