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I shifted the gun into my left hand and grabbed my sword with my right. I leaned down and beheaded it before it could repair itself enough to rise. Once it was well and truly dead, I watched the door. I always worried that they had friends. Contrary to what we used to whisper in the dark about the creatures that lived on blood, they weren’t pack beings. No nests or families. They were typically loners.
But even loners got urges for the occasional friend or fuck.
I stared at the door as I called out, “Roll doors.”
The clattering of the metal shutters dropping over the windows and doors was loud, but comforting in the way of steel at the end of the day. I watched the creature, making sure that it couldn’t flow, as I listened to the solid thunk of the doors slotting into the anchors.
The latches all clacked, sealing us in.
The store phone line lit up.
“Tomes and Tea. How can I help you?” I said cheerily as if there was any chance it wasn’t the police.
“We had an alarm from your store—”
“It’s dead. Thedraugr, not me, I mean.”
“How many other fatalities?”
“None.”
The bullets weren’t ejected from the body on the floor, so the thing was, in fact, dead. I watched the decaying process, as if time sped. The bodies not only stopped moving, biting, screwing, and whatever else they did. They also raced through the years between their first death and this permanent one. The oldest of their kind faded to ashy powder rather than stopping at bone.
“Geneviève?” the officer on the line asked after a pause. “Is this Miss Crowe?”
“Yes,” I said softly.
“You know witches aren’t immune to their venom,” the officer on the line said. “This is the fifthdraugryou killed in the last two months.”
Ninth, I silently corrected. Some were jobs. Some were awkward side effects of the job. Either way, there were nine dead-again bodies in the last eight weeks. It was a wonder I wasn’tmoreexhausted.
I closed my eyes and suggested, “I guess I keep ending up at the wrong place.”
The officer snorted. Murdering the dead wasn’t illegal.Hiringpeople to do it or being hired was. Those who pulled it off were usually lucky or had encountered an exhausted one—or one still asleep.
I only killed to keep people safe. What I never said aloud, though, was that Ilikedit. I worried that it made me too much like them. There was a satisfaction I found when I killed that I couldn’t explain. It didn’t feed me, but it sometimes took the edge off my temper.
Andthatfrightened me.
I wasn’t a sociopath. I just enjoyed protecting my city, and there was sometimes a satisfying jolt inside my body when I fought and didn’t die.
“Miss Crowe,” the officer said. “Seems like a lot of body retrievals around the places you go.”
“Are you suggesting I shouldn’t call them in?” I asked lightly.
“No.” The officer on the line sighed. “I’m suggesting that you stop seeking them out. You’re as able to die as the rest of us.”
“Uh-huh.” I hoped he was right, but I had good reason to doubt it. I really tried not to lie outright unless I had to do so. Too much time around Eli? Too much time studying ethics? I wasn’t sure, and I had no desire to ponder it.
Life was easier unexamined.
“We’ll send the Con Crew at dawn,” the officer said. “You’ll need to make a statement this time.”
I smothered a sigh. “Dead guy tried to grab me. I shot him. There! Statement made.”
“Tell that to the retrieval officer at dawn.”
We disconnected, and I glared at the corpse. I hated being trapped, but since I apparently had to be the one to talk to the Con Crew, I was stuck at the shop. I think it was their way of keeping me off the streets.
