Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

I felt Micah tense beside me, and I touched him, letting him know we needed to wait. This was the first tipping point, and it could lead to spilling all the information we needed, or to nothing; if we rushed it Rogers would clam up, I was almost a hundred percent certain of that. It was like hunting; you needed to be patient and move carefully or you’d step on a stick or a rock and scare the game away.

Nathaniel moved slightly beside us, but I didn’t warn him. I trusted him to let us work and not to push.

He looked from one to the other of us, then looked at me and Micah, very hard. It was a good look, not a cop look, but maybe a doctor look. He was looking at us as if we were a mystery illness and he was trying to decide if he could figure out what we really were. ‘Are you really his fiancée, or even his girlfriend, or is that just an excuse to butt in on this case, because the local cops would never have asked you in? One of the other doctors suggested you come in for a consult, because no one knows zombies like you do, and you would have thought she asked them to invite the devil in to help. They seem convinced you’ll take over.’

‘First, I am Micah’s girlfriend and lover. Fiancée is a little harder, because you read the papers, see the news, and you know I’m also dating our Master of the City. I can’t marry everybody.’

Dr Rogers looked at Nathaniel standing with us but being so quiet. ‘And who are you, Mr Graison? I wouldn’t normally pry, but if I help these two then the local police may make my life harder, and before I risk that I want to know who I’m talking to and why.’

‘Who do you think I could be that would hurt you with the local police?’ Nathaniel asked.

Rogers shook his head. ‘No, we’re not playing the game where questions get answered by questions. Answer my question, or we are done.’

‘Do I look like a cop?’ Nathaniel asked.

‘No, but neither did Mike here, until he started asking questions and then the energy coming off Marshal Blake and Mr Callahan was very similar. I know he’s the son of a cop, so maybe he learned it by osmosis, but your energy feels like hers, too, somehow, and I want to know why.’

Just from his asking the question I knew that Rogers was psychically gifted. He was probably an amazing diagnostician, one of those doctors who came up with leaps of intuition that were right about mystery illness and treatment. It could be luck, but in that moment I was pretty certain it was more than that. He wasn’t just seeming to look right through us; in a way he was. It made me feel better that he was treating Micah’s dad, but it also meant we couldn’t play him. He’d feel the lie, the games, and he’d shut us out. Truth was our only option.

‘You must be an amazing diagnostician,’ Micah said, making the same logic leap that I had.

Rogers frowned at him, eyes narrowing. ‘I am, but flattery is not a good idea on your part.’

‘Tell him the truth, Nathaniel,’ I said.

Nathaniel moved up and put an arm around both of us. We both put an arm around his waist, so that the three of us faced the doctor entwined. ‘The three of us live together and have for nearly three years. I’m an exotic dancer at Guilty Pleasures and a wereleopard just like Micah.’

‘That explains why your energy feels like Mr Callahan’s, but not Marshal Blake’s.’

‘I’m their Nimir-Ra,’ I said, ‘their leopard queen. It’s on record that I carry multiple strains of lycanthropy; one of them is leopard.’

‘I read the paper that Dr Nelson did on you. You are a medical anomaly. One, multiple strains of lycanthropy, which is impossible since one strain protects you from all other diseases including lycanthropy. Two, you don’t change shape. You have all the symptoms and many of the benefits, but you don’t shift. I heard the military was very interested in that.’

‘So the rumors say; no one’s talked to me,’ I said.

‘Rumors,’ he said, softly.

I nodded. ‘Yes, rumors.’

‘Maybe you’re as good as you think you are, Marshal Blake, but I have to live here with the local police after you go home. I’d like someone’s okay for talking to you about this.’

‘Federal badge means I don’t have to have an okay to see the bodies.’

‘And talk like that is why the other cops don’t like you, Marshal.’

‘I’m not here to be liked, I’m here to get things done.’

‘I thought you were here to be with Mike and his family.’

‘I am, but I’m a cop and no one knows zombies like I do. It would be a bad use of resources for me not to at least consult.’

‘I’ll ask our local guys about you seeing the bodies in the morgue. Beyond that, talk to the cops.’

I started to try to persuade him to talk now, but the door opened without a knock. I turned automatically, giving myself room to draw my gun if I needed to; I hadn’t done it for the doctor, but the last few minutes had made me tense, and I gave in to that tension. Logically I knew that nothing would get through Nicky and Dev at the door, or the cops outside, that I needed to shoot, but sometimes it’s not about logic, it’s about habit. I was habitually paranoid, like most police.

‘I’ll let you talk to your brother,’ Dr Rogers said, and he left, passing the man who was Micah’s brother.

The man who came through the door was five-nine, five-ten, with short curly hair the same deep brown of Micah’s, but the hair was even curlier so that cut almost military short there was still tight curl close to his scalp. Large gray-blue eyes dominated his face, so that was what you saw first, and I had to look twice to see he had Micah’s full lips and a skin tone only a few shades darker, but that was where the resemblance ended. The man’s features were clean and handsome, but there was no hint of the delicacy of Micah, his dad, or Cousin Juliet.

‘Mike, so you are here,’ he said in a voice that was deeper than I thought it would be.

‘Hello, Jerry,’ Micah said. Unless there was a cousin Jerry we didn’t know about it, this had to be his brother, Jerry.

‘Beth said you’d come. I said you wouldn’t.’

‘She was always the hopeful one,’ Micah said.

Jerry stood just inside the closed door looking at his brother. ‘Little sisters are like that, I guess,’ he said.

The two men just looked at each other. Nathaniel and I stood on either side of Micah, but we might as well have been on the moon for all we mattered in that moment.

‘I don’t know about all little sisters, but Beth was always kind.’

‘Softhearted, you mean.’

Micah shrugged. ‘Either way.’

I wanted to tell them to hug or something, but I’d never met his brother, and I didn’t know enough of their history to push.

‘Why’d you come back, Mike?’

‘To see Dad.’

‘If he wasn’t good enough to see while he was … before he got hurt, then why the hell do you care now?’

‘Jerry …’

‘What? You expected to come home like the prodigal son and we’d all forgive and forget?’

‘No, I didn’t expect you to forgive me.’

‘Yes, you did. You thought you’d get your Hallmark moment where everyone cries and says nice things, and you get forgiven before he dies. That’s why you came home, to be forgiven. Well, if he wakes up and forgives you, remember, I won’t.’

‘I’ll remember,’ Micah said, his voice low and even. His face was as blank as he could make it.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?’

‘I didn’t think you wanted to be introduced.’

‘I don’t hate them, big brother, only you.’

Micah did a long blink, and then without any change of expression turned to me and said, ‘Anita Blake, this is my brother, Jerry.’