Strange Brew

I'm not an expert like Murphy, but I've taken some classes, too, and more important, I've been in a bunch of scrapes in my life. In the literal school of hard knocks, you learn the ropes fast, and the lessons go bone-deep. As I reeled from the blow, I turned my momentum into a spin and swept my leg through Meditrina's. Goddess or not, the Maenad didn't weigh half what I did, and her legs went out from under her.

Murphy blindsided me with a kick that lit up my whole rib cage with pain, and had seized an arm before I could fight through it. If it had been my right arm, I'm not sure what might have happened—but she grabbed my left, and I activated my shield bracelet, sheathing it in sheer, kinetic power and forcing her hands away.

I don't care how many aikido lessons you've had, they don't train you for force fields.

I reached out with my will, screamed, "Forzare!" and seized a large plastic waste bin with my power. With a flick of my hand, I flung it at Murphy. It struck her hard and knocked her off me. I backpedaled. Meditrina had regained her feet and was coming for me, bottle flickering.

She drove me back into the beer-stand counter across the hall, and I brought up my shield again just as her makeshift weapon came forward. Glass shattered against it, cutting her own hand—always a risk with a bottle. But the force of the blow was sufficient to carry through the shield and slam my back against the counter. I bounced off some guy trying to carry beer in plastic cups and went down soaked in brew.

Murphy jumped on me then, pi

I had to shut one eye when a sharp fingernail grazed it, but I saw my chance as Meditrina's hands—hot, horribly strong hands, closed over my throat.

I choked out a gasped, "Forzare!" and reached out my right hand, snapping a slender chain that held up one end of a sign suspended above the beer stand behind me.

A heavy wooden sign that read, in large cheerful letters, please drink responsibly swung down in a ponderous, scything arc and struck Meditrina on the side of the head, hitting her like a giant's fist. Her nails left scarlet lines on my throat as she was torn off me.

Murphy looked up, shocked, and I hauled with all my strength. I had to position her before she took up where Meditrina left off. I felt something wrench and give way as my thumb left its socket, and I howled in pain as the sign swung back, albeit with a lot less momentum, now, and clouted Murphy on the noggin, too.

Then a bunch of people jumped on us and the cops came ru

While they were arresting me, I managed to convince the cops that there was something bad in Mac's beer. They got with the caterers and rounded up the whole batch, apparently before more than a handful of people could drink any. There was some wild behavior, but no one else got hurt.

None of which did me any good. After all, I was soaked in Budweiser and had assaulted two attractive women. I went to the drunk tank, which angered me mainly because I'd never gotten my freaking beer. And to add insult to injury, after paying exorbitant rates for a ticket, I hadn't gotten to see the game, either.

There's no freaking justice in this world.

Murphy turned up in the morning to let me out. She had a black eye and a sign-shaped bruise across one cheekbone.

"So let me get this straight," Murphy said. "After we went to Left Hand Goods, we followed the trail to the Bulls game. Then we confronted this Maenad character, there was a struggle, and I got knocked out."

"Yep," I said.

There was really no point in telling it any other way. The nefarious hooch would have destroyed her memory of the evening. The truth would just bother her.

Hell, it bothered me. On more levels than I wanted to think about.

"Well, Bassarid vanished from the hospital," Murphy said. "So she's not around to press charges. And, given that you were working with me on an investigation, and because several people have reported side effects that sound a lot like they were drugged with Rohypnol or something—and because it was you who got the cops to pull the rest of the bottles—I managed to get the felony charges dropped. You're still being cited for drunk and disorderly."

"Yay," I said without enthusiasm.

"Could have been worse," Murphy said. She paused and studied me for a moment. "You look like hell."

"Thanks," I said.

She looked at me seriously. Then she smiled, stood up on her tiptoes, and kissed my cheek. "You're a good man, Harry. Come on. I'll give you a ride home."

I smiled all the way to her car.

DEATH WARMED OVER

Rachel Caine

I hate raising the dead on a work night.

My boss Sam Twist knows that, and so it was a surprise when I got the e-mail on a Monday, telling me he would need a full resurrection on Thursday.

"Short turnaround, genius," I muttered. It took days to brew the necessary potions, and I'd have to set aside the entire Thursday from dusk until dawn for the resurrection itself. Not good, because I knew I couldn't exactly blow off Friday. I had meetings at the day job.

Sam, who ran the local booking service for witches, was usually somewhat sympathetic to my day job-night job balancing act, mostly because I was the best resurrection witch he had—not that being the best in the business exactly pays the bills. It was a little like being the best piccolo player in the orchestra—it took skill, and specialty, and not a lot of people could do it, but it didn't exactly present a lot of major money-making opportunities.

Then again, at least resurrections were a fairly steady business. Some of the other types of witches—and we were all very specialized—got a whole lot less. It was a fu

I contemplated Sam's message. If I wanted to, I could turn down the assignment—I wasn't hurting for money at the moment. Still. There was something in the terse way he'd phrased it that made me wonder.

So was I taking the job, or not? If I said yes, prep needed to start immediately after work. Part of my mind ran through the things I might need, and matched them against the mental stock list I always kept in my brain. The bowls were clean and ready, I'd put them through the dishwasher and a good ritual scrub with sacred herbs just a week ago. I'd need to put a fresh blessing on the athame. I had most of the other things—rock salt, sulfur, attar of roses, ambergris, and a whole bunch of slimier ingredients. I might be ru

I fidgeted in my chair as I stared at the message. Sam wasn't telling me much—just timing and a dollar amount, which while considerable wasn't enough to pay my mortgage. On their own, my fingers typed my reply: I might be interested. Who's the client?

I rarely asked, because most of the time that fell under need-to-know, and I didn't. So long as the client paid Sam, and Sam paid me, we were all good. But this time—this time I felt like it was worth the question.

I went back to my regular work—tonight, that meant straightening out a worksheet the experts in accounting had completely trashed—and was a little surprised when Sam's e-mail came so quickly. Then again, it was a short answer.

PD. Police Department.

My hackles went way up. The police didn't part with their money willingly for resurrections. The testimony of the resurrected had been thrown out as inadmissible five years ago, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, and the land-office rush for witches to bring back the dead had dried up just as fast. Some of the richer cities still managed one or two resurrections a year for particularly cold cases, just to generate leads, but I hadn't seen one in Austin for a while.