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I gave a sniff. “Well, either she’s an idiot, or I have yet to discover your horrifying flaws.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Or both.”
“Hmmf. We’ll just have to see. Now get out of my way, I have a corpse.”
He stepped aside. “I’ll call later.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll just see if I answer.”
His low chuckle followed me as I pushed the stretcher down the hallway.
The security guard pulled the lobby door open for me and gave me a slight dip of his chin in greeting as I passed him. I gave him an appropriately sober nod in return. The scent of his brains swirled briefly around me, accompanied by a jab of hunger that reminded me I needed to eat soon unless I wanted to start falling apart.
I continued on outside, shoved the stretcher into the back of the van, and then climbed into the driver’s seat. Screw this whole rationing crap. Especially if there was any chance I was starting to smell. That was one thing I was super paranoid about. The bottle of brain-chocolate smoothie in my lunchbox was only partially thawed, but I went ahead and downed what I could. By the third gulp the hunger faded away to be replaced by a lovely feeling of warm energy.
It wasn’t until after I’d put the half-full bottle back into my lunch box and started the van that it occurred to me:
If I’d been able to smell the live guard’s brains, why hadn’t I been able to smell the dead one’s?
Chapter 4
The question continued to tumble through my head as I headed to the morgue. My cell phone rang, interrupting my train of thought, but I didn’t even need to look at the caller ID to know who it was.
“I almost didn’t answer,” I said with a smile.
I heard Marcus laugh. “You know you can’t resist my charms.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, cop-boy,” I warned.
“Okay, how about if I remind you to be careful.”
I sobered. “I’m being careful. I promise. And you as well.” Be Careful had become his mantra in the past couple of weeks. Both of us were hyper-aware that the threat of Ed still hung over us.
“I am,” he said. “But that’s not the only reason I’m calling. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the scene, but my uncle’s having a get-together tomorrow, a casual cookout sort of thing, and I was wondering if you’d like to come with me.”
“Your uncle the zombie?” Marcus’s uncle, Pietro Ivanov, had been the one who’d turned him after Marcus contracted rabies from a raccoon. The rabies had absolutely nothing to do with the zombieism, except for the fact that, apparently, rabies was almost always fatal once symptoms began to appear. Marcus hadn’t even considered that he could be at risk and hadn’t bothered to seek treatment for the rather minor bite until it was too late. Conveniently, Pietro also owned several funeral homes, allowing him to keep them both well supplied with brains.
“That’s the one,” he said.
“Um, sure thing,” I said.
“You don’t sound very excited.”
Okay, so I was pretty transparent. Either that or he already knew me damn well. Or both.
I took a deep breath. “Well, you’re asking me to meet a member of your family. And that’s kinda nervous-making, y’know?” Something else occurred to me. “And on that note, who else will be there besides your zombie uncle?”
“Just a couple of people. A family friend or three. Don’t worry about them. This is mostly for you to finally meet Pietro.”
“Uh huh. Yeah, nothing at all to be nervous about. We’ve only been dating a couple of weeks. Shouldn’t this wait until the three-month mark or something?”
He chuckled. “Stop it. He’ll love you.”
“That’s not really the point,” I replied. Okay, it was kinda the point, at least to me. I really doubted that I was the kind of girl parents always dreamed their son would bring home.
I heard him sigh. “Look,” he said, “I know it seems like things are moving really quickly, but I think it’s important that you meet my uncle, especially with all this stuff about Ed going on. I promise, he’s not going to eat you.”
I made a face at the phone. He didn’t get why I could possibly be utterly terrified of meeting his family, even it was only his uncle. But at this point I knew I wouldn’t be able to make him understand.
