requiring them to be on the other side of Cincinnati’s world-class zoo. Ivy and I stood almost forgotten in the overdone show of getting Mr. Z out of Ivy’s trunk and carefully leashed between three keepers who then slowly led the rotting animated corpse to the zombie enclosure.
I thought it would’ve been easier to strap him to a gurney and wheel him there, but the keepers were big on trying to show their charges in as natural a setting as possible. My comment that strapped to a gurney was his natural setting hadn’t gone over well, and watching them shamble off surrounded by kids excited to be grossed out, I had a feeling that “walk with the zombies” was going to be one of the zoo’s more lucrative efforts come winter when they didn’t smell so bad.
Not surprisingly, we’d been asked to wait. Ivy and I stood in the sun, my head down over my phone as I texted Trent that I’d had to take a zombie to the zoo and couldn’t make Carew Tower. Ivy sighed, and I tucked my phone in a back pocket. I didn’t smell zombie on me, but I knew Ivy could as she plucked her shirt and winced.
“Thanks for waiting,” the lingering woman in tan slacks and a white top with the zoo’s logo on it said. “The FIB wants to talk to you before you leave.”
My eyebrows rose. “Ah, we were told to bring him here.”
“You’re fine.” The woman blinked fast as the smell of zombie rising from us hit her anew. “We informed the I.S. and FIB that we had a seventh zombie, and Captain Edden asked us to keep you here to sign the paperwork.”
“How long?” Ivy asked, and she shrugged, her eyes on the retreating, shambling group.
“He’s on-site. Five minutes?” she guessed. “If you promise not to leave . . .”
“We’ll sit tight,” I said, and she hustled away, fleeing almost.
“Good thing I canceled on Trent,” I muttered as I went to the nearby bench. Ivy followed, chuckling as she sat beside me in a languid display of grace. In the distance, howler monkeys began hooting. It was unusual this time of day, but I’d shout, too, if a zombie was passing my enclosure. My phone buzzed, and I took it out, smiling at Trent’s text telling me to be sure I took the zombie to see the pandas and buy him popcorn. Take a zombie to the zoo . . . , I thought, smirking at myself. I probably could have worded that better.
“It sort of sticks to you, doesn’t it?” Ivy said, and I tucked my phone away again, glad both Trent and I knew work was work and that sometimes unexpected things happened that needed to be dealt with immediately and to not get bent out of shape about it. Kisten had taught me that.
“The stink?” I said, wanting to be sure we were talking about the same thing. “I know I didn’t touch it.” I grimaced when a little girl passing asked her mom what that bad smell was. “You ever smell anything like this before?”
“Once,” Ivy said, shifting her posture and taking a breath to tell me about it.
“Stop!” I said, and then I sneezed. I froze, waiting for the second one, but it never came.
Ivy took her phone out, checked the time, then put it away. “Top of the hour,” she said, meaning the sneeze, and I made an “Mmm-hum” of an answer. “Your last sneeze was, too,” she added, wary this time, and I nodded, stretching my feet in my designer vamp boots into the sun.
“Yep.” I didn’t want to get into it. Ivy knew what structured sneezing meant as well as I did. Someone was trying to reach me via a scrying mirror. That someone probably being a demon.
“It might be a job,” Ivy said cautiously, and I slumped. The demons had been surprisingly quiet since regaining the ability to walk in reality at will, but working for them wouldn’t help my reputation. Then again, the last time I’d ignored a polite repeated call, I’d been jerked into a demon court to stand trial for breaking the ever-after.
“That’s why I snipped the end off that yew bush before we left,” I said, and Ivy glanced at it sticking out of my shirt pocket like a weird nosegay. She’d never been comfortable with my spell crafting, but it was a part of me, and she accepted it. I needed a yew stylus to