The Voodoo Killings Read online

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what time did he leave? What time did you wake up Tuesday?”

  He frowned. “I think I slept in, met a friend for coffee…”

  “You don’t remember, do you?”

  I could see him concentrate and then give up. “I can’t remember what I did Tuesday night either.”

  His memory was patchy. It was known to happen, but mostly in zombies raised from corpses that had been in the dirt too long, not fresh zombies like Cameron.

  “What’s the next thing you can remember?”

  “Wednesday night. A girlfriend of mine was in town. I picked her up, we went out…”

  A girlfriend. As in one of many. “What about Thursday morning?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay, did you drop her off at the airport? A hotel?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Still, that was two people now who’d been with Cameron around the time he’d died: the gallery owner and the girlfriend. Short-term memory loss was consistent with serious head trauma, but I’d expect to see visible damage. Drowning could explain the memory loss too, but there’d have been salt on Cameron’s clothes.

  “You were likely still alive on Thursday morning. You were raised on Friday night, so the very latest you could have died was sometime early Friday morning. Try really hard: is there anything else you remember? Anything at all that happened Thursday or Friday?”

  Cameron stared at the counter, his brows knit.

  My phone rang. I swore and scrambled to get it out of my pocket. Maximillian Odu’s name flashed on the screen.

  Finally. “It took you long enough—”

  Max’s cool voice came across the line: deep and inflected with the gravelly notes age brings. There was still the distinct touch of New Orleans that he’d never quite been able to shake, despite living in Seattle for over thirty years. “Kincaid, it is good to hear your voice.”

  Ha. Like hell it was. I covered the mic with my finger. “Cameron, I just have to deal with—” What exactly did I tell Cameron? That I was stepping out to have a conversation with the guy I was pretty sure raised him then ditched him outside a bar? “With someone who’d better have some damn good answers,” I said, then ducked into my bedroom and closed the door behind me, waiting until the latch clicked shut before uncovering the mic.

  “Max, you son of a bitch, do you have any idea what I’ve been doing for the last twelve hours? I’ll give you some clues: it’s something you lost, starts with z and ends in e.”

  “Kincaid, I know you must be upset—”

  “That doesn’t even begin to cover it—”

  “There was an accident,” Max interrupted.

  “What kind of ‘accident’ results in you leaving a zombie outside my local bar?” I balanced the phone between my ear and neck as I grabbed jeans and one of Nate’s old concert Ts out of my cleanish-clothes pile.

  There was a pause on Max’s end. “You found Mr. Wight at Catamaran’s?”

  Jesus, he hadn’t even known where his zombie had got to. I’d assumed he’d sent Cameron there for a reason.

  I took a deep, slow breath. Berating Max over the phone wouldn’t rile him up one bit. I was remembering exactly why I’d cut short my apprenticeship. No one could get a rise out of me like he could, except maybe my mother.

  “Yes, Max. Catamaran’s.” I lowered my voice so Cameron could not possibly hear. “Not to drill home the point here, but you owe Randall one hell of an apology after we get this sorted. He did not have to call me.” I knew for a fact that Randall had Aaron’s number on speed-dial. Catamaran’s wasn’t too far from Seattle’s main drainpipes, the ones that carried sewage and rainwater into the harbour. You’d be amazed what crawls out of those things every now and again. “More to the point, besides owing me serious favours for babysitting him all night, you owe me five hundred for brains—Mork upped his price—and on top of that, I had to deal with Mork!” Max knew Mork gave me the creeps.

  There was another pause on Max’s end. If it hadn’t been for the cough, from years of smoking cigars, I might have thought he’d dropped the call.

  “How closely have you looked at Cameron?” Max finally asked.

  I snorted. “Close enough to know you made a fully anchored zombie. Unconventional with those damn head bindings, though. I still haven’t figured out what the hell they’re there for, or why his memory is still partly shot. I expect you to enlighten me.” Lee’s advice from last night reared its head. “Max, he’s stable, isn’t he?”

  Officially, we aren’t allowed to bind a ghost permanently to a body anymore, in the way Lee was bound, for example. But there was no law against temporarily tangling a ghost up in a net of Otherside bindings. Provided it was done right, the zombie was animated just long enough to answer a couple of questions. Once the bindings destabilized, it turned into a harmless, inanimate corpse. But Cameron wasn’t one of those; Max had done something different.

  “He should be quite safe,” Max said. “I only wish you had not taken the initiative to acquire Mork’s services.”

  I couldn’t believe it. He was offended that I’d helped Cameron out without waiting to consult him. It was like the time I’d added Nordic runes to stabilize the zombie we were having trouble raising for a court case without asking first. It hadn’t mattered that I’d been right. “You’re welcome for my cleaning up your mess,” I said.

  Max let out a laboured breath. “I’m sorry, Kincaid. I do not mean to sound ungrateful. I’ve been under a great deal of stress this last week.”

  “Where the hell were you, anyway?”

  “I was indisposed, but I’m better now,” he said. “We need to speak in person. How soon can you meet me?”

  “Max, I still have your zombie on my hands. I can’t just come running.”

  “I know how this looks, but you must trust me when I say it is not as it seems. There are details I cannot discuss over the phone. Meet me at Salida’s in thirty minutes.”

  I sighed. Max wasn’t young anymore. If Cameron was a sign he was losing his touch, it was only a matter of time before something went really wrong. I’d hate to turn him in, but I had my own skin to worry about. And he knew it.

  “Kincaid, can you do that for me? Please?”

  Max had actually said please.

  I checked the time: 9:30. “All right, I’ll be at Salida’s by ten. What do you want me to do with Cameron?”

  “It is best if Mr. Wight is not with you, for his own safety.”

  “Max, you’re starting to scare me.”

  “Then you are beginning to grasp the seriousness of the situation. Leave the zombie and do not be late.”

  The line went dead.

  I thought about hitting Redial, then sighed loudly and went back to the kitchen. “Hey, Cameron, I need to step out for about an hour. Will you be okay here?”

  He nodded. He’d filled the kitchen sink with soapy water and was halfway through the dishes. “I wanted something to do,” he explained when he saw my expression.

  I didn’t like taking advantage of zombies…but he was cleaning my kitchen.

  “I remembered one more thing,” he said. “Thursday early morning, maybe 2 a.m., I met with one other person.”

  “Great. Who?”

  Cameron dried off his hands on one of my dirty dishtowels. “Ah, well, it’s a little—It’s not recreational, but when I’m working—”

  I frowned as he stumbled over the words. “Cameron, I don’t have time for this. Out with it.”

  “I was meeting a dealer I use, at Club 9. Then I remember heading home, but nothing after that.”

  Drug overdose. Could it really be that simple? I knew Max was pressed for cash; it wouldn’t be the first or last time someone raised a zombie to cover up an accidental overdose. It wouldn’t explain the memory loss, but it did explain why Cameron didn’t know how he was raised. Because he wouldn’t have been the one who arranged it.

  Tread carefully,
Kincaid. That’s what Max had always said. Shame he couldn’t follow his own goddamn advice.

  “Cameron, I still have no idea what’s going on with your memory, or your bindings, or how you ended up a zombie, but I’m hoping to have some answers by the time I get back. Okay?”

  He nodded. “One hour?”

  “One hour.” I was about to go find Nate when I had another idea—one that might cheer Cameron up while he waited. “Give me your hand.”

  He extended it, warily. “Why?”

  I rolled up his sleeve and began probing his arm. “I want to see if it’s okay for you to take a shower yet.”

  His muscles were malleable, with no sign of the zombie rigor mortis you sometimes see. His skin was elastic and didn’t tear or peel back, and the colour returned less than five seconds after I pressed down. Not bad. I moved on to the nails, none of which were loose. Fingers and hands are the worst on zombies. The skin tends to peel like an onion in the first few days and the bones turn brittle. The dishwater hadn’t harmed them, not even where the pads of his fingers were burned.

  I dropped his hand and motioned for him to turn. I reached up and gave a quick tug to see if his hair was loose. Only a few strands came away.

  “You’re good to go,” I told him. “Wait here.”

  I headed back into my room and dug out track pants and a T-shirt from the very bottom of my drawer. More of Aaron’s stuff he hadn’t bothered to pick up yet. Cameron was taller but roughly the same build. I bundled the clothes under my arm and handed them to Cameron.

  “Ditch your old clothes in the laundry bin. Towels are in the bottom cabinet. If Nate starts talking to you again, either hold up your side of the conversation or tell him to go away. Whatever you do, don’t take any more of his advice.”

  Soon enough, I heard the water running.

  Before grabbing my bike and heading out the door, I opened the laptop and went to AnimateMed, like PubMed but for practitioners. Once I was logged on, I ran a search for “memory loss” and “clockwork bindings.” Other than a paper on advanced Alzheimer’s and zombieism, there was nothing.

  Great. Not even the practitioner research community had any ideas to offer up as to why Cameron’s memory had holes in it.

  I shut the browser down and rifled through the closet for a reinforced shopping bag, which I shoved into my backpack. If I was going to get by the barrier at Marjorie’s, I’d need fresh supplies from the fishmongers. I grabbed my helmet and bike, and headed out the door.

  CHAPTER 8

  MAXIMILLIAN ODU

  I stashed my bike at the bottom of the Pike Place Market, a tiered collection of shops and stalls that resembled a barn built on a steep hillside—a cornerstone of the Seattle waterfront since the early 1900s. All three levels were now filled with restaurants, crafts stores and produce stalls. There was even a touristy practitioner shop that claimed to sell set mirrors. I’d never been in and doubted very much that they worked. Too much liability. The last thing the owners needed was for a ghost to flash someone’s kid. Don’t laugh, I’ve seen it happen. Like I said, impulse control goes out the window when you become a ghost.

  I spotted Max as soon as I reached the top of the first set of stairs. He was sitting in the corner coffee shop that jutted out of the building, claiming the only grassy spot near the market. Salida’s was run by a Mexican couple who were neither unfamiliar with the world of the dead nor put off by it. I thank Cinco de Mayo for that; Mexicans know how to respect their dead. That and they can spot a brujo—their term for a practitioner—a mile away.

  Max was sitting at the same wrought iron garden table he always chose, the one under the crabapple tree. It was a miracle the tree hadn’t been deemed a health hazard yet, to the buildings or people. One of these days a branch was going to break or a crabapple was going to knock someone unconscious. Coconuts do it all the time. He didn’t look up from his morning paper as I sat down opposite him.

  He presented himself as a throwback to old New Orleans. I’d never caught him outside without his hat, a button-down shirt, sports jacket and polished shoes. Not exactly what you’d expect from a highly regarded voodoo priest, though the jacket and hat were looking more worn than they had the last time we’d met, three months earlier.

  Max took his time finishing whatever he was reading before looking up from his paper. “You’re late.”

  “If time was of the essence, you should have picked the Starbucks by the docks.”

  “I like the coffee here and they remember my name,” he said, giving me a hint of a smile.

  At that moment an overripe crabapple fell on the table, making a noise that reminded me of a rock ringing a bell.

  “And because they serve coffee you like, I have to risk getting pummelled with crabapples?”

  He shrugged, but his smile widened, showing a perfect set of teeth. A damn miracle since they were real and he had to be close to seventy. “It’s quiet here. And Starbucks are like beacons to the Otherside—something familiar the new dead remember. I can’t get a moment’s peace in one of them.” He stirred more sugar into his coffee. Like most Southerners I’d met, Max liked it sweet. “God knows I’ve tried other places, Kincaid. But the family here knows how to respect the dead, meaning I can have my coffee without every new ghost falling over themselves to speak to me.”

  I didn’t know quite what to say to this uncharacteristic revelation. Max wasn’t one to share unless he had to. He preferred to make his students work for every morsel. More often than not it was a waste of time, and this had become another point of contention between us during my apprenticeship.

  “Don’t look so surprised, Kincaid. I haven’t been your teacher in a long while. What’s the point of having a colleague if I can’t complain about work every now and then? You prefer your coffee black, no?”

  I nodded and he raised two fingers to the teenaged girl behind the counter. Probably the owner’s daughter.

  Max had aged since I’d seen him last, and the look of him resurfaced my earlier misgivings about his abilities. I have an average affinity for the Otherside, and it took me years of staring into mirrors to get so I could work with it. But Max was a medium; he’d been born to it. The academics still argue over who qualifies as a true medium, and there are a lot of grey areas. The one defining characteristic everyone can agree on is that a medium doesn’t need a mirror to contact ghosts; the medium is the mirror, a living, breathing, glowing beacon for anything on the Otherside. It had never occurred to me that Max couldn’t shut it off. I’d always assumed he had control over it.

  I clenched my teeth, tapped the Otherside and let in just enough to form a ghost-grey film over my eyes, and looked his way. Max shone like a gold beacon through grey fog. In contrast, my hands were ghost grey with just a tinge of gold dust. Past Max, the ghosts who pressed themselves against the barrier reminded me of seagulls fighting over breadcrumbs in the water…except Max was the breadcrumb and they couldn’t get to him. I shuddered and let the Otherside go.

  “It is about as fun as it looks,” Max said with a faint smile.

  I nodded to where the greatest concentration of ghosts had been. “Are they always like that?”

  “Always. Wherever I go.”

  The teenaged girl brought us our coffees, along with a side of cream and sugar that Max proceeded to empty into his second cup. He caught me frowning.

  This time he gave me a grin. “At a certain age, you stop caring about your health. It’s very liberating.” He savoured a sip of his sugary coffee. “Tell me, how is your friend Mr. Nathan Cade these days?”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  Max cupped his mug of coffee in his hands, took another sip and stared at me from under his salt-and-pepper eyebrows.

  “He couldn’t pay his bar tab to Lee Ling last night, so I did. Again.”

  “Ahhh, Miss Lee Ling Xhao,” he drawled. “Give her my regards the next time you see her. And tell Mr. Cade to keep himself out of trouble.”

  I snorted. �
��I’d be happy if he could manage paying the rent on time. I won’t hold my breath.”

  “Anything else of interest in your neck of the woods?” he said.

  I shook my head. I knew better than to rush Max through the pleasantries. Most old-school voodoo practitioners like to take their time. I’ve never got a straight answer as to why, but maybe it comes from dealing so much with the dead. They love to waste my time too.

  Max nodded to where I’d seen the ghosts congregating. “They seem to think there is.”

  What could the ghosts—?

  “The mirror,” I said. I’d almost forgotten. I gave Max the short version of the ghost trap I’d found in my apartment lobby.

  Max shook his head when I was done, and I noticed that his face had taken on a gaunt and ashy hue.

  “Stop staring at me and drink your coffee,” he said. “I need a vacation, is all. I’ve been under a great deal of stress the past few weeks.”

  “Would my lost and found have anything to do with that?”

  Something akin to sadness flickered across his face. “In part. I take it you wish for some answers?”

  “Yeah, Max. That’s putting it mildly.”

  When he didn’t volunteer anything more, I said, “Why don’t you start with what the hell is going on?”

  Max stared down at his mug. Finally, he offered, “A word of advice, Kincaid. Do not get old—it is not worth the trouble. Nothing works as it should anymore. There was an accident.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  He was still looking down at his mug. By the time he looked up, the face I was used to, hardened from years of dealing with the dead, was back. “Yes, Kincaid. An accident.”

  “Forgetting to shut the gas stove off, that’s an accident. Screwing up a zombie—”

  “No irreversible damage was done,” Max insisted, his eyes taking on a dark edge.

  I stuffed the first response that came into my head, which was that ghosts weren’t the only things that couldn’t learn from their mistakes….Max had too much pride to listen to someone less than half his age, even when he damn well knew I was right. When faced with change, he just pushed tradition even harder. Like cramming a size-seven foot into a size-six shoe.