Guilty Pleasures

“Thomas Jensen called today.”

My spine straightened. “Jensen called?”

“That’s right.”

“He’s going to let us do it?”

“Not us, you. He specifically asked for you. I tried to get him to take someone else, but he wouldn’t do it. And it has to be tonight. He’s afraid he’ll chicken out.”

“Damn,” I said softly.

“Do I call him back and cancel, or can you give me a time to have him meet you?”

Why did everything have to come at once? One of life’s rhetorical questions. “Have him meet me at full dark tonight.”

“That’s my girl. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

“I’m not your girl, Bert. How much is he paying you?”

“Thirty thousand dollars. The five-thousand-dollar down payment has already arrived by special messenger.”

“You are an evil man, Bert.”

“Yes,” he said, “and it pays very well, thank you.” He hung up without saying good-bye. Mr. Charm.

Edward was staring at me. “Did you just take a job raising the dead, for tonight?”

“Laying the dead to rest actually, but yes.”

“Does raising the dead take it out of you?”

“It?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Energy, stamina, strength.”

“Sometimes.”

“How about this job? Is it an energy drain?”

I smiled. “Yes.”

He shook his head. “You can’t afford to be used up, Anita.”

“I won’t be used up,” I said. I took a deep breath and tried to think how to explain things to Edward. “Thomas Jensen lost his daughter twenty years ago. Seven years ago he had her raised as a zombie.”

“So?”

“She committed suicide. No one knew why at the time. It was later learned that Mr. Jensen had sexually abused his daughter and that was why she had killed herself.”

“And he raised her from the dead.” Edward grimaced. “You don’t mean…”

I waved my hands as if I could erase the sudden vivid image. “No, no, not that. He felt remorseful and raised her to say he was sorry.”

“And?”

“She wouldn’t forgive him.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“He raised her to make amends, but she had died hating him, fearing him. The zombie wouldn’t forgive him, so he wouldn’t put her back. As her mind deteriorated and her body, too, he kept her with him as a sort of punishment.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah,” I said. I walked to the closet and got out my gym bag. Edward carried guns in his; I carried my animator paraphernalia in it. Sometimes, I carried my vampire-slaying kit in it. The matchbook Zachary gave me was in the bottom of the bag. I stuffed it in my pants pocket. I don’t think Edward saw me. He does catch on if a clue sits up and barks. “Jensen finally agreed to put her in the ground if I’ll do it. I can’t say no. He’s sort of a legend among animators. The closest we come to a ghost story.”

“Why tonight? If it’s waited seven years, why not a few more nights?”

I kept putting things in the gym bag. “He insisted. He’s afraid he’ll lose his nerve if he has to wait. Besides, I may not be alive a few nights from now. He might not let anybody else do it.”

“That is not your problem. You didn’t raise his zombie.”

“No, but I am an animator first. Vampire slaying is…a sideline. I am an animator. It isn’t just a job.”

He was still staring at me. “I don’t understand why, but I understand you have to do it.”

“Thanks.”

He smiled. “Your show. Mind if I come along to make sure no one offs you while you’re gone?”

I glanced at him. “Ever see a zombie raising?”

“No.”

“You’re not squeamish, are you?” I smiled when I said it.

He stared at me, blue eyes gone suddenly cold. His whole face became different. There was nothing there, no expression, except that awful coldness. Emptiness. I’d had a leopard look at me like that once, through the cage bars, no emotion I understood, thoughts so alien it might as well have inhabited a different planet. Something that could kill me, skillfully, efficiently, because that was what it was meant to do, if it was hungry, or if I a

I didn’t faint from fear or run screaming from the room, but it was something of an effort. “You’ve proved your point, Edward. Can the perfect-killer routine, and let’s go.”

His eyes didn’t revert to normal instantly but had to warm up, like dawn easing through the sky.

I hoped Edward never turned that look on me for real. If he did, one of us would die. Odds are it would be me.

Chapter 43

The night was almost perfectly black. Thick clouds hid the sky. A wind rushed along the ground and smelled of rain.

Iris Jensen’s grave marker was smooth, white marble. It was a nearly life-size angel, wings outspread, arms open, welcoming. You could still read the lettering by flashlight: “Beloved daughter. Sadly missed.” The same man who had had the angel carved, who sadly missed her, had been molesting her. She had killed herself to escape him, and he had brought her back. That was why I was out here in the dark, waiting for the Jensens, not him, but her. Even though I knew her mind was gone by now, I wanted Iris Jensen in the ground and at peace.

I couldn’t explain that to Edward, so I hadn’t tried. A huge oak stood sentinel over the empty grave. The wind rushed through the leaves and sent them skittering and whispering overhead. It sounded too dry, like autumn leaves instead of summer. The air felt cool and damp, rain almost upon us. It wasn’t unbearably hot for once.

I had picked up a pair of chickens. They clucked softly from inside their crate where they sat near the grave. Edward leaned against my car, ankles crossed, arms loose at his sides. The gym bag was open by me on the ground. The machete I used gleamed from inside.

“Where is he?” Edward asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” It had been almost an hour since full dark. The cemetery grounds were mostly bare; only a few trees dotted the soft roll of hills. We should have been seeing car lights on the gravel road. Where was Jensen? Had he chickened out?

Edward stepped away from the car and walked to stand beside me. “I don’t like it, Anita.”

I wasn’t too thrilled either, but…”We’ll give it another fifteen minutes. If he’s not here by then, we’ll leave.”

Edward glanced around the open ground. “Not much cover around here.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about snipers.”

“You said someone shot at you, right?”

I nodded. He had a point. Goosebumps marched up my arms. The wind blew a hole in the clouds and moonlight streamed down. Off in the distance a small building gleamed silver-grey in the light.

“What’s that?” Edward asked.

“The maintenance shed,” I said. “You think the grass cuts itself?”

“Never thought about it,” he said.

The clouds rolled in again and plunged the cemetery into blackness. Everything became soft shapes; the white marble seemed to glow with its own light.

There was the sound of scrabbling claws on metal. I whirled. A ghoul sat on top of my car. It was naked and looked as if a human being had been stripped and dipped into silver-grey paint, almost metallic. But the teeth and claws on its hands and feet were long and black, curved talons. The eyes glowed crimson.

Edward moved up beside me, gun in his hand.

I had my gun out, too. Practice, practice, and you don’t have to think about it.

“What’s it doing up there?” he asked.

“Don’t know.” I waved my free hand at it and said, “Scat!”

It crouched, staring at me. Ghouls are cowards; they don’t attack healthy human beings. I took two steps, waving my gun at it. “Go away, shoo!” Any show of force sends them scuttling away. This one just sat there. I backed away.

“Edward,” I said, softly.

“Yes.”

‘I didn’t sense any ghouls in this cemetery.”

“So? You missed one.”

“There’s no such thing as just one ghoul. They travel in packs. And you don’t miss them. They leave a sort of psychic stench behind. Evil.”