The Voodoo Killings Read online

  I reached Catamaran’s and glided the bike around back, where I stashed it beside the overflowing green Dumpster. I reached for the canvas tarp Randall kept out back to further conceal my bike and was rewarded with a hiss. Randall’s fat yellow tabby growled as I uncovered its hiding spot before bolting off to find another refuge from the rain. I shook my head. Randall really needed to stop feeding that thing. It’s rare you run into a cat that hates the Otherside so much it reacts to the trace scent I carry with me everywhere.

  I slipped in through the kitchen’s back door—and by kitchen, I mean a deep fryer and dishwasher wedged into a corner. I squeezed by the deep fryer, trying not to think how many health regulations Randall was breaking. It was his bar, though, so I suppose they were his rules to break….

  The many widescreen TVs out front were all playing the Mariners’ home game against the Oakland Athletics. They were heading into the sixth inning, Mariners up to bat and the game tied 2–2. I doubted even a zombie would get the crowd’s attention, and they certainly paid me no mind as I stepped out through the tropical-coloured yellow and green kitchen push door. The doors stuck out like a sore thumb, but Randall had taken to decorating the place in a tropical theme to complement the bar’s name.

  I spotted my zombie immediately.

  He was sitting at the far end of the bar—the one spot where you didn’t have a clear view of one of the TVs—and was wearing a faded Mariners sweatshirt with the hood pulled down over his face. It was at least two sizes too large, so Randall must have given it to him. An untouched beer sat in front of him. Randall himself stood nearby at the sink, cleaning glasses when there was no shortage of clean ones hanging overhead. He saw me and waved me over.

  “Randall,” I said, taking a stool one over from the zombie. I crinkled my nose as the smell hit me, but it wasn’t strong enough to alert anyone not trained to pick it up.

  Randall poured me my usual Pilsner and placed it on the bar beside the zombie’s untouched drink, no coaster. It wasn’t a coaster kind of place. “He’s all yours, Kincaid,” he said. Then the Mariners game hit a commercial break and without another word Randall headed to the crowded end zone of the bar, as people clamoured for more beer.

  I took a sip of mine and turned my attention to the zombie. “Cameron?”

  His head didn’t move and with his face obscured by the hoodie, I couldn’t gauge whether he’d heard me or not. I didn’t dare check his bindings—the focused lines of Otherside energy that were holding him together. Not that anyone would see me pull a globe to check, but Cameron would feel it and I didn’t want to startle him.

  Instead, I touched his forearm. In the early stages, zombies respond to touch better than sound. Has to do with how the different parts of the brain break down. “Cameron?” I said again, applying a little more pressure.

  He lifted his head and turned it to face me.

  An untrained person would figure him for a homeless guy Randall had taken pity on and let sit at the bar while the game was on. Not bad-looking, either—still had all his teeth, minimal decrepitude. But to me? It’s in the eyes. A new zombie watches you as if he’s grasping to remember something on the tip of his tongue and you might have the key. It’s when he stops searching your face that you need to worry. I don’t know if it’s even possible to bring a zombie back from that….

  The way Cameron’s pupils focused on me, part of him still had to be in there. There was no way he was a four-line, permit-friendly zombie—the temporary kind you were still allowed to raise for will disputes and such. The kind who have just enough brainpower to recite pertinent info from memory, but not enough to appreciate their predicament, so when they’ve served their purpose you can put them in the ground, no problem. Cameron was a five-line, permanent zombie. The illegal kind.

  Shit.

  I quickly scanned him, top to bottom. There was no obvious trauma, no bullet holes, no darkening of the lips from lack of oxygen…no obvious sign of foul play. Nine times out of ten, the reason a zombie is raised is to cover up a murder. Makes proving time of death a real bitch.

  I couldn’t be sure with the hoodie up, but it didn’t look as if his shoulder-length red hair had started to fall out yet.

  Young, too. Not a day over thirty, if that. Shame he was dead.

  I heard a bat crack on TV, signalling that the game was back on. I tensed as Cameron’s focus shifted away from me and towards the noise. In profile, there was something familiar about his face….“Cameron?”

  He slowly turned back to me, narrowing his zombie faded green-white eyes. “Are you…?” He struggled to remember my name. Zombies aren’t known for their short-term memory.

  “Yes, I’m Kincaid,” I said. “You called me, remember? I’m here to help you.”

  His frown deepened. His cellphone was on the counter. I fished out a business card and picked up the phone, flipping to the last called number. I held my business card up beside it, showing him the identical numbers. “See? We spoke less than a half-hour ago.”

  Cameron took the phone from my fingers and stared at the screen.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” I asked.

  After a moment more of staring at the phone, he nodded. “I have to stay here,” he said. He picked up his beer and peered at the contents, as if undecided whether he should drink it or put it back. His indecision morphed into frustration, and I watched his knuckles turn white as if squeezing the glass would somehow make the decision easier. I counted another ten seconds before he looked back at me again. “I’m waiting for someone,” he said.

  Afraid the glass would shatter, I gently pried it from his hands. In general, alcohol is a bad choice for a new zombie: wreaks havoc on the intestines, accelerates bloating, decay…

  I glanced around, but everyone was still fixating on the Mariners’ home game. Randall, smart man that he was, was making a point of not glancing in my direction. I removed the metal Thermos from my bag and unscrewed the cap, out of sight under the lip of the bar.

  I leaned in close to Cameron and passed the Thermos right under his nose so he’d be sure to smell the contents; frozen brains aren’t nearly as aromatic as thawed. “Drink this instead,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  Cameron’s nose crinkled as he grasped the Thermos, trying to figure out the smell. The hairs on the backs of my arms shot up. It wasn’t every day I had to get close and personal with a zombie I didn’t control.

  He took a first hesitant sip, and winced.

  “Trust me, it’ll make you feel better,” I said.

  He gave me a critical stare—or as critical as a zombie in his condition could manage—but took another sip. The emergency mix of cow, pig and sheep brains would stop Cameron from deteriorating further but wouldn’t fix him. To fix him, I needed to get my hands on real brains—human ones—which was a serious problem since it was highly illegal to feed real brains to zombies. Life-sentence illegal.

  It was also the only way I’d get any useful answers from Cameron, such as who the hell had raised him.

  I took another sip of my Pilsner and motioned for Cameron to drink from the Thermos. I’d worry about finding real brains after I got him back to my place.

  I then realized where I’d seen him before: on local TV. I was looking at one Cameron Wight, the up-and-coming Seattle artist….

  My beer went down the wrong pipe and I started to cough.

  Cameron jumped at the noise, his movement jerky from a deteriorating nervous system.

  I swore under my breath. A stray zombie was one thing, but a famous stray zombie? I racked my brain for details about him from the interview I’d seen, but I’d been more concerned with watching the eBay bids on one of my voodoo books than listening to the plastic-fantastic host read cue card questions to a painter. Cause of death could be anything from suicide to accident to, well, worse. How had this man ended up a zombie?

  I studied his features and tried to gauge a timeline. I figured he was no more than three days dead but no fewer than t
wo, so he’d died between Tuesday and Wednesday.

  I leaned back in my seat to check the closest TV screen: near the end of the sixth, Mariners up, bases still loaded. The bar might be oblivious, but eventually someone in Seattle was bound to notice Cameron was missing, if they hadn’t already. I needed to get Cameron out of here now.

  I took the half-finished Thermos of mixed brain slushie, refastened the steel lid and shoved it back into my bag.

  I placed a hand on Cameron’s arm and kept it there until he looked at me. “We need to go now,” I said.

  He glanced down at my hand and back up at me, then nodded and stood. I silently thanked the universe I’d got lucky, and wasted no time steering him towards the kitchen and door.

  We were almost there when someone tugged at the sleeve of my leather jacket.

  “What the—?” Startled, I let go of Cameron.

  A man, maybe late thirties, with tobacco-stained teeth, was hanging on as if my jacket were a handle. A baseball hat shadowed a face that would have verged on handsome if not for an ugly scar running down the side.

  “Hey gorgeous, have a seat,” he slurred.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I yanked my sleeve back, but Yellow Teeth just smiled and stepped closer.

  Of all the lousy nights—

  Two more men appeared behind him, the one to his right sporting an MMA faux hawk and the one to the left sporting no hair at all. They weren’t regulars at Catamaran’s, as far as I knew. Figured. Liquid courage and relative anonymity do wonders for pushing boundaries.

  Wrong girl, wrong bar.

  Faux Hawk made a grab for my jacket next. I jumped back and readied my boot to strike.

  Cameron stepped in front of me. “Leave her alone,” he said.

  Shit. If this idiot managed to hit Cameron and a chunk of skin peeled off, it’d be game over.

  The three men edged around us, forming a small circle. Damn it, I hate assholes.

  I inserted myself between them and Cameron. Thank god his hood hadn’t fallen back.

  Slam.

  The four of us froze as a wooden baseball bat hit the bar beside us. The entire room fell silent and turned to us as one.

  Randall primed the bat over his shoulder as he addressed the three men. “She said she isn’t interested.”

  I don’t think they even breathed as they stared at the bat.

  It came down on the bar again. “So scram already,” Randall said.

  He didn’t need to say another word. They obediently filed out of the bar, never taking their eyes off Randall and his baseball bat. The door shut behind them and I breathed in deep, holding the bar to steady myself. My hands were shaking, but not from the three idiots; it’s not like I’ve never had a punch thrown at me. It was the narrow miss of having Cameron exposed. I managed to smile at Randall. “I owe you one,” I said.

  Randall didn’t smile back. “Kincaid, get him the hell out of here or you can bet your ass I’m calling the cops.” He pointed the business end of the bat at Cameron’s head.

  “Don’t have to tell me twice,” I said. I grabbed Cameron’s hand and led him out through the kitchen. When we reached my Honda Hawk, I started the bike and passed Cameron my helmet. I figured he was more likely to fall off than I was, and it wouldn’t do either of us any good if he cracked his skull open. Cameron didn’t put the helmet on, just ran his fingers over the red detailing on the cracked leather seat.

  “Never been on a bike before?” I asked.

  “Never on the back,” he said, “and usually on better bikes.”

  Tough, I thought, you’re dead. You don’t get to turn your nose up at my bike. Besides, he had no reason to be turning his nose up: my Honda Hawk was a work of art, despite the scratches. “Just get on before Randall sends a mob of crazed baseball fans after us.”

  I scootched forward, and Cameron got his leg up and over then settled in, placing his hands on my waist. I suppressed a shiver at having a zombie that close. If he came unhinged on the short ride back, hopefully he’d fall off….

  CHAPTER 2

  NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE REAL THING

  Cameron grimaced and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his Mariners sweatshirt. “That’s disgusting,” he said, and slid the second empty silver Thermos towards me across the kitchen table. I stopped it before it careened over the edge.

  “Cameron, the taste is the least of your worries right now,” I said, handing him the last Thermos from the freezer. Well, maybe not so much “handed” as “threw.” Best way to check his reflexes.

  It sailed past him and smacked into the backsplash of the kitchen sink.

  Yeah, those reflexes were nowhere near what they should be after two Thermoses of brains. I retrieved the Thermos and handed it to him. “Keep drinking,” I said.

  His face contorted into what I figured was a look of disgust—it was hard to tell as all the muscles didn’t move—but he opened it and tipped it back.

  I took my seat across from him. “Remember anything?” I asked.

  He swallowed and shook his head, and stared down into the Thermos.

  I closed my eyes. All these brains and Cameron still had no idea what had happened. But he looked better. His eyes were now a shade of green that would pass for alive, and his smell had improved to a “trace of musk.” Both big pluses in my books, even if his nervous system was slow on the regeneration uptake.

  I sighed. He needed human brains. Hard to come by and not cheap.

  I glanced down at my cellphone. Still no new messages. Come on, Max. What the hell could be taking you so long?

  I checked the time: 10:30 p.m. Screw it, I couldn’t put off calling Mork any longer.

  “Back in a sec, Cameron. Stay put.” I ducked into my bedroom. I grabbed a fresh burner phone from the bottom of my underwear drawer and dialed Mork’s number from memory. No one picked up, but then no one ever picked up. I let it ring five times then hung up; no one ever left messages either. I slid the phone into my pocket, turned, then jumped a foot in the air, my heart racing. Cameron loomed in the bedroom doorway, holding the Thermos of brains.

  “Cameron, I swear to god, don’t sneak up on me….”

  He looked down at the Thermos and then around my bedroom.

  Conscious of the mess, I slipped past him and gently closed the door. No sudden moves allowed; they unnerve zombies.

  “Can I take a shower?” he said, his eyes following me back into the kitchen. “I smell awful.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but not until we fix you up a bit more. Water causes—” I stopped. There didn’t seem much point explaining that water would warp his skin until it peeled away like birchbark. “Let’s just say it won’t help any.”

  He followed me back into my less disastrous kitchen.

  “Look, as soon as I have you fixed up, you can have a nice long shower and start getting your life sorted out.”

  “I’m dead.”

  “Being dead doesn’t mean you get out of paying rent. I need to get you functional,” I said, sliding back into my chair.

  Cameron frowned. I got the distinct impression that the tidbits of his personality filtering through the zombie fog didn’t appreciate my dry sense of humour.

  “Okay, Cameron, this is what I know. Yes, you are dead. You were—are—a Seattle artist, an almost-famous one. By the looks of it, you’ve been dead a couple of days and you were probably animated this morning.”

  I waited for him to respond, then prodded: “Any of that ring a bell?”

  He stared at me as if on the verge of remembering something, and then it was gone, like every other time I’d asked him. “No,” he said. “I’m hungry. Why am I so hungry?”

  God, I needed Mork to call me back right now. Mork was never this slow—and neither was Max.

  Every single zombie I’d ever raised—and I’d been a full-fledged practitioner for almost a decade—remembered exactly how they’d died. Heart attack, murder, overdose, even dying in their sleep—a zombie al
ways remembered. Hell, it was the first thing they wanted to talk about. Yet Cameron didn’t have a clue.

  Maybe if I took a little peek at his bindings…

  In polite paranormal circles you only look at someone else’s work if you have permission from the zombie or binder. Since Cameron’s binder was nowhere to be found and Cameron was in no condition to be giving permission to anyone for anything, polite was impossible. The bigger issue was that Cameron would feel it, and for all I knew, his bindings were already unravelling him into one big dangerous zombie mess.

  Which was all the more reason to take a look.

  “Cameron, hold still a sec,” I said. Before he could respond one way or the other, I pulled a globe.

  Pulling a globe—being able to breach the barrier to the Otherside—isn’t some kind of special talent or gift. Most people dabble in college but then give up because they don’t actually want to deal with what they see past that barrier. Me? I dabbled too, but I’m stubborn, persistent, and I have a strong stomach. And then there was the fact that there weren’t a lot of jobs out there for history majors who dropped out before they got their degrees. Whereas there was a substantial and surprising niche for practitioners willing to call up ghosts and zombies for law enforcement, for lawyers, and for good old entertainment value. And then it turned out I was already in a prime location for practitioners. Seattle is the North American mecca for all things paranormal. I blame it on the violent gold rush history and the 1990s heroin-obsessed grunge scene, though it’s probably more the geographical location of the city itself. Near water—and all of Seattle is pretty near water—the barrier to the Otherside is paper-thin.

  Tonight, as soon as I tapped it, cold Otherside flooded my head in a rush. I bit back the usual wave of nausea and waited for Otherside energy to fill my skull. Once I had stabilized my globe, I opened my eyes to a world bathed in the telltale grey Otherside haze. I looked at Cameron as I let Otherside expand around me like ripples from a raindrop.

  As the first wave of energy hit Cameron, he drew in a sharp breath and gripped the arms of my kitchen chair. He started to stand but sat back down as I sent a second wave at him.