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“Tipsy?” Tres echoed.
I took a few seconds to focus myself, correct my voice and posture, and added, “Tipsy, notdrunk. I’m relaxed but more than sober enough to work, Tres.” I met his gaze unflinchingly. “I am fine. The job will be fine. Even if I were drunk—and I am not—Eli is completely sober, and he is more than adept at gathering the information you have.”
I gave Eli the sort of smile that probably made it seem like we were lovers, but fuck it, I was being honest. He was capable. Maybe I needed to bottle whatever wine Eli had been drinking. I felt lighter, giddier, happier than I’d ever felt before. Sex was a great mood leveler for me. Witch, right? But this was different. A kiss shouldn’t relax me this much.
“I’m the slash and kill part of this team,” I added cheerily. I mean, technically, I wasallof the team until recently. For years, it was just me. Eli was a very recent addition, but it sounded better this way, and my drunk brain wanted to sound professional.
“I see,” Tres said. “Well, perhaps then,Elican notice the evidence that you will need to know when you are ready to work.”
“What do you mean by—"
“Do not question her ability, Chaddock.” Eli stepped forward as if I needed shielding. “Even slightly inebriated, Geneviève is more adept at understanding death than the rest of us combined. She’s easing your worries, but a few sips of something intoxicating will not decrease anything other than her manners.”
“You say the sweetest things,” I murmured. “Do you remember when I came to the bar with a broken ulna jutting out of my thigh?”
“Do you mean a femur?” one of the suits asked.
I laughed because, really, a femur? A bone that big would’ve severed an artery if I got stabbed with it.
“No. Ulna.” I pointed to my forearm. “Arm bone.”
“It was not Ms. Crowe’s bone,” Eli said, clarifying what I thought was obvious already.
Why would myownulna be jabbed in my leg?
“One of thedraugrused it to stab me after his friend went all goop and bone. That one hurt,” I explained. “I lost so much blood I was like a stumbling drunk. I think I actually crawled into the bar that night after I finished the job.”
Eli glanced at me. “It was more of a roll than a crawl.”
I looked at Tres and his lackies and smiled. “Anyhow, a little blood loss or booze doesn’t really stop me from getting the job done. I still got it done that night. I was just a little rough the next few days. So, no worries.”
I met their gazes, offering reassuring smiles at each man. Weirdly, they didn’t look comforted. I was going to offer more examples, but Eli said, “Let us see their evidence and get you home.”
The three men continued on to a closed door. I didn’t need to hear their explanations to know there were multiple corpses in the room.
I felt the answers before they opened the door. One of the corpses was likely to wake, to be an again-walker. Like the light in the hall, there was a soft hum of energy around it, as if the spark wasn’t there completely.
I wanted to sit and watch, a wake for the not-properly-dead. I wondered if someone would sit shiva for me one day.Eli.I’d need to ask it of him, not to mourn but to protect my mother and friends if I woke. I really ought to have done it before now. I looked at him and asked, “If I die, stay with my body for mourning. Not at a morgue.”
“Are you in peril here?” Eli stepped close. “Geneviève?”
“Not really. Maybe?” I shot him a look and a smile. “Aren’t we always?”
He nodded. “I will attend your wake if you exit the world of the living.”
It was enough for now. He wasn’t asking questions I’d rather avoid. Maybe doing the hard conversations during disasters was the trick. And I was starting to think this was going to be a disaster.
I stepped into the room. The dead man before me hummed, and I felt like a moth trying to ignore a bright light. My magic wanted to explore. It was a rare thing to be so near to adraugrbefore it stood. I could feel it, a sort of low noise of awareness that buzzed over the skin of the corpse. There was a spark of energy hovering in wait, and I wanted to catch it. I felt like I was Dr. Frankenstein about to catch lightning.
My magic could do that with corpses, call them back to our world. They weren’t alive, though. They were animated dead, and the moment they were too far from me, they crumbled as they were when they were raised. They weren’talivewhen I brought them back to our world. They weren’t tethered. No food. No drink.
On the other hand, they were a lot more sentient than the averagedraugr.
Thedraugrbefore me would wake with or without me. It would walk, eat, destroy, and eventually, it would gain sentience.
With the truly dead, the only spark was me. When I called flesh and sinew to knit over bones, I felt a warmth in my belly like I’d just had a long drink of hot cider. I felt as if I had a hearth for them to gather near. Iwasthe hearth. This was different. The closest comparison I could draw was a rattlesnake, coiled, poised, vibrating so fast that the possibility of motion felt tangible. I wanted to understand, but I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of fangs.
I drew my sword.
