zombie in the Hollows, but I didn’t know it was you.”
“Who else would it be?” I said, taking in his graying black hair cut short to his head and his ever-whitening mustache before I gave him a professional hug just so I could breathe in the scent of old coffee. It felt odd, even as I smiled. Trent was a lot thinner. Taller, too.
“True, true,” Edden said when I let go, somewhat red as he nodded to Ivy. “He didn’t give you trouble, did he? I think he’s the oldest one yet. The rest look almost normal compared to him.”
Ivy took his extended hand, and the two shook as she gave him an earnest but closed-lipped smile. “Older is easier when it comes to zombies. No charge on this one.”
“A freebie?” I muttered, but I suppose I should be glad they took him.
Edden beamed, his eyes lingering briefly on the sprig of yew poking out of my shirt pocket. “Thank you, ladies. Where’s Jenks? Too cold?”
I gave Ivy a sideways look. Jenks and Edden had a great relationship, having bonded over lost wives and a night of karaoke. “No, he and David crapped out on us and went for coffee after we got Mr. Z in the trunk. Why?” I asked, suspicious when Edden dropped the folder open on the bench behind us.
“Paperwork,” the older man said. “But I’d think your two signatures will be enough.” He fumbled the pen out of his front shirt pocket, but Ivy had already taken hers from her jacket’s inner pocket and clicked it open. “If you could sign here, saying that you took responsibility of the zombie after it encroached on your property, and then this one releasing your rights to it.”
He extended his pen to me when Ivy began signing with her own, but I wouldn’t take it. “Responsibility?” I echoed. “We knocked it down and took it to the zoo.”
“Sign the paper or he’s yours.” Ivy finished her scrawl and spun the papers to me. “You don’t want one that old. Too much maintenance.”
“I don’t want one at all,” I said, and Edden’s mustache bunched up.
“Then sign the paper. Here, and again here. Unless you want him back.”
I looked down, not wanting to read the gobbledygook. Ivy hadn’t. There was a picture of Mr. Z in his grungy lab coat and empty pocket protector that made me wonder how many people had seen and ignored him on his ramblings to our graveyard. “I swear, Edden, if this comes back to bite me, I will take it out of your hide. We tried to call it in, and no one would come.”
Edden’s posture eased as I bent low to sign, putting a period after my name so the signature couldn’t be used to target a spell to me. “And we at the FIB appreciate you handling it,” he said cheerfully. “Last night was busy, and because everyone is afraid to look over the edge of the box they put themselves in, it hit my desk. Three days of someone’s shoddy work is now my problem.”
But he didn’t seem to be unhappy about it as I straightened from my uncomfortably low stoop. A warning flag snapped in my thoughts when Ivy nodded, the motion hardly there. She knew something about it, whatever it was.
“Honestly, Rachel,” Edden said as he tucked the papers into the file, “you don’t know how good you have it, being able to pick and choose your runs.”
“Uh, huh?” My stare at Ivy became a squint, and a flash of thrill hit me when her eyes met mine and darted away. Three days of shoddy work landing on Edden’s desk? “You got the first human-on-human lethal domestic dispute, didn’t you,” I said, remembering the newscast I’d turned off, and Edden nodded, smile wide.
Cincy wasn’t known for its violent crime. Oh, it happened, but the city wasn’t known for it, and the recent spate of Inderland passion crimes ending in death was unusual. The media was busy inventing reasons for it, but the FIB would be involved now if there had been a human fatality.
“How did you get ahold of the I.S. reports?” I asked, my eyes immediately flicking back to Ivy. She was the only one who’d share information with the FIB like that—which meant she was working the cases and hadn’t told me. I put a hand on my hip, peeved.
“Ivy,” Edden said, confirming it. “Which means I have the straight poop, not the watered-down pap we usually get,”