J Duncan: Deadworld

“Yeah, it is. A dead boy drained of blood was found in a park this morning.”

“Shit,” she said, eyes going wide. “Another vampire?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Did you get a hold of Shel and Reg?”

“Of course. She’ll be here by three, and Reggie will come when you’re ready.”

“Good. Thank you.” Nick walked by and gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze. It was impossible to fathom what things would be like now without her around. “I’m going to kick back and relax for a few before Shelby gets here. It’s been a rather long day already.” Cynthia looked up at him with expectant eyes, but there was nothing to say, not yet.

“Okay. Here,” she said, handing him a note from off the desk. “Richard from the lab called, and I expect some… answers.”

He took the note and gave her a grim smile. “You’ll get them soon enough. What’s with the flowers?”

“Pretty, aren’t they?” She leaned forward and smelled them, smiling. “That sweet Mrs. Renfro sent them over.”

“Ah.” Nick appreciated the easy ones. Reggie had talked to the dead Mr. Renfro himself, who was hanging around because he had died without telling his wife about the lock-box full of cash he had been hiding in the backyard for the past thirty-seven years. The money had been significant and had certainly eased the pains of retirement on Mrs. Renfro. He had not had the heart to charge her for a two-minute phone call.

Pulling a cold can of Guinness from the mini fridge in the hall, Nick closed the office door and kicked off his boots. He pushed the shades up onto his head and savored the near darkness of the room. The beer was half gone before he managed to sit down.

Trust.

There was little of it to go around anymore. After 180 years of life, the principle of diminishing returns had reached its limit. One covenant of trust had never been betrayed, however. Cornelius Drake had said he would come, five times over, for deaths Nick had incurred back on that fateful day in the pouring rain, and, true to his word, he was here again to finish his twisted game of revenge.

The fifth and final set had begun at last.

Nick downed the last of the beer and crumpled the can into a ball like tin foil. His shot at the wastebasket hit the rim and bounced out. Leaning back in his chair, he closed faintly glowing eyes and sighed. “Yeah, I’ve got game, all right.”

“Okay, so what do you figure?” Jackie said, polishing off her ziti and meatballs with famished zeal. Her body had settled enough by midday to realize it had puked out all its nourishment. Laurel, on the other hand, picked mindlessly at a Caesar salad, pushing the leaves of lettuce around and nibbling on a crouton. Her glass of sparkling water had barely been touched.

“About what?” The absent tone indicated how well Laurel was listening.

“The case, girl. The weird vibes, the bloodless boy, freaky fucking ghosts.” She finally caught Laurel’s gaze. “What do you think?”

She stared at Jackie, hard and quiet, until Jackie finally turned away. “Don’t take this case, Jack.”

Jack? Christ, it was serious. The last time Jackie had heard her abbreviated name from Laurel’s lips was on a four AM ride home from a brawl outside a bar. It hadn’t mattered that the asshole had it coming. “You serious? Since when?”

“Yes, since my bad-vibe radar pinged off the map into next week somewhere.” She leaned forward over the table for emphasis. “This is bad news, Jackie. Let Pernetti handle it. He’s been whining to get his hands on leading something big. This case is… It’s all wrong.”

Jackie spit the mouthful of wine back into her glass. “What the hell, Laur? They’re all wrong. It’s our job to make them right again.”

“No,” she said, stern and quiet. “Wrong as in someone is going to get hurt.”

“Oh.” Jackie rolled her eyes, though she could not exactly laugh that one off. The last time that feeling had happened, Jackie’s ankle had been snapped in a high-speed chase gone bad. At least the crash had involved the bad guys, too. “Well, we didn’t sign up for the safety aspect of this job, you know.”

Laurel shook her head. “No. This is not in the same realm, Jackie. This is ‘don’t touch with a ten-foot pole’ sort of bad. It has a big glowing skull and crossbones stamped all over it.”

“Really?”

Laurel frowned at Jackie’s sarcasm, but then, how could she not make light of such things? She wouldn’t leave the case to someone like Pernetti and his super-sized, glow-in-the-dark forehead. Seriously, the man had to polish the damn thing.

“You realize that sort of feeling is exactly the reason not to give it over to some goon like Pernetti?”

“I don’t care. I’d rather see Pernetti get wheeled into the morgue than you, and need I remind you you’re a goon, too? Albeit a much prettier one.”

Jackie studied Laurel’s expression. One didn’t joke about seeing another agent in the morgue. It was bad karma. She knew from the last time a ghost was involved that if the shit really hit the fan, Laurel might actually fight her to get off the case, and that was not a scenario Jackie could win. Fighting Laurel would be like taking a bulldozer to the foundation of her being. The consequences would be too dire.

Jackie grinned at Laurel. “That’s why I always win.”

“Uh-huh. Get over yourself, goon girl, and promise me you will be very careful with this one.”

The cell phone buzzed in Jackie’s pocket, and she pulled it out to see that Denny was calling. She hit the button. “What’s up, Den?”

“Hey, Jack, thought I’d let you know we found an old coin beneath the boy.”

“You mean like something a coin collector would have?”

“Yep, looks that way,” he said. “It’s sealed up in plastic, but it looks to be very old if it’s real. It’s going downtown with the little evidence we have for now.”

“Give it to the geeks when you get there. We’ll be in soon. I want to see those pics you took also.”

“I e-mailed them to you a few minutes ago.”

“Already? How?”

Denny laughed. “Technology, Jack. You know, the cool stuff without triggers attached to them.”

“Ohhh, funny, man. It’s a good thing I like you, otherwise I’d have to inflict some bodily harm.”

“Promise?”

Jackie smiled, clicked off the phone, dipped the last of her bread into the sauce on the plate, and ate it with a wide-eyed smile. “They found an old coin under our boy. So, why don’t we go back to the bureau and see if the geeks can find out anything regarding that penny.”

“Promise me, Jackie. Be very careful with this one.”

Jackie could feel the heat of the finger pointing at her chest. The seriousness of Laurel’s voice tightened her stomach. “Okay,” she said, laughing off the tense moment, but she knew better. Laurel was never wrong about these things. “I promise.”

Nick sat against his mahogany desk, thumbs hooked in the belt on either side of the buckle that looked like two crossed revolvers. As the stress mounted, old habits tended to kick in, and the cowboy posturing was one of the oldest.

“Drake is back,” he said, glancing quickly at each of them.

Shelby sported cutoff denim shorts that revealed a good inch or two of ass, and a white tank top with no bra. Her nipples pushed up right into the fabric to say, “Hello, how do you do.” It was an annoying habit of hers, purposefully putting herself on display in front of him. Her dark hair had been drawn back into a simple tail, showing off the smooth, sensuous lines of her face, looking unchanged from the day he had met her seventy-eight years ago.