Undead Much (6 page)

  “Monica told you about the weird RCs, right? That’s what this is about?” I settled into my chair with my Sprite while Kitty pulled a tiny tape recorder from her pocket. Mom set the Doritos down between us and then returned to puttering around the kitchen, clearly intending to eavesdrop, which was fine. I had nothing to hide from her or anyone else.

  “She did, and she was thorough. As usual.” Kitty winked at me and I smiled. “But I’d like to confirm everything with you. On the record.” She pressed the record button and got her official voice on. “Interview with Megan Berry. January thirteenth, approximately twenty-two hundred hours.

  “Due to the late hour and the fact that Miss Berry suffered head trauma earlier in the evening, this interview is purely for the confirmation of the incident, as per regulation four point three, subsections a and b. Are you ready, Megan?”

  “Um, yeah. I mean. Yes.” I cleared my throat, catching a bit of Mom’s anxiety.

  It was hard not to be anxious when Kitty started sounding like the FBI-type person she really was. I made a vow right then to keep my voice friendly when conducting Enforcer interviews. Assuming, of course, that I ended up becoming an Enforcer like everyone and their sister’s friend’s dog wanted me to be.

  “Okay.” Kitty smiled again, obviously trying to put me at ease. “When did you first notice the Out-of-Grave Phenomenon?”

  “About ten minutes after I got to the car wash. Probably around five? I smelled something funny, then heard groaning, so I grabbed Monica-um, Miss Parsons-and we headed into the woods.”

  “You smelled something? Could you be more specific?” she asked, and I did my best to describe the smell of the herbs I’d noticed. “Great. So you entered the woods unobserved by any human witnesses?”

  “The other members of the pom squad and the guy getting his car washed saw us.”

  “But they didn’t see the Out-of-Grave Phenomenon?”

  “I don’t think so. No one came to look for us until we’d joined power and-”

  “We’ll get to that in just a second. First, could you tell me how many Reanimated Corpses you observed and briefly outline any unusual traits they may have had?”

  I took my time describing as much as I could remember about the strange RCs-their fast movements, the lack of red eyes, the pink cheeks and apparent absence of grave dirt or any real signs of decomposition.

  “So you’re saying they appeared to be alive?” she asked casually, as if that weren’t a huge weird deal.

  “Well… I guess. I mean, the two I got really close to were pretty pale, but their skin wasn’t cold or stiff.” I hadn’t thought of it at the time, but Shorty and Baldy’s hands
had
been warm. “But they were both really strong, like zombie strong, and they definitely wanted a piece of me.”

  “They tried to bite you?” Kitty’s eyes narrowed just the slightest bit and a shadow passed over her face. If she were someone else, I would have said she doubted my honesty. But this was Kitty. She knew I wasn’t a liar, especially about something like this. So why was she looking at me like that?

  “Several times. I managed to stop them, but it wasn’t easy. None of the commands were working, even the
pax frater
. I don’t know what we would have done if combining our power for the
reverto
spell hadn’t worked,” I said, a hint of accusation creeping into my tone. “You never told us there were RCs that didn’t respond to spells. That would have been a good thing to know, you know. Like,
before
we almost died.”

  Kitty sighed and took off her glasses to rub her eyes. “All Reanimated Corpses
will
respond to Settler commands if there’s sufficient power behind the spell and a manageable number of Out-of-Grave Phenomenons. Never in the history of our people have we had a documented case of-”

  “But, I swear, there were only seven, four at first, and they didn’t-”

  “
Never
have we had a documented case of Reanimated Corpses behaving as you’ve described.” Kitty slid her glasses back into place and nailed me with her clear gray eyes. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more at this time, but be assured your training in how to manage the Undead has been thorough.”

  “Then what were those things?”

  She looked sorry for me for a second, but apparently not sorry enough to answer my question. “Megan, could you tell me one more thing?” she asked, suddenly very interested in typing something into her BlackBerry. “Where were you between four o’clock and five o’clock this afternoon?”

  “I was-”

  “She was right here. Eating lasagna with her family, ” Mom interrupted in a supremely pissed voice. She’s a vegetarian and normally way more hippy than militant, but once you make her angry she can be pretty scary. “And this interview is over.”

CHAPTER 5

  “
J
ennifer, please,” Kitty said. “I’m not trying to-”

  “Oh, I know exactly what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to trick an innocent sixteen-year-old with a head injury into being interrogated without the benefit of representation.” Mom grabbed the chips from the table and set them down on the island behind her with loud thunk. Clearly, hospitality time was over. “If Megan is a suspect, you’ll need the proper paperwork, and we’re going to need a mediator.”

  Settlers don’t have lawyers, but mediators are basically the same thing. They step in and made sure people suspected of wrongdoing are treated fairly until their guilt or innocence is determined. After SA had decided to try Beth and Jess in Settler court, a mediator had been responsible for getting Beth’s sentence transmitted to a stay in a mental facility instead of Settler Affairs prison. Tests had shown she was dealing with a bunch of different disorders and was a good candidate for rehabilitation once her memory had been wiped by Enforcement.

  If Mom thought
we
needed a mediator…

  “Okay, let’s just calm down,” I said, certain the maternal unit was overreacting. Kitty was my friend. She’d never think
I
had anything to do with those weird zombies. “I didn’t do anything wrong and I’m sure Kitty and-”

  “Don’t say another word,” Mom said, pointing a firm finger at me before turning back to Kitty. “I’d like you and your team out of my house.”

  “Mom! Please, stop it.”

  “Be quiet, Megan, and… and go to your room!”

  “My room is full of Enforcers!” I jumped to my feet so fast my chair clattered to the ground behind me. “And this is crazy! I didn’t make those zombies, if that’s what everyone’s thinking. Use a lie-detector charm on me, I swear it will-”

  “I doubt the charm would work, Megan. You’re too powerful.” The way Kitty said the words made it clear she didn’t think my power was all it was cracked up to be. Great. Neither did I.

  “Then find some other way to test me. I’m telling the truth.”

  “Megan, listen to me,” Mom begged. “You need to be very careful what you say.”

  “But I-”

  “Your mom’s right. You shouldn’t say anything else.” Kitty flipped off her recorder with a soft sigh and pushed back her chair. “I’ll have the paperwork filed by tomorrow morning. You’ll get your copy by early Thursday at the latest. After that, it will be your responsibility to file a petition for representation. In the meantime, it would probably be best if Megan didn’t discuss this with anyone other than family members who, as you know, can’t be called upon to testify against her in a felony case.”

  “Felony?” It felt like all the air had been sucked from my lungs.

  I’d bent the rules a few times, sure, but what made Kitty and her team think
I’d
committed a felony? A felony was like… using black magic to
murder
someone or something horrible! Even the time SA thought I’d accidentally summoned a bunch of RC clones, no one had said anything about mediators or felonies.

  An accident! Maybe this was something I’d done by accident. I still didn’t have total control over my power, so it was possible.

  “What if I did something without knowing I did it?” I asked, hurrying on before Mom could tell me to shut up again. “Like the time they thought I made those clones?”

  “Not this time.” Kitty’s tone allowed no room for argument.

  “We’re finished in her room.” Barker, another of my Enforcer trainers, appeared in the entrance to the kitchen.

  He was so tall his head nearly hit the top of the doorframe and so wide he had to stand at an angle to keep his shoulders from hitting the sides. The dude was big enough to be flat-out scary and usually had a scowl on his face that completed the “fear me” look, but now he just looked sad. And disappointed.

  My Sprite gurgled sickly in my stomach as I realized I was the one who had put that look on his face. Or whatever he thought I’d done. The man could barely look at me, which made
me
sad. And angry.

  What had I ever done to make him and Kitty so ready to believe I’d raised those weird zombies? There had never been a Settler convicted of using black magic, so why were they assuming I was going to be the first? I might not have been the most eager little pupil, but I’d done my best to make them proud. I’d trained my ass off and studied until my brain felt like it was going to leak out of my ears, yet still, here we were.

  It had to be my stupid super-Settler power getting me in trouble again. That was the only explanation that made sense. I was a suspect because I was
capable
of doing things the average Settler couldn’t, not because I’d actually
done
anything.

  “Did you find anything?” Kitty asked.

  “No. It was clean.” Barker didn’t sound as happy about that as he should have. He probably thought I had stashed the evidence of my evil somewhere else. The jerk.

  “Thanks.” Kitty stood up and turned to face my mom and Elder Thomas, who had come to stand beside her sometime during the interrogation. “Please understand that we all care very much about Megan and your family. But as it stands-”

  “As it stands, Megan is innocent. She didn’t raise those zombies.”

  “Maybe not. We’ll have to wait for all the lab work to come back to be sure,” Elder Thomas said. “But we both know she
could
have. Don’t we, Jennifer?”

  It was exactly the thought I’d had a second ago, but for some reason it made my mom suck in a shocked breath, then dart a quick look in my direction before turning back to Elder Thomas. Like it was news I was weird? We’d known this for a while now. “That’s… I thought we… This is crazy, Megan is innocent.”

  “Megan may be innocent, but mistakes have been made-”

  “Are you suggesting… I can’t…” Mom turned her back on me and dropped her voice to a whisper. “You know what? I’m not having this conversation. No one in this house did anything wrong, and I refuse to call that decision a mistake.”

  “I think we both know that-”

  “Get out.” Mom pointed a trembling finger at the door. The words were soft but infused with more rage than I’d ever heard in my mother’s voice.

  “We’ll be in touch.” Elder Thomas headed toward the door, followed by a rather embarrassed-looking Kitty and a still sad-clown-faced Barker. The front door slammed seconds later and our house was suddenly disturbingly quiet.

  But for some reason, I was afraid to break that silence. Maybe it was the fact that my mom was starting to cry, silent tears that leaked down her worried face. Or maybe it was the fact that, during her and Elder Thomas’s decidedly odd conversation, I’d seen the look in Mom’s eyes. It hadn’t been anger or confusion I’d read there-it had been fear.

  She was afraid of something. Afraid that Elder Thomas was right about me going over to the dark side? Afraid of whatever this “mistake” was? Afraid that the Enforcers would nail me to the wall whether I was innocent or not? I couldn’t guess, and she didn’t stick around to explain herself.

  “Go to bed, Megan. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

  “But Mom-”

  “Just go to bed. Please.” She fled into her and Dad’s room and slammed the door, but I could hear it when she started to cry even harder. Then Dad mumbled something in his deep voice and the sobs were muffled. Probably by his chest. He was probably giving Mom a hug, and telling her everything was going to be okay.

  Meanwhile, I was out in the kitchen with no one, feet tangled in my overturned chair. Alone, the villain in this night’s drama even though I’d done absolutely nothing wrong. For a second, I thought about calling Ethan and begging him to come over and let me sob on
his
chest, but realized it would be useless. No doubt he was still busy with Protocol duty and would be for the rest of the night. And even when he was finally dismissed, he might have been given orders not to see me. Girlfriend or not, I was apparently now a suspect in a felony, and surely SA wouldn’t want one of their cops fraternizing with the enemy.

  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I learned we were on a relationship time-out until this mess was sorted out. There would be no Ethan hugs, no Ethan kisses, no Ethan common-sense talks that always made me feel so much better-not even a big, warm Ethan hand to hold.

  The thought broke down the last of my upper-lip stiffness. By the time I got to my bathroom and turned the shower on, I was crying like someone had died.

  How could I have gotten in so much trouble for something I hadn’t done? Why was I the only suspect when I
knew
they had no evidence to prove I’d raised those RCs? Sure I was the only super-powered Settler in our part of the country, but there had to be someone else who could have done this, because someone else
did
do it. I couldn’t believe Kitty, at least, hadn’t started to consider other suspects.

  And what the heck was up with Mom and her “mistake” and this felony I’d supposedly committed? Trying to kill someone with zombies was a felony charge, but I was the one they’d been trying to bite! But then, the zombies
would
have tried to bite me if I was the one who raised them and a Settler had worked a
reverto
spell on them-a
reverto
spell sends them back to their maker for a bite of the blood that summoned them from their grave. So maybe that was why Kitty thought I was guilty.