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I made air quotes with my free hand because, really? Wrong damn word. There wasn’t anything Haitian about the dead folks that were scattered on my lawn last year. I didn’tcreatethem. I simply summoned the dead to life. Basic necromancy.
“But . . . two men have been killed,” Tres objected. “At least two more are missing.”
He walked closer, and I felt Eli step to my side. I wasn’t a bone to be tugged between two men either. Tres was a client, and Eli was my partner. I pushed my rising temper away. It wasn’t really about the word, or the anger from Tres, or even needing to summon Beatrice.
“Two more?” Eli asked.
“There are four members of my father’s club unaccounted for,” Tres said.
“Perhaps they are on trips, yachts, or with mistresses.”
“Not every businessman has a mistress,” Tres muttered.
As calmly as I could, I explained, “I want answers, too, but I won’t risk the Odem family’s life to get them. Beatrice—”
“Thedraugr?” Tres asked.
“Yes.” I cleared my throat before saying a sentence I’d never really expected to say: “I trust her.”
Eli shot a quizzical glance at me.
“On this,” I added. “She wants answers, too. She’ll get them if he has them. I’ll figure it out from there, but I’m not babysitting a corpse—or releasing it to eat people. So”—I shrugged— “I asked her to take him.”
I turned and headed to the car. I’d already let Eli see meflowtwice tonight, so I didn’t bother being circumspect. It felt freeing.
In not much more than a blink, not as fast as Beatrice, but a lot faster than mostdraugr,I was beside Eli’s car. I thought briefly that in this state, I could flip the thing. Not that I would, but it was a detail to file away for future encounters with monsters. If I thought I could, I was sure somedraugrcould too.
I watched Eli walk toward me, trying to ignore the smile he wore as I stared at him. I refused to look away. I liked looking, and tonight, I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. He’d offered himself up for my use. His kisses left me feeling languid.
“Do you suppose we should discuss your ability to flow, peach pie?” Eli asked as he reached the passenger door.
“As soon as we talk about you telling the dead lady thatyour bloodwas mine or I was yours, sweetbread.”
He raised his brows. “Sweetbread is not a baked food. It’s part of a dead animal.”
“True.”
“Are you threatening me? Or admitting to craving me?” Eli gave me the sort of smile that probably resulted in most women or men hastily shedding clothing. “You should realize that I’m content either way.”
“Why would you say I was in possession of your blood?” I asked in a slightly calmer voice.
“Why did you declare me yours? I heard you, Geneviève. You said ‘mine’ in a way that was far from meaningless.” He paused. “And asking me to watch your corpse after you died? We all have secrets, but you can trust me with yours. My body or my blood, Geneviève. Fighting at your side. Tell me what you want, and I will give it to you.”
For a moment, I stared at him. Quietly, I admitted, “That isn’t working, is it? I asked for space.”
“You did. You also kissed me,” he said just as quietly.
Instead of answering, I jerked open the car door. “Either drive me home, or I canflowand get there on my own.”
Eli motioned for me to get into the car, closed the door, and got into the driver’s side. Even when facing my temper, he was a gentleman, and sometimes I wanted to punch him for it.
Chapter Twenty
Eli stayedsilent as he put the car in motion. Sometimes, I stared at the dim alleys, the people sliding into the shadows, and I wondered at our world. I realized that New Orleans was seedier than a lot of cities, but there were plenty of places like ours. Someday, I would visit Prague or Amsterdam. I’d see what it was like there. Did they have more police? Was it simply that they let the again-walkers feed on the homeless who were out at night or was the tolerance a tactic, a cheap way to deter criminals? Were there fewer muggings in the large cities withdraugr?
I knew on some fundamental level that thedraugrhad not suddenly appeared in the world. Were they few and rare at the beginning? Had thedraugrgrown in relation to the food—humans—populating so much of the planet?
I surely didn’t buy the “angry god” answers. I didn’t see the rise of the dead as a sign that the divine was angry at humanity for this or that, especially when it usually boiled down to folks grumbling over women having opinions, people marrying folks they loved, or the like. But then again, I’d never been a fire and brimstone, hell-is-waiting-for-you, person. Jew and witch by birth didn’t lead tothat. Instead, I wondered about the science of it all. Were the diseases, the plagues of modern life, a divine pay-attention-or-else, or had we created them in our labs? Or, with our destruction of other predators, of the very earth, had these man-shaped killers grown more numerous?
