Лорел Гамильтон - Dead Ice

I swallowed hard and whispered to Manny, “Pick out the zombie.”

“What?”

“Pick out the zombie.”

Manny looked at me, but when I nodded him toward the group, he looked that way. I walked around the table to take MacDougal’s offered hand. He was terribly pleased with himself. “Ms. Blake, I didn’t expect to see you again tonight, and not in full marshal gear.” A tiny frown touched his face. “Is everything all right?”

I gave him the full client smile, the one that actually reaches my eyes. “I was out on other business when I got the call that you were out at a restaurant, not a place most clients take, um, mutual friends, so I thought we’d stop by, see how things were going, since we were in the area.”

One of the women at the table said, “Everything is great.” She smiled and laid a hand on the arm near her on the table.

The zombie smiled back at her, damn near as warmly.

My phone binged, and I checked it. Manny’s text read, “I can’t tell.”

I smiled into the face of the man that I’d raised from the dead and wondered, could I have told if I hadn’t known? Would I have picked him out of the smiling, laughing group? I tried to see them with clear eyes, but I couldn’t. I looked into Thomas Warrington’s happy, alive face, and fought to keep the horror off mine. What the hell had I done?

The woman who touched him had long brown hair tied back in a ponytail. Her face was young and pretty, eyes a solid brown, but they were all alight as she touched the dead man beside her. I was engaged to a vampire, who was I to bitch, but the sight of her hand on his arm chilled me. I wondered if that was how some people felt when they saw me holding hands with Jean-Claude. I hoped not, because I was truly horrified as the zombie put his hand over hers on the table. Fuck.

I moved around until I was next to MacDougal, so I could lean over and talk low. I kept smiling and being pleasant as I said, “It’s illegal to bring a zombie into a restaurant.”

MacDougal turned and looked at me, face shocked. “I must really protest the word being used for Tom.”

I smiled harder. “I understand that he passes for human, which is really cool, but legally if the health department finds out that a zombie has been in a restaurant, then they have to close the place down.”

“But surely not in this case.”

“I know that he looks good enough to pass, but the law doesn’t differentiate between a rotting corpse that could potentially carry disease and . . . Tom here.”

MacDougal looked around the restaurant. “I didn’t know.”

“If I’d dreamt you’d take the zombie out for a meal, I’d have mentioned it.”

The zombie said, “Miss Blake, can I thank you again for this unexpected reprieve?”

I looked into his face, the clear hazel of his eyes, brown and green all mixed together. His longish blond hair looked freshly washed and dried. Had he showered the grave dirt off himself? If so, he was holding up very well; most zombies begin to disintegrate if you add water. “ Reprieve is an interesting word.”

“The appropriate word, though, I think, Ms. Blake.”

I studied his face, and finally just looked into those brown eyes with their edge of green. I tried to see beyond the color, the smile, the energy, and into his soul, if he had one.

Manny came up beside me. “Anita, introduce me.”

I introduced him to the ones whose names I remembered. The others offered their names. I threw Warrington in the middle somewhere, and Manny never blinked at him. It was only when he shook his hand that I saw Manny’s shoulders shift, ever so slightly. I doubted anyone else noticed it.

Justine was the name of the woman who was holding hands with Warrington. Manny raised an eyebrow at me, widening his eyes a bit at them. I gave a small nod, letting him know I’d seen it. We’d worked together for years, so that was enough. Again, I doubted anyone at the table saw what passed between us. Nicky was the only one who might have followed it all.

I hadn’t bothered to introduce Nicky and Domino. First, because they hadn’t asked, and second, because you didn’t introduce security. You wanted them to be grim and unfriendly; if you gave them names it humanized them and took some of the threat factor away. They were just waiting to be sent to the car for more firepower, or to go outside with the zombie and us, and for that they didn’t need to be anyone’s friend.

“Mr. MacDougal, Mr. Warrington, could I speak with you outside for a minute?” I was still smiling as I asked.

MacDougal got up immediately, but Warrington didn’t. He put a hand over Justine’s hand where it rested on his arm. It was a possessive gesture, and I didn’t like it one little bit. Had they already done more than hold hands? God, I hoped not. There was no way for this to end that wouldn’t be bad.

“Mr. Warrington, come outside with us.”

“I’m fine here, Ms. Blake, or should I say, Marshal Blake?”

“Either will do, Mr. Warrington, but we really do need a few minutes outside to talk in private.”

MacDougal touched the other man’s shoulder and said, “Come outside, Tom.”

He looked from one to the other of us, and finally stood up. It didn’t seem to be because he had to obey either of us, but then I hadn’t given him a direct order. I felt Nicky shift at my back like a small mountain flexing its shoulders, probably to get rid of built-up tension.

Justine stood up, wrapping her fingers through the zombie’s hand. “I’ll go where Tom goes.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said.

She wrapped her hand around her other one so she had a two-handed grip. “I do.”

Warrington didn’t shake her off, just stepped away from the table with her still clinging to his hand. “I would like Justine to come with us, if she wishes to.”

She smiled up at him with one of those beatific smiles that usually requires serious dating, or good sex, or at least years of semiserious flirting. “I wish to.”

I hoped she just had a crush on him. If it was more, she was going to have a very bad time, because Warrington was going back in the ground tonight. Whatever was happening with this zombie, I had to pull the plug as soon as possible. His finding true lust didn’t change that.

Most of the rest of the group wanted to come, too. “We don’t need a crowd.”

They protested.

“If you make me wave my badge around I’m going to be unhappy with you.”

Warrington turned to them all and said, “There is no need to threaten my friends. We will go outside and speak with you in private.” His calm voice did what my threats couldn’t.

Domino led the way, checking and holding the door like Nicky had on the way inside. Nicky brought up the rear this time. Our client, the zombie, and his girlfriend walked ahead of me. The guy who had been recording things at the cemetery with his phone now had a small handheld video recorder. His name was Bob, and he followed us in case we did something worth recording. I’d let Bob come along for two reasons. One, his recording everything so the rest of the historical group could see it later helped them be happier with us going outside without them. Two, I was going to have to confiscate everything he’d recorded. Proof that I could raise something this lifelike could not get out on the Internet. I’d had a government element interested in me for raising a certain dead world leader, and that zombie had been much less alive than this one. If they saw this one, I’d be lucky if they didn’t show up before the night was over. Keeping Bob close to me seemed like the best way to ensure I could bully him out of the “evidence” later.

We stepped away from the doors to find a little privacy near some shrubs, close enough to the light to not be in the dark, but Nicky, Domino, and I didn’t stand under the light. Manny kept to the light with MacDougal and Justine. Warrington kept her hand in his, but he moved toward the shadows, so that their arms were held wide between them, as she tried to keep standing in the light the way modern women are taught to in a parking lot, and he tried to stay more hidden. Maybe it was being a soldier in life, or maybe it was the instinct of the dead to hide from the light. Or maybe I was being too poetic; I was so far out of my comfort zone I didn’t know anymore.