Affairs of the Dead (8 page)

“I get that from a lot of people,” I said. “And even some ghosts. What I don’t get is why exactly I work your poor nerves so badly.”

“You’re reckless, and you get everything handed to you. How’s that to start?” Micah said, angry eyes finally turning to look at me. “Andrew had me tailing you for weeks. He took me off working with clients so I could build a report on you. After the first two weeks, I had enough dirt to warrant your reassignment or suspension, but Andrew told me to keep following you, claiming he needed more evidence. Sounded more like he was turning a blind eye to the things you were doing.” He shook his head. “If you were sleeping with Andrew, he’d probably let you get away with outright murder.”

“And what do you get to get away with since you’ve fucked just about every female in this office?” I replied with a sweet smile. His face became so stony I was sure it was about to shatter.

“I guess this is the part where I defend myself, but I can’t do that,” I continued. “I’m aware of the choices I’ve made, Micah, and I don’t regret anything I’ve done. If you ask me, my rule bending saved you and a lot of people in here from being forced to do more than one necromancer circle, so I’d say I was doing everyone a service.”

“Save it,” Micah said. “You just don’t get it.”

“I really don’t,” I said, shrugging. “But maybe it would be better if you didn’t let me bother you so much. I got in trouble, I’m being punished, and that’s my business. Why let it rattle you?”

“Because,” he said, and I was a little taken aback by the intensity in his voice. “Never mind. You’re not worth it.”

“Precisely,” I said, though a little part of me withered when he’d said I wasn’t worth it. “Well, I’d better go pretend to be busy while we all wait for the strip search to start.” I started walking away, but he called out to me.

“Wait,” he said. I turned around and raised an eyebrow. He didn’t say anything, so I walked back over to him.

“Are you going to be okay today?” he asked, though his voice was still hard, and he wasn’t looking at me.

“You give me a verbal beat down one minute, then you care about my well-being the next?” I said. “Thought I wasn’t worth it? If I get caught and carted off, wouldn’t that make the sun shine a little brighter for you?”

With those parting words, I headed back to my desk. I knew it wasn’t in my best interest to poke at someone who had a grudge against me and knew such a huge truth about me, but Micah hadn’t been lying when he’d called me reckless.

I didn’t have much time to sit and idle at my desk, because about half an hour later, Andrew came back out to tell us that the dead witches from the government were here. That was everyone’s cue to go up to the twelfth floor, which was where our conference rooms were. Affairs of the Dead employed about fifty necromancers, so we gathered in one of the larger rooms, which was like an auditorium, with staggered rows of seats, an aisle down the middle, and a low stage at the front of the room with a huge projection screen hanging behind it.

I was mostly calm since I was confident in the steps I’d taken to keep myself from being found out, but I played up the nervous factor for the benefit of everyone else. People were especially chatty when they were anxious, so I soon found myself in a group conversation that cycled the same negative points about this process over and over. I caught Micah’s eye across the room once or twice but resisted smiling and waving at him again. His stony expression never cracked.

After about twenty minutes, the doors opened and a hush fell across the room when five solemn-faced dead witches entered. They were dressed in dark suits and had that overall “here on official government business” look. People moved to make room for them as though being too close would condemn them, and the dead witches walked to the front of the room where Andrew stood. After talking to him for a few moments, Andrew stepped forward to address us.

“The witches are going to split up and start the check,” he said. “So everyone please have a seat and be patient. As soon as you’re cleared, you’re free to go.”

Andrew also had to undergo the check, and a dead witch began working with him. A murmur started up as people settled into seats, and when I glanced behind me, I saw a row of armed police officers blocking the door. They were dressed like they were about to go hunting for terrorists in helmets and bulletproof vests, with rifles in their hands.

The officers came from a specially sanctioned task force the government had created to support the dead witches who did this kind of work. Any necromancer whose reanimation power was discovered would have better luck jumping out the window than trying to get out that door. Their rifles were full of rune bullets, the same kind we used when we hunted beasties. Not only could rune bullets bring down a beastie, but they were also very effective on a reanimator who tried to evade capture. A bullet was a bullet, after all.

I found a seat somewhere in the middle of a row and settled down to wait until it was my turn to be scanned. Despite feeling confident that I was safe, I was always a little uneasy about the whole ordeal, so I distracted myself by playing games on my phone. After about forty-five minutes, I looked up and saw one of the dead witches walking toward me so I put my phone away. I recognized the petite woman with her black hair pulled back in a severe bun and face devoid of makeup. She would have been more attractive if she put a little effort into it, but I guess she wasn’t getting paid to sit around and look cute. I hoped that’s not what Andrew was paying me for.

I juggled names in my head until I got the right one: Athena. She was one of the dead witches who were always present when these procedures went down, so I’d been seeing her humorless face for a few years now. When she got to me, she didn’t waste time saying hello but immediately started fiddling with her iPad.

“Name?” she asked. She probably recognized my face but dealt with too many of us to remember us by name.

“Selene Vanream,” I said.

She nodded, poked her iPad for a few more seconds, then put it down and reached into the black pouch she was also holding. The rune stone she pulled out looked similar to the binding stone I had used on myself, except it was red. I’ll admit, my trepidation was growing the closer she brought that stone to me, but I sat still and tried not to look like someone who had stripped and hidden my reanimation power. I was just your average necromancer, no ability to reanimate the dead using souls of the living here.

Athena held the rune stone close to me, and I immediately felt the biting energy inside the stone tickle along my skin. The energy infused into this particular kind of rune stone was invasive. Its job was to search, so it did more than slide along my skin. I could feel the stone’s power sink into my body and embark on a search of every fiber of my being.

Here was where I started praying that I had peeled every last streak of reanimation power away, because if even an atom-sized particle remained, Athena and her stone would find it, and I would be fucked. Athena’s face was extremely serious, as though doing this was the single most important thing she could do with her life. I averted my gaze and stared at the far wall as I waited for it to be over.

After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only about ten minutes, Athena finally stood up straight, put the rune stone away, and picked up her iPad to make a few notes.

“Clear.” She handed me a piece of green paper, then turned around and walked away.

I released the largest breath ever and slumped back against the chair for a few moments. As I headed for the doors, I looked around the room and saw that the crowd had thinned out. The witches had gotten through about half of us, and so far no one had been tackled to the ground, screaming for his or her freedom. Micah was still here, sitting by himself, waiting his turn. As though he knew I was looking at him, he caught my eye, so I held up the green paper and waved it at him. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me, but I could have sworn I saw relief flash briefly across his face. Well whatever. I showed my green paper to the guards, and they let me leave the room and head back to the tenth floor.

I wished I could run home and take my reanimation power back, because even though I wasn’t feeling sick yet, I felt hollow without it, like I was slightly off my equilibrium. Only when I’d done the ritual for the first time and felt what it was like to be without that part of my power did I understand what was really done to a reanimator when they were stripped. And when I had tried to leave my power in the binding stone, I had really, really understood.

I was as up in arms about the stripping practice as anyone else, but I understood the fear associated with the power to reanimate a dead body. There were history books full of horror stories about reanimators who abused their power and left a high body count in their wake. If there was some way to know that modern day reanimators wouldn’t go off the deep end and slaughter people to raise corpses, maybe the stripping solution could be scrapped, but alas, there was no telling what people would do with the power they had.

The suite was mostly empty since a lot of the people who had been cleared had plunged right back into work and were off with ghost clients. Guess I should get back to work too. I sighed as I poked around my desk for my folder of assorted tasks. When I found it, my mood soured even more when I saw that today I’d be working with Larry.

I frowned. Why was I assigned to Larry if I wasn’t supposed to be working with clients? Only one way to find out. I headed to Andrew’s office and breezed right in.

“Why am I on Larry duty today?” I asked. He didn’t look up from what he was typing, but his lips did twitch in an amused smile that I was not appreciative of since it was at my expense. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to be working with clients,” I pressed.

Andrew turned to me. “Larry is an exception since it’s well known that no one likes getting assigned to him. As you’re being punished, working with Larry seemed to fit with your new schedule quite nicely.”

I frowned. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me.”

He chuckled, then stood and came over to me, grabbing me around the waist and smiling. “You did it to yourself, remember? I’m just being a fair boss.”

“By putting me on track and retrieval and Larry duty all in one week?” I said, trying to squirm out of his hold. This wasn’t a moment where I wanted him to hold me, but he didn’t let go, so I had no choice but to stand there in the circle of his arms.

“You’re only with Larry for today,” Andrew said.

“Yippie,” I said dully. “But if I end up in a crack den, I’m going to steal some, plant it on you, then tip off the cops.”

He laughed, planted a hard kiss on my mouth, then let me go and headed back to his chair. “Feel free to have a horrible day and make me pay for it later.”

I rolled my eyes, made a sound of exasperation, then stalked out of his office. When I got back to my desk, Larry was waiting for me.

“Looks like it’s you and me today, doll,” he said, giving me a smile.

“Can’t you see how happy I am about that?” I said, giving him the most expressionless face and bland voice I could muster.

“No sewer rats today, I promise,” he said as I grabbed my bag and we left the suite.

Once we were outside, I put runes on him so he could sit in my car. He could do the hover-sitting thing, but there was always the chance that when I made a turn, he would fall through the door or something. Not that it would hurt him, but I didn’t want to have to stop in the middle of the street to retrieve him.

Larry was a lot happier once he knew he could be seen. He immediately started catcalling women, and I had to push him into the car to get him to stop heckling women who probably wouldn’t want him even if he was alive. Once we were driving, Larry linked his hands behind his head, put his feet up on my dashboard, and started whistling. I released a sigh. Today was going to be a long day.

I’d leafed through the information I had on today’s duties while we were in the elevator, so I knew I had to drive into the Bronx, which was a longer drive than I desired to take with Larry, but I had no choice. The address took us to a residential street lined with prewar apartment buildings, and Larry had a big smile on his face as I parked.

“Ah, the old block,” Larry said, taking a deep breath as though he relished the scent of this dusty block. “Well, one of them at least.” He started toward one of the apartment buildings, and I caught up.

“You lived here?” I asked as he looked over the list of tenant names.

“I wouldn’t say lived,” he said. “It was more of a storage house.”

“Of course it was,” I muttered.

He found the bell he wanted and gave it three short presses, as though it was a code, then shoved his hands into his pockets and stepped back to wait. Enough time passed that I thought Larry should ring the bell again, and I said as much, but he just smiled and continued to rock on his heels and whistle the same annoying tune he’d been whistling in the car.

About five minutes later, I heard noise on the other side of the door. When it opened a crack, a wary-looking face peeked out. I heard the woman gasp sharply, and the one eye I could see widened as she looked at Larry. He bowed his head slightly.

“Hello, Beth,” he said. “I need my key, do you mind?”

Beth looked past Larry to me, and since she seemed so hesitant, I pulled out my badge and held it up for her.

“My name is Selene Vanream, and I’m with Affairs of the Dead,” I told her as she squinted at my badge. “I’m working with Larry today, and his business has brought us here. Do you mind letting us in?”

Beth hesitated a moment more, then stepped back and opened the door slowly, hiding behind it as though she’d be safe there if Larry and I decided we were actually here to cause trouble. I knew some people didn’t care to be around ghosts, but this seemed like someone Larry had known in life, so why was she acting like I had brought a beastie to her doorstep?

“Lead the way,” Larry said, flourishing a hand and indicating for Beth to go ahead of us. The vestibule we’d walked into was small and didn’t smell too great, so I was eager for Beth to lead the way out of here.