Necromancing Nim (5 page)

“Hi, Gwen,” I said. I reached over to flick on the light. She was glaring at me, her usually perfect black hair hanging sodden over her eyes. She pushed the loose, wet locks back from her forehead.

“Nice to see you, too, you little freak,” she shot back.

“Well, if you’d turn on a light. Or, you know, say hi. I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were in Australia this week.”

My sister, Gwen—yes, it’s short for Gwenevere, don’t ask—shares my house on those rare occasions when she’s home. The rest of the time she gads about the globe, working as a flight attendant. Not an ordinary one, either, but a flight attendant for people who charter private planes. She meets freakishly rich and famous people and makes gobs of money, yet for some reason still chooses to room with her dirt-poor sister. She and I moved in together after Mom and Dad left Colorado for Alaska, leaving me stranded, alone and in the middle of a quarter-life crisis. Okay, I had moved into my own place by then, but the quarter-life crisis was definitely underway. Which was probably why I’d told Colin yes when he’d asked me if I wanted to work in collections. It had sounded entertaining at the time. Plus—better benefits.

I should have known it was her, but I was so wired I could barely think, much less make complicated logical interpretations of data. On the other hand, if I’d made the right connections, I would have missed the chance to trash her stupid, perfect hair with half a bottle of holy water. Because, seriously, that was funny.

“I switched out with Sue for the week,” she said. “She wanted to take a vacation. Honeymoon or something.”

I rounded the kitchen island to face her. She hesitated, then deigned to give me a hug. Her hair dripped on my shirt. “You couldn’t call?” I chastised as she let me go. Deciding to be forgiving, I fetched a couple of mugs from the cabinet to make tea.

Her lips pursed in sisterly judgment. She’s pretty, but when she does that prissy thing with her mouth, she looks like a grouper. “If I’d called, I wouldn’t have gotten a free hair wash. What the hell are you doing throwing water on people, anyway?”

In my world, hair washes are usually free to begin with, but I decided not to argue that point. “It’s holy water. If you’d been a vampire, it would have melted your eyeballs out of your face.”

She grimaced. “That’s just gross.”

“Which would be my point.” I put milk and water in the mugs, dumped in a pair of chai tea bags and set them in the microwave. “I hope you like chai.”

She smiled. Apparently, she’d decided to be forgiving too. She had a good smile—Mom and Dad had sprung for braces for her while judging my teeth to be not quite crooked enough to bother. She also had really good hair—normally perfectly styled and glossy black—but that was because she could afford to go to high-class salons instead of hacking her own hair off with kitchen scissors as I tend to do.

“Of course I like chai.” She peered into the microwave, watching the mugs go round and round. “You don’t have to join me, if you need to get back to bed.”

I shrugged. “I need to get to work pretty soon anyway.” It was dark out already, but this time of year, sunset came early, and I didn’t technically have to be at work until seven. Strangely, though, I was itching to get to the office. Not so much because I wanted to go to work, but because I wanted desperately to get there and find out everything was normal, and that Colin hadn’t ended up with his own face melted off as a result of some misguided attempt to spring Sebastian from lockup. As to why I was so concerned about Colin all of a sudden, well, I just decided to chalk it up to a desire to remain employed.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Gwen said, breaking into my dismal thoughts, “working all night, sleeping all day.” She turned back toward me, shaking her head sadly, pitying me.

“What time is it, Gwen?” I shot back.

“Um…” She couldn’t answer. She never could; she went back and forth across time zones so many times in a week she could barely keep track of what day it was or what country she was in, much less something as trivial as the time.

“Touché,” said I, and the microwave beeped.

We drank our tea while Gwen’s hair dried; then I went to take a shower and get dressed for work.

When I emerged from the shower, the house was brimming with the smell of steak cooking. Which for most people would be fine at six p.m., but for me was just nauseating. Six p.m. was breakfast time for me—I wanted to smell coffee and pancakes, not New York strip.

I sighed. It was always like this when Gwen was home. But she paid half the mortgage, even though she was hardly ever home, so it seemed petty to complain.

I pulled on a T-shirt and a hoodie and some jeans, glad once again that I never have to actually dress up to go to work. Heading for the kitchen, I tripped over Rufus. He made an annoyed sound.

“God. Are you a dog or a throw rug?” I bent to scratch his ears, and he licked me tolerantly. I had a feeling Gwen had been slipping him goodies while she cooked. He’d love her more than me as long as she was here, and then he’d come sniveling back. He was so predictable.

In the kitchen, Gwen was, of course, cooking. I wrinkled my nose at the smell and fished out a box of cereal and some milk.

“You couldn’t wait until I left for work?”

“I haven’t eaten in, like, twelve hours or something. Besides, it’s dinnertime.”

“Not for me.”

She shrugged. “A lot of people eat steak for breakfast.” She forked the slab of meat out onto a plate, added a buttery veggie mix on the side and took a seat at the kitchen table.

“I don’t.” I poured my cereal, then started a pot of coffee. If I had to face work weirdness again today, a cup of chai wasn’t going to cut it. For that matter, even if I just had to face Colin in his normal, growly, pissy mood, a cup of chai wasn’t going to cut it.

The weird rock still sat where I’d left it behind the coffeemaker, just like a regular rock. Somehow I’d thought it might hatch into a dinosaur or something while I was sleeping. I peered at it, poked it once or twice. Nothing happened. Finished perking, the coffeemaker beeped, and I nearly jumped out of my shirt at the sound. Some days, I really think I need medication.

I started to reach for the coffeepot, but somehow it felt strange to leave the rock there where anybody could see it. After some consideration, I tucked it away in the cabinet behind the bags of coffee beans. Satisfied, I poured my coffee and went into the living room to eat. The smell of Gwen’s steak wasn’t much less nauseating there, but at least I didn’t have to watch Gwen scarf down rib eye.

“So.” Even separated from me by a room, Gwen apparently still felt the need to make conversation. “I take it by your dorky schedule you’re still working for that vampire?”

I plopped my feet on the coffee table. “Yep.”

“Why? I thought you said he was an asshole.”

“He is.”

“Then why work there?”

“Pay’s good.” That wasn’t strictly true. I could have made better money in retail or computer consulting, if I actually knew how to sell things or program a computer. It was regular money, though, and it didn’t suck. Neither did the benefits. Plus when I’d been looking for a job, nobody else had called me back for a second interview.

“That’s good, at least.” She commenced to chomping her steak, and I was allowed to finish my cereal in relative peace. I left Gwen with a promise to be home at a thoroughly unreasonable hour and headed for work.

In the front office, Colin sat cross-legged on Kim’s desk, glaring at the TV on the wall across from it. Behind him, Kim was forced to answer the phone cautiously to keep from grabbing his ass instead of the receiver.

At the sight of him slouching there like some sort of cranky gargoyle, a flood of relief washed over me. Then he turned his glare on me, and I wondered if it might have been better if he’d gotten skewered through the heart after all.

“You’re late,” he snapped.

“No, I’m not.”

He glanced at the clock and shrugged. I was actually about two minutes early. “Have you heard about this?”

“What?”

He nodded toward the TV. “That.”

The TV was running the local news. The story was about a bear who’d been sitting in a tree at the corner of Spruce and Broadway for three days. “Um…it’s a bear?”

His glare became even more baleful. One of these days, his eyeballs were going to spontaneously combust doing that.

“Not that. That.” He pointed vehemently at the TV. His pointing didn’t make the story any less about a bear.

Then I registered the words crawling across the bottom of the screen. “
I-70 Westbound closed at Santa Fe
,” it said, then, “
BREAKING NEWS: Vampire suspected in Brown Palace murder escapes from custody. Murder victim disappears from morgue.
”

So Sebastian had sprung himself from prison. Or been sprung. And the dead girl—well, who knew what had happened there, but I’d bet half my meager salary that she was up and walking again with a pair of brand-new fangs in her mouth. “That wasn’t you?” I asked.

That time, he glared and did a double take all at once. And all without straining anything. He jumped off the desk. Kim meeped, startled, then rolled her eyes at me.

“Office,” Colin said and disappeared into his office. I followed.

Once in his own domain, Colin took a seat in his chair like a normal person. He interlaced his fingers on the desk and leaned toward me as I claimed the visitor’s chair. “Kim doesn’t need to know about any of this. What are you thinking, yapping in front of her?”

I didn’t like his tone, but he was right. I should have known better. “I wasn’t thinking at all. My apologies, oh, fearless leader who signs my paychecks.”

“Mildred in accounting signs your paychecks.” He leaned back, apparently done chastising me. “It sounds like Sebastian skipped out a couple of hours ago. Just after sunset, best I can tell.”

“Any idea who got him out?”

“Not a clue. I was calling in some favors when I saw the news story.”

I wondered what kind of favors he might be calling in, then decided I didn’t want to know. It was probably best for everyone—namely me—if he kept his personal business personal.

“Are you sure you didn’t hear anything else at the police station last night?” Colin went on.

“Just what I told you.”

“Which was mostly useless.”

“Not like I could just barge in and interrogate everybody, boss. I’m not exactly a cop.”

He frowned at me, but it was more general disgruntlement than anything personal. “Yeah. Guess not.”

“So, how well do you know this guy?”

There was a moment of silence, enough to make me wonder if he was debating how to fire me; then he said, “Well.” His voice was weighty with—hell, I had no idea. Something not very Colin-like.

I forged on, since he seemed willing to answer questions for the moment. “Friend or foe?”

“Both,” he replied, which was more than I’d expected. “And there’s not much else we can do for him at the moment, so you’d better get your ass to work. I’ve got a few stops for you tonight.”

He was done being open and giving, then. Oh, well. I knew it had been too good to be true.

Based on the list Colin gave me, Mitch had only managed to take care of one of my missed stops from the night before. I had a suspicion Mitch was about to get his ass put on probation. Or maybe Colin would just bite him. Colin had put the last remaining stop on my list, as well as one more. It was a sparse list, but I could go for an easy night after what had happened yesterday.

The leftover stop from last night was only a few blocks away from where HDTV Guy lived. I had to drive by his house on the way; between last night and tonight, they’d at least gotten the streetlight replaced.

Unlike HDTV Guy, Ms. Cordelia Addison was accommodating and cooperative, apologized profusely and signed my clipboard without fuss. A nice change of pace, although usually when they’re cooperative, it takes us months upon months to get any actual money out of them. Colin usually ends up handling those in person. I’ve never figured out exactly what he does on those special trips. I’m guessing he glares a lot.

Pleased that the night was starting out so well, I headed back toward my car. Then stopped dead on the sidewalk.

Someone was sitting in my passenger seat.

I moved slowly toward the car, hand on the squirt gun in my hoodie pocket, but I’d taken only a couple of steps when the figure turned toward me, face fully visible through the glass of the passenger side window.

Sebastian.

I started to relax, then didn’t, instead approaching more quickly but still with my hand cupped loosely around the squirt gun. He rolled the window down and gave me a wan smile. Something about his face seemed different, and as I came to stand by the car, the streetlights hit him at the right angle, illuminating streaks of red down one side of his face. They looked like burns, deep ones, or like a bear had clawed his cheek. The former seemed more likely—he’d somehow gotten caught out in the sun.

“Hullo,” he offered. I stopped, still a step or two away from the car. I had no real reason not to trust him—he’d practically saved my life last night, after all—but it never hurt to be cautious, especially around people with fangs.