The Voodoo Killings Read online

I stomped to the kitchen, returned my laptop to my desk and then checked the office door locks one last time. I figure it can’t be OCD when zombies are involved. As an afterthought, I went back to the living room and flipped on the PlayStation, just in case Nate came back out. He could run the controller about as well as he could handle a guitar, since it was something he’d done every day of his life. But if they ever changed the controller design, Nate was hooped.

  I locked my own door and crawled into bed, pulling the duvet up to my neck. Warm and familiar. I flipped the lamp off.

  My phone buzzed. Damn it. I fantasized about ignoring it but checked, just in case it was Max.

  It was a text from Aaron.

  Call me.

  My stomach turned as I stared at the message. Screw it, I was too tired to deal with him right now. I tossed my phone back on the nightstand.

  Less than a minute later, it buzzed again, casting the room in a ghostly grey-blue light. I shut my eyes and buried my face in the duvet. The phone kept buzzing, though. I grabbed it.

  Nice night in Pioneer Square.

  “Fuck.” I read the text again to be sure my sleep-deprived eyes weren’t playing a trick on me. Another message popped up.

  Your light went out less than five minutes ago. I know you’re awake.

  I slid out of bed and headed over to the window. Sure enough, Aaron’s black sedan was there, and Aaron was leaning against it. He waved his cellphone at me and my gut tightened. If he’d been watching Cameron…No—if Aaron thought for one second I had a zombie in here, I’d be having a conversation with the wrong end of a SWAT team.

  I dialed.

  “Hi, Kincaid.” Aaron sounded pleasant, even friendly. “So you are still awake.”

  I stuffed “go to hell” and forced out a civil response. “Aaron, I’ve had a really rough day. Can this please wait until tomorrow?”

  “How about you tell me what you were doing in Pioneer Square.”

  “No.”

  I saw Aaron tense up. Score one for me. Damn it, I was scoring our fights now.

  “Kincaid, you can’t ignore me indefinitely,” he said. He actually sounded defeated. Though I wasn’t going to let myself put much faith in that. I had a track record of being wrong when it came to people I thought I loved.

  I took a deep breath and pulled my verbal filter out of the cobwebbed pocket of my brain before any accusations flew out. “Aaron, I’m going to say this once and only once. You want to know why I was in Pioneer Square tonight? It’s none of your damn business anymore.”

  I heard him take a deep breath on the other end. “Kincaid, this is important.”

  “It can wait until tomorrow.”

  He paused, then said, “Fine. Tomorrow. Before noon.”

  “Fine.”

  As I turned away from the window, I pulled the drape shut, something I didn’t normally do. Before I could hang up, Aaron’s voice came through.

  “How much longer are we going to do this?”

  I froze as emotions I’d been keeping carefully in check flooded me. Say something civil, Kincaid, something civil.

  “Good night, Aaron,” I said, and hung up.

  How much longer? Try a goddamned apology and maybe then we could talk.

  I stopped just short of launching my phone at the bedroom door and instead tossed it back on the nightstand. I got into bed, pulled the duvet up and hoped no one else called me tonight.

  Max, Aaron, Cameron, Lee—it seemed as if everyone wanted something from me. You know how the saying goes: when it rains, it pours, especially in Seattle.

  CHAPTER 7

  HANGOVERS

  I woke up to the phone ringing.

  Oh man, did I ever have a headache. I reminded myself never to tap the barrier so many times in one night ever again. I peeked from underneath the duvet. Enough light streamed through the blinds that it had to be past seven.

  Max wasn’t above calling me this early….

  I grabbed my cell off the night table to check the number. Aaron. Scratch my previous assertion that pulling too many globes guaranteed the equivalent of a bad hangover. This was much worse.

  I declined the call, shoved the phone under the pillow and pulled the duvet back over my head. He’d said before noon.

  The phone started to buzz again, but with the pillow between us I had no problem ignoring it. I’m functional that way.

  As I lay there attempting to get back to sleep, I registered a smell in the apartment. Smoky, salty, crispy. Bacon. Reaching out to me like a lighthouse beacon through fog. My stomach growled.

  Wait a minute. I didn’t have any food in the fridge. And what the hell was Nate doing cooking bacon?

  I threw my duvet off and slid out of bed as fast as I could manage without face planting on the floor. The room was spinning. Oh why did the room have to spin? I fumbled the lock on the bedroom door twice before I got it open. “Nate, if you’ve so much as burnt a piece of toast…”

  Cameron, not Nate, was standing in front of the stove wielding an assortment of cooking utensils I didn’t even know I owned. At the sound of my voice, he turned around, frying pan in hand.

  “Morning,” he said. “I made breakfast.”

  Reaction times normal, no twitching, eyes focused…I nodded towards the open office door. “How did you get out?”

  “The ghost—Nathan. I woke up at daybreak and he heard me moving around. He asked me a lot of questions before he let me out, but he said I was fine.”

  I had to agree—Cameron did seem fine. I picked up the smell of coffee and spotted a full carafe tucked behind the kettle. I didn’t have coffee….

  It was then I noticed the collection of plastic grocery bags on the counter.

  Cameron caught me glancing at them. “You needed stuff,” he said.

  I started rifling through: eggs, ketchup, milk. I held up the bag of espresso with the green and white logo I loved so dearly.

  He fumbled a pair of aviator sunglasses out of his sweatshirt pocket. My aviators. The ones I kept by the front door. “Nathan told me to wear these. And use cash. I kept my hood up the entire time and I only went as far as the corner store. No one noticed me.”

  That was debatable. Cameron would be hard to miss, zombie or not. I was sure he’d garnered more than a few looks, even on a short morning walk.

  I made a mental note to check the missing persons postings again as soon as I had a cup of coffee in me. “You should be careful how much advice you take from Nate. In case you hadn’t noticed, he didn’t exactly win the ‘living’ lottery.”

  Cameron glanced down at the sunglasses, handed them to me, then turned back to the stove. “Neither did I,” he said quietly.

  “Point taken,” I said. My sensitivity leaves a lot to be desired. I migrated to the coffee pot and started to fill a mostly clean mug from the sink. I thought I heard the radio over crackling bacon and spotted my transistor on the desk, balanced on another pile of books destined for eBay.

  “I turned the radio on—I hope you don’t mind,” Cameron said.

  How the hell had he found it? I’d wedged it on top of the fridge behind a pair of phone books I’d never bothered to unwrap. “It’s fine,” I said. “News just depresses me.” Cameron had it tuned to the local generic pop/rock station.

  I ducked my head into the living room to check for Nate.

  “So I’m a zombie,” Cameron called after me.

  It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yup,” I called back. The PlayStation was still on, but there was no sign of Nate. “You sound like you’re dealing with the new status quo.”

  “No, but there’s not a hell of a lot I can do about being dead.”

  “Not really. To be honest, though, I’m used to more…resistance on the issue.” Screaming, throwing tantrums, other assorted unpleasantness. I checked the bathroom next. Hunh, no Nate here either, and no message…

  “Exactly how much do you remember from last night?” I called.

  “No
t much. Snapshots with no context, though they get clearer closer to the end of the night.”

  To be expected with regeneration.

  “When I woke up this morning, I half convinced myself last night was just a bad alcohol-induced dream. That was before I realized I wasn’t breathing. I held my breath for ten minutes straight before giving up. No heartbeat either.”

  I rifled through the toothbrush stand—where was the lipliner? “Yeah, your eyes will keep fading, too. No blood flow messes with pigment deposit. Happens to every zombie. I know someone who can get you contact lenses, special ones that won’t peel off….” There it was, behind the toothpaste. I wrote Nate? in the top corner of the mirror and waited. Where the hell was he?

  I left the bathroom to find Cameron standing in the kitchen doorway holding a still-sizzling frying pan. Watching me.

  Doesn’t matter what kind of dead they are, they always want the same thing: affirmation from the living that they’re still there.

  I shrugged. “Look, Cameron, it’s an adjustment. You’re doing about as well as can be expected.”

  It wasn’t the answer he wanted. It never is. Still, he nodded and headed back to the stove.

  “Hey, did Nate say anything to you before he bugged out? Like where he was going?”

  “Yeah, he said he had someone to visit.”

  I snorted. Nate was a recluse; he didn’t have anyone to visit. I flipped open my laptop to check the missing persons section of the police database again. The browser was already open, to Mindy May’s website, with a second tab open on her Facebook page.

  Nate was stalking his ex-girlfriend again.

  Cameron glanced up from the frying pan. I closed the pages and clicked on the police database. “My roommate is being an idiot. Again.” There wasn’t a chance in hell Nate’s ex had a set mirror hanging around her place, so how would he even catch a glimpse of her?

  Still no missing report filed on Cameron. A thought struck me: if my access to the missing persons list hadn’t been revoked, maybe I still had access to the paranormal cases. It was worth a shot. I typed Marjorie’s name into the search window and, sure enough, I found her listed in the open paranormal cases. But there was next to nothing on the break-in or her murder. It was within the realm of possibility that they simply hadn’t had a chance to enter the data yet, though Aaron and Sarah were both usually better about getting the staff to update new case files….I closed the browser down.

  “How do you like your eggs?” Cameron asked.

  I still had one hell of an Otherside hangover, but far be it from me to turn down a breakfast I don’t have to make. I slid into one of the chairs at my two-person kitchen table so I could watch him. “Over easy. Bacon, extra crispy.”

  The frying pan sizzled as two eggs went in. Cameron deftly flipped them, gently deposited an egg on each plate, then passed one to me along with a set of cutlery. Where he’d found the forks and knives in my sink’s bottomless pit was beyond me.

  He looked from his plate to mine. “I can still eat…normal food, right?”

  I snagged a piece of bacon. “Yes, but put your plate back down on the counter for a moment and don’t turn the frying pan off.” I popped the bacon into my mouth and nodded to the silver cooler sitting by the fridge.

  Cameron followed my eyes, then swallowed. “I was afraid of that.”

  I bit into another piece of bacon. I don’t know exactly how long it’d been since someone had made me breakfast, but it was far too long.

  Cameron picked up Mork’s metal cooler and set it on the counter. I’d have to throw the frying pan out after this, or maybe send it on its way with Cameron.

  “Okay. Open it up.”

  He kept the cooler at arm’s length as he undid the catch. Gas from the dry ice flowed over the rim. “Now what?”

  I dipped my second piece of bacon in the egg yolk and ate it. “Take a knife out of the very bottom drawer.” I kept my tools of the trade separate from the cooking appliances. I’m messy, but not that messy.

  “Next, grab one of the sealed bags. That’s dry ice in there, so—”

  Too late. He’d reached in with his bare hand.

  “Ow! Jesus—” He dropped the vacuum-sealed bag on the cutting board and stared at his ice-burned fingers.

  I shook my head and got up. “You may be dead, Cameron, but shit still hurts.”

  He headed to the sink to run his fingers under cold water. “No, really? I hadn’t figured that one out yet.”

  “Here, let me take a look.” I went over to him and shut the tap off, then lifted his hand to examine it. Cameron swore. I ignored him.

  The tips of his fingers were covered in circular white welts the colour of cooked chicken breast. Brilliant. Just fantastic. With no circulation, they’d take a long time to heal, even with an infusion of fresh brains. I wrapped a clean dishtowel around his hand and sat back down with my coffee. “Be happy the skin didn’t peel off.”

  “No offence, but this is like the mother of all benders.”

  I took another sip of coffee. “None taken. Now cut the bag open and try not to get any—Never mind,” I said as the contents spilled onto my clean cutting board. I’d be throwing that out as well.

  “Now what?”

  “What do you think? Cut it up, put it in the frying pan, give it a good searing, then stick it on your plate.”

  He placed the knife he’d used to open the bag beside the cutting board and covered his face with his unburned hand. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  I pushed my now-empty plate towards the side of the table and cradled my coffee mug. “Those disgusting little packets are all that’s standing between you and turning into a walking worm bag. Eat them or not—it’s your choice.”

  Cameron stared at me, then at the knife, then at the brains on my soon-to-be-disposed-of cutting board. “Un-fucking-believable,” he said. One big breath later—out of reflex, not necessity—he’d diced the brains into cubes and dumped the whole lot into the frying pan. He jumped back as the pan sizzled.

  I stuck my nose over the coffee to mask the smell. “For Christ’s sake, hit the fan.”

  Cameron looked as though he was going to hurl. “Seriously? I’m about to eat the most disgusting thing ever and you’re worried about the smell?”

  “It’s no worse than what you drank last night.”

  Cameron swore and hit the fan.

  “And add ketchup. Lots of it. At least until you get used to it.”

  He stirred it for a few minutes then dumped the mess on his plate beside the eggs and bacon and toast. He grabbed the brand new bottle of ketchup from the counter and squirted what had to be half the contents on top. He put it on the table and, after finding a clean mug in the sink, poured himself a cup of coffee and took three large sips before sitting down in front of his plate.

  He picked up his fork and dug in with the same kind of Hail Mary grace he’d shown chugging Lee’s brains concoction.

  While he ate—or, more accurately, scarfed down his food in between giant gulps of coffee—I kept watch for a twitch, a miscue. After five minutes I had to concede that if Cameron remembered to breathe and got a pair of coloured contacts, short of pulling a globe, I’d never guess he was a zombie.

  But he should have been like this last night. And the strange clockwork symbols mixed in with his bindings had to be causing problems, otherwise Lee would never have commented on them—or, rather, refused to comment on them. Part of me wanted to send Cameron on his way, with that cooler and the cutting board, but he’d taken so long to stabilize, what if he came unstuck?

  I sat back and sipped my coffee, keeping him company as he got it all down, keeping one ear on the morning news. No reports of murdered or otherwise missing artists. Also no report about events at Marjorie’s Coffee Shop, not even the break-in.

  Cameron chased the last bite down with another gulp of coffee and set his fork on the plate.

  “So, now that you’ve got most of your cognitive
skills back, Cameron, I need your help with something.”

  “What?”

  “Who turned you into a zombie and how the hell did you end up wandering around the docks by yourself last night?”

  Cameron picked up both our plates and headed to the sink. He started the water and let it run for a minute, staring at the flow. Just when I figured I’d overestimated the return of his cognitive skills, he said, “I don’t know.”

  “Well, start with how you roped Max into doing it.”

  He turned the taps off with more force than was necessary and faced me. “That’s just it. I woke up this morning and remembered who I am, where I live, what I did last weekend. I remember my credit card pin, for Christ’s sake. But I have no idea how I died or how I ended up a zombie. I have no idea who Max is, or whether I roped him into anything.” He shook his head.

  I searched his face for the lie. There wasn’t one. “Let’s start with what you do remember. Raising zombies usually doesn’t happen last minute on a Friday night. It takes weeks, sometimes months to plan. And Max doesn’t come cheap.”

  He shook his head again. “I don’t know anyone named Max.”

  Something I’d seen Aaron do with witnesses gave me an idea. “You say you remember what you did last weekend. So walk me through this week, starting with Tuesday.” By my estimation, that was the absolute earliest day Cameron could have died.

  Cameron concentrated hard. “Monday night I was at an opening, Gallery 6. I club-hopped with the owner, Samuel, who’s a friend, for a few hours afterwards, than we hung out at my place—”

  I’d heard of the owner of Gallery 6. Samuel Richan. He was a middle-aged Argentinian infamous for travelling the globe finding new and talented artists who initially earned him only the ridicule of the art community but eventually garnered him a fortune. He’d settled in Seattle a decade ago and opened a space near the convention centre. I followed Richan because predicting art trends with any accuracy was like pegging a World Series winner two years ahead of time: you either were some kind of savant, had one hell of an in with the mob, or had figured out a way to use Otherside.

  “And then?” I asked.