Walking Dead

Thor reappeared, bearing drinks and a look of amusement. “Have you seen the captain?”

“I don’t even believe he’s here.” I took one of the plastic cups he offered and sniffed its contents—pink and foamy—suspiciously. “What is this?”

“I didn’t ask. There were two choices. One involved dunking my head and apples. I took this one.” He took a sip of his own drink cautiously, then made a moue. “Typical fruit-drink-and-soda party stuff.”

Reassured, I took a sip, then coughed, eyes tearing. “You forgot to mention heavily spiked.” I blinked tears away, then took another sip more carefully. Woo. Worse than the Joh

Melinda heaved a melodramatic sigh. “Do they have anything nonalcoholic?”

“They better. I told Phoebe we had minors attending the party.” I nodded at Melinda’s belly. “You look ready to pop.”

“I was ready to pop three weeks ago. I’ve forgotten what my feet look like. My children have taken to calling me El Blobbo.”

“They have not,” Billy said equitably. Melinda beamed at him and he said, “They call her La Blobbacita,” which earned him a sudden reversal of the beam into a credibly injured pout.

“When’s the big day?” Thor took a swig of the pink drink and made a face.

Melinda let go of her pout to sigh gustily. “November sixth.”

“Well, that’s not too bad, right? Only another week.”

Spoken, I thought, like somebody who’s never been pregnant. I didn’t say it out loud because it opened up a whole bunch of questions I had no desire to answer, but the look Mel gave him pretty much said what I didn’t.

Billy gri

Melinda, beaming, called, “My hero,” after him, then folded her arms across the top of her tummy and looked around. “Good party, Joa

“Thank you. From shut-in recluse mechanic to partying shamanic police detective within a year. You too can get on this ride if you’re over this tall.” I waved a hand near the top of my head, then took another hasty swallow of my drink. Apparently it was more potent than I’d realized, if it was taking me from wanting a drink so I didn’t have to think about my mystical power set to babbling about it.

Melinda, bless her, snorted and stood on her toes in an attempt to reach the required height, while Edward leaned forward to knock his forehead against the side of my still-lifted hand. He had a good three inches in height over me, and his voice dropped somewhere around his, um, knees, as he murmured, “I wouldn’t mind getting on that ride.”

This time I was sure a blush could start around the xyphoid process. His smile turned into a grin and he watched that blush go all the way down, which only served to enhance it. I whispered, “Stop that,” but not with any particular conviction.

He brought his gaze back up to my face and leered, then laughed and stepped in against me. I elbowed him with even less conviction than I’d scolded. He slid an arm around my waist, looking pleased with himself. “You brought it up, so now I get to ask something I’ve been dying to.”

I said, “No dying,” semi-automatically. Too many people around me had died, or had had alarmingly close calls, this past year. I didn’t like even joking about it.

Apology flashed through his blue eyes and he nodded, but he went ahead and asked, “Halloween’s a spooky time of year. Does it kick things into overtime?”

I frowned, first at my drink, then at my date. “Why? Have I been acting weird lately?”

He and Melinda said, “No more than usual,” in tandem, and he laughed as Melinda presented a high five for him to match. “Nah. I was just curious, and you don’t usually bring it up, so I thought I’d seize the opportunity.”

“That’s not all you’ve seized.” Billy presented a cup of water over Melinda’s shoulder. She waddled around to give him a kiss of thanks, and he smiled broadly before remembering he was haranguing Thor. “Is this guy bothering you, Joanie?”

“Terribly. Help, help.” I made a feeble attempt to escape, then blew a raspberry and leaned against Thor. “I haven’t noticed any correlation between the time of year and the amount of weird in my life, no. Get back to me in five years and I might have a better…what do you call it.”

“Survey sample?” Melinda suggested.

“Yeah, something like that. But I don’t think it fluxes and rises with the time of year. I mean, what kind of mystical portent does the second week of July have?” Actually, everything that’d happened in July had been entirely my fault, not some kind of magic cosmic conjunction. I didn’t feel it necessary to mention that aloud.

“Well,” Thor said, “it had enough mystical portent to make me ask you out. That’s got to count for something.”

“No,” Melinda said dryly, “what’s mystical is she said yes.”

“I had to. It was Alan Claussen’s band. I like them.” I actually scraped up a few lines of lyrics, half singing, “Ill met by moonlight, first kiss, stolen late at night,” which got a round of applause from Melinda as Thor staggered back as far as the press of people would let him, a hand over his heart.

“I see how it is. I’m only wanted for my concert tickets.”

I patted his shoulder, since he’d only escaped to about eighteen inches away. “Your concert tickets and your unca

Too late, I realized the error of my phrasing, and raised my voice to say, “He’s a mechanic! I’m a mechanic! I like guys who are good with cars!” over Billy and Melinda’s synchronized “OooOOooh!”

“The lady,” Thor said cheerfully, “doth protest too much. You’re not helping yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.” I was too pink cheeked and laughing to get myself out of that alive anyway, so I took a swallow of my fizzy drink and reveled in the sheer simple fun of being teased by my friends.

“Jo!” Phoebe squished through the crowd and seized my arm. I straightened away from Edward, and Phoebe shook me. I went agglty while she said, “You have so got to get a load of your boss,” and swung me around to face the door. Still rattling, I looked for Morrison and whatever costume had everybody I knew insisting I needed to see him.

Instead, the doors flew open and an entire cadre of zombies lurched through them.

CHAPTER 2

It said something very disturbing about what I’d come to consider a normal life that the first thing I did was reach for the sword on my hip. The peace knot held, which gave me enough time to remember that this was a Halloween party, and that hordes of undead weren’t unexpected at such festivities.

Still, loosening my fingers from the sword’s hilt took more effort than it should’ve. Phoebe, more or less under my elbow, said, “Well?” in such obvious delight that I scowled at her, then looked back at the zombies.

“What? Morrison’s a zombie?”

“No!” She thrust a finger out, pointing dramatically. I followed the line of her arm and still didn’t see my boss. There were a pair of cross-dressed hippies, an Elvira being hit on by an exceptionally sleazy-looking vampire, an ’80s Miami Vice look-alike and what appeared—from various blue skin, white hair and black leather costumes—to be the entire cast of a science-fiction show, but Morrison’s distinctive silvering hair wasn’t visible anywhere. I shot Phoebe an irritated look, opened my mouth to speak, and my gaze snapped back to Don Johnson without consulting my brain.

“Oh my God.”