Лорел Гамильтон - Micah

"I remember when a bagel was breakfast," Micah said.

"Hell," I said, "I remember when coffee was breakfast."

"I don't," he said. "I've been a lycanthrope too long. We have to eat regularly to help control our beasts."

"One hunger feeds the other," I said.

"I'll order food. You look at the file."

"I looked at it on the plane."

"Do you remember anything you read?"

I thought about it, then shook my head. "No. I'd hoped it would help take my mind off of the whole being hundreds of feet above the ground situation, but I guess it didn't really help."

"I noticed just how unhelpful it was." He raised his hand up. There were still dim marks of my nails. Considering how fast he healed, that meant I'd actually hurt him.

"Jesus, Micah, I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "I'm not complaining. Like I said on the plane, it was interesting to see you so… so shaken."

"You being there helped," I said in a small voice.

"Glad to hear that I spilled blood for a good cause."

"Did I really bleed you?"

He nodded. "It's healed, but yeah, you did. You still aren't quite used to being more than human strong."

"I'll read the file because I need to before tonight, but if you want to tell me about how you became a wereleopard, you can. Honestly, once you told me it was an attack, I treated you like any survivor. You don't question survivors about the trauma; you let them come to you."

He walked toward the doors, and for a moment I thought he'd walk by without touching me. Which would have been bad. He gave me a quick kiss and a smile, then moved past me to put the toiletries kit in the bathroom.

I stood there for a moment, leaning against the door. We were doing the exact thing I'd feared we'd do alone together. We were raking emotional shit. I sighed and moved into the living room. The briefcase was waiting beside the couch. I got the file out and took it to the four-seater table by the big picture window. The main road was just outside, but it wound around a sidewalk that wound around a large fountain. It somehow made it seem less of a road and more of a view.

I could hear Micah puttering in the bathroom. He had to be putting out the toothbrushes, deodorant, etc… I would have stopped unpacking once the good clothes were hung up. Both Micah and Nathaniel were neater and more domestically organized than I was. So was Jean-Claude I guess. I wasn't sure about Asher. But I was definitely the slob of the group.

I opened the file and started to read. There wasn't much there. The deceased's name had been Emmett Leroy Rose. He'd had a double degree from the University of Pennsylvania in accounting and prelaw. He'd gotten his law degree at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He'd died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three, while in federal custody waiting to testify at an important trial. He'd been dead less than three months. It listed his race as African American, which wasn't important to me. His religion was listed as Protestant, and that information I did need. There were a few religious persuasions that could interfere with zombie raising. Vaudan—voodoo—was the big one. It could be tricky to raise someone who messed with some of the same magic that I would be using. Wiccan could also make things difficult, and so could some of the more mystically oriented faiths. Straight Christian of whatever flavor wasn't a problem. And psychic abilities could mess with a zombie and make it either hard to raise or hard to control once you raised it. If there was anything less than normal human about Emmett Leroy Rose, it wasn't in the file.

In fact, there were some important things missing from the file. Like what had he been arrested for—what illegal activity did they catch him at that was bad enough to get him in federal custody awaiting his testimony? And exactly what did an important trial mean? Was it mob business? Was it government business? Was it something else I couldn't even think of? Who did Mr. Rose have dirt on, and what had the Feds had on him that made him willing to shovel it? Did I need to know any of the above to raise him from the grave? No. But I wasn't used to going into this blind. If they'd sent me this file, I'd have told them no dice without more info. Yeah, they'd have replied it was a need-to-know basis, and I'd have said if they wanted me to raise the zombie, I needed to know. Larry had just taken the crumbs they gave him and not complained.

I wondered how Tammy was doing. Did I call and ask? Later, I decided. I'd try to get some more info out of Fox first. Truthfully, I'd had about as much emotional angst as I could deal with for a little bit. If the news was bad it would wait, and I wouldn't know what to say anyway. I said a quick prayer that Tammy and the baby would be all right. That was the most concrete thing I could do.

I called the number I had for Fox. No emotional problems, just business. What a relief.

"You have everything in the file that you need to raise Rose from the dead, Marshal Blake," Fox said.

I'd figured he'd say that, but… "Just tell me this. Fox, how hot was Emmett Leroy Rose?"

"What do you mean, 'hot'?" he asked, but his tone said he knew.

"How important a witness was he?"

"He died of natural causes, Blake. He wasn't murdered. There wasn't a contract out on him. We just caught him doing something bad. So bad, he didn't want to go to jail over it. So he gave us more important people. Or was going to."

"Did he have a bad heart?"

"No, if he had, we'd have had a court reporter in to take down his testimony, just in case. We found out later that his father had died of an unexpected heart attack at almost the same age."

"You see, Fox, if you'd known that, you might have gotten his testimony down sooner, right?"

He was quiet a second, then said, "Maybe."

"Is anything you haven't included in this file going to bite me on the ass later? Like a father who died of a sudden heart attack."

He made a sound that might have been a laugh. "It's a good point, Marshal Blake, but no, there's nothing we left out that will impact you or your work."

"Have you ever seen someone raise the dead, Special Agent Fox?"

He was quiet again. Then, "Yes." Just that one word.

I waited for him to say more, but he didn't. "So you're happy with the information I've got."

"Yes," he said again, and there was a tone that said this conversation was about over. "Why do I think that if I'd called you in first instead of Kirkland, you'd have been a much bigger pain in the ass?"

That made me laugh. "Oh, yes," I said. "I'm a much bigger pain in the ass than Larry."

"How's his wife doing?"

"I'm going to call them when I get off the phone with you."

"Give him my best." He hung up.

I sighed and hung up my end. Then I went for my cell phone in the front of the briefcase. I turned it on, and there was a message. I pushed buttons until the phone gave up the message. Larry's voice: "Anita, it's Larry. They've got the labor stopped. They're going to keep her overnight, just to be safe, but it looks good. Thanks for taking the run to Philadelphia. Thanks for everything." Then he laughed. "How do you like the file? Real informative, isn't it?" He laughed again, then hung up.

I sat down on the couch sort of suddenly. I don't think I'd realized how worried I was until it was all right. I didn't even like Tammy much, but Larry was my friend and it would have broken his heart.

Micah was standing in front of me. I looked up. "Tammy and the baby are going to be fine. He must have called while we were in the air."

Micah smiled and touched my face. "You're pale. You were really worried about it, weren't you?"

I nodded.

"Were you hiding it from me or didn't you know either?"

I gave him a smile that was a bit too wry to be happy. "Stop knowing me so well, dammit."